Scott Brown Won’t Talk Tierney.

During a campaign appearance in Manchester, Connecticut, United States Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) refused to say if he believed Massachusetts Congressman John Tierney’s claim that he knew nothing of his wife Patrice Tierney’s $8 million off-shore gaming and money laundering scheme, conducted in conjunction with her fugitive brothers.  Mrs. Tierney entered her local federal courthouse on Wednesday to enter a wobbly guilty plea in the stunning criminal enterprise. She’s been depressed, she told the court. The essential Howie Carr, columnist and radio personality, provides the most biting summary of the outrage. There’s more here.

Gallant Mr. Tierney said Wednesday outside the courthouse that this was about his wife, not him.  The guilty plea contradicted earlier statements from the seven-term congressman that he and Patrice had nothing to do with the fugitive side of her criminal family.

Nine months ago, the Tierney operation was the sort of scandal that candidate Scott Brown would have highlighted as an example of what’s wrong with American politics.  Today, when I approached him and asked him if he believes Tierney, he said to ask Congressman Tierney.  It didn’t take long for the tea party darling to become a member of the establishment party.

The Massachusetts Republican, whose electrifying January victory in a special election to fill the vacancy created by the death of United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy presaged a national Republican revival, accompanied Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley to events in Glastonbury and Manchester, two Hartford suburbs the Greenwich businessman will have to be competitive in if he’s to win on November 2nd.  The event in Manchester, at the popular Shady Glen restaurant (home of the best cheeseburger on the East Coast, according to Esquire magazine) attracted about 60 local Republicans.