taking stock of Martha Stewart and Bill Frist

[welshTerrier2]

you probably were not aware that Martha and Bill agreed participate in this week's DU head-to-head to challenge ... see if you can tell who won each of the following rounds in our ten round competition:

Round 1: pumpkin-butternut bisque with apricot marmalade
Winner: Martha Stewart (1-0)

Round 2: napkin rings from hand-carved native-grown bubinga trees
Winner: Martha Stewart (2-0)

Round 3: most invisible toilet heater camouflage
Winner: Martha Stewart (3-0)

Round 4: building a computer table from used Scotch tape
Winner: Martha Stewart (4-0)

Round 5: divining medical condition of a dying patient from 800 miles away
Winner: Bill Frist (1-4)

Round 6: making kitty litter perfume from grannie smith apple peelings
Winner: Martha Stewart (5-1)

Round 7: making kitty litter from actual kitties
Winner: Bill Frist (2-5)

Round 8: violating a Senate oath
Winner: Bill Frist (3-5)

Round 9: making by far the most money from illegal sale of stock using insider information
Winner: Bill Frist (4-5)

It's a very close match going into the tenth and final round ...

Round 10: serving the most time in jail after being charged with insider stock trading
Winner: Martha Stewart (6-4)

Congratulations to this week's LOSER OF THE WEEK: Senator Bill Frist

May you get all the justice you can handle and then some ...

[niallmac]

1. Sweeet! Nice job. n/t

[welshTerrier2]

2. pretty absurd, eh ??

thanks !!

[niallmac]

4. Very absurd. I can't get over

how my fellow working class shmucks are so quick to cast stones at Martha for her 'insider' trading. Meanwhile Kenny Boy Lay has stolen how many millions and destroyed how many lives and has played how many rounds of golf ever since? I hope before I die I get to see the day Joe Six Pack wakes up.

[FloridaPat]

3. Martha did not serve time for insider stock trading. To do that,

one must actually be an insider. Now it is a little confusing what she was actually charged with. Seems that by going on TV and saying she was not involved in insider trading at the company she didn't work at, the gov't felt she lied. And since she lied in public while being an officer of an entirely different company in public, she was charged with that. Whatever it really is. But it wasn't insider trading.

[1932]

6. That tells you how watered down insider trading laws are.

She wasn't convicted of lying in public. She was convicted of lying to investigators about the transaction (which is like destroying evidence, or not submitting to a breathalyzer test -- you're not getting convicted of the precipitating event, but of something you do to avoid conviction for the precipitating event). The unique issue with Martha is that she didn't destroy the evidence so utterly that they couldn't have charged her with the precipitating matter. I think that's where a lot of people get hung up with Martha, pehaps justifiably.

That thing about lying to the public -- that had to do with her ownership of MS Living-Omnimedia. If she knew what she did was wong, she would have been lying to potential investors about pertinent matters that would influence the value of the company's stock. She was aware that she did lie to the investigators (which I think is beyond any doubt), so, as long as she knew that was a crime, she was misrepresenting material facts about the company's value.

It was a clever charge, but ultimately dropped. The judge tossed it. So there was no convinction for making public statements. That charge didn't even reach a jury.

[DURHAM D]

5. Using Martha Stewart to make a point about Sen. Frist and

insider trading is factually incorrect and offensive.