Recently, I’ve found chatty “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough to be just as serviceable as any other MSNBCer. But it’s easy to forget that the man was once the very definition of a partisan gunslinger. So this Village Voice piece—by Wayne Barrett, an old professor of mine—is a worthy reminder of how far he’s (sorta) come from his Clinton-bashing, abortionist-murderer defending, Al Sharpton-baiting days as a deep south Republican congressman. The article is a bit overworked, but Barrett and his research staff have turned up some shady ethics for a quasi-journalist, and at least one booking that was brazen, undisclosed, self-dealing:

Nor did [Scarborough] note, when he put Oregon Republican congressional candidate Derrick Kitts on his show to comment on DeLay’s resignation, that he’d just maxed out with $4,200 in contributions to Kitts four days before he was a guest on the show. A former aide to Scarborough who had left Washington years earlier to become a state legislator in Oregon, Kitts was an odd guest on what Scarborough called his “all-star panel,” since presumably an actual member of the House who knew DeLay might have been available. Kitts’s appearance seemed designed more to give the 34-year neophyte national exposure for his own race than add to the DeLay discussion.