That the Republicans will gain seats -- probably a lot of seats -- in next week's midterms is not in dispute. But don't be fooled by their claims of a looming mandate: They really haven't done anything to deserve it. The GOP is simply benefiting from the same rule of politics that boosted Democrats in 2008 and 2006: When voters are angry, they take it out on the party that runs Washington.

In House districts across the country, many voters will head to the polls next week intent on voting for the Republican candidate, even if they don't know a thing about him or her -- a perfect opportunity, in other words, for GOP candidates with checkered backgrounds to slip undetected into the halls of Congress.

We've looked around and identified the 10 Republican House candidates with the most bizarre, unnerving and downright alarming baggage who just might sneak through next week. So when someone expresses bafflement that, say, a guy who allegedly dry-fired a gun outside his estranged wife's bedroom could become a member of Congress -- well, don't say you weren't warned.

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The Army awarded the "sole source" contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university's Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.

Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because "there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.

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Winfield wrote his father, Chris, on Feb. 14 about his concern that two members of his platoon had the previous month murdered "some innocent guy about my age just farming." The correspondence from that day illustrates the young soldier's horror at the murder, and also reveals a shocking indifference about the killing among the other troops in his platoon.

"Well, it was two guys who did it actually killed the dude (sic) but the whole platoon knew about it," Winfield wrote to his father. "Theres (sic) no one in this platoon that agrees this is wrong."

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The report from the Congressional Research Service, sent to Congress with little fanfare on September 20, contends that soon after 9-11, American Muslims "recognized the need to define themselves as distinctly American communities who, like all Americans, desire to help prevent another terrorist attack" and explores how federal, state and local law enforcement organizations responded by tapping into American Muslims’ language skills, contacts, information and cultural insights.

CRS is a branch of the Library of Congress that conducts research on a confidential basis for members of Congress and committees. Its report was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists and released on September 24, but a CRS spokeswoman would not say who in Congress originally requested it.

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A review of her campaign finance records filed with the Federal Elections Commission, interviews with attorneys familiar with campaign finance law, and a review of her own public statements suggests O’Donnell has almost certainly flouted the law. The attorneys agree, but say she is likely to face little penalty from the FEC.

Earlier this month, the Delaware Republican Party filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that O’Donnell accepted illegal contributions from the Tea Party Express. On Monday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed complaints with the FEC and the U.S. attorney in Delaware alleging that O’Donnell had violated the law by using campaign contributions for personal use, paying for gas, bowling, even the rent on her house.

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The complaint includes a signed affidavit from David Keegan, a former campaign aide. Keegan said he became concerned about O'Donnell’s use of campaign money soon after joining her last Senate campaign (against Joe Biden) in June 2008, in part because "she had no other visible source of personal income."

Keegan claims that O’Donnell sold her house to her campaign attorney, Brent Vasher, because she was failing to make her mortgage payments and that O’Donnell then used campaign funds to pay rent back to Vasher. 

An expense report for Friends of Christine O’Donnell from early last year, which is available on CREW’s website, does include a payment of $750 to Vasher for an "expense reimbursement."

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The media covered Heath’s disinterment Wednesday closely, including the conclusion that Heath was buried correctly. But that's far from the whole story.

"This thing has been portrayed as some big success story," Warner told Salon during a telephone interview Thursday as he drove back to Ohio. "It was a disaster. It was a desecration of honor."

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In 2009, the EEOC, which enforces federal employment discrimination laws, received 1,490 complaints from Muslims, the fifth straight year that the number of complaints rose. The trend could reflect a rise in Islamophobia in the workplace or an increased willingness on the part of Muslims to report discrimination -- or both.

"I am not the least bit surprised," Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told Salon. "There has been an increase in employment discrimination complaints. The data just reaffirms what we see. Employment discrimination is a priority issue, and the sad reality is that not all cases of employment discrimination are reported."

The increase in complaints is particularly jarring when you consider that, after spiking in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, employment discrimination claims by Muslims actually declined significantly. In 2000, the last full year before 9/11, the EEOC received 557 allegations involving Muslims, a number that soared to 1,463 in 2002, the first full year after 9/11. Complaints then declined significantly, plummeting to just 697 in 2004 -- only to begin rising again in 2005. The 2009 total is the highest yet.

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“I am here because of America,” Ann Gardenhour told me, adding that the purpose of the rally was to “remember America.”

A relatively dense and overwhelmingly white crowd stretched from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial out past the Washington Monument. Thousands strained to hear Beck and his most prominent guest, Sarah Palin, because they couldn’t get in range of the massive TV screens and speakers surrounding the Reflecting Pool. A friend of mine walked the whole stretch of the rally and counted 27 African-Americans -- three of them were onstage giving speeches. I could count the number I saw on my fingers.

Members of the crowd seemed genuinely enthusiastic, but when I talked to them, they uniformly resorted to clichés to explain what the rally was about.

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The flagging support among veterans results from a combination of unforced errors by the White House in basic constituency relations, coupled with rising frustration that the Obama administration is not aggressive enough in tackling wartime crises that continue to escalate, like suicides in the military. The damage is serious enough that it threatens to lurk as a political liability for Obama in 2012, since disgruntled surrogates might refuse to help the next time around.

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Investigators mostly discovered a convoluted, incomplete and sometimes conspicuously absent paper trail to account for the money -- both at the cemetery and in the files of Army contracting officials who oversee the cemetery.

The Army launched this stand-alone financial investigation in June as the yearlong Arlington scandal exposed by Salon rapidly became more public. Salon reported that many at Arlington had tried to blow the whistle on questionable spending to computerize burial records, under the supervision of deputy superintendent Thurman Higginbotham, with contracts going to some of the same people more than once, even after they failed to produce a product. After spending somewhere between $5 million and $20 million, Salon reported, the cemetery's years-long effort to computerize its records wasn't completed.

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At various times, Metzler tried to say he was unaware of the issues at the cemetery, which include graves with no headstones, unknown remains in graves, urns of cremated remains tossed out in the landfill, and the apparent waste of millions in public funds that were designated to address the problems. (Salon documented these issues and others in a year-long investigative series.) Metzler also claimed that, as he became aware of problems, he fixed them -- but Sen. Claire McCaskill, who chaired the panel, would have none of that.

"You did know about it and you did nothing," she said. Then she turned to Higginbotham: "And you knew about it, Mr. Higginbotham, and you did nothing."

Metzler went on to blame an inadequate budget -- which senators quickly pointed had increased dramatically during Metzler’s tenure -- and a busy burial schedule. But again, McCaskill was unsatisfied.

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The Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, chaired by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is conducting an investigation into the burial and contracting scandal at Arlington first uncovered in a year of reports in Salon. A July 27 memo to subcommittee staff credits Salon with exposing the problems now being investigated. The memo also warns that "The problems with graves at Arlington may be far more extensive than previously acknowledged. The Subcommittee has obtained information suggesting that 4,900 to 6,600 graves may be unmarked, improperly marked, or mislabeled on the Cemetery’s maps.”

The memorandum says that estimate is based on a review of more than 5,300 pages of Army documents, material from whistle-blowers, and interviews with current and former government officials.

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The Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, chaired by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has served subpoenas to former cemetery Superintendent Jack Metzler and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham. Both men had been previously invited to appear at a subcommittee hearing on the scandal set for this Thursday, according to McCaskill’s spokeswoman, Maria Speiser.

McCaskill is looking into the squandering of millions of dollars on contractors who were supposed to computerize the cemetery’s paper burial records, still in use today. The confusion of paper at the cemetery has led to an unknown, but potentially massive number of burial mistakes –- missing headstones, the discovery of unknown remains, and the mistaken disposal of urns -- like those chronicled by Salon in a yearlong investigation.

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The former budget officer, Rory Smith, tried repeatedly to blow the whistle on the cemetery's budget irregularities, as top officials began to squander millions in taxpayer dollars, ostensibly to computerize burial records and prevent the interment mistakes documented by Salon over the last year. As a result of his attempts to communicate his concerns to Army higher-ups, Smith was reprimanded and suspended for insubordination. A 20-year cemetery staffer, Smith later joined a long roster of cemetery workers who quit in disgust or were fired after reporting problems to cemetery and Army officials.

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The military police car that had pulled him over idled on the shoulder a safe distance behind him. The midday traffic stopped. Bagosy stood for a moment on the warm pavement under a cloudless May sky. Then he raised the pistol, pointed it to the right side of his throat just below his jaw, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet sliced through his jugular vein, traveled through his skull and exited near the top left side of his head. He crumpled down in the road. Even if the bullet had failed to rip through his brain, shooting through the jugular was solid insurance. He would have bled out in minutes anyway.

Bagosy, 25, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had become another statistic in the war-fatigued military and its steadily escalating suicide rate. Last year, 52 Marines committed suicide. The suicide rate among Marines has doubled since 2005, and the Corps has the highest suicide rate in the military. The circumstances of Bagosy's death, however, provide a particularly poignant case study in what many critics say is the military's inadequate response to that suicide crisis.

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On June 25, 2008, Gina Gray, who was then Arlington's spokeswoman, hand-delivered to Rowe a binder of materials that detailed "allegations of failure to follow Army regulations, contract fraud, and budget mismanagement" at the cemetery. Gray's lengthy, face-to-face meeting with Rowe is documented in a June 29, 2010, report on Gray by the Defense Department inspector general that was obtained by Salon.

At the time, Rowe was the commander of the Military District of Washington, one of the main Army offices with responsibility for overseeing what goes on at Arlington.

The revelation of Gray's warning to Rowe appears to conflict with testimony by Army Secretary John McHugh before the House Armed Services Committee last week. McHugh pinned blame for the scandal solely on the two top civilians at the cemetery, Superintendent Jack Metzler and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham. He claimed that Army officials who oversee the cemetery were unaware of the problems, describing Arlington as "somewhat of a satellite sitting off by itself."

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Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee, McHugh found himself in the curious position of admitting that for years the cemetery has lost track of service members’ remains and funneled millions of dollars to shady contractors who produced nothing in return, all without the knowledge of Army officials. He blamed "a real disconnect between the cemetery operations and a regular oversight authority" and said, "Somebody should have said something to someone. Obviously, that did not occur.” Even though two Army offices oversee the cemetery, McHugh described Arlington as “somewhat of a satellite sitting off by itself.”

The Army secretary did say that there is “no excuse” for a still-unknown number of burial mix-ups involving the 330,000 graves at Arlington.

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This means that despite the rules, an influential general might get buried in a shady grove on a hill overlooking Washington in a plot that is easily accessible to visiting family, while a lowly private ends up in some back corner of the cemetery’s sprawling grounds.

Officials familiar with Arlington operations detailed the practice for Salon and, in response to questions, Army officials have now confirmed it. When asked on Tuesday if this seemed to violate the law, Army spokesman Gary Tallman responded, "Yes, it would."

This revelation represents a new front in the broadening scandal at Arlington and comes on the eve of a House Armed Services Committee hearing about the matter set for Wednesday. Already, the Army has confirmed hundreds of potential burial errors after examining only a small fraction of the 330,000 graves at the cemetery. The Army also says that the cemetery has funneled millions to contractors close to top managers there, but got little or nothing in return.

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"If you look at Iraq, Petraeus and [former Iraq Ambassador Ryan] Crocker were joined at the hip and closely coordinated State Department and military activities," said Conrad Crane, the leading author of what has become the counterinsurgency bible. "From the reports, it appears that the close cooperation in Afghanistan was not there."

Crane said that the authors of the counterinsurgency manual agreed on the fundamental importance of inter-agency and international coordination and cooperation. "When we did the counterinsurgency doctrine, we moved unity of effort up to the second chapter to emphasize how important that is," he explained. Crane describes the lessons in that chapter, "Unity of Effort: Integrating Civilian and Military Activities," as vital.

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