By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger
Former U.S. Attorney John Brownlee of Roanoke, a GOP candidate for Virginia attorney general in 2009, addressed a Danville audience on leadership Tuesday night and discussed the huge Purdue Pharma case he won at some risk of being fired.
Brownlee, who won a $635 million settlement and guilty plea from the drug manufacturer for its role in hiding the addictive nature of OxyContin, was placed in jeopardy of being fired by the Bush administration for not backing down in his pursuit of the drug manufacturer.
His response to a question about the case and why he did not back down when asked to do so by a Bush Justice Department official is interesting.
Listen as Brownlee described how Purdue Pharma had a history of sort of buying off U.S. Attorneys and other law enforcement officials trying to bust the manufacturer:
http://www.sorenseninstitute.org/newsroom/entry/files/uploads/audio/files/uploads/audio/brownleeqanda6.10.08.mp3
Brownlee was responding to the first question after his talk on leadership at the Southside Public Leadership speaker series sponsored by the Sorensen Instutute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.
By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger
W&L’s Shepherd Poverty Program is becoming a model for the nation.
One in five students at the university in Lexington, which certainly has its share of rich kids, studies poverty.
Harlan Beckley, a religious studies professor when he founded the program more than a decade ago, became concerned about the growing gap in this country between rich and poor.
W&L’s poverty program has caught the eye of U.S. Sen. John Warner and of fellow Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who intend to secure grants for the program and to help create a poverty studies consortium of 10 universities across the country along the lines of the Shephard Program model.
This small school in Lexington has a wonderfully long reach. Its 2008 graduates, who took their degrees Thursday, are a wonderful class of young men and women who value and practice civility, know a thing or two about honor and intend to do something about poverty.
By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger
One of the more interesting public television documentaries produced in Virginia this year airs Wednesday night, May 28, at 8 p.m. on WCVE-TV Richmond and WHTJ-TV Charlottesville.
Read all about it in a Richmond Times-Dispatch commentary piece:
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/opinion/commentary.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-05-25-0105.html
The documentary airs again in Richmond and Charlottesville on June 4 at 10 p.m., by which time the Sorensen Political Leaders Program Class of 2007 will be stars!
As I am only in my fifth week at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia, I had nothing to do with the making of this documentary but am proud of it nonetheless!
