Fristy Meets His Thurmond Birthday Party?

As readers of this space know very well, I am no big fan of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. His utter lack of courage and leadership skills was exposed this past spring in the so-called "memo of understanding" debacle when, after having spent weeks proclaiming his intention to uphold the principle of an up-or-down vote on each and every one of the President's appellate court nominees that minority Democrats had been filibustering, his dawdling move toward banning confirmation filibusters was undercut at the last minute by Supreme Chancellor John McCain and his flaccid band of RINO pirates.

He followed this up by punting on calling for a censure of Minority Whip Ali-Dickbar Al-Durbini over his slander of U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay and backstabbing President Bush on embryonic stem cell research funding. Even his so-called "accomplishments" - the highway bill and the resurrection of agricultural subsidies - would look far more appropriate in a Democrat Majority Leader's trophy case than that of an ostensible Republican.

Well, now he may have stepped into a pile of doo-doo that, while perhaps not rising to the level of criminality, is certainly a PR bonanza for a DisLoyal Opposition desperate to hide its own burgeoning answer to Watergate [h/t: CQ]:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is facing questions from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission about his sale of stock in his family's hospital company one month before its price fell sharply.

The Tennessee lawmaker, who is the Senate's top Republican and a likely candidate for president in 2008, ordered his portfolio managers in June to sell his family's shares in HCA Inc., the nation's largest hospital chain, which was founded by Frist's father and brother.

A month later, the stock's price dropped 9% in a single day because of a warning from the company about weakening earnings. Stockholders are not permitted to trade stock based on inside information; whether Frist possessed any appears to be at the heart of the probes.

And it doesn't stop there:

Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"

Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."

Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.

So - did Senator Frist knowingly and willfully lie when he said he had "no idea" whether there was an HCA stock in his "blind" trust, or was he not aware of it despite having been notified by his trustee?

All of this is still in the speculatory stage at this point, and I for one am not about to question Fristy's integrity or veracity without a great deal more corroboration. But his competence is another matter. It would be perfectly in character for a bumbler like Frist to forget the instructions he gave to his trustee, or to hire as trustee someone who doesn't have the mental wattage to grasp the purpose and SOP of a "blind" trust, or to somehow never receive that trustee's letter, or to have received it and then forgotten about it. And like Trent Lott "just trying to make an old man feel good" at his hundredth birthday celebration, the offense is not so much what was said or done but the political tone-deafness surrounding it.

If Bill Frist's career was something worth fighting for - IOW, if he was an effective caucus leader, as Tom DeLay was (until recently) on the House side - there'd be no question of the base rallying to his defense at least until such time as there was conclusive evidence of wrongdoing. But as with his predecessor, Trent Lott, Frist has been a complete bust in his leadership role, and as such he really does have to either step down or be ousted.

Cap'n Ed called it this way:

[W]e need to ensure that those documents are authentic. If they are - which is what I said earlier - then Frist needs to step down as Senate Majority Leader, regardless of whether he engaged in insider trading. Lying about the blind trust will give us enough headaches, and given Frist's generally lackluster performance in his leadership role anyway, he isn't worth the political capital that the GOP will have to spend defending him.

Fristy's dreams of a presidential run died in the McCain Mutiny. Let his leadership role perish in this, one final self-inflicted wound.