Business as usual

If anybody is uncertain as to whether the nation has begun to move on following the recent brace of destructive storms, one indicator might be found with MS/NBC. This news channel, if it can be called that with a straight face, has resumed it’s policy of taking the weekends off, and has begun, in lieu of any real news coverage on Saturday and Sunday, to show whatever completely irrelevant video the last person in its studio can find before they join their colleagues in some less-than-well-deserved time off.

Another indicator of a return to normalcy in the nation’s capital is Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle’s announcement of an indictment against Tom “the Hammer” Delay. What the indictment said was that, being barred from using any corporate cash in his attempt to give the GOP control of the Texas legislature, Mr. Delay hit on what he might have thought was a unique idea. Instead of using corporate money outright in this endeavor, he sent the corporate money to the Republican National Committee (RNC), and the RNC then sent Mr. Delay a matching amount of money to use with his political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC).

This gave the prosecutor, Mr. Earle, the idea that Mr. Delay was attempting to circumvent Texas law. This is much the same view federal prosecutors took with several politicians and political supporters in Kentucky, when there was an attempt to donate more than the law allows. By law, donations from a contributor to any candidate are limited. To get around this little roadblock, some so-called donors were reimbursed after giving the maximum allowed to select candidates.

Federal prosecutors maintained, and were upheld in this belief by convictions, that this was a way for moneyed individuals to buy influence.

For his part, Mr. Delay began to sing from the same songbook that gets passed around anytime a politician lands in hot water. After announcing that he was stepping down from his leadership post, Mr. Delay assailed his persecutor-er-prosecutor as a partisan fanatic whose only desire was to keep the GOP from its good works in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Delay then enumerated his many good deeds, and declared, in a saintly voice that neither he nor his Republican colleagues in Congress would be thwarted in their attempt to do more in this vein.

We can only hope that if they are successful in this, we will be able to live through it.

And, confirming the old adage that it never rains but it pours, the Republican leader in the other chamber, Senator, and one-time Doctor, Bill Frist, ran into a little unpleasantness of his own when it was revealed that he’d sold stock in HCA, a for-profit hospital chain founded by his father, just before a lower-than-expected profit was announced, and, happily enough, just before the price of this stock fell appreciably as a consequence of this poor fiscal performance.

By the way, these stocks were a part of a blind trust, and the fact that the Senator could mandate that the trust sell them really begs the question of just how blind this trust really is.

The astute reader will recall that is was just such shenanigans as this that landed Martha Stewart in the clink, and also made her the punch line in any number of jokes on late night talk shows. We can only hope that Sen. Frist is more savvy than Martha was, if he, too, is questioned by any federal investigators. Martha, you will recall, was found innocent of insider trading, but was found guilty, as illogical as it sounds, of lying to the feds who questioned her.

My advice to the Senator from Tennessee is this: Don’t tell ‘em anything, not even the time of day, as they can always claim lied if you were off by even a few minutes.

But if you choose to ignore this advice, keep in mind the doctrine of deniability. This very important doctrine allows politicians like Sen. Frist and Rep. Delay to sleep at night. And all you need to make it work is any half-baked reason as to why you couldn’t possibly be guilty of whatever infraction of the law you are charged with.

And if you should, God forbid, find yourself the target of an inquiry being made by either branch of Congress, it would help you in establishing your deniability, if you have a friend on the committee in question. This friend could then repeat the talking points of your protestations of innocence, and reinforce them by inquiring in a somber tone something like, “Isn’t it true that the prosecutor in this case has a history of being politically motivated?”

Later, in gratitude, you can return the favor when your friend finds himself in the hot seat.