(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

When your state circles the drain in terms of education funding (46th in the nation, as of the most recent government reports), maybe this isn't the best use of state funds:

Mississippi taxpayers forked over more than $18,602 for Gov. Haley Barbour's trip to Las Vegas for a "project meeting" last March - a trip in which he hobnobbed with potential donors and powerplayers. The state also paid for Barbour's bodyguards' to stay in $858-a-night hotel rooms during a trip to New York last June.



The expenses were made public by the Clarion-Ledger, via public records requests. The newspaper also found that the total dollar amount the state forked out for Barbour's travel was well over a quarter-million dollars, and that he was out of the state for 175 days last year.

Barbour's wanderlust is understandable. After all, when you are laying the groundwork for a Presidential bid, you gotta go where the power players are. Barbour's flacks swear that state business was the preeminent cause for all that out-of-state travel, but one struggles to recall Ronnie Musgrove or Kirk Fordice dancing across the USA in quite the same manner.

The release of these records raises a few obvious questions. For example, why does the Governor of Mississippi, who might be recognizable to 3% of the public, needs bodyguards in New York? And, if he simply must have them, why do they need to be housed in hotel rooms that are more expensive than the MONTHLY expense for an apartment in Jackson, Mississippi?

But the biggest question, as always, why does anyone take the GOP seriously when they bloviate about belt-tightening, when it is evident that their own belts, and those of their cronies, are always exempted from such "sacrifice"?