Edwin Edwards, laughed off the frequent charges against him, boasting that the only way he’d lose an election “is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” He won four times before going to prison for bribery, fraud, and other crimes. But Louisiana was more forgiving of crooked politicians than of the felons I’d met at Angola. Released after eight years, Edwards married a woman fifty-two years his junior, starred with her in a reality show, and won a primary for Congress. “People say, well, they’re all crooks anyhow,” Edwards told a reporter, when asked about going to
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