Jack Kelly Sunday

This week's column could be called "A Conservative's failed attempt moral equivalence" where Jack rattles off the evidence of corruption in President Obama's White House.

It pleases me no end that Jack spoke too soon:

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, [Alan B. Fabian,] his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.

Oopsie. Wait, there's more from the Post:

Fabian's claims emerge as Steele begins his new role at the RNC, where he oversees the raising and spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in party money. The former Maryland lieutenant governor has faced questions about his handling of campaign money in prior elections and was twice fined for missing filing deadlines.

TWICE fined. Again - oopsie.

Of course, the good folks over at the National Review Online already have an explanation:

The Washington Post has quite a hit job on Michael Steele on the front page this morning, with an above-the-fold story alleging he violated a number of campaign-finance rules. Despite the purple language and frothy allegations of the story, my in-house (literally) campaign-finance expert says it is far from clear that Steele actually violated any of the increasingly arcane and impossible-to-explain federal campaign finance laws, but of course as we all know it's the appearance of impropriety that counts for Republicans.

I wonder if they realize the inadvertent truth of that last sentence.

Let's get back to Jack. He begins:

When in the last election Democrats spoke of a "culture of corruption" in Washington, few realized they were making a promise.

The Obama administration is not yet three weeks old but already features a growing collection of ethically challenged officials.

Do I need to point out that the phrase "culture of corruption" comes from the 2006 election cycle and NOT the last election which took place just last year (in 2008)? And let's review the level and type of corruption the Republicans were swimming in. Note these are just some of the guilty pleas. I am not even getting to the indictments:

• Jack Abramhoff - pled guilty in January 4 2o06 on felony counts of fraud conspiracy and tax evasion. The next day he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud.
  
• Randy "Duke" Cunningham - pled guilty to tax evasion, conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, and wire fraud.
• Bob Ney - pled guilty to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to a charge of falsifying financial disclosure forms.

Then there's the indictments of Tom Delay (and the House Republicans' changing of the rules to protect him), and the rest of the wide ranging Abramoff scandal (the K Street project and so on).

And then there's the non-money scandals of Larry Craig and Scooter Libby. And so on.

And Jack spends a column equating that record to President Obama's cabinet/staffing choices. Of course he gets somethings wrong. First there's this:

...Tom Daschle, whose nomination for secretary of health and human services was withdrawn after it was disclosed that he didn't pay $101,000 worth of taxes owed for a car and driver, or $83,000 on consulting income, and Timothy Geithner, who was confirmed as treasury secretary despite his failure to pay payroll taxes for four years.

Hours before Mr. Daschle withdrew his nomination Tuesday, Nancy Killefer withdrew hers as chief compliance officer when it was revealed that the District of Columbia had placed a lien on her Wesley Heights mansion for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax for a household employee.

Note to Jack: Daschle has already paid $140,000 in back taxes and interest and presumably he'll pay back the rest. Another note to Jack: Geithner has also paid the back taxes he owed. Further note to Jack: Killefer has also settled her tax issues.

So of course this is exactly like Jack Abramoff (or Duke Cunningham or Bob Ney) going to prison for corruption.

Do I need to go on?