Stevens Walks Holder Talks

I had an impulse to treat this as an April Fool's joke, but that is too much of a cheap shot even for this benighted forum. Fact is "corruption of the US Attorney system" was one of the gravest charges you could level against the previous administration (well--at least the seventh or eighth gravest). If the news about Stevens means that Holder is laying down his marker for a new era of professionalization at Justice, then I think we ought to toss our hats in the air.

And on the other hand, I have always felt a little ambivalent about these "corruption" cases in communities where grand theft of public resources is more or less an accepted fact of life (that would be you, Alaska)--where, among other things, the whole point of getting public office is to control the resource flow, and where just naturally the controller gets a taste. My mothers' Scandinavian ancestors would be baffled and outraged, but it is hardly as if anybody in Alaska was the least bit surprised that Mr. Money Man was taking a little off the top for himself. I suspect the general reaction of the populous was more in the nature of a contemptuous snigger than real outrage.

In his splendid history of Bribery, John Noonan makes the point that one of the insidious truths about a culture of bribery is that you are never quite clear where the line is--one man's courtesy is the next man's felony. Ted Stevens' grabbiness may have gotten a bit overipe even by Alaska standards, but if he now shuffles off into the sunset in an atmosphere tainted by public humiliation and ridicule--and if the price is a cleaner, better disciplined, more professional Justice Department--then that is quite enough for me.