Over a year ago, on July 30, 2007, federal agents raided his home, looking for information on his recent renovation. Precisely a year later, he was indicted for failing to report over $250,000 in gifts. Among those gifts was a major upgrade on his house, courtesy of one of Alaska’s biggest oil field contractors.

That same contractor had found himself indicted the year before.

The allegations fit with Stevens’s career; they’re hardly unexpected. He’s a player. He knows how to move money around. And he doesn’t feel bound by the principles of the Constitution (he’ll spend money on nearly anything, enumerated powers notwithstanding) or by the principles of current law (to be proved in court). He goes about doing what he thinks he should be doing, which is moving huge chunks of money from U.S. taxpayers in general, and distributing those monies to his state, or his cronies in the state, in the form of special projects.

It may be that one or two of the favors finagled for his state were in the national interest. Perhaps a Senate that abided by the Constitution would have thrown him one or two of the thousands of bones he’s been given.

But that speculative gimme doesn’t justify his career. Or his methods. Or his tantrums in the Senate when his way gets temporarily blocked.

Only an old hack like Ted could have accumulated so much power over the years to push through so much pork, like those two bridges, like a hundred other bits of nonsense. Ensconced for years in a safe seat of power, one form of corruption begets another. The one can seem just as natural a part of the political landscape as the other.

In a republic, citizens must be ever vigilant against all forms of corruption. That’s why we must oppose pork spending on principle, even if tempted otherwise by politicians. And that is why we must push, now more than ever, for constitutional limits on terms of service for our national legislators, as well as requiring our legislative servants to specify precisely which words of the Constitution grant them the power to do what they demand. In every instance.

Indeed, we must whittle away everything in a politician that looks like corruption.

When we’re done, what we’ll have will look nothing like Ted Stevens.