Ted Stevens’ Trial Set to Kick Off in Washington
Largely without notice during the banking dust up, the trial of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is gearing up in Washington. Jury selection is beginning this week.
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Senator Ted Stevens’s bid for a seventh term may be decided by 12 people he has never met in a courthouse thousands of miles away from his home state of Alaska.
Jury selection in the Stevens trial gets under way tomorrow in Washington after the prospective jurors complete questionnaires. The trial could last a month or more, concluding just days before U.S. election on Nov. 4.
The longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, Stevens was indicted in July for failing to report gifts from an Alaska oil-services company. He demanded speedy justice in an effort to clear his name.
Less shocking than the trial itself are the poll numbers reported in the article. In the midst of the Alaska Pork King’s (shown above posing with the 49th state’s Pork Queen) trial, he has not only managed to secure his party’s nomination for Senate yet again, but has erased a previous 13% deficit and has drawn even in the polls with Democratic challenger, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. In yet another demonstration of how all politics is local (or at least State level), we find political actors retaining their popularity at home even as they are branded as scoundrels in the national press. (Think “Dollar” Bill Jefferson from the left side of the aisle for a comparison, though recent polls indicate that his own constituents may be tiring of him.)
Should this jury return a guilty verdict in late October, will that be enough to turn Alaskan voters off from one of the hungriest gobblers at the Federal Feed Bag, or will they send him back to extend his record as the longest-serving GOP Senator? Yet another question is whether or not this will have any fallout for the presidential race. Sarah Palin’s ties to Stevens’ pork parade run right up until Feb. of this year, when she submitted a 70 page request to Stevens’ office for hundreds of millions in earmarks. Palin faces her own investigation, with results scheduled to come out prior to Election Day, so the two actions will doubtless garner a lot of attention just as voters prepare to go to the polls.
14 Responses to “Ted Stevens’ Trial Set to Kick Off in Washington”
Hey don't be a party pooper, let's get with the gameplan! Issues are irrelevant, truth is irrelevant, integrity is irrelevant. It's all about culture wars, personalities, spin and power! OK, on with the reality show…
Palin shows that image again — “Filmed in Supermarionation”
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JSpencer said: “It's all about culture wars, personalities, spin and power!”
That seems to be true . . . certainly by the Democrats . . . as evidenced from the fine detective work over at Jawa, tracking down the PR firm (Winner & Associates), with direct connections to Axelrod, Obama's own Karl Rove . . . that was responsible for producing “viral, grassroots” videos promoting lies about Palin (e.g., that she was an Alaskan separtist . . . a smear even the New York TImes has retracted).
Check it out: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194057.php
Of course, no sooner had Jawa posted its findings then a sweeping series of deletions hit YouTube etc. as Winner & Associates sought to cover their tracks.
This is, of course, classic Karl Rove (see his use of cutouts to smear McCain in SC in 2000).
Deniability must be preserved to protect Obama. The cutout accounts are being eliminated. Democrats can count on their friends in the media not to investigate or report on this in any way. After all, there are potential FEC violations here.
Yes, focusing on the issues, indeed JSpencer.
Karl Rove would be, grudgingly, admiring of these Democrats.
Marlow- what does your comment have to do with Ted Stevens? I'm wondering how many others who are corrupt out there are NOT getting prosecuted because of the US attorneys who were fired by the Bush administration, or the fact that the Abramoff investigation has slowed to a halt.
Kritt…nothing to do with Stevens really, just a reply to JSpencer about “issues” vs. “spin” (the post being tangentially about Palin).
I am fascinated by this, as it seems to me Obama is FAR ahead of McCain on issues.
Health care: Obama +1 McCain 0
Economy: Obama +1 McCain 0
yada yada
Marlow- No one really cares about the issues right now– after the bailout there won't be any money for healthcare, the environment, renewable energy, defense etc This is the only issue that matters. All the crap we've been listening to from both camps has become increasingly irrelevant.
All we should be asking is who can get us out from under this– do we want the executives and investors to swim and US taxpayers to sink?
Kritt . . . I really hope you are totally wrong . . . and people do care about issues.
After a lot of reading, I am very concerned about this bail-out package.
The scale of it . . . and the speed people want to rush it through . . . is very disturbing.
As you say, it seems not to hold anyone responsible. I am thinking a lot of folks are concerned about this.
I think this issue overwhelming benefits Obama (not so much Congressional Democrats though). He seems serious and intelligent and someone who thinks about issues, instead of simply having advisors. Hahahaha….and I am not even an Obama supporter. Yes, the economy can be a transformative issue!
We can't get a normal omnibus spending bill through without four months of wrangling and internal civil war. The idea that we could authorize 3/4 of a trillion dollars in under a week, with virtually no debate so that it goes through “cleanly” is just mind boggling. I'm not saying that some action may not be required and justified, but a blank check of that size getting rushed through this fast just seems impossible in our system of government. (Or at least it should be.) If we're lucky, calmer heads will prevail and everyone will take a step back to breath a bit before signing way the farm.
Marlow- I think I used a bad choice of words. People do care tremendously
about these issues. But the latest economic meltdown has thrown a monkey
wrench into the campaign promises of both camps. No one really knows what
the outcome of this mess is going to be, but, its scary to think that we are
on the verge of giving more power to an executive branch that did nothing to
avert the crisis in the first place. (tho I do respect Paulson and
Gates the most out of the Bush cabinet)
Obama should take the populist route– and play off McCain's gaffes on the
economy and portray him as too removed from everyday life to feel regular
folks pain.. ie if he loses a house it won't matter because he doesn't
even know how many he owns. If he has to sleep in his car he can choose from
13 of them.* *
Marlowcan, while the democrats aren't innocent when it comes to spin and mischaracterization, they haven't made quite the science (or perhaps it's an art) of smear the way the republicans have, nor have they been as gung-ho about encouraging polarization among the electorate. This unbalanced state of campaigning (over many years now) is what informed my comment. I believe any legitimate study fact-checking this belief would support this contention, and I also believe all this throwing to the winds of decent standards has harmed the country greatly.
Actually, Palin is McCain's life preserver currently, just as it has been she who has put missing life in his campaign as soon as her choice as VP was announced to the public.
Look at two things McCain has done:
1) Health care — not only would McCain tax health care benefits. Not only is a tax credit a long-tiresome gimmick that nobody likes or respects. But McCain's plan “allows” people in one state to buy health insurance plans in other states if the people want that. Now consider this not from the deeper meaning of it as regards federalism, but just the practical and economic implications. First of all, who says the lower-cost-plan states will agree to having people from higher-cost states elsewhere swamp them, or allow anyone out of state to buy plans at all? The feds don't have the actual right to order the states to accept the outsiders. Of course, these days the feds can do whatever they want, so they would doubtless order all states to accept anyone, no matter from where in this country. But as the Iowa state insurance commissioner noted, if someone in Iowa buys a plan in, say, New York or California, and has problems with payment, or doctors in Iowa won't accept the payment schedule, there's nothing the Iowa commissioner can do. And with all that extra paperwork, does McCain's plan include more money that ought go to the states to pay for this? Or is this yet (I suspect) another federal unfunded mandate?
2) The Democrats have been often horrible in office. One of the worst is from a notorious family — Andrew Cuomo is his name. He did a lousy and questionable job in the federal government. (Many know his father, who was sought in 1992 as the Dem nominee, and made a whiny-loser lousy speech at a Dem convention once that to this day the liberal media label one of the best speeches, if not the best, of all time.) One of the presidential candidates, in discussing the current economic concerns and poor behavior by government and the financial industry, has said (in addition to wanting to fire SEC commissioner Christopher Cox) that he would like to see, of all people, Andrew Cuomo(!) as a new SEC commissioner!
Believe it or not, that candidate who said that is none other than John McCain.
[burying head in hands]
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