Back in November 2008 right after U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (Alaska) was defeated by Mark Begich, I wrote that all Stevens has left to do is get his name cleared, “But in the end, that’s all that really matters. Now his Republican colleagues can cast him away like a piece of trash and feel OK about it.”

Many of his Republican colleagues did just that.

Readers may remember that Stevens was convicted on federal corruption charges just a couple of weeks prior to Election Day 2008.

Then after Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed the indictment against Stevens (April 2009) and decided not to proceed with a new trial, I wrote:

We’ll never know what the outcome would have been if there had been a fair trial for Stevens. I’d bet that Stevens would have easily won the election. One thing we know for sure is that newly-elected Senator Mark Begich can now sit back for the next six years and know that the only reason he won his race was because of that trial.

Stevens died in a plane crash in August 2010.

Today we find that bipartisanship is alive and well in Washington, D.C., especially when the reason to be bipartisan is dead.  It makes it all the easier – and it makes ones stomach turn.

The Hill published a story today with the headline, “Senators to Justice Department: Sack prosecutors, apologize to Stevens family.”

The Hill reports that “A bipartisan group of senators is calling on the Justice Department to apologize to the family of the late Sen. Ted Stevens and fire the attorneys accused of the withholding of evidence that contributed to his criminal conviction.”

That’s really nice…

Republicans senators like Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Chuck Grassley, and Lindsey Graham were all quoted for the story.  Graham along with John McCain, Jim DeMint, and Mitch McConnell all called for Stevens to resign according to the article. 

Friendship only goes so far in Washington…

A couple of Democratic senators, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy, were quoted in the story.

All the DOJ lawyers in the Stevens case should have been fired long ago, but more importantly there should be some sort of oversight within the DOJ to prevent a mess like this from happening again.

That DOJ has “gone wild” in prosecuting dim-witted things like baseball players lying to congress about shooting themselves in the butt with a needle to a governor selling a senate seat.  Millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on silly prosecutions.

The DOJ needs a timeout to refocus.

Follow Jack on Twitter @TheWesternWord.