Source of this Topic: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080509/ap_en_mu/music_dmx_arrested;_ylt=Au_JlqrMb6YDWWmd6hPcGp5xFb8C
Rapper DMX arrested for drugs, animal cruelty

By BOB CHRISTIE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

PHOENIX - DMX was arrested on drug and animal-cruelty charges following an overnight raid on the rapper's house Friday, authorities said.

The 37-year-old rapper, whose given name is Earl Simmons, initially tried to barricade himself in his bedroom but emerged when a SWAT team entered his north Phoenix home during the 3 a.m. raid, sheriff's spokesman Capt. Paul Chagolla said.

The arrest and search warrants stemmed from indictments for felony drug possession and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges. He made an initial court appearance Friday where bail was sent at $7,500, said his local attorney, Cameron Morgan. Morgan said he expected bail to be posted quickly.

The indictment stems from an August search of the rapper's home prompted by reports of dogs being abused on his property. Detectives seized 12 pit bull dogs, dug up remains of three others and found marijuana on the rural property.

During Friday's raid, officials said more drugs were found and weapons seized and additional charges were possible.

Simmons' New York lawyer, Murray Richman, said he told his client to expect such a raid after his efforts to make DMX available to law enforcement were rebuffed.

"I anticipated it, I explained to my client what was going to happen," Richman said. He said he believed evidence did not support the charges of animal cruelty, which has been a major focus of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

"I think that the animal cruelty is not going to be able to be established," Richman said, "and I think that this is Sheriff Joe's moment."

A statement from Arpaio said someone of DMX means "has no excuse for not providing proper care for his animals."

Sheriff's deputies made a series of visits to the rapper's home in August after receiving reports of neglected pit bulls. They found a caretaker who had been hired to look after the animals.
Richman said DMX was not in Arizona in the weeks leading up to the initial raid.

The rapper has had previous run-ins with the law, including an arrest Tuesday by the Arizona Department of Public Safety after speed-enforcement cameras captured him going 114 mph on a suburban Phoenix freeway.

In June 2006, Scottsdale police cited him for carrying a concealed handgun outside a nightclub.
He also served 70 days in jail in 2005 for violating his parole following a 2004 incident in which he posed as an undercover federal agent and crashed his sport utility vehicle through a security gate at Kennedy International Airport.

DMX recorded the 1999 hit single "Party Up (Up in Here)." His last album, "Year of the Dog ... Again," was released last year.

Source of this Topic: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080509/ap_en_mu/music_dmx_arrested;_ylt=Au_JlqrMb6YDWWmd6hPcGp5xFb8C

Is Hillary Clinton a desperado?

Source of this topic: http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/movingamerica08/bitterdebate415

Black Political Observers: ‘Bitter’ Debate Reveals Sheer Desperation of Clinton Campaign
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2008By: Michael H. Cottman, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Black political analysts said Monday that the so-called "bitter" debate -- where Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is accused of talking down to small-town blue-collar workers -- is a desperate, manufactured attack by Hillary Clinton seven days before a critical primary in Pennsylvania.

Obama has spent four days on the defensive after comments he made at a San Francisco fundraiser were disclosed that suggested working class people are "bitter" about their economic circumstances and "cling to guns and religion" as a result.

And some in the media, Democrats add, have kept the story alive after Clinton labeled Obama as "elitist" who is "out of touch" with the American people.

Initial indications are that Obama’s controversial remarks have not upset voters. A new Gallup Poll shows Obama continuing to hold a solid lead over Clinton in national Democratic voters’ support for the presidential nomination, 50 percent to 41 percent.

Source of this topic: http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/movingamerica08/bitterdebate415

Why is Bill Clinton lying again...He can't help himself!

Source of this topic: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080411/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_bosnia_fact_check

Clinton misstates wife's Bosnia tale

WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago.

In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts.

The New York senator had repeatedly described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. Video footage of the day instead showed a peaceful reception in which an 8-year-old girl greeted the first lady.

Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that she got the facts wrong in retelling the tale. Bill Clinton's inaccuracies don't involve long-ago memories, but misstatements about how his wife has handled the story.

THE SPIN:
"A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me," Bill Clinton said in Boonville, Ind. "But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995.

"Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up," the former president continued. "Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark — who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way — both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

"Now I say that because what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops," he said. "And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you would of thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they all carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 o'clock at night, too."

THE FACTS:

Bill Clinton has many of the facts wrong.

His wife didn't make the sniper fire claim "one time late at night when she was exhausted." She actually told the story several times, including during prepared remarks on foreign policy delivered the morning of March 17.

It's also not true that she "immediately apologized for it." Clinton has never apologized for the comments and only acknowledged that she "misspoke" a week after the March 17 speech when video of her peaceful tarmac reception emerged.

It's also not true that she was the "first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone" — a claim that Hillary Clinton has also made when talking about the trip. Pat Nixon traveled to Saigon during the Vietnam war and Barbara Bush went to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm.

The trip also was not in 1995, but 1996.

Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer responded to the former president's remarks Friday by saying, "Senator Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it."

She's also told her husband to quit talking about it.

"Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am,'" Bill Clinton, who was in Indiana campaigning for his wife Friday, told reporters.

Why can't Hillary Clinton tell the truth?

Source of the Topic: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_hospital_fact_check

Clinton's tale part truth, part errors

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has stopped telling a story of a pregnant woman's medical tragedy after an Ohio hospital challenged its accuracy last weekend.

But recent accounts of the episode have omitted key details that suggest there was more truth in the essence of Clinton's tale than her critics, and even her presidential campaign, have acknowledged.

Since early March, the New York senator has often told campaign audiences a heartbreaking story of a young Ohio woman who began having problems with her pregnancy. She said the woman was twice turned away by a local hospital because she had no health insurance and could not pay a $100 minimum charge.

Clinton, who advocates health coverage for all Americans, put it this way in Terre Haute, Ind., on March 20: "I'll tell you a quick story that I heard in Ohio when I was campaigning there," she said. "A deputy sheriff told me about a young woman who worked at the pizza parlor there and she worked for minimum wage, she didn't have any insurance. She got pregnant, went to the hospital — and I don't blame the hospital. The hospital said, 'We can't take any more charity care. You have to give us $100 before we can examine you.' She didn't have $100. Went back another time, they told her the same thing."

Sen. Clinton said the woman returned a third time "in an ambulance. And they worked hard to stabilize her, and she lost her baby. Then they airlifted her to Columbus to the medical center, and for 15 days they tried to save her life, and she died."

THE SPIN:
Because Clinton never named the woman or the hospital, the story generated only gasps and tears at campaign stops. But on April 3, The Washington Post named the woman, Trina Bachtel, 35, of Middleport, Ohio, who died last August. The Daily Sentinel, a paper published in nearby Pomeroy, Ohio, cited Bachtel's name the next day.

With the patient's name now publicized locally and nationally, officials at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio, feared their facility would be falsely accused. Bachtel was indeed treated in August at O'Bleness, where her baby was stillborn. But Bachtel was never refused treatment there, and she even had medical insurance, the officials told The New York Times in a story published Saturday.

"We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O'Bleness Health System," told the Times.
Media outlets and political Web sites began criticizing Clinton for retelling the unsubstantiated story. By Saturday night, Clinton's campaign said she would drop it from her speeches.

"Candidates are told stories by people all the time, and it's common for candidates to retell those stories," said campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee. "In this case, we tried but weren't able to fully vet the story."

THE FACTS:
Clinton said she heard the story from Meigs County Deputy Sheriff Bryan Holman during a visit to Pomeroy, before the March 4 Ohio primary.

In a March 26 phone interview with The Associated Press, Holman said he had told Clinton the story in essentially the same way she was retelling it in her speeches. He said he knew the Bachtel story only second hand, and lacked several details.

The AP then spoke with Bachtel's aunt, Susie Casto of Middleport, who helped raise the woman. She said Bachtel, who worked at a pizza parlor, did in fact have health insurance when she and her baby died.

But at an earlier time, Casto said, Bachtel lacked health insurance and ran up unpaid bills when treated at a clinic near her home in Middleport. When she returned for treatment when pregnant, the clinic demanded $100 per visit to help retire the outstanding debt, Casto said. Because Bachtel could not afford the fees and found it difficult to travel, her aunt said, she postponed receiving treatment.

Bachtel eventually went to O'Bleness, about 30 miles to the north, for attention.
Casto declined to name the clinics or hospitals involved, and said she felt medical professionals did all they could to save Bachtel and her unborn child.

Pomeroy has about 2,000 residents and two medical clinics. One is affiliated with O'Bleness, the other is the Holzer Clinic, part of a nine-facility chain.

O'Bleness Health System spokeswoman Lynn Anastos said Monday that Bachtel was not a patient at their Pomeroy facility and "she would not have been turned away for lack of payment" if she had sought treatment there.

Holzer associate administrator Jim Blevins said his company has no record of Bachtel being a patient for the past five years. About half of Holzer's patients are "charity cases," he said, and the company tries to work out payment schedules with those who fall behind on their bills.
In some cases, Blevins said, Holzer clinics place "credit restrictions" on patients believed to be able but unwilling to pay their bills. That would not apply to patients needing immediate or emergency care, he said.

Clinton erred in telling audiences that the Ohio woman lacked insurance when seeking help for her troubled pregnancy. But according to Casto's account, Bachtel's medical tragedy began with circumstances very close to the essence of Clinton's now-abandoned account: the lack of insurance created a $100 barrier to needed medical attention close to home.
___
By Charles Babington

Source of the Topic: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_hospital_fact_check