Bernard Kerik, onetime Homeland Security pick, pleads guilty to influence-peddling

Remember Bernard Kerik? The former New York police commissioner, widely praised after Sept. 11 and for work on security in Iraq, was supposed to be secretary of Homeland Security under President Bush.

Today, in a New York courtroom, Kerik pleaded guilty to influence peddling. It was the climax of a fall that began in 2004. Back then, his withdrawal as Bush’s pick for Homeland Security was swift. Consider this. On Dec. 3, 2004, The Times reported these glowing comments about his nomination:

Supporters of Kerik who watched him lead the New York Police Department through the attacks on the World Trade Center said he was up to the job.

"He has always been a very strong leader," said Patrick J. Lynch, president of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn., the police union. "He understands security needs, especially in response to terrorism."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that Kerik knew "the great needs and challenges this country faces in homeland security."

"He has a strong law enforcement background, and I believe will do an excellent job in fighting for the resources and focus that homeland security needs and deserves in our post-9/11 world," Schumer said.

Then on Dec. 11, we wrote:

Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on Friday abruptly withdrew himself from consideration as the nation’s next Homeland Security chief, saying he had determined that a former household employee might have been an illegal immigrant.

Kerik’s unexpected withdrawal cast a temporary cloud over President Bush’s second-term Cabinet, and appeared likely to revive the contentious issues raised by the "nannygate" disclosures that derailed two of former President Clinton’s high-level nominees.

And with some prescience, the writers ended their story with this:

Trouble often followed Kerik. As a young soldier in South Korea, he fathered a child out of wedlock. As NYPD commissioner, he was fined $2,500 for sending two police officers to Ohio to help research his bestselling 2001 memoir, "The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice."

When the book’s publisher, Judith Regan, reported her cellphone stolen after a visit to a Fox Television studio, detectives reportedly showed up at the homes of Fox employees who had been on the set at the time.

A Senate GOP aide speculated about Kerik’s withdrawal: "It was probably a mounting list of potentially embarrassing issues, and they decided to cut their losses before it got worse. Good timing too: late on a Friday night."

-- Steve Padilla

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File photo: Bernard Kerik. Credit: Associated Press

Ethics probe so big lawmakers have to take a number -- half the Pentagon spending committee caught in net

We already knew that Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel was under investigation for failing to report some of his real estate holdings and rental income, and a few other goodies, on his financial disclosure forms. And that the Ethics Committee was studying Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha's ties to defense contractors.

Now it turns out that those two were just the tip of the iceberg.

Turns out that nearly half the members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which Murtha chairs, are under investigation for funneling millions in federal funds to clients of a lobbyist who used to work on the Hill. The charge: They put earmarks worth $300 million in the  2008 Defense appropriation bill to benefit clients of the PMA Group, a now-defunct....

Prison political primer: Traficant's out, but other pols headed behind bars

Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all the politicians who have run afoul of the law. In the spirit of clarity, The Ticket offers this handy guide to recent events:

Headed out: Former Ohio congressman James A. Traficant Jr. walked out of a federal prison today in Minnesota. The colorful Democrat — “colorful” being polite journalese for the excessively eccentric —served seven years in prison for corruption. He was convicted in 2002 of bribery and racketeering for accepting bribes from businessmen and taking kickbacks from staff members.

Traficant was famous for a rambling speaking style. During his nine-week trial in Cleveland, he sparred with the judge, used profanity, dropped boxes on the floor and threatened physical harm to the prosecutors.

Traficant was expelled from the House of Representatives, the first congressmen tossed out of the chamber since the Civil War.

In the video above, taken at a congressional hearing on his expulsion, he verbally attacks the allegations — and the prosecutors — in his distinctively earthy style.

Headed in: One wonders if there’s some cosmic rule in the universe that states that as one crooked congressman leaves prison another must replace him to maintain a balance.

Former Rep. William J. Jefferson faces more than 20 years behind bars when he’s scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 30. Jefferson, who may be best remembered as the guy who had $90,000 in cash in his freezer, was found guilty in August of 11 of 16 criminal counts including bribery, racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud.

The Associated Press reports that the Louisiana Democrat filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation last week.

Already in: A former Democratic state senator in Pennsylvania, Vincent Fumo, reported Monday to a low-security prison in Ashland, Ky. He too has been convicted on corruption charges.

Already in: Another former Democratic lawmaker convicted of fraud, onetime New Jersey state Sen. Wayne Bryant, reported in late August to a federal prison in West Virginia.

Turning himself in: Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez surrendered today to Connecticut State Police — for the second time this year — amid allegations of corruption at City Hall. Perez, who was already charged in January with taking a bribe, denies any wrongdoing. So does former state Rep. Abraham Giles, who also turned himself in to authorities today.

Now, getting back to Traficant ....

Hillary Clinton, still in Africa, compares Nigeria's rigged elections to Bush vs. Gore

When I traveled as a reporter with former Secretary of State James Baker back in the 1990s, he had a rule. Never stay out of Washington longer than 10 days. A former campaign manager and White House chief of staff, Baker understood that, in politics, geography is destiny. Leave town for too long and you risk losing friends -- and influence.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the midst of an 11-day odyssey to Africa that already has inspired one maybe-she-was-exhausted gaffe -- when she snapped at a questioner who asked her for former President Bill Clinton's opinion on something. As the Ticket reported earlier, the question was mistranslated -- apparently the guy in the Congo wanted to know President Obama's POV.

Now, after some laudable and heart-wrenching footage in which Clinton poignantly highlighted the use of rape as a tactic of war in the Congo, the secretary of State has stepped in it again.

On the fifth stop on her seven-nation tour of Africa, Clinton delivered her message that Nigeria's "lack of transparency and accountability has eroded the legitimacy of the government and contributed to the rise of groups that embrace violence and reject the authority of the state."

Then, during a town-hall meeting in Nairobi, she compared Nigeria's rigged elections to the 2000 presidential election that came down to a contest in Florida between Al Gore, her husband's vice president, and George W. Bush, whose brother Jeb was governor at the time.

Our democracy is still evolving. You know we've had all kinds of problems in some of our past elections as you might remember. In 2000, our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of the man running for president was the governor of the state. So we have our problems too.

A spokesman for Jeb Bush said the former governor would have no comment but wished the secretary "a safe and successful trip."

Maybe she's tired. Maybe she was trying to soften the harsh blow she'd delivered in upbraiding the Nigerians. Or maybe, as Baker might suggest, she needs to come home.

See what you think.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Clinton jokes with patients and staff at the Heal Africa Clinic in Goma, Congo, on Tuesday. Credit: Associated Press

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Ruth Madoff: Homeless and without a hairdresser as husband gets 150 years in jail

Ponzi scheme swindler Bernard Madoff, the 71-year-old financier whose greed wiped out fortunes, ruined retirements, bankrupted several prominent Jewish charities and even led some investors to commit suicide, was sentenced today to 150 years in jail.

Victims pleaded with the court to throw the book at him as federal prosecutors sought the maximum term -- 150 years -- for what is considered the largest heist in Wall Street history, now estimated at $13 billion. And he did.

Madoff  apologized to his victims -- "I'm sorry," he said, turning to face them. But Judge Denny Chin gave the perp the maximum because, he explained, Madoff never cooperated with prosecutors -- about either  who might have helped him in his elaborate deception or where the money had gone to. When the judge pronounced his verdict, the courtroom erupted in applause. For once, the judge did not gavel them to silence.

Even as the Bernard Madoff sentencing took center stage, Ruth Madoff, the swindler's wife of 49 years, was drawing almost as much ink as her husband.

Two weeks ago, in a piece entitled "The Loneliest Woman in New York," the New York Times reported that her usual salon, Pierre Michel, on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, had told her not to return for her every-six-weeks blond foil highlights.

Ruth Madoff made a deal with federal prosecutors last week to sell most of the couple's assets -- the $7.5-million co-op and primary residence in Manhattan, the $11-million house in Palm Beach, Fla., the $3-million beach house on Montauk, at the tip of Long Island and, as the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, jewelry insured at more than $2.6 million and two fur coats valued at $48,500. In exchange, the Justice Department agreed to let the 68-year-old woman keep $2.5 million.

Now, the New York Post is reporting that landlords don't want to rent to Mrs. Madoff, who is shopping for an apartment. She has started using her maiden name, Alpern, but no luck there either.

"She has nowhere to go," a top broker said. "No one wants someone with her name in their building. People like their privacy."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Mary Altaffer / Associated Press

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Just like Karl Rove, only young, slim, well-dressed and handsome

Here’s something we hadn’t planned on contemplating: Karl Rove, the early years.

But that’s what comes to mind reading about a new production of a political morality play, “Farragut North,” which just opened a run at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

In his review today, our colleague Charles McNulty describes the play by Beau Willimon as an “engaging drama about the dirty tricks and brutal back stabbing of those conducting the spin war for aspiring presidents.” McNulty says the play has the ring of truth, observing that the playwright once worked for Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York and former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont. (We wonder if the play features a character who screams.)

Central to the play, McNulty writes, is its “attractively malign central character,” Stephen Bellamy, a 25-year-old press secretary for a Democratic presidential candidate.

Except for the Democratic part, this brings us to Rove. “Imagine Karl Rove as a fit, chicly dressed media strategist for the other side and you have some idea of the nature of this latest boy genius,” McNulty writes.  

Bellamy is played by Chris Pine, who this year boldly went where William Shatner had gone before. Pine plays a young Capt. James T. Kirk in the latest movie incarnation of "Star Trek."

In a review of a New York production of the play last fall (yes, election season), the New York Times’ Ben Brantley had this to say about the Bellamy character (played by John Gallagher Jr.):

When Stephen is smooth-talking a reporter or a potential sexual conquest, like an ambitious 19-year-old intern named Molly...he sounds absolutely authentic. It’s when he is forced to speak from the heart, in anguished apology, that he sounds robotic. Spontaneity has become a foreign language.

Sounds like required viewing for pols everywhere. Even if you can’t see the play or find a copy -- we couldn't when we looked this morning -- the reviews by McNulty and Brantley still make for thought-provoking reading. Click here for McNulty, here for Brantley and here if you want more on Pine.

-- Steve Padilla

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Top photo: Chris Pine and Chris Noth in "Farragut Noth." Photo credit: Kirk McCoy/Los Angeles Times

Bottom photo: Karl Rove. Photo credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Too many 7s make 2 students certain that Iranian vote was rigged

Two PhD candidates at Columbia University have written a statistical review of the Iranian election results. According to the authors, their data suggest with 99.5% certainty that the reported voting totals for Iran's provinces were made up by a human. 

The study uses the vote counts released by the Ministry of the Interior for 29 Iranian provinces. The authors focused on the final two digits of the reported totals for each candidate in each province. As the article explains, these numbers can indicate whether humans interfered in the final tallying of votes: 

Why would fraudulent numbers look any different? The reason is that humans are bad at making up numbers. Cognitive psychologists have found that study participants in lab experiments asked to write sequences of random digits will tend to select some digits more frequently than others.

The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to appear at the end of 10 percent of the vote counts. But in Iran's provincial results, the digit 7 appears 17 percent of the time, and only 4 percent of the results end in the number 5. Two such departures from the average -- a spike of 17 percent or more in one digit and a drop to 4 percent or less in another -- are extremely unlikely. Fewer than four in a hundred non-fraudulent elections would produce such numbers.

Based on their analysis, which appeared on the Washington Post's Opinion page Saturday, the authors claim that the probability of Iran's election data being genuine is less than .005, or a 1 in 200 chance.  Although some critics have expressed concern over the small sample data (116 numbers), the article certainly raises some interesting questions regarding the validity of Iran's reported election results.

The complete annotated article can be found here.

-- Brendan Bigelow

Photo: Iranian supporters of defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi demonstrate June 16 in Tehran. Credit: Getty Images

Nevada Sen. John Ensign's popularity plummets after affair disclosure

Nevada Sen. John Ensign's popularity took a drubbing last week after he admitted to an extramarital affair with a former staffer:

A poll published Sunday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed his favorable rating plunging from 53% in May to 39%. Ouch.

Almost two-thirds of Nevadans polled, however, said the Republican senator should not resign. And even after a week of stories about his resignation from a Senate GOP leadership post, his mistress' pay doubling during the affair and the woman's husband begging Fox News to expose the relationship, Ensign still remains more popular than several prominent Nevada politicians.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s favorable rating: 34%. Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons: 10%.

Keep in mind, though, that it's unlikely the Ensign scandal has petered out. Questions remain about Cynthia and her husband Doug Hampton’s departure from Ensign’s offices -- including a reported severance payment to Cynthia Hampton from Ensign’s own pocket -- and why Ensign helped Doug Hampton land two jobs afterward.

And what to make of claims from Ensign’s camp that the Hamptons, via an attorney, “made exorbitant demands for cash and other financial benefits?” A Washington watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said today it plans to file an ethics complaint in hopes of getting to the bottom of things.

Another thing to ponder, courtesy of blogger and alt-weekly editor Steve Sebelius: If this scandal got muddy enough that Ensign resigned, Nevada law allows Gibbons to appoint a replacement. “And further what the state Constitution doesn’t appear to prohibit?” Sebelius writes. “It doesn’t appear to prohibit the governor from appointing himself to the vacant Senate seat!”

-- Ashley Powers

Ralph Nader shakes up Virginia governor's race with charge that Terry McAuliffe once tried to bribe him

Terry McAuliffe, the money man of the Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaigns, is running for governor of Virginia. Yes the behind-the-scenes back-slapper is looking to move out front.

With two other competitive candidates in the Democratic primary, McAuliffe has borrowed a page from Barack Obama's playbook, organizing a massive grassroots effort, campaigning (as seen above) with backing from will.i.am, stumping as an agent of change, someone who can "shake up" politics and business in the Old Dominion.

Now comes Ralph Nader, the bad boy of Democratic politics, to shake up McAuliffe.

A onetime car safety advocate and perennial presidential candidate, Nader is widely viewed as the spoiler who robbed Al Gore of the controversial 2000 election eventually decided for George W. Bush by drawing votes away from the Democratic vice president in Florida.

Now, Nader is telling reporters that in 2004, when McAuliffe was the Democratic National Committee chairman, he offered presidential candidate Nader an unspecified amount of money to spend in 31 states if he promised to stay out of 19 battleground states where he could potentially hurt Democrat John Kerry.

Although McAuliffe's staff has not denied the allegation, it's clearly are not happy about this.

"It looks like Ralph Nader misses seeing his name in the press," said spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith. "Terry's focused on talking with Virginians about jobs, not feeding Ralph Nader's ego."

Nader made the charge in an interview with the Washington Post, calling to verify the allegation, which was made in a recent book by Theresa Amato, who was Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, called "Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny."

Nader not only confirmed it, he made clear he thinks the former DNC chairman and Syracuse, N.Y., native now running for Virginia's governor is unfit for office. Nader's actual words: “Terry McAuliffe is slipperier than an eel in olive oil.”

With the primary election on June 9, it's not clear how much such an allegation will hurt among the Democratic base, who regard Nader with all the warmth of a skunk at a family reunion.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Photo credit: Bill Tiernan / Associated Press

Impeached Blagojevich still has full head of hair -- and new shampoo in his image

Lolly Bowean of the Chicago Tribune put it this way: Say what you will about disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but you can't say he has thin hair.

The former governor of Illinois was indicted for trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. Then he tried to become a reality TV star, something about eating worms in Costa Rica.

Now the Chicago pol has a new distinction: a shampoo named in his honor.

Scandals come and go. Corruption trials, impeachment hearings, media swarms, hey, life's a roller coaster. But hair, rich thick hair, that's a major asset, political and personal.

"I woke up in the middle of the night with the idea," said Dennis Fath, owner of Delta Laboratories Inc. "He does have a nice head of hair, and [I thought] it would be funny to have something named after him because of his hair."

The new products, called Blago It's Bleep'n Golden volumizing shampoo and conditioner, were born.
It can be purchased at, you guessed it, www.blagohair.com.

Which only confirms the old saw that in America (fill in your favorite axiom here).

-- Johanna Neuman

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Photo Credit: Getty Images