Ricardo J Gonzalez for a Better America

The stars were aligned today to make my return to the blogosphere as easy as possible. As I sat down to make my normal rounds of news sites I see this headline over at Politico:Ted Stevens indicted. Sen Stevens has been a US Senator since 1968 and is the longest standing Republican Senator in the country. He is allegedly also the the most corrupt Senator in Washington. Today he was indicted on 7 counts of false reporting on his Senate income disclosure forms. Apparently VECO, an oil services firm, did about $250,000 worth of renovations to his home which he forgot to mention...7 years in a row. Whoops!

Of course, no one believes that receiving that much money could possibly influence a senator, right? Well, the government isn't alleging bribery, and during the official press conference announcement, they made clear that there was no quid-pro-quo agreement between the Senator and VECO but that “received solicitations for official actions from Allen and other VECO employees, and that Sen. Stevens used his position and office on behalf of VECO during that same time period”.

Unlike Rep. Randall Cunningham who had a bribe menu, Sen. Stevens is probably too intelligent to put his corruption down on paper. The Senator's defense is going to argue that there's no proof that it affected the Senator's judgment. It's going to argue that the Senator didn't know that he had to report these gifts, and that he shouldn't have to. They're going to claim that, there's really nothing wrong with a Senator take hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from companies whose future he can strongly influence.

Whether the corruption by Sen. Stevens is proven to be real or just a technicality, the publics faith in congress, and particularly in the Republicans, is going to take a hit. "If a men believe the situation to be real, it is real in its consequences". The National Review is calling for Sen. Stevens' resignation. Congressmen are distancing themselves from him. It has also thrown the McCain campaign and talking heads off message, as they have to answer questions about Sen. Stevens instead of what they wanted to talk about.

Ted Stevens has spent his career in the Senate getting ridiculous amounts of Pork for his state. The "Bridge to Nowhere" was supposed to connect an island of 50 people to the mainland for $320 million, or $6.2 Million dollars per person. While plans for the bridge were eventually canceled, it shows the disrespect that the Alaska Senator has for the American people. Even if Sen. Stevens is found guilty of the charges, it is unlikely that he will face any jail time because of his age. Still, it is encouraging to see that there has recently been such aggressive prosecution of corruption in Washington and that even the career Senator from Alaska is not immune to the law.