Sounds like the gentleman from Memphis has spent a little too much time smoking crack with former DC mayor Marion Barry.....

MEMPHIS — Former state Sen. John Ford entered a not guilty plea in federal court on corruption charges today, saying it is the government that is corrupt.

“The government has tried to show me and others as being corrupt and villains when in essence they’re the ones that are corrupt. They’re the villains,” Ford said.

“They’re the ones who have been disingenuous all along. They’re the ones who set up a fictitious, illegal, phony apparatus,” Ford said.

The Memphis Democrat is among the lawmakers charged with taking bribes from that “phony apparatus,” a fake company set up by the FBI called E-Cycle. Representatives of the company, who were really undercover federal agents, paid him to promote legislation that would have benefited its “business” of recycling computer equipment, according to federal court papers.

The former senator, who resigned his seat after being charged in late May, also questioned the timing of his arrest two weeks ago, saying it came just one day after his nephew U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. filed papers to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bill Frist.

He was also suspicious because he and co-defendants Sen. Ward Crutchfield and Sen. Kathryn Bowers had been working during the legislative session to try to prevent Tennesseans from being kicked off TennCare, the state’s troubled health insurance program for the poor and uninsured.