Governor employed illegal immigrants
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a 2008 GOP presidential aspirant and a critic of illegal immigration, apparently employed undocumented landscape workers at his home near Boston.
Responding to a report in Friday’s Boston Globe, the governor’s communications director said Friday that Romney was unaware that several of the landscapers who kept up his Belmont property were in this country illegally.
As he explores a run for the presidency in 2008, Romney has made illegal immigration a priority issue, urging stiff penalties for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.
Washington
Senator plans presidential run
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat with a record of political success in a Republican-leaning state, intends to take the first official step toward a 2008 presidential campaign early next week, officials said Friday.
Bayh’s plans include creation of a presidential exploratory committee, as well as appearances Monday in Iowa and next weekend in New Hampshire, two early states on the campaign calendar.
Bayh would be the second Democrat to take a formal step toward a presidential campaign. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack is already in the race.
Washington
Pentagon official to step down
Stephen A. Cambone, the Pentagon’s top intelligence official and a close ally of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, will step down at the end of the year, becoming the first key department member to leave in the wake of Rumsfeld’s resignation.
The Pentagon’s intelligence-gathering has come under fire during Cambone’s tenure, with critics accusing the Defense Department of trying to take expanded control over the nation’s intelligence activities.
Cambone was in charge of intelligence when it was disclosed a year ago that a Pentagon database of suspicious activities contained the names of anti-war groups that had been found not be security risks.
Sierra Vista, Ariz.
Bingo player guilty of drug running
A grandmother found with a trunkful of marijuana was convicted of drug running in what prosecutors said was an attempt to earn cash for a bingo habit.
State troopers 214 pounds of pot hidden in Leticia Villareal Garcia’s car trunk last year when they stopped her outside Bisbee, Ariz.
Villareal, 61, told jurors before they convicted her Thursday that her only regular income was a $275 monthly welfare check, but she frequently played bingo and occasionally won thousands of dollars. Prosecutor Doyle Johnstun said the game was Villareal’s undoing.
“People who play bingo almost every night of the week end up losing in the long run,” Johnstun told jurors. “The underlying issue is that she’s got a bingo problem, which explains why an otherwise nice person might get sucked into something like this.”