Maybe I'm on the wrong track here, but why can't they just consult Jeff's bank records? To see if he bought the rights to the Creek?
I know they had a lot of bogus, forged documents stating that he bought it, but wouldn't there be a huge subtraction recorded in his bank account? Or am I way off base?
I'm with you there. As much as I respect the film for its cultural and all round feel-goodiness, I think the frame up job leaves a lot plot holes.
I'm not a Consitutional lawyer, but can someone confirm whether the Senate can simply vote Jeff Smith off the island with a simple administrative motion?
I know they can censure (like they did to Joe McCarthy) or impeach and convict, but that's a much LONGER process.
The Constitution provides that each house may with a 2/3s vote expel a member. The committee in the film could recommend expulsion and the full Senate could adopt the resolution with a 2/3rds vote. Then our boy Jeff Smith would be sent packing. Good thing Sen. Paine came to his senses.
shareSo, maybe they faked bank records too. What really got me though was that if he really had bought the land to make a profit, why go create a bill for the camp? Sen. Paine and Mr. Taylor bought land with the intent on selling it for the Dam. So all he had to do was keep his mouth shut, vote for the Dam and make his money.
I think his argument should have been "Look if I had bought the land to make money, I would not have bothered with a bill!"
Good movie all around though.
i saw this last nite for the first time, and it was on the big screen and it was playing with Meet John Doe, first time i had seen that one either. anyways i loved both movies, especially Mr. Smith, it had a great uplifting story.
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Anyone notice this guy just posted his review in a random thread? Your overall opinion of the film has nothing to do with the OP's question.
Random much?
I wondered this as well, but I shrugged it off when the said that he had purchased the land with the money that boys had sent him. I'm still not sure it makes sense, but I just assumed I had missed something in the set-up.
"She is tolerable I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me!" Mr. Darcy
He hadn't already purchased the land at all. The money being saved and sent in from the boy rangers was to be used for the purchase once the land was designated for the boy ranger camp. He was doing this with his bill. Then he discovered that buried in the special deficiency bill was a provision to set the land aside for a dam. The frameup was the accusation that he purchased the property with his own money for hardly anything, planning to put the camp there, then introduced the bill, which would have led to the purchase with the boys' money of land belonging to him. It was a lie. The accusers were saying he was doing exactly what they themselves really were doing, i.e., buying up land and using their power to create a public use for it so they would profit. As to why logically he would have cared, if he were just in it for the money, whether the land was purchased for a dam or for the camp, I don't get that either, except that the main point of the movie is that truth and logic get overwhelmed by the grafters using their steamrollers of power. Besides, when he might have raised that point of logic, during the kangaroo court of a Senate inquiry, all the people in Taylor's pocket had come prepared to beat down whatever defense he might have raised.
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