In words of clarity and elucidation that I could not bring together, about Martha Stewart:

The most serious criminal charge against her is not perjury or insider trading but securities fraud, based on the fact that she denied to the press, personally and through her lawyers, that she had engaged in insider trading. This was done, the feds say, not for the purpose of clearing her name, but only to prop up the stock price of her own publicly traded company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In other words, her crime is claiming to be innocent of a crime with which she was never charged.

— Michael McMenamin for Reason magazine: St. Martha: Why Martha Stewart should go to heaven and the SEC should go to hell.

I am baffled by small-business types who rail on Martha Stewart and her ilk — my stepdad being one of them, and he is trying to prop a business up — who, with no proof of any wrongdoing, assume thievery of a head of business. It reeks of self-loathing and hypocrisy: will they assume the same of themselves when they become successful? Or will they ensure their own failure so that they will never have to be like Martha, and her ilk?

Link courtesy of Z-boy.