A terrible crisis can reveal many things — and such is the case with the coronavirus pandemic. It’s already laid bare how many of the rules that govern American life are pointless and arbitrary, that it’s not pragmatism but the bulging eyes of a true believer that fuels the Democrats’ economic conservatism, and the true, pitiful state of the US health care system. Now it’s shown just how venal those who run the country really are.

Washington, DC, was rocked in March by revelations of possible coronavirus-related insider trading by members of Congress. Though several senators have been accused, it’s two in particular that the charges have focused on.

First, there’s Georgia Republican Kelly Loeffler, spouse to the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and, with an estimated net worth of half a billion dollars, the richest member of Congress. That particular fact had already made Loeffler a walking, talking conflict of interest, plonked onto a committee where she would be in charge of regulating her own husband’s business enterprises.