The Word on Stevens

Brenda Morris, the federal prosecutor who's been sweating Ted Stevens all week, delivered an indictment of Stevens that is true no matter the outcome of the trial:

And she delivered what may have been the most cutting words the former Senate president pro tempore has ever heard. "This trial has exposed the truth about one of the longest-serving senators," she argued, belittling him as a "onetime chairman of the appropriations committee" who "didn't know how to pay a bill."

The yawns and fidgeting in the jury box had subsided. Stevens, looking pale, slouched in his chair as Morris recounted for the jurors the most damaging part of the trial -- Stevens's own bullying testimony. "Behind all that growling and all those snappy comebacks and the righteous indignation, he's just a man and he needs to stand up and take responsibility," she said, asking the residents of the District of Columbia to do what "very few people have done: Stand up to him."