Ted Stevens Trial Goes To The Jury Tomorrow

Two very rich, nasty, elderly crooks

Right wing propagandists aside, Obama continues to expand his polling lead against McCain-- or rather, McCain continues to sink in people's esteem. But not in Alaska. We've come to learn a lot about that state in the last few weeks and whether you're among the growing number of people who want to stop subsidizing a whole state of welfare bums or even drain all the oil and then sell the what ever's left back to the Russians, I think everyone can agree that most Alaskans are positively giddy at the prospect of trying to inflict the least competent person to ever run for federal office on the rest of us. In Alaska McCain-Palin is up over Obama-Biden by 18.5 points, a number beaten only by the half dozen most backward of the Lower 48: Alabama (24.3%), Idaho (33%), Nebraska (21.5%), Oklahoma (30.9%), Utah (35.7%), and Wyoming (25.6%).

Listening to McCain yammering on week after week, month after month about the Bridge to Nowhere, one might get the impression that he is running against the representatives of Nowhere, Senator Ted Stevens, Congressman Don Young and Governor Sarah Palin-- or that at least these 3 crooks were from the other party. But no... the latter is his running mate and the other two are stalwart Republicans in pre-penitentiary phases of their careers.

Yesterday's NY Times reported on the end of Stevens' ethics trial, making him sound something like a very old dog with distemper who should probably be put to sleep for its own good instead of just like a crooked old political hack facing 7 felony counts on bribery charges. People keep asking me what his defense could possibly be. Ultimately he expects to get off on some kind of a technicality the rich and the powerful are allowed to use to avoid the laws. But the pretense of a defense is that all that booty he took was either just on loan, or "tasteless" stuff that just showed up of its own accord, or was is being "stored" at one or the other of his homes. He also claims his own furniture was stolen and then replaced with the current stuff by the former head of VECO-- who financed Stevens' political career-- and who admits he had been bribing him.

Brenda Morris, the prosecutor, sought to take apart Mr. Stevens’s assertions that he was unaware that a variety of expensive goods and services he received were gifts from Mr. Allen, an Alaskan oil services tycoon, and other friends.

Ms. Morris confronted Mr. Stevens with several e-mail messages and notes he had written or received that praised Mr. Allen’s contributions to the renovation of the Stevens home. She concluded each reading with a variation of this question: “So, is it still your testimony to this jury that you did not know” that Mr. Allen and his company were showering you with gifts?

Mr. Stevens, 84, insisted each time that although he had known that many of the workers at his home were employees of Veco, he had not known that Veco played any role in the renovation. “Veco was not involved in renovating my house,” he said angrily. He thought the workers were employed by a different contractor who had been paid by his wife, he said.

Jurors will get instructions from the judge tomorrow morning. Almost every poll in the past several months show Mark Begich beating Stevens in the Senate race by an average of 1.9%. That very closeness cannot but be impacted by whatever the jury decides about Stevens' charges, which is somewhat odd, since everyone in Alaska knows Stevens is horribly corrupt.