Personal Aside: Ted Stevens’ Indictment Welcome Enema for the Body Politic.

Sorry to be graphic but the indictment of Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens by a federal grand jury is a necessary tubular insertion to provide a much needed enema to the infected body politic. Let them now turn the spigot and proceed with the full flushing. The purification will recompense partly for far more than the making of alleged false statements to conceal gifts and home renovations.

Such physic would blast out the moral debris accumulated long ago, by his arrogant defense of the status quo when the late Henry J. Hyde brought charges of Bill Clinton impeachment to the Senate. Meeting with hollow man Republican “leader” Trent Lott and others, Stevens told Hyde and House Judiciary chief counsel David Schippers:

“I don’t care if you prove that [Clinton] raped a woman and then stood up and shot her dead—you are not going to get sixty-seven votes.”

The meaning was clear to Schippers and Hyde. It was not just a note-counting assessment. It signified that Stevens would artfully do all he could to save Clinton. To cover his tracks, Stevens voted against the charge of perjury (when Clinton’s lying under oath was apparent) but voted to convict on the far lesser charge…obstruction of justice…so as to justify himself on a talking point while working behind the scenes in his serpentine way to save the obviously guilty president. In doing so he cooperated in the charade of some key Senate members never bothering to examine the evidence because they simply didn’t want to know, resulting in culpable cooperation with others to balock criminal offenses. In doing so, Stevens played a decisive role as a senior Republican senator in purveying the snarl of sophistry and manipulation of public opinion, soiling his honor, the Senate’s reputation and public trust in the presidency.

While the charges against Stevens have nothing to do with his underhanded manipulations to frustrate justified conviction of Clinton, they constitute root retributive justice for Stevens…who has been getting away with boodle and graft for many years—coalescing with those who loot the treasury with baseless spending including the federally funded “Bridge to Nowwhere” in Alaska.

Federal authorities raided Stevens’ home in the resort town of Girdwood, 40 miles south of Anchorage, last summer. From May, 1999 to August, 2007 say prosecutors, Stevens hid “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation” VECO, a major Alaska oil services company from his Senate disclosure form-- including home improvements to his vacation home in Alaska, including a new first floor, garage, wraparound deck, plumbing, electrical wiring, car exchanges, a gas grill, furniture and tools. He received huge discounts on cars by swapping cheaper models for more expensive autos—receiving a brand new Land Rover for his son worth $44,000 in exchange for a 1964 Mustang worth under $20,000.

Stevens’ good friend in the Senate is Maine Republican Susan Collins, a bland figurehead liberal of no particular depth who has returned the favor. He gave her $10,000 in 2002 and another $10,000 in this election cycle. In return she contributed $5,000 to him in this election cycle where he will run for reelection, with a primary this August.

Any hope that his Republican Senate seat can be salvaged could only come if the 84-year-old, 40-year Senate backscratcher and snout-snuffler at the public trough could be convinced to resign so that the Republican governor could appoint a replacement to stand for reelection. There’s no chance because this gargoyle will remain poisoning the Senate until his ultimate conviction.

The Senate’s lachrymose Republican song-writer and lyricist Orrin Hatch a victim of Stockholm syndrome toward aged pols moaned that it is highly unfair for the Justice Department to bring these charges just before the primary, given that the DOJ had been investigating the old fraud for many years. Given that Hatch was once chairman of judiciary, he should know how long preparation of a case like this must take: but anyone who weeps uncontrollably over Ted Kennedy’s “great contribution” to the Senate would be immune from such speculation.

Perhaps Hatch’s next song can rhapsodize the “lynching of Ted Stevens.”