[Ninong]

The former Metairie legislator, perennial Republican candidate for higher office and Ku Klux Klan grand wizard has asked U.S. District Court Judge Eldon Fallon to move up his sentencing date. Duke will now be sentenced today, a week ahead of schedule.


Duke has spent the past several years spreading his message of white supremacy abroad, mostly in Russia and Eastern Europe but more recently in the Middle East, where he has proffered the theory that Israel was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He was reportedly in Moscow in 2000 when the FBI raided his Mandeville house.

But he quietly returned to the United States late last year to see his ailing father and negotiate a plea deal. And now he's anxious to get his prison term under way.

The sentencing hearing is not expected to hold much drama. As part of Duke's December agreement to plead guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of making a false statement on his 1998 income tax return, acting U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office has agreed to a 15-month prison sentence and a $10,000 fine. That's in line with federal sentencing guidelines for a first offender, Letten said.

The investigation into Duke's finances became public in 1999, soon after he finished third in a nine-candidate 1st Congressional District primary. At first, authorities seemed to focus on Duke's relationship with fellow Republican, Gov. Mike Foster, George W. Bush's state campaign manager and the $150,000 Foster paid Duke for a copy of his mailing list. The price seemed a bit high and it seemed even higher after Foster testified that he had no intention of actually using the list of Duke's supporters. But the final charges made no mention of that bizarre transaction.

The mail fraud charge grew out of what Letten described as Duke's six-year scheme to bilk thousands of followers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through a direct mail campaign that asserted he was in dire financial straits and in danger of losing his home and savings. In fact, prosecutors said, he sold his home for a profit during that period, held numerous investment accounts and gambled away much of his take at casinos in Mississippi, Las Vegas and the Bahamas.


All I can say is that it seems like poetic justice that the people who contributed to David Duke were defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's not counting the $150,000 "contribution" from Bush's state campaign manager.

[zhenya]

Geez.
Ninong,check out this pic I got in the mail today,anonimous sender mind you The title was: 'what if we loose the war'Some people never cease to surprize me