Ted Stevens, inmate senator
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who tried to convince a Washington jury that he didn't have to report gifts from wealthy supporters because, well, he considered them loans (even though he never returned them), got what he richly deserved today when he was found guilty of all seven felony counts against him. But that raises some very interesting questions -- like, if Alaska voters elect him to another term anyway, what happens? Will he be voting on bills from a prison cell?
Stevens is in an extremely tight race against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Most candidates who are convicted of several felonies the week before an election can be safely ruled out, but not Stevens. He promises to continue his campaign, he is extremely well-loved in Alaska (a state that hasn't had a Democrat in the Senate since 1981), and this is the state that put a little-known hockey mom from Wasilla in the governor's mansion.
There is nothing in Senate rules that would prevent Stevens from serving if he's elected, but Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. serves as an instructive example. Like Stevens, Williams was an institution in his home state, frequently referred to as New Jersey's "senator for life." But then he got caught up in the Abscam sting, in which FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks offered bribes to members of Congress, some of whom, like Williams, took them. He was convicted in 1981 on nine counts of bribery and conspiracy, but refused to leave office. That set up a bruising effort to expel him by the rest of the Senate; Williams resigned in 1982 just as the Senate was on the brink of getting the 67 votes needed to kick him out. He would have been the first senator to be expelled since the Civil War.
Stevens will doubtless appeal, and he would have to exhaust his appeals before the expulsion process could begin. He could do himself, and the country, a big favor by dropping out now.
* Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images
All the more reason we should demand term limits for all Congress members. I cam just visualize the trinkets Nancy Pelosi has on her mantle above her fireplace. Probably more illegal gifts than the amount of plastic she has in her face.
Posted by: Robert Finnegan | October 28, 2008 at 10:24 AM
Hey, as long as the gas grill or massage chair is under the limit, they're good to go! If they all get tagged for failing to report, then so be it! We can start afresh. 40 fricking years or corruption is too long! I say sell Alaska to CANADA and give Alaskans 90 days to get their pork-grubbing butts into the Lower Forty-Eight or it's Oh Canada! (The Hockey Mom ought to know it...we always had it played at hockey tournaments when I was in school)
Posted by: gina dentata | October 28, 2008 at 02:03 AM
All of the "selective prosecution" and " prosecutorial misconduct" stoned at Ted Stevens is deliciously ironic for a party leader of a party that brutalizes criminals and detainees. Americans have suffered in these conditions where the prosecutor is judge, jury and defense. The law is capricious. Maybe a pardon is in store for Stevens.
Posted by: slag | October 27, 2008 at 06:41 PM
Whether or not you despised the politics of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, you at least have to admire his public concern regarding the culture of entitlement that makes its way into Capitol Hill on slippery slopes.
In Sen Ted Stevens case, he's had 40 years to slide and, like the Roman senators his role was originally modeled on, to think himself a special class of human being above the treatment the rest of us mere mortals receive.
Posted by: swag | October 27, 2008 at 05:54 PM
You can make all the excuses for Sen. Stevens you want.
One word: BUSTED.
Posted by: swag | October 27, 2008 at 05:49 PM
He won't drop out... he's exactly like his protege Sarah Palin: Better than us mere mortals and above the law by divine right!
And the disgusting part is that he'll probably be re-elected. Alaska elected HER, didn't they?? Alaskans don't let petty, trivial things like corruption bother them very much, apparently.
Posted by: mavisdarling | October 27, 2008 at 05:00 PM
Every single member of Congress who is now partaking in the collective stone-throwing at Senator Stevens for his crimes against humanity — like not reporting a massage chair and gas grill on his Senate disclosure forms — had better do a detailed inventory of every single consumer item in their homes.
For this Justice Department, which ditched a legitimate bribery investigation into Veco in order to take down Stevens with a vengeance, has no concrete constitutional restraints with respect to selective prosecution. Any member of Congress, who has so much as a kitchen appliance that they did not record on their forms, is subject to the arbitrary whims of unelected, unconfirmed investigators and prosecutors who want feathers in their career caps, or who utilize their positions to effect their preferred political outcomes.
And that goes for Congresswoman Heather Wilson, a Republican from New Mexico, who went on MSNBC to forcefully condemn Ted Stevens after the verdict, despite the fact that the prosecutors in the Stevens case have already been rebuked by the presiding judge for withholding exculpatory evidence; a level of prosecutorial misconduct that should give Stevens solid ground to stand on in his appeal.
Congresswoman Wilson showed no mercy whatsoever in condemning Ted Stevens over his failure to report as official gifts a massage chair, a gas grill, a fish statue, and yes, a puppy. That’s relatively minor compared to Ms. Wilson’s misdeeds: Using her House seat to try to influence prosecutions in New Mexico, which came to light in last year’s U.S. attorney scandal.
What Heather Wilson did to run David Iglesias, a nonpartisan and upstanding federal prosecutor, out of the Justice Department is far more grave to law and order — and America’s democratic fabric — than Ted Stevens and his massage chair, his barbecue grill, and his puppy combined.
For the sake of Congresswoman Wilson, I hope her constituents will be far more willing to look at her broader record of public service to weigh against her severe errors of judgment, than what she was willing to afford Ted Stevens: nothing but a big rock at the 84-year-old WWII veteran’s head. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
Guilt by association is evidently very out of fashion these days. Nevertheless, the stone-throwers at Ted Stevens might look to their left and right to get a glimpse at just who’s joining in the political stone-throwing at Senator Stevens. They’re not exactly the leading lights of law and impartial justice in America.
Timothy Rieger
Posted by: Timothy Rieger | October 27, 2008 at 04:48 PM