[BB] Four high-ranking police officers in Louisiana have pleaded guilty in connection with a decade-long visa fraud scheme spearheaded by a migrant from India that offered illegal aliens legal immigration status for cash payments.
“These defendants’ disgraceful fraud endangered our community and undermined the public trust in the immigration system solely to line their own pockets,” United States Attorney Zachary A. Keller said in a June 30 press release.
The police officers who pleaded guilty include Glynn Dixon, the former Forest Hill Police chief; Tebo Onishea, chief of the Glenmora Police Department; Chad Doyle, Oakdale’s police chief; and Oakdale Ward 5 Marshal Michael Slaney. Each was charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and mail fraud and faces up to five years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana.
Prosecutors also arrested Indian national Chandrakant Patel and fingered him as the mastermind of the migrant scam. Patel faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.
The conspiracy scheme involved the U-Visa program in which migrants are given legal U.S. residency if they report serious crimes to the police. Congress launched the U-Visa program in the year 2000 to encourage members of migrant communities to report serious crimes in their neighborhoods without fear of deportation as a way to help make them feel safer when reporting crimes. The program also aims to help police departments bust criminals in areas in which they often do not get much help from witnesses.
This is a quick post linking to an article on Yahoo, but was apparently originally on Fox. Since I'm on one of my antique computers, I'm not going to try to find the original. I'm just going to post before Indiana Jones swoops in and grabs it, saying "It belongs in a museum..."
Apple and Google spent months suppressing negative news stories about the scandal-plagued Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner prior to his recent downfall, according to a new study obtained by Fox News Digital.
The Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative watchdog group, found that Apple News and Google News published zero stories between November of last year and May of this year about the various controversies that muddied Platner's Senate bid, including headlines about his Nazi tattoo and his offensive Reddit posts.
The MRC study said the blackout in coverage began after a poll released in late October suggested Platner was the most formidable Democrat to unseat Maine's incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins and that the blackout ended following The New York Times' May 30 report about Platner's sexting controversy.
Platner Accuser Recalls 'Gaslighting,' 'Betrayal' From Ny Times As She Came Forward With Her Allegations
According to the study, Apple News and Google News failed to promote "at least 112" news stories published by conservative-leaning outlets that scrutinized Platner during that November-May period.
MRC President David Bozell accused the tech platforms of having run a "protection racket" for Platner.
"For months, while Platner looked like the one Democrat who could beat Susan Collins, the two most powerful news apps in America buried scandal after scandal," Bozell said. "Then the polls turned, Platner became a liability, and suddenly the blackout ended. News judgment had nothing to do with it."
"Millions of smartphone users were denied the truth while Platner was politically useful and finally allowed to see it once he wasn't," Bozell added I'd say this is overblown, but I've noticed since I got the new droid phone that google has an out-of-browser and out-of-application pipeline that pushes articles to the user's attention, and I imagine whatever it chooses to push is a powerful mechanism. I'll have to look up how to turn that off. Anyway, good night.
#2
I'm more surprised that Yahoo is still in business!
Posted by: Chris ||
07/14/2026 6:37 Comments ||
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#3
Chalk another one up to the meddling kids.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/14/2026 10:13 Comments ||
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#4
You keep that old computer, Thing. Just because it won't run Windows 11 doesn't mean it can't still be useful. Maybe try Free BSD.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/14/2026 13:14 Comments ||
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#5
It's running two versions of OS X, debian, and devuan, and I might switch to dragonfly bsd if I have time.
(I had plans, when things were better, to upgrade the hard drive... now Iran's bought all the hard drives and used them in mines to close the Strait of Hormuz, and make data centers up near Poverty Point. And I'm more broke.)
[AE] Maxine Waters is 87 years old and is once again seeking another term in Congress. This is not about her age. There are people in their eighties who are far more capable than those decades younger. The real issue is that Washington has transformed public office into a lifetime career. Politicians are no longer expected to serve for a period and return home. They stay for decades, accumulating power, influence, and connections until they begin to believe the office belongs to them rather than the people who elected them.
The Founding Fathers never intended Congress to become a country club where politicians collected paychecks for half a century. Public office was supposed to be service, not a career. They feared concentrated power, which is why the president is restricted by term limits. Yet members of Congress can remain in office indefinitely, building political machines that become almost impossible to defeat. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.
Once politicians realize they never have to leave, their priorities change. They stop worrying about the country and begin worrying about protecting their seat. Every vote becomes political. Every crisis becomes another excuse to spend money that does not exist. Every campaign is financed by the same lobbyists who expect something in return. Washington has become an industry whose product is legislation.
Look at the Mitch McConnell situation. People requested proof of life. No one requested that he stand down or step aside, despite his inability to fulfill his duties. "Oh, well, it’s fine because he won’t seek re-election." Really? Has public office become a charity of sorts? If someone is no longer capable of serving today, then the question is not what happens after the next election. The question is why they are still making decisions that affect the lives of millions of Americans. Public office is a responsibility, not a lifetime entitlement that ends only when the politician decides it is time to leave.
Lindsey Graham was in politics for roughly 36 years, spending about 31 of those years in Congress. Yet every favorable news story claims he had a long career ahead of him. Only in America do we expect politicians to remain in their positions indefinitely, as if they were actually dedicating their lives to public service rather than self-interest.
History is very clear on this. Republics do not collapse because of one bad leader. They collapse when the political class becomes permanent. Rome reached that stage long before the empire officially fell. The government existed to preserve itself. Politicians fought over power while the people paid the price. Every empire eventually reaches the point where those in office believe they are entitled to remain there forever. That is always a warning sign that the system is in decline.
Term limits would not solve every problem, but they would be a start. Fresh blood matters. New ideas matter. More importantly, politicians would know there is an end to their time in office. They would have to return home and live under the very laws they passed instead of spending a lifetime insulated inside the Washington bubble.
This has never been about Maxine Waters alone. There are Republicans who have been in Congress for decades as well. The disease infects both parties equally. Washington has become a closed club where incumbents enjoy every advantage imaginable, taxpayer-funded staffs, massive fundraising operations, media attention, committee power, and connections that ordinary challengers simply cannot match. We tell ourselves elections are enough, but incumbency has become one of the strongest advantages in politics.
There comes a point when experience becomes an excuse for preserving power. Public office should never become a lifetime entitlement. No one should spend forty or fifty years writing laws for everyone else while never having to live in the real economy they created. If Congress had the courage to impose term limits on itself, it would probably be the first genuine reform Washington has enacted in decades. The fact that it never will tells you everything you need to know about the state of our republic.
#1
The heart of it is the seniority system that grants long standing members key positions on committees and with that influence as to what gets to the floor and what doesn't. Such power results in corruption not just in financial terms, but in the whole process of representation in a republic.
[BB] Republican Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) is asking Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jayanta Bhattacharya to shut down former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Chief Anthony Fauci’s Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana after White Coat Waste Project (WCW) exposed scandals including virus smuggling as well as monkey bite incidents, Breitbart News exclusively learned.
Watchdog WCW blew the lid off the lab in May, pointing to a whistleblower letter alleging that the lab is in “full coverup mode” following the allegations, which led to charges against Vincent Munster, the former chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, as well as associate Claude Kwe. The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged them with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the country.
The whistleblower letter detailed the smuggling and also alleged “that a monkey bite was the cause of an incident first uncovered by WCW in January that exposed an RML lab staffer to Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever — a deadly, foreign virus used by NIH for maximum-pain experiments on monkeys,” according to WCW.
#4
Gozar could cut the funding for the lab at any point. It’s a budget item. The Senate can’t block cut. The GOP is in control of both houses and the WH. Just Do It. Don’t ask everyone else to do stuff.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/14/2026 10:23 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
