Reasonable Doubt

I agree that some of the language in the transcript could be interpreted as soliciting a bribe, but it could just as easily be interpreted as "log rolling", which is what politicians do when they agree to vote for somebody else's bill if they other party agrees to vote for theirs.  I don't know what the Reps have to say about that, just as I didn't know that they had used the word "tacky" to describe it before I did.

I seem to remember that Blow Job Bill wasn't impeached because of the actual bow job, but rather for lying about it under oath.  I believe his exact words were "I never had sex with that woman."  He later claimed that he didn't know a blow job counted as sex, and  he may have been right about that.  He's a Southerner you know, and those Southerners have been known to refer to pussy as "cock", so they might well be confused about blow jobs as well.

I always wondered why so many lawsuits in Michigan were filed in Ingham County until Judge Joe told me that's what you have to do if you want to sue the State of Michigan.  It must be a state law, and there is no reason that other states couldn't have different laws about it.  I get the impression that Hissoner used the race card as a device in that case.  There is no law prohibiting discrimination against rural people, but there is a law against racial discrimination.  The fact that most big city dwellers in Michigan are colored and most rural Michiganders are White might have been a happy coincidence that he decided to exploit.  I am interested in learning more about this case, and I plan to do more research when I have time.  I think what I need to do is narrow the search down to Ingham County Circuit Court.  They must have a record of it somewhere in their archives.  The court clerk might be able to help me with this if they are not too busy.

In Michigan, a marsh is covered with soft vegetation like lily pads and cattails, while a swamp has trees and bushes in it.  They are both wetlands under the law, if you can dig a hole in the ground and strike water within the first 18 inches.  Draining wetlands is regulated, but it's not impossible to get a permit to do it under certain circumstances.  The logistical difficulty depends on whether or not there is lower ground available nearby.  You might be able to drain into a lake or river but, if the water level fluctuates either seasonally or cyclically, your might have trouble keeping your wetland from becoming periodically re-flooded.  We built our house on a patch of high ground that was technically not classified as wetland, but we still had to build it up three more feet to get percolation for our septic system.