For the reasons stated, I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and regulate this market. That has not been disputed in this case. The principal dispute has been about how Congress chose to exercise that power here.

Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.

Score one for Liberty and Freedom of Choice.

Obviously, The Obamasiah© and his cohorts will appeal this decision to the Supreme Court, where I figure the decision will be upheld 5 to 4. This should happen this fall, which means it will happen just as Obama kicks off his re-election campaign (wait, did his election campaign ever really end?). If people are paying attention, this should also be one of the last nails in his Presidency’s coffin. (NOTE: I am not now, nor have I ever, advocated the use of violence against this or any other President or politician. Chill out, dudes and  dudettes, it’s just a form of expression!)

One of the main points of this decision is worth bringing up. The Commerce Clause cannot be used to justify the Federal Government’s regulation of inactivity, as currently interpreted by Supreme Court case law. If this were to be allowed, there would be absolutely no limits whatsoever on Congressional power. Care must be taken to ensure that judges who think that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document” are kept from being placed on the Federal Bench and Supreme Court. All it takes is one liberal activist judge to find a way to change this, and everyone’s freedom and liberty are in question. I mean, would you like it if the government fined or otherwise punished you for NOT doing something?

Whoopi Goldberg is facing a fierce backlash after saying that film director Roman Polanski didn’t commit “rape-rape” when he had unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.

“He pled guilty to having sex with a minor and he went to jail, and when they let him out he said ‘You know what, this guy’s going to give me 100 years in jail. I’m not staying’. And that’s why he left.” Polanski was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland on Sunday and faces extradition to the United States. He fled the US in 1978 before being sentenced for the crime and has been pursued around the globe by prosecutors ever since.

You read that correctly — Goldberg doesn’t think raping and sodomizing a 13 year old girl after giving her drugs and alcohol is “rape – rape.” To top it off, it seems like most of Hollywood thinks the same thing:

More than 100 film industry figures have now signed a petition calling for the release of Polanski, the acclaimed director of Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and The Pianist.

They include leading Hollywood figures Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton and Monica Bellucci.

One celebrity supporter, the actress Debra Winger, said it was a “three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities. We stand by him and await his release and his next masterpiece.” Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein said Polanski was a “humanist” who had been the victim of a “miscarriage of justice”. He said: “We will have to speak to our leaders, particularly in California. I’m not too shy to go and talk to the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and to ask him once and for all to look at this.” However, the views of the Hollywood elite seemed out of step with those of ordinary Americans and they now face a backlash.

These people are so out-of-touch with the American public, is it any wonder why the movie industry is held in such low regard?

For the record, regardless of who you are or what movies you have created, if you give drugs to a 13 year old girl, then give her alcohol, and then rape and sodomize her, I believe you belong in jail for as long as the law allows. Not country-club celebrity jail, but Federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison. I don’t care if you ran away for thirty years to France, where apparently this type of thing is considered normal, and continued to make movies. In the America I believe in, people who commit crimes like this are dealt with harshly, regardless of who long ago they committed the crime, and especially if they publicly proclaim this:

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

You know Whoopi, I wonder if you would be so cavalier about this if the victim had been someone near and dear to you. These Hollywood morons have no clue about right and wrong in the liberal paradise bubble they exist in out there in California.

But don’t take my word on this; read the transcript of the victim’s testimony and decide for yourself if it was “rape – rape” (whatever the hell that is) or not.

Just amazing, isn’t it?

We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, see supra, at 54–55, and n. 26. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

The above quotation is the last two paragraphs of the Court’s decision as written by Justice Antonin Scalia. If you read the entire decision, you’ll find that it is likewise brilliantly written with logic and reason which is unassailable. In contrast, read this portion of Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent:

The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy.

Hey, Stevens: The entire Constitution places limits on the tools elected officials possess to regulate and otherwise control the lives of the people. I find it hard to believe that this guy can say this and still be taken seriously as a judge on the Supreme Court. If he doesn’t understand what the Constitution is, how in the hell can he be charged with interpreting it?

As for the gun ban itself, it never accomplished what it was supposed to:

Although studies through the decades have reached conflicting conclusions, this much is clear: The ban, passed with strong public support in 1976, has not accomplished everything the mayor and council of that era wanted it to.

Over the years, gun violence has continued to plague the city, reaching staggering levels at times.

…

In 1977, the first full year of the ban, the city recorded 192 homicides. The total rose to 223 in 1981, then fell to 147 in 1985 – the lowest annual homicide toll in the District since 1966. At the time, the rate for the country also was trending down.

Which turned out to be the calm before the slaughter.

The advent of the crack market and the unprecedented street violence it unleashed nationwide sent homicide rates soaring in the latter half of the 1980s. Not only did the number of killings surge in the District, the homicide rates here also far exceeded the rates in crack-ridden cities where handguns had not been banned.

In the peak year, 1991, the District reported 482 homicides.

Almost as sharply as violence in the District increased, it declined through the 1990s, a drop researchers attributed to the burning out and aging of a generation of crack dealers and users. Again, the shift reflected national trends.

Yet the gun culture on the city’s mean streets during the crack epidemic has not abated, police statistics show. Even as the homicide toll declined in D.C. after 1991, the percentage of killings committed with firearms remained far higher than it was when the ban was passed.

Guns were used in 63 percent of the city’s 188 slayings in 1976. Last year, out of 169 homicides, 81 percent were shootings.

Reading the above article you’ll find that the amount of gun-related crime was influenced by factors other than how many guns were available. In fact, it seems that the factor most responsible for the amount of violence was the number of crack dealers and users. Further proof that it is people who kill people, not inanimate objects.

As logic suggests, gun bans do not stop criminals from using guns, nor does it stop gun violence. All gun bans do is leave the law-abiding defenseless against a group of criminals who know that their prey will have no way to defend themselves. Until the gun-grabbers realize that people are responsible for violence and crime, not inanimate objects, they’ll probably never understand. I’ll bet a lot of these “brain surgeons” blame their pencil every time they misspell a word.

So, fellow citizens, it is time to rejoice. In a time of uncertainty and apprehension, one of your most basic freedoms and rights has been affirmed and protected, the right to protect yourself and your family from those who would do you harm.

The Supreme Court declared Wednesday that executions are too severe a punishment for raping children, despite the “years of long anguish” for victims, in a ruling that restricts the death penalty to murder and crimes against the state.

The court’s 5-4 decision struck down a Louisiana law that allows capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12. It spares the only people in the U.S. under sentence of death for that crime — two Louisiana men convicted of raping girls 5 and 8.

The ruling also invalidates laws on the books in five other states that allowed executions for child rape that does not result in the death of the victim.

However devastating the crime to children, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion, “the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child.” His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

Unbelievable! The liberals on the Supreme Court don’t think that the rape of a child is bad enough to warrant capital punishment. Therefore, a man who shoots and kills an intruder in his own home to protect his family can be sentenced to death in some states, but if a man intentionally breaks into a home and rapes the children, he’ll just spend some time in jail (on the taxpayer’s dime). How in the world does this make any sense at all?

Justice Samuel Alito puts this all in prespective in his dissent:

The Court’s final—and, it appears, principal—justification for its holding is that murder, the only crime for which defendants have been executed since this Court’s 1976 death penalty decisions, is unique in its moral depravity and in the severity of the injury that it inflicts on the victim and the public. But the Court makes little attempt to defend these conclusions. With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?

…

With respect to the question of the harm caused by the rape of child in relation to the harm caused by murder, it is certainly true that the loss of human life represents a unique harm, but that does not explain why other grievous harms are insufficient to permit a death sentence. And the Court does not take the position that no harm other than the loss of life is sufficient. The Court takes pains to limit its holding to “crimes against individual persons” and to exclude “offenses against the State,” a category that the Court stretches — without explanation — to include “drug kingpin activity.” But the Court makes no effort to explain why the harm caused by such crimes is necessarily greater than the harm caused by the rape of young children. This is puzzling in light of the Court’s acknowledgment that “[r]ape has a permanent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical impact on thechild.” As the Court aptly recognizes, “[w]e cannot dismiss the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of child rape.”
All citations omitted.

As a result of this decision, you are now guaranteed to see more lawyers like this defending child rapists, all courtesy of the liberals on the court:

A Massachusetts politician and defense attorney has touched off a firestorm with his shocking public vow to torment and “rip apart” child rape victims who take the witness stand if the state legislature passed stiff mandatory sentences for child sex offenders.

Rep. James Fagan, a Democrat, made the comments during debate last month on the state House floor.

“I’m gonna rip them apart,” Fagan said of young victims during his testimony on the bill. “I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”

Fagan said as a defense attorney it would be his duty to do that in order to keep his clients free from a “mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions.”

As if I needed to tell you, this guy is both a Democrat and a trial lawyer. Also, he is the Chairman of the Massachusetts State House Ethics Committee. Yes, that’s right; he is responsible for telling other lawmakers how to conduct themselves.

So, what have we learned today? Well, we’ve learned that liberals like child rapists more than they like the rapist’s victims, families, or the concept of justice. We’ve learned that liberals will bend and twist and mold the law into unrecognizable forms to achieve by judicial fiat what they cannot achieve in the legislatures or the ballot box (elimination of the death penalty, except for unborn children). Finally, we’ve learned that liberal trial lawyers will sink to the lowest forms of human behavior just to make a buck and get their picture in the media.

What do liberal bloggers think of the decision? Well. if this is any indication, they like it fine. I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions.

Not to put too fine a point on all of this, but if the Obamessiah gets elected in November, you’re probably going to get two or three more justices on the Supreme Court who have the same low-regard for children who are raped and high-regard for child rapists as the 5 clowns who decided this case.

Sleep well.

In a 6 – 3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the state of Indiana’s tough voter-identification law which requires voters to show a picture ID before casting their ballot:

WASHINGTON — By a 6-3 vote in a closely watched election-year case, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld Indiana’s strict voter-identification law, rejecting the claims of Democratic and civil-rights challengers that the law infringes on the right to vote.

The decision by Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the most liberal members of the court, emphasized that the challengers had not presented sufficient evidence that voters were kept from the polls or otherwise hurt by the law Indiana says prevents fraud.

…

Indiana’s statute, adopted in 2005, bars people from casting a ballot unless they present certain photo identification issued by the state or federal government, such as a driver’s license or passport. If a person does not have such an ID, he or she can get an alternative but generally needs a birth certificate to proceed.

The Indiana Democratic Party and other groups brought a broad-based challenge to the law, saying it infringed the right to vote under the 14th Amendment. They emphasized the difficulty of obtaining the required documentation, particularly for poor, elderly, disabled, and minority voters.

They said that the state’s interest in-person fraud at the polls — the specific type of problem at issue in the case — could not justify the hurdles to voters who cannot easily obtain the proper documentation, such as a birth certificate.

Yet, Stevens noted that the challengers did not bring in evidence from particular individuals. “On the basis of the evidence in the record,” he wrote, “it is not possible to quantify either the magnitude of the burden on … voters.” He said the record lacks even the number of registered voters without photo identification.

Conservatives have been advocating these types of laws for years as a common-sense measure to prevent voter fraud at the polls. Democrats have always opposed these laws because they say that minority and elderly voters would have too many problems trying to obtain the needed photo identification card. However, it turns out that the challengers to this law failed to provide evidence that the law would actually cause insurmountable problems for these people. In fact, the challengers’ case was so weak that you have the most liberal member of the Supreme Court writing the majority opinion on this case.

This ruling should clear the way for a similar law here in Texas, which I hope the State Legislature will pass the next time they are in session. It simply amazes me that people actually have a problem with this law; you’d think that preventing fraudulent votes from being cast would be something both parties could support. Yet, the Democrats oppose it.

Things that make you go hmmmmmm.

There is, perhaps, no subject which ignites the passions quite like abortion. Regardless of which side of the debate you are on, chances are that you have held your opinion for a long time, and because of an emotional component, you will likely hold this position into the foreseeable future. This emotional component is why this debate will always be with us; all at the same time this emotion compels us to defend our “side” while prohibiting us from reasoned discussion. It goes without saying that this post isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about abortion, so why do it at all? In the Arena of Ideas, all sides must be represented in order to allow a thoughtful choice to those who are new to the debate. It is in this spirit that I offer what follows.

Let us start at the beginning. The American Heritage Dictionary defines abortion as follows:

1.
a) Termination of pregnancy and expulsion of an embryo or of a fetus that is incapable of survival.
b) Any of various procedures that result in such termination and expulsion. Also called induced abortion.

Sounds pretty innocuous, doesn’t it? Getting rid of something which is incapable of survival; it almost sounds like an act of mercy. However, look closer at the terms embryo and fetus. What do they mean? Back to our friends at American Heritage:

Fetus
1.
a) The unborn young of a viviparous vertebrate having a basic structural resemblance to the adult animal.
b) In humans, the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo.

Embryo
1.
a) An organism in its early stages of development, especially before it has reached a distinctively recognizable form.
b) An organism at any time before full development, birth, or hatching.
c) The fertilized egg of a vertebrate animal following cleavage.
d) In humans, the prefetal product of conception from implantation through the eighth week of development.

Reading these definitions and taking them at face value gives you a more complete picture. If you were to combine all of the above into one thought, it would read: Termination of a pregnancy and expulsion of an organism in its early stages of development or the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, which is incapable of survival. So, now what does it sound like? Not so innocuous, is it? This sounds more like the taking of a life, however a life which is unsustainable. A thin, moral line to be sure, but there it is.

Up to this point, we have a procedure which, on the surface, seems reasonable if not completely acceptable for some. Like I said earlier, it kind of sounds like an act of mercy to take the life of someone whose life is unsustainable. Sort of like pulling the plug on a person who is on life support in the hospital. Distasteful, but necessary.

Now, let’s look at how society sees the act of abortion. Since before the Supreme Court legalized abortion, feminists have claimed abortion as a right for women which they should be able to exercise at any time for any reason. Further, feminists also think that men should have absolutely no say in the matter other than whatever say the woman may grant him; after all, it is her body, not his. In fact, feminists believe that if an under-age girl becomes pregnant, that girl has the right to seek a government-funded abortion without the knowledge or consent of the girl’s parents.

People who are against abortion believe, for the most part, that there is never any reason for any abortion. Even in cases of rape or incest, they believe that the child should be brought to term and delivered so that the child can be adopted. Some even feel that even if the mother’s life is in danger the priority should be the baby’s life, even if the mother is sacrificed.

Two sides which stand at polar opposites. Can they be reconciled? I doubt it. Remember, all I’ve discussed so far are the nuts and bolts of this debate; the larger portion of this debate is fueled by emotion. Emotion distorts, emotion enrages, emotion screams; emotion strips all of logic and reason. This is why the two sides will never reconcile.

They way I see it is like this: Life begins at conception. Science has not even figured out what exactly causes a mass of tissues to become sentient, so I choose to err on the side of caution. Since life begins at conception, the next question is when does the unborn become capable of survival? I would argue that as long as the mother is healthy and the unborn is developing as expected, that the unborn are capable of survival from the moment of conception. Yes, they need the help of the mother, but that will be true until the child is around 16 years of age.

So, if the unborn are both alive and viable from the moment of conception, what would justify the termination of the life of the unborn? Obviously, if some incident were to occur which inflicted enough harm on the unborn as to make it non-viable, then an abortion would be necessary. Also, if some malady were to befall the mother which would necessitate a termination of the pregnancy, that also would make an abortion necessary. However, beyond those two restrictions, I find no reason for the procedure to be performed, with the two obvious exceptions being rape and incest.

Beyond the reasons stated previously, the only reason most women seek abortions is as a type of after-the-fact birth control. Personally, I find this offensive. Killing human life because two people were either too lazy or too stupid to use one of the many available birth control methods available, to me, is inexcusable. It is yet another way for people to excuse themselves of their personal responsibility for their actions.

Summing up, abortion should be legal, but should be used only in cases of rape, incest, physical health of the mother, or due to the non-viability of the unborn. In all other cases, the baby should be brought to term and delivered. If the mother can’t or won’t keep the baby, there are thousands and thousands of couples waiting on adoption lists all over the country who would be only too happy to give the baby a home. I would be much happier if I knew my tax dollars were going to support services which would allow the healthy birth of babies instead of going to organizations whose only agenda is to keep abortion available to any woman for any reason.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House’s contempt citations against two of President Bush’s top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

As promised, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she has given the Judiciary Committee authority to file a lawsuit against Bolten and Miers in federal court.

“The House shall do so promptly,” she said in a statement.

Mukasey said Bolten and Miers were right in ignoring subpoenas to provide Congress with White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

As you will recall, House Democrats believe that the firings of 8 U.S. Attorneys were politically motivated, and therefore improper. So, they have been raising a highly publicized stink about the firings, using the press coverage to help elect their candidates for the House and Senate. However, something that has apparently not been noticed by the Democrats in all of this is that the position of U.S. Attorney is a political appointment, and that appointees serve at the pleasure of the President and can be dismissed for any reason whatsoever, or no reason at all.

So, in a time when the Democrats in Congress refuse to renew surveillance legislation, and therefore prevent our intelligence agencies from doing their best to keep America safe, they apparently have all the time in the world to file politically motivated lawsuits which will undoubtedly end up dismissed as frivolous.

But don’t you dare question their patriotism!

How can you question something they so obviously lack?

NOTE: The first sentence of this post has been edited to correct an error. The original sentence gave the impression that Gore was the first to file legal action in the 2000 Election Recount. In fact, Bush filed the first lawsuit on November 11, 2000 to block Gore’s request to have only four heavily Democrat counties recounted by hand.

Lead attorney Chuck Cooper said the private university turned its back on the players to protect the school’s image.

“These young men want an acknowledgment that they were wronged by institutions and individuals that they trusted to treat them honestly,” Cooper said in a statement. “They were victimized by a corrupt investigation that ignored or suppressed evidence that would have cleared them.”

The lawsuit filed on behalf of 38 unindicted players and nine members of their families seeks unspecified damages for invasion of privacy, emotional distress and other injuries. Cooper planned to discuss the lawsuit later Thursday at a news conference in Washington, D.C.

The players accuse Duke of ignoring, suppressing and discrediting evidence that proved the players innocence, with idly standing by while the players suffered abuse and harassment on campus, and with imposing discipline that implied the team was guilty. Duke suspended and then canceled the highly ranked team’s season in the wake of the rape allegation.

Remember, none of these lacrosse players were charged with anything. They are claiming that because the former district attorney conducted a witch hunt against their three teammates, they are entitled to compensation as well.

Its a bit of a reach, but these guys might have a case against the City of Durham, but I don’t think they have a prayer against the school. The school canceled the team’s season during the course of the investigation, but by the time the allegations were overcome by a mountain of evidence showing their falsehood, it was too late to do anything. The school was in a no-win situation; if they had not canceled the season and it turned out that the players were guilty as charged, they would have caught hell for not suspending the team. In any case, I don’t think that missing a season of lacrosse constitutes egregious enough harm to warrant an award of cash to the players. The school had no control over the conduct of the district attorney’s investigation and had no say in whether or not the case would go to court.

This reminds me of the idiots who keep claiming that they are due slavery reparations because their long-dead relatives were once mistreated. Just like these players, they haven’t suffered 1/100th as much as the people who were actually involved, yet they want all the money they can get for other people’s suffering.

These people should take their Duke degree and move on with their lives.

The New Jersey Constitution gives the governor authority to “grant pardons and reprieves in all cases other than impeachment and treason.”

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982 – six years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions – but hasn’t executed anyone since 1963.

Corzine said he was moved by passionate views on both sides, but believes eliminating capital punishment “best captures our state’s highest values and reflects our best efforts to search for true justice.”

A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed New Jersey voters supported keeping the death penalty by 53 percent to 39 percent. The telephone poll of 1,085 voters was conducted from Dec. 5-9 and had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The bill passed the legislature largely along party lines, with controlling Democrats supporting the abolition and Republicans opposed. Republicans unsuccessfully sought to retain the death penalty for those who murder law enforcement officials, terrorists and those who rape and murder children.

A couple of things to pay attention to here. First, you’ll notice that Governor Corzine ignored the people of New Jersey in abolishing capital punishment. The people of New Jersey used their best efforts to find and administer true justice when they placed those eight felons on death row. I don’t see how thwarting the will of the people in order to pander to your political base equates to New Jersey’s “best values.” I could further go on and say that this isyet another example of Democrats forcing their own values on a majority of people who disagree with them, but you knew that already.

Here is the second thing to notice:

John Martini Sr., the man who killed Flax’s husband, is among the eight men whose sentences were commuted.

Another of the eight is Jesse Timmendequas, the sex offender who murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. The case inspired Megan’s Law, which requires law enforcement agencies to notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their communities.

Megan’s father, Richard Kanka, is still hopeful the men won’t see old age. “The only thing we can really hope for is somebody in jail will knock off these guys,” he said.

Corzine has given relief to the vilest of the human scum which is available in the justice system, all to emphasize his humane bonafides to his fellow liberal democrats. He did it at the expense of the families of the victims of these soulless bastards.

Here’s hoping that 53% of the population of New Jersey remembers this travesty come election time.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) – Rep. William Jefferson pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of soliciting more than $500,000 in bribes while using his office to broker business deals in Africa.

<snip>

A 94-page indictment, handed down Monday, details 11 separate bribery schemes and 16 criminal counts, including racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

If convicted, Jefferson faces a possible maximum sentence of 235 years. His trial is scheduled for January.

<snip>

According to court records, FBI agents videotaped Jefferson picking up a $100,000 cash bribe in 2005 from an informant in a hotel parking garage. Two days later, FBI agents raided Jefferson’s home in Washington and found $90,000 in cash stuffed in a box in his freezer.

Jefferson alluded to that money on Friday, but he declined to answer any questions.

“The $90,000 was the FBI’s money,” he said. “The FBI gave it to me as part of its plan – part of their plan – that I would give it to the Nigerian vice president, but I did not do that. When all the facts are understood, I trust that I will be vindicated.”

I see. The FBI gave you the money as part of their plan to have you give it to someone else, yet they have stayed silent for these past two years and let you twist in the wind. It’s all a misunderstanding!

Question: If it was a FBI plan, and you were supposed to give the $100,000 to someone else as a part of that plan, why did the FBI only find $90,000 in the freezer? Where is the other $10,000? Was it a “fee” for participating in the FBI plan?

Question: If this was a FBI plan, why did you have to go to a hotel parking garage and get $100,000 from someone who doesn’t work for the FBI? Why didn’t you just go the FBI office and pick it up there?

This trial should be very interesting. Anyone have a guess as to how long it will take before he plays the race card?