The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

When someone last week on Twitter grumbled that Alaska had elected a convicted felon to the Senate, I quipped that it was one of his job qualifications.

Now, I’m having second thoughts, because Bill Bailey (former Federal Inmate #60733-066), whom I’ve mentioned here before, set me straight.

Bill notes firstly that Ted Stevens is not actually a convicted felon (not yet, anyhow). Yes, a jury found him guilty, but he hasn’t been sentenced, and until then, he’s not convicted. He can vote. He can run for office. He can take office. He’s not a criminal—at least not officially.

More importantly, Stevens has significant grounds for appeal. There are allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, including withholding exculpatory evidence. On top of that, federal law is particularly harsh and unfairly tilted toward the government. Most of us have at one time or another, without even knowing it, committed a federal offense that could send us to prison, because there are way too many federal crimes, and they’re way too easy to prosecute, and the penalties are way too harsh. And in this case, Stevens was not accused of being corrupt. He “had failed to disclose information about his residence on his personal financial disclosure.”

But—I know you’re arguing—residences are exempt from disclosure. (Or at least you would have been arguing that if you knew.)

Uh, oops, almost. It’s like filling out a bloody IRS form. It’s enough to give you an ulcer. And the dirty little secret is that the tax professionals don’t know all the answers, either. Hell, the IRS doesn’t even know all the answers. Federal filings are usually a mass of useless paperwork with convoluted rules that no mere human can understand. And now Ted Stevens is being threatened with felony prison time for this?

In other words, maybe he’s actually not guilty, or shouldn’t be guilty, or at least not that guilty. But that’s not how it often turns out, and that’s not what the uninformed populace assumes. Bill Bailey says it poignantly:

Unfortunately, most citizens don’t pay attention to details on matters like this and automatically assume he’s a crooked politician and that the prosecution wears the white hat.

You would think that I, as a writer of a civil-rights blog, would have given him the benefit of the doubt. Even if he were currently serving time, you’d think I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. But I knee-jerked.

Because if you look at Ted Steven’s voting record, you see a sadistically ironic justice at work here. Stevens voted to ban “desecration” of the U.S. flag. He voted for a Federal ban on gay marriage. He voted to make it easier for the government to tap cell phones and easier for the government to snoop on you in general. He helped re-authorize the hideous PATRIOT Act, and also to extend its wiretapping provisions. He voted against habeas corpus for Guantánamo prisoners, and against requiring the CIA to report on its interrogation methods. He’s voted to limit appeals in capital cases and for mandatory prison terms. He votes for the War on Drugs. He’s voted for harsher Federal penalties in gun and drug “crimes,” so called. (Fortunately, other than that, he has a pro-gun-rights voting record.)

Stevens seems to want more and harsher Federal crimes, even though there are already too many of them, even though most of those already on the books are bullshit, even in areas the Federal government has no business legislating. He’s a politician, and politicians vote for shit like this. They do it because we the voters are ignorant of the true costs of these bad laws. They do it because they’re afraid of seeming “soft on crime.” They do it because we’re afraid of criminals, and politicians love to wave their magic legislative wand and calm our fears with assurances that they’ve taken care of it, by passing yet another useless law in the convoluted web in which even more people are now going to get caught.

And now Stevens himself is caught in this same web that he himself helped to spin. There’s a certain sadistic justice in that.

-TimK