† ICE Attorney Allegedly Gets A Cool Million In Bribes: Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement assistant chief counsel Constantine Peter Kallas has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after being convicted of 36 counts, including conspiracy, bribery and fraud for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from immigrants between 2003 and 2008 to file false documents on their behalf showing job offers from U.S. employers, reports The Associated Press:

On a search of Kallas' home, authorities found 24 immigration files hidden in a floor safe and a detailed payment ledger with the names of 60 different people. They also found $177,500 in cash, authorities said. …

The Alta Loma couple banked about $950,000 before their arrests in 2008, with at least $425,000 of that amount coming from bribes, authorities said. …

Maria Kallas pleaded guilty in 2009 to conspiracy, bribery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. also ordered Kallas to pay $296K in restitution.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: After some 16 years of hard wear, “[t]he brown wall-to-wall carpeting at Haverhill (MA) City Hall is dirty, lumpy and, depending on whom you ask, smelly and dangerous,” reports The New York Times, but Mayor James J. Fiorentini says he cannot afford the estimated $100,000 it will take to replace it because he “has already projected a shortfall of at least $1.8 million in the city’s $140 million budget for the coming fiscal year”:

[S]everal city workers said Thursday that some members of the public do grumble about it.

“They come in and ask, ‘How can you stand it in here?’ ” said an employee in the tax collection office who did not want to be named for fear of losing her job. The carpeting, she said, sometimes smells “like a bar.”

Patricia Martel, the assistant city auditor, said, “People stumble quite often.”

Sandy Heverin, a resident taking care of some business at City Hall on Thursday, said the carpeting “could use an upgrade.” But the upgrade must wait, she said.

“This budget thing is really crazy,” she said. “To do it right now - I don’t think so.”

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: Omaha is on the hook for $1.7 billion bill for federally mandated sewer improvements that must be completed by 2024, and fearing that his budget will be in the toilet, Mayor Jim Suttle is proposing a 10-cent federal tax on every roll of toilet paper you buy, reports Omaha World-Herald:

“How are we affording this … as we come out of the recession?” he asked.

Suttle plans to ask Nebraska's congressional delegation to ease the blow to Omaha and other cities. He'd like the federal government to cover half of the cities' costs, possibly with grants.

Whether the toilet paper tax has legs remains to be seen, but Omaha's large industries that balked under significant sewer rate increases are listening.

Julia Plucker, a lobbyist for Kellogg's and Skinner Baking, says food industries carry an unfair portion of the increases. …

“I did chuckle when I first heard about it,” Plucker said. “But this is a serious problem. We would love to take a look at any more equitable solution.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): What do young adults throughout the Arab world have in common with their counterparts here in the U.S.? High levels of unemployment, according to 24-year-old Matthew Klein of the Council on Foreign Relations in this New York Times op-ed:

About one-fourth of Egyptian workers under 25 are unemployed, a statistic that is often cited as a reason for the revolution there. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January an official unemployment rate of 21 percent for workers ages 16 to 24.

My generation was taught that all we needed to succeed was an education and hard work. Tell that to my friend from high school who studied Chinese and international relations at a top-tier college. He had the misfortune to graduate in the class of 2009, and could find paid work only as a lifeguard and a personal trainer. Unpaid internships at research institutes led to nothing. After more than a year he moved back in with his parents. …

The cost of youth unemployment is not only financial, but also emotional. Having a job is supposed to be the reward for hours of SAT prep, evenings spent on homework instead of with friends and countless all-nighters writing papers. The millions of young people who cannot get jobs or who take work that does not require a college education are in danger of losing their faith in the future. They are indefinitely postponing the life they wanted and prepared for; all that matters is finding rent money. Even if the job market becomes as robust as it was in 2007 - something economists say could take more than a decade - my generation will have lost years of career-building experience. …

[T]he “desperate generation” in Portugal got tens of thousands of people to participate in nationwide protests on March 12. How much longer until the rest of the rich world follows their lead?

As The Stiletto observed in a different context:

Considering the significant number of white collar professional jobs lost since the start of the recession, a jobs bill that only creates manufacturing and construction jobs will do little to ease the plight of the growing number of middle class homeless who went to college or graduate school, are highly skilled and followed all the rules to climb the ladder of success.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means): For anyone who thinks state laws barring the application of sharia law are a waste of time, Human Events staff writer John Hayward tells the strange tale of a Tampa mosque that is fighting to get a civil suit in which it is a defendant decided in court under U.S. law rather than sharia law, as the judge has proposed:

The Islamic Education Center of Tampa forced out several of its trustees back in 2002.  … [An Islamic scholar [who] arbitrate[d] their complaints … ruled in their favor, but the mosque … did not accept the decision.  The trustees took their case to the Florida courts, which suited the mosque just fine. Control of a substantial amount of funding is at stake.

On March 3, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen announced that he would decide the case by consulting shari’a law to determine whether the arbitration was conducted properly, and should therefore be binding.  …

As reported by the St. Petersburg Times, the mosque contested this decision, stating through their attorney that they “believe wholeheartedly in the Koran and its teachings” and “follow Islamic law in connection with their spiritual endeavors,” but they also “believe Florida law should apply in Florida courts.” …

The Times quotes Neelofer Syed, a Tampa lawyer who gives lectures on Islamic law, who notes that the mosque is a corporation under Florida law, and makes the common-sense observation that “if you live in a country, you are subject to that country’s laws.” …

There are other Muslim Americans who will seek relief from shari’a through federal and state jurisprudence.  The stakes will not always be expressed in dollars.

BTW, Fl is one of the states considering legislation to ban applying sharia and other foreign legal codes in state courts. 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II): Travelers have two choices: Allow an unseen TSA agent in another room to see a naked image of you taken by a scanner, or allow everyone in the vicinity of the security checkpoint to see you in various states of undress as the TSA orders you to remove one item of clothing after another. An autistic man suffered both indignities at Boston Logan International Airport, according to Marilyn Falk, a friend who was traveling with him. She tells WNCN-TV (Channel 17, Raleigh, NC) what happened after he was patted down after going through the scanner:

"They did not put him in a private area. Instead they insisted that he undress in public."

The man says when he tried to take off his suspenders and belt, his pants fell down, exposing part of his underwear. …

"His privacy was not being protected," Falk said. "His rights as an individual were not being protected."

A TSA spokeswoman said anyone who requests a private screening should be given one.

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Restorative Capital Punishment): Following the lead of one of their colleagues in GA, death row lawyers in AZ and KY have asked the Department of Justice to investigate how their states acquired sodium thiopental, reports The Associated Press:

Kentucky public defender David Barron said in a letter to the Justice Department that there were multiple questions about how CorrectHealth, a Stockbridge, Ga.-based company, got a supply of sodium thiopental to sell to Kentucky. Barron also wants to know if Kentucky officials complied with federal law when it contacted Kayem Pharmaceuticals in India.

Barron represents Ralph Baze, who was sentenced to death for killing a sheriff and a deputy. …

In Arizona, federal public defender Dale Baich called for the Justice Department probe because the state bought supplies of sodium thiopental from Dream Pharma, a British company that some defense attorneys have described as a fly-by-night operation. …

Multiple states, including Arkansas, California, Georgia and Tennessee, have looked overseas for a supply of sodium thiopental, a fast-acting sedative that is commonly the first drug used in a lethal injection. Hospira, Inc., of Lake Forest, Ill., the primary maker of the narcotic in the United States, stopped making the drug earlier this year.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, What It's Like To Be Bullied): Australian student Casey Heynes lived out the fantasy of millions of picked on, put-upon people when he gave his tormentor a taste of his own medicine. Mediaite reports that Casey told his side of the story in a recent television interview:

Casey suffered from a “lifetime of torment and abuse” and was all alone since his friends had deserted him. Casey sadly spoke about how he could only remember a couple of days when nobody would tease him, and that he even contemplated suicide. Finally though, as documented in the now famous clip, Casey just reached a point where enough was enough and snapped.

Casey has no regrets about the incident, but even more importantly, has a profound message for bullying victims around the world: “look for the good days, keep your chin up and school ain’t going to last forever.”