Senator Ted Stevens Indicted

Posted July 29, 2008, 2:43 p.m.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been indicted on seven counts of making false statements for failing to disclose gifts he received from VECO, an Alaskan oil services company. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, is the first sitting senator to be indicted since 1993. His indictment is the most recent incident in a series of corruption and nepotism charges that have dogged Alaska state politicians in recent years.

Gifts Stevens is accused of receiving from VECO include major home renovations, a car, and other big-ticket items. According to prosecutors, Stevens solicited these gifts while VECO employees solicited official actions from Stevens in return, such as assistance in obtaining federal grants for the company’s projects.

Stevens’s indictment follows over four years of federal investigations into Alaskan political corruption. Three state legislators have been convicted, and two more are awaiting trial. At least four other Alaska officials and VECO employees, including the chief of staff to former Governor Frank Murkowski (R), have been charged and pleaded guilty to various corruption and/or bribery charges. Representative Don Young (R-AK), Alaska’s only member of the House of Representatives, is also under investigation.

Editorial Note: My wife Melissa is an employee of CH2M Hill, which acquired VECO in September 2007. The alleged incidents of bribery occurred before the acquisition, and Melissa works in a different operating division of the company.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

If you are not a wild and crazy fanatic when it comes to giving yourself to God, you are not practicing the heart of Christianity. If you are a fanatic about anything else, you are an idolater.

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

On the other hand . . . you have different fingers.

The hunger strike is a purely moral weapon. It presupposes that the jailer has not entirely lost his conscience. Or that the jailer is afraid of public opinion.

Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Once [President Eisenhower] makes up his mind, he’s full of indecision.

Failing to look under the bed when you strongly suspect a monster is lurking there is not an advisable strategy.

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

If we want limited government, as we should, and a level of taxation that is not unduly burdensome, we need healthy institutions of civil society, beginning with a flourishing marriage culture that supports family formation and preservation.

If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Look for three qualities in employees: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.

Governments . . . depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence.

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.

Nobody’s ever been treated badly like me . . . Although they do say Abraham Lincoln was treated really badly.

We shall see hereafter that in America the real strength of the country is vested in the provincial far more than in the federal government.

There can be no higher international duty than to safeguard the existence and independence of industrious, orderly states, with a high personal and national standard of conduct, but without the military force of the great powers.