The late South Carolina Congressman James L. Petigru once said, “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” First there was Mark Sanford, who resigned after an affair with a woman in Argentina. Then the woman who wants to replace him, GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, became embroiled in a couple of alleged “inappropriate” trysts with a blogger and a lobbyist — a normally damaging problem for a family-value, Palin-supported conservative. Now, Alvin Greene, 32, the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate has revealed that he is facing a pending felony charge for obscenity.
Incumbent U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint already shredded his primary opponent and now faces a relatively unknown candidate who will have to fight a felony charge while running for election.
Greene, an unemployed veteran who lives with his parents, was a surprise winner in the primary over former four-term state lawmaker Vic Rawl, 64. He was arrested in November and charged with showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
He has refused to comment on the charges, though he reportedly showed the woman the pictures and wanted to go up to her room. Of course, his defense could be that he was just trying to show how South Carolina is full of “Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places.”
Normally, this type of case does not result in an actual trial. If the individual is not distributing pornography or making threats, prosecutors usually treat this as creepy or boorish behavior. Obscenity remains an often ambiguous concept in criminal codes. Reports indicate that Camille McCoy, a 19-year-old rising sophomore, said that Greene sat down next to her in a computer lab and asked her to look at his screen which showed a porn site. That is usually not enough for a criminal charge. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that the police could show for sure which image was showing on the screen at the time. There are often complaints of people watching pornography on airplanes or college computer labs. Such conduct can result in expulsion from a public area or even a school, but rarely rises to the level of a criminal charge. We will have to know more about the case to see why this resulted in an arrest.
However, that is a legal, not a political, analysis. I am frankly not sure what constitutes a political scandal any more in South Carolina. Citizens in the conservative state may have to look to God-fearing public servants in places like Massachusetts and California as examples of good government.
For the people of South Carolina, they were already having a bad day and may have confused two different Alvins :
Sometimes the system goes on the blink
And the whole thing turns out wrong
You might not make it back and you know
That you could be well oh that strong
And I’m not wrong(yeah…)
So where is the passion when you need it the most
Oh you and I
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lostCause you had a bad day
You’re taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don’t know
You tell me don’t lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad day
You’ve seen what you like
And how does it feel for one more time
You had a bad day
You had a bad day
Sir, you mention that Mark Sanford resigned. He did not. He is still governor.
First there was Mark Sanford, who resigned after an affair with a woman in Argentina.
While the Dems gnash their teeth over the failed plan of corporate management to place their favored candidate, the emerging favorite in the US Senate race is the Green Party candidate, Tom Clements. His website is getting going: http://clementsforsenate.com/
A recent Rasmussen poll didn’t name him or the party just listed him as “another candidate” and he got 9% in the poll. Polls should name all three candidates in the race and stop the effort to black out Clements’ candidacy. Dems and disaffected Republicans are moving towards him.
Check out the legitimate listing of his candidacy on the SC election commission website:
http://www.scvotes.org/files/2010%20Convention%20Party%20Candidates.pdf
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/06/just_helpin_out.php?ref=fpblg
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/south_carolina/election_2010_south_carolina_senate It looks like the people who put up Green accomplished their goal.
http://www.bradblog.com/ is a web site that deals with issues of election integrity especially related to the danger of elections being stolen by rigged electronic voting machines.
The Brad Blog has several articles on Alvin Green and statistical irregularities in the vote tallies that point to possible election theft by tampered voting machines. The most recent of them at the moment is this one http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7891. You should read earlier articles in the sequence as well as not everything from previous articles appears in the latest.
Here is a link to a vote caging article on Greg Palast’s website.
http://www.gregpalast.com/bbc-journalist-warns-against-voter-irregularities/.
http://www.gregpalast.com has a search field so it is easy to find relevant articles of which there are many more than just the ones to which I gave links. Palast is about the only source on some scandals in the US as the main stream media will not touch anything where some might shout “conspiracy theory, ha ha ha”.
Actually the link is to a Palast article which mentions the felony disenfranchisment in passing. Here is a more relevant link http://www.gregpalast.com/the-great-florida-ex-con-gamernhow-the-felon-voter-purge-was-itself-felonious/.
AY
Bush’s mates in Florida stole the 2000 presidential election for by purging enough democratic leaning voters from the rolls. Two techniques were used:-
1/ Fraudulent disenfranchisment of many people in minority areaa on the basis of matching their names with those of convicted felons using loose data matching designed to give false positives;
2/ Vote caging, this involved sending registered mail to people such as US soldiers to their normal addresses with the specification that the mail was not to be forwarded. If the soldier was on active duty he would not get the package, it would be returned and the Republicans would use this to prove that he did not live at his registered address and to have him removed from the voter rolls. Greg Palast at http://www.gregpalast.com/ has the nasty details.
I suggest you browse Palast’s archives but here is a link to one of the felony disenfranchisment articles http://www.gregpalast.com/democratscom-chat-with-greg-palast/.
The man is a sad stooge — a veritable puppet, happily jiggled by his “off-camera” masters judging by his “interview” on Olbermann. As a citizen, I am embarrassed he is being exploited this way for whatever nefarious purpose.
ID,
This man has competition in CT for office. Stupid does not keep you from getting elected to office. Look at W,
Governor of Texas and President. No wait, he was never elected president, it was stolen by the Supreme Court one time and Tafts grandson lost election boxes in Ohio for the second one.
If you will read history that is why T. Roosevelt got back into the race and Wilson won, handing a defeat to Taft for his policy’s that went unchecked and set up the down fall that Hoover ultimately suffered the country as well.
You know what they say, in any great routine there’s either a straight man or the fall guy. This happens to be a comedy with a bunch of errors.
I think he’s straight standing but crooked when he walks and definitely when he talks.
Others find him charismatic with a certain amount of charm.
Bdaman:
are you serious? People actually think Obama is a republican plant? Now it may be that republicans voted for him because they knew he was inept and the fallout would be the destruction of or marginalization of the democratic party as a political force. I heard a talk show prior to the election where a caller said he was a republican and was going to vote for Obama because there was a world of hurt coming and he didn’t want the republican party blamed. Apparently he was correct, I guess the question is how many others voted for Obama and other democrats for that reason?
I thought about voting for him because he actually seemed like a decent man and I agreed with some of what he was saying but couldn’t bring myself to vote for a guy who wanted to “share the wealth”. Had he not said that I probably would have voted for him. Palin and McCain wanted to share the wealth as well, just not as quickly.
In hindsight I should have written in Walter Williams.
Apparently the Pentagon has confirmed he was in the Army. They have a policy apparently that prevents them from disclosing whether his discharge was honorable or dishonorable, but he was in Korea a few years ago.
I saw the Keith Olbermann interview and it was pretty painful. Greene couldn’t answer the simplest questions and after the interview was finished Keith said that Greene was being coached by his public defender off camera in answering the questions. The guy has some sort of mental problem, maybe borderline retarded. I feel sorry for him and doubt that he could come up with the $10k filing fee himself. Something fishy here.