Right at the moment when he was about to make his move on DeMint, too.

I could have handled this news in isolation, but hot on the heels of another American icon revealing a tarnished halo? Too much, too much.

Longshot Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene was indicted Friday on two charges, including a felony charge of showing pornography to a teenage student in a South Carolina college computer lab…

A Richland County grand jury indicted Greene, 32, for disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity – a felony – as well as a misdemeanor charge of communicating obscene materials to a person without consent.

If convicted, Greene could face up to three years for the misdemeanor or up to five years for the felony.

Greene declined comment at his home in Manning.

I’ll bet those sinister military types who kept passing him over for promotion in favor of terrorists and communists are behind this. Semi-serious question: Should we expect a constitutional challenge here? Obscenity is a famously dodgy area of First Amendment law and doubtless the ACLU would love a little free buzz by taking on a newly high-profile client. I think they’ve got a prima facie case for acquittal, too: According to Supreme Court precedent, one of the requirements for an obscenity charge is that the material in question must lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” Does that sound like the sort of thing that Alvin Greene would have in his possession?

That’s the bad news. The good news is that he’s ramping up his campaign, replete with an address to the South Carolina Democratic Party’s executive committee just last night. Total elapsed time of his speech: 23 seconds. Exit quotation: “I think, in a very short time, you’re going to be seeing a very different Alvin Greene.”