After the verdict Edwards said, "I don't think God's through with me"

I would agree Mr. Edwards.

What's the difference between using money to screw the public or just one person?

Looks like the judge and jury just couldn't take any more adding insult to injury. This is a nice way to say, continuing to ravage the nation by shelling out, and wasting, public money, on this wastrel who single-handedly destroyed more public faith in the national political process than, say, Richard Nixon.

On the bright side, it sure was a needed wake-up call to people of all political stripes, to be more careful about who they get behind, lest we all get shafted in the outcome.

http://www.steynonline.com/5005/a-ravening-justice

Meanwhile Karl Rove and Grover Norquist, the Koch Brothers and the gods only know who else are laughing all the way to their Super Pac bank accounts.

Really Gaye? More then Watergate... Hyperbole much?

FWIW it was the "hanging chads" that destroyed my faith in the public process. It don't matter who wins if they don't like it they will just ignore it (Sorry Jack--Bv.sG again). Today's job reports just confirms my early cynicism as 2 years of GOP state budget nihilism designed to destroy Obama's economy is working like a charm just in time for Election season. And Obama's a righty. Next the SC will probably throw out HC reform, just like it eviscerated campaign finance laws which turned this whole trial from a farce to pouring vinegar on the wound. So much for any attempts to deal with seriously f'd up problems in this country.

The only bright side to this story is that the idiot sleezeball might finally go away. He was the last to try and mount a populist campaign, so its only fitting that he has been so publicly tarred and feathered. There will be no William Jennings Bryans in our era.

"... much?" is so 2008.

If guys like Obama and Wyden weren't sellouts, we'd actually be going somewhere. It's a little late to be rehashing the events of 12 years ago.

We need open primaries in this country and 4 or 5 parties with honest to God qualified candidates. The two parties are playing to the middle because that's what it takes to win that 50.000001% necessary to win an election. Sticking to your guns and acting in a principled manner just gets sand kicked in your face in this political climate. I can think of one case on the local level that brings this to mind, but I'm not in the mood to argue about it right now.

People are influenced by their own experiences, Shadrach.

When I think Watergate, I think brilliant, talented, half-mad politician gone off the reservation trying to illegally tape his opposition and cover it up. I think...tragedy. I think, a milestone, for us to have weathered it all, and for many to have understood it in all its complexity, from a humanist perspective. My father choked up when he got the news in 1974. I'll never forget, aged 10, standing with him in the lobby of our apartment building, as he opened the newspaper, and seeing the shock and pain register in his expression. For him, Nixon going to China was the only thing that mattered. He won election in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history, remember. Nixon was an American son, an anti-hero of the Cain variety perhaps, but nonetheless someone who holds an important place in the national historical experience, and if anything, his fall from grace makes people MORE interested in politics.

Edwards. How to even compare. Everyone, but everyone, has such an overweaning sense of revulsion and betrayal when contemplating him, that we just wish that no one would ever, ever, mention him again. In this sense, the experience of being politically cuckolded by such a ridiculous narcissist, has much more power to disgust and turn people away from politics than the Nixon drama ever did.

His message made a lot of sense. But then he betrayed it. Edwards set America back at least a decade, probably more like 25 years.

Sorry to date myself

Gaye, I wasn't alive during the time, but I can't say I agree with your assessment. Edwards will be an embarrassing footnote. Nixon was an outright criminal. And making a short-sided deal with the corrupt—and completely crazy at the time—dictators of China was probably the worst thing that ever happened to our middle class (well besides electing Reagan), and certainly made a utter mockery of our human rights platform. I remember a few years ago a billboard ad campaign in America that had the famous picture of the kid who stood up to the tanks during Tiananmen square, it was about courage or something or rather, but the fact that the kid disappeared and has never been heard from was completely missing from the ad. For those brave students who built a statue of liberty in Tiananmen square, we sold them out to for cheap crap that we don't need. I know from our earlier torture discussion that you don't place as high a value on universal human rights as I do, but that stuff used to matter. People used to look at us as a role model—and as we have seen recently some news starved Chinese dissidents still do— today that is no longer true. Although to be fair to Kissinger none of these consequences were necessarily foreseeable at the time, but then he only cared about the perception of victory so he wouldn't be too bothered.

Nixon was the last liberal president we had, so I am much sadder at his fall then Edwards. Then again if Edwards had won and passed even half of his platform--I wouldn't have ever cared that he is a vain narcissist. Sadly I am sure he had no chance, just like Clinton before him.

Jack, I was only sharing the moment when my idealism burned. Also there are those 100k + Iraqis, tax cuts, and stacking the judicial branches that bug me, but you are right..its water under the bridge.