Three young men looking to buy marijuana from a "friend of a friend" ended up getting robbed at gunpoint on the southwest side, Madison police reported.

Police said the robbery happened at about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday in the 2700 block of Cimarron Trail near Mesa Court.

According to the police report, the three young men -- an 18-year-old from Madison, a 17-year-old from Verona and a 19-year-old from Fitchburg -- were out celebrating the 17-year-old's birthday and planned to buy some pot.

"The trio drove to a park on Cimarron Trail where they met up with this friend of a friend," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain.

A stranger also showed up, toting a handgun.

"The would-be marijuana dealer and the stranger carried on as if they did not know each other," DeSpain said. "The gunman threatened to kill the victims, and then robbed them of money, a cell phone and a backpack."

The suspect was described as a black male, 20-25 years old, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet 1 inches tall, 150 to 175 pounds, with short hair, and wearing a long black T-shirt.

Oklahoma City mom gets 20 years for enabling child abuse

Oklahoma City woman let boyfriend take care of their daughter even though he was a convicted child abuser.

 

LA PAZ

Fri Jul 30, 2010 12:42pm EDT

Jason Nordlander, 21, and his mother Cheryl Nordlander, 49, both of the 1800 block of Portsmouth Lane, were arrested and appeared in bond court in Rolling Meadows charged with dealing drugs out of their home, Cook County sheriff's officials said in a press release.

Jason Nordlander was charged with manufacturing and dealing cannabis, possession of cannabis, possession of drug paraphernalia, and two counts of possession of a controlled substance. Cheryl Nordlander was charged with possession of cannabis and possession of a controlled substance.

Officials said they began investigating the duo after police received complaints from neighbors about drug activity at the family's home.

The home was put under surveillance and investigators witnessed a "suspicious amount of foot traffic in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night," officials said.

After getting a search warrant police raided the home on Thursday and found large quantities of drugs and drug paraphernalia in plain view, officials said.

Inside the home police found 30 hydrocodone pills, 1.5 grams of hashish, 38.5 grams of cannabis, and nearly $2700 in cash, officials said.

Police also said there was evidence of a disassembled grow house in the basement, with hydroponic equipment used to grow cannabis.

Cheryl Nordlander is on probation for a previous drug arrest.

In January she was arrested by the Chicago Police Department and charged with possession and production of cannabis, and possession of Ecstasy, after a tip that drugs were being shipped to her home by a relative in California, officials said.
 
Bond for both Jason and Cheryl Nordlander was set for $10,000 in Rolling Meadows Court on Saturday. Cheryl Nordlander's next court date is July 29th at 26th & California.  Jason Nordlander appears in Rolling Meadows on August 19th.

Schamburg Police assisted Cook County Sheriff's Police, officials said.

-- Carlos Sadovi

The 47-year-old told police she had been undergoing treatment at Discovering Health, 1513 E St. At some point, she realized the acupuncturist had left and closed the office, police spokesman Mark Young said.

The woman told police she pulled out the needles and tried to leave, but the doors were locked and required a key to unlock even from the inside.

She set off motion detector alarms while trying to leave the building and called 911 for assistance at about 7:30 p.m., Young said.

Police officers responded and were able to get her out of the office. The woman was not harmed, Young said.

A call to Discovering Health on Wednesday was returned by an attorney, who declined to comment for this article.

All three acupuncturists listed as working at the clinic have valid licenses with the state Department of Health as East Asian medicine practitioners. Two of them have held those licenses since the mid-1990s, the other got the license in 2000. One of them also is a licensed naturopathic physician, according to the Department of Health.

Young didn't say which acupuncturist was treating the woman.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said if the patient filed a complaint, it would be investigated. She would not speculate on what the penalty, if any, would be if the complaint were found to be true.

Police did not release the patient's name.

Foreclosure activity rises in most major metropolitan areas

 

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 30, 2010  

Foreclosure activity climbed in three-quarters of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas in the first half of 2010, compared with the same period a year ago, but declined in some of the nation's hardest-hit regions, according to data released Thursday.

• In slow economy, Americans stay put
• The new division of labor: Adding profits, subtracting workers
• Foreclosure activity rises in most major metropolitan areas

The number of properties in some stage of foreclosure rose during the first six months of the year in 154 of the 206 metropolitan areas with a population of 200,000 or more, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac said in a report.

The 20 regions with the worst foreclosure rates were in the four states -- Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona -- where home prices climbed fastest during the boom years and crashed hardest during the crisis. Nine of the areas on the top 20 list were in Florida, eight in California, two in Nevada and one in Arizona.

Nationwide, more than 1.6 million properties were in some stage of foreclosure in the first half of the year, according to RealtyTrac, up about 8 percent from a year ago but down 5 percent from the final six months of 2009.

In the Washington region, foreclosure activity fell 5.4 percent from a year ago and nearly 18 percent from the previous six months. About 1 in 78 D.C. area loans was in some state of foreclosure from January through June.

Foreclosures tend to drag down home prices and undermine the housing market's stability. The nation's stubbornly high unemployment rate and the lending community's increased willingness to sell foreclosed properties are boosting the number of foreclosures hitting the market.

For a period, lenders were under political pressure to delay foreclosures and modify troubled loans. But as lenders get a better handle on which loans cannot be salvaged, they are starting to complete more foreclosures and put those homes on the market.

However, there are "early signs" that foreclosures might have peaked in some of the most-troubled regions, James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac's chief executive, said in a statement. Foreclosure activity dropped in nine of the 10 most-severely affected areas. Even so, the rates still remain three to five times as high as the national average.

The Las Vegas area still has the nation's highest foreclosure rate, with 6.6 percent of its housing units receiving a foreclosure filing in the first half of the year. But the number of filings fell 15 percent from the second half of 2009 and 9 percent from the first six months of last year.

Foreclosure activity in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area of Florida, which had the second-highest rate among U.S. metropolitan regions, at 4.98 percent, also slipped. The foreclosure rate there in the first half of the year is down 30 percent from a year ago and 22 percent from the previous six months.

Thomas Lawler, a housing consultant, attributes the declines in those regions to a high concentration of exotic loans that went bad and cleared the system.

In other areas, "more of the loans are running into problems not because loans were bad but because the economy stinks," hence the rise in foreclosure activity, Lawler said.

The report collects data from 2,200 counties nationwide that make up more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. Some of the foreclosure filings captured in the first half of this year may have been recorded in previous time periods.

With Reporting By Julian Hattem

During his daily press briefing on July 13, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was peppered with questions about why the president's popularity numbers are in decline and his policy positions are so difficult to sell.

ABC News's Jake Tapper sought reaction to the network's newest poll showing that 51 percent of respondents would rather have Republicans running Congress. CNN's Ed Henry wanted to know why, in that same poll, "six in 10 Americans have little or no faith in the President to make the right decisions." CBS's Chip Reid then pointed to his own network's poll showing that only 13 percent of respondents thought the president's economic programs had affected them personally.

Exasperated, Gibbs deployed a classic rejoinder: mocking the polling-obsessed media culture.

"You know, in all honesty, Chip, there isn't a website in the world that doesn't have a new poll every day," the press secretary replied. "And if you spent a lot of time sitting around worrying about polls rather than worrying about the people that you're trying to help, I'm sure you'd get discouraged. But we're way too busy to sit around looking at polls."

Too busy to look at polls? Perhaps. But not too poor to pay for them. While Gibbs routinely chides members of the press for obsessing about the day-to-day temperamental swings of the American public, behind the scenes the White House has poured plenty of money into conducting its own public opinion polls. Through June 9, 2010, the administration, via the Democratic National Committee, has spent at least $4.45 million on the services of seven different pollsters, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. (The Huffington Post looked into only those expenditures that totaled more than $5,000)

That total represents only 18 months into the administration. During the first 24 months of the Bush administration, the Republican National Committee spent $3.1 million on polling according to a 2003 study done by Brookings. During the 2005-2006 years of the Bush administration, the RNC spent just north of $1.23 million on "surveys," "focus groups," and "polling," according to an analysis of Center for Responsive Politics data (they spent millions, instead, on telemarketing services). So far this cycle, the RNC has spent slightly more than $1 million on those same activities. (The Huffington Post did not examine data from the 2008 cycle because spending totals were affected by the presidential election.)

The expenditures seem at odds with the image that the administration and the president project publicly. During the past few months, for example, Gibbs has dismissed speculation that polling played a role in the federal government's decision to file a lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law, the president's economic agenda, and the administration's approach to health care reform. In a speech at the National Urban League's 100th anniversary convention on Thursday, the president himself laughed at the "scribes and the pundits" who wonder why he pursues policies that don't poll well.

"I have to explain to them, I've got my own pollsters. But I wasn't elected just to do what's popular," Obama said. "I was elected to do what was right."

All of which may be true. But the administration, like those of the past, is far more invested and interested in the flow of public opinion than it lets on -- wary of the perception that it is operating off anything other than pure conviction. At one point during the presidential campaign, Obama was spending more money on pollsters than the notoriously poll-driven Clinton camp.

Part of the current buys has to do with the state of American politics. The Democratic Party has congressional majorities bigger than any of those Republicans enjoyed during the Bush administration. Keeping those majorities involves a duty to protect incumbents.

"We laid out an agenda in the election and we are pursuing it now," said a senior party official. "Our polling is to get the pulse of the American people, to understand where they are, what their priorities are and how they are responding to the policies we are pursuing."

"It's par for the course for the party in power in the White House to spend more on research than the party out of power," said DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, before adding a bit of partisan flare. "What is surprising is that going into such an important election that the RNC has spent so little on research and so much on redecorating offices and sex clubs."

That said, the party's campaign committees have spent their own money on polling as well. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for instance, divided more than $1 million between six separate pollsters, according to Center for Responsive Politics data. (Figures for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are not detailed on the site).

The White House declined to comment on the nature of its polling, noting that it was done under the purview of the DNC. But sources familiar with the expenditures say that the administration has indeed done broad-themed polls on several recent hot-button issues including immigration and energy reform. And while the administration claims it hasn't made decisions based on the results, it does put heavy stock in the data.

Among the firms that have benefited are David Binder Research, which has been paid close to $800,000 this cycle; Harstad Strategic Research, which was paid more than $850,000; Benenson Strategy Group, which took in the biggest haul at $2.36 million; and AKP&D Message and Media -- WH Senior Adviser David Axelrod's old firm - which has not done polling itself but for $334,000 has helped coordinate messaging and questions for the polls, prompting the CRP to define those receipts as a polling expense.

"Part of what they are trying to figure out, I think, is trying to figure out what kind of message to use in terms of selling their policies to the country," said Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University.

But, as Abramowitz points out, even with the data culled from all the polling, the evidence is mixed as to whether the administration has been able to reach or move public opinion. "The problem," he said, "is I don't see a coherent message right now." Indeed, the past year has been marked in a relatively steady decline (with natural ups and downs) in public opinion for the president. As one party operative put it, when shown the expenditures: "They spent this much money to drive their numbers this far down?"