Liberty's Blog

Rotten to the Core

In an effort to prove that crookedness in a bipartisan occupation in government. Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana was caught with his hand in the cookie jar with $100K in cold cash, literally.

It takes a particular kind of nerve to be filmed taking $100,000 in alleged bribe money out of an FBI informant's car, have the FBI later find the very same money wrapped in aluminum foil in your freezer - and then adamantly claim that you have done nothing wrong.

But Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana has that rare trait - to the horror of his fellow Democrats who are hoping to convince voters that it's the Republicans who are corrupt. "There are two sides to every story," Jefferson said, reaffirming his innocence in a Capitol Hill news conference yesterday. "There are certainly two sides to this story."

Maybe so. But an 83-page FBI affidavit released over the weekend - after a raid of Jefferson's congressional office - alleges Jefferson was caught on video taking a certificate for a 30 percent stake in a Nigerian company in exchange for his political influence, including intervening with the vice president of Nigeria.

The affidavit also says that, outside the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton in Arlington, Va., Jefferson received "a leather briefcase which contained $100,000 cash in denominations of $100 bills"- and that $90,000 of it wound up in his freezer, concealed "inside various frozen food containers." It says he referred to the cash as "African art" and laughed with a partner about "all these damn notes we're writing to each other as if . . . the FBI is watching."

Well, congressman, the FBI was, and your business partner was wearing a wire. Guilty pleas by another former partner say you took more than $400,000 in payments.

Now if this isn't disturbing enough, our congressman are attacking the Justice department for the raid claiming seperation of executive and legeslature issues.

So in the wake of the FBI's Saturday night raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), Democrat and Republican members have united in a spirit of bipartisanship to defend the Constitution. House and Senate leadership went on record to say how "concerned" they were about the action. House Speaker Dennis Hastert even waxed eloquent on how the Constitution was designed to protect against tyranny.

Wow. After sitting largely silent for more than five years of assaults against citizens' constitutional rights, our legislators have been moved to protect the Constitution because one of their own -- a man who meets contacts in hotel parking lots to accept briefcases full of money, and actually kept $90,000 in cash bundled in his freezer -- had his offices searched by the FBI.

Me, I blame the voters. We are the ones the elect the Ted Kennedys, Ray Nagins, Tom Delays, and William Jeffersons. We won't hold accountable those who defend such folks. We keep electing the same old people because they have developed power and influence. The problem is with most of these folks the power and influence is used to help themselves, instead of helping their constituency.

posted by Liberty @ 5:41 AM