Robert Menendez Must Go

I have long been resigned to the fact that New Jersey is one of the least cool states in the Union, what with its run-down industrial cities, its loudmouth proles, a state turnpike that has wracked the nerves of many a hardened driver, and once-bucolic farmland developed into plastic-jive housing shopping malls (and Muzak fills the air from Livingston to Little Falls).  In other words, we're like Ohio.  But at least, I thought, we don't have a scumbag like James David Vance representing us as the voice and conscience of the state.

And of course, I was wrong.

Robert Menendez and his wife Nadine - who is his second wife, not his first wife, his first wife being the mother of his daughter Alicia - have been indicted on bribery charges.  He was discovered to have cash in his suits and gold bars in his house.  Menendez has been accused of attempting to sway the President Biden's choice of the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey to benefit a businessman and attempting to pressure the Department of Agriculture to protect a contact's monopoly on supplying halal (the Islamic equivalent of kosher) meat to the United States.

Despite the fact that Senator Menendez, a Democrat, is innocent until proven guilty, the evidence pretty much proves it in the court of public opinion.  The evidence is so overwhelming that U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (Ohio). John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), and Peter Welch (Vermont) have called for his resignation.  Plus several other Democratic senators, including New Jersey's other Senator, Cory Booker.  Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, however, won't call for Menendez to resign, apparently because he thinks that a tainted and disgraced Menendez is the best bet to keep his Senate seat in New Jersey Democratic. 

Uh, Chuck?  This is New Jersey!  We have qualified Democrats for the Senate coming out of our ears! 

It's over for Bob.  The sooner he gets out of the Senate and stops disgracing the senate with his gross indiscretions, the better.  Because you know it doesn't look good for him when his daughter - a regular MSNBC host of a program about Hispanic issues - suddenly disappears from the airwaves.

By the way, did you know that only thirteen U.S. Senators have been indicted in the chamber's 234-year history, and Menendez is the only U.S. Senator to be indicted twice?