A New Chair for Stevens

Ted Stevens has sat on many things during his 40 years in the Senate.

The 84-year-old Alaskan has had a seat on the commerce committee longer than any Republican in history, he boasted during his trial on corruption-related charges. He also sat on the Senate committees on appropriations, rules, governmental affairs and ethics -- in the chairman's seat, no less. As the former Senate president pro tempore, he sat frequently in the presiding officer's chair. And Stevens, the longest-sitting Republican in the Senate, often rests his haunches at his center-aisle desk on the Senate floor.

But what got Stevens in trouble was another seat he chose to occupy: a $2,695 vibrating Shiatsu massage lounger from Brookstone.

And that has set up perhaps the cruelest irony in the whole sad Stevens trial: The chairman is in danger of being unseated by a chair.

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-- Dana Milbank