Who is the man in the white shirt and tie behind and to the right of Lee Harvey Oswald?

We’ll get to the “Shocking Details” in our “bombshell” in a moment, but first, a little housekeeping.

Deflated Brady –

First, football’s “greatest quarterback of all time,” Tom Brady is suspended for four games for being “generally aware” of a scheme to deflate – and thus make the ball easier to control – footballs in the 2015 A.F.C. championship game. Then, Brady and the Players Union win their case on appeal, reversing the suspension.

Now, according to a story in The New York Times (Apr. 25), “A three-judge panel on Monday overturned a lower-court decision, meaning Brady now has virtually no chance of escaping a four-game suspension.

“In their decision,” The Times writes, “the judges did not consider the underlying facts of the case, including the science of football deflation, but instead looked solely at whether Goodell, as arbitrator, acted in the spirit of the collective bargaining agreement.”

“In their collective bargaining agreement,” the judges wrote in their opinion, “the players and the league mutually decided many years ago that the commissioner should investigate possible rule violations, should impose appropriate sanctions, and may preside at arbitrations challenging his discipline.”

Ethical Take: Get a grip, Tom and take your medicine. The Wells report, commissioned by the NFL, may not have found a direct link to Brady from ball handlers, but are fans expected to believe that the balls for the Patriots deflated due to “weather conditions,” while Indianapolis Colts’ balls remained untouched?

Washington Still Doesn’t Get it! –

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors provided details that former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert molested four boys while he worked as a High School wrestling coach.

“In a court filing late Friday,” The New York Times writes (Apr. 26), making suggestions for a judge who will decide Mr. Hastert’s sentence, the prosecutors described specific, graphic incidents that they say occurred when Mr. Hastert was a popular, championship-winning coach in a small Illinois town in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The ‘known acts,’ the prosecutors said, consisted of ‘intentional touching of minors’ groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor.’ ”

Hastert said he is “profoundly sorry.”

However, because statutes of limitations have expired, the former speaker has been charged with “illegally structuring bank withdrawals to pay one of his victims in an effort to hide the abuse,” the Times writes.

Ethically, there should be no expiration date on rape or molestation, but what troubles me most are the 41 letters, some from former colleagues, in support of leniency for Hastert.

As reported in The Chicago Tribune (Apr. 22), “ ‘We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few,’ wrote DeLay, the Texas Republican who served as majority leader under Hastert in the early 2000s. ‘He doesn’t deserve what he is going through. I ask that you consider the man that is before you and give him leniency where you can.’

My question for DeLay: Did the four boys deserve to be molested?

In addition to DeLay, Hastert’s former GOP colleagues Reps. Thomas Ewing, David Dreier, Porter Goss and John Doolittle also submitted letters of support, and “Tyrone Fahner, a former Illinois attorney general, said he knew Hastert to be ‘a kind, strong, principled, and unselfish man.’ ”

“Kind,” “principled,” “unselfish”? That’s what a former top law enforcement officer in the state calls a child molester.

Hastert’s defense team “said it received 60 letters in all and had hoped to keep them sealed from public view, but U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin, who will sentence Hastert on Wednesday, warned he wouldn’t consider any letters not made public.

“Nearly 20 writers did not want their letters made public or had requested their letters be ‘withdrawn’ from consideration.”

The E. T.: What does it take for some members of Congress to call a molester a molester? Apparently, even former members of Club D.C. are granted “special dispensation.”

UPDATE: Hastert was sentenced (Apr. 27) to 15 months in prison.

Smoking Gun? –

Who is the man in the red circle pictured on the streets of New Orleans working for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald?

Well, if you believe the intrepid investigative “journalists” at The National Enquirer, it is presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael!

(I knew this guy was dirty! And now we have bombshell proof!!)

“Top D.C. insiders have confirmed,” The Enquirer writes (Apr. 20), “that ‘the man in the photograph is indeed Rafael!’ ”

While I am no fan of Ted Cruz (Senate colleague, Mike Lee, is the only one who supports him), ethically speaking, I have to check this out.

Snopes, a website that checks the credibility of gossip, rumors and innuendo, debunked a report that originated in April 2016 from “the notoriously unreliable conspiratorial ‘Wayne Madsen Report.’ ”

According to the Madsen Report:

“Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz).

“Based on the presence of the elder Cruz,” Madsen continues, “an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Castro operations.”

“Just those first two paragraphs,” Snopes writes (Apr. 17), “were loaded with plenty of weasel phrasing: The article doesn’t elaborate on exactly what “questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr.” (other than the far-fetched ones the author is raising) but nonetheless concludes ‘there is a strong reason to believe’ that Rafael Cruz, Sr. was somehow involved with the CIA’s ‘anti-Castro operations’ (which, even if true, is not the same thing as being ‘linked to the JFK assassination’ unless the CIA had a hand in killing President Kennedy).

“The sum total of the evidence presented in support of this claim is that some grainy pictures of a man purportedly photographed handing out ‘Hands off Cuba!’ pamphlets with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans during the summer of 1963 bear a passing resemblance to a picture of Rafael Cruz, Sr. taken nine years earlier (that is, both photographs are of dark-haired young men with similar haircuts).

“…the WMR’s author,” Snopes adds, “doesn’t explain how he could possibly know that the unidentified person standing near Lee Harvey Oswald in these photographs was actually a Cuban (other than by assuming he’s Rafael Cruz), nor does he identify the ‘source’ who informed him that the ‘individual to Oswald’s left is none other than Rafael Cruz.’ (By the standards of ‘evidence’ used in typical WMR items, someone’s saying, ‘Hey, the dude in that blurry Oswald photo looks kinda like Ted Cruz’s dad’ counts as a ‘source’).”

E.T.: (Shoot, this was one conspiracy I really wanted to believe!) The Enquirer needs to circle back to Trump. I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult for a staffer to process a photo of The Donald on the six-floor of the Texas School Book Depository.