Internet "series of tubes" senator indicted

You can look this one up on the "tubes."

"You see, there are these tubes out there..."

(Credit: Ted Stevens Web site)

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was indicted today for making false statements to federal investigators.

The seven count indictment charges Stevens, a Republican, with lying on his Senate financial forms.

The Senate's longest-serving member, Stevens became an Internet celebrity a couple of summers ago after an audio of his "The Internet is a series of tubes" speech to the Senate Commerce Committee wended its way round the Web.

He made the comment during a debate on Net neutrality when he was still the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee. Stevens had been a critic of extensive Net neutrality mandates. At the time, he accused proponents of a Congressional bill of "imposing a heavy-handed regulation before there's a demonstrated need."

[oogabooga2000]

Dude, you've really got to run a grammar checker on this article. :)

e.g.: "became a Internet" should be "became an Internet", "after a audio" should be "after an audio", etc.

[terminalblue]

a series of tubes? moar leik a series of indictments, amirite?

[charlie cooper]

i remember listening to bill safire riff on this. he was less emphatic about the a vs an usage. but in this case, you're right.

[Kev Orng]

He probably wasn't lying, he just had no idea what he was talking about. "You see, my money, it's not like a steak, which I would eat. It's like a big stack of paper, and I can trade bits of that paper for bits of this other paper which go up in value, see, and then I can trade it for more of the original bits of paper."

He wasn't deliberately obfuscating, he's just very, very confused. It's like two summers ago when a member of his staff forgot to send him an email, and then used the excuse that the email was caught up in the internet tubes because of all the videos that savages like me are downloading, which led to his senate speech and hit internet single "A series of tubes"

[RainCaster]

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. May he live long and prosper - in Club Fed.

[michaelo1966]

He's going to learn about big tubes where he's heading to ... he'll find there's nothing virtual about them.

[HiPro]

Sen. Ted Stevens is NOT "The Senate's longest-serving member..." He is the Senate's fourth-longest-serving member. The longest serving member is Sen. Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) of Hawaii have also served longer than Sen. Stevens. Sen. Stevens is the Senate's longest-serving Republican member. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_Senators_by_seniority.

[President_Panda]

I love the way you guys can't comment on the point of the article - "HEY lemme correct your grammar!"

Anyway. This is funny and kind of sad.

[Volker_staring]

President Panda, there IS no point to this article.
It's pretty vague.. most of it is talking about the tubes thing..

But yeah, I agree, it is sad.
I am sad now.
A poor man who thinks he understands the internet got in trouble...
:(