EVEN REPUBLICANS CAN GIVE SECOND CHANCES...BUT WATCH THE MONEY

The Miami Herald is reporting this morning that Congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris' travel aide has a criminal record and is currently on community control and three years probation for stealing money from his former employer.

Bruce Carlton Jordan is a good friend of the Longboat Key Republican, as well as with Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie "Chain Gang" Crist. But as Executive Director of the Florida Funeral Directors Association in 2003, the Herald story says that Jordan rang up $6,863.05 worth of unauthorized expenses on a company credit card and signed himself $3,361.78 worth of checks from the association's political action committee, the Leon County sheriff's office said. Five years before that, in 1998, the sheriff's office said, associates accused Jordan of stealing $5,000, but he reimbursed the money.

He was already on probation for that charge, but last fall he was charged with charging $1,125.79 worth of personal airline tickets on the American Express card of his boss at Florida Workers' Advocates...while at the same time passing fake work checks and filing false reimbursements that totaled $2,975.39, court records show. Charged with multiple felonies, Jordan pleaded no contest to a single grand-theft count.

He got out of jail in February, but still has to pay restitution and occasionally works off the remainder of his 60 day jail time cleaning roadsides and moving furniture for nonprofit organizations.

About a month after leaving jail, Jordan began working as a volunteer driver and personal assistant for his friend Ms. Harris. That comes as a heckuva surprise to incoming Florida Funeral Directors Association president Daniel Perrin.

''You gotta be kidding me. . . . I can't believe it. I can't believe this, that somebody's got him on staff."