Frist and Martha

With the revelations recently that Bill Frist used the only lever of control over his blind trust of HCA stock to make a suspiciously timed sale of all his family's HCA stock days before it released a warning that it would not make the quarterly profit targets. His explanation was that it would reduce or eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest. However, this is a rather lame excuse since Frist has been in the Senate for quite a while before the sale, in July of 2005. If he had wanted to reduce the appearance of a conflict of interest, he would have sold it when he was first elected. However, the fact that his stock transaction cleared the day before the profit warning announcement. If Martha Stewart was sent to prison for 6 months with 6 months of additional house arrest for lying to investigators about a possible inside trade worth $10,000, certainly Frist's sale of between $7 and $35 million in his family's company (his brother is the director) should open the possibility that he be prosecuted and sentenced to prison. At very least, he should resign his leadership position in the U.S. Senate. To avoid the appearance of protection on the basis of his position, he should resign his Senate seat.