Young admits that Bunny money used to build YOUNG's new home!

[unc70]

I posted about this is Latest Breaking News. After reading about today's cross examination of Young, I can not believe that DOJ ever took the Edward's case to trial. You need to read the article from AP and WRAL.

[peacebird]

1. Why was Young given immunity? And why was Edwards charged?

[unc70]

4. Holding wanted to get Edwards. Why did it go to trial?

Holding is running for Congress in NC. I would relish the prospect of him winning the GOP primary on May 8, followed by being investigated himself before the general election in what has been gerrymander into a "safe" Republican district.

There is another story I'm posting tonight that I think calls into question the "facts" regarding the denial of paternity that Edwards initially made.

[dkf]

2. Wow that guy is a piece of work.

[customerserviceguy]

3. Yeah, I saw that, too

So, why does it change things? Andrew Young's job was to make sure the media didn't find out the truth about Johnny's little tootsie. How does having him skim off a few hundred thousand dollars as payment for that job affect the fact that the money went to hide the honey? Is the money Young pocketed for putting up with Space Cadet Rielle really any different from the money used to hide her in fancy hotels when she went to see Johnny along the campaign trail?

And how does a woman who's 101 years old get to keep the nickname "Bunny"???

[JDPriestly]

5. Young's veracity is placed in doubt. His testimony will quite likely not be believed.

Since Young is the prosecution's most important witness, that rather makes the prosecution's case just as unbelievable and untrustworthy as its chief witness.

Young is the person claiming that Edwards orchestrated the use of the donations (which were allegedly not intended for direct use in the campaign which is confusing in and of itself). The defense's cross-examination of Young really placed doubt on all of Young's testimony, his certainty about dates. Young's story is kind of falling apart.

So that is how this changes things.

Turning an opposing attorney's key witness into the opposing side's key problem is every litigation attorney's dream.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Young is a thief, we already know that

I expect Edwards' defense to do whatever they can to assail him. But there is way too much physical evidence that Mellon and Baron money were flowing for the purpose of hiding this, and Edwards has to be aware that somebody somewhere was paying her enough money to keep her trap shut. I'm sure she needled him about not having enough every time they got together along the campaign trail.

There's more than enough here to convict him if it really is a crime to have campaign supporters pay for the cover-up of your misdeeds.

[JDPriestly]

7. I have been trying to find information about who funded construction of George W. Bush's

ranch and house in Crawford, Texas.

I would also like to point out that, as I understand it (and I could be wrong) George W. Bush was enriched by third parties through the financing and political gymnastics that permitted government assets to be used for the football stadium for his Rangers' team in Texas.

I don't think that Edwards was really doing anything all that unusual in taking money from wealthy donors to fund his personal expenses.

I read something about the fact that Bunny Mellon was unhappy when she read the ridicule of Edwards for having used campaign money for his haircuts and was moved by that to offer money to him personally. I don't know whether that story is true.

The Clintons had so little money that they could not afford to hire lawyers for his defense in the bimbo scandals. Now they are extremely rich. And the new wealth they acquired during and after Clinton's presidency have enabled them to enjoy a wonderful lifestyle that they might not have known had Clinton not been president.

I'm sure the Clintons' money was legitimately earned -- by giving speeches, advice, etc. But ultimately there is little difference between "earning" very large amounts of money for relatively undemanding acts -- like speeches and introducing people and giving advice -- and accepting gifts of personal money. Both are ways that a person can make sure that money flows to a person who is potentially or may actually be powerful and can maybe return the favor at some later time.

So, I think it is very difficult to say whether Edwards, if he really knew what was going on, did anything worse than what a lot of politicians do routinely.

[customerserviceguy]

8. Good points

However, Edwards was stupid enough to do something sexual, and that's red meat to the media. It's not the good old boys network that used to keep things hushed up for Kennedy, etc. I mean seriously, in the post-Lewinsky era, what was he thinking?

His pick for a playtoy will be on the stand soon, and the whole country will know how incredibly stupid she is, if they didn't pick it up during her Oprah interview. The flabbergasting things are:

1) He would do this in the first place and take even a tiny risk of getting caught, given that he's always tried to score points off of Elizabeth's cancer.
2) That he would find such a space cadet to do this with, didn't he learn from the Lewinsky scandal how crazy it is to have someone stupid enough to blab about it.
3) That he wouldn't have had a secret vasectomy or at least use a condom to avoid impregnating her, giving solid DNA evidence of the affair. Didn't he remember the blue dress?

Even if the exact dollar amounts were hidden from Edwards, he still knew that SOMEBODY was taking care of his girlfriend, her pregancy expenses, the child that would result, and the guy he got to lie to all of us to cover it up. And all of this was while he was asking for our support, both at the ballot box and by donations.

[JDPriestly]

9. Stupid, yes. More criminal than Vitters or Ensign, not in my opinion.

Did Ensign HIRE the son of his mistress? Did he find a job for that young man?

Did Ensign pay to keep his story quiet? I'm not sure of the answers. Do you remember?

I wish I could find the reference I am looking for about Bush and his ranch. I wonder if I dreamed it.

[customerserviceguy]

10. They're both sleazebags to be sure

But neither of them catapulted themselves on to the national stage by running for President, and that makes a difference, too.

[JDPriestly]

11. No. They were just senators.

Nothing personal, but that is a ridiculous argument in my opinion.

This trial is yet another example of the kind of sensationalism that keeps good people from running for office.

Idiots like Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Michelle Bachmann, even Romney don't run into problems like this. They can't consider two points of view to much of anything. Their brains just don't have the capacity.

You get a brilliant man like John Edwards (if you had seen the outline of his proposals for our country and understood the work he did as a lawyer, you would not question his brilliance) and the complexity of his nature is just too hard for people to understand.

I wonder sometimes what very brilliant and qualified people might run for office if they weren't pushed through the gauntlet of a blow-by-blow accounting for every passion, every mistake, every episode of excess they had in their youth and life. Bush -- far below brilliant -- was never scrutinized. He married at a fairly mature age, but the only relationship he had before marriage that was discussed was when he was quite young and in college. Sorry, but I don't believe that a guy with his reputation for alcohol and maybe even drug abuse, was that celibate before marriage. Possibly not even after marriage. Yet, no news reports. It's as if there were a blackout.

Edwards is being singled out. It's not that I defend what he did. It's that I abhor the fact that he is being singled out.

[customerserviceguy]

12. There were a few other things different

Edwards denied everything, even when the cat was out of the bag as far as the National Enquirer story went. I don't seem to recall such vehement denials from Ensign and Vitter. Also, there's the pregnancy to consider, and the denial of his parenthood of the child that he was responsible for. That includes letting Andrew Young rake in so much personal cash to say he was the father.

Yes, John Edwards had some pretty beautiful things to say, I'll give you that. Too bad that he didn't give those ideas enough respect to not be so incredibly reckless. If Barack Obama had simply said, "Now is not my time," we might well have had Edwards as the nominee, and all of this would have hit the fan just as we were going into the general election. You'd be seeing stories about how Osama bin Laden wanted to kill John McCain to make way for an utterly unprepared Vice President Palin.

As for people being discouraged from running for office, why not look at it the other way? Why are people who would make good officeholders not discouraged from doing blatently stupid things? And John Edwards was not being lambasted for some youthful error, he was being pursued for current behavior.