Poor Mojo's Newswire

NASHVILLE - State Rep. Mike Kernell said today that he was aware of Internet rumors about his son being the subject of speculation that he accessed the personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Asked whether he or his son, a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, had been contacted by authorities investigating the break-in of Palin's account, he responded: "Me, no." As far as his 20-year-old son, David, he said: "I can't say. That doesn't mean he has or hasn't (been contacted by investigators)." Kernell, D-Memphis, cited the father-son relationship.... The alleged hacker, using the e-mail address rubico10@yahoo.com, posted Wednesday to a forum on the website 4chan about how he used Yahoo! Mail's password-recovery tool to obtain the Alaska's governor password.

WASHINGTON -- Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible. "It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.... ...sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.... But the tepid response also reflects a broad realignment of law-enforcement priorities at the Justice Department in which mortgage fraud and other white-collar crimes have been subordinated to other Bush administration priorities. That has reflected, in part, the ramp-up in national security and terrorism investigations after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the administration has also put more support behind efforts against illegal immigration and child pornography.

All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother. "We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said. His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.

Most corporations, including the vast majority of foreign companies doing business in the United States, pay no income taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday. During the eight-year period covered by the report, 72 percent of foreign-owned corporations went at least one year without owing taxes, and the same was true for 55 percent of domestic corporations. Small companies were much more likely to pay no taxes than larger companies. Still, more than 3,500 large domestic corporations — with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts — did not pay taxes in 2005. The report said about 80 percent of the companies studied paid no taxes because they didn’t generate any profit after expenses. Money-losing companies can legitimately owe no tax, and others can use provisions of the tax code to lower or eliminate their liability.

Six years after the long-rumored but never proven Manoogian Mansion party, a Detroit Fire Department EMS supervisor has come forward to say he spoke on an autumn night in 2002 with a swollen-faced Tamara Greene, who told him the mayor's wife had just assaulted her. Lt. Michael Kearns is the first official to publicly claim he had direct contact with Greene at the time of the supposed assault around October 2002.... Greene was killed in a drive-by shooting on April 30, 2003.