Live By the Sword...

...well, you know the rest. For months now, Brian Moran and his campaign (and vociferous anti-Terry blog minions) have attacked Terry McAuliffe for...well, something or other related to money, influence, fundraising, god knows what. In attacking McAuliffe for the sin of - gasp! - raising money, they also by implication attacked Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and other super-successful Virginia Democratic fundraisers (and fighters), including Jim Moran and Brian Moran himself. That always seemed like a risky and poorly-thought-out strategy to me, and I honestly could never understand it except as a panic reaction to Terry McAuliffe's entry into the race.

Now, it turns out that throwing stones in glass houses might not have been such a great idea after all. Check out the Washington Post story that just went up:

More than a dozen defense contractors with business before U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, have donated thousands of dollars to Moran's younger brother Brian, a candidate for governor of Virginia.

Brian Moran filed a campaign finance report this week that shows he collected $80,000 during the first three months of 2009 from 18 contractors that have been longtime backers of the congressman. Seven of the firms are awaiting approval of Moran-backed earmarks totaling $14.5 million.

Read the entire article, it gets worse, and the Moran campaign's excuses are beyond lame (in short: "hey, it's northern Virginia, everyone operates like that around here!"). What's really pathetic is that, for months now, we've had to put up with the Moran campaign's insufferable, holier-than-thou language bashing Terry McAuliffe for his fundraising and ties to lobbyists. Well, sorry to gloat a bit here, but this is serious ass-bite time for the Moran campaign. Or is the applicable expression "hoisted on their own petard?" And what IS a petard, anyway? :)

By the way, I'm glad to see the Washington Post FINALLY picking up on this story, a month after Alan "Aznew" Zimmerman basically laid it all out. Of course, the only "defense" by the Moran people against what Aznew wrote was...yeah, you guessed it, ad hominem attacks against Aznew, Terry McAuliffe, anyone and everyone. Unfortunately, with the Moran campaign, that falls into the category of "what else is new?"

UPDATE: The New York Times has a similar story:

The elder Moran, a Virginia Democrat on the House panel that oversees military spending, let it be known that he would attend a holiday fund-raiser for his brother at the Ritz-Carlton hotel near the Pentagon, thus encouraging the attendance of military contractors and lobbyists. And Representative Moran even helped bring along a special guest, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the panel’s chairman.

Over the next four days, the younger Moran took in about $110,000, including about $20,000 from lobbyists and military contractors. Over all, of the roughly $2.3 million in individual contributions his campaign has raised, about 10 percent has come from people who work in the defense industry, some of whom have personally profited from contracts inserted as earmarks into spending bills by Representative Moran.

Just lovely.