A Lincoln Fan?

Sen. George "Macaca Man" Allen (R-VA), known as the only current member of the Senate to have had a Confederate flag in his office (his law office), emerges as, apparently, a student of our sixteenth President--at least so far as Lincoln's famous quotation about being able to fool all of the people some of the time.

The AP reports that for five years, Allen has failed to disclose stock options granted to him while a director of several high-tech companies, at least one of which has done business with the government. According to AP, Allen also neglected to inform the SEC of insider stock transactions, as required by law.

It's not as if Allen forgot about the options--he did disclose them once, in a late amendment to his 2000 ethics report.

Allen's excuse is that the options were not worth anything, but Senate rules require disclosure without respect to the value of the holding. Given Allen's past behavior, we may expect that inconvenient fact to be conveniently ignored as the Senator tries to play down this latest disclosure, coming as it does just a month before election day.

One of the option-granting companies was Commonwealth Biotechnologies, which normally requires departing directors to exercise options within 90 days. For Allen, however, the company extended the exercise period to 2009, because he was leaving the board to enter government service. Was this a gesture of appreciation for an individual's willingness to serve the public? Judge for yourself. The company's chairman said at the time, "We, of course, wish him much success in Washington and look forward to his pro-business agenda reaping benefits for CBI, the commonwealth and the nation." Even in this day and age, such a frank admission of quid expected for quo is rare.

According to the story, Allen has done his dutiful best to help the companies he got the options from in their attempts to obtain government business.

There's much more in The AP's story. Read the whole thing.

Will this have an effect on Allen's campaign against Jim Webb, whom most polls have running a few points behind even after the "macaca" controversy? Although the issues are a bit complex, the average voter should have no trouble discerning that Allen has concealed transactions intended to benefit him, and has helped favored companies to feed at the public trough. Will that fuel outrage in these jaded days? Time--just over four weeks, to be precise--will tell.