What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Former State Senator Kent Sorenson testified this week in the trial of two former Ron Paul presidential campaign aides. (A judge dismissed charges against a third man who had been indicted in the same case.) After initially claiming to be the victim of a “straight-up political witch hunt,” Sorenson eventually pled guilty to federal charges related to accepting hidden payments. He had been negotiating with Paul’s operatives for months on a price for changing his allegiance from presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to Paul less than a week before the Iowa caucuses.

Russ Choma wrote up Sorenson’s testimony for Mother Jones, and Grant Rodgers has been covering the trial for the Des Moines Register. On Thursday, Sorenson testified that he was upset when some staffers for Michele Bachmann’s campaign treated him “like a leper,” after he revealed that he had considered switching to Paul and was offered money to do so. Dude, what did you expect? Asking to be paid for a presidential endorsement should get a person shunned from polite society. People with leprosy should take offense at being compared to a guy like you.

Sorenson said in court the next day that going into politics was “a waste of my life, and I wish I had not done it.” I would guess a large number of Iowans in both parties also wish he had never gotten involved with politics.

Ten days ago, Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal heard arguments in a case challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s veto of funding for two in-patient mental health facilities his administration decided to close earlier this year. In one exchange, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Thompson asserted that the governor could theoretically shut down the state’s court system by exercising his veto power to reject all appropriated funds for the judiciary. He noted that the constitution gives state lawmakers power to override a governor’s veto (through a two-thirds majority vote in both the Iowa House and Senate), and courts should not take on that role if legislators decline to do so.

I would like to hear attorneys’ opinions on whether the governor’s veto power extends so far. Can the governor eliminate virtually any part of state government by blocking appropriations for it, as long as at least one-third plus one member of one chamber of the legislature will back up his political agenda?

I’ve posted excerpts from these reports after the jump.

From Russ Choma’s October 15 article for Mother Jones, “Disgraced Ex-Iowa State Senator Testifies Against Ron Paul Aides”:

“I’m sorry for what I’m about to do,” Sorenson testified that he told a friend on the Bachmann campaign after revealing to him and others on Bachmann’s campaign that the Paul camp had offered him money to switch sides. Then, he said, he drove to a Paul event, where he was eagerly greeted by Kesari, who ushered him inside, where Benton and others on the campaign were waiting. Sorenson testified he was led over to meet Benton.

“I remember specifically asking Jesse if they would take care of me,” Sorenson testified, when asked whether he arrived at the Paul event with the expectation of being paid to change his endorsement. The response from Benton, according to Sorenson, was “You’re bleeding for us—we’ll take care of you.”

Later that night, Sorenson said that Kesari took his cellphone away to prevent him from talking to the media or anyone else about his reasons for switching sides. “I was a wreck,” Sorenson recalled.

Bachmann publicly accused Sorenson of taking money to switch sides—it was later revealed that Sorenson was paid by Bachmann’s campaign first—and the morning after his decision, Sorenson said Kesari, Benton, and others counseled him on how to handle the situation and prepped him on how to address the media.

From the October 15 Des Moines Register story by Grant Rodgers, “Sorenson testifies about emotional campaign flip-flop”:

Over dinner, Sorenson said he told the deputy campaign manager [Dmitri Kesari] that he was worried about Bachmann’s polling, as well as whether he’d receive his paycheck from her campaign. Sorenson admitted in court that Bachmann’s campaign paid him at least $7,500 monthly, which violated Iowa Senate ethics rules; he resigned shortly after those payments were criticized by an independent investigator in 2013. […]

In the car, Sorenson said his wife showed him a $25,000 check that Kesari had written on the account of his family-owned jewelry store. The check was made out to Grassroots Strategies, Sorenson’s consulting company, he said.

But, Sorenson testified that either later that night or the next morning he told Kesari he would not be switching campaigns. He also told several Bachmann campaign staffers about the incident over the next day, and told jurors he was treated “like a leper” by campaign staff on the morning of Dec. 28, 2011.

The former state senator said he “felt secure” when he made his decision to switch later in the day that he’d be paid for his endorsement of Paul.

From Rodgers’ follow-up story on October 16, “Sorenson: Politics was a ‘waste of my life'”:

Kent Sorenson does not speak fondly of his former status as an up-and-comer in Iowa’s conservative political circles.

“It was a waste of my life, and I wish I had not done it,” the former Iowa state senator said in federal court Friday.

Sorenson said he felt the fallout over the payment scandal that ended his political career particularly disappointed his father, who has since died.

“I made a lot of mistakes, and I regret that,” he said during an exchange with a defense attorney over why he chose to testify in the case. “I’m also trying to right wrongs I’ve done to my family.”

From the October 8 Des Moines Register report by Tony Leys, “Branstad’s mental-hospital closures debated in court”

[Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey] Thompson told the judge that the statute [attorney for the plaintiffs Mark] Hedberg cited is “less than clear” about the state’s duty to maintain four mental hospitals. In any case, he said, such a statute can’t trump the governor’s constitutional authority to veto spending bills.

Hedberg raised the possibility that under Thompson’s argument, the governor could theoretically do away with a whole branch of government by vetoing its annual appropriation. For example, Hedberg said, the governor could get rid of the entire court system that way.

The judge asked Thompson whether he believed Hedberg’s hypothetical situation had merit. If the governor was displeased with judges’ decisions, could he use his veto power to shut down the court system? Thompson called it “an extreme example.” But then he said, “Yes, I think that could happen. It’s crazy, but it’s possible.”

Thompson pointed out that if the governor tried to take such a bizarre step, legislators could override his veto with two-thirds of the votes in the House and Senate. They could have done the same thing with his veto of the mental hospital financing, but they didn’t, he said. It shouldn’t be the court’s job to overturn the governor’s veto if legislators couldn’t do it themselves, he added.