BOB NEY WILL STILL GET A FAT PENSION AFTER HIS WRIST SLAP SENTENCE

When I was a student at PS-197 in Brooklyn I had little in common with my creepy classmate Norm Coleman, except that we were co-secretaries of our class. Judging by how badly he's turned out, I suspect we had another thing in common-- and this is where I part company with almost all the liberals I know (if only theoretically)-- and that is our adherence to the death penalty. I actually won a borough-wide UN scholarship for an essay I wrote defending the death penalty. What a bloodthirsty little bastard I was/am-- although I need to say that I would almost never advocate actually using the death penalty because of the grievous nature of the criminal justice system. Anyway, it doesn't matter for this story since even I wouldn't advocate that Bob Ney get the death penalty. I hope some of the higher ups do, of course, but Ney... just a two bit mobster who should spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars with much of the rest of the Republican caucus. Although not before a trial jury. David Sirota should be judge.

It's more likely that he'll get 2 years and be pardoned by a much more culpable criminal, you-know-who, still eatin' bananas in the White House. But what pissed the hell out of me today was a story in the Columbus Dispatch about how the confessed bribe-taker will actually be able to retire on his substantial tax-payer funded pension when he gets out of prison.

Ironically, the crooked GOP slimebag voted just 4 months ago to deny pension benefits to members of Congress convicted of a felony relating to their official duties, he'll still be able to get his-- another case of Bill Frist's Do Nothing Senate not being able to get anything done. By my calculations, Ney has made a very good deal. He admitted some relatively minor crimes and other cases will vanish, cases that probably would have kept him in the slammer for decades-- even without a Judge Sirota presiding.

An Ohio candidate with a head on her shoulders, Mary Jo Kilroy, "called on Congress to 'strip Ney of his federal pension so that taxpayers are not left funding a felon’s future. That money should be donated to the U.S. Treasury to pay down the federal deficit.'"

It isn't clear how much Ney will get but it's probably around $100,000 a year. Crime pays-- if you're a white Republican member of Congress. By the way, he still refuses to resign, although embarrassed Republicans, hoping voters will forget how integral in GOP rule Ney has been in the last 6-7 years, are demanding that he do so.