The aw-shucks defense (Milbank / WaPo re: Stevens)

[struggle4progress]

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens claims ignorance in corruption case
By Dana Milbank The Washington Post

... "You have to look at the relationship between Ted and Catherine, because it says something about what happened here," superlawyer Brendan Sullivan declared. In fact, he said, the Stevens family has a saying: "When it comes to things around the teepee, the wife controls. That might seem old-fashioned, but Ted Stevens is old-fashioned" ...

The 84-year-old senator left his lawyers the unenviable task of explaining away all the goodies he took but didn't report. "He didn't want these things," Sullivan said of the gifts. The tool cabinet? "He wanted it out of there." The furniture? "Used! Big cigarette hole in it." The garage? "It snows six feet a year." The $20,000 worth of Christmas lights? "I suppose Ted Stevens, the senator, should go home and get some climbing shoes on, go up and take them down, and send 'em back?"

Actually, all he had to do was report them to the Senate on his disclosure forms. But instead, Stevens, caught up in a sprawling Alaska corruption scandal, sat scowling and grumbling in the defendant's chair yesterday as he listened to opening arguments that, in a way, echoed the class-warfare themes of the campaign trail. Prosecutor Brenda Morris portrayed Stevens as a man of privileged tastes foreign to the 16 jurors. In response, Sullivan, counsel to Ollie North and Henry Cisneros, portrayed the former Senate president pro tempore as the very model of the average guy ...

"You won't find him at the art gallery" on days off, Sullivan assured the jurors. "He'll put on boots and go out in the woods." Sullivan even tried the creative argument that his client sided with labor unions over big oil. "To heck with them!" Sullivan recalled the former Senate Commerce Committee chairman saying of his beloved energy companies ...

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080927/NEWS03/809270320/1013/NEWS03

[spag68]

1. Stevens and his lawyer

It is amazing to me how these creeps can lie with perfectly straight faces. If anyone thinks that is all he has done in his time, you haven't thought about it much. The fact that it was this creep that got the traitor and cisneros off is troubling. Maybe he loses this time, we can only hope.

[orleans]

2. i forget why milbank was banned from olbermann's show

he wasn't being forthcoming about something--anyone remember?