The Conservative Fool Of The Day is...Lisa Smith!

Because you did so well a few days ago when we played "Guess The Party Affiliation", let's try it again!

Lisa Smith, a former West Virginia state senator, was sentenced yesterday to 2 years in prison on federal tax and mail fraud charges. She had to pay almost $1,000,000 in restitution.

Smith, who ran 2 in-home health care companies with her husband Mark, failed to pay the IRS money that was withheld for taxes from her employees' paychecks. Mark Smith was convicted of failing to pay employment taxes and was sentenced to 6 months of home confinement, 5 years of probation, and almost $400,000 in restitution.

Let me get this straight: Lisa Smith stole tens of thousands of dollars by pocketing the amount that was withheld from workers for taxes. That's really what happened. Smith also mailed a fake campaign finance statement to state election officials during her Senate campaign.

Can you guess Lisa Smith's party affiliation? Just from the fact that the AP article about her sentencing failed to mention it is a clue. More clues: She's from a suburban county, had funny hair, and was first "elected" as senator in 2002. And she lies and steals money.

You guessed right: another Rethuglican!

Smith won the 2002 "election" in a vote plagued by fraud by Republicans. She defeated a popular Democratic incumbent when officials in Bush's so-called Justice Department blabbed that the incumbent was under investigation for something or other. However, the Democrat was never prosecuted for anything - so they lied. While they baselessly accused the Democrat of campaign finance fraud, Republican Smith was committing this crime all along.

On the issues, Lisa Smith was an extreme conservative. In her Freeper-like complaints, she cried about juries being too generous to malpractice victims. Because Smith hates gays, she attacked the incumbent for supporting laws to protect people from hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation.

However, Smith resigned her seat in 2004, reportedly because of mental issues. If she really did have some sort of clinical illness that rendered her incapable of doing her job, the real conservafools are the corrupt GOP bosses who politicized the U.S. attorney's office with baseless charges against her opponent, lied to the media, rigged the election, and installed Smith in that Senate seat. But Smith evidently was mentally competent enough to go to trial for her scaminous ways, so she's obviously just another right-wing politician who spews venom and commits crimes even though they know better. If she's in good enough health to have been a state senator for 2 years, I have no regrets about exposing her corruption.

The Lisa Smith story is a pattern that's played itself out again and again in recent years: Some right-wing beezweezer lies about a political opponent, gets "elected", then gets exposed as the criminal they are.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080116/ap_on_re_us/ex_lawmaker_sentenced;
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003902.php)