The latest bombshell reporting about the relationship between Collins’ political operation and a defense contractor makes it worth looking back at her whole career. Because, the truth is, her political operation has always been as corrupt as any other pol you can fill with enough helium to animate. Like Mitch McConnell. She's just cleverly and corruptly camouflaged it behind a brand-borrowing, bumbling, ever-frowning persona.

When Trump faced his first impeachment, Collins voted to acquit him. Her reassurance? “I hope that the president has learned the lesson.” Additionally, Collins built her career telling voters she supported abortion rights. When any criticism would come her way. she has hid behind her supposed staunch support for choice. Then she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime on the Supreme Court.

Finally, what almost nobody knows. In Collins’s first Senate race in 1996, her campaign turned routine Democratic opposition research—conducted by all candidates, as I described in a piece on the art of oppo with top oppo guy, Brett di Resta not long ago—into a supposed scandal about her opponent. Former Maine Governor and U.S. Rep Joseph Brennan, had supposedly hired a “private investigator” to “dig through her trash.” She dropped this particular bit of horseshit right at the last moment in a very close race.

Then she did something even more corrupt. Go to BAM to read the rest of the story!