Ouroboros: the beast that devours its tail. Wikipedia To “Jack,” an open letter: Many thanks for your comment on my Dec. 11 column about U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s resignation. Your overarching message seems to be that Letten’s disgraced former assistant Sal Perricone really did nothing wrong in commenting publicly on federal cases the office was handling. Informed feedback […]
Author Archives: Mark Moseley
Mark Moseley blogs at Your Right Hand Thief. Until mid 2014, Mark Moseley was The Lens' opinion writer, engagement specialist and coordinator for the Charter Schools Reporting Corps. After Katrina and the Federal Flood he helped create the Rising Tide conference, which grew into an annual social media event dedicated to the future of New Orleans.
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Politics and prosecutors: tortuous route to an all-powerful office
Aspirants to the office of United States Attorney don’t openly campaign for it. That’s unseemly. Protocol dictates that they urge friends to lobby political party leaders on their behalf—governors, senators and representatives on down. The partisan bigwigs then narrow the list of aspiring candidates based on… what precisely? Loyalty? Patronage? Owed favors? We’ll never find […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
With Letten gone, ’tis the season for intrigue and wild rumors
Mob boss Carlos Marcello. Wikimedia It’s transition time at the local U.S. attorney’s office, now that Jim Letten, the nation’s longest-serving federal prosecutor, and his top three lieutenants have retired in the wake of a scandal involving anonymous online comments. No doubt candidates aspiring to replace Letten have quietly expressed interest to U.S. Sen. Mary […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Letten lesson: Even the best officials need ‘terrible scrutiny’
Teddy Roosevelt aimed his elephant gun at elephants, not house flies. News stories have talked up the “irony” of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s resignation, which is effective today. We’ve been reminded that in 2001 businessman Fred Heebe was the top candidate to replace then-interim U.S. Attorney Letten. But allegations of domestic abuse derailed Heebe’s candidacy, […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
With staffers flacking online, Letten didn’t need enemies
Jim Letten I’ve read several lamentations about the damage Perricone’s activities might have done to the image of Letten’s office in the public mind. But if the image conjured is, in fact, a more accurate one than what Letten’s fans in the press tend to cultivate then what will we have lost besides a distorting […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Rants under yet another alias sound a lot like Perricone
Sock puppets—Internet lingo for pseudonymous commenters—seem to have abounded in the federal prosecutor’s office. graphic: Matt Buck Former assistant U.S. attorney Sal Perricone retired in March after businessman Fred Heebe filed a defamation lawsuit claiming Perricone authored anonymous online rants about targets of federal investigations, politicians, attorneys, judges, among other topics. In August, Perricone spoke […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Moral of the story: Even Letten’s office wasn’t ‘untouchable’
Not long ago Jim Letten was our local Eliot Ness, here portrayed by Kevin Kostner, in “The Untouchables.” Foolish underlings have cost him that reputation. photo: Paramount file. U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office is embroiled in controversy over online comments made by his top lieutenants. The team he has long-trusted has let him down during […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
Four years is a split-second eternity—no matter who wins tonight
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson: Is the Libertarian a longshot for 2016? photo: Steve Terrell, Flickr I expected the 2012 race for national office to be a weird one. Instead, it’s been pretty stable. Sorry about that. I didn’t think Republicans would nominate former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to lead their crusade against President […]
Posted inEnvironment, Opinion
Can new organization make lead safety a priority for New Orleans?
Halloween disappointed me; I didn’t see any kids dressed up as lead-poisoned blood. They missed a real opportunity too, because high blood-lead levels scare me more than witches or zombies. Nonetheless, this week I was delighted to learn about a new organization dedicated to raising awareness of the city’s lead problem and finding solutions to […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Opinion
When it comes to child sex abuse, we’re all ‘mandatory reporters’
While I do enjoy plumbing “gray area” hypotheticals and connecting different issues to one another, I’m afraid those predilections obscured a central point I wanted to make in my previous column on new laws about reporting child abuse. As noted, the new laws expand the definition of “mandatory reporters,” folks who work with kids and […]