Posted on 09/02/2006 4:23:35 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
U.S. Senate candidate Mike McGavick ran a red light, reeked of alcohol, failed a roadside sobriety test and fell asleep during police processing on a 1993 drunken-driving charge, according to a Maryland police report.
The report was obtained Friday from the Montgomery County, Md., Police Department. It suggests that McGavick, a Republican running against Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell this fall, was less candid than he seemed when he disclosed the previously unknown arrest on his campaign Web site Aug. 24.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
I don't see what the big deal is. Yellow light or red light? I have run through a lot of yellow lights that turned red before I crossed the intersection. This is much ado about nothing.
"...we just can't catch a break this year...."
I'd suggest that this goes on every year, but maybe they're on 'good behavior' (double-secret probation?) in election years. It's a given that the lib-dem-controlled MSM scum will play them up, during an election year, and hide their own deviants' problems.
Hey, Torie...you oughta be out here this afternoon...Toonderboompers and lighting goin' nuts!
LOL. OC is a bit more comfortable at present. :)
Fortunately, I have that secret "wet meat" recipe, so things'll probably turn out O.K.
...Suppose I should do the Midwestern thing now, and shut the computer off!
I'm sorry, but I read the entire news article, and I see no real indication that his confession wasn't accurate.
He said he "cut a yellow light too close". That means he ran a red light. The police report says he ran a red light.
He SAID he had an alchohol level of 0.17. That is exactly what his report said. The fact that the test was 83 minutes later does mean his level was probably higher earlier, but anybody who gets a breathalizer is going to remember what the breathalizer said.
He said he was given a citation. The official record says he received a fine. He was taken into custody, but he was not jailed, which is what most people mean when they say "arrested".
He didn't SAY he fell asleep, but that's just a detail, not important -- he already confessed to a BA level of 0.17, so it's not like he was trying to pretend he wasn't really drunk. The "i had two beers" is what he said to the police officer at the time.
It's interesting that these expunged records seem to always pop up again if it's a republican -- we already know more about this arrest than we do about Kennedy's.
Kennedy meanwhile will be running for election again, and nobody on the left is saying he should resign or not run or not be re-elected.
I don't get why republicans are so quick to jump on these stories with a gloom-and-doom fatalism over 13-year-old confessed crimes.
Has Cantwell confessed to anything? So, if we find out she got a speeding ticket, would we see a front-page story about her being less than candid, or lying about it?
Not a chance, there would be stories about how it didn't matter, how we shouldn't delve into private lives, etc.
Well, Bush had a DUI.
I still voted for him.
Though it almost cost him the 2000 election because he didn't reveal it himself in time to do damage control. It was actually quite foolish, because part of his profile was that of a sinner reformed by Christ's redemption. Which I believe in his case...but given that profile why hide the DUI? It caused a lot of people to suddenly question him, and some stayed home as a result.
McGavick's taken the calculated risk to reveal it himself, get all the mud out of the way, and see what happens.
It was going to be revealed either way, and while In know he mentioned it out of political calculation, I much prefer this route then finding out a week before an election.
Does this cost him the election? No.
Could it be used as an excuse not to vote for him? Sure, but if so they didn't want to vote for him to begin with.
We'll see in the coming weeks what his genuine support here really is. And whether he really has a chance to win. If anyone was looking for an excuse not to vote Rep, they'll use this. If they are interested in change, his numbers will stabilize and rebound. If that happens cantwell should start to worry.
DU collegiate psuedo-intellectual egghead spewage follows:
The GOP candidate trimmed when describing what happened. In fact, his characterization was factually inaccurate. His errant characerization of the facts, happened not in 1993, but last week, revealing a lack of candor, or, to be generous, his Panglossian veneer with which he chose to affix over the rather uglier truth...'Panglossian veneer'???
<***WARNING***~~~***DANGER***~~~***WARNING***~~~***DANGER***
You may now return to normal thought processes.
So you do something, you pay the price and 15 years later people still won't forgive you??? My God.
LOL. Learning new words is a pleasure, at least to me. You should feel fortunate.
The GUY himself admitted it on his website. HE SAID HE HAD A DUI...because he didn't give all the sordid details, that disqualifies him??? I don't get it.
Judging from your usage, it appears you're still on your training wheels.
If you read his published statement on the voter guide you can see what he has written about border security:
Unsecured borders threaten our communities but the Senate doesn't act. We must secure our border while providing for an adequate workforce.
Translation: Open the borders and let millions of Mexicans in and give them all amnesty.
But at the moment, he's the only candidate who has a possibility of beating Cantwell, which is why they are going after him.
When I read his original story, I thought he described a pretty bad DUI, since I knew that a 0.17 test meant he had been drinking way too much. I guess I glossed over the 2-3 beers, because I didn't remember that, just that the guy must have been stone drunk and was lucky not to kill someone.
That was before I read this article, so to me the article didn't reveal anything new. I guess those who didn't understand what a 0.17 was could have been misled by his statements about the yellow light.
Every court case I've seen about running a red light has the driver saying "the light was yellow, but I guess I cut it too close", after the police officer says "the light was a solid red when the car went through the intersection".
Solid red means that it didn't turn red while the car was in the intersection. In some states, if you enter while yellow, you are not running the red light. I don't know what Maryland's rules are. But the driver will almost always have seen a yellow light before the light turns red, because they are driving up to the light, so to them it's all a matter of timing. Most drivers aren't actually sure where their car was at exactly the time the light changes to red, especially if they are watching to see if any cars coming the other way are timing the light to fly through on green.
I suppose he should have said he got a ticket for the red light, but he didn't say he didn't, and he did say he cut the yellow "too close". If he hadn't gotten a ticket for the red light, then he wouldn't have been "too close" on his yellow light.
But yes, I'm a bit of a spin-meister here. The newspaper article though was equally spinning, the other way.
The point about him being possibly a 0.19 when the incident happened is really not at all germaine to his confession, he provided the number he was given from the police. Nobody would have done any different than that, and I bet if there is a newspaper article from the time it says 0.17 as well, not this "must have been higher at the time of the occurance" stuff. So I don't see ANY attempt at hiding anything from him saying 0.17. If he had said "it was over the 0.1 limit", I might agree with you, as that could be an attempt to hide how much more it was.
The point is that the criminal justice system found fit to reduce his crime to a citation offense, given his participation in and completion of a DUI remediation course.
I have to agree with others on this thread who say he's done.
He's trailed in every poll conducted this year (and if the two SurveyUSA polls released this week are any indication then the margin is getting wider, not smaller). Time to shift resources out of WA and MN and into MD and NJ, in my opinion.
Voltaire is just pushing it.
= )
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