Fristing for Frist?

Senator Bill Frist (Hypocrite-TN) used to own some stock in a company called HCA. His dad and his brother and one of their friends founded the company, and Bill's brother is still one of the directors of the company. Since Bill is a Senator, all of his stock holdings go into something called a blind trust. But if you're a Senator, there are special "ethics" rules that apply to blind trusts. Specifically, they're not blind. You get to know what's in there, and you get to direct the administrator of the "blind" trust to sell specific holdings. And in the case of companies in which you might have a special interest -- say, a company founded by your dad, where your brother is still an executive -- this power just might come in handy.

In fact, Billy directed the administrator of his trust to dump his shares of HCA, that company that his dad and brother and some other guy founded. And -- I'm sure this is just a coincidence -- his directive to dump those shares came just a few weeks before HCA had some bad news to report, news that resulted in those shares of HCA stock to be worth considerably less.

I'm sure Bill had no advance knowledge of any of this, of course. And I'm sure that Congress, having suffered through the investigation of Bill Clinton over the Whitewater affair (in which the Clintons actually lost money), isn't going to subject Bill to any unnecessary unpleasantness just because this happens to look a little (OK, a lot) like insider trading. Cause, you know, you gotta be fair to the guy. He's a Republican, after all.