WSJ:  A ROMNEY VICTORY IN FLORIDA
‘COULD SEW THIS [NOMINATION] UP’
 
Columnist Kimberley Strassel predicts
GOP  presidential  nominee  could be
determined Tues. in Sunshine State
 
READ THE VOICE OF BALTIMORE STORY  (click here)

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WAS ONE OF 19  CHARGED
IN 2011 TOWING SCANDAL

No longer faces criminal chgs.

17 OF 19 WERE CITY COPS

One of the 17 Baltimore police officers charged last year with taking kickbacks from a Rosedale automobile towing company will not face prosecution, the city U.S. Attorney’s office confirmed today.

Eric Ivan Ayala Olivera, 36, of Edgewood Md., was among the officers and tow company operators caught by an FBI wiretap that resulted in 19 indictments of extortion and conspiracy regarding the misdirection of accident victims from city-authorized medallion towing companies to Majestic Auto Repair in Rosedale.

The U.S. Attorney’s dropping of the charges against Ayala Olivera was first reported shortly after noon Tuesday by Fox45- WBFF-TV.

No reason was given for dropping the indictment, leading to speculation the officer was cooperating in the ongoing investigation in return for no longer having to face criminal charges.

More than a year ago, Voice of Baltimore’s predecessor, Investigative Voice, initially reported the FBI’s involvement along with city police investigating the scandal and was first to report the mass arrests in February 2011, hours before U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein held a press conference and released the names of those indicted.

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MICA PROF. BETSY BOYD  READS
IN THE ‘VOICE’ OF HER MOTHER
 
‘The Wire’ writer Rafael Alvarez
and poet Dean Bartoli Smith
are featured participants
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
“There’s something I have to tell you,” the 18-year-old Israeli soldier mumbled, fidgeting nervously as she spoke to the father who hadn’t raised her but with whom she’d had a loving relationship since the age of nine.
 
“I’m a lesbian.”
 

“Well thank God!” answered her father. “I was afraid you were going to tell me you had an incurable disease or something.”

That was five years ago. The woman was the only offspring of the acclaimed American memoirist, poet and novelist Alan Kaufman, who was in Charm City last week to help kick off a monthly series of literary readings organized by Baltimore writer Rafael Alvarez in association with the Greektown Community Development Corporation (GCDC).

The readings are scheduled to take place in Greektown — the first, on Thursday night, was at the Acropolis Restaurant on Eastern Avenue at Oldham Street — and will feature local writers, poets and musicians, according to Jason Filippou, executive director of the GCDC, who told Voice of Baltimore “the idea is to welcome people to the Greektown neighborhood and to showcase local talent.”

Locations for the readings will “rotate” among different Greek restaurants, Filippou said, culminating in what the organization hopes will become its home in the Plateia, in the 700 block of Ponca Street, a community/cultural venue being constructed by St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and featuring an outdoor mini-amphitheater.

“I can live anywhere in the world,” Alvarez told the large audience that attended the opening reading at the Acropolis. “But I choose to live here, I have an affinity for this neighborhood,” he said.

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PALMETTO STATE DEALS
CRUSHING BLOW TO EX-
FRONTRUNNER ROMNEY
 
A  CERTAIN  LOSER?
Gingrich the phoenix
 

By Alan Z. Forman

UPDATE (Thurs., Jan. 26th @ 8:25 PM):
WSJ:  A ROMNEY VICTORY IN FLORIDA
‘COULD SEW THIS [NOMINATION] UP’

Wall Street Journal columnist predicts
GOP  presidential  nominee  could be
determined Tues. in Sunshine State

“Newt Gingrich’s South Carolina bump is fading,” asserts columnist Kimberley A. Strassel in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, “and polls show Mitt Romney again leading in Florida.

“A Romney victory in the Sunshine State could sew this up,” Strassel predicts.

However the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Republicans nationwide favoring Gingrich over Romney by a margin of 37-28 percent, the WSJ reports in tomorrow’s edition.

The “Ex-Speaker [of the U.S. House of Representatives] fares worse vs. [President Barack] Obama,” the Journal says in Friday’s paper.

Strassel’s column is online tonight and will appear in tomorrow’s print edition of the Wall Street Journal.  (To read her column in its entirety,  click here.)

—————   —————   —————

If the ability to overcome adversity and steer a steady course from all but certain defeat to absolute victory is the stuff that presidents are made of, former House of Representatives Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich will become the 45th President of the United States exactly one year from today.

In early June his campaign was considered dead in the water by virtually every knowledgeable pundit and it appeared likely he would have to make an embarrassing exit from the race following the mass exodus then of 16 of his senior staffers.

But he steadfastly refused to quit, despite the resignation of his campaign manager and a half-dozen senior advisers, the heart of his personal staff.

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VoB SELECTS:  INVESTIGATIVE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WEB

 

TEXAS GOVERNOR ENDORSES
FORMER SPEAKER  GINGRICH

Terms him a ‘conservative visionary’

NEWT’S NOT PERFECT, BUT WHO IS?
 
UPDATE (Sat., Jan. 21st @ 8:30 PM): GINGRICH WINS SO. CAROLINA PRIMARY IN MAJOR UPSET; defeats former front- runner Romney by wide margin, 41-26 percent in early returns
 
UPDATE (Fri., Jan. 20th @ 3 AM):  ROMNEY STRIPPED OF IOWA CAUCUS VICTORY

The Iowa Republican Party has determined that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who had apparently won that state’s first-in-the-nation presidential test — the January 3 Iowa caucuses — by eight votes, in fact lost to former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) by a margin of 34 votes.

As such, the Iowa GOP said the party would not name an official winner because of the closeness of the results and the inability to count some of the votes.

Santorum however pronounced himself the winner.
 
Two days before the pivotal South Carolina primary, Texas Gov. Rick Perry abruptly dropped out of the Republican presidential race, throwing his support to Newt Gingrich and endorsing the former House of Representatives speaker as what he termed a “conservative visionary.”

Perry told a packed news gathering Thursday morning in North Charleston, S.C., “Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?” according to an early report in the New York Times.

“The fact is, there is forgiveness for those who seek God,” Perry declared. “And I believe in the power of redemption, for it is a central tenet of my Christian faith,” an apparent reference to former Speaker Gingrich’s highly publicized marital infidelities.

“Mr. Perry reached the decision on Wednesday night, his aides said,” as the Times reported less than two hours ago, “and informed Mr. Gingrich of his plans to leave the race. He was planning to fly home to Texas shortly after his announcement.

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