The speed with which even Republicans are demanding the resignation of Senator Burr over suspicions of insider trading are shocking to us. He is being accused of selling as much as $1.7 million of shares in his personal accounts after negative briefings about the coronavirus. We don’t know Mr. Burr and have rarely written about him. What’s happening, though, strikes us as another rush to abandon due process. Mr. Burr, the Senate, and North Carolina all deserve better.

It’s not that we belittle the ethical question in the contretemps, even if we are a long-time skeptic of insider trading laws. The wrong being laid to Mr. Burr is selling shares after alarming closed-door briefings in respect of corona during early and mid February. A law known as the STOCK Act makes it illegal for senators, among other federal government employees, to trade on non-public government information. The Sun is for obeying that law in its letter and spirit

Mr. Burr, though, denies that he decided to sell the shares he unloaded on February 13 on the basis of the closed government briefings. He certainly wouldn’t be the only one who began to retreat from equities at that time, even if he did sell at the peak. News of corona’s seriousness had begun to hit the papers, and millions of Americans were already wondering whether to act. In any event, Mr. Burr has asked for an investigation by the Ethics Committee, and, like any senator, he deserves it.

This isn’t a partisan thing with us. We’ve been hoeing this row for years, including in defense of Democrats. The Sun was one of the most vocal papers to defend, say, Senator Al Franken, against the bum’s rush for his resignation in the face of allegations of sexual harassment. That was coming largely from his fellow Democrats, by the way. Mr. Franken, too, had asked for an investigation by the Ethics Committee.

In the event, Mr. Franken cracked. He gave in to the bullies in his own party and quit the Senate that he had come to love and in which he had emerged as, despite (or because of) his comedic background, a serious player. Once out of the Senate, he seemed to disappear, until Jane Mayer of the New Yorker turned in her heartbreaking story of how his regret over his retreat had thrown him into a depression. He came bitterly to wish that he’d held out for Ethics Committee to do its work.

Nor was it just Mr. Franken who came to have regrets. Even those who forced Mr. Franken from the Senate came to have regrets. Senator Leahy came to see his decision to seek Mr. Franken’s resignation as one of his “biggest mistakes”; Senator Heitkamp confessed she acted “without concern for exactly what this was.” Tammy Duckworth, Angus King, Bill Nelson, Jeff Merkley, Thos. Udall, all seem ashamed. What a bunch of invertebrates.

And what a teaching moment for the United States Senate, all the more so because Mr. Burr isn’t the only Senator who is suspected of selling when they should have known better. At least four other senators — Dianne Feinstein, Jas. Infhofe, Kelly Lauffler, and David Purdue — reportedly sold shares during this crucial period. Even more legislators in the House reportedly did so. By our lights, the details matter. Who knew what and when and who made the decisions to sell?

Millions of Americans leave the managing of their retirement accounts to others and rarely get involved in the details. Senator Burr insists he made his decisions on the general news. Did he — or anyone — really need a classified briefing in mid-February to decide the market could head south at a moment’s notice? Would it be right to prosecute someone for selling on inside information if enough public information was available to justify a sell-order?

Mr. Burr, according to a report in ProPublica, was one of three senators to vote against the STOCK Act banning stock trading by legislators on the basis of non-public government information. Now, in any event, there are moves afoot in Congress to ban members of Congress from owning stocks altogether. That would be a tragedy, a further alienation of our Congress from the free-market capitalism that is part of the warp and woof of the fabric of freedom in America.