Innocent...just like OJ.

Yup.

Conservatives are believers in nothing if not fair trials.

Why, I can´t even remember the last time I heard a conservative complain about criminals getting off on technicalities.

Ya gotta love these cretins.
They pursue Whitewater for years, finding nothing. YEARS! But he HAD to guilty!!! They just knew he was!
Look! A soiled dress!
SEE! We told you he was guilty!!!

I had heard early on some rumblings that the prosecutor misconduct was 'gamed' to ensure subsequent clearing of charges against Stevens. That the prosecutors deliberately mangled things so that the man would go free; they, having been Bush administration minions, did this on purpose. Has anything come of that? Could anything come of that?

I suppose this is another instance of 'we'll never know for sure.' Sorry, but after 8 long years my conspiracy hat has had much use, and it has not always been wrong...

Ollie North also had a conviction thrown out on a technicality. Now he's a Republican hero. Cap Weinberger had the decency to disappear. And Gordon Liddy is a Rep hero despite a conviction and jail time.

So sayeth the Republicans, Our reality not yours dutifully repeated by the "liberal" press . He was dirty and nothing can change that.

When Duke Cunningham comes marching home, again, hurrah, hurrah, when the Dukester comes back home, again, hurrah, hurrah.

Ummm, that slight technicality for Ollie was due to the huge ego driven mistake of Democratic Senators, who had once passed the Bar and thought that qualified them to be trial lawyers, to give immunity to Ollie for his testimony and never taking his deposition prior to that blunder. But, yes, the wingers do think of Ollie as a hero.

The justice system only works for the rich and connected. So This scumbag walks for something close to 100k people are rotting in jail for (Prosecutorial misconduct), and we're supposed to be okay with it because it was the right thing?

Fuck that, what about all the little people for whom justice could have fucking cared less about the 'law' or 'what's right'?

I hope someone murders this guy in their beds, and holder with him.

Hey, Terraformer --

Yeah, I rememer the same thing. When it was first announced that the Justice Dept. had decided to drop charges against Stevens after he already had been convicted my first thought was, "What the hell?"

Then I listened to the explanation and I thought: "Oh, yeah, I remember that. There was so much sheer excess of prosecutorial misconduct it looked to some people -- including me -- that maybe the politicized Justice Dept. was actively working for a mistrial/throwing out of charges."

I understand now that the judge who presided over the trial is looking into an investigation of this misconduct. Hopefully they'll go far enought to find out if this was the premeditated "gamed" scenario you reference.

I do wonder why so many pundits manage to avoid mentioning that the Bush Justice Dept did all this, and that Holder went about as far as he could in saying that they'd messed up badly. Watch as HE gets blamed for the misconduct.

Bush has vanished. There was a whole long Time cover story about the economic crisis and the moral implications therein, and I don't think it once mentioned Bush. It's like the press has decided to draw the curtain on him, and pretend en masse that there was a Democratic president in 2000, then a big time travel to the election in 2008.

soullite -- you might want to ratchet yourself back a little bit. advocating murder is not appropriate under any circumstances. but it seems especially stupid in conjunction with your complaint that the justice system doesn't work. are you also advocating that everyone should ignore the courts and seek their own justice personally in every case?

and it's odd that you would include both holder and stevens, your gripe seems to be with the justice department. so what did stevens do that he should be murdered?

and do you really suggest that federal officials should be murdered because the world is imperfect, and name particularly one who has made an attempt to address it in one instance?

how does that help "the little people"?

advocating murder is not a rational response, nor a moral one.

When republicans are prosecuting republicans, especially in the bush doj, I have to wonder if prosecutorial conduct wasn't purposeful. No wonder bush didn't pardon him.

Why are the Republicans so soft on crime?

Also, why don't they understand the difference between "innocent" and "not guilty"?

The Bush/Rove owned and operated DOJ screws up prosecuting a guilty-as-hell prominent Republican Senator so bad that they have to let him go.

I'm SHOCKED, just SHOCKED!

NOT!

Hey Steve,

you hear the voice of the people here? They smell a rat. How about a little investigative reporting here?

Who were the prosecutors? Whatt are their political affiliations? Their experience level? Does it appear that they deliberately threw the case or were they just too inexperienced/incompetent to do it right? And, are they still employed by the DOJ?

We want to know.

pushing back against the misleading conventional wisdom

That would imply there is wisdom and intelligence involved.

Corrected: pushing back against the misleading conventional stupidity

Got off on a technicality and that proves his innocence??? Just the kind of mental giants I want legislating our laws. The Rove approach. (Sooner or later he'll pay for Mike McConnell's tragic death.) No matter how they buff this Steven's turd so it doesn't smell as bad he's still been exposed for a corrupt long term briber.

btw...our conversations have sunk to such a level because there really is noway to communicate with the lunacy that has become the republican party whose repre4sentatives are Beck,Steele, Rush, Hannity Boehner, Bachmann and a host of other looneys. The party of selfishness and greed, hypocrisy and corporatism. The anti-government party even when the government is we the people.

The question is now: Can Democracy survive the republicans?