Just Googled him up, found him on Wikipedia… if you’re talking about the Florida Christian, then all I can say is “good god, what an asshole” and wonder if he’s ever thought about hooking up with the Phelps assholes.

Preferably, on a sinking boat.

In shark-infested waters.

He doesn’t strike me as an “ambulance chaser,” though. More of a crusading Religious Reich zealot who believes in using the courts to push his psycho agenda. I see they’re trying to disbar him, and good for them.

But back to Edwards… a scummy personal-injury lawyer who finally got his comeuppance. Good riddance; couldn’t have happened to a scummier guy.

J.

Hate to point this out, but those people were just humoring you.

Funny, I don’t see you whining about ambulance chaser Jack Thompson. I wonder why that is? Hmm…

I call him “ambulance-chaser” because, to most people, that’s a good slang term for “disgustingly corrupt and vile personal-injury lawyer.” That’s what Edwards was, and it is what he is, at his core.

I’m not proud of admitting this, but when Elizabeth Edwards was first diagnosed with cancer, my first thought was “what doctor would dare treat her, considering who her husband is and what he’s done to other doctors? That family has ‘lawsuit’ written all over them!” And I know I was not alone with that thought.

J.

1.)Edwards made a stupid mistake, but he was holding any high office and he isn’t the nominee, so I don’t get where the comparisons to Clinton come from.

2.)The claims about Edwards ambulance chasing apparently are rooted in his career in the 80’s involving multiple cases of cerebral palsy. There was never any “channeling.” To convey to the jury in one case how one doctor purportedly failed to heed the warnings from a fetal heart monitor, Edwards spoke as though he were the fetus (i.e. “30 beats, everything’s okay, 60 beats, starting to feel unwell, 80 beats, I need help”). That’s not channeling. You can call it manipulative, but it is a tactic as old as the hills. You can argue that there is conflicting evidence on the issue of birth complications, fetal heart monitors, and doctor liability for cerebral palsy, if you like (though you need to be aware that the issue was less clear in 20 years ago). None of that constitutes proof that Edwards was and ambulance chaser.

Everything else aside, though, this kills Edwards as a figure in Democratic politics. No way they are going to let him speak at the Convention.

But thanks again. You helped me recover from a terrible mistake — saying that Bill Clinton wasn’t as big a scumbag as he was. That was truly mortifying.

J.

A keyboard macro would save time.

Lewinsky left her internship in November 1994, began her liaisons with Clinton in November 1995, and was transferred from the White House to the Pentagon in April 1996.

So yes, Quaker, I was wrong and I apologize. Clinton did, indeed, pork someone on his payroll, just like John Edwards. I hereby withdraw my saying “at least Clinton wasn’t that bad” and make it “at least Clinton didn’t start porking her until after she was an employee, unlike Edwards who apparently put his mistress on the payroll.”

That’s such an improvement. Thanks, Quaker.

J.

Once again, Mr. Tea bungles even the most basic facts. Ms. Lewinsky was not a White House intern at the time of her intimacies with Mr. Clinton. She was a Pentagon employee.

From the opening of the NYT story:

n 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.

Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards told the jury: “She said at 3, `I’m fine.’ She said at 4, `I’m having a little trouble, but I’m doing O.K.’ Five, she said, `I’m having problems.’ At 5:30, she said, `I need out.’ ”

But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion, failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said, the doctor permanently damaged the girl’s brain.

“She speaks to you through me,” the lawyer went on in his closing argument. “And I have to tell you right now — I didn’t plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you.”

NOT the pool drain case, for the record, but one of the numerous cerebral palsy cases where Edwards put forth his theory (since statistically discredited) that CP was often caused by doctors choosing to avoid C-sections and insisting on women giving birth vaginally. His little hobby there netted him millions, and sent malpractice insurance rates for obstetricians through the roof in North Carolina.

Nice smokescreen there, Bill. Pity it ain’t true. But it was a darned good effort.

J.

And Parthenon, I was mistaken on one detail. The child whose voice he channeled was crippled with cerebral palsy, not dead. Guess I got him mixed up with John Edward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/31/politics/campaign/31EDWA.html?ex=1390885200&en=4fb97ac07a96f186&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

(Hope that link works…)

He literally made his millions suing hospitals and doctors over kids born with cerebral palsy, saying that it was because they didn’t perform caesarean sections. And studies since then have shown that in the vast majority of cases, there’s very little correlation between caesarean/vaginal birth and cerebral palsy. But that didn’t stop Edwards, who had his medical theory and used it to make himself a tidy fortune — and drove the malpractice insurance rates into the stratosphere for North Carolina obstetricians.

I am thrilled that they are, I hope, finally out of public life.

As far as her health goes, I feel great sympathy for her. As I do for Ted Kennedy and Robert Novak, just to name two other politically prominent people suffering grave health issues. And I intend to be at least marginally classier than a lot of folks were on the passings of Tony Snow and Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

J.

Yeah, suing a negligent country club over the horrific death of a 6 year old, what a disgusting jerk!

Don’t bother waiting on that ambulance chaser evidence Parthenon, it doesn’t exist. Jay Tea and the rest of the winger set simply like to throw out that smear whenever they want to knock trial lawyers, which is a favorite hobby of corporate America in their never ending quest to erase “liability” from the English language.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26099046/

Reporters found Edwards’ affair tough to prove
AP’s approach: ‘Better to get it right even if we couldn’t get it first’

…But a sexual affair can have just two people who know the truth. Without witnesses, documents, photographs or some form of irrefutable evidence pointing to the truth, news organizations will not endanger their own integrity.

That made it difficult to prove — and to print — the rumors that John Edwards had cheated on his seriously ill wife while running for president. Reporters were left to poke around the edges of a potentially career-ending scandal in search of an opening.

Great. You know what wouldn’t be that hard to prove? High crimes and misdemeanors.

Save a guy the research?

The only exceptions I can recall is Jim McGreevey’s wife and Arianna Huffington… but they kinda didn’t have much choice when their hubbies came out as gay.

J.

I’m glad to hear that. I hate that shit. Hopefully, she was at home, throwing his shit out on the lawn.

“I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen.”

Senator John Edwards, 1999, on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

At least Clinton was using an unpaid intern as a human humidor. Edwards had his mistress on the payroll.

J.

As for those comparing Edwards’ actions with McCain’s, kindly note that the best source of info on McCain’s conduct regarding his first marriage is John McCain himself. He’s personally recounted his failings, at length, and expressed his regrets and admitted his misdeeds.

Also, to all those who say that the Edwards story should be a private matter, strictly within his family, note that the first Mrs. McCain maintains a friendship with both Senator and the present Mrs. McCain, has refused to speak out against her ex-husband, and has expressed support for his candidacy. If she doesn’t choose to make an issue about how the marriage dissolved almost 30 years ago, who the hell else has the right?

But back to the core issue here: Edwards cheated on his wife, lied about it repeatedly, paid his mistress with campaign funds, and then only confessed when his guilt was proven beyond a doubt. He fooled a lot of people, and it was only blind luck that he has twice been denied positions of great power.

Good riddance, scumbag. Go back to suing obstetricians and gynecologists out of business. At least that way you can’t fuck up more than a single state.

J.