By Jeff Smith, on Wed May 2, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  As a former state senator who served prison time for lying about a campaign finance violation of approximately $10K, I unfortunately have a unique perspective on the John Edwards imbroglio – and also on the broader issues of campaign finance law, selective prosecution, and budget priorities in a time of scarcity.
If John Edwards goes to prison, then many other politicians should join him, according to the Department of Justice’s logic.
A candidate who innocuously accepts a second-hand sportcoat from a supporter who laments the candidate’s ill-fitting blazer, or accepts a free haircut from a friendly barber who understands the importance of candidate’s presentation – but doesn’t report them on quarterly contribution reporting form – has broken the law just as John Edwards did, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.
 (FEC rules state that any gift to a federal candidate that is meant to influence an election and which has not been given routinely prior to the benefactor’s candidacy must be reported.)
But if the DOJ has anything to say about it, there will be a precedent set for candidates, even political neophytes who know little about the intricacies of federal campaign finance law.
Any failure to report such gifts would merit a felony charge and, potentially, prison time.
Read the rest of…
Jeff Smith: Is John Edwards a Criminal Or Just a Jerk?
By Artur Davis, on Wed May 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  I have a suspicion that the loathing toward John Edwards in Democratic circles is a kind of remorse toward a path that was almost taken. Another two days of campaigning in Iowa in 2004 and he might well have won there instead of coming in a close second; Iowa was in his reach again four years later and could have fallen his way had the late Obama surge been just a little weaker, or if the Jeremiah Wright tapes had more timely surfaced. Politics is made of those hair-length turns of fate; but there was more to it than some near misses with Edwards. For tantalizing moments in his career, he seemed unstoppable—a preternaturally smooth orator, but also a walking narrative of middle class aspiration who breathed passion into the old liberal idea that the powerful are lording over the powerless. The man who collapsed in a sex scandal came quite close to seducing a party to make him its savior.
Many Democrats know just how close, and in a complex way, they hate Edwards for it. The anger is compounded by the fact that part of his lie involved a marriage to a woman who died valiantly; and then there is the pathological depth of the lies, and the determined way he repeated them.
 But the most legitimate disdain and righteous anger is not a calculus that should drive prosecutorial discretion. If it were, the investment banks who jiggered their books to disguise their leveraged, insecure portfolios, and who helped wreck an economy, would have long faced their day in the criminal dock. The lending institutions who subsidized loans with no documentation, and whose underlings fudged signatures, would have surely faced fraud charges. The executives who told Congress that Fannie and Freddie steered clear of subprime, the senior Goldman management team whose testimony about their securitization of risk has been so undercut by the facts, would all have been hauled off on perjury charges. The fact that the sordid trail just described has not generated one prosecution is defended, and excused, on the ground that the power of indictment is not for morally clear but gray legal areas.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: The Troubling Choice to Try John Edwards
By RP Staff, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET When I learned that my good friend and our contributing RP, Jeff Smith, would be the featured guest on National Public Radio’s “This American Life,” I was thrilled. My favorite radio program was taking on the story that Jeff first wrote about here at this site in a series of provocative, hilarious and sometimes moving stories.
The program exceeded all of my highest expectations. In thirty minutes, the program provides a new, independent look at the career, scandal and recovery of Jeff Smith. And, while I am obviously biased, I think it demonstrates that despite his serious setbacks, Jeff’s voice will continue to educate, provoke and make us laugh for many years to come.
Click here to listen to the podcast: “The Postcard Only Rings Once.
By RP Staff, on Fri Apr 27, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET We are really thrilled to report that contributing RP Jeff Smith will be the featured guest this weekend on National Public Radio’s “This American Life,” the wildly popular radio program hosted by Ira Glass.
Jeff will be discussing his unique career trajectory — from rising political star, to federal prisoner, to college professor on the journey toward redemption. It’s a journey that he first discussed exclusive at The Recovering Politician. And soon, we will expect a bestselling book on the experience.
The show sounds very interesting:
MORTAL vs. VENIAL
Religion makes it pretty clear what differentiates mortal sins from venial ones. Mortal are the really bad sins and venial the lesser ones. But in our everyday lives, it can be really difficult to determine just how bad we’ve been. This week we have stories of people trying to figure out that question.
Check your local NPR schedules this weekend for “This American Life,” and/or the podcast will be available on Sunday at 7:00 PM EDT by clicking here.
So please tune into Jeff this weekend!
By Krystal Ball, on Fri Apr 6, 2012 at 11:30 AM ET  Yesterday, in my appearance on Martin Bashir’s MSNBC show, Bashir Live (See Clip below), I lost it a bit over Reince Priebus’ comparison of the War on Women to a War on Caterpillars. In my spluttering rant, I listed evidence of the many ways in which the War on Women is very much real and very much a product of the GOP working with shadow organizations like Americans United for Life (AUL). Below are a SMALL and not nearly comprehensive sample of the provisions being introduced nationwide which are designed to shame women and dictate to them what they can and can’t do. Please email additional examples to me at kmb.uva@gmail.com.
Overall
War on Planned Parenthood
***Please note that only 97% of what Planned Parenthood does is preventative health care or providing birth control and other contraception which DECREASES the need for abortions. One in five American women have relied on Planned Parenthood for services.
- In 2011 – 7 states passed bills defunding or limiting funding to Planned Parenthood (IN, KS, NC, NH, WI, TN, TX)
- In 2012 – 8 states are considering legislation to defund or limit funding to Planned Parenthood (AZ, IA, MI, NE, NH, OH, OK, PA)
- Mitt Romney has stated he would defund
- Congressional Republicans nearly shut down the government last year trying to defund Planned Parenthood
- Congressional Republicans launched a bogus investigation of Planned Parenthood last summer based on equally bogus Americans United for Life “research” and gave Susan G. Komen for the Cure an excuse to discontinue their partnership with the organization
- In Texas, Governor Perry decided he would rather low-income women go without preventative health care than have them receive it from Planned Parenthood.
Transvaginal Probes
- Legislators in 13 states have introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion. Of these, 7 states are pursuing the staterape vaginal probe variety.
Insurance Coverage
- Legislators in 11 states (AL, IN, KS, MI, NE, OK, OR, SC, TX, UT and WV) have introduced 18 measures that would restrict abortion coverage under all private health insurance plans.
- Legislators in 23 states (AL, AR, FL, GA, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, MI, MT, NE, NJ, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TX, UT, VA and WV) introduced 49 measures that apply to exchange coverage.
Personhood
TRAP Bills
- Mississippi legislators using arbitrary standards to attempt to close the states single remaining abortion clinic
- 11 states already have instituted arbitrary standards for abortion clinics with the sole purpose of shutting down increasingly rare clinics
Just purely WTF bills
State legislator craziness
Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from ShoqValue.com
By Artur Davis, on Fri Apr 6, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET There is a price to invoking race too frequently. It goes something like this: allege bias and racial motivations often enough, and the case gets old. Then, when the time comes when there is a genuinely ugly racial moment, and the claim needs to be made, it seems more shopworn than moving.
I have seen this equation play out countless times in Alabama, and I thought of it as the outcry builds over the shooting of an unarmed black child in Florida named Trayvon Martin. The details remain vague but there is at least an outline of what occurred. A neighborhood resident notices a black teenager who seems out of place to him; without reason or provocation, and contrary to the instructions of the police dispatcher he called, the man apparently follows the teenager. At some point, the two encounter each other and the episode ends horrifically. A 17 year old with no history of violence, and nothing in his past to suggest he would resort to violence, is shot dead. The shooter was allowed to leave without being arrested and without even being subjected to an alcohol or drug test.
 The shooter had a bloody nose and it suggests that his meeting with Martin turned into an altercation. But the case seems an almost perfect storm of bad, flawed intentions: one man’s suspicions of a kid who looked neither menacing nor suspicious; a police department’s insensitive decision to let the shooter walk away from the scene of a death; the local prosecutor’s failure to see probable cause to convene a grand jury; and a state deadly force law that might have been written for the jungle and not the confines of a community. It is morally clear enough that, yes, the Justice Department ought to be preparing an assault on the law as well as an investigation of the shooting.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: The Other Trayvon Martin Tragedy
By Jeff Smith, on Mon Apr 2, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET  Amazing piece, over 5 years old, that was well worth the wait. “Inside the Pathology of Gilbert Arenas” [Esquire]
By Jeff Smith, on Fri Mar 30, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET Absolutely.
It may be the only way to get state officials to act.
The Sanford police chief claims that he has no ability to prosecute based on the “Stand Your Ground” law.
Of course, he’s making huge assumptions without a full investigation of the facts.
Most importantly, “Stand Your Ground” is misapplied in the case of an assailant who has actually pursued a victim; pursuit directly contradicts the notion of self-defense.
And the assailant is caught – on tape, no less – determinedly pursuing the victim even against the specific and unambiguous direction of the police dispatcher.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Mar 20, 2012 at 4:00 PM ET  In his column this week for The Huffington Post, the RP tackles an issue that’s familiar to the RP Nation: the legalization of hemp.
But he pairs his advocacy with a challenge to you, the reader: Please get involved in this policy debate.
Especially if you live in Kentucky.
Tomorrow afternoon and evening, please come to the Red Mile in Lexington to join the RP and a bi-partisan group of state officials and local business leaders who understand that legalizing hemp will be a no-risk boon to our state’s and our nation’s economy.
You can also get more involved by becoming a political science major and getting an elected official position to push these efforts forward!
Click on the graphic to the left for details.
And check out the RP’s article below:
Last week, I received a very warm reception from my hometown’s Tea Party organization.
Yes, you read that correctly…
My regular readers know that I am an unabashed, gay-marriage-embracing, pro-choice-supporting, clean-energy-promoting, immigration-reforming, economic-inequality-battling, church-and-state-separating LIBERAL.
And yet, I repeat (for my friends that may have fainted upon reading the first sentence of this essay), I was warmly welcomed and even embraced by our local lovers of liberty.
I wish I could credit my soaring oratory or my youthful charisma, but I simply can’t deny that I’m a better recovering politician than an active one.
The truth is that I spoke on a topic that knows no ideology, an issue that has broad bi-partisan support, and yet one that has met stiff political resistence from the powers that be:
The legalization of industrial hemp.
The subject of hemp, while discussed and debated for decades, unfortunately has been mostly seen as a cause célèbre of the political margins, either the “hippie” Far Left or the libertarian Far Right. But my recent experience with the issue reveals that public support for industrial hemp legalization—particularly within the agricultural community — is reaching a tipping point.
And it’s time for the business community to shoulder-pad-up and push legalized industrial hemp across the goal line.
Click here to read the full column, “It’s High Time to Legalize Hemp,” at The Huffington Post.
By RP Staff, on Fri Mar 16, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET Contributing RP Jeff Smith hit the national radio airwaves yesterday to talk about the advice he’s given to Rod Blagojevitch on his first day in prison.
Click here to listen to the NPR interview.
Click here to read his essay.
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(FEC rules state that any gift to a federal candidate that is meant to influence an election and which has not been given routinely prior to the benefactor’s candidacy must be reported.)
