From Beam Us Up, Madam Speaker

By John Edgell, CQ Politics, August 13, 2009

Brace yourselves.  In about three weeks, the world is about to get a little wackier  and a little louder, and don’t say you weren’t forewarned.

Former Congressman James A. Traficant Jr., Youngtown Ohio’s  finest, is to be released from the Rochester, Minn. federal medical center  on Sept. 2, after completing his sentence for his April 2002 conviction for racketeering, bribery and fraud.

For most convicted felons, returning home after seven years locked away to a hero’s welcome is most unlikely.  But most ex-cons aren’t Traficant,  the onetime presidential candidate  with an almost mythical standing in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley region, who will be greeted with “Welcome Home, Jimbo”  and a sold-out tribute dinner of 1,200 people  in his honor.

There aren’t many larger-than-life characters left in American politics, especially notorious ones such as Traficant, a hero to many, who deliberately flaunt conventional norms and are unafraid of embarrassing themselves.  He’s the second House member expelled since the Civil War, who received a hero’s send-off going to the pokey, and a hero’s welcome getting out  too.  

Have expulsion  and a federal felony conviction  become a potential platform for a political comeback?  Go figure.

Best known for his loopy and theatrical  ‘one minute’ House floor speeches – “Beam Me Up, Mr. Speaker” — the pro-labor, pro-school-prayer ex-county sheriff  railed on such topics as burping cows and space toilets.  

Of course, Traficant wasn’t the first or last member of Congress to exploit demagogic rhetoric  to gain the spotlight, but he surely elevated it to a higher level, if not orbit.

Who else other than Traficant could represent themselves in a federal courtroom, convince a jury and gain an acquittal after being caught red-handed with audiotape evidence showing he took $160,000 in bribes  from two Mafia bosses?  In doing so, Traficant became the only person to represent himself against a federal RICO case and win.  (Of course, Traficant’s record  as a defense lawyer wasn’t perfect.)

And then Traficant ran for Congress in the next election – up against Ronald Reagan’s re-election coattails – and beat handily a Republican incumbent and despite being outspent seven-fold.

Traficant may not have wanted to be a freak show , but, hey, he hung around with people like ‘Charlie the Crab’  and couldn’t help himself most of the time.  You don’t hire as your top staffer one of the good fellas  who delivered $100,000 in bribes from the Pittsburgh arm of the mob, at least not by accident.

And his constituents loved him for it: In 1992, ‘Jimbo’ received the third-highest vote total  of congressional candidates.

Want More and Better? Read the WHOLE thing… ;-)…

Crossposted from Antemedius

Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

In this interview McGovern talks with Real News Network CEO Paul Jay about the paper trail on the Iraq war, as revealed in the British “Downing Street Memo”.

From Lee Camp at Huffington Post:

I know I should be mortified by the lobbyist-organized mobs of angry Brooks Brothers mannequins who are now making headlines by shutting down congressional town hall meetings. I know I should be despondent during this, the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Health Care and Tax War. And yet, I’m euphorically repeating one word over and over again with a big grin on my face.

Finally.

Finally, there’s no pretense. Finally, the Me-First, Forget-Everyone-Else Crowd’s ugliest traits are there for all to behold.

— David Sirota, Friday, August 07, 2009, The Me-First, Forget-Everyone-Else Crowd

Murdoch’s paywall is a gift to the competition

The UK Telegraph, Shane Richmond, August 06, 2009

They’ll be doing the conga round the office at The Daily Mirror today following news that Rupert Murdoch plans to charge for the online versions of The Sun and The News of the World by next summer.

It’s not clear exactly what the plan is but based on Murdoch’s comments it sounds like a paywall. He said: “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”

Ok, now repeat after me:

We have never charged for news.

We have never charged for news.

We have never charged for news.

Back to Murdoch: “Quality journalism is not cheap.”

I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about The Sun.

This is a great opportunity for the Mirror, The Daily Star and, I suppose, producers of pictures of topless women, to hoover up those Sun readers who aren’t sure whether they want to pay.