The Senate’s Strange Double Standard

I don't understand the attitude towards people like Craig and Stevens from their fellow Senators and the states they represent.

By Joe Conason

For an object lesson in the distorted values of the United States Senate, consider how that august institution is handling the ethical embarrassments created by Republican Larry Craig of Idaho and Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska.

As everyone in America knows by now, Craig pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for an indiscretion in an airport men’s room. Stevens, along with his son Ben and a number of other Alaska politicians and businessmen, is the subject of a corruption investigation that resulted in an FBI raid on his home last summer. Every day, the pressure mounts on Craig from his colleagues to resign—and every day, those same colleagues treat Stevens as if he remains above suspicion.

The Craig case is currently under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, yet no such probe of the Stevens matter has commenced. According to the prevailing morality in the Senate, a legislator who may or may not have signaled his prurient interest in another man demands the most searching scrutiny, but a legislator who quite plainly accepted financial favors from a contractor deserves none.

Now Craig’s colleagues feel a special sense of outrage because he has violated his promise to resign by the end of September if he was unable to get his original guilty plea withdrawn. Clearly, the senator is given to rash gestures that he later regrets, whether tapping the toe of another man in a toilet stall, entering a plea or vowing to surrender his Senate seat.

“I wish he would stick to his word,” complained Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who chairs the National Republican Senate Committee and understandably does not relish the bad publicity that makes his task of re-electing Republicans much more challenging. Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, a freshman Republican up for re-election next year, told reporters that he hoped the Idahoan would step down and “respect the institution.”

But the institution is not so easy to respect when its members show so little of it by ignoring the stench that surrounds Stevens.

Oh, how true, how true, how true!

But Stevens has a LOT of friends in the Senate, and friendship is far more important than any pledge to the Constitution!

Our forefathers are twirlling in their graves...

They're probably laughing at the way their plans worked out.

The Republicans have become so thoroughly corrupt that there is only one crime which they will not forgive. And that one crime is not a crime at all.



BTW, with all these corrupt old Republicans retiring, when is that crooked, crazy old fart, Ted Stevens, going to spend more time with his family. I guess the only way to get his corrupt, insane ass out of the Senate will be to put him behind bars, where he can at least spend lots of time with his criminal son.