Democrat Leland Yee Sentenced to Five Years in Weapons Trafficking Case

From Breitbart's Big Government:

A federal judge sentenced former California state senator Leland Yee on Wednesday to five years in prison after he acknowledged in a plea deal that he accepted thousands of dollars in bribes and discussed helping an undercover FBI agent buy automatic weapons from the Philippines.

Senior District Court Judge Charles Breyer called the weapons allegations against Yee – a gun control advocate -unfathomable and said it was frightening that Yee would be willing to go entirely against his public position on guns in exchange for money.
.................

Still, Breyer’s sentence fell on the low end of guidelines that called for a prison term of between four years and 9 months and six years.

Prosecutors had recommended an eight-year sentence.

The Judge should have given Yee the max for 1.) being a corrupt lifelong politician, 2.) being a hypocrite, 3.) being a gun gunning gun control advocate willing to do anything to raise money to continue being a career politician.

Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee's votes and checks often coincide

From the LA Times via Instapundit: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Captain Renault (Casablanca)

Like, that's really surprising?

Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee, indicted Democrat Pol vs. Chris Christie, Republican Pol

From Instapundit:

I BET THIS GETS MORE COVERAGE FROM CNN THAN LELAND YEE, WHO’S ACTUALLY BEEN INDICTED. YOU KNOW? Grand jury convened in NJ bridge scandal.

The Week in Pictures - April Fools' Edition

From the guys at Powerline Blog:

Radio Silence on Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee -- He stands accused of conspiring to arm the Mafia, but the media won’t say it.

From Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review:

Having assiduously ignored one of the gonzo corruption stories of the last decade, CNN this week offered a peculiar defense of its silence. Rankled by a curious Twitter user, who asked why “the Leland Yee story appears nowhere on CNN’s website,” the outlet explained that the decision was “in line with us covering state senators & state secretary of state races just about never.” “You see another conspiracy?” the account asked its inquisitor, snippily.

There is a lot of space between bias and conspiracy, and one does not have to believe that CNN’s editorial staff is sitting around stroking white cats and cackling for its explanation to remain unsatisfactory. A search for the words “state senator” on CNN’s website returns more than 2,800 results, the vast majority of them stories about . . . state senators. “Wendy Davis” — one such state senator — yields 168 entries, many of which predated Davis’s running for governor; “Stacey Campfield,” a Tennessee state senator who has made some choice comments about homosexuals, returns five; and “Ted Nugent,” who is not an elected figure of any sort, returns 186, a substantial number of which relate to comments he made while supporting Texas attorney general and gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott earlier in the year. For his part, Yee’s name returns just one result, a video in which, per the outlet’s own blurb, he “discusses a bill to help prevent children from having access to violent video games.”

If we were to take CNN at its word, then, we would conclude that state senators are unusually fascinating when discussing video games, homosexuality, or abortion, but utterly unremarkable when indicted by the FBI for negotiating with Muslim separatist groups in the Philippines and conspiring to put missile launchers and fully automatic weapons into the hands of the Mafia. “Conspiracy”? Nah. That requires self-awareness.

Still, compared with the alternative, CNN’s radio silence seems almost wise. Elsewhere, Yee has been cast as a bit player in his own extraordinary story. On Sunday, the Sacramento Bee flirted with the conceit that he was a mere pawn, casting the tale as one primarily of debt rather than criminality, and asking inexplicably whether it was “time to revamp the state’s campaign-finance system.”

It's because he's a Democrat.

Democratic Shell Corporation CNN Continues Embargoing the Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee Story, But Actual News Organizations Are On It

From Ace of Spades HQ:

At Forbes, a contributor writes of the perils of absolute power -- which Democrats possess in California.

Democrat leaders in California today are so well ensconced in power, so very insulated from scrutiny or criticism, that not only is there corruption in their ranks – they are hardly moved by that corruption.

Indeed, for months California Democrats have had to deal with the fraud conviction of State Senator Roderick Wright. He was caught lying about his address so he could get elected in a certain district. He could face 8 years in prison. A month later, another Democrat Senator, Ronald Calderon, was indicted on serious public corruption charges.

You would think a responsible party would do all they could to distance themselves from such corrupt politicians. Despite Republican attempts to expel them from the Senate, however, on a party line vote Democrats blocked that effort.

Of course, the reason the Democrats did that was to protect their super-majority in the Senate, which allows them to pass tax legislation without a single Republican vote. In other words, having absolute power is more important to them than any semblance of integrity.

Then came along (indicted) Democrat Senator Leland Yee from San Francisco. He has been indicted on charges that are almost too wild to fathom including attempting to facilitate arms sales to a terrorist group. The allegations read like a bad movie and perhaps some day there will be a movie. In the face of that horrific – and impossible to ignore – publicity, the Democrats finally took some action.

And they will continue to own this State for quite a while.

The Unbelievable Story Of How An Anti-Gun Politician Ended Up Arrested For Alleged International Arms Dealing

From Business Insider:

According to court documents, (indicted) Democratic California State Senator Leland Yee's political career began to unravel "at some point in the last five years" when an undercover FBI agent was introduced to a self-described reformed gangster who operated in San Francisco's Chinatown named Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow.

He's from a very safe, liberal district and saw the writing on the wall that he was going to be term limited out. So he needed to fund the next election for the next rung on the political ladder.

The Media hates Republicans

From Glenn Harlan Reynold of Instapundit fame in the USA Today Editorial:

But — and here's the part Hollywood would miss — outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the coverage was surprisingly muted.The New York Times buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, "California: State Senator Accused of Corruption." This even though Yee was suspended, along with two others, from the California state senate in light of the indictment.

CNN, home (also until last week) of Piers Morgan, whom Yee had praised for his anti-gun activism, didn't report the story at all. When prodded by viewers, the network snarked that it doesn't do state senators. Which is odd, because searching the name of my own state senator, Stacey Campfield, turns up a page of results, involving criticisms of him for saying something "extreme". Meanwhile, CNN found time to bash Wisconsin state senator and supporter of Gov. Scott Walker, Randy Hopper over marital problems.

But there's a difference. They're Republicans. When Republicans do things that embarrass their party, the national media are happy to take note, even if they're mere state senators. But when Democrats like Yee get busted for actual felonies, and pretty dramatic ones at that, the press suddenly isn't interested.

We've seen this before, of course: Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff dismissed the horrific Kermit Gosnell trial as a "local crime story", even as the press was going crazy covering another equally local crime story, the George Zimmerman trial. Likewise, another state senator, Texas' Wendy Davis, got national attention when she filibustered an abortion bill, a story that fit conveniently with the "war on women" theme used by Democrats.

It's almost as if "what's news" is just a synonym for "what advances the narrative chosen by the Democratic Party." The question that "news" operations like CNN may want to ask is, how many people are really interested in getting their news from party organs.

That is why the Legacy Media is dead and the new media is taking over and giving them fits. The legacy media has become the propaganda department for the Democratic Party.

Scott Shackford -- Why Is Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee Not Yet A Household Name?

From Reason Magazine via Instapundit:

A politician honored for his gun control efforts is arrested for attempted arms smuggling. He held press conferences denouncing violent video games and helped pass legislation in California prohibiting sales of such games to minors. And yet, secretly, he was living the life of a Grand Theft Auto character.

The downfall of Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco should be an utterly captivating, fascinating story, and the national media should be sinking its teeth into the details. I joked when Yee was first arrested about how he is destined to be parodied in Grand Theft Auto. That was before the FBI’s report was even released. Now, I’m convinced the report could be the outline for an entire Grand Theft Auto installment (have they set a game in a parody of San Francisco yet?). Yee’s story of corruption, attempted gun-running and accusations of vote-selling (an undercover FBI agent posing as a medical marijuana clinic owner wanted him to support legislation introducing new barriers to entry for potential competition) is actually just a small part of a larger story about the crime scene in San Francisco. Beyond Lee’s role, the whole story (pdf) is full of drug transactions, stolen booze fencing, a home invasion by apparently Mexican gangsters, what appears to be counterfeit credit cards supplied by a Russian hacker, and more. It has everything. There’s even a money-laundering scene that takes place inside a massage parlor. It’s part FBI report, part Hollywood pitch.

And yet, it has not captured as much national media attention as one might think. Not long after the story came out, every Republican I follow on Twitter was noting how stories about Yee’s arrest were burying the fact that he’s a Democrat. I’m not particularly interested in an argument over which party is more corrupt. In the Corruption Olympics, each party is full of stellar athletes whose gold medals were paid for by taxpayers, manufactured by a company with cozy ties to both parties, and cost 300 percent more than they would in the private market. Nevertheless, given the media coverage of every time a conservative Republican politician on the state level says something dumb or controversial, it is worth noting.

It's because he's a Democrat.

Linking Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee’s Voting Record To Major Donations.

From the San Fransisco Chronicle via Instapundit:

As (indicted Democratic) state Sen. Leland Yee aggressively campaigned in the 2011 San Francisco mayor's race, he blasted interim Mayor Ed Lee as beholden to City Hall power brokers with "selfish interests" and vowed to "throw them out" if elected.

At the same time, Yee was allegedly soliciting $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a real estate developer who had already illegally funneled $11,000 to Yee's campaign, telling the agent to "cover your tracks," and boasting that "there's tremendous opportunity in local levels ... because whoever's gonna be the mayor controls everything."

Sifting through the layers of alleged criminality in a years-long FBI probe that ensnared Yee, notorious Chinatown gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow and 24 others last week, the picture that emerges of Yee in a 137-page FBI affidavit is not the sleeves-rolled-up, 65-year-old Democrat with a knack for retail politics that Yee projected.

Instead, it's of a man driven by money who was willing to skirt campaign finance laws, collect cash for meetings, trade political favors for donations, and even promise to facilitate an international arms deal worth up to $2.5 million. Now, a Chronicle review of his votes and campaign donations shows that money might have influenced many of his votes in the Legislature, too.

So the Chronicle SUDDENLY decides to check indicted Democratic State Senator Leland Yee's voting record vs. his campaign contributions and suddenly notices a correlation between the two.

Well, duh!

S0 why haven't they done this with ALL the politicians in Sacramento?

Memorable Lines from Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee’s Arms-Dealing Indictment

From Legal Insurrection:

I have been following the news about (indicted Democratic) California state senator, Leland Yee, who was arraigned in federal court on charges related to alleged roles associated with Chinatown gangsters and brokering arms deals with a Muslim rebel group based in the Philippines.

I made the analogy to the recent box-office smash, American Hustle.

My personal favorites are:

1. Which is better: 10 months or 8 years?

Yee: “I can be of help to you for 10 months or I can be of help to you for eight years. I think eight years is a lot better than 10 months.”

2. Playing Mortal Kombat in the Philippines

Yee authored California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to children that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional. In the indictment, he allegedly said he was “agnostic” to working with a Muslim rebel group, which he knew to be responsible for “kidnapping individuals, killing individuals and extorting them for ransom.”

Yee: “People want to get whatever they want to get. Do I care? No, I don’t care.”

3. Pillow talk for Capitol fundraisers

Yee: “Just give me the g—– money, man s— … you should just tell them, write some f—ing checks, man.”

4. Liberal SF Democrat driven by money

Allegedly Yee, who thought Africa was a largely untapped market for trade, was eager to get the goods and make money.

Yee: “Do I think we can make some money? I think we can make some money. Do I think we can get the goods? I think we can get the goods.”

…7. Life imitates ‘The Wire’

The catch-phrase of “The Wire” TV show’s Clay Davis appears frequently in the indictment.

Yee: “$15k man, s—. For what we did man? S—. You know, we got him close to [State Senator 1].”

Yee: “There’s got to be some trust around here man, s—”

Yee: “S—, as much as I want that five thousand, I can’t do that man. S—. F—. S—.”

Yee: “S—. That’ s pay to play and you can’t do that. You cannot connect. You could go to jail for that . … They got to understand, it’ s about the long term. It ‘s not about the short term.”

Yee: On his possible election as mayor of San Francisco: ”We control 6.8 billion, man. S—.” The number was the approximate size of the city’s budget at the time.

8. The Allure of Secretary of State?

Yee: “I’m just trying to run for secretary of state. I hope I don’t get indicted.”

This reads like a B movie script.

In The Hollywood Version Of The Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee Story

From The Scratching Post via Legal Insurrection:

... Leland will be an evangelical Christian from Alabama running guns to a white supremacist gang who are also crystal meth dealers. The story will be broken by D'Vonte Carmichael, the first black reporter from the little town of Blue Springs who struggles to prove himself to his homophobic boss because his sister, Taniqua Wilson, is a lesbian, feminist professor fighting for equal pay for LGBT teachers at Spelman College in Georgia, which is run by another evangelical Christian, Mary Smith, who is a narrow-minded prude and is actually in league with the white supremacists.

The story will feature lots of clever social media content, a shoot out at the supremacists' meth lab, car chases, shrewd product placement of Apple technologies and will culminate with a Twitter mention from the Obama Administration's Department of Justice. In a deeply touching scene, one of the supremacists' kids, orphaned in the shoot out, will be adopted by D'Vonte and his boyfriend as a part of their wedding ceremony.

It will crash and burn at the box office, but will win several Academy Awards. Robert Redford will call it the one of the finest movies he's ever seen and MSNBC hosts will be falling all over themselves to praise how daring and innovative it is.

California version of “American Hustle” features cameo by #Shrimpboy

From Legal Insurrection:

I am a fan of American Hustle, the Hollywood take on Abscam, a FBI sting operation that was aided by a convicted con-man in which politicians were videotaped as they were offered bribes by a fictional Middle Eastern sheik in return for various political favors.

Now, the Golden State has produced a real-life version of this saga, complete with arms trafficking and Chinatown gangs. The “star” of this show was a contender for the California Secretary of State slot in November’s election, (indicted Democratic) State Senator Leland Yee:

Gun-control groups said Thursday they were trying to find a new legislative leader to champion firearms restrictions after one of their most outspoken supporters was charged in a federal gun-trafficking case. People on both sides of the gun control issue said the charges against (indicted Democratic) state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, may slow consideration of gun legislation this year.

“Ironically, while he’s being charged with gun trafficking, next to (U.S. Sen.) Dianne Feinstein he was probably the second most outspoken gun control advocate. This really leaves us scrambling for someone to pick up that mantle,” said Paul Song, executive chairman of CourageCampaign.org. “If it wasn’t so sad it would be comical. But what we’re really worried about is that this will further destroy the momentum for gun control here in California.”

Since Kalifornia is a single party state, let's hope the opposition can make some hay about the 3 DEMOCRATIC State Senators who were either convicted or indicted the last few months.

Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee to Continue to Draw $95,291 Salary Despite Suspension from CA Senate

From Breitbart's Big Government:

On March 27th, Breitbart News reported that California Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D) warned senator Leland Yee (D) to resign or face suspension. Yee "refused to step down," so the senate suspended him. However, he will continue to draw his $95,291 salary. .....................

State Senator Joel Anderson (R-36th Dist.) was the lone vote against Yee's suspension. Anderson argued that Yee "should be expelled" rather than just suspended, and that "it was wrong that [Yee] should continue receiving [his] $95,291 personal salary."

So we're stuck paying this guys salary until his term expires or he's convicted, since the corrupt pol in the Kalifornia Legislature, won't expelled the slimeball.

Indicted Democrat State Senator Leland Yee, the Kochs, and the Press -- There’s no journalistic skepticism about the motives of those on the left.

From Jonah Goldberg of National Review:

Leland Yee, (an indicted) Democratic state senator and candidate for secretary of state in California, has been a longtime champion of gun control. This week he was arrested on numerous charges, including conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and conspiracy to illegally transport firearms. Yee, a prominent foe of assault weapons, allegedly took bribes to set up a meeting between an undercover agent and an international arms dealer to broker the sale of automatic weapons and shoulder-fired missiles. A lengthy FBI affidavit also describes Yee’s ties to a Chinese triad and his desire to help out Islamist militants.

In short, the story makes for what journalists call “good copy.”

And yet, so far no reporter has raised the possibility that Yee supported tighter restrictions on guns in order to keep gun prices high and his own services in demand. Economist Bruce Yandle popularized the idea of the “Bootleggers and Baptists” coalition. The apocryphal Baptists want to ban alcohol. Bootleggers don’t make much money when liquor can be bought legally at a grocery store or bar. So the bootleggers bankroll the Baptists’ effort to ban booze.

Now I sincerely doubt that Yee was that clever. The more likely explanation is that he believes in gun control and he’s a greedy hypocrite (and maybe not too bright either). The fact that gun-control policies are to his advantage is just a happy coincidence.

What’s interesting — and vexing — to me is that this sort of analysis is all the rage when it comes to conservatives and Republicans, and utterly incomprehensible to most journalists when it comes to liberals and Democrats.

Since he's from San Fransisco, I'm inclined to think he believes in Gun Control (for others) AND is a greedy hypocrite, i.e. a Democrat.

Consider the Koch brothers, the billionaire businessmen and philanthropists. The Democratic party raises vast sums off demonizing the Koch brothers. (Slate’s David Weigel reports that fundraising e-mails mentioning the Kochs raised roughly three times as much as those that didn’t mention them.) This explains why Senate majority leader Harry Reid calls the Kochs “un-American” and liars every chance he gets.

Meanwhile, many media outlets are all too willing to take their cues from Democratic talking points. For instance, the Washington Post recently ran a shockingly shabby story insinuating that the Kochs have a lot to gain from the Keystone pipeline. The story was utterly debunked by John Hinderaker of the website Powerline. (The Kochs have no stake in the pipeline, and even if they did, so what?) But the Post’s piece was typical of the media’s fascination with the idea that the Kochs’ political activities are simply cover for their desire to maximize profits. ......................

I have no problem with journalistic skepticism or the search for ulterior motives. I just object to the idea that only Republicans might have them.

Al Gore reportedly left government with a net worth of less than $2 million; he’s now worth more than $200 million, in part by profiting from climate policies he lobbies for. Gore surely believes in those policies, but why does he get the benefit of the doubt? GE spent millions on politics in exchange for “green energy” policies that generate billions in profits that wouldn’t exist in a free market. Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon recently chronicled how George Soros and new liberal golden-boy fat cat Tom Steyer have financial interests at stake in their own preferred public policies. And yet they get glowing treatment from the press as idealists sacrificing profit for principles.

The irony is that it’d be in the media’s business interest to report on the seedy underbelly of liberal politics, too. But they don’t, because they actually do put their liberal principles before profits.

Al Gore, another liberal Democratic hypocrite.

Is Democrat Leland Yee a Full-Blown Gun-Runner for Russians and Islamic Terrorists? (Updated)

From PJ Tattler at PJ Media:

Just ponder that one for a few seconds. Yee has tried to disarm Americans. Behind the scenes he claims that he is arming rebel groups in the Philippines. Which rebel groups? ...............

In specific the Moro Islamic Liberation Front: “[The agent] asked about the major Muslim organizations in the Mindanao region of the Philippines. Senator Yee responded by saying ‘M.I.L.F.’”

Indicted Democratic State Senator Leland Yee wants to disarm law abiding American Citizens, while while trying to arm MUSLIM terrorist.

Schadenfreude -- Anti-Gun Democrat State Senator Leland Yee Charged With Gun Running

From The Truth About Guns:

It what would surely place his likeness prominently on the Mt. Rushmore of hypocrisy if the allegations are proven in a court of law, famously anti-gun California state Senator Leland Yee has been charged with, in addition to bribery and public corruption…yes…gun running. Specifically conspiring with known organized crime lord Kwok Cheung “Shrimp Boy” Chow to illegally import firearms and sell them without a license . . .

The affidavit charges that the $2 million worth of weapons to have been secreted into the country from the Philippines included rocket launchers and machine guns, some of which Yee himself had fired while on Mindanao. A portion of the weapons Yee conspired to bring into the U.S. through New Jersey were to have been forwarded on to North Africa via Sicily.

We’ve yet to get through the full 154-page affidavit for all of the juicy details, but you can see for yourself here. If it’s possible to die of an overdose of schadenfreude, we may need to call 911 in the next few minutes.

Revenge is a plate best served cold ! ! ! ! !

Too Funny