Playing off of Dengre's highly Recc'd (and deservedly so) diary about corruption and the absolute necessity of Dems to distinguish themselves from Publicans on this very important topic, comes the news that Brent Wilkes, Duke Cunningham's briber-in-chief, has been CONVICTED ON ALL COUNTS!
Wonderful news. Now let's "help" the traditional media keep track of the corruption scorecard shall we?
A U.S. District Court jury has convicted Brent Wilkes on all 13 counts in his corruption trial. The Poway defense contractor had been accused by prosecutors of leveraging more than $600,000 in cash bribes and thousands more in gifts to ousted Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham in exchange for Cunningham's influence in securing more than $80 million in government contracts.
The key here is to combat the meme from Publicans that all politicians are corrupt. We NEED to help keep the traditional media on the ball here, since this is typically not something that people spend a lot of time on. Just like the Nobel Peace Prize Winner reminds us regarding the traditional media, we CANNOT let the lazy and complicit transcribers try to include the typical story about William Jefferson in order to create parity.
Oh yeah, remember also that
this is just the first of two trials that Wilkes will face. The second deals with Wilkes' alleged bribes of former CIA executive director Dusty Foggo.
Oh yeah, here's more on the corruption stuff, this time from sunny California:
Our sheriff is, of course, an extraordinary skillful liar. If one-tenth of the allegations contained in the 29-page indictment are true, a devious chameleon has been running our county’s criminal-justice system. We already knew, for example, the self-styled Christian-conservative sheriff prowled for extramarital sex with government secretaries, ladies in cities a plane ride away, or—how’s this for class?—the wives of criminal defendants arrested by his deputies. Who can forget the photo of the young, scantily clad Russian woman in the sheriff’s Moscow hotel-suite bedroom wearing little more than the official uniform jacket the public loaned him?
It wasn’t just sex on the sheriff’s mind. The FBI now tells us that Carona positioned himself for bribes like a bouncer at an exclusive Hollywood nightclub. His game? Pay to play.
According to federal prosecutors, the sheriff used his public office to accept cash and other forms of bribes for years; lied to the IRS about the money; and recently attempted to get a co-conspirator, ex-Assistant Sheriff Donald Haidl, to lie to a federal grand jury.
"The defendants schemed to get Carona elected and to corruptly use the office of sheriff to enrich themselves," according to federal prosecutors Brett A. Sagel and Kenneth B. Julian, who allege that the crime plot began in 1998. Other allegations are that Haidl, a wealthy used-car salesman, gave Carona "regular monthly payments of $1,000," fraudulent campaign contributions, a yacht, loans, gifts, private jet trips and a luxury vacation to Lake Tahoe. FBI agents say bribes totaled more than $350,000. In exchange, they say Haidl got appointed assistant sheriff and obtained special treatment in the Orange County Jail for his gang-rapist son, Gregory Scott Haidl.