But who will slay the slayers?

Of course I've wanted to say a little something about the news that the Jindal campaign will have to pay a small fine for a minor ethics infraction regarding its failure to report an in-kind contribution from the the state Republican party.

I mean it sounds like a slam dunk snarky blog post. All I would have to do is quote Jindal delivering a stump speech in a heavily played campaign ad,

"We can't tolerate corruption"

And then link to the story. Then there would be a little block quote from the article explaining the "whoopsie" nature of what really is a minor mistake.

William Potter, an accountant who has worked on Jindal's campaign financial reports, said he is responsible for the error. "He expected me to do things right," Potter said.

Potter said that during the campaign, he mistakenly left the item off the original disclosure forms, but when campaign officials discovered the error the campaign amended the report to include the contribution.

Potter told The Advocate of Baton Rouge that Jindal's campaign chief, Timmy Teepell, who is now the governor's chief of staff, failed to notify those preparing the campaign finance report about the party expenditures for Jindal.

"He just flat forgot to tell us," Potter said, according to the report.

And then quote Jindal from the same ad,

"We can't tolerate incompetence"

Likewise, it would be embarrassingly easy to write "Awesome Dragonslaying", link to the story, and post a funny picture. A post like that practically writes itself.

When you go around demagoguing about how intolerant your administration is going to be then you really shouldn't expect to be tolerated back. But that's just Jindal's hypocrisy coming to light once again and picking on "reformist" pols for their hypocrisy is like shooting dragons in a barrel.

But there remains something icky about picking dragon nits even when done in jest so I'd prefer to just point you to Timshel where Ricky has a slightly better sense of perspective although I can't really get behind his rational argument for the need for ethics reform. In my mind, "goo goo" reformers (as Adrastos likes to call them) are almost always engaging in a circus to disguise or enable their own (often far worse) obsession with power at the expense of effective governance.

See also Suspect-Device for more on this and a gem of a quote from an LSU economist explaining what a blessing it is for Louisiana to be struggling with flood recovery during a national economic collapse.

Update: While the ethics oversight isn't worth freaking out over, it is certainly worth continuing to call Jindal out and hold him accountable to his over-the-top campaign rhetoric... like this.

Upperdate: WWLTV is now running a notice that says:

Governor Bobby Jindal cannot quickly pay a fine to the state ethics board and end an investigation into charges he violated the state's campaign finance disclosure laws. Details to follow.

So this might be worth a few more yuks before it dies.