"Alaskans deserve to have a fair election not tainted by some announcement that one of the candidates was convicted fairly of seven felonies, when in fact it wasn't a fair conviction," Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in an interview.

Hah, yes, well, it wasn't fair when voters thought Barack Obama was a muslim socialist terrorist who should be feared, but they still made the right call.

Anyways, Palin says the fact that the Justice Department finally stopped it's completely inept prosecution of Ted Stevens for crimes that he's still probably guilty of means that there should now be a special election or something, and she calls on Mark Begich to step down, because why not, let's just call on people to do stupid things that make no sense. We call on Mayor Bloomberg to ride a dragon to our birthday party!

The head of the Alaska GOP, some guy who won a contest probably, agrees! Congressional Republicans and people with brains in their heads, not so much.

"In light of the good news yesterday, I am sure many of us wish we could turn the clock back to last November," said Alaska's senior GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski. "Unfortunately, that is not an option."

Corrupt dick Rep Don Young wants to have it both ways, sort of, with the bemoaning the sad treatment of his political hero but also not demanding crazy things.

"The seated senator there, Mark Begich, will be in the Senate, he will do a good job," Young told Fox News. "It's just sad that Alaskans were frankly hoodwinked into malfeasance of office work by the Justice Department itself."

What does that second sentence mean? Anyone?

Meanwhile, Palin daughter-impregnator Levi Johnston went on Tyra to lie about using a condom when he impregnated Bristol Palin one of the many times they had hot high school sex. He is still basically a sad, kinda dumb kid, but his "the condom had a wardobe malfunction" excuse is still less dumb than whatever thing Sarah Palin will say to the press next.

While there is no doubt in our mind that former Senator Stevens is genuinely felonious, the Feds, the FBI, and the Bush Justice Department so thoroughly fucked up the prosecution that we shouldn't be surprised at this late "exoneration."

• A prosecution witness recanted his testimony and later claimed he made up his testimony because of death threats made against him by his uncle Bill Allen, the oil company owner who gave Stevens all those gifts.
• Then an FBI agent involved in the wide-ranging Alaska corruption investigations came forward with allegations that the government investigation was marred with the exact same sort of hilarious bribery and favor-trading that makes up Alaska politics in general.
• The DOJ tried to relocate a witness that the defense subpoenaed in the middle of the trial, and then they forgot to redact the names of the people they wanted redacted in their own request to redact those names, because their investigation was apparently run by the DOJ's "Kindergarten Cops" division.
• Supposedly another FBI agent was sleeping with Bill Allen.
• Then the names of all the folks shamed in that FBI whistle-blower's statement were released, even though they didn't give consent.
• The judge held the prosecution in contempt for ignoring a court order.
• Then, in February, the Justice Department finally replaced the morons who'd been running the prosecution.
• But it was too late. Eric Holder admitted defeat and dropped the charges against Stevens.

So hey, if you were an elected official, 2000-2008 was basically your window to do any fucking thing you wanted because the Bush Justice Department was staffed by illiterate morons. Congratulations to Ted Stevens, the most innocent man in America!

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who is a convicted felon, won his reelection campaign! Stevens, convicted just last week of seven counts of corruption, has a 4,000 vote lead over his opponent, some boring non-corrupt Democrat. There are still 50,0000 absentee ballots left to count, so you know, this could still go either way. But honestly, Stevens is probably a lock. Good work, Alaska.

Ha, of course, upon re-watching, the question is about whether she voted for convicted felon Senator Ted Stevens, from Alaska. She won't say, of course, because she still has to go back to Alaska when she's done with this little vacation, and "Uncle Ted" is still a powerful figure, and she "stood up to corrupt old boy politics" by not even admitting that she probably still voted for him.

In 2006, America watched in glee as Republican congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Tom DeLay all faced indictments on the eve of the midterm elections. Resignations and bitter GOP infighting soon followed! Ney refused to resign until days before the election! Oh, then Florida congressman Mark Foley, uh, had some sort of scandal involving sexy, sexy underaged male pages. Also there was this Jack Abramoff guy! It was an exciting time, sort of.

Now we are so busy with Barack Obama being a socialist and John McCain being old that Ted Stevens getting kicked out of the Senate, finally, after 200 years, seems like some happy afterthought. So. Corrupt Alaska Republican fucks his own party and loses an election. Who knew Alaska would matter, this year?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 27, 2008

Statement of Senator Ted Stevens

I am obviously disappointed in the verdict but not surprised given the repeated instances of prosecutorial misconduct in this case. The prosecutors had to report themselves to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility during the trial for ethical violations. Exculpatory evidence was hidden from my lawyers. A witness was kept from us and then sent back to Alaska. The Government lawyers allowed evidence to be introduced that they knew was false. I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have.

I am innocent. This verdict is the result of the unconscionable manner in which the Justice Department lawyers conducted this trial. I ask that Alaskans and my Senate colleagues stand with me as I pursue my rights. I remain a candidate for the United States Senate.

Nice.

Prosecutor Brenda Morris, toward the end of her cross-examination of the senator yesterday, settled in for a long discussion about the chair, which Alaska restaurateur Bob Persons bought for Stevens as a gift seven years ago — but which Stevens never reported on his Senate disclosure forms.

"And the chair is still at your house?" Morris asked.

"Yes," Stevens conceded.
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"How is that not a gift?"

"He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift," Stevens explained. "He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift."

"Where is that chair now?"

"In our house," Stevens repeated. "We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us, ma'am."

The Stevens defense so far rests on convincing a jury that people kept giving him gifts because they liked him a lot. Testifying to that was Colin Powell, who was a character witness for Stevens (maybe someone convinced him Stevens is black?).

His strong opinions in the network neutrality debate may have something do with contributions from Internet service providers like Verizon and AT&T, which are respectively third and fifth on the list of largest contributors to his current re-election campaign, both ahead of oil industry services company Veco. He also counts News Corp. and Disney as top donors, and has championed broadcast flag provisions that would have required electronics manufacturers to bar users from recording digital audio or video flagged by rightsholders.

The investigation by the Department of Justice has been going on for four years, having raided the senator's remodeled home last year. But it's clear that corporations have known that Senator Stevens's vote has been for sale for some time now. The bad news alone might spell doom for the senator's re-election campaign, which would count as good news for open Internet advocates — the Democratic challenger, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, is a strong supporter of network neutrality legislation.