Conspiracy

In his new thriller, "The Third Bullet," novelist Stephen Hunter sets his sights on an American tragedy that's also the most famous gun mystery of all time - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The questions surrounding the shooting as JFK rode in a motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, have never been fully put to rest. And the controversy is certain to intensify as the 50th anniversary of the assassination approaches this fall. As the novelist tells it, the decision to enlist his fictitious super-sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, to determine whether the gunman acted alone or as part of a conspiracy began as a joke.

Regarding Susan Reimer 's recent column on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's illness and the skepticism it has received ("Hillary and the 'clot plot,'" Jan. 3), Ms. Reimer is, indeed, athletic in making her leaps of conclusion. Even other writers in The Sun show a snickering attitude toward the blood clot plot, and it is interesting to recall that one of the great conspiracy shouters of the past was the first lady in the Clinton home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Dick Huffman, Timonium Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

An Upper Marlboro mortgage broker has admitted to inflating her clients' incomes so that they would qualify for larger mortgage loans - a scheme that caused lenders to lose more than $1.3 million, officials said. Licensed mortgage broker and the owner of the Newgate Mortgage company, Shola Risikat Balogun, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a plot she led to make money off loan origination fees, commissions and other premiums, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland.

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.

Immediately after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation's unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent in September, conservatives started attacking the agency for producing figures that sounded a little too convenient for the Obama administration. The most prominent doubter was former GE chairman Jack Welch, who tweeted shortly after the announcement, "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers. " But he was hardly alone.

The Ravens cut kicker Billy Cundiff on Sunday, and some are creating more conspiracy theories about this than the JFK assassination. Believe me, there is nothing more behind Cundiff being waived than rookie Justin Tucker out kicking him in training camp practices. Forget about the preseason games. They meant something, but not a lot. If you had a brain and attended practices on a daily basis, it was a clear-cut decision. The Ravens made a smart move by bringing Tucker in to challenge Cundiff for the job, and it was Cundiff's to lose.

A federal judge on Monday ordered Baltimore police Officer Samuel Ocasio to repay a Pennsylvania insurance company more than $1,900 for a fraudulent claim connected to a kickback scheme. A jury convicted Ocasio, 37, of conspiracy and extortion this winter for taking cash from Rosedale's Majestic Auto Repair Shop in exchange for customer referrals in a plot that involved dozens of city officers. He was later sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to pay the Police Department $1,500 — the amount he accepted in kickbacks from January 2010 to January 2011.

A 24-year-old man admitted to killing two men over a span of about 48 hours in downtown Baltimore last year, crimes that came a few days after he and his brother are alleged to have committed a rash of robberies across the city on a Sunday morning. Isaac Truss pleaded guilty Monday in Baltimore Circuit Court to the shooting deaths of 47-year-old Keith Cooper, found fatally shot in a high-rise building near the Inner Harbor on April 20, 2011, and Edward Jones, a 50-year-old man who was shot during an attempted robbery as he sat on a bench in the 200 block of W. Fayette St. According to the state's attorney's office, Truss pleaded guilty to both killings and is expected to receive a sentence of life in prison with all but 50 years suspended.

The brouhaha over Attorney General Eric Holder and the contempt of Congress charge brought by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa is providing new evidence that the lunatics are running the Republican asylum. Mr. Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, would have us believe President Obama's assertion of executive privilege in the dispute -- "an eleventh-hour stunt," he called it on Fox News -- is part of a White House cover up of something much more sinister.

Two 44-year-old city men were sentenced to federal prison Friday for taking part in a heroin conspiracy that spread into Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced. William Larry Diggs Jr. was sentenced 14 years, and his co-defendant Darrin William Scott, received a five-year term. The men were part of a vast drug ring run by Christian Gettis, who previously described himself in court as a family man living a double life: secretly dealing drugs while holding down a job in retail.