Slime Trail leads to former Republican Assembly leader Scott Jensen. Conservatives are never wrong, Laws are.

I find it odd that so many former conservative crooks can get right back into politics without being tainted by their criminal past, while their liberal counter parts are run out of town for a paper they wrote 30 years ago in college or because of a friend with a questionable history.

Take the eternal case of former Republican Assembly speaker Scott Jensen. His actual defense is that the Democrats were doing it too. No, really. The best analogy is getting stopped for speeding, even though everyone around you was too. The thing is, you’re the one that got caught. Jensen got caught. So what. Dan Bice of the Milwauke Journal Sentinel writes:

Scott Jensen is back. Once one of the two most powerful figures in the statehouse … Jensen was one of several Capitol lawmakers from both parties charged with running campaigns with taxpayer resources. But unlike the others caught up in the scandal, he avoided a plea deal and took the matter to trial, where he was convicted of three felonies and one misdemeanor ethics violation. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison but was allowed to remain free while appealing the case.

In 2007, an appeals court threw out the felony convictions and granted him a new trial, saying Jensen's legal team should have been allowed to argue that Democrats also had long used legislative aides as campaign workers.

Jensen's friends think he has a good chance of being cleared. "They had to cheat to get a conviction," said a GOP political observer. "Captain Ahab (DA Brian Blanchard) isn't prosecuting the case, it won't be in Dane County and it's no longer a highly partisan Department of Justice (Republican partisan AG J.B. Van Hollen)."

A few readers left the only kind of response you would expect from such an absurd case.

The idea that Mr.Jensen did not know his caucus staff was campaigning on the taxpayer's dime in violation of the law is absurd. His defense seems to be "yes" but the Democrats did it too so there was no unfair advantage?

Jensen continues to act like he did absolutely nothing wrong. He was a victim just
doing what everyone else was doing. Poor guy.