Kenneth Starr, our country's favorite high-powered prude, is back in the news.

After failing to get Bill Clinton thrown out of office, Starr continued his investigation into the lives of President Clinton and his wife. Now, the rumor goes, he's ready to step down and let a replacement continue the farce which began as the Whitewater Investigation (into a seamy Arkansas real-estate investment which nobody actually understood) and became a multimillion dollar inquiry into oral sex. Starr has tried to quit before, in 1997 he wanted to end his federal career or a posh job at Pepperdine University, but he decided to stay when he was criticized for leaving an ongoing investigation.

It's hard to believe he's so easily swayed by criticism, though. If he were, he'd have quit long before he became a force for evil in he eyes of millions of Americans. More likely, Starr didn't want to quit without impeaching a President and getting his name into the history books. Even more likely, the stolid prosecutor with a flair for Victorian oppression really wanted to nail the President for sex crimes.

Well, he must have realized that he's gotten about as far as he's going to get. There are two remaining parts of the investigation: A look into Hillary Clinton's involvement in the purging of the White House travel office and an attempt to prove that Bill Clinton coerce Kathleen Willey into offering favorable testimony to the grand jury. The first charge is a trifle, and the second charge is basically the same thing that didn't get Clinton impeached the first time. There's just no future in this investigation.

But don't expect it to stop. Replacing Starr Will be Robert Ray, the guy who worked on a four-year long investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was charged with receiving gifts from companies and organizations which he was supposed to be regulating. Espy was acquitted on all counts and is just another of the innocent people who have had their lives ruined by Starr and his overzealous cohorts.

Fortunately, Starr and Company have overstayed their welcome in the land of American celebrity, so there's little chance that Ray will ever get the attention which Starr had. But he will keep hammering on Hillary Clinton, hoping to turn up something dirty, hoping to ruin her Senate campaign in New York.

Starr's Dream Team has been working against the Clintons for over five years now. It's just basic to human psychology that they all have an us vs. them attitude towards the Clintons. Bill and Hillary are the enemy, the speak prosecutors, humiliated in countless trials lost and falling short of conviction before the Senate, want to save face. They want to hear that they were right. When they think of the Clintons they think of two slicksters who have slipped wriggled through the law and when they think of themselves as white knights with the truth for their shields. These are the last of the Independent Prosecutors--the last of the power hungry maniacs who will ruin the lives of young girls and encourage back-stabbing among friends, as the Independent Counsel Statute was not renewed after it expired last summer. Good. But still, the Whitewater Investigation continues.

It's time for congress to revoke all funding to the Independent Counsels' office and for all the suited prudes to give up and go home.

Michael Maiello has felt a left wing rant of this type building up ever since he took his present job at Forbes Magazine.