Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, exiting courthouse after being found guilty of corruption charges.

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, exiting courthouse after being found guilty of corruption charges.

So how shocked are you that the nation's most corrupt states also happen to be some of the GOP's most reliable states?

An academic study of public corruption from 1976 to 2008 found that Mississippi was the nation's most corrupt state, followed by Louisiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Alaska, South Dakota, Kentucky, Florida, Oklahoma, New York, Ohio, North Dakota, and South Carolina.

Any state more corrupt than Illinois—who's seen four of its last seven governors go to prison—is on a whole other level of corrupt. So it figures it would be three southern Republican strongholds.

The flip side should be no surprise, either, with Oregon kicking off the list of least corrupt states, followed by Washington, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Vermont, Utah, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Kansas.

Maybe the reason Republicans distrust government is because they're the ones (typically) pillaging the government?