As political scandals go, the report that Ron Paul double-invoiced for airfare reimbursements seems relatively petty stuff.
Roll Call found evidence that Ron Paul charged at least 26 flights both to the US government and also to an outside support group. Roll Call found suggestions of perhaps 31 additional double charges.
It's not impossible there is an innocent explanation here: filing errors do happen. And sometimes they happen again. And sometimes they happen 20 or 30 or 50 more times after that.
But when a filing error does happen, an honest person will act with reasonable promptitude to tidy it up.
In Paul's case, the errors were first brought to his attention in 2005. Six years later, the mistakes remain unreimbursed. The amount at stake is estimated by Roll Call at $10,000, petty cash in modern politics.
Yet combined with Paul's newsletter business of the early 1990s, this latest story has another possible interpretation as well:
Ron Paul supposedly, Mr. Fiscal Conservative, is a man not very scrupulous in money matters—and likewise a man with not a very high opinion of his supporters and donors.
