Former Senator Ted Stevens Dead in Plane Crash

Posted August 10, 2010, 1:18 p.m.

Major media outlets including CNN and CBS are now confirming that former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), who represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 2009, has died in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska. He was 86. Also in the aircraft were former NASA chief and current CEO of EADS North America Sean O’Keefe and seven others. According to reports from rescuers, at least five people on the plane were killed. Details about the cause of the crash and the disposition of the other passengers are currently unavailable.

Stevens, who survived a plane crash in December 1978 that took the life of his first wife Ann, was the longest-serving Republican Senator and held several leadership positions during his tenure, including president pro-tempore and Majority Whip. In 2008, he was charged with making false statements on Senate disclosure forms for failing to disclose gifts received from VECO, an Alaskan oil services company. Stevens, amid the controversy, narrowly lost his 2008 bid for reelection to Senator Mark Begich (D-AK).

In early 2009, President Barack Obama’s (D) administration requested that Stevens’s charges be dismissed and his conviction vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct; the request was granted by the court in April 2009.

Editorial Note: My wife Melissa is an employee of CH2M Hill, which acquired VECO in September 2007. The alleged incidents 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

I never had a master plan. I just got fed up one day and decided to do something about it.

From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted.

I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign.

We humans are judgmental people, and we can’t turn off that feature of our brains. Nor would we want to do so, since judging our environment is what keeps us alive.

This is faith, receiving the truth of Christ: first knowing it to be true, and then acting upon that belief.

Indifference . . . is the epitome of evil.

On the whole, it is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready.

The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones.

I had rather be a free citizen of the small republic of Massachusetts, than an oppressed subject of the great American empire.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

The name of God must never be used to support immoral acts.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

Suppose for instance, that the same body, which has the power of raising money by taxes, is also entrusted with the application of that money, they will very probably raise large sums, and apply them to their own private uses.