Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska was indicted Tuesday on charges that he lied about receiving gifts worth more than $250,000 from an Alaska-based energy company on whose behalf he intervened in Washington.
The indictment, returned Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington, says the veteran lawmaker “schemed to conceal” the fact that Veco paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work on his home.
Stevens has long been a leading figure in the types of corruption which don’t violate the law (securing federal money and benefits for well-connected people in your district, etc), so it doesn’t surprise me to hear that a grand jury thinks he’s crossed the line into illegal corruption. Although it looks like the actual charges are not for the actual conduct, but for lying when suspicious conduct was being investigated.
If the charges are true, Stevens should resign. And if he doesn’t resign, the Senate should consider expelling him (this requires a 2/3 vote, and would let Alaska’s governor appoint a replacement to serve out the last few months of his term). Criminal misconduct in office is serious business, especially considering just how much is legal.
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It’s been far too long since we’ve had a good expulsion from the Senate. No Senator has actually been expelled since the Civil War.
The last hearings IIRC were Bob Packwood and he resigned before they expelled him.
Of course, if they expelled all of the Senators who’ve engaged in corruption in office or other criminal misconduct they’d be hard put to get a rubber of bridge together let alone a quorum.
I hadn’t realized it had been that long. I seem to recall the House expelling people from time to time (was Traficant the last Representative to be expelled?), but then the Senate has always been more "gentlemanly" than the House.
I see it more as looking after their own.
The first word was "Republican". Doesn’t the style guide mandate that the party affiliation appear 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the article, after the jump to page A35 under the tire ad, if it appears at all?
Ahhh, the style guide states that if the news is bad, and the party is Republican, then it should be the first word. If the news is bad and the party is Democrat, then it gets buried.
Dishman
We must have the same style guide. Mine says the same thing.
I vote for a series of tubes up his ass.
Assuming he’s guilty, of course. Â
Corrupt politicians really, really piss me of….
Given that he appears to be maintaining his innocence, and his term is up in January anyway, I doubt they’ll want to put the energy into expelling him.
Expelling him might be the wise tactical move, as he’s seeking reelection and he’s way behind in the polls in a Republican-leaning state even before the indictment news broke. Also, it’d be a signal that Congressional Republicans have learned the lesson of the 2006 election, that consistantly sticking up for party members under fire for crimes and ethics violations creates the impression that the whole party is corrupt.
Expelling him might be the wise tactical move…
Except for one thing: the Democrats control tactics in the Senate right now. Senator Reid is not going to take the time to let the Republicans off this hook.
I don’t think Senate Democrats would want to put themselves in the position of openly protecting a Senator whose own party wants him gone for corruption charges, even if the protection takes the form of refusing to schedule debate on the Senate floor. The attack ads would practically write themselves.
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