By Staff
J. Steven Griles, the former No. 2 official in the Interior Department, March 23 became the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, pleading guilty to obstructing justice by lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with the convicted lobbyist.
Abramoff repeatedly sought Griles' intervention on behalf of Indian tribal clients.
Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist, became an architect of Bush's energy policies as deputy Interior secretary.
Griles is the ninth person convicted in the continuing Justice Department probe, which sent Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, to jail.
Small world: It was news to me that Blackwater, the private North Carolina security firm that is emblematic of the outsourcing of the war, had a Michigan connection.
You may remember the incident in Fallujah, Iraq, on March 31, 2004, when a Blackwater convoy was ambushed by gunmen.
Four men were dragged from their vehicles, mutilated by a mob and set on fire, two of their torsos dangling from a bridge.
Blackwater's founder and sole owner is Erik Prince, 37, whose sister, Betsy DeVos, chaired the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and from 2003 to 2005. Her husband Dick ran for governor in 2006.
According to Time magazine, Blackwater in 2003 landed its first high-profile contract guarding Ambassador L. Paul Bremer in Iraq for $21 million in 11 months.
Since June 2004, Blackwater has made more than $320 million from a $1 billion, five-year State Department budget for protecting officials.
Family values frontrunners: Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich lead the 2008 GOP presidential pack with three marriages each, followed by John McCain with two. Mitt Romney trails because he's still with his first wife. Then there's dark horse Fred Thompson, who, before he became a TV star dated Lorrie Morgan, who sang at the 2002 Cass County Fair.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "Government is not only bigger and more expensive than it was when George W. Bush took office, but its reach is also longer, thanks to the broad new powers it has claimed as necessary to protect the homeland. It's true that (Ronald) Reagan didn't live up to everything he promised: he campaigned on smaller government, fiscal discipline and religious values, while his presidency brought us a larger government and a soaring deficit. But Bush's apostasies are more extravagant by just about any measure you pick … McCain seems to have become much of what he used to fight against. The deficit hawk who had opposed Bush's tax cuts voted to extend them. (His unwavering) support for the war and Bush's troop buildup … finds himself on the opposite side of the fence from 72 percent of Americans in the latest poll."
– March 26 Time magazine
Larry "Bud" Melman dies: Gnomish Calvert DeForest, 85, who gained a cult following on David Letterman's late-night talk shows from 1982-2002, died March 19 at a hospital on Long Island after a long illness.
"To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him," Letterman said March 21.
Producers spotted him in a New York University student film and found him working as a file clerk at a drug rehabilitation center.
In 1994, the "Late Show" sent him as a correspondent to the Winter Olympics in Norway and to Woodstock.
Obit: Charles Harrelson, 69, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, died of a heart attack in his sleep March 15 at the Supermax federal prison 90 miles south of Denver, where he was serving two life sentences for murdering U.S. District Judge "Maximum John" Wood Jr. outside his San Antonio home on May 29, 1979.
Other inmates residing there include the Unabomber, Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph.
The actor was 7 when his father was first sent to prison, for murdering a Texas businessman. He was in college when his father was convicted of killing the federal judge.
Houdini won't escape this time: A forensic dream team wants to exhume magician Harry Houdini, who died at 52 in Detroit on Halloween 1926 to see if he was murdered.
He died days after being punched repeatedly in the stomach by a college student testing his abdominal muscles.
His death certificate listed the cause of death as peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, but no autopsy was performed, so rumors that he was poisoned persist.