Lawyers for deceased former Enron Chairman Ken Lay want a judge to rule right away on whether to clear his name.
They say in court papers filed this week that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake should rule on the nearly two-month-old request because an effort by prosecutors to change federal law to preserve Lay's conviction bore no fruit before Congress adjourned.
Lay's lawyers had asked Lake to wipe Lay's record clean and dismiss the 2004 indictment against him because he died before he had been sentenced or launched an appeal. Lay was convicted May 25 of 10 counts of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in two separate cases.
A 2004 ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a defendant's death pending appeal erases an entire case because the defendant can't challenge the conviction.
If Lake approves the request, the government would no longer be able to seize, through the criminal case, alleged ill-gotten cash and property because a conviction on which to base forfeiture no longer exists. Prosecutors would have to chase Lay's estate in civil courts, along with other litigants.
Lay died July 5 of heart disease.
Yeah, right.
This whole thing stinks of Lay's evil stepchildren who are trying to glom onto whatever cash remains of the millions Stepdad deceived out of his employees and shareholders. And they need to do it before the Big Bad Government (that Stepdad helped install) experiences regime change.
If you haven't guessed, the predominant theory in Skimbleland is that he didn't die of "heart disease" but that Lay committed suicide.
And why should Lay's exoneration get on a fast track when justice has been anything but swift. Even if Lay were alive to be sentenced, the whole mess is taking place more than five years after the fact — a period in which inside trader Martha Stewart (a Democrat) had already been tried, sentenced and served out her term in full.
Fast track for imprisonment of living Democrats. Fast track for exoneration of dead Republicans.
Foley must have been the life of Republican parties — turning his imitation of Clinton's line into an ironic bit of humor.
Because the open secret within the GOP was that Foley didn't even have any interest in sexual relations with women. Or even with men.
Only boys.
This is what happens when your political party offers not a big tent, but a gigantic Log Cabin outfitted with a special closet expressly for known cyber-predators.
A defiant House Speaker Dennis Hastert fought Wednesday to hold on to his leadership post while fractures appeared among his lieutenants and a former senior aide to Mark Foley said he repeatedly had warned Hastert's top aide about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward underage pages more than two years ago.
In an interview with the Tribune on Wednesday night, Hastert said he had no thoughts of resigning and he blamed ABC News and Democratic operatives for the mushrooming scandal that threatens his tenure as speaker and Republicans' hold on power in the House. [...]
When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base over his handling of the issue, Hastert said in the phone interview: "I think the base has to realize after a while, who knew about it? Who knew what, when? When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by [liberal activist] George Soros."
He went on to suggest that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.
"All I know is what I hear and what I see," the speaker said. "I saw Bill Clinton's adviser, Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then."
Hastert said he had spoken with former President George H.W. Bush, whom he described as "very supportive." He also said he had not spoken to President Bush.
Responsibility and accountability are fucking bitches, aren't they, Denny?
Who's the first person you call? Who's the person you trust the most to help you out of your difficulties? Your attorney? Your psychiatrist? Your clergyman?
Because it's Baugh who can help you figure out a way to reduce the political damage from behavior like this:
Things have been looking up for accused child molester Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, the 36-year-old Christian conservative activist and lawyer with close ties to Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Scott Baugh, head of the Orange County Republican Party. Police say Nielsen took a 14-year-old Westminster boy as his sex partner in 2003 and maintained a huge cache of man-boy pornography.
But prosecutors have allowed their case against Nielsen, once an intern in the district attorney’s office, to stall for 40 months.
Ironically, those delays have provoked new sex-crime allegations. Saying he fears a subversion of justice, a northern Virginia man claims that Nielsen repeatedly molested him when he was an adolescent.
“For two years, when I was 13 and 14 years old, Jeff sexually abused me while he worked in Washington for Rohrabacher as a legislative aide,” the 25-year-old married man told the Weekly in a recent interview. “There was never any penetration, but other than that? Everything. He wrapped it all up as normal, as love.”
Paul S. Meyer, Nielsen’s Costa Mesa-based defense attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Virginia man, who asked to remain anonymous, said Nielsen worked in his church’s youth ministry and that his parents rented Nielsen a basement room in their home sometime in 1994 or 1995.
“Jeff took an immediate liking to me,” he said. “When he moved into our house, [the sex] started right away. I know this might sound weird, but at the time he was a mentor and he assured me the messing around was normal. I believed him. I was in the seventh grade at the time. It was brainwashing.”
He says Nielsen orchestrated a “boyfriend-girlfriend type” relationship that included occasional public kissing, hand holding and sex.
“Jeff called it ‘our thing,’ and one time we were near Tyson’s Corner [Virginia], he stopped at a gas station so we could have sex in the bathroom,” the man said. “A guy walked in and caught me with my pants down and Jeff on his knees. We made some excuse about an injured knee or something. The guy said, ‘Oh!’ and quickly left.”
Another day, another Republican on his knees in front of a boy. This time it's not about the lies — it is about the blowjobs.
The Republican Party: Torturing the innocent, taxing the poor, and fellating the teens.
In going to a rehabilitation facility, Foley offered his first comments to date in a statement through his lawyer. The location of the facility is undisclosed, but the statement by fax came from a Clearwater phone number. He is expected to remain there at least 30 days.
I wonder how they picked the duration of his treatment to last "at least 30 days." Let's see, Election Day is 35 days from today...
No more late-night sessions for Foley:
Foley was a particularly friendly House member to young pages, remembering their names and talking to them during lulls in late-night sessions. [...]
In one speech, he referred to taking one of the young men, who was the highest bidder in "lunch with Mark Foley," to Morton's Steakhouse in his BMW.
Meanwhile, [to prevent homosexuality] the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.
The problem with this formulation is that in the Bush family it is the codpieced son who is doing his damnedest to demonstrate that, of father and son, he has the bigger penis. Or is the bigger penis, something like that.
WASHINGTON -- For more than a week, members of Congress said they would avoid partisan politics when they got Kenneth Starr's report on President Clinton. But when they finally saw it Friday, they split along party lines.
Republicans were aghast at Clinton's behavior, with many saying it showed he had lied and abused his power.
"It's vile," said Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach. "It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction.
That's what it is! More sad than anything else! Sad! So sad!
U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, one of Washington's leading advocates for missing and exploited kids, doesn't like the idea of a clothes-free camp for teenagers. [...]
The New York Times article noted that the kids were subjected to the unwanted gaze of a 40-something visitor to Lake Como peeping from a sauna window.
Lake Como resident Elf Andersen dubbed the man a "COG," which she said stands for "creepy old guy." This particular COG, like all others, was ejected from the 200-acre resort.
"The kids can spot when somebody is not pure of heart," said Andersen, who stressed that campers are protected by adult counselors and sleep in tents isolated from regular resort patrons.
Foley, a fifth term congressman, denies that he's raising the nude camping issue to bolster his chances for the Republican nomination for Senate.
As co-chairman of the House's Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, he lobbied for the AMBER network, a way to broadcast missing children's cases across the country.
He most recently tackled child erotica on the Internet. He said he was shocked by the newspaper article about the naked camps that have been going on in his home state since 1993.
Foley suggested the camps force kids to fixate on nudity during their impressionable, formative years. Normal teen sexual urges can become inflamed by the nakedness around them, he said.
"It's putting matches a little too close to gasoline," he said.
"The kids can spot when somebody is not pure of heart." This is where kids differ from Hastert.
