Your Tax Dollars Wasted: The Daily Pilot says that Costa Mesa officials admit they’ve spent at least $127,000 in public funds to prosecute Benito Acosta, an Orange Coast College student who had the audacity last year to demand the right to address the city council for the same three-minute period allotted to everyone else. Acosta wanted to criticize a policing plan suggested by Gestapo, errr, Mayor Allan Mansoor (R-Dusseldorf) when Mansoor prematurely turned off the public microphone, suspended the meeting and allowed a gaggle of cops to haul Acosta away. Welcome to OC, where government officials think they can get away with anything.
Ellen May Want Back In Closet! The online Los Angeles Times homepage this morning reports that striking television writers have “declared war on Ellen.” According to a statement from the writer’s union, the star is writing her own material, which they say violates agreements and undermines the folks who put words in her mouth. Money quote: “We find it sad that Ellen spent an entire week crying and fighting for a dog… yet she couldn't even stand by writers for more than one day.”
Uh, Sheriff, That's Not What You Said Before: Indicted OC Sheriff Mike Carona is building a defense that blames two of his handpicked assistant sheriffs for his corruption charges. Ex-assistant sheriff’s Don Haidl and George Jaramillo have pleaded guilty to federal crimes and outlined Carona’s participation in using his powerful office for personal financial gain, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. It’s the Carona camp’s strategy to argue that you can’t trust admitted criminals, which would now be the only distinction between the three men. Anyhow, here was Calamity Mike on May 17, 2007, talking about why reporters should not trust inmates who insist a jail deputy participated in the brutal killing of an in-custody defendant: “I don't think it's uncommon for people charged with crimes to try and blame someone else.” Thanks, Mikey.
Holy Crap: Stanton pastor Ronald Hernandez Tova, 57, was set to go to trial on Christmas Eve on charges that he’s repeatedly engaged in sexual intercourse with a minor who attends his church. In past months, people claiming to be Tova supporters at Shadow of the Almighty have told me he’s a fine, innocent man targeted by Satan. I’m beginning to see their point. Today, David Haldane at the Times OC bureau reports that the married pastor has been rearrested for twice violating a court order prohibiting contact with the 16-year-old girl. Now, he’s back in jail, facing additional charges and a higher $750,000 bail. Prosecutor Drew Haughton told the Times that Tova “continues to show complete disregard for the authority of law.”
— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.