Satan, laughing, spreads his wings...

Somewhere, probably either in Frankfort or Prestonsburg, Greg Stumbo is laughing.

With yesterday's e-mail sent by the Anne Northup campaign about the state hiring persecution, Stumbo's mission edged one step further to completion.

He has succeeded in his major goal that was set forth when he launched the probe. He has split the Republican party and has managed to get folks whom we otherwise regarded as intelligent and well-informed to buy his belief that Ernie Fletcher is a criminal.

Stumbo had no interest in prosecuting crimes. His interest was in politically damaging the governor. Apparently he succeeded.

We are astonished at the number of Republican officials and bloggers who have swallowed Stumbo's bait hook, line and sinker. We continue to be amazed that these people put any credibility or belief in the charges that were brought forth by an assistant attorney general who works solely at Stumbo's pleasure and supported Ben Chandler in the 2003 gubernatorial election, and ratified by a grand jury that never showed any desire to act independently of the prosecutor.

We are still working on confirming some preliminary information, but we do know that most of the grand jurors were Democrats and several were state merit employees -- two groups that were already predisposed to dislike Fletcher and his administration and the policies they put forth.

The media never supported Fletcher, not before the election and certainly not after it. Northup is among many Republicans who never supported Fletcher after he got into office and ran into difficulty. If she ever made a public statement in support of the Fletcher administration and in denouncement of the Stumbo investigation, we aren't aware of it. If she made any move to cut off federal funding to the attorney general's office after the persecution began, we never heard of it. If she did anything at all to help her fellow Republican and former congressional delegation mate, that remains a deep dark secret.

You are either with Ernie Fletcher or you are with Greg Stumbo. And Northup obviously wasn't with Ernie Fletcher.

So Satan -- we mean Stumbo -- is certainly laughing today. He has enlisted the help of key Republicans in this state to tear down the Fletcher administration. One of us wants to cry. Another wants to puke. Others here feel like doing both.

We just wonder how Northup would feel if she ended up being governor and on the receiving end of a politically motivated partisan investigation, and she got no support or defense from within her party.

That's something Northup, Hal Rogers, Mitch McConnell and others will have to live with on their consciences.

In case you didn't get the "Satan, laughing, spreads his wings" reference, it's the last line in the song "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. The line right before it goes, "Begging mercies for their sins." That's what Northup and the rest of the Fletcher critics in the GOP should be doing.