Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted Monday on a raft of corruption charges, ensuring a trip back to prison for the notoriously scandal-ridden politician. Jurors convicted Kilpatrick on charges including racketeering and conspiracy, following a five-month trial that detailed how he accepted bribes, rigged contracts, and ran a “private profit machine” while in office until fall 2008. Among the most damning allegations: he used a nonprofit fund that was supposed to benefit Detroit’s most in-need residents to pay for his own yoga lessons, golf clubs, and camp for his children.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his friend Bobby Ferguson removed their suit coats. Then their ties and jewelry came off in U.S. District Court this afternoon. Kilpatrick handed his driver’s license to his mother. The men, who were now handcuffed, were led out of the courtroom shortly after U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds ordered them into federal custody pending sentencing on racketeering and bribery and extortion convictions handed down earlier today in the public corruption case.

"Stay strong," Kilpatrick tells sobbing family members as he's handcuffed, led away.

Full list of criminal charges and convictions below the fold and an in-depth report and analysis here.

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The Connecticut State Supreme Court overturned the sexual assault conviction of a man who had sex with a woman who “has severe cerebral palsy, has the intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old and cannot verbally communicate.” The Court held that, because Connecticut statutes define physical incapacity for the purpose of sexual assault as “unconscious or for any other reason so uncommunicative that she was physically unable to communicate unwillingness to an act,” the defendant could not be convicted if there was any chance that the victim could have communicated her lack of consent. Since the victim in this case was capable of “biting, kicking, scratching, screeching, groaning or gesturing,” the Court ruled that that victim could have communicated lack of consent despite her serious mental deficiencies:

When we consider this evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict, and in a manner that is consistent with the state’s theory of guilt at trial, we, like the Appellate Court, ‘are not persuaded that the state produced any credible evidence that the [victim] was either unconscious or so uncommunicative that she was physically incapable of manifesting to the defendant her lack of consent to sexual intercourse at the time of the alleged sexual assault.’

Anna Doroghazi, director of public policy and communication at Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services expressed concern that “The court’s interpretation of what it means to be ‘physically helpless’ jeopardizes the safety of people with disabilities.”

“By implying that the victim in this case should have bitten or kicked her assailant, this ruling effectively holds people with disabilities to a higher standard than the rest of the population when it comes to proving lack of consent in sexual assault cases,” Doroghazi said. “Failing to bite an assailant is not the same thing as consenting to sexual activity.”

It was a Bloody Sunday, indeed for Iraqis as bombs and small arms attacks claimed at least 75 lives and left another 285 wounded in a series of attacks that targeted the country’s security forces. The onslaught by insurgents struck a dozen cities and an outpost of the Iraqi Army. Ten soldiers were killed in that assault, and 8 more were wounded. A brigadier general and 7 police recruits were killed when a bomb exploded in the city of Kirkuk, and 2 more car bombs detonated outside the French Consulate in Nasiriyah. Explosives went off in a number of other cities, including Baghdad. No group claimed immediate responsibility for the violence.

Via:

"What kind of life is this?" said Safeen Qadir, 26, a university student in Kirkuk. He described dead bodies and weeping, shouting relatives at bombing scenes in Kirkuk, where three midmorning explosions killed seven and wounded about 70.

"Because of the daily explosions, we must write our wills before go out of home," Qadir said. "The death exists in every inch of the city of Kirkuk, and no one is spared from the crime of terrorism."

Via:

Journalist Ahmed Rushdi, reporting from Baghdad, told Al Jazeera that, according to him, it was not only al-Qaeda that was behind the attacks.

"It is also the insurgency against the government and the political parties, because there is a major political dispute between al Maliki and his opponents," Rushdi said.

"It is another day in the major failure of the security forces in Iraq. The people here are asking themselves; what is the government doing to regain control of the situation? There seems to be no real intelligence data concerning these attacks."

As the attacks were sweeping across Iraq on Sunday, a Baghdad criminal court sentenced Iraq's Sunni vice president to death after finding him guilty of masterminding the killing of two people. The sentence was handed down in absentia.

Hashemi fled the country after Iraq's Shia-led government authorities had accused him in December of running a death squad, as the last US troops were withdrawing from the country.

Connor Stevens, Doug Wright and Brandon Baxter -- three men with ties to Occupy Cleveland who were arrested in the spring for plotting to blow up a bridge -- entered guilty pleas on Wednesday afternoon. A fourth man pleaded guilty earlier this year, while a fifth suspect is undergoing a competency evaluation. All three pled guilty to "conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted use of an explosive device to destroy property used in interstate commerce," according to the DOJ.

“The defendants today made a voluntary choice to plead guilty, the same way they made voluntary choices to try to detonate what they thought were explosive devices they had planted at the foot of a bridge," Steven Dettelbach, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a statement.

“We are pleased these defendants have admitted to their intent to utilize violence, which threatened innocent citizens, to further their ideological views,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen Anthony.

Police in Arizona are investigating whether self-poisoning may have caused the death of former Wall Street trader Michael Marin in a Phoenix courtroom on Thursday. “They are leaning towards that,” said Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jeff Sprong. “We cannot verify that at this point, and we’re not going to be able to until the toxicology report comes back in two weeks.” The 53-year-old former Wall Streeter was found guilty of arson Thursday. Marin was heavily in his debt, and he quickly came under suspicion when his $3.5 million Phoenix-area mansion went up in flames in July 2009. In video of Marin taken minutes after the verdict, Marin claps his hands to his face and appears to “put something in his mouth,” Sprong said.

[Via KTVK]

[Occupy Wall Street members enter a plaza known as Duarte Square that is owned by historic Trinity Church, one of lower Manhattan's largest land-owners December 17, 2011.]

Eight protesters with Occupy Wall Street that include a retired Episcopal Bishop who won both the Bronze and Silver Stars for his service in Vietnam, have been convicted of misdemeanor trespassing for entering a lot owned by Trinity Church a month after the Zucotti Park encampment was dismantled.

A judge in Manhattan Criminal Court found the protesters guilty Monday after a weeklong trial. One of the defendants was also convicted of trying to slice through the fence's locks with bolt-cutters.

The defendants had been charged after a Dec. 17th incident when protesters scaled a chain-link fence or crawled under it to get to a lot to use it as a new camp site.

The original camp in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan was shut down in November. Protesters had wanted church officials to let them occupy the church-owned property but were refused.

[Via]

Retired Navy Commander Leah Bolger to plead guilty to interrupting the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to tell the truth about the only things needed to fix the federal budget, "Tax the rich, end the wars!"

Bolger spent 20 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy and retired in 2000 at the rank of Commander. She is currently a full-time peace activist and serves as the President of Veterans For Peace. She was also a member of Occupy D.C. at Freedom Plaza. Bolger was arrested on October 26, 2011 for an act of civil disobedience, and will plead guilty at her hearing on these charges, which is scheduled for April 12, 2012.

A press conference will be held at 8:30 am, Thursday April 12th in front of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, 500 Indiana Ave NW, Washington DC. Those scheduled to speak and/or answer questions include:

Leah Bolger, defendant, President of Veterans For Peace (VFP)

Mark Goldstone, attorney for the defendant

Art Brennan, NH Retired Superior Court Associate Justice, member of VFP

Kevin Zeese, Co-director, Its Our Economy, organizer of Occupy Washington, DC

David Swanson, author, activist, radio host, member of VFP

Italian hacktivists with the group Anonymous took down the Vatican website Wednesday.

In an online statement, they accused the Vatican of historical transgressions, including burning books, executing critics and leading people to believe in a "pay to get access to paradise" plan. The hackers also claimed the Catholic Church allowed children to be molested by clergy, the protected the guilty when the abuse was discovered.

They said the attack was not intended at "the true Christian religion and the faithful around the world, but to the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church and all its emanations."

"You refuse to decree practices and object [the] result of progress, such as condoms or abortion, as clinical wounds to eradicate," according to the statement.

A Vatican spokesman confirmed the attack but declined to comment on the source, according to USA Today. Several other Vatican-related sites were taken down, including the site for its newspaper.