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Sen. Ted "Tubes" Stevens Is Indicted
Many readers are letting us know about the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens on seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms. We discussed the raid on the senator's house a while back. Everyone's favorite technologically challenged senator is the longest-serving Republican in the history of the upper house. An Alaskan paper gives deep background on the probe that has ensnared Stevens and a number of other Alaska political figures.
There's a joke here about federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison and clogged tubes but I'm just going to savor the indictment instead.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's not just a truck you can dump things on....
It's a house, that you can add things to...apparently for free.
down the...ummm...drain.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
AHHH No more bridges to no where. I think I am going to cry. I wanted to visit that uninhabitabed ice berg in alaska.
while this guy is an asshat, Series of Tubes as an analogy works just fine. This is one of those things other clueless asshats giggle at.
...into people claiming that everything is the fault of one party or the other and that all members of one of the two parties are corrupt.
How did he stay in office so long if there was already evidence of corruption in 2003 and 2004?
Yep. crazy.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Enjoy:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_cZC67wXUTs
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
text of the indictment is now available.
It was a part of the scheme that STEVENS, while during that same time period that he was concealing his continuing receipt of things of value from ALLEN and VECO from 1999 to 2006, received and accepted solicitations for multiple official actions from ALLEN and other VECO employees, and knowing that STEVENS could and did use his official position and his office on behalf of VECO during that same time period.
That sounds like good old-fashioned bribery to me, but with our screwed-up laws it's probably a lot easier to convict a politician for lying about the bribes than for taking the bribes.
Let me be the first to shout:
"Yeee-hawww!!!"
Good riddence! The coming Alaska senate race is going to be one of the most interesting in history. I suggest everyone look into it. On the democratic front, we've got popular Anchorage city mayor, Mark Beigich, who's taken the election scene by storm in just the last month or so. And Stevens, being a long time incombant, is running virtually unopposed on the republican front.
In the house, rep. Don ("I'll beat you over the head with a walrus penis") Young is having even more trouble, due to falling public perception and the VICO scandal. This long-time incumbent may be KOed in the primary by our Lt. Governor.
The republicans only star runners, at this point, are Gov. Sarah Palin and Lt Gov. Sean Parnel. Parnel is running against Young in the house, and Sarah just had a child and is busy fighting some of her own battles.
Translation: the alaska republican party is FUCKED. Before the year is out, there's a very good chance we'll see our one house seat filled by a Dem, one of our Senate seats filled by a Dem, and the state's electoral votes go to Barak Obama (currently a very close race). AK is one of the most conservative and republican states in the country, btw.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) offered up this bizarre explanation for why he voted against net neutrality laws. In it, he explains how the internet works...
"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
But this service isn't going to go through the internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discriminate against those people [...]
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.
[...]
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.
Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.
It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.
The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a violation of net neutrality that hits you and me."
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
And when will Dodd and the Democratic senators who got their mortgages personally handed to them by bank CEOs receive the same treatment? I'm not a partisan in this, and I do enjoy seeing Stevens go down, but this guy is just the tip of the iceberg. I suspect that most of Congress would have to be indicted if a sweeping investigation were done.
The Democratic challenger to Steven's seat has actually been out-polling him in the last couple of weeks. The timing of this indictment means it is far more likely that Stevens will lose the primary next month, and Mark Begich will be facing a Republican without all of the baggage.
What he is charged with is so petty compared to the greater good he has done that will be a crying shame.
So, you're saying... as long as he keeps the money flowing to you, you are willing to overlook lies and deception? Do you think he's clean as a whistle in all his other dealings, too?
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his technological incompetence is the least of anybody's problems (yes, he's on the committee for regulating our future livelihoods and should understand this stuff..)
He's the guy who wanted the bridge to nowhere.... let's be frank that's a much larger problem than his blustering.
This is good - maybe the system works? It's too early to see
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Until then he is innocent until proven guilty.
People in positions of power shouldn't get such benefits. Every last one of them should be set under The Sword of Damocles, hanging by the barest of thread. If you consider robbing the rest of the country for the benefit of Alaska a good thing, especially with the vast riches it possesses, then there's not a hell of a lot to tell you. Especially with your whining about "liberals". Socialism must be a good thing when you're the one who benefits. But when somebody actually needs it, they're a bunch of leeches. Kinda sick thinking.
What?
There is a great fear that nobody else (the up-and-comer Mark Begich for example) will be able to pull the kind of strings in Washington that Stevens was able to pull -- at least not for decades.
Ah well there's the catch. So, Alaskans don't care if they elect dumb, corrupt politicians just so long as they bring in the pork for the state? I've often wondered about the electees from Alaska. Murkowski... now there's another story. He resigns to become governor and then appoints his daughter in his place?
What about the common good of the country as a whole? Your senator does not merely pass laws that affect only Alaska, but all the other 300 million of us. And powerful, corrupt politicians like yours have been coming up with dumbass laws that affect all the US for decades. For just one fun example, how about the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Choice Act.
Our state certainly needs to rid itself of corruption. If Stevens is convicted it will be a sad day.
I'm a bit dumbfounded by this. What on earth could be sad about kicking out a senator that has been proven corrupt? Oh.. yeah, he's powerful and brings money and investment, not to mention I'm sure great parties with the oil execs at the Chalet.
I know what it's like to lose a powerful government rep. Tom Foley was speaker of the house until he was the first speaker to be unseated in ages (or maybe forever, I forget). His opponent, Nethercutt, a replublican, chided Foley for being in office so long--how does one get to be speaker otherwise?--and promised to serve only two terms. Haha. Well, that promise went out the window. Anyway, eastern Washington survived gaining a lying newbie representative, I'm sure Alaska will get over this fiasco.
-Aaron
They deserve it. They've completely screwed themselves by not having even a nodding look at conservatism. Republicans had their time to prove themselves, and they proved they're just as bad and hypocritical as the democrats, and now they're going to lose the exectuive and legislative branches.
Many people, regardless of their "party" or lack thereof, are fiscally conservative and socially liberal in their day to day lives. We generally don't want to pay 90% in taxes, and we don't generally care what people do in their own homes, in their own lives, and we prefer if they don't get involved in telling us what we should be doing in our own lives either.
democrats and republicans have both failed completely, frankly I don't know what the difference is, other than republican's extremism is religion and democrat's extremism is environmental.
I'm a satanic clam.
explore and develop our natural resources like oil, gold and copper
? Really? The letter next to your name determines whether you will allow things to be dug out of the ground? Or perhaps its just that adhering to environmental regulations already in place might cut into profits a little?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
So, we've got Tom Delay, William Jefferson, and Ted Stevens (that I can recall off the top of my head) with outstanding indictments. All of these cases have been ongoing for YEARS. It took them 4 years to indict Stevens, and those indictments don't even cover the perjury or bribery charges. William Jefferson was busted red handed and he's still hanging around. These aren't complicated cases. I'd love to know why the wheels seem to grind so slowly for them. Hmmmmmm.....
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
No. What he's saying is that he did a great amount of good in the first 35 years of his senate career, and then went a bit overboard toward the end.
He did a good job of convincing the Senate that Alaska was important to the nation as a whole, and that it required a disproportionate amount of federal funding (in comparison to the population) to fulfill this role. Alaska supplies most of our domestic oil, and is of considerable military importance. I don't doubt any of these things, and didn't mind my tax dollars being spent this way.
Unfortunately, he found that he had an innate ability to convince the senate to spend money on his state, and let more than a few frivolous projects through. Fortunately, the federal government has a good system of checks and balances in place, and these were mostly blocked.
Honestly, I think he's just getting old and senile.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Why do you have to label everyone and everything a liberal? It makes me sad that everyone has to be so partisan these days. It is like people actually believe the things that Rush Limbaugh says...which is scary to me. He is a polarizing force that skews things so that everything is the fault of the scary "liberals". Which is stupid, considering the Republicans have been in power and actually held the presidency, the house, and the senate simultaneously and still did nothing. This polarization crap is just like religion fanatics going at it. It reminds me of the guy who went and started to shoot up a church because the "liberal movement" was destroying the country. Seriously, we are all just people. We may have different views but we aren't going to get anywhere if we blame everything wrong in the world on liberalism or conservatism.
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I love that all the conservatives think I'm a liberal, and all the liberals think I'm conservative.
Anyway, you wrote: "Our state certainly needs to rid itself of corruption. If Stevens is convicted it will be a sad day. What he is charged with is so petty compared to the greater good he has done that will be a crying shame. And entirely his fault. He should of course take the blame for his actions. But that doesn't change the fact that it will hurt the state MORE if he is convicted... the damage comes from the hurt this does to the Republican party in Alaska."
I read you as follows:
Do I have that right?
If so, you are saying, in essence, that as long as he keeps the money [benefits, improvements, etc.] flowing, you are willing to overlook [forgive, sideline, ignore, etc.] lies and deception for the greater good of the Republican party [you]. Right?
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Fuck y'all.
No, seriously, fuckyouverymuch, kthnxbi.
Reason:
Everybody Outside (that's "not in Alaska", for those Outsiders) likes to yap about Ted "Tubes" Stevens and squawk about how corrupt Alaska is and how we build bridges to nowhere bridgetonowherebridgetonowherebridgetonowhereblahblahblahblahblah, and then lament how we can be so stupid as to keep electing him.
Why do you think that happens?
This is because 70% of the land of Alaska is locked up by the federal government. This is because we have unprecedented interference in our industries and development by the federal government. This is because everybody and their dog has an opinion about ANWR, when the simple truth is that it's as much the business of Outsiders what Alaskans do with ANWR as it is Alaskan's business what development plans are in New York, Los Angeles, or Texas.
The simple truth is that Ted Stevens has been sent back repeatedly because he is effective at ensuring that Alaskans get overrun as little as possible by the Will of the People (who live SOMEWHERE ELSE), and that when they must bow to the Will of the People From Somewhere Else, that those peolpe pay mightily for the privilege. Ted Stevens has never pretended to have any other mission in the Senate, in fact.
Incidentally: most of the charges in this case are bullshit, as anybody who thinks about it for a minute can tell you; in a state that is "sparsely populated", exactly how many choices of company do you have for things like home construction? Very few. Who benefits from legislation? Likewise very few people. There are not that many people in these circles; it's difficult to avoid "benefiting" one of them.
The unvarnished truth: this is a political attack by Outside Democrats, designed to "take out" Ted Stevens, that has been ongoing for some time, pure and simple.
There is nothing particularly hypocritical in denouncing, what you think is an awful idea, while milking it for as long as it is forced upon you anyway.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Can we really blame him for losing some financial information? I mean it's not his fault when that information gets lost along with the internet sent by his staff.
Being indicited is nothing. Yet. Once convicted, either W or McCain will pardon him, if they are in office.
Don't be so sure on that one. Although I'm not fan of the major parties, McCain and Stevens have been opposing each other on key issues for a long time. Probably the most distinctive between the two is the issue of earmarking. McCain's opposition and Stevens' abuse of them have been completely polar stances on the issue.
Just because people share the same political party does not mean their views do not vary widely, and the idea that 50% of politicians get to walk just because their party is in the white house is not reality.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
If he ever serves a day in prison (unlikely), it will be in some minimum security prison where the only rape is to the taxpayers who have to pay the cable bill. Rich Republicans never pay for crimes they commit. Even when it looks like they might, they just find some slick way out of it (like Ken Lay, who killed himself so his wife and family could keep every dime of his stolen money).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Senate's rules require that Stevens immediately give up his committee chairs or "ranking member" status that gives him privileges in controlling most Senate business:
Indictments should be a lot more common for that gang of crooks.
--
make install -not war
I may be a conservative, but after watching in disgust when he made his impassioned plea to save his Bridge to Nowhere from the Ax of Excess, and how he'd have to leave the Senate if that piece of governmental waste was cancelled, I was shouting at the TV: "DO IT! DO IT! PLEASE DO IT! GET HIM OUT OF THERE NOW!"
Unfortunately they bowed to his threat at the time.
If the Democrats were as hard on their elected politicians as I was on this one, we could have a much better Congress than we have now. Having someone as a member of your own party doesn't make them wonderful. Sometimes they're just embarassing.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
McCain and Stevens have been opposing each other on key issues...
Ah yes, the Geritol "Tastes great/Less Filling" debate.
Most government employees have to report a gift of any size. A company I used to work for had a change-box next to the fridge with the soda's, but no body ever put any money in. I asked about that one day and they said the box was for their government customers who aren't allowed to accept anything of value, even a simple can of soda (so they paid for it instead).
If I recall there was a governor that was visiting with Edwards (back when he was still running for president) who had to turn down breakfast or coffee or something because he wasn't allowed to accept gifts. Now there was a man with some freaking ethics.
I've always known Senators and Representatives are corrupt (voting themselves a 15% pay raise when the rest of the country can't afford to fill up their gas tanks), but not having to report $10,000 gifts?
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Cat Litter
Soda
Stevens is one of the half dozen or so Republican senators in danger of losing his seat in the 2008 election. Nothing would be more satisfying than to see him get thrown out of the senate and straight into prison. There's also an added bonus: If he loses his seat, then there's no political reason for the Republicans to try and help with his defence.
I came here for a good argument
Actually, the Vietnam War began during the Eisenhower administration, but thanks for playing anyway. As a parting gift, here is a link from Wikipedia.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
According to the link you posted, the Vietnam war did indeed begin "during the Eisenhower administration", but it was LBJ that got us into the war: (from the 3rd paragraph: "The United States entered the war to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam (as part of a wider strategy of containment during the Cold War), beginning with military advisory missions in the early 1960s and escalating to full warfare with the deployment of combat units from 1965 onward. By 1973, almost all U.S. troops had left the theater and in 1975, communist forces assumed control of South Vietnam. North and South Vietnam were reunified shortly thereafter.")
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