Back in the news: Ted Stevens

US Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, is back in the news for all the wrong reasons – and no, it’s not for comparing a PC to a fruit basket or zoo animal.

Stevens, who gained a rare sort of notoriety in the IT community for his June 2006 statements comparing the web to “a series of tubes,” complete with tales of internets sent to his staff that where tied up in traffic on the web, which, for the record, is not like a dump truck.

Stevens’ Alaska home was raided by agents from the FBI and IRS on Monday. He is under federal investigation for his relationship to energy services contractor Bill Allen, who was convicted this year of bribing state lawmakers, according to this CBS News story.

Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican ever (Strom Thurman switched parties), made this statement in June 2006 while arguing about net neutrality on the Senate floor:

“Ten movies streaming across that, that internet, and what happens to your own personal internet? I just the other day got…an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially…They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”

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