CASHIERS, N.C. — Florida retirees escape the summer heat to this laid-back haven of waterfalls and mountain views. But now it's buzzing with talk.
A man with a colorful history is up to something on Big Ridge, a mountain community about 10 miles from the nearest stop light. No one is quite sure what is going on.

The man is Domenic Rabuffo, a Miami resident whose onetime business partner, the "fat man,'' was killed in a 1987 mob hit as he dined at Bravo Sergio, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan.
Rabuffo and his partner were accused of masterminding a $49-million mortgage fraud. Rabuffo pleaded guilty, went into the witness protection program and served a brief prison sentence.

Now, amid the huge downturn in the real estate market, he is shepherding a real estate development that is completely out of character for the area. He is building huge luxury homes sandwiched on 1-acre tracts, in a gated community he values at more than $200-million.
Rabuffo has been buying land, often paying dramatically more than it's worth, and selling it to people who pay even more. The buyers, some having never laid eyes on the property, all obtain big mortgages. Though Rabuffo is calling the shots, his name does not appear in most of the documents relating to the project.

It's the big mystery on Big Ridge, where curious residents call Rabuffo "the mobster.''

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It has been 14 years since Rabuffo walked out of a federal prison.
Facing as much as 80 years in prison and having to repay millions of the $49-million he took in fraudulent loans, he became a federal witness against others. He paid a fine of about $11,000 and served five months behind bars. ..... About four years ago, Rabuffo bought a house in these mountains, which are renowned for the awesome views. He has been buying property since — often overpaying, according to prices stated when the deeds were recorded.

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Lawrence Ashe, an Atlanta lawyer, recently sold a house to Rabuffo for $500,000, almost twice what Ashe thought it was worth.
"I think it's nuts,'' Ashe says. "Where's the money coming from? He's putting mansions within a few feet of each other. I don't know why anyone would buy what he is selling.''
But buying they are. With no advertising.

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With no advertising, the cool real estate market and mortgages increasingly unattainable, Rabuffo has sold more than 100 lots.
Deeds recorded in Jackson County indicate the undeveloped lots have been sold for $650,000 an acre, an astronomical sum for land on Big Ridge, where an acre usually goes for no more than $50,000.
"Something is very wrong with that; $650,000 an acre is incredulous,'' says Dennis Ford, project superintendent for Sims Valley, another development off Big Ridge Road. "Nobody is selling that kind of lot up here. It's just bizarre to build houses that size on the side of the mountain. They are going to wash down the hill.''

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Buyers are taking out mortgages that average $487,500 for the property alone. They live in St. Petersburg, Tampa, Brandon, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, Miami and a handful of other places.

Donald D. Busby Jr., a mechanical engineer at Baxter Healthcare Corp. in Largo, said he did not visit the development before buying four half-acre lots for $1.2-million. .... Other buyers include a convicted sex offender from Miami whose picture appears on state law enforcement Web sites, the owner of a Tampa window blind company, Odessa residents who own an Internet site that offers views of naked women, and dozens of other Florida residents.
The buyer with the most holdings is Yolanda Serrano, a 44-year-old native of Colombia. She lives in Rockledge, near Cocoa Beach, but now she's a resident of the Brevard County Jail.

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SunTrust holds about $34-million in mortgages on lots in Rabuffo's development. Bank of America holds mortgages totaling about $8-million, Wachovia about $7.3-million and Regions Bank about $5.4-million.
Fourteen mortgage foreclosure suits have been filed against individual property owners to force immediate payment of $19-million in mortgage money loaned by SunTrust. Rabuffo is not a named defendant in any of the suits.
"That's just SunTrust trying to get out of their loans because they are upside down,'' Rabuffo says. "The loans aren't delinquent, they are all paid up.''

Fourteen houses are in various stages of construction, but little has been done lately. The original contractor, Schmitt Construction Co., of nearby Highlands, left the job this year after filing $650,000 in liens against the properties. The liens have been settled; owner Gary Schmitt says he has worked out an agreement to complete the houses and SunTrust has extended financing.
There is also the matter of unpaid property taxes. Last month the Jackson County tax collector included Rabuffo, several of his corporations and many of the individual property owners in a list of delinquent taxpayers, noting more than $150,000 in unpaid taxes for 2007.

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Rabuffo, who turned 72 this month, says he plans to move back to his beloved New York and spend more time with his eight children and 14 grandchildren.
He says he is selling his $2-million penthouse in Coconut Grove and turning more of the work overseeing the North Carolina development to Ray Olivier, a Tampa engineer.

Rabuffo's legacy in North Carolina will be some 150 acres, carved into 1-acre lots, surrounded by pristine acreage where Christmas tree farms and the summer homes of other Floridians dot the landscape.
"He's damaged the property, I don't know if it's recoverable,'' says Craig Cotterman, a Largo resident who has owned land here for 35 years and has a clear view of the buildings Rabuffo is putting up.
"It surely isn't what we dreamt of when we bought our property about 25 years ago and built our house,'' says Coral Gables resident Mimi Armstrong.

To those who say he's ruining what makes the area special, Rabuffo says that he is not only building a new resort here, he also is buying and fixing up old houses. And raising property values.
Residents are well aware of what's happening to property values — and are unhappy to see their tax values double and triple because of Rabuffo's project.

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EDGE: You use an audio clip of Rush Limbaugh saying ’Has anybody ever heard of Rachel Maddow’ on your show. How did that come about?

Rachel Maddow: I was on Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC, and he was trying to get me to condemn a Democrat who had compared what was going on in prisoner abuse with the ’just following orders’ defense that Nazis gave during the Second World War. I said, yes, I agree that Democrats shouldn’t make comparisons with Nazis when they’re talking about American politics; but I wasn’t just going to condemn Democrats for that; Republicans do it all the time. Rush Limbaugh still calls feminist ’femi-Nazis;’ and I used that as an example; and he took me to task on his radio show.

For clues about who might be next to get a show on MSNBC, viewers need not have looked further than “Countdown” earlier this month. For eight nights beginning just before the Fourth of July, Rachel Maddow, the host of a program on Air America, the liberal talk-radio network, served as a substitute for the vacationing Keith Olbermann.

“At some point, I don’t know when, she should have a show,” said Phil Griffin, hours before he was promoted on Wednesday to president of MSNBC. “She’s on the short list. It’s a very short list. She’s at the top.”

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As the Fannie Maes sink in the west, and the banks close, and the taxpayer gets stuck again bailing out more failed institutions and stock market manipulations, time to contemplate a recent essay in the latest Harpers, an excerpt from his forthcoming book: “The Wrecking Crew, How a gang of right-wing con men destroyed Washington and made a killing,” by Thomas Frank. Frank, as you recall, wrote “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” Well, what’s the matter with Kansas is now, what’s the matter with America.

Yes, it’s old Reagan, Abramoff, Norquist, Reed. Rove, Bush & Co, and all the associated neocon free-marketer, privatize-it-all, We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Government Regulation Gang. As Frank concludes, “Take a step back, reader, and see what they have wrought.”

An excerpt:





Read it and weep.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey rejected calls to appoint a special counsel to investigate Bush administration officials who approved the use of coercive interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects.

In a letter sent yesterday to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Mukasey said opening a criminal investigation would be "unfair" and "seriously short-sighted."

Lowering the aim of an impeachment effort to focus on those who have aided and abetted, or directly engaged in, the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, would have all the positives, and none of the negatives, of going after Bush and Cheney. ...... to rid the government of those who have participated, along with Bush and Cheney, in abuses and misuses of power; indeed, many among them have actually encouraged Bush and Cheney to undertake the offensive activities.
Many of these men (and a few women) are young enough that it is very likely that they will return to other posts in future Republican Administrations, and based on their experience in the Bush/Cheney Administration, they can be expected to make the offensive conduct of this presidency the baseline for the next president they serve. Impeachment, however, would prevent that from happening.

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It will be recalled that Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution states: "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." (Emphasis added.) After any civil officer has been impeached, under the rules of the Senate, it requires only a simple majority vote to add the disqualification from holding future office.

...... Given the number of officials within the Bush Administration who may have been engaged in Constitutional high crimes or misdemeanors, and the nature of the impeachment process, there is no shortage of civil officers worthy of consideration. Where there is clear prima facie evidence of such constitutional misconduct, impeachment action should be commenced.

.... and (The President) shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Barack Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, is expected to campaign in the Tampa Bay area on Friday, including meeting with teachers. Soetoro-Ng, 37, is a teacher at an all-girls school in Hawaii.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare, a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

The Supreme Court, in a decision 15 months ago that startled the government, ordered the EPA to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse-gas pollution from cars, power plants and other sources or to provide a good explanation for not doing so. But the administration has postponed action instead, according to interviews and documents.
To defer compliance with the Supreme Court's demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.
The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation in December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare.

Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.
"They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's record," not Bush's, said a participant in the lengthy interagency debate, referring principally to officials in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on the National Economic Council and in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

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Career EPA officials said the global benefits of reducing carbon are worth at least $40 a ton, but Bush appointees changed the final document to say the figure is just an example, not an official estimate. They prohibited the EPA from submitting a document, "Technical Support Document on Benefits of Reducing GHG Emissions," as part of today's announcement.
"The administration didn't want to show a high-dollar value for reducing carbon," said one EPA official, adding that the administration cut dozens of pages from a draft that outlined cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

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The full story of how the finding of public endangerment and Bush's promised greenhouse regulations got sidetracked is still not known. The idea of instituting complex new controls on emissions by cars, ships, aircraft, power plants, factories and office buildings was never greeted warmly by any senior Bush appointees, but officials said that after the Supreme Court's slap they divided into roughly two groups: those who thought that regulating under the Clean Air Act was unavoidable, reasonable and best done under Bush; and those who wished to sidestep the law and press for its eventual modification after delay and public debate.

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..... And to answer your question, I believe in open government. I've always believed in open government. Rich is right. You know, I don't email, however. And there's a reason. I don't want you reading my personal stuff. There has got to be a certain sense of privacy. You know, you're entitled to how I make decisions. And you're entitled to ask questions, which I answer. I don't think you're entitled to be able to read my mail between my daughters and me.

-----George W. Bush, April 14, 2005

George W. Bush, who has expanded his power to access the e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans, is resisting congressional demands that White House e-mails be saved for later research by historians.

Bush signaled he would veto a House-passed bill that seeks to overhaul the Presidential and Federal Records Act to ensure that e-mails and other government documents are preserved in the age of the Internet.
The measure passed the House, 286-137, on Wednesday, after congressional investigations revealed that the Bush administration apparently purged millions of e-mails and that dozens of administration officials used e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee to conduct official White House business and thus evade federal records laws.

Watchdog groups -- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, and George Washington University’s National Security Archive -- sued the administration last year alleging the White House violated the Presidential Records Act by not archiving e-mails sent and received between 2003 and 2005.

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The Presidential Records Act states that the records of a President, his immediate staff and specific areas of the Executive Office of the President belong to the United States, not to the individual President or his staff.
The act further states that the President must "take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented."
By coincidence, Bush issued his veto threat – against this legislative “intrusion” into the handling of his internal records – on the same day that Congress gave final approval to a law granting Bush broader authority to intercept e-mail and other electronic communications by American citizens.

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Since taking office in January 2001, Bush has sought to limit the public’s right to see historical records from past presidents, including his father. In one of his first acts, Bush delayed the scheduled release of documents from the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

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Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, said many of the missing White House e-mails coincide with some of the Bush administration's biggest scandals, depriving the public a historical accounting of an already secretive administration.
"Whether it is Vice President Cheney's secret Energy Task Force meetings or the cover-up of the outing of Valerie Plame, the Bush administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conduct its affairs in secret and to hide key documents from those investigating wrongdoing," Dingell said.

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"White House e-mail is very problematic," (David) Gewirtz (expert on e-mail and the author of the book Where Have All the Emails Gone?) said. “What offends me as an IT professional is that none of these problems are insurmountable. In fact, most of them are easy to solve. What's worse: not a single private-sector CIO would be allowed to get away with negligence on this massive scale.”

DWS: It's Karl Rove's responsibility to come to the hearing.

DA: He's not coming. So what do you do?

DWS: Listen, it's Karl Rove's legal responsibility to come and testify. We are expecting him to come. Quite honestly, this executive privilege he's claiming.... he has to come in front of the committee and claim it there.

DA: He's not.

DWS: I realize that that's your opinion.

DA: But do you disagree? Do you think there's even a chance that he will show up?

DWS: You know what? That's not even the point.

DA: REALLY???

DWS: Well, he's been subpoenaed, and we expect him to come. At the point where he does not comply with that subpoena, then we are going to..., take... I think, to explore our options.... take the next appropriate steps... we have a number of options.... we are going to explore all our options.... all of those options that are on the table.... like with Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton.... we certainly didn't hesitate to move on their contempt citations, and I expect that we won't hesitate here either.

DA: So you expect him to be charged with contempt if he doesn't show up?

DWS: Well... that decision hasn't been made, and I am not the chair of the Judiciary Committee and I am not the speaker of the House. But I know that those decisions have not been made. And I know that we are going to explore all the options available. This is very serious. We're talking about somebody who has intricate detailed knowledge.... not just about the Siegelman case but a variety of things, and it is high time, long past time that he come in front of the Judiciary Committee and answer those questions, especially that he's answered them on national television.

DA: Let me ask you this. Is there any pressure from the leadership in the House to the Judiciary Committee to say, look, don't arrest Karl Rove, don't hold Karl Rove in contempt, don't make too big a deal about this.... have you heard at all, or has the committee heard at all from the leadership about taking this down a notch?

DWS: Not one bit. Let me just tell you... we are all deadly serious about making sure that we can get the information that we think we need. Congress, since Democrats took over, has re-engaged in terms of our oversight role, which was nonexistent when the Republicans were in control. We take our oversight role very seriously. We've had a number of significant administration officials, including the vice president's chief of staff a couple of weeks ago... he felt comfortable enough responding to us in subpoena and coming and testifying in front of us. Karl Rove is no different.

DA: You say you're going to consider your options... look, as a practical matter, everyone on the committee knows Karl Rove's not coming, his lawyer says he's not coming... I know there are two issues here... whether he will testify, which he won't, and the other is whether he will show up to invoke the privilege, which he also won't, based on his lawyer's letter to you. I can assure you, I can promise you, he's not coming. So, when you said you're going to explore your options, I've got to believe that those options have already been explored.

DWS: There are a variety of options available. There are inherent contempt, there is statutory contempt, we have subcategories.... it's a couple days premature.... he hasn't not shown up yet. So we are carefully examining our options... obviously we want whatever action we take to be taken seriously and to be effective. I really feel strongly about jealously guarding the legislature's responsibility as a coequal branch of government, and so do my colleagues on the Judiciary and so does the Speaker. So we want to make sure that whatever option we move on, it is the one that will be the most effective and will preserve Congress's authority.


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DA: I will say this... you talk about respect. I'm going to tell you, he's not showing up. He's not testifying. He's not even going to invoke privilege. As a result, I don't know what you are going to do; I don't know what exactly you should do. But I do know this has to be taken very seriously and we are going to follow this very closely on Thursday, when he doesn't show up.

President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

President Bush made the private joke in the summit's closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry. He had given some ground at the summit by saying he would "seriously consider" a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050.

But green groups had protested that the meeting was a missed opportunity to secure the radical reductions in carbon emissions that were needed to reduce global warming. China and India, who were among the emerging economies invited to the summit, refused to sign up to binding agreements without firmer commitments from the US and the other industrialised nations to cut their CO2 emissions.

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The most recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning of produce caused much alarm across the country and cost American tomato growers millions in lost revenue. As of this writing, over 900 salmonella cases have been diagnosed in 40 states.

While American farmers struggled as the CDC did their best to pin the tainted tomatoes on them, their crops rotted on docks and in warehouses as consumers refused to buy potentially contaminated goods. For those of us in Arkansas, it was a relief when our famous Bradley County pink tomatoes were cleared; harvesting had not begun when the outbreak occurred.
It came as no surprise when the CDC finally had to admit, rather reluctantly it seemed, that the contaminated goods were not only tomatoes but possibly jalapeños and bulb onions as well - all imported from Mexico.

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When Department of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters began pushing the program to allow Mexican trucks access to American highways and offered the "fast pass" through Customs, it became an open door for drug and human smuggling. Ignoring opposition from the Teamsters Union, the Owner/Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) and individual truckers nationwide, President Bush and Ms. Peters continued to pander to the Mexican government while pushing their spin on how "safe" it is to allow trucks from a country rife with drug lord crime and corruption to have free access into the United States.

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On June 13, 2008, SignOnSanDiego.com reported finding 805 packages of marijuana weighing more than 5,500 pounds and with a street value of over $2.2 million dollars, hidden among jalapeños, cucumbers and husk tomatoes. The driver of the truck was a Mexican national with cargo originating in Mexico.

On June 27, 2008, the Missouri State Highway patrol busted truck driver Marcos J. Tirjerina of McAllen, Texas, in New Madrid, Missouri. Tirjerina's cargo? Assorted produce, including 1538 pounds of marijuana.

Then there is Manuel Zuniga of Weslaco, Texas. Zuniga's tractor trailer was searched after being stopped for speeding through Indianapolis' east side, on June 16, 2008. Among his cargo of assorted produce were 500 pounds of marijuana.

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The possibility of bio-terror cannot be ruled out as America continues to fight the War on Terror. It takes only one spraying of contaminated water at any point in time during growth and transport, and even on a produce stand display, to create economic distress to American farmers and spread illness and disease among unsuspecting consumers.

It is well past time for the United States government to put the safety and security of the American people above the desires of a corrupt Mexican government. Trucks must be inspected at the border. Not just randomly, but each and every truck attempting access to the United States. The continued complacency and appeasement to the Mexican government as they peddle contaminated food products and drugs into the United States, sickening our citizens and strengthening the illegal drug trade within our borders, is inexcusable.

Americans must insist upon American-grown produce, strict compliance within our food processing plants with regard to sanitation and most importantly, a government of the American people, by the American people and in the best interests in the health and security of the American people.

(CNN) -- Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton team up again Wednesday, but not all Clinton's supporters are jumping on the Obama bandwagon despite her calls for unity.
Two fundraisers are scheduled Wednesday in New York and a third on Thursday, making it five times the two have appeared together since Clinton ended her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination last month.

Two of the events are aimed at raising money for Obama's campaign, and one is to help Clinton retire the debt from her failed run.

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But for some of Clinton's top supporters, it's going to take more than just encouragement from the former first lady to get them to open their wallets and hearts to Obama.
Some of Clinton's fundraisers are pressuring the Obama campaign to support her policy positions -- and help pay off her campaign debt.

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Clinton was more than $22 million in the red when she bowed out last month, and half of it was personal loans she made to the campaign to keeping it running.
With that debt yet to be paid off, some of Clinton's supporters are balking at the idea of forking over donations for Obama -- especially if he does not choose her to be his running mate.

Businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild launched a Web site bringing Clinton supporters together to put the pressure on Obama.
"We are being asked to embrace party unity without the fair representation of Hillary Clinton and her 18 million voters," she says on her Web site. "Party unity requires bilateral action. We ask Barack Obama and the to respond."
De Rothschild is one of the so-called "Hillraisers" -- supporters who raised at least $100,000 for Clinton. She's yet to fork over any cash for Obama, and she doesn't know if she will.

"I certainly know there are lots of people who are withholding their money," she said.

"This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him. I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him."

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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, spent two days in New York this week with disaffected Clinton supporters.

"It's not unexpected that they wouldn't just automatically shift over to Obama, because they're not the typical Democratic supporters that just automatically shift over," she said. "They need to be wooed. They need to be won over."

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