Mails

Not long ago, "I was probably the biggest distracted driver on the road," Angela Donato said. "I was reading e-mails. I was sending e-mails. I was calling people. I thought that I was invincible. " Then came the evening of June 1, 2011, when Donato, 22, and her close-knit family in Washington Township got the call that changed everything. Her oldest sister, Toni Donato-Bolis, who was nine months pregnant, had dialed their mother, Mary, desperate for help. She was trapped in her car on Pitman-Downer Road after becoming involved in a horrific accident less than a mile from her home.

The Secret Service is investigating a hacker's apparent theft of a trove of personal e-mails and photos belonging to the Bush family after they were posted late Thursday by the Smoking Gun website. A report by the Smoking Gun said the e-mails covered the period from 2009 to 2012, and that a total of six accounts appeared to have been compromised. Among those hacked were Dorothy Bush Koch, daughter of President George H.W. Bush and sister of President George W. Bush; as well as sportscaster Jim Nantz, a Bush family friend.

Question: I'm married with a child and another on the way. I've seen a couple of e-mails on my wife's phone related to dating websites, like eHarmony.com. After a little investigation, it appears that there is no way to sign up to receive those e-mails without posting some type of profile. I am suspicious that she is or was out looking for alternatives. I just don't know what to do. Should I approach her or, because I don't know for sure, just let it go? And I don't know what I'd do if she were out there trolling, as it were.

Former Gov. Jon Corzine owes New Jersey taxpayers $127,000 - the amount of state funds he spent on a legal fight to hide his e-mails with former lover/labor leader Carla Katz. Corzine said he had no relationship with Katz when his administration negotiated a new state contract with her union, the 37,000-member Communications Workers of America. But recently published e-mails confirm the public's suspicions that an embarrassing conflict of interest was playing out behind the scenes.

Call it the many moods of Vince Fumo. In an e-mail war with federal prosecutors, the defense lawyers for former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo released their own selection Friday of Fumo's electronic messages from prison. The defense team said the messages show him to be a different and far more attractive man, or least a more sympathetic one, than the vengeful figure sketched out by prosecutors in their Fumo e-mail dump. In the new round of e-mails, Fumo worries about his weight and his mortality.

Leonard P. Luchko, the former aide to indicted State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo who pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of trying to thwart the probe of his old boss, implicated himself in a series of e-mails that the FBI later recovered. Prosecutors had charged Luchko and another indicted aide, Mark C. Eister, with a concerted campaign to clean computers used by Fumo, his aides and associates. They say even as the pair demanded that Fumo staffers delete e-mails from their computers, they failed to cleanse their own devices - an oversight the FBI exploited to obtain copies of hundreds of e-mails.

Prosecutors continued yesterday to mount their obstruction-of-justice case against former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, even as his lawyer said he was buoyed to get hold of a "treasure trove" of e-mail that he hoped would ultimately benefit Fumo. Defense attorney Dennis J. Cogan told U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter that the defense had been combing through thousands of pages of newly discovered e-mails from computer technician Leonard P. Luchko. In them, Luchko, who worked in the once-powerful Democrat's South Philadelphia office, regrets agreeing to testify against Fumo and contradicts his own guilty plea by insisting he had done nothing wrong.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's pick to be the next ambassador to Iraq withdrew from consideration Monday as Senate Republicans suggested his confirmation was endangered because of his behavior and judgment while working at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in 2008. Brett McGurk's nomination, which was scheduled for a vote Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, became endangered after the release on the Internet of sometimes racy e-mails he sent to journalist Gina Chon while he was married and was negotiating a security agreement with the Iraqi government during President George W. Bush's administration.

SOME OF THE bad words that readers used on me after Monday's Michael Vick column: Hypocrite. Elitist. Hater. Neo-Con. Socialist. Judgmental. And the all-purpose tool of the all-around fool: Racist . Oh! Also God , but not in a good way. Here are some excerpts from the hate mail, with answers. (Since I can't verify the sender's identity, first names only.)   "I was wondering if Rick Pitino has your respect," asks e-mailer Rochkar. "He paid for the MURDER of an unborn CHILD.

WASHINGTON - The White House released 100 pages of e-mails Wednesday that reveal differences between intelligence analysts and State Department officials over how to initially describe the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were also provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago. Since the assault that killed four Americans, Republicans have accused President Obama and his senior advisers of mischaracterizing the attack during a close reelection campaign.

A POSTAGE stamp for Wilt? According to a recent report, the late Wilt Chamberlain, an NBA star who starred at Overbrook High, is on the short list of those being considered for next year's U.S. Stamp Program. In the upcoming May 27 issue of Linn's Stamp News, Bill McAllister reports that Wilt, the Beatles, Elizabeth Taylor, Steve Jobs, Julia Child, Sarah Vaughn and James Brown are among those on the list. According to Donald Hunt, of the Philadelphia Tribune, the Chamberlain stamp is tentatively scheduled to be issued in February, which coincides with Black History Month.

WASHINGTON - Political considerations influenced the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used five days after the deadly Sept. 11 assault in Benghazi, Libya, with State Department and other senior administration officials asking that references to terror groups and prior warnings be deleted, according to department e-mails. The latest disclosures Friday raised new questions about whether the Obama administration tried to play down any terrorist factor in the attack on a diplomatic compound just weeks before the November presidential election.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday he's determined to answer any questions related to the deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, as the House Republican leader pushed for more information from the Obama administration. One day after a lengthy House hearing on the Sept. 11 attack, Kerry told reporters as he traveled overseas that anyone culpable of wrongdoing will be dealt with appropriately. But he's withholding judgment on testimony in Congress suggesting that senior State Department officials were pressured or demoted for objecting to the administration's initial and since-debunked explanations for the attacks.

JACK McBRIDE'S DOOR was always open. Friends, friends of friends, his sons' friends - all were welcome to drop in anytime, check out the refrigerator, have a meal, sleep over if they wanted to. A happy, congenial Irishman, Jack was the kind of guy who always gave of himself, whether it was to his five sons, his cherished grandkids or his many friends. Jack was there with an open door and an open heart. And his grandkids could wrap him around their fingers. They were spoiled rotten by Grandad.

OXFORD, Miss. - A Mississippi man was arrested Wednesday, accused of sending letters to President Obama and a senator that tested positive for the poisonous ricin and set the nation's capital on edge days after the Boston Marathon bombings. FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel McMullen said Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested at 5:15 p.m. at his apartment in Corinth, near the Tennessee state line about 100 miles east of Memphis. It was not immediately known where he was being held.

With his Devo-esque brand of electronic music and highly physical live performances, Dan Deacon has been a Philly favorite since 2007's Spiderman of the Rings . Deacon thinks as much of this town as its fans do of him. "It's a major DIY city, with a good scene and a lot of community-based spaces that remind me of Baltimore," says Deacon, recalling his hometown. Deacon returns to Philly this weekend, not only to hype his Record Store Day exclusive, "Konono Ripoff No. 1," an homage to the legendary Congolese band Konono Nº1 ("I've been playing that music live for years and tried to record it, unfinished, until this," he says)

The U.S. Postal Service slogan is: "If it fits, it ships. " Evidently, however, a Philadelphia man learned the hard way that some restrictions apply. On Tuesday, police in Cheltenham Township received a tip that a delivery to an apartment complex would contain a "large amount of drugs. " They were alerted that the package would be picked up by a man driving a white Infiniti, police said in a statement released Friday. When Lawrence Rowe Graham, 31, of Philadelphia, the driver, showed up to claim the package at the Towers of Wyncote apartment complex in the 8400 block of Limekiln Pike, police with a drug-sniffing dog were on hand to greet him. Police said the parcel contained 17 pounds of high-grade marijuana that they valued at more than $150,000.

WASHINGTON - Members of Congress are traveling less and worrying more about meeting office salaries. Their aides are contending with long lines to get inside their offices and fewer prospects of a raise. Such are the indignities thrust upon the men and women who this month brought the country $85 billion in government spending cuts. There probably won't be much sympathy for a senator or Congress member making $174,000 a year who is in no danger of being furloughed or laid off, at least until the next election.

WASHINGTON - The spending bill passed by Congress on Thursday appears to continue the requirement for six-day mail delivery, but some lawmakers and postal officials say plans to cut Saturday service should proceed. The financially troubled Postal Service announced last month that it would switch in August to five-day service for first-class mail and continue six-day package delivery. The government at the time was running on a temporary spending measure and postal officials invited lawmakers to spell out the way ahead in the 2013 spending bill.