I figured it was important to put up some crime, politics and punishment news before the rest of the gallery got grumpy (again) about this site being all electoral politics, all the time.  So, with Don Silvio, we get crime, politics and news in one lump.

Berlusconi is accused of paying 600,000 dollars to his British corporate lawyer, Mills, to persuade him to withhold evidence in two corruption trials involving his Mediaset company, back in the 1990s.

The opening hearing is set for March 13.

The two are already facing another court trial on charges including false accounting and tax evasion. That trial is set to start on November 21.

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Berlusconi has faced a number of trials before but has always been acquitted or has seen the charges brought against him dropped because of Italy's statute of limitations.

I'm no big fan of criminal investigations, less one of prosecutors and pols, but I'm even less one of Berlusconi.  He pretty much ran Italy like Bush runs the US, though, to be fair, with a bit more panache.  So, to the extent "comeuppance" or "Schadenfreude" can substitute for anything ....

So, in more crime and punishment news, here's an article about a running fight over who was first in line at a falafel stand, which wound up with one guy stabbed to death.  Looks like New York City can still be edgy and dangerous, if one knows where to look for it and how to find it.

Here's another story, with more detail. Apparently, the falafel stand itself was voted "fifth best" in NYC and is located at 6th Ave. and 53rd Street.  

While that's not far at all - maybe 5 blocks - from News Corp.'s (and Fox News') offices (at 48th and 6th), for those who were hoping or holding their breath, Bill O'Reilly apparently was not present.  Bill-O does not work at 4 AM Saturdays.

And, in still more crime and politics news, beginning today a young man on Long Island is to be tried for killing his ex-cop stepfather by decapitating him with a samurai sword.

His stepson, in a written and videotaped confession to detectives, cooly admits he inflicted the carnage to end years of abuse. "It had to be done," 19-year-old Zachary Gibian says in the confession.

This week, a Suffolk County jury will be asked to decide if Gibian is a cold-blooded murderer who was fed up with his stepfather's disciplinary tactics, as prosecutors contend, or whether the defendant's stepfather had persecuted him to such a degree that the boy had no other option but to kill him.

A defense attorney claims the victim was an abusive "monster" who made the teenager wear a Nazi soldier's helmet and salute a portrait of Adolf Hitler, a contention prosecutors and the victim's father vehemently reject.

The case does not look remotely good for the defense:

"I couldn't handle all the stuff piling up with him," Gibian said in his written confession. "I told my mother that I was going to kill him. She asked me if I thought this was the right thing to do. I said that in my heart this is the right thing. This way there would be no more abuse and we could still live comfortably.

"My mother went upstairs. I went into the garage and got a sword."

Defense counsel said in court that the decedent "...used his extensive collection of military paraphernalia to taunt Gibian in an unrelenting practice of behavioral modification."

"He'd make the kid wear a Nazi helmet and salute a picture of Hitler," the attorney said.  Apparently, he also would show Gibian a photo album with a swastika on the cover that contained dozens of graphic Holocaust pictures and threaten him....

Step-grandpa is taking the decedent's side:  




"He's confessed. How can you take that back?"

Nice family dynamic, that.  Tragic, too.

I don't envy his defense counsel.