Two public college professors are suing Rhode Island’s governor to stop an executive order requiring all state contractors to check the immigration status of workers and state police and prison officials to identify illegal immigrants for possible deportation.

Represented by a nationally known civil rights group, the Rhode Island College teachers (Daniel Weisman and Ann Marie Mumm), whose salaries come from taxpayers, claim Governor Don Carcieri violated the state constitution and that he failed to hold a public hearing before signing the measure into law earlier this year.

Furthermore, the lawsuit points out that the federal database (E-Verify) used to check workers’ immigration status disproportionately identifies foreign-born employees as ineligible and that will encourage employers to discriminate against workers who appear foreign. Therefore, professor Weisman said, he opposes its use as a matter of public policy, particularly in light of its “discriminatory impact on naturalized citizens and other foreign-born workers.”

Similar local measures to curb illegal immigration have been legally challenged nationwide, with the high cost of litigation often forcing smaller municipalities to drop the laws all together. In many instances the ordinances have been defeated in court. Examples include Escondido California and Hazleton Pennsylvania. Others, such as Valley Park Missouri, Riverside New Jersey and Farmers Branch Texas, are still battling costly lawsuits.

Local governments that have successfully implemented laws to curb illegal immigration include Virginia’s Prince William County’s resolution to deny taxpayer-funded services to illegal aliens, Arizona’s stiff penalties for companies that hire illegal immigrants and Oklahoma’s measure denying illegal aliens state identification cards and public benefits.

A powerful Democrat congressman who has repeatedly violated House ethics rules and used his office to raise money from corporations with business before him, has for decades excluded rental income from a Caribbean villa on federal and state tax returns.

It marks the latest in a series of violations for veteran New York Representative Charles Rangel, a self-proclaimed champion of his poor Harlem constituents. Instead, his recent gaffes paint the portrait of a greedy rich politician who might very well think that he is above the law.

It turns out that, although Rangel is chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which actually writes the federal tax code, he claims that he had no idea that he had to declare thousands of dollars in rent money as income. So, for 20 years Rangel has not reported about $75,000 in rental income from his luxury villa in the Dominica Republic.

Additionally, the lawmaker has failed to mention the income in his congressional financial disclosure forms, which are sworn statements. Intentionally filing a false report is a felony that carries a possible prison sentence. On top of that, New York state law makes filing a false city or state tax return a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

Claiming ignorance and blaming his wife will probably be sufficient to help Rangel, a member of the House since 1971, escape punishment. After all, he has not faced any consequences for his other violations. Just a few months ago, Rangel was exposed by his hometown newspaper for having four extremely rare rent-stabilized apartments—a violation of state and city regulations as well as House ethics rules—even though he regularly criticizes his district’s lack of affordable housing.

In the same week, Rangel was exposed for using his congressional office to solicit millions of dollars in donations from corporations with business interests before his panel. The money, about $30 million, will be used for a new academic center that will be named after him and eventually house his papers when he retires. Rangel got the project started with a highly controversial $1.9 million congressional earmark.

In 2007 Rangel was in hot water for proposing tax legislation that would greatly benefit his campaign contributors and the year before for secretly accepting an all-expense paid family trip from a terrorist government. He slipped the tax provision into a broad tax relief bill in order to halt current audits of Americans who get breaks for operating businesses in the Virgin Islands.

In 2006 he was caught lying about a family trip financed by a government that for years has appeared on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations, a violation of House ethics rules. Rangel actually lied on his congressional travel disclosure forms to conceal that the Cuban government had paid for him and his family to visit the island to meet with Dictator Fidel Castro to discuss lifting U.S. trade restrictions on Havana.

A major U.S. city will finally get rid of its criminally corrupt thug of a mayor whose felonious antics have cost taxpayers millions of dollars and brought shame to the long ailing municipality.

Facing an embarrassing criminal trial and nearly a dozen felony charges, Detroit’s scandal-plagued mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, finally admitted he’s a felon for obstructing justice by lying under oath at a whistleblower trial. Up until today, the self-described “Hip Hop Mayor” had denied any wrongdoing and ignored calls to resign.

With detrimental evidence mounting against him by the day and facing removal by Michigan’s governor, Kilpatrick evidently decided to admit some of his crimes in order to avoid the much larger prison sentence attached to a jury conviction on the additional counts. He will serve four months in jail, five years probation, pay $1 million in restitution and turn over his state pension to the city of Detroit. During his five-year probation period the disgraced lawmaker, who is the son of Michigan Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks, will not run for office.

The once rising star in Michigan’s Democratic circles has been much like a ripe volcano on the verge of eruption since taking office in 2002. He spent a great part of his first tenure partying with strippers at the mayor’s mansion and got busted for charging hundreds of thousands of dollars on his city-issued credit card for personal travel, meals and entertainment. He also used $25,000 of city funds to get his wife a fancy sports utility vehicle at a time when Detroit was in a deep financial crisis and thousands of city jobs were being cut.

Then Kilpatrick lied under oath at a police whistleblower trial to hide an extramarital affair with a city staffer. The cops had been wrongfully fired for asking questions that could have exposed the undercover romance and Kilpatrick ended up orchestrating a secret city deal to pay the officers nearly $9 million for their troubles. Details of the scandalous settlement were only made public after a local newspaper filed a public records lawsuit.

The self-destructive politician subsequently got charged with two additional felonies for assaulting a sheriff’s detective trying to serve a subpoena on one of his shady friends. The irate mayor pushed the detective and attacked him and his partner with profanity and racial remarks. Kilpatrick then became the first mayor in Detroit’s 300-plus years to spend the night in a jail cell for violating the bond conditions in his perjury case by traveling to Canada. He capped that by violating the terms of the assault bond when he spent time with a key witness to the incident.

Incredibly, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has praised Kilpatrick by calling him a “great mayor” who has done an “outstanding job.” Early in Kilpatrick’s tumultuous administration Obama assured that his friend would do “astounding things for many years to come.” The Hip-Hop mayor with the attention-grabbing diamond stud earring certainly came through.

Proving once again that the nation’s airports are vulnerable to serious security breaches, a longtime public employee at one of the world’s busiest airports has been charged with smuggling foreigners—including previously deported aliens with criminal records—into the country by helping them out of the terminal before mandatory customs inspections.

The veteran city worker, an elevator mechanic, has for decades been cleared to access restricted areas at Los Angeles International Airport and federal authorities believe he was a small part of a large scale illegal immigrant smuggling operation at the massive facility which annually handles 62 million passengers.

Officials admit they have no clue how long the smuggling ring has operated but say the city mechanic (Roberto Canchola) sneaked in at least 15 illegal immigrants in the last few months, including two criminals who had been deported, as they arrived on Mexicana flights from Mexico.

Upon arrival, the passengers would signal to Canchola by putting their hands over the hearts like they were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. He then escorted them out of the airport through restricted back areas to avoid U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoints mandatory for all international passengers. The smuggled aliens were then taken to downtown Los Angeles where relatives paid up to $4,500 for each person.

Now the 23-year city employee, whose annual taxpayer-financed salary is $81,000, faces a decade in prison. Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time that a serious lapse puts the nation at risk since the devastating 2001 terrorist attacks supposedly strengthened security at all of the country’s transportation facilities.

In the last few years alone unbelievable breaches have occurred at airports across the nation. At Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Georgia’s Atlanta International Airport, illegal immigrants used fake security badges to work in highly restricted security areas. At Florida’s Orlando Airport a pair of baggage handlers smuggled guns and drugs onto a commercial flight more than once and Customs and Border Protection officers at two separate east coast airports helped drug smugglers and illegal immigrants enter the country for cash.

A professor emeritus at a public university in Tennessee has been convicted of passing sensitive U.S. military secrets to the communist government of China through graduate research assistants and wire transmissions.

A federal jury in Knoxville deliberated only six hours before convicting the veteran electrical and computer engineering professor (J. Reece Roth) of 18 counts of conspiracy, fraud and violating the Arms Export Control Act. Roth disclosed restricted military data about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, also known as drones, to foreign nationals without required government license or approval.

Prosecutors say that between 2004 and 2006 the professor transmitted technical data on a restricted U.S. military contract with a university research spin off company he helped found. The information involved an Air Force project to develop plasma actuators for munitions-type drones. Roth gave the information to a Chinese national who was a graduate research assistant at the university.

Roth also put America’s security at risk during a 2006 trip to China to supposedly deliver an academic lecture. Instead, prosecutors say the professor—a graduate of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology—delivered more delicate technical data about the military project that was controlled by the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations.

At his trial, Roth testified that he didn’t break the law because he had not proved that his research actually worked. The jury clearly didn’t buy it and now he faces up to 160 years in jail and $1.5 million in fines. Sentencing is scheduled for early next year.

Before resigning under fire last year, embattled Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales violated Justice Department regulations by removing classified documents from a special secure facility without proper authorization.

According to the Justice Department’s inspector general Gonzalez, the nation’s top law enforcement officer for 31 months, stored the documents in his office and home. The files contained highly sensitive information on the Bush Administration’s counterterrorism efforts and were supposed to be heavily guarded.

A 29-page inspector general report says the breach risked exposing parts of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) terrorist surveillance program as well as interrogations of terrorist detainees. Aspects of the crucial surveillance program that were explicitly referred to in the mishandled documents had been classified as top secret and sensitive compartmented information.

Gonzales took the classified documents, which contained operational aspects of the program, home and stored them there for an indeterminate period of time even though such material must always be kept in a Sensitive Compartmented Storage Facility. Gonzales, who had been appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Bush before becoming White House counsel then attorney general, could have been criminally prosecuted but wasn’t.

A few years ago Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger got a slap on the hand (a $50,000 fine and community service) for removing highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives. Berger took the documents as he prepared to testify, on the behalf of the Clinton Administration, before the September 11 Commission. He stole the files, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to get a trash collector to retrieve them.

A Connecticut state agency that ensures citizens’ access to public records has ruled that its second-largest city doesn’t have to disclose information relating to controversial identification cards designed to help illegal immigrants integrate into city life.

About 6,000 New Haven residents—mostly illegal immigrants—have obtained the city’s official municipal identification cards and one group wants more information on the cardholders. The state’s Homeland Security chief (James Thomas) ordered the city not to release the information because it could put cardholders in “harm’s way.”

More importantly, Connecticut’s Homeland Security chief used the same pathetic argument that sanctuary cities across the nation love to cite when they refuse to enforce immigration laws; it will destroy crucial cooperation between the growing illegal immigrant community and police. So the official in charge of guarding the state’s security endorses protecting undocumented aliens who live there illegally.

Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission agreed with its Homeland Security chief, ruling that the records are indeed exempt from disclosure. The five-member state agency administers and enforces the provisions of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act and supposedly ensures citizen’s access to public records.

The decision is being legally challenged by a group that claims the city’s interpretation illegally expanded the categories of exemption allowed under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The suit points out that only records, whose disclosure would result in a threat to certain government and public utility facilities and their occupants, are exempt from public scrutiny.

A veteran public school board member in a large Texas district has been arrested and charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as part of a broader public corruption scheme that has already led to the guilty pleas of several officials.

According to an eight-count federal indictment, El Paso Independent School Board District trustee Salvador Mena took bribes from vendors seeking multi million-dollar contracts for more than a decade. Around nine vendors paid Mena close to a quarter of a million dollars during his 12-year tenure with some of the money disguised as campaign contributions and some delivered in cash that was stashed in his desk drawer.

In the indictment prosecutors outline the shady deals that Mena orchestrated to cheat taxpayers over the years. His motes operandi was to take hefty sums of cash and other benefits in exchange for his vote to award multi million-dollar contracts to various companies and his help in securing additional lucrative contracts in other districts.

Mena, who faces four decades in prison and a $1 million fine, is one of many public officials targeted by federal authorities in the widespread corruption probe that has seen guilty pleas from a county judge’s chief of staff, a county commissioner and an architect who admitted he bribed Mena. An arraignment for Mena, who was bailed out of jail by his cousin, is scheduled for next week.