Jefferson's Reality Check
by Stephanie Grace - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

When I read on Friday that former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson asked a judge to put off scheduling his long-pending criminal trial, I stopped short. It wasn't Jefferson's attempt to delay his day of legal reckoning until yet another pre-trial procedural issue is decided that caught me off guard. He's been filing similar motions and appeals for many months now.

It was that word: Former. Right there in stark black and white, finally, indisputably official.

Everyone's known this day was coming, ever since the nine-term congressman's stunning loss to a virtual unknown just over a month ago. But with the holidays, the presidential transition, the economy and all the juicy news from elsewhere in the political universe, there just hasn't been much time to think about what happens to Jefferson next.

Even in the 2nd District, all eyes have been on his successor, Anh "Joseph" Cao, the man who just last week moved into Jefferson's cushy onetime digs in the Rayburn House Office Building -- the same office that will go down in history as the first ever to be raided by the FBI.

Jefferson's been around so long, and he's clung to his job so stubbornly, that the implications of his new, diminished status are just starting to sink in for many of us who've followed his career.

And imagine what a cold, hard reality check he's facing.