CIA Whistleblower, Missouri-born, In Prison

I hadn't heard this story but one CIA whistleblower, Jeffrey Sterling, "...an American lawyer and former CIA employee who was arrested, charged, and convicted of violating the Espionage Act for revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen."  

Mr. Risen you may remember:

,,,is the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (January 2006). The book conducted important investigations into Central Intelligence Agency activities. It states that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin) intended to delay Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components—which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery. In early 2003, the New York Times refrained from publication of the story after an intervention by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with the NYT Executive Editor Howell Raines.

So Mr. Sterling "blew the whistle" on the CIA over their own illegal activities and now he's in jail. 

He's originally from our own Cape Girardeau. He also got his Juris Doctor degree from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

Jeffrey Alexander Sterling was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law.

In May 2015, Sterling was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.

So one more time, our government is found doing things illegal---against our own laws---as with Edward Snowden, it seems, someone blows the whistle, so to speak, and they end up in jail, no one else.

And check this out. According to the Wikipedia entry on Mr. Sterling:

Sterling was convicted of espionage charges on January 26, 2015. Sentencing was originally scheduled for April 24, but after learning of the sentence of no more than two years’ probation plus a fine given one day earlier to David Petraeus for the felony of providing classified information to an unauthorized person, Sterling's lawyers submitted a plea that Sterling "not receive a different form of justice" than Petraeus, asking for a similarly lenient sentence instead of the 19 to 24 years imprisonment sought by the federal prosecutors.

So the white General "provides classified information to an unauthorized person" and gets probation. 

The black guy in the CIA gets 3-1/2 years?

Really?

That's what passes for justice in America?

Link:  How Jeffrey Sterling Took on the CIA — and Lost Everything

Very cool thing coming out of Cape Girardeau this weekend

An electric car convention? In Cape Girardeau, Missouri?

Believe it:

Convention on electric cars set in Cape Girardeau

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — A convention designed to help people convert cars to run on electricity is scheduled this week in Cape Girardeau.

About 150 people are expected to attend the Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention, which runs Tuesday through Sunday. Organizers say educational sessions and hands-on work will be held at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport. The Southeast Missourian reports (http://bit.ly/1en6Kwc ) nearly 45 electric vehicles will be on display for the public.

Co-organizer Jack Rickard says the convention is drawing people from across the country, as well as countries such as Canada and Australia. He says many attendees are coordinating electric car projects with people on other continents, and the convention gives them a chance to meet.

It gets even more unpredictable, too:

The convention also will offer electric-vehicle drag races and autocross Friday afternoon.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/08/05/4390759/convention-on-electric-cars-set.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/08/05/4390759/convention-on-electric-cars-set.html#storylink=cpy

Cape Girardeau train wreck this morning

Seven injured in Missouri as trains collide, trigger highway bridge collapse

Two freight trains collided and derailed early Saturday in southeast Missouri, then triggered the collapse of a highway overpass when several rail cars struck a support pillar.

Seven people were injured, including two personnel on the trains and five individuals in cars on the overpass on Highway M near Scott City, about 120 miles south of St. Louis, NBC affiliate KSDK reported. All the injured were hospitalized and listed in fair condition.

The collision occurred before dawn at a rail intersection. 

"One train T-boned the other one and caused it to derail, and the derailed train hit a pillar which caused the overpass to collapse," Scott County Sheriff's dispatcher Clay Slipis told Reuters.

The crash, which involved BNSF Railway Co and Union Pacific trains, also ignited a fire when diesel fuel leaked from one of the train engines, Slipis said.

Missouri's Senators working together!

Yahoo!

I'd never seen this before.

Maybe it's happened but I don't know of any instances of it. This from Senator Claire McCaskill's Facebook  page today:

Claire and Senator Blunt brought federal agencies together yesterday to help resolve a decades-long dispute that’s been delaying a project critical to families and businesses in the Bootheel. The Senators pledged to continue working together to resolved outstanding issues and bring a conclusion to these delays.

Now, if our Senators and legislators in Washington, particularly, but in Jefferson City, too, could only come up with a jobs bill, one that would repair, modernize and widen I-70 from St. Louis on the East to Kansas City on the West, so it isn't so dangerous, we'd really have some progress.

More on the meeting here: http://1.usa.gov/YZE9Xd

and here:  McCaskill seeks action on delayed St. John's Bayou project

On Porkulus

Here's the thing about Rush Limbaugh right now--he's lost 13 advertisers, I understand, and 2 radio stations and Peter Gabriel, the singer/songwriter/performer has demanded that he never use his song "Sledgehammer" again. It was the song he played as he--Limburger--derided the young lady last week. The thing is, here he was, doing his shtick and bam! He went too far. WAY too far. Now, he's had to apologize to the young lady--and he did it twice to date--so he's backing down big time, for the first time ever, to my knowledge. Now, say--God forbid--you're "Porkulus", just for this argument's sake. You've lambasted an otherwise innocent young lady, nearly the entire nation is against you and you're losing both stations and advertisers. What do you do? Really, what do you do on and for your next show? How can you angrily "go after" anyone when you were just heavily reprimanded by nearly the entire nation? It makes doing his shows right now extremely difficult. So good did come of this, after all. Unfortunately, the state of Missouri is, right now, arranging to have a statue of him put up in the State Capitol. Brilliant. Let's idolize and canonize an ugly hater. Way to spend the state money. Links: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/limbaugh-not-think-sandra-fluke-slut-prostitute-181711551.html; http://www.americablog.com/2012/03/rush-just-lost-station.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americablog+%28AMERICAblog%29; http://www.americablog.com/2012/03/list-of-advertisers-still-on-limbaughs.html; http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/political-fix/rush-limbaugh-to-be-honored-in-state-capitol-s-hall/article_36b99152-66fb-11e1-af45-0019bb30f31a.html

Missouri: Worst on meth. Who knew?

There was an article out yesterday about a sheriff in a small town--unfortunately, here in Missouri--who got caught selling and using methamphetamine.  Turns out he was out of the Southeast corner of the state--the Cape Girardeau area, Carter County.

So I read a bit of the article and it was, as expected, tragic and sad and unfortunate.

It was also informative.

It told of methamphetamine usage and Missouri:

No state has been hit harder by the meth epidemic than Missouri, which led the nation in meth lab busts every year for a decade before Tennessee took over the top spot in 2010, dropping Missouri to second. Missouri has reported more than 13,000 meth lab incidents in the past seven years. The highly-addictive drug, made by cooking common chemicals, has caused countless fires and explosions, along with severe health problems among users.

If you go to the link to the original story (see below), you can see a picture of this Sheriff.  At 31, he was/is still baby-faced.  So young.

His life doesn't have to be over, necessarily but this certainly was a bad turn for the young man.  It will likely be years now, somewhere, in a jail or prison.

So sad.

As if this, above, isn't enough, as if this wouldn't make it sad and tragic enough, this sheriff is also married with a child:

Lloyd Parsons, 37, a member of the Van Buren Fire Department, never figured Adams for one of the bad guys. He described Adams, the married father of an infant son, as professional and knowledgeable.
"I've worked several accidents with the guy and he knew his stuff, even the medical part," Parsons said.

It seems another example of how we need more education, possibly, in our state and country.

There's no one answer but we need solutions.  So many problems.  And we need solutions.

Link:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110419/ap_on_re_us/us_sheriff_meth

KANSAS CITY WON!!!

According to a release yesterday over at "Mary Anne's Kansas City, MO Blog" (see link below), Kansas City will, in fact, get to go from Kansas City, through St. Louis--for a time, anyway--down to Little Rock on a good old-fashioned steam engine train.  Check it out:

Union Pacific's Great Excursion Adventure will start in Kansas City

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

For the first time ever, Union Pacific let the people decide where their steam engine would be routed.  Pitted against three other adventures--the Tuscola Turn (through Iowa and Illinois), Baton Rouge Rambler (through Texas and Louisiana) and the Boise Limited (through Idaho and Utah)--it was announced that the Little Rock Express, which boasts Kansas City as the starting point, won the highly anticipated event with 76,217 official votes.

The Union Pacific will start in Kansas City and head across the great state of Missouri, going South after St. Louis, through Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff and ending in Little Rock.

Details of the trip have yet to be announced as of yesterday.  You can keep checking at http://www.upexcursioin.com for information.

Very cool.

Link:  http://kansascity.about.com/b/2011/01/18/union-pacifics-great-excursion-adventure-will-start-in-kansas-city.htm

Word to Lt. Gov. Kinder on health care

The word? Don't do us any favors, Lt. Governor. You have a lot of nerve, pal, suing in federal court to keep health care reform, even this watered-down version, from taking place. We need health care reform. We needed more than this--far more. We need a "public option" so health insurance companies could and would be more competitive and fair and decent, instead of fleecing us the way they have been since the 1950's. Give us a break, sir. Withdraw your lawsuit. Sure, I know you won't but a) you should never have filed it and b) you really should withdraw it now. Government makes us get car insurance, right? Would you dare suggest the government can't require us to get health insurance? Would you dare suggest that the current health care system works? Because if you do or are, I'd be happy to show you statistics that prove you wrong. You're an obstacle to solutions here, Lt. Governor. Please get out of the way. Link to original story: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/07/2069501/missouri-lieutenant-governor-sues.html