Remora

Here are three grafs from the story announcing Senator Torricelli won't be prosecuted for his buyability.

"Even before Ms. White took over the case from the campaign task force early last year, many legal experts had emphasized the difficulty of successfully prosecuting sitting politicians in cases involving bribery or illegal gifts.

Such cases have been especially difficult when the accusers had legal problems of their own. In Mr. Chang, the prosecutors had a witness whom they themselves had called a liar before he agreed to plead guilty.

The senator himself has never denied that he accepted gifts from Mr. Chang, but said merely that he considered Mr. Chang a friend and that he never took any "illegal gifts." Congressional ethics rules allow legislators to accept certain gifts from friends when they are of limited value and are promptly reported."




Limited Inc is only mildly astonished that there will be no trial before a jury of Senator T.'s peers. Instead, he is going to have to negotiate with the Senate Ethics committee, which holds a position vis-a-vis potentially corrupt politicians similar to the position the Taliban held to Al Quaeda. It would be feeble irony to call the Senate Ethics committee an oxymoron. It is, rather, an offense to the word Ethics. Far better to abolish it once and for all, than to pretend that anything like ethics transpires in the Senate.

The up front thievish behavior of Torricelli was testified to by his "friend," Mr. David Chang. On the semantic salience of friendship in this case, there is a nice little article by Jason Zengerle that prefigures the non-prosecutorial conclusion of the Torricelli investigation; although when Zengerle wrote it, he probably thought he was nailing Senator T. Unfortunately, since legislators decide for themselves those laws that they will have to obey and have riddled them with friendly little loopholes, it looks like Torricelli will emerge unjailed from this contretemps because David Chang is just the kind of sleezeball that Torricelli proudly (and intermittently) claims as a friend. As a friend, apparently, the sky's the limit in terms of giving gifts and getting favors. Limited Inc has experienced this ourselves. Our friends often come over with wads of cash to give to us, rolex watches, and such; sometimes our friends, just like Senator T.'s, insist on taking us to tailor shops and buying us ten thousand dollar suits. That's how friends are, God love em.

The fruits of amity are listed at this NYT site. One is reminded of Charles Keating, of S & L debacle fame, who once commented, when asked whether his 'contributions' influenced political figures, I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so.