Poor Mojo's Newswire

The Jonathan Ayers story was already outrageous enough. Last September, Ayers, a 28-year-old Baptist pastor from Lavonia, Georgia, was gunned down by a North Georgia narcotics task force in the parking lot of a gas station. Ayers had not been a suspect in any drug investigation. And even today, police acknowledge he was not using or trafficking in illicit drugs. Instead, Ayers had either been ministering to or having an affair with (depending on whom you believe) Johanna Kayla Jones Barrett, the actual target of the investigation. Ayers is yet more collateral damage in the boundlessly tragic and wasteful drug war, as are his widowed wife Abigail and the child she was carrying at the time of his death. But that's really only the beginning of this mess. In a lawsuit filed last week, Abigail Ayers makes some astonishing new allegations about the competence of the police officers who killed her husband, the supervisors who hired them, and the law enforcement agencies and the grand jury that investigated Ayers' death. Most damning: The police officer who killed Ayers wasn't even authorized to be carrying a gun or a badge.

The Roman Catholic Church’s account of Pope Benedict XVI’s handing of a serial paedophile was called into question today when new documents emerged suggesting that his office was kept informed of the offender’s rapid return to working with children. Contrary to statements released by the Church in Germany, a memorandum uncovered by The New York Times suggests that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was told that a priest had gone back to pastoral duties in Munich a few days after he started psychiatric treatment. The priest went on to commit further offences.

... This may be the most important case of the 21st century. If the [Supreme Court] decides against Paul Minor, then every U.S. citizen - even corporations, despite the inherent fallacy of corporate personhood - could be convicted for bribery and thrown in jail simply for donating to a political campaign. the Wayne Madsen Report revealed today that: Assuming the Wayne Madsen Report is accurate, we now know that Rahm Emanuel is a willing accomplice in that distortion of justice, turning a blind eye to the shameless political prosecutions waged by the Bush administration. Why? ... Paul Minor was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida. What heinous crime did Paul Minor commit that warranted this severe prison sentence? He gave campaign contributions to Democratic candidates running for state judgeships in his home state of Mississippi.... ... in his second trial, the partisan U.S. attorneys succeeded in getting the Reagan-appointed judge to incorrectly instruct the jury that it was not required to find proof of a quid pro quo agreement to convict Minor and the judges.

A source forwards an email sent at 12:58 PM by Boehner spokesman Michael Steel to The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward and other reporters, with the original memo attached. “Folks — Please read the attached draft memo addressed to `Democratic Health and Communications Staff,’ Steel wrote. ...The GOP leadership did circulate a hard copy of the memo to reporters before its authenticity had been confirmed or disproven.