With House Majority leader Tom Delay under indictment, the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, shoulders the arduous task of feigning innocence while defending Martha Stewart-like charges regarding the prescient sale of his HCA stock. HCA owns 200 hospitals and was founded by Frist’s father; his brother currently sits on the board. So the idea that Dr. Frist wasn’t warned about a lousy earnings report is a tough pill to swallow. And because company insiders disgorged 2.3 million of their own shares before announcing weak results, they, along with the Senator, avoided a 15% hit. As the SEC and U.S. Attorney investigate the transaction, spokesperson Amy Call remains sententious: “His only objective in selling the stock was to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Asked if his conscience suddenly pricked up after ten years of operating on healthcare legislation, Call flippantly rebutted, “I don’t know that he’s been worried about it in the past.” Here’s the point: Who would worry when the stock, despite HCA’s $1.7 billion Medicare fraud settlement, was busy tripling in value? Making matters worse, Frist took control over shares that were supposed to be a blind trust. Terri Schiavo, as it turned out, was blind, while the portfolio was anything but. It was supposed to be the other way around.

Inexorably, the business of Washington (namely, corruption) grinds on. Committee hearings have been called to assess the government’s no-bid response to Katrina, although after über lobbyist James Albertine giggled, “They are throwing money out – they are shoveling it out the door,” little more needs to be said. As if by rote, the feds cut the first checks to Halliburton. After exhausting their list of regular cronies (Haley Barbour, Joe Allbaugh), bureaucrats got uncharacteristically creative. Inspired by New Orleans’ floating corpses, FEMA paid Carnival Cruise lines $236 million to house evacuees on three nearby cruise ships. The deal is so rich that it would be cheaper by half for the government to book everyone on an all-inclusive Caribbean cruise, with guests enjoying myriad on-deck activities, top shelf entertainment, and an unlimited array of food-borne pathogens. President Bush has further directed that any government funds left over be given to churches lest they forget vote Republican in ’06. Christ, the proceedings have become so fatuous that Michael Brown was rehired to investigate his own failings.

The Democrats, unable to secure equal billing, are for the most part boycotting the hearings. Members on the Right are desperate to cover their own ass – a good idea now that David Drier (R-CA) assumes a top position on The Hill – especially in light of recently un-redacted portions of the 9/11 report. To wit: The FAA was advised as far back as 1998 that Al Qaeda could “seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark,” and that Logan airport was cited for “security weakness or violations” while Dulles had “a number of problems and vulnerabilities.” Had this information come out a year ago, it is doubtful Bush could have stolen a second election.

It is said that thievery and prostitution are as old as the hills. Last week I hired this perky young escort online, although she turned out to be a sagging old crone who stole my wallet. Not quite the rarified terra of smuggled antiquities, but solid evidence nonetheless. Meanwhile, Italian authorities are asking the Getty Museum to return 42 objects presumed looted from archeological sites. Mistakes do happen – even the venerable Metropolitan had to return some First Dynasty pottery to Egypt – but the scope here suggests something else. The museum was secretly purchasing smuggled objects even as curator Marion True stated publicly: “If serous efforts to establish a clear pedigree for the object’s recent past prove futile, it is most likely – if not certain – that it is the product of the illicit trade, and we must accept responsibility for this fact.” The accusations are hardly new; acting curator Arthur Houghton resigned in 1986 predicting the institution’s “cultural avarice” would eventually prove problematic. A year later a Getty trustee commented on one acquisition: “We know it’s stolen, [the dealer] Symes is a fence.” In 1993, True received an Interpol cable describing a gold funerary wreath as stolen. She hastily wrote to the item’s peddler: “I am afraid that in our case it is something that is too dangerous for us to be involved with.” Six months later, she bought the piece.

Could there be a more heinous violation of the Eighth Commandment? How about stealing someone’s cancer medication… or perhaps her baby. Enter Angelina Jolie. The actress threatened to sue London’s Sun newspaper for publishing an interview with an Ethiopian woman claiming to be the biological mother of the recently adopted Zahara Marlie. Jolie insisted the girl’s parents were quite dead at the time she obtained custody, but, as it turns out, the birth mother, one Mentewab Dawit, is unmistakably alive. Apparently the little girl was sold, er, put up for adoption by her grandmother. Under Ethiopian law, if the mother does not formally consent, the adoption is rendered illegal. Luckily, Dawit has come to favor the current arrangement: “I want to say thank you to Angelina for giving my baby this wonderful, loving family… In the future I would like to know about her condition, but I will never try to interfere with their lives.”

With these Hollywood types, the future, unfortunately, is a total crapshoot. One minute you’re starring in blockbusters and the next you’re lucky to get a low-budget supporting role (think: Michael Keaton). Who knows, maybe during Angelina’s next trip to Africa, Brad will bang the nanny (think: Jude Law), or Billy Bob Thornton (think: Rock Hudson). It is not beyond the imagination that in a few years Brad could be banging little Zahara (think: Woody Allen). Hey, at some point, childhood ends. So get over it. In fact mine ended just this month. Because we grew up without nannies, our folks plopped us in front of the TV when they needed to get drunk with the neighbors. Back then the Brady and Partridge moms had their hands full and I thought of Jeannie and Samantha in less matronly terms. Basically, the parenting was left to Gilligan and Maxwell Smart. Their untimely passing leaves me orphaned and forces me, kicking and screaming, to accept some fractured sense of adulthood.