Skimble notes this Houston Chronicle story about tax shelters of dubious legality -- a story that cites one beneficiary who really should have known better:

KPMG [devised a tax shelter that] involved several complex offshore transactions that created a loss — on paper — of $30 million, for a fee of $2.4 million.

The Senate subcommittee on investigations recently found that KPMG ignored warnings from its own staff that the shelters were bogus and concocted legal opinions to the contrary.

"I think everybody here knew what they were doing was wrong," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., the subcommittee's chairman.

The committee reported that KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms, collected fees of $124 million from 1997 through 2001 on shelter plans — saving clients $1.4 billion in taxes.

The clients included Maurice Marciano, co-chairman of Guess; Dale Earnhardt, the late race car driver; and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., according to documents filed an IRS lawsuit against KPMG. (emphasis mine)

Frist's investments are in a blind trust. But why is a prominent senator (who's now a member of the Senate Finance Committee) working with a trustee who puts his money in obviously questionable investments?