Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more from Peter Flaherty tonight on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Peter Flaherty
President, National Legal & Policy Center

With the spotlight this week on House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), we found this timeline of his current issues posted by the National Legal and Policy Center.

July 11, 2008- New York Times’ David Kocieniewski reports that Rangel occupies three rent-stabilized apartments in a luxury building, and uses a fourth as a campaign office.

July 14, 2008- NLPC files Complaint with the Federal Election commission alleging use of a rent-stabilized apartment for a campaign office comprises an illegal corporate contribution from the landlord. Rangel announces he will close the office.

July 15, 2008- Christopher Lee of the Washington Post reports that Rangel solicited donations on Congressional letterhead to the so-called Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service at City College of New York (CCNY), in violation of House rules.

Find the rest of the timeline here...

Program Note: Tune in tonight for more on the Willingham case from Randi Kaye. Tonight AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

A family photo shows Cameron Todd Willingham with his wife, Stacy, and daughters Kameron, Amber and Karmon.

The Innocence Project

Texas Gov. Rick Perry today removed three of the eight members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC), which was set to hold a hearing on Friday to review an arson expert’s report on the controversial 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. The public meeting set for Friday has been cancelled.

Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck called the move “troubling."

The Innocence Project ("IP") was established in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law by civil rights attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld and is dedicated to exonerating the innocent through post-conviction DNA testing. Since its inception, more than 215 people in the United States have been exonerated, including 16 who were at one time sentenced to death. In many of these DNA exonerations, the Innocence Project either was the attorney of record or consulted with the defendant's attorneys.

Read more about the Innocence Project and its work here.

Program Note: Tonight on AC360°, we will take a closer look at just how unsafe it is to use a cell phone will driving. Posted below is a U.S. Department of Transportation report obtained by the New York Times that outlines the safety complications.

Click here to read the full Department of Transportation report.

Program note: More from Gary Tuchman on this story tonight on AC 360º at 10 P.M. ET.

A former District Attorney paid his secretaries nearly $80,000 in bonuses, with public cash.

Gary Tuchman
AC360º Correspondent

How much do you think it would pay if you got a job as a secretary working for your county? In Jim Wells County, Texas, which is just west of Corpus Christi, we are told the typical salary is $35,000 a year. So how do you bump up that salary? Well, one way is to have worked for the former District Attorney of the county. You see, three of Joe Frank Garza’s secretaries got extra money totaling more than 1.1 million dollars over a five year period.

That’s an average of more than $80,000 extra dollars a year.

Why? Well, Garza, who is now a private attorney, says they were loyal and excellent employees. Now, in the private sector, you could probably get that kind of raise with controversy only coming from fellow workers who might be jealous. But in the public sector, it’s a different story, particularly with where this money came from. It wasn’t from the regular office budget, but from a so called forfeiture fund. When certain suspects are arrested, they sometimes have to forfeit money and valuables. That cash can then go to police and district attorneys for their spending pleasure. But in the case of D.A.’s in Texas, it must be spent for “official purposes.” This former D.A. says compensating his secretaries was an official purpose because they were such excellent employees. What is particularly stunning is that more than 50 percent of the money he received in his forfeiture fund between 2004-2008 went to these three women. We’ve learned that from an auditors report done on behalf of the county. The former D.A. doesn’t deny giving the secretaries a lot of money, but says he would not do anything differently. The new D.A. though, who beat Garza this past November to get the job, says he should have done things much differently and has now sent the auditor’s report to lawyers in the Attorney General’s office in Texas to get their take.

And by the way, just in case you were wondering, the three secretaries left their jobs when their boss left his.

These pills were sent to CNN's Drew Griffin, even though he was never seen by a doctor.

Editor's Note: Four Emmy nominees for Outstanding Investigative Reporting on a Regularly Scheduled Newscast were announced today. CNN's David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffith were nominated for their pieces on online prescription drug abuse.

David Fitzpatrick
Special Investigations Unit Producer

If there was any doubt at all that the sale of prescription drugs over the internet, without a doctor’s legitimate authorization, is very big business, what happened in Kansas over the last couple of days should dispel those notions in a heartbeat.

The Kansas Attorney General’s office arrested and jailed three people, a pharmacist and the co-owners of a small pharmacy in the northwestern part of the state, on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts. Hogan’s Pharmacy is in a tiny town called Lyons. And according to documents filed in court, this small storefront operation, in a town of no more than 3,000 people, handled nearly $1.9 million in wire transfers in 2007 alone.

CNN Correspondent Drew Griffin and I went to Lyons a few months ago as part of an AC 360 investigation into internet prescription abuse. We had met and interviewed a young widow only the day before. Her husband had ordered the muscle-relaxant drug Soma over the internet—time and time again. Many of the pills came from Hogan’s Pharmacy and came without any legitimate order from a physician. One day last year, she went to their bedroom and found her husband unresponsive. He had died of an overdose of Soma.

There’s a good reason why doctors limit doses of Soma. Research by the Food and Drug Administration shows that it is one of those class of drugs which can be easily abused. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, there’s now some consideration being given to classifying Soma as a “controlled substance,” putting it in the same category of dangerous drugs such as Xanax and Hydrocodone..

I was sitting in my New York City office when that widow telephoned me to express her thanks to the Kansas authorities and to CNN for the investigative work. She told me she would likely testify in any coming trials and was looking forward to doing so.

Keeping them honest, we’ll continue to investigate prescription drug sales over the Internet.

Attorney General Steve Six announced charges today against Hogan’s Pharmacy owners Jolane and Mark Poindexter for their part in an Internet pharmacy scheme. The pharmacist in charge, Rick Kloxin, was charged earlier this week.

Program Note: Tune in to AC360º tonight at 10 P.M. ET to hear more from Erin Brockovich as she teams up with Dr. Sanjay Gupta to investigate a toxic oil spill endangering the health of the environment and the citizens of Kingston, Tennessee.

Properties near ground zero of the December 22 Tennessee spill are covered in sludge.

Erin Brockovich
The Brockovich Report

It looks like I may be paying a visit to Tennessee. Numerous residents have asked me to come to the community for a meeting on the coal fly ash disaster around Knoxville, and I think I will be going.

I know the question on everyone's lips. What is coal fly ash, and why does it need to be contained? The folks around Knoxville are getting to know a lot more about coal fly ash than they ever wanted to learn.

Coal fly ash. It sounds like someone has been burning fly poop or airborne coal. But seriously, it is akin to the creosote that coated those chimneys and chimneysweep boys of Charles Dickens ancient London.

Fly ash comes from chimneys, specifically the chimneys of power plants. The collection point determines exactly what kind of ash it is. Fly ash apparently contains silicon dioxide and calcium oxide as well as trace concentrations of heavy metals. In other words, coal ash is nasty stuff to have floating around in your river, air, and drinking water.

Read more...

Drew Griffin | BIO
CNN Investigative Correspondent

Michael Daly
New York Daily News

To spend a week at the epicenter of the Michael Jackson tragedy, and to hear talk of the three fatherless kids, and see thousands of his distraught fans is to wonder if his death could have been prevented.

And as I watched the elaborate preparations for his sendoff today, the question came: Why is a drug considerably more dangerous than Russian roulette as unregulated as bubblegum?

The coroner's report is not yet in, but investigators are paying special attention to Propofol, one of the drugs found at Jackson's house, and the one that an expert says has a 100% death rate for most abusers.

"All the reports I've read of those patients have died," said Dr. Paul Wischmeyer of the University of Colorado. "A cc too much of this drug can change you from being high to being dead.

"It's not like heroin or cocaine or other drugs where there is a margin for error. There is no margin for error for this drug. It kills people."

Read more...