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Ted "A Series of Tubes" Stevens Found Guilty
techmuse writes "According to a series of tubes sites, Senator Ted Stevens has been found guilty of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor. He faces up to 5 years in jail, and the outcome of his current reelection bid is now in doubt. 'The conviction came after a tumultuous week in the jury room. First there were complaints about an unruly juror, then another had to be replaced when she left Washington following the death of her father. Finally, jurors on Monday discovered a discrepancy in the indictment that had been overlooked by prosecutors. Jury deliberations in this historic trial have at times been as contentious as some of the proceedings The Justice Department indicted Stevens on July 29, and the Alaska Republican took a huge legal gamble and asked for a speedy trial in order to resolve the charges before Election Day. Judge Emmet Sullivan complied with Stevens' request, and in less than three months from the time of his indictment, Stevens was found guilty.'"
Prison, it's not like a big building, it's more like a series of cubes.
I can forsee the senator saying that his jailtime will be much like living normal life, but behind a series of bars connected together. I look forward to his jailing, so I can enjoy more humorous remarks about the particular "Series of Bars" he is behind at any given time.
I would celebrate, but I know in my heart he'll be replaced by someone just as bad. Our body politic is rotten to the core.
So your a Senator of one of the largest oil producing states, an you hire an oil services company to renovate your house, instead of say, a home builder.
Yea that doesn't look odd at all.
I hope he does the proper thing and resigns. Although the Republicans cannot afford a single loss of Senate seats, he needs to immediately show respect to the people of Alaska. Of course, I'm still waiting for William Jefferson (D - LA) to do the right thing too ...
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
The summary indicates that he faces up to 5 years in jail. This is incorrect. He faces up to 5 years in jail *per count*. Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/stevens.jurors/index.html
The truely sad thing is that if he is reelected then he can serve. Forgetting there being no law against a felon holding office. Shouldn't there be some law to protect the American people from legislators who commit felonies relating to their position?
Another bad apple is fine. We will send him to prison just like Stevens. Eventually America will get pissed enough to start hanging these crooks in the street.....then it will stop.
Despite being a convicted felon, he is not required to drop out of the race or resign from the Senate. If he wins re-election, he can continue to hold his seat because there is no rule barring felons from serving in Congress. The Senate could vote to expel Stevens on a two-thirds vote. Article here
WTF?!?! Seriously?
From same article, when asked about stepping down: "Put this down: That will never happen - ever, OK?" Stevens said in the weeks leading up to his trial. "I am not stepping down. I'm going to run through and I'm going to win this election.
What an absolutely arrogant bastard! It's good to know what the rule of law really means to the men in charge of this country.
Yes, because only one party is corrupt!
Clinton is well known for having pardoned many cocaine traffickers before leaving office. One of the first things Bush did when getting into office was block a congressional investigation into it.
Whatever you do, don't research Mena, AK
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
...a presidential pardon in 85 days.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
This pretty much ruined Ted's shot of being reelected
They're so cute when they're in their young, naive stage. Too bad they grow up so fast.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3975103&IDComment=45754482#c45754482
You owe Decados an apology!
From here:
" Among the articles of faith of "progressivism" is the theory - which never yields to experience - that you can fill the sea with enormous quantities of fresh red meat and then, Moses-like, successfully command the sharks not to devour it."
"As long as Uncle Sam continues to stock the Potomac by ripping from the body politic such enormous quantities of flesh and muscle - now more than three trillion dollars worth annually - sharks and vultures will inevitably swarm throughout Washington in a competitive struggle to gorge themselves on this unfortunate feast."
Stevens: Allen didn't have permission to remove the furniture, we didn't want it, and it was tasteless furniture.
Prosecution: After Allen removed the furniture, Stevens didn't get back his old furniture but kept the new furniture, and didn't report Allen to the police. More importantly he didn't report this furniture among other things to the Senate. Also Senator Stevens reportedly wanted to gift this "tasteless" furniture to his newly married son.
Stevens: It was not a gift. It was a loan, and we hardly used it.
Prosecution: A loan for 7 years, interest free? Also Stevens sent a note thanking Persons for his "gift" and that he (Stevens) used it all the time.
Stevens:"Ms. Morris, I have not died yet."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The Real Deal on the Current Economic Crisis
So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.