frist fried?

you remember the senate majority leader, don't you?

you know, the son of the founder of giant health care conglomerate hospital corporation of america?

the one who adopted cats from animal shelters so he could perform medical experiments on them?

the famous doctor who ran for US senator in '94 on the platform "who better than a heart surgeon to take out that bleeding-heart liberal jim sasser?"

the floor leader who tried to win favor for a future presidential run by keeping a brain-dead woman alive, blocking a budget vote because of an anti-torture clause, and suddenly and unexpectedly switching sides on embryonic stem cell research only when polls showed the public was solidly behind it?

yeah! that's him.

well, he just sold all that hca stock—or, rather, he instructed the trustee of his "blind" trust to sell it—a couple weeks before its price tanked.

now you may wonder, as i did, how he knew what was in his "blind" trust. it seems all that stuff of politicos telling everybody they have blind trusts has turned out to be garbage. the law requires knowledge of office holders' holdings to be publicly available, so they all know what's in their trusts. the only thing blind about them is voters with wool pulled over our eyes.

anyway, mr majority leader says he ordered the sale to "end the appearance of a conflict of interest."

right. that makes sense. of course. after 10 years in the senate, owning that stock the whole time and doing nothing to guarantee health care for everyone who needs it (like, say, cuba does), now he wants to end the appearance of a conflict of interest.

good luck, bill.