At least 19 Buffalo priests publicly linked to sex allegations

The Rev. Norbert F. Orsolits isn't the only priest in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo who's been publicly accused of inappropriate sexual conduct.

At least 19 priests who worked in the Buffalo area have been publicly accused in recent decades, according to a search of The News archives.

Some were arrested. Some were named in lawsuits. Some were accused of wrongdoing outside of Western New York.

They represent a fraction of the priests who have been the targets of complaints privately filed with the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

In 2004, the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo said 93 complaints alleging sexual abuse had been lodged against 53 clerics in the diocese since 1950. The diocese has refused to identify most of those men. At the time, those about whom complaints had been filed represented 2.6 percent of all clerics who served between 1950 and 2002.

Read more: http://buffalonews.com/2018/02/28/at-least-19-buffalo-priests-publicly-linked-to-sex-allegations/

Former deputy county exec, a one-time assemblyman, pleads not guilty to obstruction charges

Richard “Rob” Walker, former chief deputy to then {Nassau} County Executive Ed Mangano, pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements to FBI agents. He was released on $200,000 surety bond, for which he and his wife put up their Hicksville home.

According to court papers, the case against Walker, 43, centers around a $5,000 payment made to him in Indiana at a University of Notre Dame football game by an unnamed contractor in 2014, and Walker’s attempts to conceal the payment from investigators. The government contends that Walker attempted to “obstruct and impede” a federal grand jury investigation, and lied to the FBI about receiving the $5,000 from the unnamed individual.

Walker, a Republican from Hicksville, represented the 15th Assembly District, which includes East Meadow, from 2005 to 2009. Before that, he was a full-time employee in the Town of Oyster Bay Parks Department from 1998 to 2005. He is also the son of Rose Marie Walker, a Republican county legislator and former Oyster Bay councilwoman.

The former state assemblyman surrendered his passport to the court after his indictment and was asked to surrender all weapons in his possession to a local police precinct. Walker must ask permission from the court’s pretrial services division if he wants to leave the New York area.

Read more: http://liherald.com/stories/former-deputy-county-exec-assemblyman-indicted,100431

Senate Democrats' gun-violence agenda rejected by GOP

ALBANY — The state Senate's Democratic Conference fell short in an attempt Wednesday to force a vote in their chamber on a series of gun-safety bills intended to augment the 2013 SAFE Act.

"The madness has got to stop. We need action, and we need it now," Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said at a press conference outside the Senate chamber on Wednesday morning. "Stopping gun violence should not be a partisan issue."

Stewart-Cousins and 20 members of her conference subsequently entered the Senate chamber and began pushing their legislation on the floor in a series of what are known as hostile amendments - attaching their legislation to an unrelated bill on organ donations.

But when the Democrats asked for a vote by a show of hands, however, they fell short — even with eight votes of support from members of the Independent Democratic Conference — as Republicans in control of the chamber declined to support the measures. Some Republican senators left the chamber prior to voting. Sen. Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat who often conferences with the Republicans and provides their crucial 32nd vote, opted not to attend the vote.

Read more: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Senate-Dems-force-vote-on-gun-safety-measures-12716634.php

Death threat prompts security for Albany-based judge

ALBANY — Police are guarding the home of one of the region's most prominent judges after he received a death threat that authorities deem genuine.

Office of Court Administration spokesman Lucian Chalfen confirmed Wednesday that it was responding to "what we believe to be a credible threat" against state Supreme Court Judge Thomas Breslin.

"All appropriate security measures are being taken by local, state and federal law enforcement as we continue to investigate that threat," Chalfen said.

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple confirmed the heightened police presence in Albany's Pine Hills neighborhood is aimed at protecting a judge's home.

Read more: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Death-threat-prompts-security-for-Albany-based-12716627.php

Democratic Super PAC spends big on Pennsylvania special election

A Democratic Super PAC is making a major, last-minute investment in a special House election in Pennsylvania, a sign of some party officials’ growing belief that Democrats might pull off a shock upset in the heart of Donald Trump country.

Patriot Majority PAC on Wednesday will begin airing TV ads in the southwest Pennsylvania district, part of a $250,000 buy that also includes digital media. The ads will run for the final two weeks before the March 13 election.

It is the second Democratic organization to start running ads this week on behalf of Democratic nominee Conor Lamb, joining the party-aligned group End Citizens United.

Patriot’s TV ads will run on cable and broadcast, attacking GOP nominee Rick Saccone over hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded perks he used while a state lawmaker. It equates the money it said Saccone used — $435,000 — to seven years’ worth of paychecks for the average resident in the 18th Congressional District, or the equivalent to three homes.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article202467419.html

Alaska lawmaker cites Holocaust deaths to oppose gun control

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska Republican and most senior member of the U.S. House argued against gun control by wondering how many Jewish people "were put in the ovens" because they were not armed.

U.S. Rep. Don Young, who has a history of off-the-cuff remarks that can draw criticism, made the comments at a meeting last week in the state capital of Juneau when responding to a question about what the federal government and cities can do to stop school shootings.

"How many millions of people were shot and killed because they were unarmed?" Young, 84, said at a meeting of the Alaska Municipal League, a lobbying group for local communities. "Fifty million in Russia because their citizens weren't armed. How many Jews were put into the ovens because they were unarmed?"

The comments were "taken entirely out of context," Young spokeswoman Murphy McCollough said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/elections/alaska-lawmaker-cites-holocaust-deaths-to-oppose-gun-control/article_3e4ac140-bf35-539b-ad62-3a494b42088a.html

O'Rourke touts support for I-14 expansion

Infrastructure is key to the future of Texas, Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke said during an interview with the Temple Daily Telegram Sunday.

O’Rourke, a third-term congressman hoping to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, hosted a town hall in Temple on Sunday. Nearly 300 residents attended the El Paso Democrat’s event.

Infrastructure projects — such as Interstate 14, an undertaking that is expected to connect Army bases in Texas to other military installations across the Southern United States to the East Coast — accomplish several goals, O’Rourke explained.

“One, investing in infrastructure in Texas makes all the sense in the world. It gets what we’re producing on our farms and ranches (and) in our factories to markets all over the world,” he said, walking out of the Wilson Park Recreation Center as it sprinkled outside. “Two, it creates real jobs in building out that infrastructure. Three, it’s going to make Texas more competitive and make us more of a draw for talent and investment going forward.”

Read more: http://www.tdtnews.com/news/article_c5c31ef2-1b51-11e8-b081-ef6ebf58f56e.html

Gov. Greg Abbott orders immediate measures for junior college campus safety after school shooting

AUSTIN — One week after ordering Texas schools to take immediate safety measures in the wake of the mass shooting in Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday issued a similar mandate for the state's public junior colleges.

"We must act expeditiously and prudently to ensure that college campuses in Texas are safe places to study, work, and live,” Abbott said in a directive to the state's top higher education official. “These are important first steps to ensuring that junior college districts are meeting all requirements and have the best information available to help keep their campuses safe."

The directive to Raymund Paredes, commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, contains five major components:

Colleges must catalog and share all available information from the Texas School Safety Center on college campus safety, and distribute this information to all public junior college districts and universities. They also must distribute this information to private and proprietary institutions of higher education.

They must ensure that all public junior college districts are in compliance with statutorily required school safety audits and "multi-hazard emergency operations plans." Also, they must ensure school safety audits have been submitted to the safety centern and cover all school facilities, both instructional and non-instructional.

Publish on the coordinating board's website a list of any public junior college districts that do not satisfy the requirements of their 2015 audit within 45 days of being notified by the coordinating board.

Ensure that all public junior college districts have made "satisfactory progress" toward completing security audits, which are due Sept. 15, 2018.

Work with the safety center, the Department of Public Safety, and the governor's office make recommendations to the Legislature on policy changes to keep students safe.

Suspect in death of Trinity University cheerleader arrested on charges of murder, sexual assault

A 22-year-old man was jailed Wednesday in connection with the death of Cayley Mandadi, a 19-year-old Trinity University cheerleader who died Halloween 2017 after falling unconscious in a car traveling to Houston.

Mark Howerton faces charges of murder and sexual assault.

The arrest comes about four months after Mandadi, who is from the Houston area, was pronounced dead on Oct. 31 at the Seton Medical Center Hays in Kyle, Texas. Until Wednesday, few details about her death had been made public. But an arrest warrant affidavit for Howerton, her boyfriend of four weeks, has shed new light on the hours leading up to Mandadi's death.

The warrant describes injuries Mandadi sustained that don't match Howerton's version of events.

Read more: https://www.lmtonline.com/news/local/crime/article/Suspect-in-death-of-Trinity-University-12717342.php

SEC charges Texas oil operators with fraud, alleging investor cash used for booze, strippers

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged three oil and gas companies and its executives with fraudulently scheming to raise $11.7 million for drilling projects allegedly located in Kentucky and using investor money for booze, drugs and strippers.

In a federal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Sherman, lawyers with the SEC's Fort Worth office say that AmeraTex Energy and Lewis Oil Company, which are based in North Dallas, and Lewis Oil Corp., which is headquartered in Albany, KY., perpetrated a fraud to sell unregistered securities to more than 150 investors in 36 states, made false statements to investors and diverted money raised for personal pleasures.

SEC lawyers say several defrauded investors live in the Houston area. The companies could not immediately be reached for comment.

To read more, go to texaslawbook.net.

https://www.lmtonline.com/business/energy/article/SEC-Charges-Texas-Oil-Operators-with-Fraud-Execs-12717345.php