Ignorance is no excuse

These Republicans sure do surround themselves with sleazebags, don't they? Rudy Giuliani's South Carolina campaign chairman is a cocaine trafficker; his affiliation with Bernie Kerik is (or ought to be) an embarrassment to his quest to be the Rule of Law candidate, and hired a pedophile priest to work in his consulting firm months AFTER Msgr. Alan Placa was accused of molesting three underage boys.

Not to be left out, Grandpa Fred seems to want a piece of the crook action too. Turns out the private plane on which he's been flying is owned by a friend with a history of drug trafficking:

Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing.

Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White House bid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and the head of a group called the "first day founders." Campaign aides jokingly began to refer to Martin, who has been friends with Thompson since the early 1990s, as the head of "Thompson's Airforce."

Thompson's frequent flights aboard Martin's twin-engine Cessna 560 Citation have saved him more than $100,000, because until the law changed in September, campaign-finance rules allowed presidential candidates to reimburse private jet owners for just a fraction of the true cost of flights.

Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana in 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of his probation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and with multiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking and conspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth of the drug, and was continued on probation.

Thompson's campaign said the candidate was not aware of the multiple criminal cases, for which Martin served no jail time. All are described in public court records.

Karen Hanretty, Thompson's deputy communications director, said yesterday that "Senator Thompson was unaware of the information until this afternoon. Phil Martin has been a friend of the senator since the mid-1990s and remains so today." Thompson communications director Todd Harris added that Martin was not subjected to the campaign's standard vetting process because "he's a longtime friend."

You have to ask yourself how these high-profile men who have long had higher political ambitions, pick their "friends." Last week Paul Krugman opined that Giuliani's tendency to spout utter horseshit ought to be judged not as a "mistake", but as a larger question of "character." I don't expect candidates to vet every contribution that comes across the transom; after all, politics is a dirty business. But when there is a pattern of candidates having criminals as "friends", particularly when said Candidates are Republicans with a history of giving lip service to law and morality, their judgment, if not their integrity, warrants increased scrutiny.