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This article from Wonkette is just too funny:

Norm Coleman, the hobo senator from Minnesota, rents a basement room from a Republican campaign consultant so he doesn’t have to sleep in the back of a freight car when he’s in Washington. Senator Coleman is supposed to pay $600 a month in rent, but he missed a couple of payments over the past year because he is a degenerate as well as a hobo.

Senator Coleman’s landlord is a gentleman named Jeff Larson, whose employer has helped the senator with fundraising ‘n stuff. Also Larson is the chief executive of the Minneapolis Saint Paul 2008 Host Committee, which is hosting the Republican National Convention.

But enough about their completely above-the-board connections! Apparently this apartment is a frightful dungeon that would terrify all but the most desperate vagrants, and Jeff Larson is a monster:

“I rent a cramped bedroom from him, with no kitchen. … It’s a place to lay my head,” the senator told a reporter.

Somebody needs to notify the proper authorities that a Republican pervert is keeping an impoverished, starving senator in his basement Incest Dungeon, the end.

As hilarious as the above is, it really hits the nail on the head at the same time: where the heck does someone find a $600/month apartment in D.C., much less on Capitol Hill?  I’ll tell you where: no where.  It’s just not possible in that area.  I had an apartment on the hill and it cost me $1200 a month and that was after it was subsidized by an intern housing organization and the place was a 1-bedroom studio dump (which I was more than happy with because of the location, but it was a dump) that I was splitting with a roommate.  Now, I might give Coleman the shadow of the doubt if he said he was paying $1000 for a room in a $1 million townhouse on the hill (that would still be stretching it), but $600?  Give me a break.  Does he really think we’re dense enough to see this as anything but a political favor?

Ethics have never been a barrier for Norm Coleman’s unbound ambition, but I have to admit that the National Journal’s article (seriously, read the whole thing, it’s stunning) about Norm Coleman’s extremely close ties to GOP operative Jeff Larson surprised even me.  Jeff Larson is a behind the scenes political strategist who runs a political telemarketing group that has “profited handsomely” (according to the article) from his close relationship with Coleman:

Most curiously, Larson provides Coleman with a place to live in Washington. In July 2007, Coleman began paying Larson $600 a month in rent for a portion of a one-bedroom basement apartment in a Capitol Hill town house that Larson owns.

…

Earlier this month, after National Journal questioned Coleman and Larson about the living arrangement, the senator said he discovered that his rent for last November and January had not been paid. In mid-June, Coleman covered the back rent with a personal check for $1,200 made out to Larson and signed by the senator’s wife. Last year, Coleman sold furniture to Larson to cover one month’s rent, according to Larson. And Larson held on to yet another month’s rent check for three months, cashing it a few days after NJ’s inquiries.

Okay, so this guy provides Coleman with a place to live, gets paid by Coleman’s wife (apparently the Senator doesn’t have a bank account of his own or a joint account under which he can sign his own checks, and occasionally accepts furniture as rent… anything sound sketchy yet?  If that doesn’t sound like the typical landlord-tenant relationship it’s probably because it isn’t.  See, Jeff gets paid in other ways as well, Larson’s St. Paul company “has been paid about $1.6 million since mid-2001 by Coleman’s Northstar Leadership political action committee and two Senate campaigns.” All these furniture based rent payments are starting to seem more reasonable…

But it gets stranger in that Coleman now lives in Larson’s townhouse when in DC… for free by all accounts.  His previous apartment cost him over $1700 a month.  Now why would Larson be so generous, well maybe some of these explain the situation:

• The above mentioned $1.6 million since 2001 that Coleman’s PAC and campaigns have given Larson’s company
• Larson’s wife being on Coleman’s payroll (under her maiden name…)
• The $50 million Coleman helped procure for the RNC convention in St. Paul; which Larson is the CEO and chief fundraiser for the local host committee.

The information and evidence in this article is so extensive that I don’t have enough room to list it all here.  The ties here are stunningly interwoven; it will take a while to sort out where Jeff Larson ends and Norm Coleman begins… or where the money between the two begins and ends. This is just beginning…