Indictment Day
 

I find the little podcasts this lawyer does to be helpful in following the legal game of pin the flagelllum on the slime we know as American politics these days. I thought someone else might like her info to. Interesting to see if she is correct.


https://www.facebook.com/elizabethcronise

Take or leave her own politics or faith in the Democratic Pale but for details on the legal ins and outs she is helpful.

Interesting. It's nice to hear her review, but I would take to heart her frequent reminders that she is merely speculating.

By the way, she says that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt. That's something that many lawyers say but which in fact (in my opinion) is not true. The Supreme Court case that the claim is based on actually indicated only that a person may decide to refuse to accept a pardon lest he be perceived as admitting guilt. Pardons are sometimes given precisely because a convicted person has subsequently been exonerated. And even an innocent person facing a costly criminal trial and possible imprisonment would likely accept a pardon to avoid it.

Joe Arpaio certainly chose not to treat the pardon he accepted as an admission of guilt. And I'm sure he has a constituency.

We each advancing day forward in this morass of american politics I hear echoes of the recent past, during the election campaign, that now take on new meaning; or ring hollow; or worse.

Case in point: The republican campaign mantra, "Drain the swamp!" (which, btw, has been a mantra for virtually all candidates for decades).
As of today, the swamp A) is not being drained -- at all. It's being fed. Look at the appointments made; look at the nepotism flowering, and B) The swamp IS NOW THE PRESIDENCY. Filled with fakes and deceitful legislation, venomous deregulation, predatory capitalism, etc.

I'm disgusted anew each morning.

What inflames me more than anything is the virulent propaganda arm of the presidency. It's spewing out bile that the deplorables are licking up like honey. I'm disgusted. Can you tell? I'm disgusted.

If someone were really serious about draining the swamp they would simply walk over to the faucet, turn it off, and let it wither. It's systemic. For example, the most despicable of "swamp critters" is the congressional benefits package that looks like the blueprint for socialism (not that a dose of socialism is a bad thing). I cannot believe we continue to allow the select few that WE ELECTED receive the benefits they do while we beg for morsels of healthcare, slivers of social security. They even SPEND our social security money to pay for their tax plans that benefit the wealthy.

We have now entered the rock throwing stage. The glass house era of politics. Give me a break. What Al Franken did was immature. He was a funnyman once; a comedian. Not a serial criminal. That Alabama politician running for senate whose name I can't recall at the moment was obviously a bad dude back in the day. He found religion and put it behind him. He should say that and let the voters have their say. If criminal charges can be brought against him then get on with it. I'm ready to give up on democracy -- if what we have is even democracy.
We are in the throes of an existential moment in the US. Where do we turn? Where is the decent revolution when you need it? Who?

Jim, if we were both young and single, I'd ask you to marry me.

I hear you, Gail. We would live forever and a day ;)

The thing with Al Franken is really disappointing, to say the least; and I think it is more than just immature, I am afraid. Being a comedian is no excuse for what he did. I honestly think he will be an unwanted liability now for the Democratic party that would define itself in opposition to the party of Moore. I do agree, however, that Roy is worse. In my opinion, when one of our own is guilty, it is incumbent upon us to fully disclaim the wrong committed as we would do were he of the other party. And where there is smoke there is fire, what starts as a trickle of accusations all too often ends as a flood with such cases; as we have seen play out over and over. Thus, I would be all the more hesitant to downplay or defend, though the first allegation was bad enough.

He's guilty of posing in an adolescent picture during a 36 hour plane ride after spending two exhausting weeks entertaining the troops in a bawdy show with Playboy models and Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. The part where he kissed her with her consent but too sloppily for Tweeden's taste (as she informs us 10 years later) is bullshit, and even if it weren't it's really not all that huge a blemish on an otherwise spotless life of 60 years. (And now we have pictures showing that she also went around pinching and kissing people without permission, and the script she says Franken wrote just as a pretext to kiss her was actually a standard script used for years in USO shows).

Well, if the plane was 36 hours, then in that case... Or if there were Dallas cheerleaders, that does not give one the license to take degrading pictures of someone, hands over breasts. And it is quite generous to characterize it as not to her taste that he forcibly shoved his tongue down her mouth as she tried to push away.

Now, with the latest one, is it ever acceptable for a senator, as he was in 2010, when asked to take a picture at a state's fair, to do as Lindsay Menz now has come out to say: he "pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear. It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek" "It wasn't around my waist. It wasn't around my hip or side. It was definitely on my butt..." .
Are you just fine with, that because I'm not. I can't imagine asking for a simple picture and being groped. These are violations and they are not right.
As the first woman said, she found out of the photo and has since " felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated."

P.S. The whole thing upsets me because I liked Franken quite a bit, and it is unpleasant to disclaim one whom I admired, but it may be morally right and even politically judicious not to stand by him and his baggage (which may yet worsen for all we know).