• Rod wasn’t nearly as devious as he wanted you to think he was.
• He was a whole lot smarter than you, but he’d be damned if he’d let you know it.
• He never did know the words to “La Bamba.”
• He had more fun working than anybody has a right to.
• He’d give you the last $10 he had in his pocket. I know this because he gave it to me more than once.

It sucks that I can’t write more. But I’ll miss my friend.

Jack Abramoff

Notably, most of the elected officials entangled in the Abramoff scandal have either gone to jail, lost re-election, or retired.

“By taking money from convicted felon Jack Abramoff, Congressman Joe Wilson is showing us that he represents everything that’s wrong with Washington,” Miller said. “Congressman Wilson should return his dirty money and come clean on his ties to Abramoff.”

You have to wonder if Baby Wilson is trying to “clean” some of his own funding since he’s taking so long to file his latest disclosure with the state Ethics Commission.

It’s been three days since Wilson was supposed to file his latest ethics report – and we still don’t know just who is bankrolling Wilson’s campaign.

This isn’t the first time Daddy’s Boy has ignored state campaign finance law. Wilson delayed the disclosure of his Statement of Economic Interests far beyond the deadline and is the target of a lawsuit challenging his eligibility for office.

State Democratic Party chair Carol Fowler has weighed in on Wilson’s negligence:

“It’s the height of arrogance for Alan Wilson to skirt South Carolina’s transparency laws and then think he will be trusted to enforce them,” said Fowler. “We look forward to Mr. Wilson’s continuing to show voters all the reasons that he’s clearly wrong for South Carolina.”

Richardson, a Columbia-based attorney with Wyche Burgess Freeman & Parham, will likely need every penny of that hefty warchest as he prepares to take on Republican Alan Wilson (son of U.S. Rep. Joe “You Lie” Wilson) in the coming weeks.

Though Wilson appears to have raised less money than Richardson — about $250,000 as of May — his bruising three-way primary forced him to go on the air early and build a strong network of grassroots supporters across the state. If Richardson hopes to rival Wilson’s built-in name ID and established grassroots organization by election day, he’ll need to fund an aggressive communications and GOTV effort to catch up quickly.

And, so far, it looks like he’s well on his way to making that happen.

It is clear, too, in the course of the two hours I spend with Greene that he has some pretty wacky ideas that, were he to win in November, would put him among the more unpredictable members of the senate. At one point, he lurches off on his big idea for how to create jobs in South Carolina.

“Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That’s something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It’s not something a typical person would bring up. That’s something that could happen, that makes sense. It’s not a joke.”

(H/T Political Wire)

“Truth Squad SC wants you to know. Disgraced Sen. Jake Knotts – who used a racial slur against Nikki Haley – endorsed four candidates in the Republican primary: Andre Bauer, Larry Richter, Alan Wilson and Converse Chellis. Reform-minded voters ousted three of them, and now it’s time to send a message to Knotts by defeating Alan Wilson.”

Pretty funny given that Wilson is probably more in tune philosophically with the tea party crowd than Leighton Lord. We never knew that whole Heathwood crowd played ball this way.

One, the sum of Haley’s legislative accomplishments:

Haley has introduced 13 bills since entering the state Legislature in 2004. One has become law – exempting salon employees who only shampoo hair from acquiring a cosmetologist license.

Still, Haley has likely done more for non-licensed shampooers than for charity:

Haley and her husband earned $196,282 in 2009, according to tax documents provided to the media Thursday. The Haleys gave $971 to charity.

$971?

The Haleys gave less than one-half of one percent of their income to charity last year. In contrast, my kid and two of his friends made 25 bucks selling lemonade yesterday and decided themselves to give $5 to charity.

According to a group called Independent Sector, people whose household income is $100,000 or more donate an average of about $4,000 a year to philanthropic causes, compared with about $600 per household for those earning less than $25,000; the national average is $1,600.

Haley makes much of her Christian faith in her campaign – but she must be unfamiliar with the concept of tithing, in which believers are urged to give 10% of their income to the church.

Tithing, however, is not purely a Christian tradition. It’s roots are in Judaism. Haley’s family faith, Sikhism, teaches the concept of dasvand, literally a tenth part and refers the act of donating ten percent of ones harvest, both financial and in the form of time and service.

Republicans like to decry the welfare state, and claim that churches and charities would naturally take care of the poor and indigent in the absence of government assistance. Fat chance of that with Nikki Haley in charge.

8:15
Roll call vote now being called in Executive Committee session on motion to reject Rawl’s protest request. It’s not looking good for Rawl supporters…

8:10
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter speaks in favor of denying Rawl’s request for a new election. Says S.C. Dems are deeply conflicted over this issue, but that we need to look ahead to supporting Vince Sheheen and others in November elections.

7:55
The protest hearing is back in session. Committee member Tim Moore (representing Barnwell, SC) makes a motion to ask the General Assembly to investigate the voting machines. However, says evidence does not warrant overturning the election. Makes motion to deny Rawl’s protest.

7:20
The Executive Committee members are now deliberating behind closed doors.

7:15
Rawl’s attorney requesting a new primary election for the Senate race.

7:00
The committee has returned from break. Rawl’s camp making closing argument. Rawl’s attorney argues they don’t have to prove corruption, only that the voting process on election day was unreliable.

6:25
Ludwig: “We are not asserting that the machines were hacked; we are asserting that the results are wrong.”

6:10
Several questions have focused on whether results from Senate race could be flawed or corrupted without affecting other races. Two witnesses have said “yes” essentially because each race is uploaded individually.

Vic Rawl election protest witnesses

5:47
Susan Turner, a voter from James Island, says when she pressed her vote for governor, a “gray screen” popped up and said, “vote registered for Alvin Greene.”

Owens says voters complained that voters repeatedly pressed Rawls name and would not “light up”

Owens has affidavits from two voters who said Rawl’s name was not on ballot for US Senate.

5:40
Anne Jett Owens is Rawl campaign office manager.

5:35
Abrams says Berkeley County’s machines are connected to the Internet. SEC says Internet access is supposed to be disabled on all machines.

5:32
Abrams says he was not allowed access to the state’s equipment in order to test the actual software used in the machines.

Stephen Mark Abrams is testifying.

Buell: “We should treat these machines with an enormous amount of skepticism.”

5:25
I don’t think Buell is impressing a lot of committee members.

Buell says that he often presents the ESS voting machines as examples of what not to do when designing software.

5:14
Buell has been studying electronic voting since about 2003, including as a consultant to League of Women Voters.

5:11
Duncan Buell of USC computer science department is testifying.

5:06
Ludwig is taking exception to Jennifer’s assertion that Rawl lost because he didn’t campaign.

5:01
Ludwig is citing some of the coverage by fivethirtyeight.com that can be found here.

5:00
Ludwig says previous studies have shown that “ballot position” is sometimes worth 3-5 points, not the 19 Greene won by.

4:57
Most of what Ludwig is talking about is summarized in Rawl’s statement last week:

One of the teams was Dr. Walter Mebane of the University of Michigan and Dr. Michael Miller of CornellUniversity. Dr. Mebane is a professor of political science and statistics and a recognized expert in detecting election fraud. As of August 2010, Dr. Miller will be professor of political science at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and specializes in the analysis of election data. Neither is affiliated with the Rawl campaign.

Dr. Mebane performed second-digit Benford’s law tests on the precinct returns from the Senate race. The test compares the second digit of actual precinct vote totals to a known numeric distribution of data that results from election returns collected under normal conditions. If votes are added or subtracted from a candidate’s total, possibly due to error or fraud, Mebane’s test will detect a deviation from this distribution.

Results from Mebane’s test showed that Rawl’s Election Day vote totals depart from the expected distribution at 90% confidence. In other words, the observed vote pattern for Rawl could be expected to occur only about 10% of the time by chance. “The results may reflect corrupted vote counts, but they may also reflect the way turnout in the election covaried with the geographic distribution of the candidates’ support,” Mebane said.

Dr. Miller performed additional tests to determine whether there was a significant difference in the percentage of absentee and Election Day votes that each candidate received. The result in the Senate election is highly statistically significant: Rawl performs 11 percentage points better among absentee voters than he does among Election Day voters. “This difference is a clear contrast to the other races. Statistically speaking, the only other Democratic candidate who performed differently among the two voter groups was Robert Ford, who did better on Election Day than among absentees in the gubernatorial primary,” Miller said.

Ludwig is citing examples of counties where Rawl won absentee votes by 2-1 in counties where he then lost election day votes by similar margins.

4:51
Says independent academics approached the campaign about “anomalies” in the returns.

4:50
Rawl campaign manager Ludwig is up.

Rawl is protesting on four grounds:

Machines are susceptible to accidental or intentional modification, alteration or tampering.

Numerous voters experience difficulty in trying to cast votes for Rawl.

Rawl will provide evidence that results cannot be verified.

Inherent unreliability of machines constitute evidence that election is invalid.

4:41
Apparently, Alvin Greene and/or his attorney are not present.

4:40 pm
Corrected that to Greene with an “e”

The executive committee of the S.C. Democratic Party has taken a recess after dispensing with the day’s first protest hearing. Vic Rawl’s protest hearing will begin at approximately 4:30 pm, and we’ll be blogging live here.

A group of former Linda Ketner staffers from her ‘08 congressional bid have started a statewide petition to get Linda’s name on the ballot as an independent. The grassroots group already has a website, Facebook page, and is organizing petition drives across the state.

So is Ketner serious about taking on DeMint?

Well, I spoke to one of Ketner’s former staffers last night who told me that Linda is open to the idea of running against DeMint, but first wants to see how much support is out there before committing to a formal bid. Our source said the Ketner for Senate group needs 10,000 signatures by July 15 to get on the November ballot, but that they’re aiming for 20,000.

If you’re looking for a strong, progressive candidate who knows how to raise money and run a sophisticated campaign, I can’t think of a better lady to support. If you’re interested in signing the petition or in helping collect other folks’ John Hancocks, check out KetnerforSenate.com.