Christian Leftist

You’d think that any politician convicted of seven criminal felony charges and facing significant jail time, possibly for the rest of his natural life, would quit while he was behind and call it a day.

But this is not just any old politician. This isn’t even any old senator.

Oh no. This is Senator Ted Stevens of the “Alaska Is Always First!” persuasion we’re talking about, and Sen. Stevens is the kind of guy who would rise from the dead just so he could shoot at noisy neighborhood kids to scare them off his lawn.

Now that the longest-serving Republican senator ever is a seven-time convicted felon, he’s decided not only to appeal the conviction, on which he has several legitimate reasons to do so, he’s also refusing to drop out of his senate race to re-election.

Before the conviction announcement by the jury yesterday, Stevens was in a virtual dead heat with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich last week according to a poll done there. It’s unclear whether Sen. Stevens will win re-election, considering he is only the fifth U.S. Senator to ever be convicted of a felony while in office.

The verdict was a huge blow to Stevens, who had pushed through his lawyers for a speedy trial (and what he hoped was a speedy acquittal) before Election Day. Now, with seven days left before November 4th, there isn’t enough time to have an appeal approved before voters go to the polls to decide his fate.

Just this past Sunday, Stevens’s attorneys were expressing impatience and frustration at the dismissal and replacement of one juror with an alternate after the juror’s mother died and she cut off contact with the judge. They were concerned that the verdict would not arrive soon enough. With the results the opposite of what Stevens’s team had wanted, one can assume they are regretting the decision to request a speedy trial.

The real kicker? Today, the press announced that Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin has disavowed his actions, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell is too worried about losing his own seat in a re-election bid to care much, and even Arizona Senator and GOP Presidential Candidate John McCain says Stevens should resign.

You know it’s going to be a bad week when the head of your party and that party’s presidential candidate says you should call it a day and go home.

To top off the ludicrousness of the situation, Stevens probably can’t even vote for himself in the election. That’s right: Alaska law says that convicted felons cannot vote until their sentences are served and completed.

However, there’s apparently no law that says convicted felons can’t run for Congress. Irony, pinch me, please. I think my brain just left the building, and I want it back.

One of the most redeeming aspects of the television news industry is that it can expose the worst possible outcome of any scenario and drive a point starkly home in the space of thirty seconds. That’s what ABC News did on Thursday when it covered the Paris Hilton jail scandal. I don’t think there is an accurate estimate of precisely how much medical suffering goes on in prison, but I’ll hazard a guess and use my treatment when I was in lockup as an example.

If your medical condition requires that you take certain pills on a daily basis to function and it has been proven that going cold turkey on said pills WILL cause severe physiological effects (say, a complete mental breakdown and suicidal tendencies), it is in everyone’s best interests that you receive those medications. When I pleaded for medical attention, the guard took a look at me, snarled, “She’s not dying!” and walk away. Among several other civil rights violations, I was released rather than treated because it would have meant more trouble for the police. If there hadn’t been lawyers filing en masse for a group of us as a whole and a significant media presence surrounding our arrests, other protesters and I would have languished in roach-infested cells as long as the paperwork backups continued, possibly for weeks.

Google the Washington Post articles on Jonathan Magbie, and you’ll understand how cruel and heartless the criminal justice system truly is towards anyone who isn’t as healthy as a horse. That’s just a taste of the horror stories to have emerged from U.S. prisons. I can’t imagine the treatment in countries poorer than our own.

Medical care is not supposed to be a ‘luxury that prisoners don’t deserve.’ It is a basic human need, and there is no excuse that can justify the physical and mental suffering of a patient whose problems are treatable.