EXTRA...

Delahunt pay-off delayed; JFK's last tapes

TODAY's quotes: “It doesn’t look good,” she said. “It raises a question: What was he thinking when he got that earmark?  Was it something he had in mind? It just smacks of insiderism.”
- Mary Boyle of Common Cause on Delhunt's latest money grab.

Hull holds off on Delahunt's influence peddling $90,000

The Patriot Ledger reports that the town of Hull wants to give our former Congressman William Delahunt a $90,000 contract, but since the money would come from the same pile of money which Delahunt earmarked for the town's energy project during his last two years in Congress, they will await an ethics commission ruling before writing the check.

$1.3 billion for his hometown

     The newspaper adds that his own hometown, Quincy, hired Delahunt last year to help get grants for the $1.3 billion Street-Works redevelopment of downtown.
      In 2008, Delahunt steered a $2.3 million earmark to Quincy for the Broad Meadows marsh restoration, and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe has a $130,000 contract with the lobbyist.

Pre-assassination JFK tapes show eerie concern

While historians may gravitate most to Kennedy's just-released secret recordings about Vietnam to where they will hear him voice concern over what his generals were telling him about that war, the tapes also reveal his concern about where his policy was heading and what it would do to his place in history.

Kennedy kept the recordings a secret from his top aides, some speculate to protect his thinking and prove his concern about the then-escalating Vietnam conflict.

He made the last secret recording only two days before his death.

In talking to staffers while trying to arrange his schedule for that fatal trip to Texas and death on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy remarked that his schedule for two days after his return, was shaping up to be a "tough day" for him after his return from Texas and time at Cape Cod.

"It's a hell of a day, Mr. President," a staff member agreed.

It turned out to be the day of his funeral.

The tapes are the last of more than 260 hours of recordings of meetings and conversations Kennedy privately made before his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Listen to the final tapes in the New York Times report here.

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