B*tches Set Me Up!

Repeatedly disgraced and re-elected former DC mayor (and current City Council Member) Marion Barry recently found himself at the business end of a gun as two youths robbed him after helping him unload groceries from his car.

Rather than calling for their prosecution, Barry asks only that they admit it...then be set free to rob again.

Here is Barry in his own words:

"There is a sort of an unwritten code in Washington, among the underworld and the hustlers and these other guys, that I am their friend," Barry said at an afternoon news conference in which he described the robbery in detail.

The highlighted statement above sheds light on how Barry constantly gets re-elected. In a crooked profession, what "underworld" figures and "hustlers" wouldn't want in office a "friend?"

Barry continued:

"I don't advocate what they do. I advocate conditions to change what they do. I was a little hurt that this betrayal did happen."

Barry, advocate of the criminal element, was shocked that the element turned on him. But he's against crime, see? Not siding with criminals, he's just trying to understand what makes them so, and by understanding, changing their behavior. Right.

Read on in the same article, and you will find out why Barry both understands the criminal mind, and should get his own house in order before advocating the capture and release of two violent offenders:

Barry often has spoken out against street crime in a political career that goes back more than three decades. He was first elected mayor in 1978 and was reelected to second and third terms. He was in his third term when the FBI videotaped him smoking crack; he was convicted of one count of misdemeanor drug possession.

He settled in Ward 8 after completing a six-month prison sentence and won the council seat there in 1992, launching a comeback that eventually led to a fourth term as mayor. He recently pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges because he did not pay most of his income taxes after leaving the mayor's office in 1999. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 18.

Different year, same Mayor Barry.