by Diane on July 20, 2008
Welcome to my home base.
I’m now incredibly proud to announce my association with Creators Syndicate, one of the nation’s largest purveyors of quality opinion columns, is now distributing my weekly crime and justice column, which I post below every Monday. I’m also a contributing writer for The Daily Beast.
The Albuquerque Journal will continue to be the paper of my childhood and my home base for as long as they’ll have me.
My columns here are always different. Sometimes I’ll simply tell you a story. Sometimes I’ll share my opinions, praise or criticism, other times I’ll hold a mirror up to our society and ask you to form your own opinion. I hope the columns will give you something new to think about each time you visit. It’s a complicated world out there, full of situations of good versus evil, right versus wrong. My job is point them out.
If you’re interested in running my column here’s the Creators Syndicate link or call (310)-337-7003.
Contact me here.
by Diane on March 22, 2010
Where There's Money There Are Crooks
Crooks flock to where the money is. So no one should be surprised that as the amount of money being spent on health care in this country rises, so have the number of fraud cases connected to that industry.
There was the scam in which Medicaid and Medicare patients were billed, monthly, for wheelchairs they never got or didn’t need. There was the phony program to provide liquid food, like Ensure, to undernourished elderly – except it turns out most people didn’t get the delivery and many of them were dead. Last summer there was a fraud plot afoot that [click to continue…]
by Diane on March 15, 2010
Keep the Doors Closed!
Well, that didn’t take long.
And, it certainly didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that in our rush to balance budgets by granting early parole or release to thousands of convicts wasn’t such a great idea. And it sure isn’t saving the money proponents predicted.
Several states embraced the theory that they could save millions of dollars every year by paring down their prison population. They’ve quickly come to realize some things just can’t be measured by money. Like public safety – and [click to continue…]
by Diane on March 8, 2010
Gina Gentile (L), Vanessa Dorwart (R)
Two beautiful teenagers died recently and I was there. I’ll never forget what happened.
I needed to get from New York to Washington, D.C. for a business meeting but a massive snow storm was set to slam into the Northeast. I thought the meeting would be canceled. It wasn’t, so a trip aboard Amtrak’s high speed Acela train seemed the best bet.
As two colleagues and I were strategizing we felt a bump and heard a cracking sound. There were murmurs of, “We must have hit a patch of ice,” and “I think it was a big tree branch on the track.” Then the train stopped dead.
There we sat for two hours in Norwood, Pennsylvania watching the snow fall outside our windows. [click to continue…]
by Diane on March 1, 2010
Adultery is Still Illegal
So, did you notice what I noticed as Tiger Woods delivered his 14 minute nationally televised mea culpa last week? While he was busy admitting, “I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated …” What jumped out at me was what Tiger didn’t mention. He confessed he’d broken the law.
Adultery is a crime.
I know that sounds odd and old fashioned. But the truth is that more than 20 states, including Florida where Wood’s keeps his primary residence, still have laws on the books against cheating on your spouse. [click to continue…]
by Diane on February 22, 2010
Attacking the Messenger
What would you do if your boss began to do questionable, maybe even criminal, things? Would your paycheck be top of mind or would you call authorities? What if you worked for a politician and you knew he or she was doing something wrong. Would you speak out?
Such was the dilemma for an impressionable young man named Andrew Young who worked for former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. While he believed passionately in his boss’s political message, he allowed his loyalty to temporarily blind him. Young admits he did things for Edwards which he now regrets. Some of those things came to the attention of a federal grand jury investigating how Senator Edwards spent campaign money and Young was called to testify.
After dutifully serving the Senator for more than a decade Young has written a book … [click to continue…]
