Uh, Senator, about that $412,000...

Noticed on Atrios...

A former campaign worker for U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., was sentenced in federal court today to three years and one month in prison for stealing more than $412,000 from the senator.

Roger D. Blevins of Elsmere was accused of raiding Biden’s re-election fund to pay for dates with, and buy lavish presents for, performers on a gay pornographic Web site.

And in the interest of bipartisanship, we have this item.

CONCORD, N.H. -- The former executive director of the state Republican Party was sentenced Thursday to seven months in prison for jamming Democratic telephone lines during the 2002 general election.

McGee resigned in 2003 after police alerted federal prosecutors to the phone-jamming operation. He denied any wrongdoing at the time. He later admitted paying $15,600 to a Virginia telemarketing company that hired another business to call get-out-the-vote phone banks around the state.

The computer-generated calls -- more than 800 in all -- lasted for about an hour and a half. They also disrupted a nonpartisan firefighters' union phones.

James Tobin, the former Northeast political director of the national party committee working to elect Republican senators, also is charged in the case. Prosecutors say he orchestrated the jamming. Tobin has pleaded innocent.

Allen Raymond, who was president of the Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace LLC at the time, pleaded guilty to hiring a firm from Idaho to make the calls. He was sentenced earlier this year to five months in prison.

-- and the kicker --

McGee asked to serve his sentence promptly. He must turn himself in by April 26.

"I'll be back in 2006 to help some good Republicans get elected," he said.

I bet he will. Dems have a strange habit of pretty much ignoring their members who have been convicted of felonies. But Republicans have a long history of rewarding those who break the law for their cause. Bush has appointed a few former felons to high government positions. And if you're incompetent and have utterly failed in your duties, you get promoted, like Condi Rice, or get the medal of freedom, like former director of the CIA, George Tenet.