Former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson was sentenced to 13 years in prison for using his office to solicit bribes.

Jefferson, 62, was convicted of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and unlawfully seeking millions more, mainly by promoting business deals in Africa. Prosecutors claimed he was involved in 11 separate bribery schemes from August 2000 to August 2005 and that he and his family stood to gain more than half a billion dollars.

The Louisiana Democrat…was videotaped in July 2005 accepting $100,000 in a leather briefcase at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, and putting it in his car. About $90,000 in the marked bills were later recovered from Pillsbury pie crusts and Boca meatless burger patty boxes in the freezer of his Washington residence.

The AP ran a fact-check on the claims Sarah Palin makes in her new book.

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking “only” for reasonably priced rooms and not “often” going for the “high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.

THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City’s Central Park for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000…The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children’s travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.

THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.

***

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, “you’ll have to be brave enough to fail.”

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama’s stimulus plan – a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts – and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed…During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being “instrumental in bringing folks together” to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said “it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in.”

***

PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp.

***

PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free – this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.

THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family’s $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.

• Former Congressman Tom Andrews (D-ME), who is now Director of the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, talks with Alan about the Obama administration’s decision to bring 9/11 suspects to trial in New York.

• It’s the Friday Night Free-For-All with:

• Conservative Comedian T.J. McCormack

• Marketing specialist John Tantillo

• Singer/songwriter Chip Taylor

The theme all week on the right has been that what happened at Fort Hood was an act of terror by a Muslim terrorist, one who has ties to al Qaeda.  Domestic terror on Obama’s watch, get it? And a president who tried to make us think he’s a Christian but is a secret Muslim.  If he wanted to be a Christian, I guess he was supposed to go to a right-wing evangelical church, but certainly not a black one with a preacher who hates America.  Don’t they know they already lost an election putting out this garbage?  But with the tragedy of Fort Hood prominent, what a nice excuse to try to tie its underpinnings to the president.

Think Progress has the audio and the rundown of the Bauer/Liddy lovefest.

Since Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in a civilian court in New York, it will be interesting to see how the great defenders of our Constitution view it.

Mr. Mohammed’s trial in New York was widely expected since the Obama administration announced a preference to hold criminal trials, instead of military commissions for terror suspects held at Guantanamo. New York’s Manhattan U.S. attorney competed with the district in northern Virginia, home to the Pentagon, to prosecute the 9/11 accused and senior al Qaeda leader. A team of prosecutors from both districts will handle the government’s case, people familiar with the matter said.

Nice to see that little things, like the Sixth Amendment, are being observed.

The health plan offered to employees by the Republican National Committee covers elective abortion, even though the party platform calls the procedure “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.”

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.

Informed of the coverage, RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho told POLITICO that the policy pre-dates the tenure of current RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

“The current policy has been in effect since 1991, and we are taking steps to address the issue,” Gitcho said.

Oh? Taking steps finally after 18 years?

According to several Cigna employees, the insurer offers its customers the opportunity to opt out of abortion coverage – and the RNC did not choose to opt out.

Maybe because the RNC wants to offer its employees the same kind of coverage almost every other employer does.

• VoteVets.org Chairman Jon Soltz joins Alan to discuss President Obama’s Afghanistan options, and also the troubling report that U.S. contractors are funding the Taliban forces that our troops are fighting.

• Actor George Wendt, who played beer-lover Norm Peterson on Cheers, tells Alan about the liquid inspiration behind his new book, Drinking with George: A Barstool Professional’s Guide to Beer.

• Queen vs. King: Alan weighs in on the latest “inappropriate” behavior of former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean.

Will Phillips of West Fork School District in Washington County, Arkansas, refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. His family is involved in the gay rights issue, straight allies to that community, and Will doesn’t believe there is “liberty and justice for all” in America.

Laura Phillips is Will’s mother. “Yes, my son is 10,” she said. “But he’s probably more aware of the meaning of the pledge than a lot of adults. He’s not just doing it rote recitation. We raised him to be aware of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s fair.”

On October 5, after asking his parents it was legal to do so, he sat down during his class’s recitation of the Pledge.  The substitute teacher that week became more and more agitated each day with Will’s refusal to stand and, when she kept pressing the issue Phillips told her, “With all due respect, Ma’am , you can go jump off a bridge.”  After Will’s parents spoke with the school, which admitted he had the right not to stand, they asked for an apology from the teacher, but have not received one.

After Phillips put a post on the instant-blogging site twitter.com about the incident, several of her friends got angry and alerted the news media. Meanwhile, Will Phillips still refuses to stand during the pledge of allegiance. Though many of his friends at school have told him they support his decision, those who don’t have been unkind, and louder.

Joe Lieberman tried to make nice with Democrats to retain his committee assignments, but now that he continues to threaten to filibuster a health care reform bill, his stock with Democrats is on the decline.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of 13 Democrats who voted last fall to strip Joe Lieberman’s gavel of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, answered sharply when asked if Lieberman should be kicked out of the Democratic Caucus if he filibusters the health care bill.

“Let’s see what happens. I don’t think anybody should be filibustering — nobody should be filibustering health care. Either vote it up or vote it down.”

Nomentum!