No scandal too small

When you raise as much money as our Governor, it's inevitable that you will eventually, say, take money from a Republican fundraiser who convinced Ohio's Worker's Comp fund to "invest" some of the State's money in rare coins, $10+million of which then turns up missing.

Even George Bush is gonna return this guy's money, but Arnold is standing tall, fighting the "Special Interests" by keeping their money.

On Thursday, President Bush joined a steadily growing band of Republicans opting to rid their campaign accounts of Mr. Noe's money, but the Republican governor of California is not planning to return the campaign cash he received from Mr. Noe, who is facing a flurry of state and federal investigations.

"The allegations about Mr. Noe became public a year after we accepted his contribution," said Martin Wilson, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. "As he was an active Ohio Republican Party fund-raiser and donor, we had no reason at the time to question his contribution and have no intention of refunding the money."

Am I the only one to whom this makes absolutely no sense? I mean even beyond the snarky "Hey, he was an 'active Republican Fundraiser' and you didn't question his money?" thing, what difference does it make that it was a year later?

For more or less chronological coverage of this, check out the Robot Invasion coverage. They are ex-Ohioans (is that how you say it), and have been following it for a while. And Americablog has also been hammering on this for a while.