Gibbons of Nevada: Now You See It; Now You Don't

For three days this week, the media were saturated with speculation from unnamed sources that just-discovered video surveillance tapes do not show Rep. Jim Gibbons and Chrissy Mazzeo inside a parking garage where she claims the Republican gubernatorial candidate assaulted her Oct. 13....Little seems secure about security tapes, Jeff German, Las Vegas Sun, 11/3/2006

In an ongoing scandal in Nevada, Harry Reid's state, a cocktail waitress claimed that gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons, a current US Representative from Nevada, had assaulted her in a parking lot after she, he and another had been drinking together. She hoped that security tapes of the parking lot from that night, which had been locked up by the police when the story broke, would show that Rep. Gibbons was actually there with her. Apparently, though there's lots of hemming and hawing from the police, they don't show this, supporting Rep. Gibbons's claims that he was never there. Gibbons is a Republican and the writer wishes him well, but he can't help but remember a classic incident in the House of Representatives. In the late 19th century, a time of scandals that make today's seem rather tame, a staffer for House Speaker James Blaine, boss of all bosses for the Republicans nationally, was accused by Roscoe Conkling, the boss of all bosses of New York's Republicans, of taking money from railroad executives. Blaine claimed that there were letters in his office safe to prove differently. Conkling demanded that the letters be produced. Blaine, grandly presenting himself as always (he wasn't called the Plumed Knight for nothing), in a fashion that would make Tom Wolfe seem positively Puritan by comparison, said that he would do so the next day. That night, Conkling himself broke into Blaine's office and into his safe, took out the letters, and then, with stationery from the same railway companies, wrote out copies, with some slight changes in wording. He put his revised versions back into Blaine's safe, locked up the Speaker's office, and disappeared. The next day, Blaine appeared on the House floor with a box of letters. He stood up and began to read them aloud. Needless to say, there was a paroxysm of laughter in the House when the Speaker began to read incriminating passages about how much money would be given to the staffer in exchange for convincing the Speaker to guide favorable legislation through the House. The lesson: never trust the evidence too much in politics, pro or con. When power is the game, the rules of evidence may go out the window.

Luther