Dave wrote:

D Peter Maus wrote:
Dave wrote:
Did Cindy's dad and uncle have reporter killed? What is the
connection between John McCain and the mob?


Ah..yes...the song of the truly desparate.

Noting that the same person who abjectly dismisses the racketeering
conviction of the guy who financed Obama's house is the very person
raising this spectre about McCain.


Because, as we all know, only Republicans can do wrong.

the jury found Rezko guilty of six counts of wire fraud, six counts of
mail fraud, two counts of corrupt solicitation, and two counts of money
laundering, but found him not guilty on three counts of wire and mail
fraud, one count of attempted extortion, and four counts of corrupt
solicitation.[17] According to CBS News the "high-profile federal trial
provided an unusually detailed glimpse of the pay-to-play politics that
has made Illinois infamous."[18]

While the jury was deliberating on the Board Games trial, an arrest
warrant was issued in Las Vegas for passing bad checks in two casinos
and failing to pay $450,000 in gambling debts that were accrued between
March and July of 2006.[19] Another casino had also filed a civil
complaint for a total of $331,000 in 2006 and was given a judgment of
default in 2007.[19]

Rezko is also under indictment, along with a business associate, for
wire fraud related to the alleged sale of his pizza business to a straw
buyer at an inflated price in order to obtain millions of dollars in
loans from GE Capital.[20] Rezko has plead not guilty to these charges
and the trial is scheduled to begin in 2009.
-wikipedia
__________________________________________________ _______________________
ELECTION 2008
McCain fortune traced to organized crime
Mob figures later implicated in Arizona savings and loan scandal
Posted: February 26, 2008
9:29 pm Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Sen. John McCain

John McCain's personal fortune traces back to organized crime in
Arizona, through his father-in-law, according to a report published by a
multi-news agency team called Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.

IRE reporters Amy Silverman and John Doherty, writing in the Phoenix New
Times, note that the father of McCain's wife, James Hensley, was
convicted by a federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March
1948 on seven counts of filing false liquor records. Hensley also was
charged with conspiracy to hide from federal authorities the names of
persons involved in a liquor industry racket with two companies he
managed, United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.

The umbrella company, United Liquor, at that time held a monopoly in
Arizona, organized and managed by Kemper Marley, who was accused of mob
ties by a reporter who was murdered in 1977.

Silverman and Doherty report that by 1955, Hensley had launched a
Budweiser distributorship in Phoenix, "a franchise reportedly bestowed
upon him by Marley, who was never indicted in the 1948
liquor-law-violation case – or a subsequent one – despite his
controlling role in the liquor distribution businesses."

According to Marley's longtime public relations man, Al Lizanetz, the
Marley liquor empire was founded by the Bronfman family dynasty of
Canada which operated Allied Finance Company, Northern Export Company
and Distillers Corporation – the Seagrams, Ltd. empire.

As chronicled by the "Rumrunners and Prohibition" video shown popularly
on the History Channel, during the 1920s, the Bronfman family made
millions in bootlegging, accounting for half the illegal liquor crossing
the border, working in a profitable distribution deal with the infamous
mobster Meyer Lansky, who later moved on to establish the crime
syndicates in the casinos of Havana, Cuba, in the 1940s and 50s.

Arizona in the 1970s drew a "who's who" of organized crime figures
seeking to retire in the sun, including Rochester, N.Y., mob boss Joe
Bonanno, who spent his last days along the Lake Havasu shores and in a
quiet home in Tucson.

In 1977, after Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed when his
car was blown up by the mob in a parking lot, a team of 36 journalists
from 27 news organizations, known as IRE, published an 80,000 word
23-part series on organized crime in Arizona.

Dan Nowicki and Bill Muller, reporting in the Arizona Republic March 1,
2007, documented that in 1953, Hensley was again charged with falsifying
records at Marley's liquor firms.

Hensley was found not guilty after being defended by William Rehnquist,
the future chief justice of the Supreme Court, Nowicki and Muller wrote.

In 2000, Hensley, then 80 years old, still controlled the Budweiser
distributorship valued as a $200 million-a-year business, with annual
sales of more than 20 million cases of beer.

On Feb. 17, 2000, Pat Flannery reported in the Arizona Republic that
Hensley's beer-distribution empire was the fifth largest in the nation,
"a Budweiser franchise whose bigwigs hold the No. 2 spot on Sen. John
McCain's all-time career list of corporate donors."

Since 1982, according to the Center for Public Integrity, Hensley & Co.
officials have pumped $80,000 into the campaigns of McCain, Flannery
wrote. More than a quarter of that has been donated since 1997.

Flannery further reported that in 2000, Cindy Hensley McCain, the
senator's wife, held a 37.18 percent financial interest in her father's
Budweiser distributorship, although she was not involved in day-to-day
operations.

The McCain's four children held a combined 23.55 percent interest,
though their interests were at that time held in trust.

Arizona crime connections again surfaced in the 1980s when McCain was
implicated as one of the five U.S. senators named in the "Keating Five"
scandal.

Charles Keating Jr. and his associates paid McCain some $112,000 in
political campaign contributions between 1982 and 1987, while Keating
was organizing a massive real estate fraud in the then FDIC federally
insured Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

In April 1986, McCain's wife and father-in-law also invested $359,000 in
a Keating shopping center, before the savings and loan scandal broke.

Keating was sent to prison under civil racketeering and fraud charges
for the $1.1 billion loss the investment scheme cost the public,
although McCain and the other U.S. senators involved managed to avoid
charges in the Senate, with McCain receiving only an Ethics Committee
rebuke for exercising "poor judgment."
-worldnetdaily

That whole story reminds me of the Kennedy Crime Family, except nobody was
drowned, and we didn't have John "Fraud" Kerry hanging out on the periphery.