Well, this just proves the wisdom of Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) decision to keep almost $300,000 in his campaign coffers.

Burns paid approximately $12,000 more to Powell Goldstein in early November, according to Burns' last FEC report, meaning that since he hired Ralph Caccia of that firm in April, Burns' campaign has doled out more than $103,500. And you can bet that number will continue to climb.

During his doomed re-election campaign, former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) did his best to convince voters that he wasn't worried in the least about what Jack Abramoff had told prosecutors. Hell, he's not even a target of the investigation!

If he failed to convince voters, that may be because he appears not to have convinced himself: rather than spend his bottom dollar on last-minute ad buys to eke out a win, Burns quietly banked nearly $300,000. He lost by 3,602 votes.

Playing the squirrel to Rep. John Doolittle's (R-CA) grasshopper, Burns is now sitting pretty. That's money he can use down the line to pay his lawyers, whom he's already paid more than $90,000. By contrast, Doolittle, the other lawmaker reported to be in prosecutors' sites, finished his successful re-election bid in debt. Silly grasshopper.