How to Deal with Swine Flu - Heed Mistakes By Eben Harrell Monday, Apr. 27, 2009     

  She-devil of family's nightmares or Amelie of Seattle: the two faces of Amanda Knox   Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP She is a wide-eyed innocent, a normal, high-spirited, all-American college student. She came to Italy to learn the language and became caught up in a nightmare of accusations over the death of her British housemate. She is a she-devil, manipulative, unscrupulous, a born actress and a liar, a killer whose angelic face is betrayed by her ice-blue eyes. She taunted and fought with her housemate and eventually killed her in a drug-fuelled sex game out of hatred and revenge, with her submissive Italian boyfriend and one of the “strange men” she kept bringing back to the house. Then she tried to blame an innocent man. The question for the jury throughout this marathon trial boiled down to this: which version of Amanda Knox did they believe in? The global attention on the murder of Meredith Kercher, whose body was found in a pool of blood on November 2, 2007, is in part due to its setting. Perugia is a picturesque medieval Umbrian university hill town by day, a place of dark cobbled alleyways and pubs and bars crowded with students by night, a town with the unhappy reputation of having the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Italy. Related LinksKnox gets 26 years for murdering British student Timeline of a murder and trial It is also in part down to the varied cast: Ms Kercher a product of modern multicultural Britain, bright and attractive, with an English father and Asian mother; Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s boyfriend, a bespectacled IT student from a well-to-do family in Bari who she thought looked like Harry Potter but who had a collection of knives and manga comics; Rudy Guede, who came to Perugia as a boy with his father from the Ivory Coast but was soon abandoned then taken in by a local family who brought him up only to see him turn to a life of petty crime. But it is Amanda Knox who has been the focus of attention from the moment that she appeared on the scene, first as a witness, then as a suspect. She was, one of her lawyers said this week, “submerged in a media tsunami”. One Italian survey said that she was more famous than Carla Bruni. Like Perugia itself, Knox has two faces in the popular imagination, angel and demon, and the battle over her image has raged ever since. “It is Amanda who started the fight, which triggered an unstoppable crescendo of violence, and it is Amanda who plunged the knife into Meredith’s neck,” said Giuliano Mignini, the chief prosecutor, in his summing up to the court. “It is Amanda who later covers the cadaver with a blanket — a form of pietas, of respect for the victim. An unknown male would not have any need to cover the body. As a woman, and friend, she couldn’t stand to see that nude, battered cadaver that she was responsible for.”…

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Rod Blagojevich stands outside his home in Ravenswood Manor on the city's Northwest Side.
(Jean Lachat/Sun-Times file)   Did Rezko pay for Gov's house rehab? FEDERAL INVESTIGATION | Probe into Blagojeviches centering on whether indicted fund-raiser paid for all or part of $90,000 work on Northwest Side home Recommend (22) Comments October 4, 2008

 Immigration Law in Arizona Reveals G.O.P. DivisionsBy JENNIFER STEINHAUERLOS ANGELES — Republican lawmakers and candidates are increasingly divided over illegal immigration — torn between the need to attract Latino support, especially at the ballot box, and rallying party members who support tougher action. Arizona’s new measure allowing the police to detain anyone suspected of being in the country without papers has forced politicians far and wide to take a stance. But unlike in Washington, where a general consensus exists among establishment Republicans, the fault lines in the states — where the issue is even more visceral and immediate — are not predictable. Conservative Republican governors like Jim Gibbons of Nevada, Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia and Rick Perry of Texas have all criticized the Arizona law. But some more moderate Republicans, like Tom Campbell, who is running in the party’s Senate primary in California, have supported it. The decision on whether to support or oppose the law can have almost immediate political consequences. The latest evidence may be Meg Whitman’s declining fortunes. For months, Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, enjoyed a massive lead over her principal rival for the Republican nomination for governor of California, Steve Poizner. But in recent weeks, she has seen her advantage slip significantly, in no small part because Mr. Poizner has hammered her on her opposition to the Arizona law. Finding herself increasingly on the defensive on the issue, Ms Whitman even proclaims in a new advertisement: “I’m 100 percent against amnesty for illegal immigrants. Period.” Nonetheless, a poll released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California showed her advantage cratering 23 percentage points since March, down to 38 versus 29 percent for Mr. Poizner. In states with hotly contested elections, several Republican candidates are finding their positions mobile, reflecting the sensitivity of the issue and a growing body of polls that suggest many voters support the Arizona law. In Florida, for instance, State Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is running for governor, now says he approves of the law, though he called it “far out” two weeks ago; Marco Rubio, the state’s Republican Senate nominee, has also shifted his stance. State Republicans now find themselves in a careful balancing act, trying to seize a moment of Congressional stalemate to demonstrate leadership while not repelling voters on either side of the debate, a challenge that is particularly daunting for those in a primary fight. “I think we need to be very careful about immigration,” said Karl Rove, the former adviser to President George W. Bush. “I applaud Arizona for taking action, but I think…