of hurricane katrina vowing to clean up corruption and cronyism in new orleans but today, ex mayor, ray nagin, goes on trial facing 21 federal counts of the crimes he promised to get rid of. hello. i m ashleigh banfield. it is good to have you with us this morning. a u.s. representative who admitsed to buying cocaine, congressman trey radle was busted in washington last year. he agreed to a plea deal in november and went to rehab. he had planned, he said, to keep his job. lisa is following the story in washington, d.c. what do we know about the change of heart? in the past few minutes, we got a copy of the congressman s resignation letter. he doesn t say exactly why now but he does say, it is my belief
he has only served since last january. he calls himself a hip-hop conservative, trying to present himself as a young, fresh conservative. on issues, he ran on trying to fight the deficit. interestingly enough, he is also in favor of the dream act. not the most conservative stance there. we know he will not be a congressman any longer as of 6:30 tonight. one last thing in this letter, he sort of leaves the door open for returning. at the very end, he says, whether it is as a father, husband or in any future endeavor, i hope to contribute what i can to better our country. perhaps he is thinking of running again in some future year. we don t know. for the time being, what does this mean, lisa, for the balance in house? do the dems have any shot at the seat? any democrats hoping to pick up something, should just turn around on this. lots of hungry republicans in this district around naples, south of tampa. there is already a congressional
was busted caught red handed with illegal drugs and for some reason, that seems to be a line that is different here. one other note about timing that s interesting, we are having this conversation, so are house republicans that will have their retreat this week. that s their big moment to plan out the rest of the year to try and keep the house so maybe not a coincidence that trey radel is resigning days before the republicans gather to figure out their strategy for the rest of the year. lisa des jar dins reporting live for us in d.c. today. a long way away from d.c., the olympic athletes are going to start arriving in sochi, in russia today. all of this amid reports of yet another terror threat. it is kind of getting sickening hearing all of this over and over. the new threat emerged from the embattled region of dagestan which is where the olympic torch