Political Criminals

First, the disclaimer. I am not a member of any political party. When it comes to voting candidates must earn my vote based upon the issues I actually care about.

Now, moving on… There is a very amusing little video working it’s way around the Internet in which a man offers $100 if anyone can name all of the Republicans who are “under criminal investigation or already convicted” in just one breath.

This is a fantastic piece of marketing, although in my opinion it’s almost completely without merit. The video is 59 seconds long, and only 15 names are read, but it leaves you with the general impression that all Republicans are, well… criminals. Here, see for yourself:

I took the time to actually capture all of the names read in the video. They are:

• Bill Frist, Senate Leader, Under investigation for insider trading
• Conrad Burns, Senator, Under Investigation criminal conspiracy
• Tom Delay, Congressman, Indicted for money laundering
• Mark Foley, Congressman, Under investigation for soliciting underage pages
• Jim Gibbons, Congressman, under investigation for assaulting a female
• Jerry Lewis, Congressman, under investigation for criminal conspiracy
• John Doolittle, Congressman, under investigation for criminal conspiracy
• Curt Weldon, Congressman, under investigation for illegal influence peddling
• Rick Remzi, Congressman, under investigation for illegal influence peddling
• Ernie Fletcher, Governor, Indicted for official misconduct
• Scooter Libby, Advisor, Indicted for perjury
• Brian Doyle, Homeland Security deputy press secretary, Convicted of child seduction
• Bob Taft, Governor of Ohio, Convicted of ethics violation
• Duke Cunningham, Congressman, Convicted of accepting bribes, tax evasion
• Bob Ney, Congressman, Convicted of accepting bribes

One should note that among the list of 15, only 4 have actually been convicted (According to the list. I did not vet them all…) For all we know, the other 11 might be simply targets of attack for the sole purpose of being able to say they are “under investigation”. After all, this is America, and people are presumed innocent until proven guilty!

Still, I decided I would do a little searching to see if I could find more complete lists of Republicans, or even Democrats, that are basically criminals. After doing Google searches for terms such as “list republicans convicted” and “list democrats convicted”, I must say the results were not encouraging for Republicans.

People have compiled extensive lists of party members that have been convicted for all sorts of things, especially sex crimes. For example:

• Republican Hypocrisy Revealed
• Democratic Party’s Site
• Examples of Republican hypocrisy

I would think there must be similar examples of Democrats, but my search didn’t turn up any similar lists. I can come up with several theories:

• There are none.
• No one was prepared for the Democratic attack and the Republicans have not yet completed the necessary research to compile a similar list.
• Republicans are not as good as utilizing the Web and haven’t managed to get decent Google rank for the pages that would reveal this information.

Anyway, all of this just goes to prove that my philosophy towards elections is correct. You should never vote a straight party ticket because you are definitely going to get some bad apples by doing so. Vigilance is the price of being an American, and candidates should earn your vote by convincing you based upon the issues.

If you aren’t familiar with each candidate you should honestly refrain from voting for them and leave it up to people who have done the homework.