Coulson denied knowing about phone hacking, but resigned from Downing St. in January after police reopened their inquiry into wrongdoing at the paper.

Last month he was arrested and questioned by detectives investigating allegations the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper illegally eavesdropped on the voicemail messages of celebrities, politicians and even murder victims.

The new allegation appears to contradict evidence Coulson gave to Parliament in July 2009, when he said he received no other income after being hired by Cameron.

The Conservative Party said “senior party officials have no knowledge of Andy Coulson’s severance arrangements,” but the opposition Labour Party said Cameron had “serious questions to answer.”

Labour lawmaker Tom Watson told the BBC he would ask the Electoral Commission to investigate whether the payments constituted a hidden political donation, which would violate electoral laws.

The newspaper’s parent company, News International, said it would not comment on individuals’ financial arrangements.

Then on Thursday, U.K. officials arrested a Hollywood correspondent for News of the World. The reporter had worked as the paper’s Los Angeles based editor. That brought the scandal tantalizingly close to U.S. law enforcement, although the Guardian indicated that the alleged misdeeds took place in the U.K., before the suspect had arrived state-side.

Still, the latest news raises a key question: Have the same tricks been used in the United States? Were News Corp.’s U.S. outlets, such as Fox News and the New York Post, involved as well?

So far, no arrests or allegations have been made in connection with these media organizations. But one could be forgiven for having suspicions.

The transgressions at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid have been blamed on a culture of licentious journalism, driven by Murdoch’s voracious appetite for scoop-driven sales. And Murdoch has long pollinated his U.S. media operations with staff plucked from the very U.K. titles now under scrutiny. So who’s to say these trusted cohorts didn’t pack phone-hacking skills along with their valued noses for news?

Indeed, few people seemed surprised when the Daily Mirror (a rival to Murdoch’s Sun tabloid) reported last month that the News of the World — which by this point had admitted to accessing the voicemail of a murdered British schoolgirl — had hacked the cell phones of 9/11 victims.

That dubiously-sourced claim, however, has now largely been discounted, despite an FBI investigation. And observers say there is little likelihood identical crimes were committed on American soil.

Instead, however, News Corp. faces a litany of other accusations in the United States, ranging from credible allegations of computer hacking to the more amorphous charge of “Murdochizing” America through sleazy influence-peddling deals with politicians.

One of the biggest headaches for Murdoch has been the costly claim that News America Marketing, a highly-profitable subsidiary of News Corp., hacked in the computer databases of minor rival Floorgraphics Inc. and stole business strategies and data.

Floorgraphics took News America to court in 2009, but settled mid-trial. The company was then bought out by News America for an undisclosed sum, said to be far in excess of its estimated value.

Another case saw News Corp. shell out $665 million to silence two other rivals, Valassis Communications and Insignia, after they accused News America of abusing its market position in violation of anti-trust laws.

News America’s solution was typical of Murdoch’s pay-your-way-out-of-trouble approach to business ethics, and was emblematic of the wider News Corp. culture, according to media analyst Porter Bibb, a former Newsweek White House correspondent and Rolling Stone magazine publisher.

“Floorgraphics threatened to sue and News Corp. turned around and said ‘don’t sue, we’ll buy your company’ — this is very typical of the approach and philosophy that Murdoch instills throughout the company,” he told GlobalPost.

There are also parallels here with events in the U.K. where News Corp. executives, including Murdoch’s son James, have authorized payoffs to phone-hacking victims (while maintaining they had been unaware it was taking place.)

Likewise, just as Murdoch has tried to resist throwing trusted lieutenants such as former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks to the wolves, News America’s CEO Paul Carlucci not only retained his position but was also appointed publisher of the New York Post.

Such parallels seem to have raised alarm bells. Apparently prompted by the trouble Murdoch faces on the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. Justice Department has launched its own investigation into the computer-hacking allegations.

Bibb predicts Murdoch will escape unscathed, just as he has from most of his brushes with U.S. legislators. This persistent immunity, according to journalist Frank Rich, can be attributed to the media mogul’s relentless pursuit of friends and browbeating of foes in high places.

In an article printed last month in New York Magazine, Rich accused Murdoch of “hacking” America not via telephones or computers, but through desensitizing the public to his manipulation of the country’s political morality — what he calls “the Murdochization of America.”

This, he argues, is characterized by the numerous prominent political figures that are now or have once been in receipt of News Corp. pay checks. Fox News, for instance, has counted Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum among regular paid contributors.

Rich wrote: “We’ve become so inured to Murdoch tactics over the years — and so many people in public life have been frightened, silenced, co-opted, or even seduced by them — that we have minimized his impact exactly the way his publicists hoped we would, downgrading News Corp. misbehavior merely to tabloid vulgarity and right-wing attack-dog politics.

Bibb cites the political support Murdoch has relied on when navigating stringent regulations over who can own newspapers and broadcast media in the States. “Murdoch is very famous for buying votes when he needs them,” he said.

As in the U.K. prior to the hacking scandal, Murdoch’s ability to achieve his aims in the U.S. so readily is partly the fault of the wider media community (with the exception of the New York Times) in failing to take him task, Bibb added.

“Murdoch is not the bogey man of a public figure here that he is in the U.K.,” he said. “People are much more hostile towards the right wing politics of Fox News than they are against Murdoch, but that’s not because of anything illegal, just its cultural and political bias.

“People expect it, they say: ‘That’s News Corp., that’s Murdoch — of course he’s going to be extremely right wing, but he’s not breaking any laws.’”

The huge numbers and public anger has sparked concerns that judges were handing out sentences that were disproportionate. Some of the concerns centered around two men in northwestern England, who were handed stiff jail terms for inciting disorder through social networking sites.

Cheshire Police said Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, both received 4-year sentences for using Facebook to “organize and orchestrate” disorder.

Blackshaw used the social networking site to create an event — with a date, time and location — for “massive Northwich lootin.’”

Sutcliffe created a page on Facebook called “Warrington Riots” which listed a time and date for anyone who wished to be involved in a riot. The riots discussed never occurred.

The Crown Prosecution Service defended the sentences, saying the web pages caused panic and revulsion to the people of Cheshire.

Most of the convicted suspects have been sent for sentencing to higher courts, which have the power to impose longer terms of imprisonment. Two-thirds of the accused have not been granted bail.

Some of the harsher sentences are expected to be appealed.

“It will be a further drag on the court system, which is already struggling — and that’s before considering the pressures on the prison system,” said Andrew Neilson of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said those who participated in the riots should go to prison, but the government has insisted it is not trying to influence the judiciary.

The letter … names names. As everyone has come to realize, every News of the World executive (many of whom went on to other jobs at Murdoch’s News International — or in the government!) knew about, endorsed or directly authorized illegal voice-mail hacking and all the rest. Specifically implicated this time: Andy Coulson, then the paper’s editor, who was hired to be Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director last year. Coulson resigned in January and was arrested last month.

Goodman then claims that other members of staff at the News of the World were also hacking phones. Crucially, he adds: “This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the editor.” He reveals that the paper continued to consult him on stories even though they knew he was going to plead guilty to phone hacking and that the paper’s then lawyer, Tom Crone, knew all the details of the case against him.

In a particularly embarrassing allegation, he adds: “Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me.” In the event, Goodman lost his appeal. But the claim that the paper induced him to mislead the court is one that may cause further problems for News International.

So this is basically evidence of an active coverup. It was accompanied, in “a cache of paperwork published by the Commons culture, media and sport select committee,” by a letter from Harbottle & Lewis, a law firm News International hired to go through thousands of News of the World emails for evidence of criminality, in which the firm more or less accuses James and Rupert Murdoch of lying to Parliament.

So … James will probably have to go back to Parliament.

The Equals, like another 1960s band way ahead of their time — Love, Arthur Lee’s phantasmagoric, mixed-race Los Angeles band  — were a visual knockout, but their music was even more socially compelling. Grant’s fierce songwriting, alongside violent dueling guitars and Derv Gordon’s absurdly mighty vocals, culminate in energetic anthems that leave you feeling like the “Blown Away Guy” on those ‘80s ads for Maxell cassette tapes. (Grant left the band after suffering a collapsed lung and heart infection in 1971; he’d score his biggest hit in the 1980s with “Electric Avenue.”)

The Equals’ lament about police brutality, “Police on My Back,”  was a cult hit when the Clash — big fans of the band — covered it and turned it into a kick-ass, agit-rock classic. But a lesser-known song, “The Skies Above” — a brilliant anti-romance love song — is the Equals’ true masterpiece. Gordon’s screams are haunting enough to make Howlin’ Wolf proud. Tucked subtly somewhere beneath his cries are his Caribbean roots that protrude just enough to add yet another unique layer to the already rich sound. 

The essential Equals’ playlist must also include “Stand Up and Be Counted” — a song that predated Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” by a year and makes you want to run wild in the streets. Gordon’s drill-sergeant shout-singing riles you up like few vocalists can. “You might feel to wear your hair long,” he shouts. “But your long hair will make you black as me.”