Democrats Hire Forensic Accountants to Dig into Trump Finances You can't say no one saw this coming: People familiar with the matter say Democrats have leading forensic accountants poring over all of Trump's public records and disclosures with a plan to release whatever they find to support this narrative as the campaign shifts into general election mode this summer and fall. 'Some of the stuff is supposedly dynamite,' one senior Democratic operative with ties to the Clinton campaign said. 'They are very confident about the opposition research. But I wouldn't expect anything cataclysmic until the fall.' You know what's going to happen, right? Democrats will drop this information, and even if it's in public records and disclosures, Trump will accuse the Internal Revenue Service of leaking private financial information. He'll accuse the IRS and Hillary Clinton's campaign of colluding, and neither of those two entities are particularly trusted these days. Oh, and he'll deny anything unflattering in the report, insist it's all outdated information, and that his real financial papers show he's worth more than ever, everybody knows it, believe me, etc., etc. Will the revelations hurt Trump more? Hillary more? Both about equally? Stay tuned. As for the contention that Trump is worth significantly less than he boasts, and is cash poor -- well, most of us could figure that out early in the primary, and the GOP went ahead anyway. Now we see the consequences: Donald Trump's campaign has alerted Senate Republicans that he won't have much money to spend fending off attacks from Hillary Clinton over the next couple months. The notice came when Paul Manafort, Trump's senior advisor, met with a group of Senate Republican chiefs of staff for lunch last week, sources familiar with the meeting told the Washington Examiner. The admission suggests that Trump will be far more dependent on the GOP brass for money than he has led voters to believe, but it's consistent with his reliance on the Republican National Committee to provide a ground game in battleground states. You were warned, guys. Don't come crying now. Libertarians Step Up to Moment of Opportunity, Collapse into Giggles Our Ian Tuttle was down in Orlando for the Libertarian party convention. With two lousy choices offered by the Republicans and Democrats this year, formal and informal Libertarians have their best opportunity in decades to get Americans to seriously consider this different, liberty-focused philosophy and approach to governance. Ian notes that they basically rejected any effort to win over middle America and showcased a "Libertarian wish list, instead of providing common ground on which to erect a 'big tent,' [that] is likely to alienate just about everyone who isn't a capital-L Libertarian." Consider Saturday evening's debate, during which the five candidates ([Kevin] McCormick missed the cut) opined on such pressing issues as whether the United States was justified in intervening in World Wars I and II, and whether they would have supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It's almost as if the debate organizers wrote the questions with the express purpose of disqualifying the candidate from national consideration. The audience doesn't help: When Gary Johnson suggested that perhaps the government should be able to deny blind people drivers' licenses, boos were audible. Likewise when Petersen suggested that maybe, just maybe, there should be laws against selling heroin to five-year-olds. And the candidates themselves offered up some good ol'-fashioned bat-guano crazy: Perry said that, 'contra the fear-mongering,' Iran is actually just pursuing nuclear energy. Petersen peddled Howard Zinn–style history to explain why 'the rest of the world hates us.' And, sure enough, Feldman rapped his closing statement. Vermin Supreme, a beloved party regular who wears a rubber boot on his head and who received 18 votes toward the nomination, spent the debate handing out toast. Or, as Iowahawk put it, 'Oh boy! Libertarians finally have a real chance to show America we're not a bunch of drugged lunatics and... nevermind…' 
Our political system has been taken over by angry teenage minds in grown-up bodies, in part because our culture has been taken over by angry teenage minds in grown-up bodies. But the Libertarians picked a ticket of relative grown-ups in Gary Johnson and William Weld. There was considerable skepticism of Weld among the delegates, foreshadowed by last week's profile. Weld was pro-gun control and had to reverse himself twice in recent cycles, withdrawing endorsements of Barack Obama and John Kasich -- not exactly natural libertarian positions. But neither man went streaking at the convention, so they've got that working for them. Get Ready to Hear a Lot More about the Tomah VA Scandal Today the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will hold a field hearing in Tomah, Wis., reviewing allegations that government agencies silenced whistleblowers' concerns and put veterans at risk in a painkiller scandal at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center. At least three people -- including Tomah VA director Mario DeSanctis, chief of staff David Houlihan, and a nurse practitioner -- lost their jobs after the overprescribing scandal came to light. Houlihan was known to veterans as the 'Candy Man' because of the quantities of drugs he prescribed, the VA found. Marine Veteran Jason Simcakoski died in 2014 of a drug overdose at the facility. Whistleblowers have said other veterans also died as a result of the care they received in Tomah. If the Tomah VA controversy sounds familiar, it's because it's become a major issue in Wisconsin's Senate race. Six years ago, conservative businessman Ron Johnson defeated incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold; now the Democrat wants to win back his seat and avenge his 2010 loss. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is… Ron Johnson. Freedom Partners Action Fund has put together a detailed timeline of the Tomah painkiller scandal -- including the key question of whether the problems at the VA were reported to Feingold's office back in Summer 2008. 
It wouldn't be a Wisconsin political story if it didn't feature a public employee union; in this case, Feingold says that despite the markings on a memo, the public-sector union never passed along warnings about the VA office to him. The 2009 memo came from Lin Ellinghuysen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees local at Tomah. It was addressed to another union official, Ben Balkum, and marked as being 'hand-delivered' to Feingold, then a U.S. senator, as well as U.S. Rep. Ron Kind and then-Rep. Dave Obey. 'The ad claims that somehow our office knew about this. That's not true,' Feingold said during a campaign stop in Milwaukee. 'There's no record in our office at all that we knew about it. Rep. Kind says the same thing about his office. Apparently someone was intending to give the information to our office, but there's no record that we ever got it. So it's not true.' Ellinghuysen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she made an error in marking the memo as being hand-delivered to the Democratic lawmakers. She said she made an assumption but that the deliveries did not occur. ADDENDA: Rasmussen Reports -- which no longer is run by Scott Rasmussen -- was, for a long while, the pollster showing the best results for Donald Trump. Back in late April, when everyone else had Hillary up by double digits over Trump, Rasmussen showed the race tied. A few days later, they put Trump ahead by two points, the first survey by any pollster to show Trump ahead since mid-April. By mid-May, they had Trump ahead by 5 points, as every other pollster saw a tightening race. Late last week, Rasmus  | 
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