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STEVENS GUILTY….Ted Stevens, whose defense against corruption charges was that he was just “borrowing” stuff from campaign donors, lost his case today:

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted today of lying on financial disclosure forms to hide tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and renovations to his Alaska home that were financed mostly by a powerful business executive and his oil services company.

….Despite the guilty verdict, Stevens remains on the ballot in Alaska, where he is locked in a tight race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

If he can pull off an upset victory, Stevens could remain in the Senate for months, if not longer, if he chose to appeal the verdict. Tradition allows him to exhaust his appeals before the ethics committee begins expulsion hearings, according to the Historical Office of the Senate.

A reader asks, “If Stevens is re-elected and the US Senate then kicks him out, can Palin then name herself to replace him?” I assume the answer is no, and I further assume that even if the answer is yes Palin wouldn’t have the chutzpah to do it. But of course, those are my big city values talking, so I might be off base here.

In any case, I assume that Stevens is now considerably more likely to lose his seat next week, thus making this point moot. Any Alaskans care to weigh in on how this is going to play up in the Great White North Last Frontier?

UPDATE: False alarm. Sorry. After Frank Murkowski appointed his daughter Lisa to an open Senate seat in 2002, Alaskans approved a ballot initiative to change the law. An open Senate seat in Alaska is now filled via a special election.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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