[IronJack]

I thought it was interesting to note the contrast between the "prosecution" attorney (I forget his name) and Traficant. The prosecutor was smooth, unemotional, and effective. Traficant was a gibbering idiot, who could not put together a coherent sentence, much less a convincing defense. It's almost as though he thought the whole thing was a big game, and he was the star. His mugging for the cameras was downright juvenile, and his rhetoric was random outgassing.

He's doomed.

[Catspaw]

I thought it was interesting to note the contrast between the "prosecution" attorney (I forget his name) and Traficant. The prosecutor was smooth, unemotional, and effective. Traficant was a gibbering idiot, who could not put together a coherent sentence, much less a convincing defense. It's almost as though he thought the whole thing was a big game, and he was the star. His mugging for the cameras was downright juvenile, and his rhetoric was random outgassing.

At first I thought it was stream of consciousness, but when I caught his act on various TV shows before & after the hearing, I realized that it was a practiced style. He repeated himself word for word, including these strange riffs when he'd go off on a tangent, fly into a rage, bully and physically threaten people, calm down, go off into some inchoate rant, then make a feeble attempt to tie it together. But at times, he'd forget his lines. For example, during his opening statement, he said he was #4 on AIPAC's "hit list." When he went on Washington Journal the next morning, he said he was #1. But he used the same phraseology, same sentence structure, same scatological references, same profanities.

It may play well at the local bar where everybody buys Jimmy a drink, but he didn't impress me. If his goal was to make a mockery of the courts and a mockery of congress, he's succeeded.

But part of the game was to denigrate everybody and everything--he attacked the judge; he attacked the jury; he attacked the prosecutors. During these hearings, he attacked members of the committee; he attacked the counsels for the committee. Although the committee gave him great latitude, he still managed to attack them. And he did not address his ethics violations. Instead, he attempted to retry his criminal case before this committee and failed miserably.

I don't know what he's going to do when this comes to the floor of the House. But I suspect it'll be his usual incoherent rant. And I do believe he will be expelled. He's become an embarassment to both parties.