It is my understanding that Bryant already has an admission from the person who paid for the fliers. The person who admitted to it (unless that person volunteered to be the fall guy) should be fined and let us get on with things.

How do you think the State should enforce the law?

I am satisfied with the law as it stands.

It allows for citizens to make statements of opinion even when their opinion might not be grounded in facts. It slaps the hand of the informed activist that should have known better without dampening involvement of average citizens in public discourse.

We won’t know that until we get a conviction, will we? If each flier counts as a violation….

But that is not really the point. His career as a political advisor will be over, and others will be deterred from similar violations.

If you do not like it, work to get the law changed to either make the penalty more severe, or to eliminate the offense from the books. Just ignoring the law is not an acceptable option.

All Harvey Bryant did was step aside to ensure that the prosecutor who actually makes those decisions does not have a conflict of interest. That’s an honest decision, and one the Pilot should be honest enough to commend.

He could be earning his salary investigating bigger crimes. He already has an admission from the person who paid for the fliers.

Mouse,

Your post was dripping with sarcasm. Let me deal with that one with a bit of logic.

The person guilty will not even serve a day in jail. The fine the perpetrator will receive is minimal.

Seems to me the efforts of a Commonwealth’s attorney and his entire staff could be better employed. I’m sorry if such employment would not help you achieve your political goals.

Why spend the money on criminal investigations if we’re just going to spend more money paying for the prisons? We should only pursue criminal investigations that will turn a profit for the State. Let’s go back to the weregeld system, but instead of the family’s getting the money, the State does. For lesser crimes, let’s take the money for the perp’s jail time from his family. If his family will not feed him, why should we?

Thanks for the link to the VP editorial.

I’m going to quote from it.

“The investigation is appropriate, but Virginia Beach doesn’t need a special prosecutor to handle the case.”

And:

“Sessoms said he didn’t know about the flier and ordered copies destroyed when he learned about them midday.”

And even further:

“In this specific case, Sessoms’ margin of victory – 6,852 votes – was substantial enough that the fliers couldn’t have affected the outcome. Still, someone needs to be held responsible for breaking the rules and given an appropriate fine.”

Of course I guess we are spending major bucks with this special investigation that is going to yield a minimal fine.

It is my understanding that Bryant already has an admission from the person who paid for the flier. Unless one of the over 4,000 documents (and that is not that many to look through) he has in his possession points to something more diabolical he should abandon his investigation and save us some money.

But of course the longer it takes for him to do the job the longer he collects the paycheck for doing it, right?