Isn't it time to give Sen. Ted Stevens a choice for living out his gutless, godforsaken life—between the can and the loony bin?

I don't know about you, but one of the things I miss most in DWT's absence is the regular updates on the criminal behavior of his honor roll of Republicrooks. Surely it isn't possible, for example, that his favorite subject, the kingpin of the Ohio GOP Crime Syndicate more popularly known as "the state government, plus its Washington henchpersons," Rep. Bob Ney, is still walking free?

Well, one of these days we'll have to get caught up on "the boys." Meanwhile, it's not the rank criminality of the Republicrooks, however gross, that most offends and alarms me.

I think rather of the stories told about not-quite-former House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay—tales of how, in the course of his shakedowns of lobbyists and other would-be players in his government, "encouraging" them not just to be generous with money and jobs for Republicans but to cut all Democrats off completely, he would make it clear to them that this is "his" government.

Confronted with no-doubt-bluffed threats to report his extortion demands to the government, the Hammer is supposed to have snapped back, "I am the government." And indeed, to an alarming extent, he was.

This, I submit, is so not good for America.

Not that I'm approving of the thieving that seems to have become rampant in Congress, or suggesting that anyone look the other way. On the contrary, the fact that congressional Republicans have turned their terms in office into an orgy of stealing every dollar they can lay their grimy paws on shocks and revolts me. I'd love to see all of those SOBs rot in prison.

Still, it's one thing to have become so arrogant in your greed that you think you can get away with anything, which is surely the attitude that has been demonstrated by the unthinking obviousness of so much of the Republicrookery we've learned about. But the behavior of the Hammer is something else.

Our Tom has raised the stakes. He seems truly to believe that he is beyond the reach of the law, that the rule of law doesn't apply to him.

I look at his protestations of innocence in the matter of his apparently flagrant violation of the Texas laws against corporate fund-raising, and I no longer know what he thinks. It surely isn't possible that he really believes he's innocent, is it? Not with the lengths he went to to paper over the crime. (Some of his thieving House confreres could have taken a lesson from his criminal playbook—that after all you're obliged to apply a little finesse.)

Is it rather that a man who is the government can't be brought down by some pisher of a district attorney? Or is it some sort of incredulousness like what Al Capone must have felt when he first heard that the government planned to indict him for tax evasion? How dare they demean me and everything I've accomplished with such triviality?

Well, Capone learned in time that the tax-evasion charges were quite sufficient to bring him down. However, if the Hammer thinks he deserves more grandiose charges, perhaps his old partner in crime Jack Abramoff will pave the way with the song, or perhaps songbook, he's dickering to sing to the feds.

Now, at least our Tom has the pressing attention of a gaggle of investigators. When is something going to be done about a lawmaker who has equally run amok, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens?

You would have thought that just the stunning spectacle he made of himself, bringing that cartoon gallery of oil-company execs to the Capitol for the express purpose of lying their heads off with his naked protection, would have revolted enough senators to rise as one, or at least in sufficient number, to say, "Get the fuck out of the Senate, you loony old wackjob, before you take us down with you."

The evidence has certainly been mounting that the old coot really has gone completely out of control, what with the whole business of the famous $254 million bridge to nowhere (and recall that, while he finally gave in on the bridge, he didn't give up the appropriation to his state) and now his maneuvering to ram ANWR oil drilling down the Senate's throat while screwing people who can't afford the gouging to be inflicted on them this winter by his oil-company cronies.

When Senator Ted announced at that committee hearing that his oil-company pals weren't going to have to tell their lies under oath for the simple reason that it was his decision as chairman and it didn't matter how many of his Senate colleagues whined about it, he seemed to be saying, Hammer-like, that he is the government. Same deal with his relentless wheeling-and-dealing to drain the treasury for the benefit of his home-state cronies.

Again, this isn't healthy for our increasingly precarious democracy.

At least in Senator Ted's case there is a plausible theory to explain all this otherwise-inexplicable behavior. Perhaps, realizing that he has become so transparent in his wheeling and dealing that it would take a second-year law-school student maybe half an hour to draw up a set of indictments that, upon conviction, would have him dying in prison, he's laying the groundwork for an insanity defense.

If so, frankly I'm inclined to buy it. Actually, I'm beyond caring whether the old gasbag dies in prison or in a mental institution. Either way is good for me. I just think that, one way or the other, it's time get him the hell out of the Senate.