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$1M in legal aidspending is under scrutiny

By Times Wires
Published January 18, 2008

WASHINGTON

Legal aid programs serving poor people spent federal money on liquor, interest-free loans for staff, late charges on overdue bills and even lobby registration fees. The parent organization that distributes grants to programs in all 50 states, Legal Services Corp., failed to monitor how the money was spent by state and local legal aid officials, congressional investigators say in a new report. It did not specify how much money was misspent but questioned use of more than $1-million in payments. "We will take whatever actions are warranted when all of the facts are known," said corporation president Helaine Barnett and board chairman Frank Strickland.

White House now says e-mails intact

The White House tried Thursday to tamp down a growing e-mail controversy, dismissing suggestions that millions of electronic messages are missing from the early days of the Bush administration. "We have no reason to believe that there is any data missing at all," said spokesman Tony Fratto. The comments shifted away from White House statements last spring that expressed uncertainty over whether the allegations were true or not. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Fratto's statements conflict with what congressional staffers were told four months ago and summoned White House officials to appear at a hearing Feb. 15.

Televangelists urged to cooperate

Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is preparing another round of letters to Christian television ministries, prodding them to answer questions about their spending and the way they are governed, a spokeswoman said Thursday. An aide to the committee's Democratic chairman indicated it would be in the ministries' best interest to cooperate with the Iowa Republican's investigation. Among the targeted ministries, all of which preach a "prosperity gospel" that God wants his followers to flourish financially, are Randy and Paula White of Tampa.

U.S. drops planto help jaguars

The Interior Department has abandoned attempts to craft a recovery plan for the endangered jaguar because too few of the rare cats have been spotted along the Southwest region of New Mexico and Arizona to warrant such action. Some critics of the decision said Thursday that the jaguar is being sacrificed for the government's new border fence, which is going up along areas where the cat has crossed into the United States from Mexico. Benjamin Tuggle of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that while four male jaguars had been documented in the U.S. border region, the latest last year, no females have been confirmed there since 1963, indicating that "the United States does not support a separate breeding population" for the cat.

[Last modified January 18, 2008, 00:25:41]