Justice Dept. to drop charges against Ted Stevens

by Rossputin | 10:28 am, April 1, 2009 | Comments Off

In a remarkable turn of events, but one which has seemed somewhat likely since the original conviction of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, the Justice Department has filed a motion to drop all charges against Stevens, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

I’ve never been a fan of Ted Stevens and his outrageous pork-barrel spending. He’s been part of the GOP’s problem for a long time.

However, if the information about the prosecutorial misconduct had been made public before the election rather than it being kept buried in yet another likely bit of misconduct, the Republicans would still have one more extremely valuable seat in the Senate.

Fox News quoted Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski: “I was pleased with the news that the Justice Department will drop all charges against Senator Ted Stevens, but I am deeply disturbed that the government can ruin a man’s career and then say ‘never mind.’”

Stevens’ prosecution occurred under a Republican administration, but that most certainly doesn’t mean the misconduct was not politically motivated. Much like the outrageous National Intelligence Estimate telling us not to worry about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, this is an example of entrenched bureaucrats with their own agendas working against the administration they work for. To be clear, I’m not saying that bureaucrats should blindly do the bidding of the administration. They have jobs to do and they should do them honestly and ethically regardless of politics. And I’m not saying I expect that sort of behavior, particularly not from a government employee. But it shouldn’t be too much to hope that a government attorney wouldn’t intentionally hide evidence in order to convict a US Senator of a crime.

At the end of the day, it is remarkable that anyone was somehow able to make Senator Ted Stevens appear as a sympathetic character. But the Bush Justice Department did just that, adding one more black mark to the Bush Administration’s many failures.

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