We Need to Know More About Bob Penney

In an earlier post I discussed Lisa Murkowski's selling back the land she bought cheap next to real estate developer Bob Penney's house on the Kenai River. (For the non-Alaskans, that's KEY-nai, emphasis on the KEY.)

But I suspect the really interesting character in this story is Bob Penney. His name has been in and out of the news since we arrived in Alaska 30 years ago. He's been a big proponent of sports fishing. We really need to learn more about all the things he's been involved with. The quote below and then the video deal with Penney's knowledge of the value of the land.

From a Richard Mauer and Brandon Loomis Anchorage Daily News piece on July 25, 2007,

“The denial of knowledge of the value of a prime piece of real estate by a multimillionaire developer who lived next to the property and an attorney/real estate investor turned U.S. Senator took on comic opera overtones when Penney told the press: ‘Word of honor, I did not know what the assessed value was … I thought it was still $120,000,’” Boehm wrote.
“It doesn’t pass the straight-face test or the laugh test,” Boehm said in an interview. “On what planet is that an excuse?”

To add to Boehm's point, here's a video from Veracifier at Youtube in which

Real Estate developer Bob Penney testifies at a hearing on the "Ecocomics of Sports Fishing," April 24, 2007

By the way, I still haven't heard back on the email I sent Penney's company on the 27th offering to buy the land he'd just gotten back.

[More on Penney here and here.]

Mom and Daughter Fly to LA

My daughter has been visiting for the whole month of July. My mother came about two weeks ago. The logistics were a little tricky since we had our trip to the village of Wales (don't know why everyone thinks we went to UK when I say we went to Wales) came the day after my mom arrived. Anyway, getting my mom on a non-stop flight was a high priority and there are about two a day from Anchorage, one a red-eye, one at 3:15pm. And then getting my daughter on the same flight.










I've never seen the Alaska Airlines check-in so crowded in Anchorage. It looked more like LA. Let's start here at the check in counter. Only half the stations are open. Doesn't look bad.






But here's the beginning of the line, these folks are almost at the counter. It goes all the way back and around to the windows.











This is maybe 3/4 of the way, looking back toward the counter. The line winds to the right and then around way back to the far wall. The machines at left are the e-ticket baggage checkin lines.







And here I'm at the end of the line. Now this may be common other places, but I've never seen it this jammed in Anchorage except on the first day of Christmas vacation.



The E-ticket baggage check-in was also crowded, but it only took about 20 minutes.




Meanwhile, security was almost completely empty.















Then I decided to pay for the parking at the relatively new machine in the terminal. Actually, we were pretty close to 30 minutes so I thought we might still be in the free category. But the machine got stuck. Pushing the cancel button did nothing, running my credit card through did nothing, and the machine had my parking ticket. We pushed the 'call for help' button and got a recording saying to leave a message.




We tried again a few minutes later and they sent someone to fix the machine. But by then we owed $2. Oh well, if we'd have paid after we got the car, it surely would have been $2 anyway.

When we got home after running errands, we found out their 3:15pm flight didn't leave until almost 7:30pm. Bummer. At least they were together and my mom didn't have to do all that alone.

What's With All the Phone Books?

It used to be that the phone company dropped one copy of the white pages and one copy of the yellow pages on our doorstep once a year. Now it seems we get new sets of phone books every couple of weeks. Another one was there this morning. Who are all these people publishing phone books? It's not from our phone company. I called and asked them to please come and take it away, but she said they couldn't. Is it worth checking the anti-litter laws? She did tell me it was recyclable. Great use of trees. There's got to be a way to stop this proliferation of phone books.

Bird Houses and Chinese Dinner

We did some of the Anchorage Garden Tour yesterday. It was disappointing. We saw nice gardens, but nothing that was terribly exciting. Perhaps I've been on too many of these tours, but it sure seems like there was more variety in past tours. The most interesting thing I saw was this wall of bird houses. This is perhaps just a half or a third of the wall.






Later we had dinner at the home of friends. Xiwei and Wang Yen had prepared a wonderful dinner and the company was good too.

Wales 7 - Writing Workshop

The ostensible purpose of the trip to Wales was the Writing Workshop. I'd never been to one before and didn't know what to expect. We had a bona fide writer leading the workshop. Actually, someone who has extensive experience in teaching writing - Kim Stafford director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College..


I was pleasantly surprised. Starting in Nome, where we spent the first night because Wales was fogged in, we regularly did little writing exercises. Our first exercise was to "take a line for a walk." After about five minutes or writing we stopped, volunteers read what they wrote, then we were supposed to pick a line we really liked in what we wrote, and start from there.

We got another assignment to just write a run-on sentence - we weren't to worry about proper grammar or anything like that, just keep writig your thought.


Saturday, in Wales, when we had all the participants, we did an assignment on "What makes me want to live?" I'm attaching a page Kim printed out with one or two lines from most of the participants. These are pretty short and anonymous and they've been printed and passed around so I don't think I'm betraying any confidences by posting this here. I'd love to put up a couple of the pieces that were printed in the booklet at the end of the workshop. Even though people picked what they wanted in there, and it is pretty public by virtue of being in the booklet, I don't have anyone's permission to put their stuff up here, so I'll pass on that.



I've never really written in a group before, where we shared our writing with others as we wrote and it was an interesting and useful experience. I explored ideas I wouldn't have come up with on my own. I also got a better focus on things I sort of knew. Since this was my first and only such workshop, I don't have much experience to base recommendations for such things on. Things I know contributed were: 1) an experienced, articulate, thoughtful facilitator, 2) interesting and diverse participants who brought a lot of different perspectives and ideas to the table, and 3) being in a pretty isolated place. There was only nature and nice people to distract us pretty much.

Oh yes, I would also add that many of the people in the group identify themselves as artists rather than writers, so some of the participants led art exercises. We did watercolors one afternoon and made little books out of beautiful pieces of paper. All - the writing, the watercolors, the bookmaking - were incorporated in the booklets Kim had published on his new printer that he'd carefully carried all the way to Wales.

Dan Fagan is Now Selling Happiness

Today's Fagan column ends with:

Happiness is like the flu. It spreads. It has a domino effect. And that's a good thing.

Next, he's going to change his radio show theme song to John Lennon's "Love, Love, Love"

But for all his ranting against materialism -

I say the following with an unblemished record of being a staunch lifelong capitalist. I fear we are in the grip of materialism

- he hasn't come completely over to the dark side. He doesn't mention capitalism or even corporations as a cause for our materialism. He doesn't 'bellyache' about CEO's getting paid $50 million when their companies lose money, or corporate America's search to cover the last empty space with advertising to create all these wants in people who have to max their credit cards at 20% and higher interest rates to pay for it. He doesn't say corporations are the problem. Instead, Fagan says

government is not helping with the wants verses [sic] needs problems.

It's all the money government gives to welfare recipients to meet their wants, not their needs. Things like cell phones and Big Bird. Again, there's no mention of how much cellphones and Big Bird cost, compared to, say, for starters, what Haliburton has gotten from the government in shoddy, or uncompleted, contract work in Iraq.

But let's give Dan some credit here. He even recognizes some subtleties - that some people are unhappy because of chemical imbalances or real tragedies. Dan's taken some big steps in his articles. And in today's he tells us that spreading happiness is much more important than 'bellyaching.'

Dan, are you going to follow your advice and spread happiness on the air, or are you going to keep bellyaching?

[Dan, a note on your metaphors and similes. You're trying to create a postive image here. Yes, the flu spreads quickly, but it isn't something that people want. And what exactly is 'a domino effect"? One thing knocking down another and then another and then another? Again, not exactly a positive image. I know, I'm having trouble too coming up with images of things spreading quickly that are happy. A beautiful song? What about peanut butter on bread? These don't quite catch the spreading image of the flu, but they are a lot more positive. So a good writer here, if she couldn't come up with a positive metaphor, would try to find a totally different way of making the point instead of using problematic metaphors.]

I'd link this to his Comment piece, but I'm having trouble getting to it tonight. If I can, I'll add the link in later. [Fixed - link at top]

Good-Bye Toni Pounds

I shouldn't have been surprised at how many people I know from totally different parts of my life who were at Toni's memorial this afternoon at the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.





I knew Toni from Healing Racism Anchorage. Such a smart woman with such a wicked sense of humor. And so dedicated to fighting racism. She's been on dialysis for years, but she kept leading discussion groups and training workshops. She didn't make it to our last meeting - July 17 - and Shirley invited us to go back to the hospital with her after the meeting. Toni was clearly in pain and not at all happy, but she was still making snappy comments.

Today, despite the reason we were there, there was much laughter as friends and relatives told tales about the Toni they knew. I'm sure Toni was watching from somewhere, free of the physical ailments that burdened her here on earth, and smiling along with all of us.

The details were in official ADN announcement:

Anchorage resident Toni Pounds, 59, died July 20, 2007, at Providence Alaska Medical Center after a long illness. A memorial service to honor and celebrate her life will be at 3 p.m. Saturday at Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 3201 Turnagain St.
Toni was born Oct. 7, 1947, to Gloria and Russell Pounds, at Fort Riley, Kan. Her father was in the military and Toni traveled and lived all over the world during her childhood. After earning a bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology from Iowa State University, she received a master's degree in public administration from Drake University. Toni moved to Anchorage in 1990 with her daughter, Elizabeth Gloria Pounds. She worked for the Municipality of Anchorage in the Department of Health and Human Services until illness forced her retirement.
Her family wrote: "Toni was an incredible and multi-faceted woman in many ways. She loved life and after retirement, forged ahead continuing to work on projects of importance to her, in spite of chronic kidney disease. Her spirit continues to enrich our lives with the memories we hold of her, and she is deeply mourned by the many people whose lives she touched."
Pounds was instrumental in establishing the Alaska Chapter of the American Association of Kidney Patients and was the chapter-founding president. She represented the state at several national AAKP conferences.
She was a dedicated member of Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, serving on the board of directors, many committees, and overseeing large groups of Unitarians who traveled through Anchorage each summer as part of the WhaleCoast program. She was a much-loved, active and pivotal member of the church community.
Pounds was a dedicated co-founder, guiding force, steering committee member, and workshop facilitator for the nonprofit organization Healing Racism in Anchorage. She also had an enormous love of literature, participating in several book clubs. She was a member of several writing groups and was a regularly published author.
She is survived by her daughter, Elizabeth; and two brothers, Michael and Russell, all of Anchorage; as well her aunts, Gladys, Lillian and Grace; and cousins, Jackie, Jewel, Cheryl and Eileen.
Published in the Anchorage Daily News on 7/26/2007.

Wales 6

I'm still trying to catch up with the reports of the Wales/Nome trip. Last Saturday, while we were walking, Tony went out and caught a salmon for dinner.








Here's the group filling their plates. Catherine had shipped in a lot of food and we had a nice mix of local and outside food for our meals.




Then the drumming practice began. The Kinggikmiut Festival will bring drummers from different villages to Wales later this year. Writing workshop participants were proud of the young drummers and dancers who were maintaining the local traditions.









One former Wales resident, who is now an engineer in New York State, was visiting and getting video of the drumming and dancing.











They told us the drummers could make the sun shine, and the only time we saw the sun in Wales was that evening toward the end of the drumming.




And I couldn't help notice the back of this sweatshirt from one of Wales' residents who had on a World Eskimo - Indian Olympics sweatshirt.

Wales 5

Joan and I took a walk on Saturday afternoon along the beach to see the sculpture on the hill. There were several nets drying on the beach.













Here I'm starting up the hill at the end of the beach looking north, we can see the south end of Wales.







The hillside is lushly covered with green stuff.





Here, again, looking north from the hillside we can see the village of Wales from the south. The sculpture was created by Joe Senungetuk, the organizer of the workshop, in memory of his brother Skip. He worked on this with sculptor David Barr from Michigan. Barr's website has a little more on the sculpture:

Arctic Arc consists of two sculpture installations at sites on the Bering Sea (Naukan, East Russia and Wales, Alaska) which are sites of the first human migrations into North America. The sculptures are a peaceful symbol for a border of international tension.

This is the inscription.



A tractor slowly disappearing on the beach.











On the way back we saw a snow bunting, a bird I hadn't ever seen before.

Lisa Returns Property

The ADN headline today is "Murkowski returns disputed land." At least Lisa M. recognizes that some people could see this as a conflict. But apparently she still doesn't completely get it.

Murkowski said it was a heart-wrenching decision because she, her husband and their two sons -- all avid fishermen -- have long sought a place on the Kenai River.

And how is it that Bob Penney made the offer to her and not to me? Is it possible that one factor is that I'm not a US Senator who'd make a nice, useful neighbor? It's the same reason Tom Anderson got all those jobs where he didn't have to do too much.

Selling back the land was a good step. But it doesn't absolve her of any wrong doing. After all, if I rob a bank, and then when the cops appear to be closing in on me, I get remorseful and return the money, they aren't likely to dismiss the charges. It may affect the sentencing though.

On the other hand, I must say in Lisa's and other politicians' defense, people can get pretty ugly venting their anger. I'm sure much of the worst invective comes from people transferring their own self loathing. After all, if the ADN report is accurate, Lisa got bad advice from the Ethics Committee staff.

"Senate ethics says that if the properties are used for personal use, you don't disclose it," she said. She said she disclosed the mortgage for the property but not the transfer, based on advice from Ethics Committee staff.

Murkowski dismissed criticism that she used a Ketchikan bank with close family ties -- she once sat on the board, and her sister is a current shareholder and director. She and her husband received a two-year balloon mortgage known as an "equity lot loan" that can be rolled into a construction loan to build on raw property.

I think we all go to friends we know 'in the business' who we trust and think will give us a good deal. In the case of the bank, I suspect she would have gotten a special deal just because of her family connections to the bank, even if she weren't a prominent politician. Yet this form of 'privilege' where you get deals that aren't available to the average person, is the kind of thing that blinds the privileged to the realities of life of the rest of us who don't have that sort of connection. While I think it is relevant to investigate, I think the personal invective reflects more on those invecting than on Murkowski.


One danger is that people like Cheney and Bush who stonewall every step of the way, who attempt to destroy those who oppose them (ie outing Plame) get off through their bluffing, whereas people who step forward and try to make things right get punished. Though there is nothing in the ADN article that suggests Murkowski thinks she did anything improper. The only thing she seems to be concerned about is the public trust (translation: her electability).

"While Verne and I intended to make this our family home and we paid a fair price for this land, no property is worth compromising the trust of the Alaska people," Murkowski said in a written statement.

And she does fall into blaming her accusers:

"There are those who will do anything to bring down the strength of the Alaska delegation. I think that is a reality. I think what I do is to get up every morning and do the best job I can representing Alaskans. That's what I was elected to do."

Wales 3

On Friday afternoon (still our first day in Wales) we did some writing exercises. Then we broke for dinner. Tony and his wife Joanne prepared reindeer in the kitchen. I'm not going to talk a lot about our Wales hosts and the other workshop participants because in the writing workshop they talked about themselves and the village of Wales, and while they didn't say anything terribly sensitive, there was an agreement that things we talked about are confidential, and it's hard for me to separate out what they might not want shared from what they wouldn't care about. However, we did 'publish' a small book with highlights of what people wrote and that I can share as i go along.





In addition to the reindeer meat, we got to taste walrus flippers cooked in seal oil and locally picked greens also preserved in seal oil While the reindeer was definitely a more familiar type food, the walrus and greens weren't bad.





Here's everythig ready to eat.







Joan and I both enjoyed being right on the beach. I think this was an after dinner walk.





There are no trees anywhere around, but there is lots of firewood in the form of driftwood on the beach (see Wales 1 pix) and lots of interesting other things like these dead starfish.














That evening the community center was busy with bingo. There is electricity, though the experimental windmills weren't on while we were there. They are made, I was told, in Kotzebue, a little further north, and when they first tried them the wind was so strong it broke the windmill. There are very harsh winds here.



This picture was from the plane when we flew in.

Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses

It's amazing what all you can find out reading The Next Hurrah comments. Here Frank Askin, professor at Rutgers School of Law, and director of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, writing in the Washington Post, suggests:

So long as Congress is investigating issues over which it has the power to legislate, it can compel witnesses to appear and respond to questions. That power has been affirmed over and over in prosecutions for contempt.

In modern times, this congressional power has been enforced by referring contempt cases to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for indictment and prosecution. That, of course, is the rub. It allows the president to exercise his plenary power under the Constitution to issue pardons "for offenses against the United States."

But no law says that indictment and prosecution by the Justice Department is the exclusive means to enforce congressional prerogative.

Thus, the congressional alternative. Instead of referring a contempt citation to the U.S. attorney, a house of Congress can order the sergeant-at-arms to take recalcitrant witnesses into custody and have them held until they agree to cooperate -- i.e., an order of civil contempt. Technically, the witness could be imprisoned somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol, but historically the sergeant-at-arms has turned defendants over to the custody of the warden of the D.C. jail.

For the complete piece click here.

I'm sorry, I can't help it, he's so egregious

From Scott Horton, Harper's Magazine.

For those of you who missed the testimony of Alberto Gonzales before the Judiciary Committee, I’d recommend making the effort to catch it on a CSPAN rebroadcast. There’s simply no way to adequately describe the whole scene: that creepy, evasive visage, calmly churning out falsehood after falsehood. You have to keep reminding yourself—this man is the attorney general of the United States. He is the physical embodiment of an idea. At this point no one, Democrat or Republican, would argue that he is highly qualified to hold the position he now occupies, that he is the obvious choice among America’s legions of lawyers to be the attorney general. He was chosen and installed as the exaltation of personal loyalty and fidelity over all other traits, especially intelligence, honesty, loyalty to the law and especially the Constitution. Gonzales stands for the willingness to lie and dissemble in order to protect his patron; he is the ultimate and absolute politicization of high office. His selection and installation reflect the values of a tyranny, not a democracy...


Robert Conquest wrote that the Soviet Union was the only nation with a completely unpredictable past. But meet Alberto Gonzales. He was extremely busy rewriting history today, and it now appears that when he raises his hand and swears an oath, there’s no telling which version of the past will appear next. First, he tells us that the trip to see Ashcroft in the hospital has to do with something entirely different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program about which his former Deputy James Comey testified. In doing this, he contradicts his own prior testimony, and he contradicts Comey. At least one person is lying. And indeed, that person has to be Gonzales. The only issue is which of his diametrically opposed statements is the lie...

Tuesday, July 24. All in another day’s testimony for Alberto Gonzales, the worst attorney general in the history of the United States, the man who has come to embody the lawlessness and immorality of the Bush Administration.

For the rest of the list of Gonzales' lies and a few capital offenses according to Horton, click here.

Has Gonzales No Shame?

How did we get here? How is it that Gonzales is still the attorney general? What will the history books say about this administration? Has Gonzales no shame? Has Bush no shame? I recognize that TPM has edited the testimony, but all the various reports on his testimony suggest it is one of the low points of the history of US Attorney General's Office.

Wales 2

That first day in Wales - Friday - after helping Alice get her tent up, we had a late lunch. Here you can see Winton (from Wales) and Eli (from Anchorage.) Eli was the pool manager at the University for years and is originally from Germany. She is now a sculptor and has an outdoor 'studio' along the beach somewhere in Anchorage where she builds natural, temporary sculpture in the manner somewhat of Andy Goldsworthy. And just a part of Barbara's face. She's a writer from New Jersey who has been a museum curator and has done extensive work with Alaska Native art and has spent a great deal of time in Alaska. There were so many interesting people.





And here Joe's wife Catherine is talking to Lena. Both Lena and Winton were important participants in the writing workshop. Both have lived in Wales their whole lives and know so much about the history, the natural world, and the social world of Wales.

















There was a picture earlier of Marie on her four wheeler going out to get water. Well, in Wales they still use honey buckets. There's a white bucket with a plastic garbage back in the 'toilet' on the right. When this gets filled, someone has to take it out and dump it.



There are little honey bucket stations all around town. Here is someone coming back from dumping. Think about it. Alaska has a Permanent Fund of savings from oil income (and more recently investments on that income) of $40 billion. This fund pays annual dividends to all the citizens of Alaska. Last year it was around $1000 per person. And yet we have people living in villages that still don't have running water and decent sewage systems.

I'll try to get a little more up each day. My mom and daughter are both here visiting. Yesterday we had a triple birthday party - my daughter, me, and a friend, Alex - and we've got lots to do so I can't do too much at once.

Most of the pictures can be enlarged somewhat by clicking on them.

Wales - 1

Tryying to figure out how to post about Wales, I've decided to let my pictures structure the story and go in chronological order. There are lots of overlapping stories here, but rather than isolate them out, I'll let them unfold (or not) as I experienced them. For the beginning of this Wales trip including maps go to July 18, 2007.

We got the flight go-ahead at 11am on Friday and flew into the Wales airport on a new Beechcraft. Here we are at the airstrip in Wales with our luggage out. Four-wheelers were out at the airport to pick up luggage and we walked the ten minutes to the community center, passing grassy marsh land.


We had to decide where to stay. People had sleeping bags to put in offices in the Community Center, several of us brought tents. Alice, who's from Bethel, wanted to sleep out on the beach, so I went along to see if that would work for Joan too.





On the way we passed Marie who was going a little out of town to a large pond to fill up on water. Wales doesn't have running water. People said they did, but it was chlorinated and the State health people said that wasn't safe. So now they get the same unsafe water, but they have to get it in buckets. Or so that is what I was told.





Alice gave a warm hello to everyone we passed and the warmth was returned by all. A group of kids followed us to the beach. Shawna, the one in the hooded sweatshirt, became a buddy She's also the daughter of Joanne and Tony who were both participants in the writing workshop. Alice got her tent up on the beach, despite warnings by locals that it would get extremely windy and blow away. She piled rocks on all the stakes and in the tent.





Walking back through town to the Community Center after Alice's tent was up. In the end, Tony convinced me to put our tent just behind the community center so we wouldn't have to walk so far.

Back from Wales in Sunny Nome

We spent Thursday night in Nome because Wales was fogged in. There were six residents of Wales who joined the ten of us (plus our workshop facilitator Kim) who came from outside. With Alice (from Bethel) and Joe (from Wales) we had more Alaska Native participants than non-Native.

The people of Wales were incredibly hospitible and we share a lot. I'll blog more and post lots of pictures when we get back to Anchorage, but I'm just taking a moment in the Nome library to get back on. The sun is shining here in Nome. (We only had about an hour of sun in 3.5 days in Wales, that was after the drummers had been practicing for two hours one evening.) It was warm enough that I put on my shorts at the beach and tested the waters of the Bering Sea.

We have a few hours to wander the beaches of Nome and see if we can find a few birds that normally we can't see.

Nome Detour

Flying into Nome - Bering Strait [Norton Sound on the Bering Sea] in the background.




Kim, the workshop facilitator, has a brand new Mac Book so I can keep blogging as long as we have internet connections. Here he is as our luggage gets moved to the Bering Air office.

We checked in, got all our luggage weighed, sat and talked, before finding out that it was foggy in Wales and that we couldn't take off.








Bering Air's bus took us to the Airport Cafe in town which looks like hip coffee shop anywhere for lunch.










Downtown Nome sits right on the Bering Strait.





Then we walked into town to visit Faith's library. Faith is one of the group members who works for the Reindeer Bridge Project, to draw the connections among the Arctic Indiginous peoples who herd reindeer.







Every hour Catherine calls the Bering Air office to see if we can fly.



Right now we're in the visitors center and Catherine is calling places to stay. The weather is lifting somewhat here in Nome. Four o'clock call was a no-go. If we can't fly out at 5pm, we spend the night in Nome.

Nome Stop

Wales is fogged in. We're in Nome. Going into town. Checking on weather later.

Headed for Wales, Alaska

All the photos in this post can be enlarged by clicking.

This may be the last post for several days. Joan and I are headed to the Westernmost point of the North American mainland, the village of Wales. (There are some islands further west.) Our friend Joe was born and raised in Wales and has put together a small writing workshop there. We couldn't refuse such a great invitation.

The top map of North America is from Joe's 1971 book Give or Take a Century and was done by Joe as are all the illustrations. On the Atlas map of Alaska, you can see Anchorage in the lower right and Nome on the left. Wales is a little above Nome (Under Little Diomede which is an island a mile from Big Diomede. Little is in the US and Big is in Russia).





This last map is another Joe drew of Wales almost 40 years ago. We'll see if it still is useful.













Here's the cover page of the book.














This is the beginning of the chapter about Wales in Joe's book. Click on it to enlarge.

Pulling Out of Iraq

Rosa Brook's July 13 piece from the LA Times helped crystallize some questions I've been having about the calls for withdrawal from Iraq.

Basically, the same people saying we should withdraw from Iraq are saying we should do something about Darfur. It is hard to get a good sense of exactly what would happen if we withdrew - whether our presence is the problem or whether our withdrawal will open the flood gates for even worse violence.

As bad as Saddam Hussein was, the lives of Iraqis appear to be much worse today than before we invaded. And under Hussein, Iran was kept in check. And even those of us who can say we didn't vote for Bush and that we opposed the war from the beginning, have some responsibility for not protesting louder and more effectively. It is the US that has gotten Iraq into this situation. Now that we've totally mucked things up, can we with a straight face say, "Ooops, sorry, we screwed up. Better leave now."

Brooks' article critiques the basic arguments being offered both for and against withdrawal including mine above. The issue, of course, is about our ability to accomplish a better outcome by staying than by leaving.

Clearly we have obligations to the Iraqi people. But are we capable of meeting those obligations? I think one key strategy is to get other countries involved in the peace keeping. When the war began, companies from countries that didn't support the war were kept out of the contracts in Iraq. Cheney's company, Halliburton, has profited hugely from the war. Perhaps France and Germany might have more interest in helping keep the peace if their companies got part of the action.

It's clearly an incredible mess, largely of our own making. Will our withdrawal help wind down the violence? I suspect things will get worse before they get better, and in the end, Al Qaida and/or its allies will control the oil of Iraq. Way to go George.

Blogging Is Good For Your Health

When I searched for a link for a health article in the Anchorage Daily News on Tuesday, July 17, 2007, I found it was first published

10 ways to improve your health in 2006
By Julie Deardorff, Tribune health and fitness reporter

Chicago Tribune
January 8, 2006

Most of the tips are things we hear all the time - exercise, eat right, get enough sleep, etc. But #5 shows us that blogging is now in the top ten health tips:

5. Do the write thing

Deepak Chopra, medical doctor and proponent of alternative medicine, calls journaling "one of the most powerful tools we have to transform our lives," but don't just take his word for it. Start one. Journaling helps release and process emotions, it provides clarity and can help you find your inner voice.

"Your writings, musings and doodles are a way to talk to your soul," writes Sandy Grason in "Journalution" (New World Library, $14.95).

There is no best or right way to journal. Pick a medium--a spiral notebook, a blank book labeled "diary," drawing paper, a computer--then write whatever you want whenever the mood hits. An obsessive journaler since 4th grade (I have more than 70 notebooks), I favor a portable, lined desk journal by Raika that is small enough to carry at all times.

Don't know where to start? Write what you eat every day. (It could help you lose weight.) Write what you do. Write what you feel. Eventually, journaling will become a natural habit, a conversation with yourself. And although you might not want to go back and re-read some of the darker moments you've chronicled (feel free to rip these pages up), your journal inevitably will preserve precious snapshots of your life.

New MacBook

After over a year of being a squatter on my wife's Mac Mini, I have finally bought my own Mac Power Book. Ben, whom I met first at the Alaska Apple Users' Group, is the Apple rep at Comp USA on Dimond. He also graduated from Stellar Alternative School in Anchorage (as did my daughter) and is a philosophy major at UAA (my daughter is doing her graduate work in philosophy) and I know his faculty adviser. But I'd already been impressed by his knowledge of the computers and his helpfulness. So, any Anchorage folks interested in Apple products, I highly recommend calling Ben.

Rating Baseball, Scoring Legislators

There must be a way for the media to cover politics with more depth and substance so that politics is as interesting as sports. Certainly the West Wing did that. Now how about doing that for our legislators and other elected officials. And posting stats that give us real information.

Well, this all came from first spending a week at the Anderson trial and then having my son show me this baseball stats website.

This site that rates baseball
not just individual ball players, but also teams. It goes way beyond the standard baseball statistics, tweaking them to get more meaningful data.

Here's a list of the different basic statistical charts they have:

Offense Batter's Quality of Pitchers Faced Double Play Rate for Batters Equivalent Average League Batting by Position VORP for Position Players VORP for Rookie Position Players	Pitching Miscellaneous Pitching Stats Pitcher Abuse Points Pitcher Expected Win-Loss Records Pitcher's Quality of Batters Faced Relievers Expected Runs Relievers Expected Wins Added Starting Pitcher Bullpen Support VORP for Pitchers VORP for Rookie Pitchers
General League Batting Averages League Pitching Averages Pitcher Defensive Efficiency RBI Opportunities Run Expectancy Matrix Umpires Report Win Expectancy Matrix	Team Current Adjusted Standings Playoff Odds Report Playoff Odds Report (ELO adjusted) Playoff Odds Report (PECOTA adjusted) Postseason Series Odds Team Defensive Efficiency Team Record by RA Team Records By RS Team Streaks Team record by Run Difference

For example, if you go to "Equivalent Average" above under "Offfense" the charts will have (among many others) a column labeled RARP. It defines this as:

RARP	[ Return To Top ]

Runs Above Replacement, Position-adjusted. A statistic that compares a hitter's Equivalent Run total to that of a replacement-level player who makes the same number of outs and plays the same position. A "replacement level" player is one who has .736 times as many EqR as the average for the position; that corresponds to a .351 winning percentage. Used when fielding data is unavailable.

The site is trying to more closely refine the statistics so they take into consideration more of the things that affect the quality. Comparing players to RP's - Replacement Players - who are somewhat below the average player for that position is one way to do this. They are trying to find how much of a real impact individual players have on the team.

They also rate whole teams and look at things like what do teams get for what they spend.

After a week of trial listening to lobbyists talking about how they find ways to gain influence over legislators, the baseball stats got me thinking about how much time people spend on sports stats and how much people know about sports, but how little they now about political stats and politics. What if there were information about politicians like there is about sports? Of course, the basics of sports is easier to keep track of and there are great statistics for each player. While there are election stats, there aren't great stats for how good a legislator is.

I did some googling and mostly what I could find are ratings based on votes. Various special interest groups pick certain legislation and then give legislators points for voting "the right way" on bills they are interested in.
For example:

Holding Lawmakers Accountable
Paychecks Hawaii Gives Some of the Harshest Ratings Yet to Legislators Who Hurt Business
By Hawaii Reporter Staff, 6/6/2002 1:34:32 AM

Paychecks Hawaii, an independent, non-partisan political action affiliate of the small business advocacy organization Small Business Hawaii, just released its annual ratings of state legislators, with those in charge of rating legislatohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifrs saying this is one of the worst yet legislative sessions for business.

and

Clean Water Action Michigan 2005-2006 Legislative Environmental Scorecard

There are a few sites that collect those interest group vote ratings so that you can look at a legislator from lots of different perspectives. But these are really rough numbers compared to what we have for baseball. I've got links to a few sites to let you see some of what's out there.


WHAT IS IN THE REPORT CARDS

CRC Updates History

Each "report card" is an easy-to-understand graphical report that shows how closely the position on legislation of a member of Congress matched the position on legislation of one or more advocacy groups over the period of up to six years .

For members' position, we use either

* the members' voting record (how they voted on the floor of Congress), or
* the members' cosponsorship of legislation (whether they have officially signed up as a sponsor of a proposed piece of legislation).

We extract the voting record and cosponsorship data from the Congressional Record.

The groups' position comes from the groups' publications that we monitor. The advocacy groups analyze the legislation they consider important and publish the results of their legislative research.

Kathleen Carlisle Fountain, Political Science and Social Work Librarian Reference Librarian at California State University, Chico (kfountain@csuchico.edu) maintains the website "Political Advocacy Groups" which includes a Directory of United States Lobbyists. On the page on Rating Congressional Members, she writes:

On the subject category pages, groups who routinely rate members of Congress are identified by this image: . Project Vote Smart and Voter Information Services each offer a list of who conducts "performance evaluations." The Voter Information Services site even provides the numerical ratings by some organizations.

Further down on her page she has a list of the groups on her site that rate Congress.


Project Vote Smart is a comprehensive site that bills itself as non-partisan and gives lists of ratings from all different groups that rate candidates. It pulls together a lot of information but it's up to the reader to go through it all and do the analysis.


PollingReport.com gives lists of polling data from different polls (AP-Ipsos, CBS, Newsweek, Gallup, etc.) on %Approve and %Disapprove of Congress from September 2005 to the present.

Then are sites that critique the ratings:

And then there are criticisms of the ratings:

Maine House Democrats analyze the Maine Economic Research Institute ratings:

MERI and the Politics of Distortion

The Maine Economic Research Institute (MERI), issued a scorecard last year which rates each legislator on his or her “supportiveness” of business. The group updated and reissued the scorecard over the summer. While MERI claims to behttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif “scientific” in its approach, it is clearly and blatantly biased against and far from scientific.

The Wilamette Weekly takes a totally different approach:

Every two years, as the Oregon Legislature winds down, WW allows anonymous sources to rate Portland-area lawmakers.

Why have we done this for 32 years?

Because there's no better way to assess the region's 38 legislators as good, bad or awful than to ask the lobbyists who know them best—and because nobody has less incentive than lobbyists to speak candidly.

We recently sent more than 120 surveys to lobbyists for business and unions, advocates for single causes and contract lobbyists who represent all comers. These are the people who mingle with legislators each day, buy them meals, drinks and Hawaiian junkets, and finance their election campaigns. And we also checked in with legislative staffers and members of the legislative press corps.

But Norman R. Luttbeg's article in Legislative Studies Quarterly examines "The Validity and Electoral Impact of Media Estimations of "Best" or "Worst" State Legislators" The abstract says the ratings matter:

Many news organizations have ranked or rated state legislators in their state as "best" or "most effective" and "worst" or "least effective," sometimes using several groups of informants, such as legislators, lobbyists, agency heads, and capital correspondents. Other organizations merely give the impressions of reporters. Obviously those rated worst are displeased with this evaluation and at least somewhat anxious as to what it will mean when they next face an election. This study assesses the validity of these rankings and their impact at the polls. The media rankings cannot be dismissed as invalid, and legislators cannot dismiss their impact at the polls. It helps to be ranked as among the best and it hurts to be among the worst, although the effects are small.

So this really calls for getting much, much more sophisticated ways to measure legislators and to get more bi-partisan websites that have credible objectivity to evaluate the data. I'm going to think on this for a while. So let me know what other better stats exist already.

More From the Alaska Botanical Gardens

On the same outing to Campbell Creek Friday, we stopped at the Alaska Botanical Garden which I blogged about before.



The peonies are... I'll let them speak for themselves.






























The Himalayan blue poppies, what can I say? Nice counterbalance to politics and trials. The peony pix can be enlarged with a click.

Besides the Cow Parsnip

There was also lots of monk's hood. Look carefully for the bee.




We made it up to the rock that marks the transition from trees to mostly tundra. Looking back down you can see the whole Anchorage bowl and if you squint, the waters of Cook Inlet. (Again the pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.)







Looking up you can see into the clouds.

Cow Parsnip - Heracleum

We hiked up the Wolverine Peak trail today. It was clearly Cow Parsnip Day. Everywhere we were surrounded by the large white flowers of the cow parsnip plant. The pictures below were all taken today in Anchorage. You can click on any of them to enlarge it. The information on Cow Parsnips come from the links.

Cow Parsnip
Heracleum maximum (Heracleum lanatum)
• Family: Carrot (Apiaceae)
• Habitat: moist meadows, thickets, streambanks
• Height: 4-9 feet
• Flower size: 1/4 to 1/2 inch across, in clusters 4-8 inches across
• Flower color: white
• Flowering time: June to August
• Origin: native

From Connecticut Botanical Society

Cow parsnip Heracleum lanatum has been used medicinally. The root for toothaches (placed directly to the area) or you can also use a tincture of the root or seeds, it is less irritating to the gums than cloves. The root and seeds are used as an antispasmodic to the intestinal tract. If used in a tea, make sure it is dried first, the tea is used for nausea of a persistent nature, when you have not yet vomited, as well as acid indigestion and heart burn according to Micheal Moore in Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West. The seeds tinctured are effective for stomach aches, the dose should be one or two drops. Do not use this plant during pregnancy or nursing.

From The Herbalist's Path Blog

Cow parsnip is a valuable forage species for livestock, deer, elk, moose, and bear. Moose in Montana and Yellowstone National Park eat cow parsnip. In low elevation riparian areas it is an important food for grizzly bear, especially in the spring. In Glacier National Park, cow parsnip comprised 15 percent of grizzly bear total diet volume, spring through fall, in 1967-1971 and 1982-1985.

From Little Flower's Medicine of North American Plants

This is the largest species of the carrot family in North America. The genus is named for Hercules, who is reputed to have used these plants for medicine. Early in each year, Native Americans peeled and ate the young sweet, aromatic leaf and flower stalks.

From eNature.com

This very tall plant has huge leaves and flat umbels of numerous tiny white flowers; stem is grooved, woolly, hollow, and stout.
Flowers: umbel to 12" (30 cm) wide, often in groups; each flower with 5 petals, those at margin of umbel larger, about 1/4" (6 mm) long, cleft in middle, often tinged with purple.

From eNature











People new to Alaska often confuse Cow Parsnip (left below) with Devil's Club (right below.) You can see from these two pictures, both have large leaves that initially seem similar.










The Devil's Club leaves have hooked thorns underneath.







































"The green stems of pushki [cow parsnip] are covered with fine hairs, which give them a slightly fuzzy or furry texture." From Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Refuge Notebook.

The [Devil's Club] plant grows 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.4 meters) tall and is covered with thorns up to an inch (2.5 centimeters) long."Even the leaves have little-bitty thorns," said Peggy Hunt, an agronomist at the Native Plant Nursery in Palmer, Alaska. "They go through your skin. You wear jeans, they still go through those jeans. And the thorns will fester. It's like getting a splinter. You really have to dig them out."

From National Geographic The National Geographic article goes on to talk about the medicinal aspects of Devil's Club.



For some people Cow Parsnip poses a danger of severe skin problems.

Known Hazards Many members of this genus, including this species[65], contain furanocoumarins. These have carcinogenic, mutagenic and phototoxic properties. The fresh foliage can cause dermatitis[21]. If the juice and hairs of the outer skin are left on the face and mouth, they can cause blisters[212]. This effect is especially prevalent for people with fair complexions[256].

From Plants for a Future

It is interesting to ask if this phototoxicity has any adaptive value for the members of the carrot family? Is this toxicity, for example, a chemical defense against some kind of plant-eating animal (herbivore)? First, we should note that bears and moose eat young pushki plants, apparently without suffering any kind of sunburn effects. Indeed, in the Lower-48 pushki is considered a valuable forage species for deer, elk, moose, and livestock. A study in Glacier National Park found that pushki comprised 15% of grizzly bear diet, spring through fall. All this suggests that mammals, other than humans, are not bothered by any phototoxicity effects of pushki.

Nevertheless, you don't see many insects eating pushki. A fascinating study of a close cousin, wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa), found that the furanocoumarins were potent deterrents for most insects, but one insect has evolved the ability to break down the furanocoumarins and eat wild parsnip. This insect - a caterpillar called the "parsnip webworm" (Depressaria pastinacella) - also eats pushki. If we ever need a biocontrol agent for pushki, parsnip webworm would be a good place to start.

From Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Refuge Notebook.

GRRRR! Youtube Quality destroys Salmon Video

Took Beth (who's visiting from Texas) to Campbell Creek as the rain mostly ended Friday afternoon. Salmon were making their way up the creek and they are red enough at this point that this one showed up pretty well in the video I took. But saving it in a format small enough for Youtube made this all but unviewable. But I've been playing with it for so long I'm going to put it up anyway in hopes that someone can suggest a better way to save it or a better video host than youtube. (I saved it from i-movie. The best quality was 332 MB - too big for youtube. The next best was 12mb - that's the one you see here. Pretty awful. Not only does the crystal clear water water look muddy, you can barely see the fish until near the end.)

Ready to Impeach - House Resolution 333

My son is back in the T-shirt business. He designed a T-shirt when he was headed to Denmark to work several years ago. As an American in Europe, he wanted to make it clear that he hadn't voted for G W Bush. He had it made through CafePress and other people could buy it. Proceeds, if any, were going to Doctors without Borders. He sold a few T-shirts after a few months, but then some conservative blog blasted him as a traitor and sales suddenly took off. Cafepress grossed around $45,000 from that and Doctors without Borders got several thousand out of it too.

So now he's back in business. This time with this:

He and a friend are making 20 different T-shirts and each shirt covers a different set of states with the names and phone numbers of the members of Congress in those states. California and New York had to be divided into two because there were two many members of Congress to fit. You can find details at readytoimpeach.com.
The back of the T-shirt has the beginning of Dennis Kucinich's House Resolution to impeach Vice-President Cheney.

Flex Cars - Don't Need Your Own Car

I've known about Flexcar a while now, but Wednesday was the first time I rode in one.

An alternative to owning a car, you get a membership, and then when you need a car, you call in and reserve it. They have set parking places around Seattle (and other cities). You pay by the hour - I think it was $9/hour. Put your Flexcar card over the code reader and you're off.

A Few More Seattle Photos

A few more photos from Seattle. I'm back in a grey, rainy Anchorage now.

I-5 through downtown Seattle

Under the tree in the park on the left was a young woman practicing her poetry to a small group. Sounded like she was getting ready for a slam.

Statue of George Washington - well Seattle is in the state of Washington

Silver, Black, Blue

Seattle Alamo

Cooler in Seattle

Here are a few pictures of yesterday and today in Seattle. They all get at least a little bigger if you click on them. Get on the plane for home in a few hours.

80s in Seattle

Flew to Seattle today to see my son before he leaves for the year in Singapore.


There were two seats empty next to me, so this young woman switched seats, and took them both, without even a good morning or do you mind?













Took the express bus into town and walked over to Joel`s place. It's very warm here, but the sky is also very blue.

Anderson Response

From ADN Politics blog:

"I'm devastated," Anderson said after the verdict was announced. He said he'd appeal.

"The prosecution has criminalized being a legislator over this past year. And I think I fell victim to that," he said.

Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 2.

His family, including his wife, state Sen. Lesil McGuire, who was not accused of wrongdoing, were not present for the verdict. Anderson said they couldn't get to the downtown Anchorage courthouse in time after it was announced the jury had reached a verdict.

Steve Heimel's had some audio report with quotes from Anderson is this evening, but it's not yet up on the APRN site. But you can check and see if it's up. It says pretty much the same that Lisa Demer's ADN pieces above says.

Anderson Trial - Guilty on All Counts

I didn't go in today, not really expecting a verdict this soon. Only if they all agreed on guilty for all counts would it be done today. So when I heard just now on KSKA there was a verdict, I was sure it was all counts. The seven counts of the indictment are listed below along with a discussion of what the jury would have to figure out.

The ADN website says this:

A federal court jury today convicted Tom Anderson, a former member of the Alaska House of Representatives, of conspiracy and bribery. The jury returned a verdict shortly before 2 p.m. that found Anderson, 39, guilty of all seven charges against him.

The charges include conspiracy to commit extortion, bribery and money laundering and stemmed from claims he took money to do the bidding of a private prison firm. 4:02 p.m. AKST

Life Beyond the Court House

The jury's inside here working out its decisions. I've decided not to sit and wait since I'm skeptical that they'll be done today and I'm off to Seattle for a couple days tomorrow to visit with my son.






But, just a reminder of why I live in Anchorage - here are some pictures riding back from the Court House Friday afternoon on the bike trail.








































We ran into our friend Yakob at Goose Lake (along with his wife Lisa).

Anderson Trial - What does the Jury Have to Decide?

I've been attending this trial as a member of the public. I'm not a lawyer. What I'm going to try to do here is look at the jury instructions - as best as I could take notes on them as they were being read - and see what questions and problems I would have in reaching a decision as the jury is required to do. The jury has the advantage of having a copy of the written instructions, each other to help fill in what any individual missed, all the exhibits (except they don't have the CD's of the taped conversations, though they can ask to hear specific parts) and they can send a note to the judge to get answers to their questions. Any attorneys reading this are invited to jump in and make any necessary corrections.


I do have a Summary of Charges from one of the court documents available on line.
Anderson is charged in the Indictment with the following offenses:
I've taken the counts verbatim from DEFENDANT’S MOTION IN LIMINE REGARDING GOVERNMENT’S TRIAL EXHIBITS

The jury instructions are a little sketchier - they are from my notes. Marsh highlighted some of the points in his closing argument and then the judge went through them quickly at the end. But at least this will give you a better idea of what the jury has to determine.

Count 1 - Conspiracy - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371
The Instructions to the jury were (again as best as I can pull out of my notes - anyone who can correct anything here, please jump in and do so):

1. Beginning about July 2004 there has to be an agreement to commit at least one crime, at least one covert act.
2. The have to have knowledge of the agreement and that it is unlawful.

Marsh said in his closing that it is not like an agreement to buy a car. There doesn't have to be a written agreement, it can be something that is understood by the parties. It is not necessary that they discuss every detail.

As I write this, I have questions about which of the things discussed in the trial would fit here, and so if I'm having trouble, perhaps the jury will too. Though the jury has the written jury instructions and that may make figuring this out easier.
Does setting up the electronic publishing company to conceal the payments constitute a crime?
Do the various functions Anderson did for Prewitt - writing the letter to Antrim on his own House of Representatives stationery, getting other legislators to sign a letter about the Certificate of Need, lobbying Commissioner Gilbertson, etc. - constitute crimes because he was being covertly paid to do these things by Prewitt?
If I were on the jury I guess I'd want to get some instructions on this from the judge.
The next problem will be to determine if Anderson knew they were illegal. The defense attorney argued throughout that what he did was no different from what other legislators who got campaign contributions did. What is the difference he asked again and again. And the Prosecutors said the difference was that he was being paid directly, not through a campaign contribution, to do the unlawful legislative acts. I'm guessing that some of the alleged crimes will serve double duty for different counts. And as I write this, I'm thinking of the power of the jury. They are the ones who can change an alleged crime into a crime.


Counts 2 & 7- Interference with Commerce by Extortion Induced Under Color of Official Right - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) and § 2
In each case (counts 2 and 7) according to the jury instructions, they have to prove

1. The person is a public official
   
2. He got money he was not entitled to
3. He took an official act
4. There was interstate commerce

#1 is clear. Anderson was an elected official, a state representative.
#2 In the closing, Marsh said this was for the $24,000 Anderson was paid by Prewitt through Bobrick for Count 2. Count 7 was for the extra $2000 check that Prewitt gave directly to Anderson when Anderson complained that Bobrick was taking half the money. We saw copies of the checks from Prewitt and the checks from Bobrick to Anderson, signed and cashed by Anderson. And also a copy of the check directly from Prewitt to Anderson. I don't recall that anyone denied that Anderson got the money, though Stockler argued that Bobrick was taking half of the money himself. The Prosecutors later came up with checks that Bobrick wrote from his own account that got Anderson to the full $24,000. So, the question the jury has to wrestle with here is whether he was entitled to this money. Was he getting paid to work on the website or for his legislative duties? The first draft of the website made it onto the web. But there was no evidence that Anderson wrote any articles or that any ads were solicited. And it was pretty clear there never was a functioning website newsletter business. So, he wasn't being paid for the website. So, was he being paid for doing legislative acts? The jury will have to decide.
#3 Did he take an official act? The jury was presented with a number of situations where Anderson did things that Prewitt asked him to do. He got appointed to the Corrections and HSS committees as well as the budget subcommittees that dealt with the issues Cornell was concerned with. He lobbied fellow legislators including Lesil McGuire. He lobbied two different commissioners to make changes in the Certificate of Need process and in the budget as asked to do by Prewitt. And he went to a public hearing, as a legislator, not a private citizen to argue on behalf of Cornell. So I think the jury has a lot of choices here.
#4 Marsh, as he talked about the jury instructions, pointed out that Cornell was a company based in Houston, Texas, which made this an interstate commerce issue. But, the money wasn't coming from Cornell, it was coming from the FBI. Does the FBI count as commerce? Does it matter that the money isn't coming from Cornell? Or since Prewitt was being paid by Cornell, it counts as interstate commerce? I guess they have to ask the judge on that.

Count 3 - Bribery Concerning Programs Receiving Federal Funds - Violation of 18 U.S.C. §666(a)(1)(B) and § 2
The jury instructions for count 3 include:

1. Was there an elected official in Alaska?
   
2. In the time period from 2004 to March 2005 did he accept/receive something of value?
3. Was the something of value over $5000?
4. Did the Alaska program receive over $10,000 in federal funding?

Again, #1 is easy. Anderson was an elected official in Alaska. No dispute here.
#2 - Marsh pointed to the $24,000 he received.
#3 - During the trial I didn't understand the relevance of asking if the payment was over $5000 and if the State program received more than $10,000 in federal grants and aid. I'd missed the opening of the trial and so these questions only began to have meaning when I heard this part of the jury instructions. The $24,000 is over $5000, so that would fit. But if the jury wants to split hairs, they may argue that the individual checks were under $5000. Though I'd have to go back through my notes to be sure there wasn't one payment that was over $5000. The jury has the exhibits, they can check.
#4 - Both Commissioners Gilbertson and Antrim assured the Prosecutor that the state received significantly more than $10,000 in federal funding.

Counts 4 - 6 Money Laundering - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1) and § 2

I'm least certain about the jury instructions for these counts. As best as I can tell they have to use the criteria from either the first or second bullet:

• Conduct a financial transaction

1. There is a financial transaction using the proceeds of the bribe in count 2
2. The person knows it (not sure what they know - I guess he knows the money source is being concealed)
3. The person acted with intent of carrying out the unlawful act in count 2
   

The Prosecutor said that the financial transaction here was simply cashing the check - and we saw copies of at least three checks (one for each count) that Anderson cashed. Perhaps the fourth check - the one from Prewitt directly - doesn't count here because it wasn't laundered. #2 then would be that the person knows the money is isn't what it appears to be. And I guess #3 is related to the intent to commit the official act.

• Laundering the Money

1. There was a transaction of the proceeds of the bribe in count 2.
2. The person knows that source of the money is being concealed
   
3. There is a transaction to conceal or disguise the source of the money
   

#s 1 and 2 would be the same as above. #3 would be the setting up of the sham company to conceal that the money was coming from Cornell (again I should point out that in actuality Cornell knew nothing about this because Prewitt was using FBI money and did not tell Cornell, though I wonder how many people, at the end of this, will be under the impression that Cornell was trying to bribe Anderson.)

As I understand this, the jury has to find all three of the first bullet points or all three of the second bullet points to be true to find him guilty of these charges. I think it generally means that you are hiding the source of illegal proceeds. If I were on the jury, I'd have to have more clarification of this.



Count 7 - Interference with Commerce by Extortion Induced Under Color of Official Right - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) and § 2

This was covered with count 2.

Friday afternoon, I was pretty sure the jury wouldn't be able to make a decision that day because it would take them the rest of the afternoon to decipher the jury instructions and how they relate specifically to the case. After going through this exercise myself, I'm guessing that with 12 people having to understand and agree on what these mean, it might be a while before a verdict comes in. After all once they understand what they have to decide, then they have to decide and agree on all of the counts.

Again, any attorneys out there who can correct and/or clarify, please jump in and leave a comment.

Beyond the Headline

When most people read the headlines next week - "Anderson [--------]" - they'll maybe make a comment or two and by the time they read the celebrity gossip on page two of the Anchorage Daily News they will have forgotten all about Anderson. Well, for this trial there's a little more widespread interest, but still for most, it's print on the page that will be in the garbage or recycling bin before long.

But as I sat in the trial I realized how many people's lives were directly affected by this case. Some changed forever, others impacted for the two weeks of the trial or less. This isn't just a story in the newspaper - real people lived this story.

Tom Anderson - For Bobrick's 'rising star' nothing will ever be the same. No matter the outcome, his name will be linked to Alaska scandal for a long time. If he has a felony conviction, his work prospects will be severely restricted. This doesn't mean that he can't learn from all this and redeem himself some way, but life has suddenly gotten much more difficult than it has been. No one, not even the prosecutors suggested that he wasn't the enthusiastic politician who wanted to help people. Or that we wasn't a likable guy.

Lesil McGuire[Anderson's wife and a state senator] - What was she thinking through all this? I would imagine that up to now things have been pretty one sided for the family. Probably the attorney, their friends, mostly said supportive things. "You were framed by Prewitt and the FBI" and "you didn't do anything wrong, everyone does this, you were just Prewitt's ticket to avoid prison." I would guess that sitting in the courtroom was the first time she heard the whole case against Tom spelled out. What could she be thinking in there? Especially at the end when the Prosecutors ended both the Closing Argument and the rebuttal* to the Defense Attorney's closing argument with, "Why didn't he tell Lesil? Because he knew she would say, "You can't do this; this stinks." Can she disagree with this positive characterization of herself - in her heart of hearts? Especially knowing that it led to this whole trial? Or maybe she's still unconvinced by what the Prosecutors presented. It isn't unreasonable to believe that Tom was entrapped. Without Prewitt, there would be no money funneled to Pacific Publications. Without Prewitt, there would be no tapes.
[*In a previous post I questioned why the Prosecutor got to rebut the Defense Attorney's closing argument, but the Defense Attorney didn't get the same chance. An attorney told me that it was because the burden to prove guilt is on the Prosecutor, so he gets a chance to rebut.]

The rest of Anderson's family. His mother and mother-in-law were there. Other relatives and friends were there, though I don't know who was who. Lisa Demer in her ADN article today wrote, "Anderson said his dad is busy building a home in Wasilla but wanted to come." I'll leave that one alone.

FBI Agent Mary Beth Kepner has been working on this and presumably other related cases since at least 2003 and this is just the first trial. This is her job so it isn't something out of the ordinary the way it is for the Andersons or the jurors. But this is a very intensive, and I would imagine, high stress job. The outcome of this and other trials will surely affect how well her career progresses. The same can be said for the Prosecuting Attorneys Marsh and Bottini. While the outcome of this trial could have some effect on their careers, especially if the outcome is seen as particularly good or particularly bad by their bosses, they do work in a bureaucracy, and there will be plenty of other work ahead. Possibly a brilliant 'win' could mean a lucrative job in the private sector if that was something they wanted. For Defense Attorney Stockler, a private attorney, the outcome of this case could have a much larger impact on his law practice and income. A result of not guilty on all charges could raise his rates quickly.

The witnesses: Bobrick potentially could have his sentence reduced based on how he 'performed' as a witness and the outcome of the trial. But it was clear that testifying was close to the bottom of the list of things he wanted to do this week. I think being abducted by aliens would have been higher. His time on the witness stand was humiliating and the best one could wish for was that maybe it was cathartic to just get it all out and over with. Things can only get better for him the way he described his life. Prison might be worse, but he seemed to already be in a kind of personal hell already. It isn't clear from the testimony whether Prewitt faces any charges or not. He claimed to be confident that he didn't, not because he'd made a deal with the FBI, but because any charges against him were either too old or too minor. But it appears that for the last couple of years Prewitt has begun a new career as an unpaid undercover agent, though after this trial, wearing a wire probably won't be too productive. But he's got all the trials of the other people he's gathered information on.

The jurors are suddenly drawn into some fictional newspaper world they've read about, or not. They are the focus of scrutiny at the beginning. Those not dismissed then have a special status. Everyone has to rise when they enter and leave the court. On some things they are left in the dark while the attorneys and the judge work out procedurally details. But when they come into court they get the best seats. The are first observers and then participants. If this jury is anything like the juries I've been on, most will take this job very seriously, as they weigh the evidence that will so drastically affect Tom Anderson's future. And it will also affect the futures of the family and the attorneys, though to a much lesser degree. Now the jury is the center of attention. Once they give their verdict there will be a short time when they will be sought to give the attorneys and the public an understanding of how they reached their conclusions. Then, they'll slip back into their normal lives. Presumably when they read about future trials, they will have much greater understanding.

As with the attorneys, this is part of the reporters' job. It's the normal job, just two weeks of different scenery. And it adds to the collection of facts about people and politics and justice in Alaska, and ideally some of the 'missing pieces' help them make more sense of the bigger picture.

I also talked to one of the artists who was in the courtroom using some sort of felt pen that created waterpainting-like images of the judge, attorneys, and witnesses. There is something satisfying about how the ban on recording equipment and cameras creates an opening for an artist to get paid some extra money. And there is something about having to study the people carefully so that you can capture their essence in your painting. Sure, a great photographer does the same, but it is so much easier to point the camera and shoot the picture. The artist has to take her time, get a sense of the person and has to 'see' each detail. There was something in her paintings that was very different from what you see in the coldly real photos.

And then there are the other people - the bailiffs, clerks, security guards, transcriber, technicians, etc. - without whom the trial, as we know it, couldn't function.

For all of these people, the trial is part of their real lives, not just ink on the newsprint in the orange plastic bag on the doorstep each morning.


An interesting final point on this case. Unlike many sorts of crimes where the victim is an individual human being who, like the accused, would have friends and family in court with him, we didn't have that dynamic here.

Thomas Anderson Case Closing Arguments Audio

Here's a link to Steve Heimel's Friday APRN report on the case. He knew enough to order the CD of yesterday and got it in time for the news. There are only snippets, but you can hear Nicholas Marsh, the Prosecutor, and Paul Stockler, the Defense Attorney.

USA vs Tom Anderson Day 9

U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska
Court Calendar for Friday, July 6, 2007


9:00 AM 3:06-CR-00099-JWS Judge Sedwick Anchorage Courtroom 3
USA vs. THOMAS ANDERSON
TRIAL BY JURY - DAY 9


Nicolas Marsh was already into his closing argument as I walked into the 75% full courtroom at 9:15 this morning. Having apparently listened closely to the defense these last couple of days, he was hammering hard on the idea that Anderson didn't believe the Prewitt money was going for legislative acts. He played tapes of Anderson that sure looked like he knew what was going on. (My quotes will be as close as I could get taking notes during the trial. The exact words my not be right, but the meaning should be correct.)

Anderson: "Frank [Prewitt] is my employer through Bill [Bobrick]"

Anderson: "Quit the bullshit on the banner thing." [That Cornell was buying banner ads on the website] Then talking about ads at an Anchorage Aces Hockey game, "Who's gonna buy a prison from the audience?"

Anderson: "Put together a strategy and I'll be the Lieutenant. You get me the script and I'll walk it."

Anderson: "I'm not a fucking idiot, you're not just doing it [paying Pacific Publications] to help me."

Anderson: Talking about Bobrick's plan to set up a Website Journal Company and have Prewitt pay for banner ads on the website and have that money go to Anderson "It's perfect. The best idea he's [Bobrick] come up with and it looks like it's working."

Anderson: "APOC [Alaska Public Offices Commission] only needs to know Bill [Bobrick] pays me, then we're always safe."

Then Marsh shows slides of checks paid to Anderson.

It went on like that as he picked out tapes or documents that showed many of the points Defense Attorney Stockler had tried to make sound ambiguous or totally non-existent. (He'd said things like, "You can't show me a single instance where Anderson ..." and Marsh was showing instance after instance.
Marsh reminded me a little of Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker persona. Kind of wonky, going through the evidence in a very methodical way, until I started to glaze over thinking, "Enough already, I get the point." He even looks a little like him.

Although the judge had said he would go over the Jury Instructions, Marsh did some of that himself. He particularly, I think, wanted to make the point that it doesn't matter if the person being bribed would have done those actions anyway as part of his job. This is an important point because Stockler has made this a big part of his argument - that Tom Anderson helped people out and would have done all this stuff [at other points Stockler said he didn't do anything] without the payments. And despite the jury instructions, this was still a big part of Stockler's closing statement.

Finally Marsh attacked Stockler's argument that Anderson had concealed the source of the money purely for political reasons, not because the deal was illegal. Basically, Stockler had argued in the trial that Anderson didn't want people from the prison unions to know he was getting money from Cornell. (Isn't one reason for disclosure so that voters know where you stand on issues?) Marsh had a list of 11 situations when or people to whom Anderson could have disclosed this relationship. The last one was Lesil McGuire, whom Marsh identified as Anderson's romantic interest. (She was a fellow legislator and is now his wife.) "He didn't tell Lesil," said Marsh, "because he knew she would have said, 'What are you doing? This is illegal. You can't do this.'" I was sitting right behind Lesil in the courtroom. She sat very still during this, but I couldn't help imagining what might possible be going through her mind? And here Marsh ended his closing argument.

Stockler presented quite a contrast. While Marsh looks like he hasn't been outside in years, Stockler looks like he just got back from a beach vacation. Marsh has those clean cut Tobey Mcquire looks, Stockler's head is shaved and he looks like someone who breaks your knees if you don't pay your debts. It struck me yesterday when he was putting on the defense's case, when he had to go out of the courtroom to escort in the defense's witnesses, that he is the Lone Ranger here on this case. In contrast, two attorneys and FBI Agent Kepner have been sitting at the Prosecutor's table, two technicians sit behind them running all the fancy video and audio equipment that made the tapes and transcripts as easy to follow as possible - given the bad sound quality of much of it. Plus there are four or five other people who back them up, including the woman who has been escorting in the Prosecution's witnesses into court. Today that contrast came out again after Marsh used his high tech audio/visual replaying of the tapes to punctuate his closing argument and Stockler stood there with his wooden easel and poster board charts. But Stockler started out looking into the eyes of the jurors and his presentation was much more a story than the prosecutor's methodical, logical exercise. But he couldn't pull it off for the whole hour. He too had a book that he went back and referred to. But Stockler appeared to be talking from the heart while Marsh was talking from the head.

Maybe it was because the facts weren't in Stockler's favor. He started with probably the most compelling argument, that Prewitt was the man under investigation and that Anderson's name just happened to come up while the FBI was investigating Prewitt. Prewitt was hoping that bagging a legislator would reduce whatever penalties he faced. Stockler belittled Prewitt's claim that anything the FBI had on him was either too old to prosecute or it was minor. Then he went after Bobrick. Though the way he characterized Bobrick's answers didn't completely square with what I heard. He said that when he asked Bobrick if the Website business was real, Bobrick answered yes. Well, I heard Bobrick qualify that by saying for a while it was, but part of me knew it wasn't. Bobrick had said several times he was in denial about what he was doing. I can't help but imagine that a few of the jurors might have heard it that way too and how this might affect their opinion of Stockler. While I thought the evidence was there to show that Anderson knew what was going on, there is no question in my mind that he also was in some ways a victim of Prewitt's cunning and Bobrick's fantasies. Stockler again mentioned that neither Prewitt nor Bobrick told Anderson that "yes, we're paying you to use your legislative position for our client" when Anderson asked things like "this is ok right?" But Anderson is 41 years old, has a law degree, was a lawmaker, and is responsible for his own actions, isn't he? People involved in bribery and extortion don't usually write out detailed contracts spelling it all out. And the judge's instructions to the jury said that these things need not be explicitly spelled out. I guess Stockler was hoping at least some of the jurors would emotionally respond to the idea of poor Tom Anderson being used by these older crooks and ignore the judge's instructions and perhaps prevent some or all of the charges from sticking.

Bottini got to do a follow up to Stockler. I hadn't realized that he could. And he forefully pointed out that Anderson was not Prewitt's victim and repeated Marsh's closing point about Anderson not telling even Lesil McGuire, because he knew it was bad.

Stockler didn't follow that. I'm not sure if he chose not to or that's not part of the rules.

Then the judge gave the jury instructions. They got too complicated for me to write down and I've mentioned some of the key points already. If I can find something that gives the details I'll do another post.

The four alternate jurors were dismissed and the average age of the jurors fell by 10 or 15 years. Within minutes the jurors had asked for a copy of the stipulations. And then another note came out asking when they could have a smoke break. It seemed pretty unlikely that they would have a verdict today. There are seven charges and each has specific standards. It will take up the whole afternoon just sorting that out. And then there are the smoking breaks.

But the show wasn't quite over. Bottini had a point to make. In an interview reported on Channel 2 yesterday, Paul Stockler was quoted as saying that FBI Agent Kepner had lied in her testimony. Bottini argued that if Stockler really said this it would be a violation of some code of standards that I didn't catch. The judge appeared outraged - he had just thanked attorneys for both sides for doing a very good of arguing their cases. He asked Stockler, who paused a long time and then said that the reporter must have misquoted him. (Since it was done inside the courtroom the reporter wouldn't have recorded it.) The judge said, "I won't tolerate this sort of behavior. I'll accept your statement, but I'm not making a conclusion.. . I'll leave it open for another setting."

Then Stockler stood up and stated that yesterday's witness Ms. Bradley had been harassed by the FBI after she testified. Her cell phone kept ringing at security, and they went to her restaurant and confronter her employees. Bottini stood up to say that yesterday she had given a date for a payment made to Tom Anderson that would have been during the legislative session. If that was true it would have been an illegal payment. They were trying to check to see if she had mistaken the date.

And then all rose as the judge left. I've got to run so I don't have time to proof this. Pictures from after the trial are in the previous post.

Tom Anderson - Post Trial Photos

The jury got the case right around noon. They have seven counts to consider. While I'm working on my post of the end of the trial today, let me post a couple of pictures of after the trial. Cameras aren't allowed inside the Court House, but here are a few shots afterward. Here are five members of the jury taking a smoking break about 2:45pm.
















Alaska Public Radio Network Reporter Steve Heimel outside the courthouse.





An AP camera man waiting for some pictures talking to a reporter (?) who was taking lots of notes in the courthouse.

USA vs. Thomas Anderson Day 8 (Final Version)

U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska
Court Calendar for Thursday, July 5, 2007
Current as of 07/05/2007 at 5:30 PM

9:00 AM 3:06-CR-00099-JWS Judge Sedwick Anchorage Courtroom 3
USA vs. THOMAS ANDERSON
TRIAL BY JURY - DAY 8



Highlights -

• Anderson did not testify
• I didn't see anything too significant in today's testimony - the Defense attorney was trying to establish that Anderson did paid work as consultant for other organizations - Anchorage CHARR and Alaska Telephone Association - but did not vote for things they wanted. It seemed to me that this had mixed results, particularly the ATA testimony seemed to be negated in the cross examination.
• Tried to establish that the committee work was not particularly important, so all the testimony about getting Anderson onto Corrections and HESS committees wasn't as significant as it was made out to be. Again, this either backfired or was a wash. Not sure
• Witnesses:
• Joshua Michael Appleby - Anderson's legislative chief of staff who also got contract to do work for the website business with Bobrick.
• Bernadette Bradly - President of the Board of Anchorage CHARR (Cabaret, Hotels, And Restaurants and Retailers Association)
• James Rowe - Executive Director of the Alaska Telephone Association
• Mary Beth Kepner - FBI Agent
• Robert "Bob" Roses - Alaska State Representative who was elected to Anderson's seat when Anderson left the Legislature
• Jury was dismissed for the day at 2pm
  
• Judge and attorneys were to meet in judge's chambers to agree on jury instructions
• Tomorrow morning will be final arguments and the case will be given to the jury
  

It looks pretty certain that tomorrow the case goes to jury. I got there at 9:30 this morning and the jury was still out while the attorneys were wrangling over procedural matters. As we got there it sounded like the judge was saying to Defense Attorney Stockler that

1. he wouldn't be able to raise an entrapment defense, I think this is what the judge said, because it hadn't been raised in the beginning. [According to Lisa Demer's article in today's ADN, the judge ruled he could use this defense. I got there just as they were discussing this so I certainly defer to her take on this.] Stockler objected that things were revealed during the case that he hadn't been informed about - such as Commissioner Antrim getting called by the FBI in advance to let him know he would be getting a letter from Anderson, written by Prewitt. My understanding was that this was denied.
   
2. The Prosecutors also challenged some of the witnesses Stockler wanted to present.
   
1. He wanted to call FBI Agent Kepner, who has been involved in this case from the beginning and who has been in the courtroom throughout the case at the Prosecutor's table. Asking her about the number of hours of taped Anderson conversation - so he could show that there had been hours and hours of conversation and only in a few did Anderson say anything stupid. The judge responded that it was like asking for all the surveillance tape at the bank to show that the robber had come in many times and not robbed the bank. The other tapes didn't matter. He wanted to document that the FBI had a boat the followed Prewitt's boat on Prince William Sound five our bonding trip. And he wanted to follow up on the point that Anderson was originally called to the FBI office on the pretext that he'd won an award. The judge allowed the second two reasons.
2. He also wanted to call Mr. Fuhs and Mr. Roses as expert witnesses. The Prosecutors challenged the need for expert witnesses. Stockler said they'd had expert witnesses discussing how the legislature works. They countered that these were participants in meetings with Anderson and their discussion of the legislature was to give context to their discussion. In the end Roses was allowed, not Fuhs.
3. The Judge considered Defense's argument for Rule 29 Motion on each charge. When I googled it, I got the Cornell Law School website. That seemed appropriate. It said:
   

Rule 29. Motion for a Judgment of Acquittal

1. (a) Before Submission to the Jury.

   1. After the government closes its evidence or after the close of all the evidence, the court on the defendant's motion must enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction. The court may on its own consider whether the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction. If the court denies a motion for a judgment of acquittal at the close of the government's evidence, the defendant may offer evidence without having reserved the right to do so.

The Rule 29 motions were rejected for all counts.

I've got to run now. I didn't catch anything too significant, but I'll try to fill in some more details of the defense witnesses later tonight.

Added from the Draft Version:

It appeared to me that Defense was using its witnesses to prove:
1. That the website was a real business, not a sham business. (Joshua Appleby)
2. That Anderson had worked as a consultant for other companies before and being paid by them didn't prevent him from voting against their preferences. (Bernadette Bradley, James Rowe)
3. The FBI was trying to entrap (was careful to not use this word in front of the jury) his client. (Mary Beth Kepner)
4. Committee assignments - the Prosecution had shown that Anderson had worked to get on those committees of most interest to Cornell - weren't really all that important. (Appleby,Bob Roses)

I'm not sure that the points came across the way the defense intended and additional information came out that seemed to be of questionable value to the defense. In contrast to the Prosecution's witness Bobrick's account of a smart, hard-working, gung-ho, politics junkie, who followed through on things he started, the defense witnesses portrayed Anderson as "extremely hyper," loses focus unless you followed up with him; brilliant mind, but hard to keep it focused; sent staff to the key committee because it was at 7am and Anderson didn't function well that early. Stockler even asked a witness if he was ADD.

Item 1: Appleby, who was Anderson's chief of staff and who was recommended to Bobrick for a contract to develop a list of local government officials around the state who could be writers for the electronic journal, said he believed it was a real business venture. But after March 2003, he needed instructions to go further and he asked Anderson "about 20 times and was told 'let me think about it.'

Item 2: Bradly and Rowe were there to show that Tom didn't vote for former clients issues if he didn't agree with them. Bradly said Tom had been the first executive director of CHARR. Later when a rep, he had a contract to increase membership and help the new ED. He was paid either $1500 or $2500 in September 2003 and another $5000 in April 2004. Despite this relationship, he voted against CHARR's position on several issues. They were against lowering the blood alochol level for DUI from .10 to .08, against mandatory seat belts, increasing limits on brew pub sales, and a law relating to establishments with strippers. Anderson voted for all of them. Rowe's organization which represents local phone companies across the state hired Anderson for $5000 a month September 1, 2003 to do legal research for them. He was paid for four months for a total of $20,000. But Rowe testified under examination by Stockler, the Defense attorney, that Anderson voted against their key bill. On cross examination, it came out that the Alaska Telephone Association had two law firms they regularly used for legal advice; that Anderson's contract had no product required ; and that his 'research' involved studying HB 211 on telephone regulation as well as the State Regulations. When asked what the purpose of this study was, Rowe said, to educate Anderson on issues of importance to our rural Alaska customers.

Item 3: Stockler was limited by the judge on what he could ask Agent Kepler.
Q: Did you call Anderson and tell him he one an award and had to pick it up at the FBI headquarters on June 15, 2005?
A: No he was asked to give advice nominate someone for an award.
Q: Did he come into a room with a wall full of pictures of fishing trip on Prewitt's boat and played recordings of his conversations?
A: Yes.
Q: Was he told to stop working on the website?
A: No.
Q: Why use deception to get him to the office?
A: We wanted to get his cooperation and keep covert the nature of the investigation.

Item 4: Appleby said that as long as there was a quorum of four, he could go in Anderson's place to the Corrections Budget Subcommittee and did for the last two meetings.
Roses barely touched on committee assignments except to say he himself probably sat on more committees than any other representative. His testimony ranged from character witness (Anderson's family move in across the street from Roses when Anderson was a kid, so he knew him a long time), talking about what various legislators did for a living. When asked in cross examination if legislators have a responsibility to report sources of income, Roses essentially agreed this was the expectation, but it doesn't reflect what all happens.


Crucial tomorrow morning will be the instructions to the jury. What exactly has to be proven for each count against Anderson. From what we've seen it appears that the Prosecution wants to prove:

1. That Pacific Publications was set up to channel money from Prewitt (and Bobrick and Anderson assumed the money was from his employer Cornell, though it was from the FBI) to Anderson.
2. Although there may have been a belief that this was a real company in the beginning, all parties, including Anderson, knew the main purpose was to hide the fact that Anderson was being paid by Cornell.
   
3. The money was paid so that Cornell could ask Anderson to do various things for them - get onto committees that would impact relevant legislation and could give him a legitimate reason to ask administrators to testify on Corrections issues, lobby his legislative colleagues, and meet with administrative officials, and even testify at public meetings.
4. If Anderson had not known there was something wrong with the arrangement with Cornell, he wouldn't have agreed to the hiding of the source of the funding, he wouldn't have hidden the deal from his then girlfriend (and legislative colleague) and now wife.
5. Of course, Bobrick, Prewitt, and Anderson attempted to make Pacific Publications into as real a company as they could. This would give them cover in case there was an investigation. The more legitimate it was, more they could deny it was a sham organization to hide the real source of funds.
   

The Defense is going to try to demonstrate that:

1. Anderson was an eager, conscientious legislator whose door was open to anyone, and that he was eager to please would assist people simply because that was how he was
2. Anderson believed that Pacific Publications was a real company and that it was not related to assisting Cornell's interests. Since those interests were consistent with his philosophy, he had no conflict.
   
3. He wasn't hiding the source of income because it was illegal, but because he didn't want to lose the votes of union constituents who were opposed to the private prison.
4. [Anderson was entrapped by the FBI] The criminals here are Prewitt who when confronted by the FBI with illegal acts and likely prison, agreed to catch a legislator, and worked hard to get Anderson to do and say the things that would reduce Prewitt's criminal liability. Then Bobrick was confronted by the FBI and he agreed to help too. The did everything they could to get Anderson to say he was performing legislative acts in exchange for specific payments, but he always said that the payments and the actions were not related.
   

Googling around, I found a list of the specific charges. I don't know enough about the specifics of each charge to know how the evidence fits. I'm sure this will be in the instructions to the jury tomorrow (well, later today.) But here are the charges.

Summary of Charges
Anderson is charged in the Indictment with the following offenses:
Count - Offense Charged

1 - Conspiracy - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371
2 - Interference with Commerce by Extortion Induced Under Color of Official Right - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) and § 2
3 - Bribery Concerning Programs Receiving Federal Funds - Violation of 18 U.S.C. §666(a)(1)(B) and § 2
4 - 6 Money Laundering - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1) and § 2
7 - Interference with Commerce by Extortion Induced Under Color of Official Right - Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) and § 2
Source: DEFENDANT’S MOTION IN LIMINE REGARDING GOVERNMENT’S TRIAL
EXHIBITS



Interesting quotes:
Appleby on what a day is like during the legislative session - "mind-numbingly slow to hair-pullingly crazy"
The judge, while the jury was out, discussing with the two opposing attorneys new witnesses and information that had come out because witnesses had volunteered without being asked, "Bobrick was a peculiar witness."
Roses "Tom is two different people: The first cares about people and compassion; The second is a hyperactive kid - the energy needs to be funneled." (Quote is approximate)


Finally, just a comment on the role of the FBI here, since apparently the defendant, and the two key witnesses for the prosecution all were, at some time cooperating with the FBI and wearing wires.
Frank Prewitt began wearing a wire with Bobrick and then Anderson in Spring 2003. Prewitt claimed that 'mistakes' he'd made were either past the statute of limitations or very minor and that he was cooperating with the FBI voluntarily, not to get any reduction in sentence or charges dropped. He said he was involved with 6-8 other investigations.
Bill Bobrick began cooperating with the FBI in late September or early October 2006. He quickly pled guilty and agreed to cooperate with the FBI. It's not clear whether he is cooperating in other investigations. The only promise made to him was that if things went well, they might write a letter to the judge asking for leniency in sentencing.
Tom Anderson was called into the FBI in November 2006 [June 14, 2005]. Anderson, obviously, has not pleaded guilty, but apparently has cooperated with the FBI and worn a wire.

So this case is most likely the tip of the iceberg. We know of three more legislators who have been indicted and two more who have been investigated, but not indicted.

The President Didn't Lie

On July 19, 2005, MSNBC reported

President Bush said Monday that if anyone on his staff committed a crime in the CIA-leak case, that person will "no longer work in my administration."

I guess we should have paid closer attention. The President didn't lie. Libby no longer does work in the administration. We didn't know that 'would not go to prison' was also part of this promise.

Time for Us All to Stand Up to Bush and Cheney

Attending and posting on the Anderson trial has kept me from addressing another important issue: the commuting of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. With so much to be said about this, how does one zero in on the truly important issues here? Let me try to articulate why I think this is such an important event.

Our nation is founded on the rule of law. The Constitution spells out the compact that Americans have. It outlines the procedures by which we will make decisions. It is this set of procedures and the laws made following those procedures that have made the US a special place in the world. We make decisions based on a set of rules we that all have a role in establishing and changing. We don't make decisions through the whim of a monarch or through violence. Not everyone follows those rules, and we may not always find 'truth' in the court, but even if there are mistakes, there are further procedures with which to correct those mistakes.

Thus obstruction of justice is not a minor crime, it is an assault against the foundations of the United States of America. Bush has now said, "Fuck the Rule of Law. Libby is one my friends and I don't want him to go to prison." [I almost never use "Fuck." Not because I'm a prude, but because if we use it all the time, it loses the power it has as a taboo word. I use here, then, with all the shock value it once had, to say, "This is serious."]

But he hasn't denounced the Special Prosecutor or the Judge. When Clinton was impeached, he faced a conservative Special Prosecutor and a Republican controlled Congress. But in Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald and Judge Reggie Walton, Libby was facing people appointed by George W. Bush.


Essentially, this event should make clear to even the most obstinate Bush supporter that

• the rule in the administration is not the rule of law, but the protection of their own interests. But we knew that after the 2000 Florida voting theft.
  
• Criminals aren't people who break laws, they are people Bush and friends don't like. There is nothing wrong with five years at Guantanamo for people who have never been charged with a crime, but one night in prison is one too many for our close friends.
  

I'm convinced this is not just, or even, a gesture to a friend. I'm persuaded by Marcy Wheeler it is also a way to insure that Libby will not reveal what he knows about Cheney's and Bush's obstruction of justice in the Plame leak and who knows what all else. There isn't one single event that is the turning point in any trend, but this one shows that those who are guilty in Bush's campaign to dismantle the Constitution and establish a dynasty, will be taken care of and that American justice as we knew it (think Guantanamo, secret detention camps, firing US attorneys as well) no longer exists. If we don't stand up now to stop this assault, it will be much harder to stop things later on.

Even if you only say, "Commuting Libby's sentence is an outrage. I expect you as my (Representative/Senator) to do something immediately to get to the bottom of this" now is a good time to write to you legislators.

Other bloggers are all over this.

I've mentioned before a minor addiction to the Blog Next Hurrah and the key blogger there, Marcy Wheeler. She and her commenters mostly write with knowledge and insight. She sat through the Libby trial and blogged live from the Libby sentencing. She knows this as well as the attorneys involved almost.Here's what she has to say about commuting his sentence. Her take is that commuting Libby's sentence (and presumably the fat legal defense fund that was raised to help Libby will take care of the $250,000 fine) will ensure that Libby won't say what he knows about Bush and Cheney's involvement in obstructing justice. Here she is on MSNBC in the video.

USA v Anderson - Day 7 (Final Version)

U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska
Court Calendar for Tuesday, July 3, 2007

9:00 AM	3:06-CR-00099-JWS	Judge Sedwick	Anchorage Courtroom 3
USA vs. THOMAS ANDERSON TRIAL BY JURY - DAY 7

---

The Prosecution finished presenting its case today. Things began with Mr. Bottini going through tapes with Mr. Bobrick until 10:19am. Then a withering cross examination by Anderson attorney Paul Stockler that was interrupted for lunch. Bobrick was finally excused at 2:17pm. I'll add more to this later. The other witnesses were relatively brief and I'll try to highlight them and then add to this later tonight.

[Bobrick comments added at the end]

Ken D. Erickson was the next witness. He was the person hired to design the website for the Pacific Publications through which the payments were supposed to channeled from Cornell (though actually from the FBI) to Anderson. He said he set up the website, was paid $1000 of the $2000 he was supposed to be paid. (Stockler later asked him about a check that sounded like it was $4000 but that wasn't clear to me at all what that was.) He also said there were never any articles put up on the site or any advertisements.

Former Health and Human Services Commissioner Joel Gilbertson testified about the Certificate of Need Process, basically saying that when the legislature added requirements for C of N for Imaging Centers and Residential Psychiatric Treatment Centers (RPTC), that the state then had to develop standards for evaluating them. Thus, even though everyone supported the Bring the Kids Home program, they couldn't certify and RPTCs until they had standards.

Karen Fink from National Bank of Alaska testified that a check had been cashed by Tom Anderson, not deposited in his account on Dec. 31, 2004.

David Pierce, the Certificate of Need Coordinator for the State testified that at an Anchorage public hearing on RPTCs in Anchorage, Rep. Thomas Anderson signed in the roster and wrote 'self' in the box labeled 'representing.' He also read a transcript of Anderson's public comment where he said, (and I don't have the exact words here) something like "I'm particularly interested in Cornell's proposal...I don't have a particular interest, except interest in kids...not here on behalf of any group... Northstar looks good, but I've met with Cornell and toured their proposed site." This was all when money was being funnelled from Cornell's lobbyist Frank Prewitt to another Cornell lobbyist's (Bobrick) non-existent website and then paid to Anderson, who was asked to talk at this public hearing by the Cornell representatives.


I'll revise this post later tonight and add more on Bobrick's testimony. After the jury was dismissed for the day, Stockler was asked about his witnesses. He did say he still had to decide whether Anderson would testify. He'd decide that tomorrow (July 4).

Bobrick Testimony

As I wrote yesterday, Bobrick walked slowly, like a very tired man going somewhere he didn't want to be. And with good reason. He was going to testify against someone he'd described as a good friend and future business partner. And he was described by someone as a mentor and adviser to Tom Anderson. Much of the testimony went over tapes and quotes that had been reviewed during the Frank Prewitt testimony. His memory wasn't too good, especially when being cross examined by Stockler. We heard "I don't remember" frequently, particularly when asked what day something happened. Early on when asked if he knew Frank Prewitt was recording him, he answered, "No, I wouldn't have said as many stupid things as I said."

Bottini seemed to be trying to establish

1. That for Bobrick's clients Anderson's best qualification was that he was a legislator. He could lobby the executive branch.
   
1. Q: "as a private citizen or as a legislator?"
2. A: "You can't shed that you're a legislator"
3. What was Tom Anderson paid for? Being a legislator. Understood by You? Yes. Understood by Prewitt? Yes. Understood by Tom Anderson? I think so also, because there was no work, no newsletter, etc. [these are not exact quotes, but the best I could catch]
   
2. That Anderson and he knew that it wouldn't look good if people knew that he was getting paid by Cornell.
3. That the internet publishing business - Pacific Publications (sometimes Publishing) - was not a real business, but merely set up to pass money from Cornell to Anderson without it being visible.
   
4. That Bobrick used the money from Prewitt to write checks totaling nearly $23,000, and the money wasn't for banner ads on the website, but for furthering Cornell's business interests as requested. The extra money was used to hire Ken Erickson to set up the website. But Bobrick said while the site got made, no one wrote any articles for it or sold any ads. Another check went to Josh Appleby who did some research on Alaska village governments that was for finding stringers around the state for the website.
5. That the FBI had contacted Bobrick in Nov. 2006 and that Bobrick had pleaded guilty of conspriacy to commit money laundering, bribery, and extortion. [Take that with a grain of salt, not sure from my notes how many of those charges he pleaded to.] In exchange for "telling the truth" the Prosecutors might file a motion to ask the judge to take his cooperation into considering when sentencing.
   

It seemed to me that a number of times Bobrick's answers to Botinni had the rising intonation of a question, as if he were asking whether he'd given the right answer. He kept saying he'd done stupid things that have ruined his life and he's terribly sorry and testifying was one way to make things right. It sounded a little like a kid who is being forced to apologize for hitting his younger brother. He had to do it, but I wasn't totally sure his heart was in it. Another interpretation might be that he felt so defeated that his heart wasn't in anything. I've never met or seen Bobrick before to my knowledge, but he didn't seem like he was in the best mental health condition.


When Stockler started the cross examination, Bobrick was like a boxer who'd been knocked down but kept getting back up. Stockler hammered and hammered Bobrick over three things:

1. Trying to get Bobrick to agree that he was getting a great deal from the FBI for testifying. He kept responding that they made no promises, only possibilities. He finally said, "I've been convicted of a felony, I've lost my business of 20 years, my reputation in the community [something important for a lobbyist] has been destroyed, and I'm probably going to prison, I'm wrecked." Based on what's already happened to me, I don't expect anything good is going to happen to me." He acknowledged he'd made stupid mistakes, he's sorry, and he's paying for it and trying to make up for it as best as he can.

2. That Tom Anderson was looking for real, legitimate work and that he didn't want a sham job.. Anderson never asked for money when he did legislative work.

3. That the internet publishing company Pacific Publications that Bobrick was setting up was a real legitimate business, it was not a sham. This exchange got painful to watch. Bobrick said, that he wanted it to be real, he'd hoped it was real, but that he had been in denial. Half of him hoped it was real, half of him knew it was a sham. Stockler pressed hard. When did you stop thinking it was real? I don't know. On date X? Date Y? "THIS WAS A REAL BUSINESS WASN'T IT?!" And Bobrick would return to the refrain, "At the end of the day, it was set up to funnel money from Prewitt to Anderson. In this exchange, it seemed that Bobrick had lots of business ideas - sell bottled Eklutna water to the Chinese, a Vodka distillery, a shooting range, buy half-way houses from Cornell , but none of them came to fruition. He even said something like, Ok, you've established I'm a lousy entrepreneur.

This will give you one view of what happened, but I'm pretty tired. Check out the Anchorage Daily News for Lisa Demer's report too.

USA vs. Thomas Anderson Day 6 (my day 3)

U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska
Court Calendar for Monday, July 2, 2007
Current as of 07/02/2007 at 10:00 PM


9:00 AM 3:06-CR-00099-JWS Judge Sedwick Anchorage Courtroom 3
USA vs. THOMAS ANDERSON
TRIAL BY JURY - DAY 6

You can see my posts on Day 4 and Day 5.

I didn't make to court til 10am when Stockler (Anderson's attorney) was still cross examining Frank Prewitt, the FBI's main wire in the case. Basically Stockler was going back over the transcripts, plus adding in some that apparently his office had made of tapes the FBI didn't make transcripts of, trying to get Prewitt to admit to some different interpretations of what was said:

1. That basically Anderson was a guy totally into politics who was eager to help, eager to please any constituent or even anyone coming in. Thus he helped out Prewitt, not for pay but because that is the kind of guy he is.
1. He did this by trying to show that Anderson helped Prewitt out before money was involved and going through the transcripts to show that Anderson hadn't asked for money.
   Prewitt's response was that Bobrick had asked for the money so Anderson didn't have to
2. That the things Anderson did for Prewitt were consistent with Anderson's values (supporting private enterprise, for example) and they were the kind of things that legislators do for lobbyists all the time.
1. He used Rep. Mike Hawker as a regular example - if you had written talking points or a letter to sign as though it were his own would you think there was something wrong?
   If you make a campaign contribution to someone you could ask him do these things and there would be nothing wrong?
2. So, what's the difference then between what Anderson was doing and these others?
   
3. Stockler asked Prewitt whether the work Anderson did to try to change the staffing levels at half-way houses wasn't just good government. Even though they didn't have the number of residents they were designed for, they had to continue full staffing which made no economic sense. But Commissioner Antrim was being bureaucratic and wouldn't budge or give a good reason for his position. [Antrim was a witness in the afternoon. I got the impression he was added to respond to this characterization.]
   Prewitt's response each time was: The difference is that he was working for me. Or I was paying him to do these things. [I would also note that the campaign contributions are reported to the Alaska Public Offices Commission, but these were secret even from Anderson's then girlfriend Rep. McGuire.
3. Anderson never asked for money, that he never considered the payments related to the work he was doing for Prewitt (see 1 and 2 above) and while he asked Prewitt at various times whether there was such a connection or there was a conflict, Prewitt never said yes. If he had, Anderson would have ended it there and Prewitt wouldn't have gotten what the FBI wanted. He challenged Prewitt to show where in the transcripts Anderson had asked for money.
1. Prewitt said he couldn't recall the specifics and would have to go through the transcripts, but that it was clear Anderson knew there was a relationship between the money and the work. And it wasn't his job as a lobbyist to give Anderson legal advice
2. Stockler also repeatedly asked Prewitt what the FBI told him to do or not do.
1. Prewitt: I was there to listen, ask questions.
3. Anderson didn't ask for money, because Bobrick was taking care of that and Anderson knew Cornell (the prison company Prewitt was a lobbyist for) really didn't care about the ads in the sham internet company that Bobrick set up to hide the source of the payments to Anderson.
4. He also tried to get Prewitt to say that Anderson didn't want it known he was working for Cornell because it would be politically damaging, not because it was illegal. He had some union support that he could lose if they knew he was working for Cornell. [Of course that is one of the purposes of disclosure laws, so voters know the potential conflicts of interest of the candidate.]
   
5. At another point, Stockler was trying to show that there was nothing in Anderson's past that would indicate that he was unethical and would accept illegal money. That caused the Prosecuter, Mr. Marsh, after the jurors left for the morning break, to say that since Stockler had raised this, an excluded part of the transcript which showed that Anderson had worked for Veco on contract "for doing nothing" (according to Bobrick) should now be brought in to show that there was something to indicate this. Marsh was allowed to bring this back in when he did the redirect with Prewitt later on.
6. Finally, Stockler worked to clear Lesil McGuire's name by getting Prewitt to say he had no reason to believe she knew anything about the arrangement Tom Anderson had with him and Cornell.

And then it was lunch break at noon.
Back in court at 1:30. Stockler finished the cross examination at 1:47 pm.
Marsh was up right away. I have to say, I've been impressed had how quickly the transitions go from one attorney to the next. Marsh worked to get Prewitt to reinterpret what had been said in the morning. It was clear that Prewitt is a witness for the prosecution. He did not let Stockler push him into anything he wasn't ready to accede. He would say, "I have to read the transcripts again before I can say that." He would disagree with Stockler's characterization. But for (Prosecutor) Marsh he was always supportive.

Marsh started by asking what his instructions from the FBI were. Did they set rules, parameters?

1. They identified specific persons of interest
2. He was not allowed to propose something illegal, just carry out my business as a lobbyist
3. He was instructed not to shut down any illegal proposals that came up. "It would have a chilling effect"
4. He was never told "you have to bag a legislator."

All this seemed to go to answer Stockler's point that he was proposing the illegal activity and that if he had told Anderson it wasn't legal, Anderson would have stopped right then.

They went on to:

1. Highlight times when Anderson did, in fact,
   
1. show he knew that the Internet Journal ads were not the reason Cornell was paying him (Anderson said, "Quit the BS on the banner [ads] thing.") and that in fact that Prewitt never saw any articles that Anderson or anyone else had written for it and he's pretty sure it never came to be
2. show places in the transcripts where Anderson did ask for money - particularly, the Nov. 16, 2004 meeting where Anderson came to Prewitt to complain that Bobrick was taking a big cut out of his money for himself and that he really needed money. Prewitt said rather than cut out Bobrick, he make an extra payment for Anderson. Another was where Anderson was asking if he should get out of the legislature (because the pay is so low) and work for Prewitt. Anderson answers his own question, "No, you want votes in the legislature."
   

Then Stockler asked another 15 minutes worth of questions of Prewitt.

At 3:25pm Mark Antrim, former Commissioner of Corrections was the witness. After giving a brief biography - first job after getting a BA in Justice at UAF, was as a Corrections Officer II for the State of Alaska in the 1980s and appointed as Commissioner by Gov. Murkowski. Palin asked him to resign and he is now back as a Corrections Officer II until retirement soon.

He gave a totally different view of the logic of the Half way house staffing levels. Stockler had argued and Prewitt hadn't argued[disagreed], that what Anderson did on this was simply good government to stop a blatant inefficiency of forcing the contractors to keep full staff when they had only a few residents. It was an example of how the work Anderson did was stuff any good legislator would do.

But Antrim's picture was much different. There was increased pressure to fill the halfway houses and so more prisoners who normally would be classed at a higher risk level were being sent to halfway houses and the number of 'walkaways' or prisoners who escaped [was going up fast]. A corrections employee had been sent out to audit all the privately run halfway houses [and] found that most had only one staff when they should have had three. The halfway house contractors - Cornell and two others - were told to get back to contract mandated staffing levels. One complied right away, but Cornell and another gave a lot of 'pushback.'

Although Anderson and Antrim had had good relations before, things were a little tense this time. Anderson wanted Antrim to make a supplemental budget request to increase funding for the halfway houses. Antrim said no. The head of OMB would laugh at him. Why would he ask for more money for something they already were paying for based on the contract with Cornell?

Stockler, in the cross examination, raised the question about Antrim and Hawker being like oil and water. Antrim thought that was a fair assessment, but added that before he left his appointment he told Hawker that in hindsight he was grateful for his close oversight - it had helped him run the Department better.

Finally, at 4:04 - Bill Bobrick began his stint as a witness. We'd heard a lot of about Bobrick to this point so it was interesting to see the actual person. I thought he walked in rather slowly, not at all eagerly. He was a lobbyist who lobbied the Municipality of Anchorage. He'd started construction work in Alaska after his third year of college, gotten into union work, executive director for the Democratic Party of Alaska, became a legislative staffer, and eventually realized that people would pay him to help them deal with the Anchorage Municipal Assembly. He's been doing that for 20 years. He met Anderson around 2001 when Anderson was on the school board and both worked as lobbyists for clients needing to deal with the Municipality of Anchorage. They hit it off and they saw a future lobbying business together after Anderson was out of the legislature. Anderson, a Republican would work in Juneau and Bobrick, known as a Democrat (though he's now registered Independent) would stay in Anchorage. [All this background on Bobrick was stuff he said when asked to give his background.]

And soon it was 4:30 and adjournment. It's late, and while I should proof this, I'm too tired to do it. So I'll post as is. I'd love to add some pictures, but you can't bring your camera into the court side of the Federal Building. There was an artist doing great drawings for Channel 4 in court in the morning.

Lisa Demer's Great Coverage of the Anderson Trial

There's a lot of criticism of the press and always has been. Many people only realize how bad news coverage can be when they see the reporting on something they were involved in and see big differences between what they saw and what was reported. Some of that can be seen as people seeing different things. Some because the news media had a predetermined story line.

So it's important to acknowledge when the press is doing a great job. I've been at the Anderson trial for the last two afternoons, and her coverage was both accurate and hit all the main points as I saw them. In fact in Saturday's paper she covered a significant point that I somehow didn't hear - that Prewitt responded to Anderson's attorney's cross examination suggesting that he wouldn't have been wearing a wire for the government if he weren't guilty, by saying that Tom Anderson also wore a wire, so did that make him guilty?

And in today's paper she reported that Don Stolworthy (I spelled his name wrong in the previous post) who Prewitt had said had asked him for a job if he got fired and even asked him for money, clearly illegal things to do, was working "as a cooperating witness" for the FBI, and that FBI spokesperson Eric Gonzalez said he was "squeaky clean."

So, did Anderson wear a wire expecting not to go to trial? Did he think he was innocent and was helping the FBI catch criminals?

Also, the Alaska Ear had some tidbits on who some of the other spectators were in court.

When is Innocent until Guilty the Rule?

Vic Kohring is just one of the politicians who have wanted to keep their elected positions despite being indicted.

Kohring said he couldn't answer specific questions about the case before it goes to trial.

"All I can say is that people have to remember that I am innocent until proven guilty," he said. (Anchorage Daily News)

John Havelock wrote a much needed commentary in the ADN yesterday, pointing out that "innocent until proven guilty" is the rule

When serving on a jury, empowered to deprive one of our fellow citizens of their freedom or even their life...

But that standard isn't the one we should or do use for other decisions.

No such principle should guide our judgment as individuals when we make decisions about who should we trust with our family or property, or who should be entrusted with public office. . .

Would you let your daughter go out with an accused rapist because, after all, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence?

And surely you wouldn't hire an accountant who had been indicted, but not yet proven guilty, of embezzlement. And elected officials are our employees in a sense. So when there are indicators of wrong doing, we have the right to explain themselves.

Appropriately, in business the employee exercising his legal right to remain silent may be fired if he does not offer, in short order, a persuasive counter to incriminating circumstances. This should also be true of the public officeholder, who can avoid criminally incriminating himself by speaking through a spokesman such as his lawyer. If he can't provide a reasonable explanation, then he should resign or be removed from office.

An indictment is not an offhand comment on talk radio or an anonymous post on the internet. As Havelock points out

A grand jury has found that evidence exists which, if believed, would establish guilt

Knowing when a rule applies and doesn't apply is important in life. Too often people throw out the rule of "Innocent until Proven Guilty" inappropriately. It is an important part of our legal rules, to prevent people from being deprived of life, liberty, or property by the state. And before indicted politicians are imprisoned or fined, that standard is important. But it isn't the standard on which to decide whether they should continue representing us in our government.