George Allen Ups Privately Funded Trips

Last year, Virginia Senator George Allen received six trips, with destinations ranging from Las Vegas to Virginia Beach, from various nongovernmental organizations, according to the personal financial disclosure report he filed for 2005. The report ws released last week.
Perhaps these trips are part of the conservative Republican’s rising presidential ambitions—since 1999, Allen has declared only two other privately funded trips, both in 2004.
Allen also reported commercial rental property in Charlottesville worth more than $1 million, which includes a property at 109 E. Jefferson St, assessed at $583,800 in 2005. His real estate holdings extend to Albemarle County, where he and his wife, Susan, own 98.5 acres at Buck Mountain. Combined with his stocks and bonds, his listed assets are somewhere between $1.8 and $3.8 million.
Now that his November election rival James Webb has been selected, the campaign ought to heat up—Allen recently started airing his first television ad.
In related news, those searching for seedy partisan dirt on the current senator can visit the “Weasel Meter” on www.raisingkaine.com, a website for Virginia Democrats. The site editorializes on the Senator’s opposition to gay marriage, his presidential aspirations and his youthful misdeeds. Said misdeeds, culled from a tell-all book by his sister (and recently chronicled in a New Republic article), include throwing his younger brother through a glass door, repeatedly displaying the Confederate flag, and spraypainting his high school with racially charged graffiti. Good times!—Will Goldsmith