Edward's case no "slam dunk"

Complex Case Ahead for Prosecutors

Excerpt:

The criminal case against John Edwards on misuse of campaign funds will be a challenge for federal prosecutors, experts in campaign finance and corruption said.

Most cases related to campaign finance are hard for prosecutors to win, said Joseph Sandler, a lawyer in Washington with much experience in campaign finance and election law. “In the best of circumstances, to successfully prosecute a campaign finance case is not easy,” he said. “It’s a complex area of law, and it’s difficult to explain and understand.”

Yet public disapproval of Mr. Edwards’s extramarital affair while he posed on the campaign trail as a “devoted family man,” as the indictment put it, seems to have predisposed many observers to hope that he can be found guilty, whatever the law states.

A blogger at Above the Law, a Web site devoted to legal topics, noted the indictment and added, “Life can seem pretty unfair sometimes. This isn’t one of those times.”

Comment: He wasn't really a Breck "girl" but I like these images!

John Edwards channels Slick Willie's "IS"

Edwards, feds arguing if money was donated or gift

Excerpt:

Former presidential candidate John Edwards and federal prosecutors are arguing over whether funds used to cover up his extramarital affair were campaign contributions or just gifts from his longtime friends.

Comment: Clinton

Bill Clinton and the Meaning of "Is"

Excerpt:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

Final comment: If it was a gift to help cover up his sin to protect his campaign it was a campaign contribution!

"he sent his marriage into remission when his wife was in remission"

Keeping It Rielle

Excerpt:

The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

So narcissist walks into a New York bar and meets a legendarily wacky former Gotham party girl — whose ’80s exploits were chronicled in a novel by her former boyfriend Jay McInerney because the behavior of her and her friends “intrigued and appalled me.” When you appall Jay McInerney, you know you’re in trouble.

The president manqué gives Rielle Hunter, formerly Lisa Druck, more than $114,000 to shoot vain little videos for his Web site (even though she’s a neophyte), one of which is scored with the song “True Reflections” about the Narcissus pool, which goes: “When you look into a mirror, do you like what’s looking at you? Now that you’ve seen your true reflections, what on earth are you gonna do?”

He has an affair with Hunter, while he’s honing his speech on the imperative to “live in a moral, honest, just America.” A married former aide says he’s the father when she gets pregnant, even though she’s telling people Edwards is the dad. And one of his campaign donors pays off Hunter to get her resettled with the baby out of North Carolina.

But the Breck Girl wants a gold star for the fact that he sent his marriage into remission when his wife was in remission. That’s special.

In his statement, he bleats: “You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare.” Isn’t stripping bare how he got into this mess?

It isn’t like we didn’t know that the son of a millworker was a little enraptured by himself, radiating self-love from his smile and his man-in-a-hurry airs and the notorious $800 bill for a pair of haircuts and his two-minute YouTube hair primping to the tune of “I Feel Pretty.”

Certain men assume that power confers sexual privilege. And in American politics, there is an eternal disjunction between character and achievement. Sinners do good things, saints do bad things.

Comment: Edwards: enraptured by himself. (I was never a John Edwards fan!)