Conspiracy

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

Well, this is a fine mess. After years of moaning about various "conspiracies" against them, conservative activists finally have a real (i.e., not manufactured by Fox or inflated by Rush Limbaugh) piece of evidence to take before the court of public opinion. Meaning, of course, last week's revelation that the Internal Revenue Service has been giving extra scrutiny to groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Extra scrutiny from the IRS is about as welcome as extra scrutiny from the proctologist, so one can hardly blame conservative groups for complaining, as they've done since last year.

The Masons of Maryland will be so busy Saturday they'll probably have to take a break from plotting world domination. Surely they'll already have found somewhere to temporarily hide their collection of human skulls and satanic pentagrams. That's because the Freemasons, or Masons for short, are preparing to unlock the doors of their lodges on Saturday for a rare, statewide open house — in part to dispel some of the mythology that has risen around the group in novels, movies and conspiracy theories.

Last month, I received emails from two people I know but who don't know each other: one a close friend and Second Amendment supporter, and the other a regular reader who sends me news items she believes the "liberal media" are willfully suppressing. Each sent me a story link about recent U.S. Department of Homeland Security purchases of huge stockpiles of ammunition, including hollow-point bullets. A Forbes.com column penned by Larry Bell, replete with conspiratorial overtones, suggested that the Obama administration is up-arming itself while trying to disarm the citizenry.

The release of Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate yesterday probably won't quiet all the so-called carnival barkers out there, but it ought to make a dent. As the president observed, the political sideshow over his place of birth and citizenship had become too great a distraction of late not to at least make the effort. Make no mistake, President Obama didn't prove this morning that he was born in Hawaii. That was already accomplished several years ago when he released his short-form birth certificate, the one that is standard issue in the 50 t h state and that Republican and Democratic governors had already confirmed matched the information on the longer document.

I f you wake up in the morning with the blues because people treat you mean, you could sing a song about it, or you could shop around for an enormous conspiracy that has denied you your constitutional right to liberty and happiness - and how about Central Standard Time? What gives the feds the right to set your clock for you? It's tyranny. So you join the Free Time movement. You go to meetings. You tune in "The Bob Glenn Show" every day on Fox for your marching orders and set your clock as you darn well please and feel liberated from lockstep uniformity.

WASHINGTON - Defense company BAE Systems PLC pleaded guilty to conspiracy on Monday and a judge imposed a $400 million fine, among the largest in the Justice Department's efforts to combat overseas corruption in international business. The defense contractor knowingly failed to ensure compliance with legal prohibitions on foreign bribery. The company's conduct impeded U.S. efforts to be certain international trade is free of corruption, said acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler.

In addition to the relentless onslaught of mostly negative ads from the Romney and Obama campaigns and their affiliated super PACs, the good people of Ohio are finding themselves targeted by a right-wing conspiracy maven who is dispensing a DVD that pushes beyond the birthers into a new level of paranoid fantasy. "Dreams From My Real Father" is being sent to a million Ohio voters. The DVD makes the claim that, rather than being the son of a student from Kenya, the president was sired by a communist from Chicago named Frank Marshall Davis.

The Justice Department has put its indictment where its leaks and hints have been by indicting 15 defendants, including Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, for a conspiracy "to levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States."That's what it always sounded like, but not where the Justice Department was heading -- until now -- with investigations into the World Trade Center bombing in February and a plot to make further explosions in New York in June. In that sense, most Americans are probably reassured by this grand jury action.

WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators are reluctant to say a conspiracy is involved in the recent wave of arson attacks on black churches, but there is. There is a conspiracy of silence.There is also a conspiracy of denial, a conspiracy of timidity and ++ a conspiracy of permissiveness toward racism. To find the culprits, start by looking in a mirror.More than 30 black churches have been destroyed since January, 1995, before major media or national politicians gave the problem the national attention it deserves.

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

A Baltimore jury found Policarpio Espinoza Perez guilty of murder conspiracy charges Tuesday in the grisly deaths of three young relatives in 2004, a conviction that could put him in prison for the rest of his life. While jurors found that he played a role in the killings, they acquitted him of murder charges in two of them and could not decide in the third. With the panel deadlocked, a circuit judge declared a mistrial on a charge that Espinoza Perez, 31, slashed the throat of his 8-year-old niece.

To rack up arrests and look good for his bosses, Officer Kendell Richburg decided to ensure that his confidential informant could continue dealing drugs and funneling him information. He paid the unnamed informant with city funds, a standard procedure, but also gave him seized drugs to resell, according to court records. Richburg told the informant about the whereabouts of law enforcement in the Pimlico area where he operated, and the informant would tell Richburg about drug activity.

A Parkville man was federally indicted on charges that he conspired with a man in Iran to export manufactured industrial products from the U.S., state's attorney's office said Thursday. Authorities believe Ali Saboonchi, 32, ran the Ace Electric Company to obtain goods to send them to businesses run by Arash Rashti Mohammad, 31, in Tehran, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates since November 2009, the five-count indictment said. U.S. economic sanctions prohibit exporting to Iran.

I'm not big into conspiracy theories. I never bought into the grassy knoll in Dallas or the anti-Obama birther movement. And it will take a lot of convincing for me to believe Oakland Raiders coach Bill Callahan took a dive in Super Bowl XXXVII to please his friend (and opposing coach) Jon Gruden. But I do believe that America's political tilt toward progressivism is the product of a lot of grassroots work by very liberal groups intent on remaking the American economy and culture.

A federal grand jury indicted a Baltimore police officer Friday on charges that he was involved in a conspiracy to distribute heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana. In an indictment unsealed Friday, federal prosecutors allege that Kendell L. Richburg, 36, took part in a drug scheme between January 2011 and October 2012. He is further accused of having and using two handguns to further the conspiracy. "Corrupt police officers insult the many honorable officers who serve with integrity," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.

Federal authorities announced Tuesday that they had cracked a large suburban Maryland drug organization, arresting 18 people and charging 15 of them with conspiracy to distribute more than a ton of marijuana. According to a federal grand jury indictment, the drug trafficking organization, primarily based in Anne Arundel County, also dealt in cocaine, prescription drugs, steroids and other drugs. Law enforcement officials said they seized at least 30 cars, 60 pounds of marijuana, $300,000 in cash and 35 guns in the investigation.