Visit Counter
Friday, May 11, 2012
John Edwards' Prosecution Ends with ABC Video of Him Lying
The prosecution wrapped its case against John Edwards today hoping to convict the former presidential candidate by replaying an ABC News interview from 2008 in which he denied having fathered a child with his mistress.
The Nightline interview aired just days after Edwards was photographed at the Beverly Hills Hilton cradling the infant daughter he had with mistress Rielle Hunter.
Edwards adamantly denied in the televised interview that he was the father of the baby and said he never asked any of his wealthy donors to support his mistress or his baby.
"I have never asked anybody to pay a dime of money. Never been told that any money has been paid. Nothing has been done at my request," Edwards told ABC News' Bob Woodruff.
"So if the allegation is that somehow I participated in the payment of money, that is a lie. An absolute lie," Edwards said.
Edwards is accused of illegally using campaign funds to hide Hunter and the baby. He claims any money used to hide Hunter were personal gifts and he was motivated only to keep the affair a secret from his wife, not the government.
You be the judge.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The prosecution rested its case today. On Friday the jury will have the day off, but Edwards' lawyers plan to argue that the judge should dismiss the case.
The government has built its case against Edwards on the allegation that he knew his aides were soliciting donations from wealthy donors to cover up his illicit affair and illegitimate daughter. Edwards maintains that he was worried about keeping the affair secret from his wife and did not know his supporters had supplied nearly $1 million in hush money.
In the Nightline interview, Edwards also said he did not know that Fred Baron, a donor and one-time campaign treasurer, was helping to pay for Hunter's upkeep.
"I knew nothing about this. No one consulted me about it. I had no involvement at all," Edwards said, conceding that Baron may have been paying Hunter in order to "help him."
That story contradicts testimony from Edwards' speechwriter Wendy Button, who on Tuesday told the court that Edwards told her "he had known all along that Fred Baron had been taking care of things."
Edwards has also since admitted fathering the baby girl, Frances Quinn.
Lawyers observing the case said the video made a dramatic conclusion to the prosecution's case, essentially putting Edwards on the stand and listening to him lie about things the jury now know to be true.
"It tied together a lot of circumstantial evidence. This case does not have the smoking gun. Juries like smoking guns. It has this tape, however," Steve Friedland, professor at Elon School of Law, told ABC News.
"It's likely, he'll never take the stand. This was the functional equivalent. And it hit all of the major areas from hiding the fact about he had a baby, from hiding what happened with the money trail... and on and on and on," Friedland said.
"So, John Edwards who said, I want to tell the truth here, wasn't telling the truth," he said. "This is like eating a garlic sandwich. It leaves a bad aftertaste.
Edwards seemed buoyed by state of the case on Wednesday, even remarking to his lawyer "That's their case?" But today he left court looking downcast.
After 14 days of prosecuting its case against Edwards, the government never called the woman at the center of affair, Edwards' mistress Rielle Hunter.
Instead, prosecutors called a cast of supporting characters, each offering insight into Edwards' machinations and motives.
Earlier in the day, the jury heard testimony from a former campaign adviser who testified that Edwards desperately tried to strike a deal with presidential rivals to be named attorney general with the hope of one day becoming a Supreme Court justice.
Leo Hindery, a campaign adviser, said he knew little of the $1 million effort to cover up Edwards' tawdry affair.
Hindery said he believed Edwards' lie that the first stories about the affair were "untrue" and "rumors."
Hindery, a longtime Democrat operative, was part of Edwards' inner circle and was dispatched to contact Barack Obama's campaign, and later Hillary Clinton's campaign, to strike a deal when it was clear Edwards would not win the 2008 presidential nomination.
On Jan. 3, 2008, the night Obama won the Iowa caucuses, Edwards ordered Hindery to contact Sen. Tom Daschle, an Obama adviser. Edwards wanted to team up with Obama, trading his endorsement for the vice-president slot early in the campaign to strike a death blow to Clinton.
Daschle questioned the Edwards' campaign reasoning for broaching the topic with Obama following the first contest of the campaign and on the night Obama was savoring victory, but brought the proposal to his candidate. Obama rejected the deal.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Thank you Barry... but we knew it all along
Gay Marriage
He voted for it, before he voted against it, but now he's for it.
He voted for it, before he voted against it, but now he's for it.
Another gift from the president. First it was Joe (The Gaffe) Biden and now the Messiah. Now where do you suppose most Americans are going to stand on this issue? NC just banned same sex marriage the same state holding the DNC. That makes 30 states against it. You just have to wonder about the timing of this announcement. I would like to have been a fly on the wall during the Obama-Biden conversation.
Out of control debt, Keystone, Solyndra, suing states for enforcing illegal immigration policy, Obamacare, etc, and now this. Ya gotta love this guy. Thanks Barry.
Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal
(aka The Death Nail... so the NYT's had to spin it)
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of "evolving" on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.
"At a certain point, I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.
In an election that is all but certain to turn on the slowly recovering economy and its persistently high jobless rate, Mr. Obama's stand nonetheless injects a volatile social issue into the campaign debate and puts him at even sharper odds with his presumptive Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage and favors an amendment to the United States Constitution to forbid it.
Public support for same-sex marriage is growing at a pace that surprises even professional pollsters as older generations of voters who tend to be strongly opposed are supplanted by younger ones who are just as strongly in favor. Same-sex couples are featured in some of the most popular shows on television, without controversy.
Yet time after time, when the issue is put to voters in states, they have chosen to ban unions between people of the same gender or to defeat measures that would legalize same-sex unions. Just Tuesday, North Carolinians voted overwhelmingly to add a ban to their state constitution, and Republican leaders in the Colorado House blocked a vote on legislation to allow civil unions; North Carolina and Colorado are considered swing states in presidential politics.
Nationwide, according to the pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, a plurality of swing voters favors same-sex marriage, 47 percent to 39 percent, and outside the South the margin widens to a majority of 53 percent in favor and 35 percent opposed; in the South, a plurality of 48 percent opposes same-sex marriage. Swing voters generally do not have strong opinions on the subject, Mr. Kohut said, though in the South 30 percent of swing voters say they are strongly opposed.
Supporters of same-sex marriage were quick to praise the president's decision to speak out.
"President Obama's words today will be celebrated by generations to come," said Chad Griffin, the incoming president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group. "For the millions of young gay and lesbian Americans across this nation, President Obama's words provide genuine hope that they will be the first generation to grow up with the freedom to fully pursue the American dream. Marriage — the promise of love, companionship, and family — is basic to the pursuit of that dream."
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, called the president's statement "a watershed moment in American history" that would aid efforts to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York said, "No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people, and I have no doubt that this will be no exception."
Some supporters saw the president's announcement in more political terms.
"For thousands of supporters who donated, canvassed and phone-banked to help elect Barack Obama in 2008, this is a powerful reminder of why we felt so passionately about this president in the first place," said Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way, a liberal interest group.
"I'm almost in tears," said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. Mr. Clemons, who is gay and was married in California in 2008, said the announcement would ignite progressives at a time when there was some ambivalence on the Democratic left as to how forcefully to support Mr. Obama's re-election bid.
Mr. Clemons compared that ambivalence to that of evangelicals on the Republican right toward Mr. Romney. But now, in one single step, Mr. Obama, at least, has erased any ambivalence his base might feel toward his candidacy, Mr. Clemons said.
Mr. Obama's comments came in an interview with ABC News's Robin Roberts that was arranged by the White House, knowing that Ms. Roberts is a popular correspondent, well-known especially among female viewers as a cancer survivor and among African-Americans, a group in which there is widespread opposition to same-sex marriage.
The interview was intended to be wide-ranging, but it inadvertently became the outlet for Mr. Obama's long-awaited evolution on same-sex marriage in a week that began with the remarks of his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., all but embracing same-sex marriage in an expansive answer to a question on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
Mr. Biden's well-publicized comments increased the pressure on Mr. Obama to take a stand, with his press secretary, Jay Carney, pummeled with questions from White House reporters. Newspaper editorials, columnists and bloggers assailed the president's ambivalence, demanding clarity before the election. On Tuesday, Mr. Carney signaled that Mr. Obama would soon address the matter.
But the timing was forced on the president in other ways.
Meaning Obama cares about one thing and that's Obama.
Meaning Obama cares about one thing and that's Obama.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama is to attend a fund-raiser in Los Angeles at the home of the actor George Clooney, which is expected to raise about $12 million, much of it from Hollywood people active in the gay-rights cause. On Monday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to speak at a campaign fund-raiser and reception of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Leadership Council in New York City, where the special guest is Ricky Martin, the singer who is gay. On June 6 Mr. Obama is scheduled to return to Los Angeles to speak at a gala benefiting the gay, bisexual and transgender community, with tickets costing up to $25,000. And this summer, Democrats will begin meeting to draft the party's platform for the national convention that will nominate Mr. Obama in September, and some gay-rights activists are pushing to include language endorsing same-sex marriage. The president and his advisers in the White House and at the campaign headquarters in Chicago knew Mr. Obama would repeatedly have to parry questions and criticisms on the issue. That prospect, several Democrats said, suggested that the greater political risk for Mr. Obama was not in coming out for same-sex unions but in appearing to be politically calculating, especially given that most supporters believe he personally has favored same-sex unions.
"He's been on this evolution since November 2010, and it's been getting kind of awkward," said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. "The word evolution signifies change that has an ending at some point."
This should insure he "evolves" himself right out of the WH.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Coming to our shores soon
France's new president Socialist Francois Hollande said his new tax rate (75%) would target those earning more than 1 million euros per year and apply not just to work income but also on capital gains. Immediate polls show that the idea is supported by nearly two-thirds of the (we want something for nothing) public.
So if you make a million a year you're going to give the government $750,000!
Look for the wealthy to be leaving France in droves.
We also have a Socialist president the public thinks is Robin Hood. Stealing from one to give to another calling it "fair share" is nothing more then Socialism. The problem is magnified when supported by nearly half of the (we want something for nothing) public which is the direction we are headed.
Margaret Thatcher's comment which has been used so often it's almost a cliché, "The problem with Socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people's money." was never more clearly evident then it is now.
Lets face it, Obama and Hollande are both Socialist's. But only one admits it.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)