First order of legislative business: packing their own parachutes

After massively bungling last year's budget, members of the Arizona legislature, especially Republican members, have been announcing their retirements and resignations from the body right and left. Many are term-limited out (though that is almost meaningless with the loophole allowing members of the house to bounce to the senate every eight years and back again eight years later.) Others are seeking higher office (though I'd wonder what they've been smoking if they think the reward they deserve for last year's debacle is a promotion) and others are apparently just tired of it all and don't want to take the blame for the mess they've created.

But, Senator Jack Harper is sponsoring a bill that will do one thing: eliminate the one year wait before they can accept jobs from lobbying firms. Of course that law was put in place nearly twenty years ago after seven members of the legislature were caught accepting bribes from an FBI agent posing as a lobbyist. That should be a hint right there why we don't want to get rid of the prohibition.

But Harper's bill appears to have been put on a fast track, clearing a key committee vote today and ready to go to the full senate for approval. Apparently with the mass rush towards the door, it's nice to know that with unemployment near 10% in Arizona and the state suffering form the consequences of the failure of their policies from past years and their failure to even have a policy last year, they are looking out for themselves.

You'd think that for millions of dollars in no-bid contracts they'd at least do a really good job

Well, apparently not.

Pasta or chicken?

As in, what meal would you like on your flight back to the United States?

That's what Eric Peters was told would be his choice if he questioned the shoddy electrical wiring he found in buildings wired by Houston-based KBR, Inc., on bases in Iraq. Peters, licensed as a master electrician in nine states, worked for KBR in Iraq from February to April of this year.

Peters, along with Jim Childs, a former project manager in Iraq for the Army Corps of Engineers, and Charles Smith, the former head of the Army Field Support Command, testified today at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing regarding tens of millions of dollars in government bonus money paid to KBR, a contractor whose faulty work is said to have led to the electrocutions of American soldiers

Of course as we know, KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root) is a subsidiary of Halliburton, and we well know how Halliburton got all those no-bid contracts.

But to hear that they may have (despite all that money) cut corners on costs and that because of it some American servicemembers may have died needlessly is terrible, and I hope this gets fully investigated.

This political clown is right out of the 1920's. And he needs to go to prison

I'm still having trouble absorbing the absolutely shocking news involving Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the degree and breadth of his corruption 'spree' (to quote U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald.) Among the most shocking allegations are that he tried to sell his appointment to fill the Senate seat formerly occupied by Barack Obama (or appoint himself if no one would pay his price), and also that he worked to block the Chicago Tribune from selling Wrigley Field until they fired editorial writers who had been critical of him and replaced them with 'editorial support' (presumably meaning editorial writers who were willing to write nicer things about Blagojevich.) The transcripts of Blagojevich's own words are all over the internet by now, and they are pretty damning-- though those on the right side of the blogsphere who want to try and spin this into an attack on Obama are tripping over themselves since Blagojevich profanely complained that the Obama people 'wouldn't give him anything.' In fact, Valerie Jarrett, who was known to be Obama's choice for the job, abruptly removed her name from consideration, apparently right away once she found out that Blagojevich was going to make the appointment based on what he could get out of it instead of more wholesome considerations. It is even being reported that Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel may have tipped off Fitzgerald about the potential sale of the Senate seat so he could add it to the long list of investigations he had ongoing involving the Illinois Governor.

I wrote a couple of days ago regarding Louisiana Democratic congressman William Jefferson, who is facing a court date after being indicted on bribery and corruption charges that I was glad to see him go.

As in the case of Jefferson, I refuse to support Blagojevich just because he is a Democrat. My sense of partisan loyalty ends when it comes to felony corruption. If he does not resign immediately there is no question that he should be impeached by the Illinois legislature. Even before that though the Illinois legislature should immediately act on Senator Dick Durbin's recommendation and take the power to fill this seat away from the Governor and schedule a special election.

Remember how as Democrats we held the high moral ground during the Abramoff scandal, the Plame scandal and other scandals that rocked the previous Republican congress and administration. But we should not claim that our public servants are less susceptible to scandal. Instead we must maintain that high moral ground by drawing a sharp contrast to the 'hanging-on-until-the-last' attitude that characterized the Tom Delay/Scooter Libby Republicans. We have to speak out and take a strong stance against corruption.

And for that matter, that includes ongoing ethical questions. Right now Charlie Rangel, a Democrat who I've always admired, is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee. While I agree that he deserves to have the investigation run its course before any action is taken, I believe that it would be appropriate for him to step aside as the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee until he is either cleared by the Ethics Committee, or the charges are sustained in which case it will be up to the House what action to take.

Political corruption can show up in politicians of any political stripe. And it is never acceptable.

About the only time I'm congratulating a Republican for beating a Democrat

Very, very rarely would you ever see me express any satisfaction about a Republican beating a Democrat, especially a Democratic incumbent.

But I am happy about a huge upset win in a runoff in New Orleans tonight, in which Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao upset Democratic incument congressman William Jefferson.

Jefferson, of course, is facing a trial after being indicted on federal corruption charges after FBI agents found, among other evidence, $90,000 in cash in his refrigerator. Just as a lot of Republicans were not so secretly happy when the Alaska vote count finally resulted in the departure of convicted felon Ted Stevens from the Senate, a lot of Democrats (and I count myself as one of those) are happy to see Jefferson go. In fact, I don't think I've ever said anything nice about my own indicted congressman, Rick Renzi but I will say that I congratulate Renzi on at least being smart enough to not run for re-election this year. Ann Kirkpatrick (yes, I finally have a REPRESENTATIVE who actually does REPRESENT me!) beat someone else instead, sparing Renzi the final bit of humiliation that were the lot of Stevens and Jefferson this year.

I strongly suspect that in this overwelmingly Democratic and African-American district in New Orleans, Cao will be a one-term congressman and will be beaten in two years by a Democrat (just by one who thinks that refrigerators are for storing groceries.)

But in the meantime, Ted Stevens will be able to appeal his conviction, and Rick Renzi, William Jefferson and retiring California Republican John DooLittle will be able to focus on their upcoming corruption trials all without the distraction of carrying out congressional business.

And it's about time.

Smoke and mirrors

Remember the carnival magician? You'd buy a ticket, go into a tent and watch as the Amazing Zandolini seemed to pull a canary out of an empty box, saw a woman in half and then put her back together, escape from a straightjacket while locked inside a safe, hand you two interlocked iron rings and then separate them, make a rope rise up out of a basket and dance as he played some vaguely middle eastern tune on the recorder, levitate a volunteer in thin air and make all sorts of objects disappear and reappear in a puff of smoke.

You knew of course that it was all sleight of hand, but it was entertaining anyway.

Who knew that the Amazing Zandolini's assistant would go on to run for Vice President of the United States?

We've heard a compelling story this week about Sarah Palin-- that she fought corruption, fought earmarks, cancelled the so-called "bridge to nowhere," cut taxes. and sold her predecessor's private plane on e-bay.

Turns out that it's all smoke and mirrors.

Start with the corruption, since we've been learning all week about how Palin is under investigation herself for apparently abusing the power of her office as Governor to try and help her sister out in a custody dispute with her ex-husband. This has been reported on fairly widely (including here) so I won't repeat all the details, except to say that to claim that Sarah Palin is a corruption fighter is a bit like suggesting that Eliot Spitzer was a fighter against prostitution. She's throwing stones and they are breaking her glass house all around her on that one. She also likes to point out that she ran against and defeated corrupt former Governor Frank Murkowski, who was especially unpopular after engineering his daughter into a U.S. Senate seat. OK, so she beat him. Corrupt politicians often lose because they are corrupt. She was astute enough politically to realize that Murkowski could be beaten in a primary but that in itself says nothing about her own views on corruption.

What about earmarks? Isn't she big against earmarks? Well, no actually. We've learned that while she was mayor of Wasilla, a town about the size of Winslow, she hired a Washington lobbying firm which brought in over 27 million dollars in earmarks for the town. She even once praised Congressman Don Young for helping her town get this 'largesse.' Yup, a fighter against pork. NOT!!

Then when she ran for Governor she promised more of the same. On one campaign trip to Ketchikan she said she supported the proposed bridge that has now become infamous.

So what about the bridge? It became a symbol of so-called wasteful government spending. Demogogues on the right made no end of pointing out that the bridge cost $223 million and would provide road access to an island that had a population of fifty. In fact, they either ignorantly or intentionally omitted the fact that on the island was an airport that serves 200,000 passengers per year who have to be brought over to the mainland by ferry, so in fact a good case could be made for building the bridge. In any case though, Congress decided to make it the symbolic sacrifice of pork they could kill and all look good back home. So Palin, the consummate politician realized it was about to be gone anyway so she cancelled it and took the credit. In her speech this week she said "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks." Only she kept the money! The money that had already been sent up there stayed in Alaska and went to other projects. Not only that but right now the state of Alaska is building the access road to the proposed bridge for a twenty-five million dollar price tag (they did keep that money too.) So if the bridge is never built then this must be wasting money on the 'road to nowhere.'

What about tax cuts? Well, that would be difficult since in Alaska there is no sales tax and no income tax to begin with. Most of the state revenues come from royalties paid to the state by the petroleum industry, as well as the Federal largesse that Alaskans enjoy on a grander scale than residents of any other state (and which Palin for years dined at the trough of.) And in a remarkably progressive policy, the state of Alaska has for several decades sent excess oil revenue to all residents of the state in the form of a once per year check. It is true that with oil prices soaring the revenue has gone up commensurately so this year's check, about $1,200 per permanent resident was substantially more than last year's. If you want to call that a tax cut, I guess you can call it one. But you can call a mule a horse and it still doesn't make it a horse.

What does that leave? Oh, yes that airplane. It is true that when Palin took office she found that Murkowski had purchased an airplane with state money. So she put it on e-bay. Again, a good political move, and if she and the GOP left it at that, she'd have scored a point. Only they haven't; they've implied and have now actually been saying that she sold it on e-bay. Which is false. We learn today that the plane did not sell on e-bay, but was subsequently sold to a businessman in a private transaction, and at a $600,000 loss.

Specifically, the plane originally cost $2.7 million and was sold for $2.1 million to businessman Larry Reynolds.

Yet today John McCain is quoted as saying at a campaign stop in Wisconsin,

You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay -- and made a profit!"

Well, McCain can be excused-- this is hardly the first time he's gotten his facts wrong on the campaign trail.

But on the video played about Palin at the GOP convention they said outright that she had 'auctioned it' on e-bay. Either the video was intentionally misleading or very poorly researched. But I'm sure Palin must have known that it didn't really sell on e-bay but she has said nothing to correct the error-- which reflects directly on her own character, and not in a good way.

And for that matter, if she took a loss on the plane then it is fair to ask, now that the state government doesn't have that plane anymore, how she gets around a state where flying is a necessity (you can't drive to Juneau from the rest of the state, for example.) Does she take commercial air? If so does the state government pick up the tab for the flight? If not, then did they buy another airplane? Come on, if they lost $600,000 on the deal then where is the savings? Only an advocate of Bush economics could figure out a way to claim that the state is better off selling a plane they already owned at a loss and then having to pay for the services that the plane would have been providing.

So it looks like everything that Sarah Palin is supposed to be running on is a mirage. A carefully crafted mirage, which makes you wonder exactly who is writing the story-- it looks like something that might be written in a Washington think tank rather than in Alaska.

At least when the Amazing Zandolini pulled a rabbit out of a hat nobody was trying to tell me that it was real.

Palin trooper vendetta story just keeps growing

Since I posted the other day on the investigation launched by the Alaska legislature of Sarah Palin regarding whether she used her official position to punish a state official who didn't satisfy her desire for revenge against her sister's ex-husband, it seems to be growing.

There had been recorded phone conversations of an official who worked for Palin, Frank Bailey calling Public Safety commissioner Walt Monegan and pressuring him to fire the trooper, Michael Wooten. Some on the right had hopefully argued that it may stop there, and that Bailey may have done this without the Governor's knowledge. Perhaps, but apparently in the past twenty four hours it has come to light that there are emails, including some originating from the Governor herself that have been collected and retained by the private investigator in the case. Palin herself has now retained an attorney.

What is most interesting though is that a team from the McCain campaign is now on their way to Alaska. Now, if this was all expected and had shown up when Palin was vetted, why would they be sending people to Alaska now? Clearly they are worried about how all this will play out. He may end up with a choice between accepting a Dan Quayle (keeping her on the ticket even though she is a drag on it) or a Tom Eagleton (kicking her off the ticket.) Either way it's not good for him. Maybe Palin will do him a favor and find an excuse to step down before the convention is over.

In this day and age of the internet, instant communication and professional dirt diggers though, it was foolish of either McCain or Palin to think that just because it was something going on up there in Alaska, this would stay buried. Digging up skeletons is hard work, but if it's there then it will come to light.

Palin under investigation for misuse of her official powers

Although John McCain is to be commended for bringing the Republican party up to the point the Democratic party was 24 years ago by choosing a female running mate, his specific choice, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, shows stunningly poor judgement.

You'd think that if John McCain picked a running mate who has served as a governor for less than twenty months, the least you could expect is that she would be scandal-free.

But the Republican-controlled Alaska legislature has hired a private investigator to look into evidence that Palin fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he refused to fire her sister's ex-husband, who is a state trooper.

If the investigator concludes she did, this misuse of her office to settle a petty family squabble could be used as grounds for impeachment. No wonder Palin wants out of Juneau.

How could John McCain screw up something this big, this badly? And what does that say about his judgement?

John McCain did the same thing as Rick Renzi. Will he be indicted for it too?

Rick Renzi is under indictment for using his influence in Washington to push through a Federal land swap deal that benefitted campaign donor James Sandlin, as I wrote about here. Renzi helped fast track the deal despite concerns raised by environmentalists.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that John McCain pushed through a Federal land swap which benefitted long time supporter and campaign donor Steven Betts. McCain helped fast track the deal despite concerns raised by environmentalists. And even today, McCain's campaign website has a link to a press release about his Arizona leadership team in which Betts and his wife are listed as members of the financial arm of the campaign.

PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history...But it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input.

Although the bill called for the two parcels to be of equal value, a federal forestry official told a congressional committee that he was concerned that "the public would not receive fair value" for its land. A formal appraisal has not yet begun. A town official opposed to the swap said other Yavapai Ranch land sold nine years ago for about $2,000 per acre, while some of the prime commercial land near a parcel that the developers will get has brought as much as $120,000 per acre.

Well, you get the gist. Sounds a lot like what Rick Renzi may go to prison for. Almost exactly the same thing, in fact.

Of course, John McCain likely doesn't see anything wrong with pushing land swap legislation that benefits campaign donors. He certainly didn't see anything wrong with it in 2006, when in the midst of a bunch of reports about Renzi and Sandlin, McCain recorded a robocall praising Renzi for his HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BEYOND REPROACH

Obviously John McCain has a different set of ethics than the rest of us do, if Rick Renzi represents his definition of honesty and integrity.

The question is now whether he will be indicted for committing essentially the same crime as Rick Renzi committed. And further, we know that one reason it took as long as it did to indict Rick Renzi was that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez tried to protect him by firing U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton when he started zeroing in on the connection between Renzi and James Sandlin. Wanna bet that the Bush White House pulls out all the plugs trying to protect McCain from any unwelcome probes into the relationship between him and Steven Betts?

Rick Renzi needs to Resign, Now!

Yesterday, my congressman, Rick Renzi announced that he won't seek re-election in 2008 when his term expires. Renzi has been in the middle of a corruption investigation and the FBI raided his business earlier this year. Renzi announced that he won't seek re-election but he has refused to resign. This is unfair to voters in this district, as they no longer have a full time congressman. Renzi no longer goes to committee hearings (he is barred from them) and any legislation he puts up there has less chance of passing than if it was offered by a noncorrupt Congressmember.

I met Rick Renzi when he attended the Founder's Day barbecque in the small town I live in, in 2002 (when he was first running.) I can tell two stories that speak volumes about the man.

The first was when he was at the barbecque and he was going down the line shaking hands of people who were waiting in line for their term to be served. I have a friend whose wife is from Australia. He stuck out his hand and she told him that she was not an American and couldn't vote. So he just pulled his hand away without shaking hers. Couldn't even be bothered to say, 'pleased to meet you' and finish shaking her hand.

My own Rick Renzi story from that barbecque is this: I asked him whether he supports continuing to maintain a selective service registration data base. He said he did. I asked about his opinion on gays in the military (knowing that he wouldn't be for it.) He said he supported the current, 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. So then I pointed out that if both policies were in place and there were ever a draft, people who wanted to dodge it could claim they were gay. Renzi obviously was surprised, having not considered that before. He stammered around, and said 'the recruiter could tell.' I asked on what basis, and then mentioned that in a draft there is no recruiter, you just show up and if you pass the physical you're in. So then he suggested a polygraph. I answered that I finally got it, that these young men and young women would all show up for the draft, and the first thing we'd do is hook them up to a machine and ask them questions about their sex lives. Renzi turned purple. I didn't think that such an idiot could possibly be elected to Congress so I let him go.

What I didn't count on was 1. how much money he had (we now know, he had it because of the Sandlin land deal which is now among the matters under investigation); or 2. that he was a master of the personal smear. He overwhelmed George Cordova with a barrage of attacks (embezzlement, fraud, illegally wiring money out of the country) which, if true would have put Cordova behind bars for a long time. Of course Cordova never was charged with a crime because it was all a lie in the first place, in fact he subsequently pursued a civil court case against Renzi for slander and that was settled out of court but involved Renzi paying him money (not that at least at the time having mysterious amounts of money was any problem for Renzi.) Ironically, it is Renzi, not Cordova, who is now the subject of a Federal investigation. In subsequent campaigns against Paul Babbitt and Ellen Simon, Renzi also used smear tactics to win.

There is one problem with Renzi's announcement that he won't seek re-election. And that is still his refusal to resign. As a congressman-in-name-only the people here in this district don't have the same quality of representation as we should expect, especially with our 'Congressman' still drawing a $135,000 per year salary. He's done virtually nothing in the way of constituent service since the initial FBI raid of his family business back in April. As a citizen of CD 1, I demand that we have a legitimate representative who is carrying out all duties of a congressman, as soon as possible. If Mr. Renzi resigns, then constituent duties will be appointed to a neighboring conressperson, and a special election would be scheduled within a 75- to 90 day window.

FBI raids GOP Senator's home

Well, having raided two Republicans (Rick Renzi, R-AZ and John Doolittle, R-CA) and one Democrat (William Jefferson, D-LA) in Congress it looks like the FBI corruption investigators have moved on to the Senate.

According to the Washingtonian Magazine, Stevens has retained "Washington's most powerful and expensive lawyer," Brendan Sullivan Jr.

Unlike the three congressmen (or for that matter like Duke Cunningham, R-CA or Bob Ney, R-OH who are presently in prison after being convicted of corruption) Stevens is not a small fish. He was elected to the Senate during the last year of the Johnson administration and has been Republican whip of the Senate (between 1977 and 1985). He has chaired the Senate Rules Committee and Appropriations Committee-- both positions of extraordinary power in the Senate. Stevens has been in the pocket of large media corporations which want to control the internet and oppose network neutrality. During the debate on it last year, Stevens displayed an astonishing lack of understanding even of his own bill as well as of technology and finally got so frustrated that he described the internet as 'a series of tubes.' And this was the guy who wrote and pushed through the Telecommunications Industry backed intenet bill, SB 2686, last year in the Senate.

Interestingly enough, as the senior Republican in the Senate, Stevens last year was President pro-tem. This means that he was (and should Republicans regain control of the Senate, will again be) the fourth person in line for the Presidency.

Ted Stevens is well known for pork barrel spending. Now, I'm not the opponent of pork that some on the right are, since I do believe that many projects classified as 'pork,' while they might be unprofitable from a purely monetary point of view, do benefit and make life better for some of our fellow American citizens and as such are things which are worthwhile doing. However, Stevens crossed the line IMO when he blocked the creation of a federal database which would allow people to see what the 'pork' projects are and how much they cost. I'm perfectly ready to defend a lot of 'pork,' but I fault Stevens for the fact that the projects and numbers are not out there for perusal on the internet like they should be. And now it seems he may be done in by pork, apparently personally benefitting from the largesse of a government contractor. How fitting an end, if it turns out to be so.

The culture of corruption still seems alive and well in Washington. Until it is swept out, we have to demand that ethics reform continue. This year's ethics reform bill, while better than the complete lack of it that we saw for the past few years, still is far less than what we as voters should be demanding.

I guess he's going to choose to do it 'the hard way.'

In my last post I asked whether Rick Renzi is going to resign. Since the FBI raided his family business and he was dropped from ROMP (Regain Our Majority Party-- a Republican fundraising group that is presently raising funds for Republican congressmembers in marginal districts), Renzi has since resigned from his congressional committees, leading to intense speculation that he was planning to resign from Congress. Yesterday, however, Renzi said that he doesn't plan to resign, and that he will fight the corruption charges being leveled against him. He claimed that what we are seeing is a partisan attack. Yeah, right. Those Democrats, they sure run the FBI and Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department, especially for the purpose of getting Rick Renzi. But the paranoia aside, it seems that Congressman Renzi intends to fight this out to the bitter end.

So be it.

The evidence is rapidly accumulating that his large and complicated web is unraveling. Details of the Sandlin land deal have grown into a wide reaching investigation of alleged bribery, kickbacks and other schemes with Renzi running for Congress essentially out of the proceeds. The FBI raid last week resulted in the seizure of documents, presumably related to the ongoing investigation. And with Attorney General Gonzales in the crosshairs for the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton in what it is increasingly clear was an effort to sidetrack the Renzi investigation, don't expect that Congressman Renzi will get any more favors from the Justice Department-- Attorney General Gonzales is desperately trying to hold onto his own job, and the last thing he will do is stick his neck out again to save Rick Renzi's.

I'm not sure whether his leaving the committees will make much difference, because Rick Renzi has scores of absences from committee meetings and committee votes during the past four and a half years, so by resigning from the committees he was serving on he only makes official what was unofficial before-- that he's just not interested in the day to day work of House committees. However, as the only member of Congress without any committee assignments, I'm not sure what exactly Mr. Renzi is supposed to do. More to the point, as the print edition of the Arizona Republic pointed out this morning, his no longer serving on the committees will cause his source of donors to dry up.

Politically, it is hard to see how Renzi can survive this, even if he tries to stay in Congress. He does have broad support here, having crafted a coalition of Republicans and Native Americans (since he has spread a lot of Congressional money around on the reservations.) But while his support is broad, it is not deep. I've met Republicans (and occasionally others) who are willing to go the wall for, say, Jon Kyl or Jake Flake-- they just fundamentally believe in and support those candidates. I may disagree with their supporters, but in many cases they are voting for Jon Kyl or for Jake Flake very specifically because they like them. On the other hand, I've hardly ever met anyone who was excited about Rick Renzi. Republicans vote for him because he is a Republican, Native Americans vote for him because they expect Federal money back as a reward, but I don't ever think I've met anyone who was really jacked up about voting for (or working for) Rick Renzi. At events I've seen him or his representatives at like parades and fairs, the only people wearing 'Renzi' attire were his campaign staff-- mostly college age interns imported from someplace else (like Renzi himself is) and presumably expected to don his campaign wear. So what I'm saying is that if, say, Jon Kyl for example were involved in a similar scandal (not that I have any hint or reason to believe right now that he might be), he'd have some core level supporters who would stick with him no matter what. Renzi just doesn't have that depth of support.

Renzi refusing to resign also puts the GOP in a pickle. On the Democratic side, State legislator Ann Kirkpatrick, who represents the Navajo reservation in addition to Flagstaff and Sedona, had been considering running against Renzi even before this all broke. I'd say at this point it is highly likely that she will run, and if/when she does she will make a formidable candidate. On the Republican side, they have a tough situation. If Renzi left Congress soon enough then they could put together a challenge, possibly by former State Senate President Ken Bennett. But if he stays and fights, then do they run against him in the primary and risk weakening him further? If not, then might he end up being indicted a la Tom DeLay and Bob Ney and hand the seat to the Democrats anyway?

On the national level, he also puts the GOP in a jam. Last year when they lost soundly in November the two main issues according to exit polling were Iraq and the 'culture of corruption.' As I blogged on Wednesday, with the President failing to budge on getting us out of Iraq and finally beiong confronted on it by Congress, that issue will work to the advanted of Democrats in 2008. So now thanks to Rick Renzi, the corruption issue will now be front and center. In other words, the GOP will be heading into the 2008 election cycle without having gotten out from the wrong side of the two issues which worked so devastatingly agains them in 2006, and Rick Renzi fighting it out will be like Bob Ney and Tom DeLay trying to fight it out were in 2006-- the kind of slow drip story that will keep GOP corruption in the headlines (although after Renzi, ongoing investigations against Reps. John Doolittle, Tom Feeney and Gary Miller will keep the pipeline running.)