Cry us a river Ernie, when you stand in front of Senior U.S. District Judge Alan Nevas and look at that half-dozen years in the slammer coming at you like the echo after the closing of a cage door.

You better keep saying you're the "Moses of my people," like you did that September afternoon on the steps of City Hall. Make it a mantra, another lie you can tell yourself, like misrepresenting yourself as a leader.

Was it a lie when you said you kicked a cocaine addiction? Remember when you righteously imploded and, oh, by the way, finally, finally resigned from the state Senate, as the rainy downpour tried to melt you like the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz?"

I don't recall Moses robbing his people, Ernie, or using a Senate seat to push for legislation making it easier for bail bondsmen — some of whom, according to the FBI, were your mob buddies — to prey on the families of defendants.

Moses never misrepresented himself, Ernie. He probably never even had to say he was the leader. He merely struggled and led.

Moses didn't drive an overpriced, rattletrap Jaguar, Ernie.

There's no Senate district in Connecticut that needs an honest advocate more than the East Side of Bridgeport and that chunk of Stratford's South End.

It has one of the lowest per-capita incomes; an entire neighborhood in the East End was leveled for the major Steel Point project that remains a dream on planner's maps after seven years, coincidentally the same seven years during which Connecticut became an FBI test kitchen. The proof's in the pudding, because Chief State's Attorney Chris Morano is even in on the act, busting six people last week, including five state transportation workers, in a bid-rigging scheme that set up a Massachusetts company to win a contract to perform shoddy work filling cracks in state highways.

But Ernie Newton's the pathetic, Sad Sack in Connecticut's seven-year spasm of corruption, that started with Paul Silvester, the crooked state treasurer, worked its way up to Phil Giordano, the Waterbury mayor/pedophile currently in Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, and then to Joe "I Will Be Completely Exonerated" Ganim.

The next raft of defendants, John "Why Should I Resign If I've Done Nothing Wrong" Rowland, the disgraced former governor, and his crew including former aides Peter Ellef and Larry Alibozek, along with construction mogul Billy Tomasso, finally knew enough to cop a plea, just like you, Ernie.

Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, which oh-so-beautifully included Newton this year — even as one newspaper story after another showed the feds were circling — said all these men have something in common besides self-delusion.

"If people can't understand the difference between right and wrong, they should at least know the implications of getting caught," said Lawlor, a former prosecutor who teaches law at the University of New Haven.

"You have to hope that with the cumulative affect of Ganim, Silvester, Giordano, Rowland, Ellef, Tomasso and Ernie Newton, you'll probably get caught. You're just not going to get away with it."

After his plea bargain in September was aired in Nevas's courtroom, Newton called me and predicted that he'd be back again, someday, running for a General Assembly seat in Bridgeport. Let's hope that by the time he gets out of prison, around 2012, the people of his district — and Newton's Democratic party enablers — will have higher standards.