As in Senator Conrad Burns (MT) and Senator Ted Stevens (AK).

Both of whom lost their most recent re-election battles in solid Red states exactly because of the Pharisee attitudes on display here by far too many people. So many of us were so concerned with appearing beyond reproach that we completely abandoned the concept of innocent until proven guilty the instant they were fingered for crimes that only a handful of the people loudly denouncing them actually understood.

And of course, both these men were discovered to be innocent conveniently right after Election Day. So we got to prove that we’re so anti-corruption we abandon people the instant they’re accused of it, and the Democrats got Jon Tester and Mark Begich in the Senate rubber-stamping everything Barack Obama sends down the pike. Great trade, eh?

Now we see something similar happening with Marco Rubio; the media loudly announces an investigation insinuating something along the lines of Rubio using the party credit card to pad his bank account and go on mad daily shopping sprees and we already have people self-righteously insisting that he is “corrupt”. Of course, when the story comes out on page B23 that there was no crime committed, after Election Day of course, Senator-Elect Meek would be measuring the drapes of his new office on Capitol Hill.

Let us not be fooled again into prematurely abandoning our own for the Democrats to profit – twice would mean we’re idiots. This is just an investigation, not a conviction. And as we have seen with Ted Stevens, even a conviction is not to be trusted when Democrats’ political operatives in the DOJ are involved.

Worse is that, if anything, the so-called crime is so incredibly picayune – he used a Party credit card to buy some things and then promptly paid the money back in full every single time – that anyone on our side who can conclude that this means that Marco Rubio is a “crook” is either a fool or a tool so stewing in self-regard that he’s lost all sense of reality.

Rubio denies any wrongdoing and is being open with his finances – according to his campaign, he’s not amending any of his financial documents or forms. So I’m with Marco, not some nebulous anonymous sources in a liberal newspaper, until I see incontrovertible evidence that he broke the law.

PS: Here’s another name to remember, Tom DeLay. He wasn’t just investigated, he got indicted. When is his trial, I wonder?