{"id":186072,"date":"2014-05-20T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/20\/bummer-of-a-birth-mark-bob\/"},"modified":"2014-05-20T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T23:31:00","slug":"bummer-of-a-birth-mark-bob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/20\/bummer-of-a-birth-mark-bob\/","title":{"rendered":"Bummer of a Birth Mark, Bob"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a completely that  unsurprising move, District Judge James Spencer has ruled<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2014-05-20\/virginia-ex-governor-must-face-prosecution-in-corruption.html\">disgraced former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell&#8217;s trial should proceed<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Virginia\u2019s former governor Robert McDonnell, once a rising star in the Republican Party, failed to persuade a U.S. judge to throw out federal corruption charges against him and his wife, Maureen.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">U.S. District Judge James Spencer in Richmond, Virginia, ruled today that U.S. prosecutors sufficiently supported their charges in the McDonnells\u2019 indictment and that the case against them, scheduled for trial in July, should move ahead. Spencer also rejected the couple\u2019s request that their cases be separated.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The McDonnells are accused of accepting vacations, loans, private plane rides and other benefits in exchange for using the governor\u2019s office to benefit businessman Jonnie Williams, who at the time headed Star Scientific Inc. (STSI) and was trying to promote the dietary supplements made by the Glen Allen, Virginia-based company. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I half expect that the jury to, &#8220;Find the defendants incredibly guilty,&#8221; to quote Mel Brooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a completely that unsurprising move, District Judge James Spencer has ruleddisgraced former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell&#8217;s trial should proceed: Virginia\u2019s former governor Robert McDonnell, once a rising star in the Republican Party, failed to persuade a U.S. judge to throw out federal corruption charges against him and his wife, Maureen.U.S. District Judge James Spencer &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,972,1019],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-justice","category-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186072"}],"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=186072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}