Eideard

The website advertising legal services from Thomas J. Lyon & Associates boasts about Lyon’s victories for clients. “We win cases all the time,” the site says. “It’s what we do…”

But Lyon is not an attorney. He’s been using another person’s Wisconsin Bar license number, that of attorney Thomas J. Lyons who has a practice in St. Paul, Minn., according to a criminal complaint. Lyon also has used the notary stamp of a dead notary public and forged the signature of court officials, the complaint says.

Prosecutors on Friday charged Lyon with practicing law without a license, theft, forgery and related charges tied to Lyon’s legal practice…

The receptionist also said she was one of several prostitutes working for the escort service “Lacuna Limited” that Lyon had set up in Milwaukee. She told an investigator that she helped to recruit new prostitutes for the escort service…

A probation agent told a detective with the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office that Lyon is on probation after convictions of grand larceny, stalking and false imprisonment in New York. Lyon’s probation was transferred to Wisconsin, the probation officer told the detective…

The system is better now that it has some checks, he said. But the Minnesota Lyons, the real Lyons said he was amused that the coincidence of the similar names allowed someone to trick court officials.

I don’t think it’s especially amusing that the court officials and everyone from local business folks to the police department never noticed [a] this clown wasn’t a real lawyer and [b] he was fronting a string of hookers.

Doesn’t sound like a surplus of integrity in Milwaukee.

Post-It Notes

Body bags go for $20. Yellow crime scene tape is $6. Toe tags are normally $5, but they were sold out this month. The merchandise comes in a white plastic shopping bag that says “Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.”

Tucked in the corner of a squat brick building that houses a huge depository of the dead is the strangest of gift shops. For years, the county coroner has run the shop, aptly named Skeletons in the Closet, selling knickknacks playing off the rather morbid humor that the department’s business arouses in many people.

But it turns out that the shop’s slogan — “We’re dying for your business!” — is all too accurate. The shop was once supposed to make enough money to pay for an anti-drunken-driving course for teenagers that includes a visit to the morgue.

But a recent report from county auditors shows that it has not made a profit for years and is actually subsidized by the very program it was meant to finance…

“It’s certainly a problem for us from a financial sense,” said Craig Harvey, the director of operations for the coroner. “We’re not necessarily a place that has a lot of experience in business, so this is simply a kind of wake-up call to see if we can do better at selling what we have…”

But for the most part, the shop’s only marketing has been word of mouth and free publicity in the news media. The store has a rudimentary Web site and is only now starting to explore ways to use the Internet to drive sales through Amazon, eBay and Facebook. There, it hopes to find a larger market for sweatshirts, notepads and pens bearing the same logo that department officials display in the field…

Ms. Pereyda said that much of the merchandise in the store had been the same for years, leaving many regular customers eager for more. So she is brainstorming new ideas and is particularly excited about a shipment of water bottles that is supposed to arrive next month.

The containers will be labeled “bodily fluids.”

Sounds like a fun place.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
You get to know “this much”

Tony Blair made made a profit of at least £710,000 last year from a mysterious web of companies set up to further his business interests, it can be revealed.

The former prime minister’s companies also declared net assets of £2.2 million – four times what they were worth last year – suggesting Mr Blair’s “pulling power” is as strong as ever.

The profits, funnelled through an “opaque” and highly complex web of financial structures, was declared to Companies House as it closed for business for Christmas last week.

The money is believed to have come from his often controversial private work, including his six-figure speaking fees, his banking and insurance consultancies, including work for JP Morgan, and his pay from advising Middle Eastern and African regimes.

Mr Blair – who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street – has a commercial consultancy, called Tony Blair Associates, plus paid jobs advising a US bank and a Swiss insurer.

In addition, millions of pounds have passed through two parallel company structures, called Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures, in the last three years.

Mr Blair has so far refused to discuss what these financial structiures, centered on a pair of mysterious limited partnerships, are for…

The public declarations come in the wake of claims that Mr Blair is earning up to £100,000 for making guest appearance and was paid a reported £600,000 signing on fee by the prestigious Washington Speakers Bureau…

He is also said to have earned around £6 million in consultancy fees, including £500,000 a year from Zurich Financial Services, £2 million from JP Morgan, the investment bank, and another £1 million from the Kuwaiti Royal Family…

The accounts give no indication of how much Mr Blair pays himself from the fees and other money channelled through his companies.

The profitable sleaze that follows upon time in office is no surprise. No doubt, some of this may be legitimate charity, legitimate enterprise. I wonder, though, how much is payment for services rendered while in office?

Republicans step into control of the House of Representatives

The Interior Department reversed a Bush-era policy on wilderness on Thursday, restoring the authority of its Bureau of Land Management to identify and recommend new areas for protection.

Since 2003, the department has excluded wilderness as a criterion it applies in managing federal lands for the public benefit.

“The new Wild Lands policy affirms the B.L.M.’s authorities under the law — and our responsibility to the American people — to protect the wilderness characteristics of the lands we oversee,” the bureau’s director, Bob Abbey, said in a statement…

Environmentalists welcomed the decision but questioned why it had taken nearly two years for the Obama administration to reverse the policy. They also expressed worry that the new policy could prove weaker than the wilderness designation formulas in place before President George W. Bush took office in 2001…

While only Congress can designate areas as wilderness, the bureau has traditionally identified areas for study and issued recommendations.

In 2003, Gale A. Norton, then the secretary of the interior, and Michael O. Leavitt, then the governor of Utah, struck a deal that removed federal protections from about 2.6 million acres of public land in Utah that had been designated as potential wilderness by the Clinton administration.

At the same time, Ms. Norton disavowed her department’s longstanding authority to recommend new areas for wilderness protection…

In theory, under the new policy, the Interior Department may begin designating more acres as wild lands worthy of study and fend off more development.

The original mandate of the BLM was deliberately corrupted for the Oil Patch Boys. I’d have to add that into the existing query as to why Obama has taken this long to begin restoration of BLM priorities.

I fear the failure to restore BLM guarantees a sacrificial set of regulations to be tossed to Big Oil lobbyists to enable the next round of “bipartisan” negotiations.

Eight-year-old Juliana-Rose Hatcher had tracked Santa Claus all of Friday with the aid of NORAD’s Santa hotline, before she got some unexpected help from Michelle Obama.

The first lady stayed behind when her husband, President Barack Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia hit the beach on their Christmas vacation in Hawaii to answer calls from children trying to pinpoint Santa’s whereabouts.

“She asked me what I wanted from Santa and I told her an MP3 player and she said her daughter wants an MP3 player too,” Juliana, of Goose Creek, South Carolina, told Reuters.

Her mother Jennifer said at first they thought it was a joke or a prerecorded message but quickly realized “wow, it really, really is her.”

The White House said the first lady spent about 40 minutes talking with children who called the line…

Austin Futch, 10, from Memphis, Tennessee, said he quizzed the first lady about a few things on his mind concerning life in the White House.

He wanted to know how it felt to be surrounded at all times by Secret Service agents — not too bad because they are nice guys — and if it was hard being married to the president.

“No, he’s a pretty good guy,” Michelle Obama told him, according to a transcript of the calls released by the White House.

“I mean, it’s a tough job and sometimes you want to do everything you can to help him, but it’s pretty easy being married to him. He’s kind of funny — fun to hang out with.”

Bravo, Michelle. Taking the time to take an extra step in the direction of children is something too many people forget about.

Proper political responsibilities include every part of the population. Even those not yet old enough to vote.

… in all their hobbyhorsical manifestations.

For all of you, our readers, who may celebrate one or another moment grounded in reflection and family in this mid-winter time, I reproduce an image and a blog post from widely separated portions of the northern hemisphere.

The month of December is full of holidays and celebrations across religions and diverse cultures. St. Nicholas Day, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, Hanukah, Las Posadas, Al Hijra, St. Lucia Day, Christmas, and Boxing Day pack December with joyful festivities and cultural ceremonies. For me, the magic crescendos on the Winter Solstice (this year the day falls on December 21st) as it echoes the earthy rhythm of changing seasons. Whether felt as an astronomical, spiritual, religious, or personal event, the day visibly marks a turning point in our 365-day cycle. On this shortest day of light, ancient and modern cultures hold solstice ceremonies to bring them closer to the skies as the giver of life and bounty. At the root of many ancient rituals was the fear that the dwindling light would not return without human intervention, creating the need for generous offerings and lavish celebrations to keep the gods and goddesses happy.

The Winter Solstice has greatest significance to those that live closest to the earth, and whose lives are intimately tied to changing seasons and harvest cycles. Tuning in to celestial events was an especially important cosmic science for ancient societies who created meaningful fertility rites; fire festivals and offerings to their deities in hopes of procuring a bountiful harvest. While not widely known, many of these rituals are part of our modern traditions. Candles, evergreens, mistletoe, lavish feasts, and the giving and receiving of gifts are rooted in ceremonies performed thousands of years ago…

Sith gun robh so.

Fred Hargesheimer, a World War II Army pilot whose rescue by Pacific islanders led to a life of giving back as a builder of schools and teacher of children, died on Thursday morning. He was 94…

On June 5, 1943, Hargesheimer, a P-38 pilot with the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, was shot down by a Japanese fighter while on a mission over the Japanese-held island of New Britain in the southwest Pacific. He parachuted into the trackless jungle, where he barely survived for 31 days until found by local hunters.

They took him to their coastal village and for seven months hid him from Japanese patrols, fed him and nursed him back to health from two illnesses. In February 1944, with the help of Australian commandos working behind Japanese lines, he was picked up by a U.S. submarine off a New Britain beach.

After returning to the U.S. following the war, Hargesheimer got married and began a sales career with a Minnesota forerunner of computer maker Sperry Rand, his lifelong employer. But he said he couldn’t forget the Nakanai people, who he considered his saviours.

The more he thought about it, he later said, “the more I realised what a debt I had to try to repay…”

In the decades to come, Hargesheimer’s U.S. fund-raising and determination built a clinic, schools and libraries in Ea Ea, renamed Nantabu, and surrounding villages.

In 1970, their three children grown up, Hargesheimer and his late wife, Dorothy, moved to New Britain, today an out-island of the nation of Papua New Guinea, and taught the village children themselves for four years. The Nantabu school’s experimental plot of oil palm even helped create a local economy, a large plantation with jobs for impoverished villagers.

Since the war, this sort of tale has been part of my life. Remembering the war, friends and relatives who fought and survived, often with the aid of those who risked their lives to save members of the Allied Armed Forces. Remembering the debt. Remembering the war – and maintaining a commitment to fight against all the unjust and unjustified wars that followed.

Contradictions to the history and bravery of those who fought in World War 2.

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around,
And glory shone around

But, then, there’s this -

Yesterday morning Salama Abu Hashish, 20 years, was herding his sheep and goats in Beit Lahya, in northern Gaza, when the Israeli Occupation Forces shot him without any warning. The bullet hit his back and went straight through one of his kidneys. He had surgery and was in the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where he died at 5.30 pm. The IOF has not only taken a life away from the Abu Hashish family; it widowed a young woman and orphaned a baby that was only born the previous evening. Salama Abu Hashish had just become a father, but has not even been able to name his first born…

Riad Abu Hashish, the victim’s uncle, says that Salama regularly took his sheep and goats to the northern border area to graze. Yesterday, he was approximately 150 to 200 meters from the border when he was hit by an IOF sniper. As ambulances cannot reach the buffer zone without Israeli coordination, nearby scrap collectors carried Salama away on their donkey cart.

“This is all because of the occupation and the poverty it has brought to Gaza! He only risked going to the dangerous buffer zone, because there are no other possibilities for feeding his animals”, said Riad Abu Hashish in shock.

Killed by the allies our government serves and supports in unquestioning dedication.