Morse Per Diem Scandal Now Shaffer’s Political Cross to Carry

As our friends at Complete Colorado first promoted, a formal call for an ethics investigation has been made into Majority Leader John Morse's year-long taxpayer funded per diem party, a 331 day extravaganza where the Senate Dem floor leader claimed per diem even when he wasn't apparently working, including on days his official calendar showed him on junkets in San Diego and China.

Now Morse's year long ethical lapse is more than his own personal problem: it is Senate President Brandon Shaffer's cross to carry as well.

That is because the decision about appointing an ethics commission is now the sole decision of Morse's good buddy Brandon Shaffer.

Morse's misdeeds put Shaffer in the horns of one helluva hairy dilemma. Appoint an ethics panel and royally miff the Senate's Number Two Man, or do nothing in the face of credible evidence of public corruption and become complicit in the whole tawdry episode.

If Shaffer were a term-limited Senate President with no ambition other than to ride off into the legislative sunset, this hot potato would feel less fiery.

But with Shaffer positioning himself to run for Congress against Cory Gardner in the 4th Congressional District, a decision not to appoint an ethics commission would provide his Republican opponents a huge opening.

If Shaffer rejects the call for an ethics panel, the National Republican Congressional Committee's mail pieces against the complicit Senate President write themselves. Like Dennis Hastert to Mark Foley, it looks like ethics are an afterthought to Brandon Shaffer.

That may not be as bad an option as throwing Morse in the blender by appointing an ethics commission, but it is hardly a good option.

What to do now?

Maybe the President should take a seat at the bar and mull this one over, because one way or the other John Morse has put him in one terrible predicament.