{"id":186070,"date":"2014-05-20T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/20\/this-is-a-good-day-for-schadenfreude\/"},"modified":"2014-05-20T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T00:59:00","slug":"this-is-a-good-day-for-schadenfreude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/20\/this-is-a-good-day-for-schadenfreude\/","title":{"rendered":"This is a Good Day for Schadenfreude"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dinesh D\u2019Souza has just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/05\/dinesh-dsouza-pleads-guilty-illegal-campaign-contribution-106882.html\">pled guilty to using straw donors in violation of campaign finance laws<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D\u2019Souza entered a guilty plea Tuesday to a charge that he used straw donors to make $20,000 in illegal contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in 2012, officials said.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The unexpected guilty plea came on the same day the trial for the strident critic of President Barack Obama was set to open in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The single felony count D\u2019Souza admitted guilt on carries a maximum prison sentence of two years, but the plea agreement D\u2019Souza\u2019s lawyers reached with the government says sentencing guidelines applicable to the case call for a sentence of 10 to 16 months.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Judges are not required to sentence defendants in accordance with the guidelines, but usually do. Both sides reserved their rights to argue for a sentence outside that range and D\u2019Souza\u2019s lawyer Benjamin Brafman indicated he plans to ask Judge Richard Berman not to send D\u2019Souza to prison.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The plea deal calls for dismissal of a second charge D\u2019Souza faced if he went to trial: causing Long to file a false report with the Federal Election Commission. That carried a potential sentence of up to five years behind bars.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Atrios has noted that he is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/2014\/05\/maybe-im-getting-soft.html\">feeling far less schadenfreude about this than he expected<\/a>, despite his being, &#8220;One of America&#8217;s Worst Humans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Me not so much.<\/p>\n<p>This is the guy that has never grew up beyond tacky College Republican guerrilla theater that had classmate Timothy Geithner asking him, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/05\/13\/ex-treasury-secretary-tim-geithner-relives-college-glory-days.html\">how it felt to be such a dick<\/a>.&#8221;&nbsp; (And that is ignoring his rather idiosyncratic marital life) <\/p>\n<p>This really could not happen to a more contemptible human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dinesh D\u2019Souza has just pled guilty to using straw donors in violation of campaign finance laws: Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D\u2019Souza entered a guilty plea Tuesday to a charge that he used straw donors to make $20,000 in illegal contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in 2012, officials said.The unexpected guilty plea came &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1094,1052,972,978,1019,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-finance","category-crimes","category-justice","category-politics","category-schadenfreude","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186070"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}