Monday, October 27, 2008

Ted Stevens Found Guilty



I haven't written much about the corruption scandals which have pestered mostly Republicans recently, but it's worth pointing out the Ted Stephens case:

Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history and patriarch of Alaska politics, was found guilty of felony charges for making false statements.

The verdict could spell the end of a 40-year Senate career for a man who rose to be one of the most dominant figures in the upper chamber and who helped transform Alaska in its 50 years of statehood. The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated since Wednesday and found the 84-year-old senator guilty of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from Bill Allen, the former head of Veco Corp., and other friends.

Corruption is a bad thing, for all sorts of fairly obvious reasons. But I'd love to see a proper court case into all that money that has disappeared into the Iraq reconstruction project without creating much reconstruction at all.