When someone who claims to want to serve the less fortunate in society sees money being stolen from children, what kind of response should one expect to see?  Would that person report the crime, or perhaps make an attempt to stop it from happening?  Or would the person who claims to represent the average Minnesotan just wait to get his cut?

Norm Coleman asks that question in his latest attack ad against Al Franken (via MDE):

Almost 900,000 tax dollars taken from a Boys and Girls Club by a corporation. Falsified documents. Widespread fraud.

Air America, the home of radio shock jock Al Franken took the money and ripped off thousands of kids. Blamed a crook. Said he didn’t know about it. When he finally admitted he knew, Al Franken still did nothing about it. Except Franken made sure he got paid – millions – but did nothing to make sure that the Boys and Girls Club got their stolen money back.

Al Franken. Talks accountability, just doesn’t want to be accountable.

I wrote about this extensively at Captain’s Quarters, but Michelle and Brian Maloney did the heavy lifting on original reporting, because the mainstream media didn’t take an interest in the story until much later.  Together, they turned over the rocks under which Evan Montvel-Cohen crawled and unraveled his trail of deceit and fraud in taking money from children for his commercial enterprise.

Franken never bothered to either blow the whistle on Cohen and AA, or to lift a finger to restore the money stolen from Gloria Wise.  He didn’t take the money, but he certainly benefited from it.  For a man who has represented himself as concerned about “eas[ing] the burden on families caring for children or elderly loved ones”, he certainly didn’t show much concern about the children and the elderly that had almost $900,000 lifted out of a program meant for their benefit, at least some of which went to pay his contract.

Addendum: Franken exploited the death of a Minnesota soldier for his own political gain yesterday in a despicable ad — and an inaccurate one.  Norm Coleman wasn’t in the US Senate when the vote to authorize military force was taken in 2002.  He joined the Senate in January 2003.  Furthermore, the chair of the DSCC, which helped produce this ad, is Chuck Schumer — who did vote to authorize military force in Iraq.

Absolutely despicable.  Both men should be ashamed of themselves.