UPDATE, 4:04 PM: Jose Lambiet of the Palm Beach Post provides some background on Woods’ alleged mistress:
Uchitel is the granddaughter of powerful Cleveland banker and amateur golfer Warner Bishop, who moved to The Island with a much younger wife in the 1990s. He died in 2001 at 82. And her mom is socialite Susan Bishop.
“I can’t talk about this,” said Susan Bishop, who lives part-time in a $600,000-condo on Palm Beach’s Bradley Place. “But I can tell you I’ve never met Tiger Woods or heard anything about it until these stories came out.”
Click here for more.
UPDATE, 11/30 1:23 PM: SportsByBrooks flags this UsMagazine.com report, which says the mother of Rachel Uchitel, Tiger Woods’ alleged mistress, has said in the past that Uchitel has dated Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
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UPDATE: Uchitel speaks with HollywoodLife.com, telling the web site that the current situation “is awful!” Click here for more.
EARLIER:
Rachel Uchitel, Tiger Woods’ alleged mistress, arrived in Los Angeles today and was greeted by her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Rumors emerged last week that Uchitel and Woods were having an affair, and speculation has increased after Woods was involved in a car accident. Uchitel has denied the affair.
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A man with an extensive criminal past — whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee– was being sought Sunday as a “person of interest” in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.
Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer told reporters that Maurice Clemmons, 37, was one of several people investigators want to talk to and that he could not be called a suspect at this point.
In a news release, the sheriff’s office said Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. Clemmons was also recently was arrested and charged in Pierce County, Washington state for third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.
According to The Seattle Times, Clemmons was released from the Peirce County Jail last week, despite facing eight felony charges. Clemmons posted $15,000 with a bail bondsman, who paid the remainder of the man’s $150,000 bail.
In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons’ 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons’ age at the time of the sentence.
After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper
Huckabee has released a statement regarding Sunday’s attack. He does not directly address his decision to grant Clemmons clemency (click here to read Huckabee’s statement in its entirety):
Should [Clemmons] be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State. He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, making him parole eligible and was paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time. He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him… Our thoughts and prayers are and should be with the families of those honorable, brave, and heroic police officers.
Officials in Washington state have not issued a statement explaining why a prisoner facing eight felony charges was able to post bail. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said she was “shocked and horrified” by the killings.
The four officers were with the 100-member police department of Lakewood, Wash. The city identified the victims as Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39; Ronald Owens, 37; Tina Griswold, 40; and Greg Richards 42.
Huckabee, who served as governor of Arkansas from 1996-2007, has a history of supporting pardons and commuting sentences of violent offenders. According to ABC News, Huckabee granted pardons and commutations to approximately 12 convicted murderers.
A study by the Arkansas Leader showed that between 1996 and 2004, Huckabee helped to free more Arkansas prisoners than were freed from all of Arkansas’ six neighboring states–combined.
In 2004, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette concluded that “9 percent of the prisoners who benefited from Huckabee’s clemencies ended up in prison again.”
Huckabee’s pardons and commuted sentences as governor earned him extra attention during his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential race. In 2007, Huffington Post published documents that contradicted Huckabee’s story about the release of convicted serial-rapist Wayne Dumond in 1999. After Dumond was released from prison, he raped and murdered a 39-year-old woman and allegedly raped and murdered a pregnant 23-year-old woman before he was arrested and returned to prison.
While on the campaign trail, Huckabee has claimed that he supported the 1999 release of Wayne Dumond because, at the time, he had no good reason to believe that the man represented a further threat to the public. Thanks to Huckabee’s intervention, conducted in concert with a right-wing tabloid campaign on Dumond’s behalf, Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.
“There’s nothing any of us could ever do,” Huckabee said… “None of us could’ve predicted what [Dumond] could’ve done when he got out.”
But the confidential files show that Huckabee was provided letters from several women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond and who indeed predicted that he would rape again – and perhaps murder – if released.
[Click here to read more Huffington Post campaign coverage of Huckabee's pardons]
In 2007, ABC News reported on the role that Huckabee’s religious beliefs may have played in his decisions to support early release of so many prisoners:
“None of the prosecutors were ever told why Huckabee felt compelled to have a hand in freeing so many prisoners, though all of them speculate that his deeply religious nature led to a strong belief in repentance and forgiveness. In some cases, prosecutors say, evangelical leaders attested that a prisoner had found Jesus and that seemed to influence the governor’s thoughts.”
Huckabee is currently the host of the Fox News show Huckabee. On Sunday the AP reported that Huckabee was leaning “slightly” against a run for the US presidency in 2012.
UPDATE, 11/29 7:27 PM: Click HERE for pictures of Uchitel arriving in Los Angeles.
*** SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS OF RACHEL UCHITEL ***
UPDATE, 6:52 PM: SportsByBrooks posts additional photos of Uchitel.
UPDATE, 3:58 PM: TMZ reports that Uchitel is seeking a lawyer and may sue the National Enquirer for defamation.
EARLIER:
Rachel Uchitel became a major story on Wednesday, when rumors that the 34-year-old was having an affair with Tiger Woods began to circulate. The rumors have picked up steam after the circumstances surrounding Woods’ car accident raised more questions than they answered.
Uchitel continues to deny the affair. She told the New York Post that the rumors are “completely untrue.”
Nevertheless, she said, “this is nothing to do with me. We have never had an affair, and the claims we did are completely false. We have never had an affair, talked on the phone or sent any type of text, sexy or not.
She denied the National Enquirer story that sparked the rumors to BlackBookMag.com as well:
“I totally deny the Enquirer story. They did contact me about it, but they didn’t use any of my quotes or any of the information I gave them. They make it sound like I said those things, but it’s all other people saying I said things.”
The Enquirer is standing by its story and has released additional details.
SportsByBrooks has posted photos of Uchitel.
Dear President Obama, Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so. It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption). So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin. There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit. With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.” Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds. Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones. I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it. Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!” Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning. We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand? Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge. The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us. President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.” What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines. All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know. When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has. Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop. Tonight we still have hope. Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son. We’re counting on you. Yours,Michael MooreMMFlint@aol.comMichaelMoore.comP.S. There’s still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.
There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line.
But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden.
As the epigram to Chapter Three, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:
Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.
Only the quote wasn’t by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled “Back on the War Ponies,” which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
Here’s the full quote:
Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Oops! That’s not quite the sentiment that Sister Sarah was trying to convey as she guzzled down sugar-free Red Bull and cranked up Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?” while jumping on her patriotic high horse at the opening of the third chapter.
There’s also no small amount of irony in the quote, given Palin’s abysmal record on Alaska Native issues during her truncated term as governor.
I was a huge UCLA basketball fan as a kid. Whenever the Bruins came to the Bay Area, I did whatever I could do to snag a ticket. I loved to watch Wooden coach. But I never figured the Wizard of Westwood as an advocate for radical land distribution.
Obviously this one slipped by Sister Sarah and her crack team of investigative journalists Lynn Vincent, Meg Stapleton and Ivy Frye, as well as all those dutiful fact checkers at HarperCollins. Obviously, they didn’t get the quote from anything Wooden ever wrote, but from a cute little web site called The Quote Garden. Isn’t that sweet?
Okay, I was a little leery reading Palin’s book and wondering if she really had read Aristotle and Plato. Somehow I didn’t think so. But I thought, maybe, just maybe, she might have read Sir John. Apparently not.
But just because we’re all good sports here at HuffPo, I thought I’d save the former Governor (can you imagine what Wooden thought about her quitting?!) a little bit of time, and here are five actual Wooden quotes, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor, that she might want to take to heart:
1. It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
2. Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be.
3. What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.
4. Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
5. Never mistake activity for achievement.
We’ll see if the second printing carries a correction.
Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn’s book The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power will be released by St. Martin’s Press in spring 2010.
Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has
been morally bankrupt all along. The idea that Dubai is an oasis of
freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time. Yes,
it has Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath
these accouterments, there is a dictatorship built by slaves.
If you go there with your eyes open – as I did
earlier this year – the truth is hidden in plain view. The tour books
and the bragging Emiratis will tell you the city was built by Sheikh
Mohammed, the country’s hereditary ruler.
It is
untrue. The people who really built the city can be seen in long
chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of
the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told
not to stay in for more than 10 minutes. They were conned into coming,
and trapped into staying.
In their home
country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are
told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee.
When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are
told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.
They
end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay
back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities
outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage.
They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better
conditions, they are beaten by the police.
I
met so many men in this position I stopped counting, just as the
embassies were told to stop counting how many workers die in these
conditions every year after they figured it topped more than 1,000
among the Indians alone.
Human Rights Watch
calls this system “slavery.” Yet the Westerners who have flocked to
Dubai brag that they “love” the city, because they don’t have to pay
any taxes, and they have domestic slaves to do all the hard work. They
train themselves not to see the pain.
But
Dubai’s bankruptcy does not end there: it is ecologically bust. This is
a city built in the burning desert, where everything shrivels up and
blows away if it is not kept artificially cold all the time. That’s why
it has the highest per capita carbon emissions on earth – some 250
percent higher even than America’s. The city has to ship in desalinated
water – which is more costly than oil. When it runs out of cash, it
will run out of water.
Today Dubai will be
bailed out by the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich country of which
it is only one state. But the oil will not last forever. More
importantly, there is no Bank of Morality that could provide a bailout
for this sinister mirage in the desert.
To read Johann’s full report from Dubai, click here.
Johann hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here.
Sarah Palin dropped out of a 5k race on Thanksgiving Day in Kennewick, Wash. The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor quit the race because she wanted to avoid the crowds that were waiting for her at the end, according to The Tri-Cities Herald.
Palin was 1 of about 3,000 participants. The paper reported that her presence drew a “mass of onlookers.” Palin announced that she would be running the race on Twitter.
The former Republican vice-presidential candidate visited nearby Richland, Wash., to spend the holiday with relatives. She said it’s good to be back in the Tri-Cities to reconnect with “the roots.” Her grandparents, Clem and Helen Sheeran, came to Richland in 1943.
That’s right, I’m throwing down. If you don’t whole-heartedly agree that this is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen then yell at me in the comments. I challenge you to watch this and not make one “awww” sound or have your face contort into that weird face people get when they see cute things.
WATCH:
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Rihanna rocked the Today show Tuesday in little more than fishnets and a slinky white blazer, but she’s hardly the first celeb to forget her pants. Lately more and more women are going without, and some women try to turn shirts into dresses. Who’s pulling it off and whose outfit is missing one key item? You decide.
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LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner, who announced two years ago he was a transsexual and was changing his name to Christine Daniels, has died at age 52, the newspaper reported Saturday.
Penner was pronounced dead Friday at a hospital, said Los Angeles County coroner’s Lt. Brian Elias. He said coroner’s officials hadn’t yet performed an autopsy or issued an official cause of death. The Times said in a story Saturday Penner was believed to have committed suicide. Penner had returned to using the name Mike Penner last year and was a Times columnist at the time of his death.
In 25 years with the newspaper, Penner covered Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the Olympics, World Cup soccer, tennis and other sports. A fluid writer with a sharp wit, he worked at various times as a reporter, columnist and the newspaper’s Los Angeles Angels beat writer.
“Mike was one of the most talented writers I’ve ever worked with, capable of reporting on any number of topics with great wit and style. He was a very gentle man who will be greatly missed. This is a tragic ending and a difficult time for all of us who knew him,” said Times Sports Editor Mike James.
Times Editor Russ Stanton said Penner “respected our readers a great deal, enough to share with them his very personal journey.”
Penner revealed that journey on April 26, 2007, when he wrote a story for the Times headlined “Old Mike, New Christine,” in which he revealed he was taking a few weeks vacation and when he returned to his job as a sports writer it would be as a woman named Christine Daniels.
“I am a transsexual sports writer,” Penner wrote. “It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words.”
The announcement sent shock waves through the sports world, but Penner’s bosses were supportive.
As Penner himself noted, when he revealed his plans to Times Associate Editor Randy Harvey, who was then the newspaper’s sports editor, Harvey “leaned back in his chair, looked through his office window to scan the newsroom and mused, ‘Well, no one can ever say we don’t have diversity on this staff.’”
After his vacation, Penner did indeed return as Christine Daniels, not only continuing to report on sports for the Times but also authoring a blog called “Woman in Transition,” detailing his experiences.
Making public the transition, he once said, was the hardest thing he had ever done.
“How do you go about sharing your most important truth, one you spent a lifetime trying to keep deeply buried, to a world that has grown familiar and comfortable with your facade?” he asked.
At the time of his announcement he was married, and he declined to discuss his family situation. He said he was undergoing female hormone treatments but declined to say whether he planned to undergo a sex-change operation.
However, he eventually dropped the “Woman in Transition” blog and returned to writing under the name Mike Penner.
At the time of his death he was writing a column for the Times called Totally Random that focused on offbeat, lighthearted and historic moments in sports. His last one appeared in the paper on Nov. 15.
Information on survivors and funeral arrangements was not immediately available.
