One of our customers has been perusing old newspapers to refresh his memory about Newt.

Remember the $300,000 fine Newt had to pay when he left congress looking like the leftovers at a coroner’s inquest?  When it came time to pay the band, Newt came up a couple dollars short.

As he has in the past, Gingrich sought to limit his own culpability. “To the degree I have made mistakes, they have been errors of implementation but never of intent,” he said as his wife, Marianne, watched from the gallery.

Dole offered to make the loan, for which Gingrich will pay 10 percent interest. But neither the principal nor the accrued interest is due until the end of the eight-year loan period in 2005, when the combined total would be $643,000. Gingrich has said he would leave Congress by Jan. 3, 2003.

Does anybody know if the greedy sumbitch ever paid it back or did he spend all his money on his mistress?

And if you’ve forgotten what he got tangled up with, the story lives on the internet machine.  It’s as much fun to read now as it was then.

For Gingrich, it was another humbling event in a remarkable series of peaks and valleys since 1994. That year, he led his party to the promised land of control of the House and Senate, only to threaten it when he was blamed for two partial government shutdowns during the battle over the budget, making him seem reckless. Then he complained about his treatment on a long flight aboard Air Force One, making him seem petty. The GOP narrowly retained its House majority last November, giving him a brief reprieve. The next month, he admitted to the charges brought by the ethics subcommittee.

In the middle of that article, there’s a priceless quote from Governor Mark Sanford, who was a member of the House of Representative at the time —

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said that had he known what was in the ethics committee’s report, he would not have voted for Gingrich as speaker. “The gray got grayer when you read the report,” he said. “When I think of my three boys and what kind of example I want to set for them for leadership in this country, gray is not the example.”

Darlin’, it’s a long ride from that statement to hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Thanks to Ralph for perusing the newspapers.