Jefferson: Ambien Blackout

Democrats Acting Badly
CNSNews.com, by Rich Galen in Commentary from Mullings.com

* Thursdays papers were chock full of a report that a guy named Vernon L. Jackson had plead guilty to bribing Democratic Congressman William J. Jefferson of Louisiana on some Nigerian Internet deal he wanted to sell to the US government.
* Jefferson denied any involvement, saying he was "surprised and disappointed to learn of Vernon Jackson's guilty plea."
* We have a guy who has plead guilty to bribing Jefferson. Not guilty of ATTEMPTED bribery. Bribery.
* Bribery requires a briber and a bribee. To believe that Vernon Jackson could bribe William Jefferson without William Jefferson actually taking a bribe from Vernon Jackson requires a suspension of disbelieve amounting to a religious adherence to the concept of an immaculate deception.
* This is a pretty complicated case, bribe-wise, but the shorthand appears to be that Congressman Jefferson demanded that money be paid to a phony company set up by his wife and son. If Jefferson is going to claim that the money went to his family and not to him and so he was never bribed, he is going to be laughed right out of court and right into the federal slammer.
* You have to read the whole thing to get a sense of the scale of this thing. According to the LA Times, the Vice President of Nigeria is involved. The Vice President of Nigeria is not exactly living in Nigeria.

Pelosi Wants Investigation of La. Democrat
WashingtonPost.com, The Associated PressFriday, May 5, 2006

At the same time, Pelosi sought Thursday to differentiate the Jefferson case from what Democrats have labeled the "culture of corruption" linking the Republican majority and special interests represented by disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "The Republicans are all tied together," she said. "Mr. Jefferson is his own behavior, he is responsible for it." [sic!]