Thu, 2008-12-11 11:11

In his recent post Regarding K-Lo’s snark on Blagojevich: Right Wrong Again, Figleaf provides a poignant reason why the downfall of Gov. Blagojevich should not be cause for celebration:

And that’s right around the point where I part company with K-Lo: my heart is not warmed by the scandal. There are two little kids, roughly my kid’s ages, who are looking at growing up while their dad (who richly deserves it) and (ditto depending on how involved she was) maybe their mom are in jail.

Not convinced? Allow me to present another reminder of a scandal presented by Jonah Goldberg of the National Review:

Another name Republicans could have mentioned if they’d fought back better would have been Mel Reynolds — the Democratic Congressman who went to jail for, among other things, having sex with a 16 year-old campaign volunteer, soliciting child pornography and various and sundry corruption charges. He was convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. He was subsequently convicted on unrelated bank fraud charges. Bill Clinton commuted Reynolds’ convictions on bank fraud, letting him out of jail early. One does not remember the hothouse of Democratic righteousness about “the children” back then. 10/06 01:03 PM

Link to National Review article:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQyNjFlYzkyNDdmMmM1ZTUzNDViNjgzYTQ5ZWQ1YTc=

As Figleaf points out, that’s not the end of the story.

In an interview with the Chicago Reporter in 2001, Mel Reynolds described how his conviction and imprisonment affected his family.

...I wonder if any of the prosecutors in my state case as well as my federal case and especially the federal case, if they ever think about the fact that my children were homeless at times.

My wife tells me that not one prosecutor, even people that she, you know, initially helped the prosecution, they never once called her to help her with our children when they were homeless, when they didn’t have any place to go. They were the cold heartedness people that ever lived.

When, when this guy [FBI mole John] Christopher, whatever his name was, the alderman, they gave him over 300 and some thousand dollars. Now I’m not suggesting that they should have given my wife any money but they should have at least been sensitive. She wrote a letter to the judge, Judge Norgle, begging him to allow me to go to a halfway house so I could help her with the children. She never even, he never even paid her the common decency to write her back. She wrote [U.S. Attorney] Scott Lassar asking the same thing. He wrote her back saying, well, you know these are, this is misfortunate, misfortunate, and the, the children have to be the, have to suffer, but he didn’t offer any solution. So, you just wonder perhaps they think it is normal for black children to suffer, I don’t know.

And I’m not making any excuses for Mel Reynolds as far as what I did and what I didn’t do and the mistakes that I made. I made mistakes and I regret those mistakes tremendously because, the real reason that I regret those mistakes is because they brought a lot of wrath down on my family. My three babies had to suffer and had I not made the mistakes that I made they would not have suffered. But once a person makes a mistake he does not lose his right as a United States citizen to be treated fairly. And race and poverty should not come into any punishment when it comes to someone who had made mistakes. I think in my case it came into it. And it’s not fair.

The entire interview can be found here.

I think it appropriate to quote Figleaf’s concluding statement:

Nor will the stork tidily take them away in time for her [Lopez’s] next vapid snark.
If the Blagojevich children do end up fostered to others let us hope that as well as providing comfort, stability, and love those grown-ups, unlike Lopez, have the capacity to understand, and communicate, both basic decency and the differences between right and wrong.
Heart-warming my ass.

Note:
The campaign volunteer, who was nineteen when Reynolds was indicted based on her initial accusations, recanted her sexual abuse charges three times, refused to testify, and, as a result, spent 13 days in jail until she agreed to testify. At the trial which took place in 1995, she explicitly stated that her relationship with Reynolds was consensual. It should be noted that Reynolds would have succeeded Congressman Dan Rostenkowski as Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. Rostenkowski was indicted on corruption charges in 1994 and resigned his office in 1995 following his conviction.