Good Judgment

It says something about the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party that the unctuous used-car salesman of a Minority Leader is tougher on corruption than he is. While Boehner has called on indicted Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Culture of Corruption) to resign after the grand jury came back with charges of fraud and money laundering, McCain has decided that he's going to hang back. This is fine if you're a potential juror, but not if you're a Presidential candidate who claims to have the highest integrity, and this guy is a member of your leadership team and a US Representative who's supposed to hold sacred the public trust.

McCain seemed surprised when asked in Indianapolis for his reaction to the indictment, choosing his words carefully, shaking his head and speaking slowly.

"I'm sorry. I feel for the family; as you know, he has 12 children," McCain told reporters on the presidential campaign trail. "But I don't know enough of the details to make a judgment. These kinds of things are always very unfortunate. ... I rely on our Department of Justice and system of justice to make the right outcome."

Look, McCain's running a national campaign, he doesn't need to be that up to date on the latest of every case. However, the Renzi allegations have been out there since 2006, and McCain, in fact, went back to Arizona to defend him at that time. So he's at least familiar with this, and yet he'd rather not presume any manner of judgment. That's because his judgment wasn't very good to begin with.

Meanwhile, emptywheel, as she's wont to do,
has put together a very good timeline of the Renzi case. It should be noted that Paul Charlton, the US Attorney who originally investigated this situation, was one of the 9 US Attorneys fired by the President in 2006. In fact, Renzi's Chief of Staff called Charlton's office and asked him about the indictment shortly before he was fired. So this could be some sort of vindication for Charlton, although DoJ definitely slowed down the investigation as much as they possibly could.