Ex-governor of Virginia in court on bribery charges

[onehandle]

Source: Reuters

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(Reuters) - Former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife are scheduled to make their first court appearances on federal bribery charges on Friday.

McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were charged this week in a 14-count indictment with accepting bribes from the chief executive of a dietary supplements maker, Star Scientific Inc.

The pair are scheduled to make an initial appearance and be arraigned in federal court, a court filing shows.

McDonnell - who left office this month and was once seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016 - and his wife are alleged to have accepted gifts that included cash, golf fees and clothing, the grand jury indictment said. In exchange, they arranged for Star Scientific executives to meet government officials who could help their business, it said.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/24/us-usa-virginia-mcdonnell-idUSBREA0N0RV20140124

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[Triana]

2. Oh I see. IOW, McDonnell was a one-man version of ALEC.

But ALEC is OK and legal. Uh-huh.

[Heather MC]

3. Maureen was having

an Affair. That is my theory
It would make some parts of their story more believable.

Like Why Bob didn't know about the $30,000 gift.
Or how Maureen knew before she asked the Williams would buy bob a 6k watch.

It also might explain why she was the one always setting up meetings between the two men trying to help Williams with his vitamin product.

The Cook said she was Lonely, bored, and upset about money, and in walks a wealthy benefactor, to solve her #firstLadyProblems.

[valerief]

4. Another criminal gov with bad hair. nt

[yesphan]

5. It will be nice to see the title from this story

change from "Ex-governor of Virginia in court on bribery charges" to "Ex-governor of Virginia in jail on bribery charges".

[gussmith]

6. Very Large Repayment

"McDonnell said in July he had repaid $120,000 in loans from Williams"

How was that possible given McDonnells' finances?

[Iwillnevergiveup]

7. I'm not usually in favor of categorizing people

But Papantonio is on the money when he says Repubs are either grifters or lunatics.

[calimary]

8. He's go the strangest shape.

I try not to fixate on looks especially when there's so much other strange stuff about him that draws one's attention.

But I have to say I am stunned at the sheer size of his head. It doesn't fit the rest of his body. It's disproportionally large! Just looks like he's wearing some outsized surround-helmet that features a human face and hair. As though somebody popped the next-size-up head on his neck.

And then, of course, there's all that other decidedly off-putting stuff about him that draw's one's attention.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. Whenever conservatives start bleating about "class warfare"

I think of a bit from Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Tuchman writes about a French peasant revolt in 1358 that began in the village of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley. At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with his children watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her husband and then killed her.

I might have given examples from the French Revolution -- guillotining aristrocrats for the "crime" of being aristocrats is actual class warfare. In the Russian Revolution, both sides engaged in it.

That is class warfare, not raising the marginal tax rate by a few points on those making six-figure incomes.