The power of not being able to add

Who could (not) have predicted Michele Bachmann would end up having major ethical problems.

My favorite involves the pending case in my State:

Bills are piling up in an Iowa court case, Heki v. Bachmann, filed by another former Bachmann staffer, Barb Heki. That suit alleges that onetime state campaign chairman and state Senator Sorenson stole from her—and then used with the candidate’s knowledge—an email list of Christian homeschool families in Iowa. Heki’s accusation has been backed by a sworn affidavit by former campaign staffer Eric Woolson, who had also been named in the suit, though charges against him were dropped after he submitted his affidavit.

Sorenson told Politico that the alleged theft “absolutely did not happen,” while Jeff Goodman, a lawyer representing the Bachmann campaign, has said his clients "vigorously deny the substantive allegations and claims against them."

Separately, the Urbandale Police Department in Iowa has conducted its own investigation into the theft of that list, and the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee had been probing the actions of Sorenson for allegedly taking “under-the-table payments” from her campaign, according to Waldron, the former Bachmann staffer who filed the initial complaint. In a written response to the committee, Sorenson has “vehemently denied any wrongdoing as alleged.” (That investigation has been put on hold until the criminal investigation is complete.) Ironically, when Sorenson defected to Ron Paul’s campaign days before the Iowa caucus, Bachmann herself publically charged that the influential state senator had told her that he’d been “offered a large amount of money” to shift his allegiance.