Since 1983, long-bearded Texas rockers ZZ Top have been singing that "every girl crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man."

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is singing a different tune: If you want to be a sharp-dressed candidate, you better pay for the threads yourself.

The FEC, in a ruling Thursday, determined that four congressional candidates "appear to have violated" a federal election rule barring the use of campaign funds to purchase clothing. But because all of the candidates had reimbursed their campaign treasuries for the expenditures, the cases were closed without further action taken.

The ruling came in response to a complaint filed last December by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a political watchdog group.

Here's the latest example of the axiom that politicians need to keep their friends close and their enemies closer:

For the second time in five days, a Republican hopeful for a major 2010 Senate race had to scramble to deflate a rumor that he is dropping out.

The latest incident, which erupted Wednesday, put Florida's Marco Rubio into damage control mode. National Journal's CongressDaily in Washington, D.C., wrote that Rubio appeared to be preparing to quit the 2010 Republican Senate primary contest, in which he is the leading conservative opponent to front-running centrist Gov. Charlie Crist.

Judy Chu, the California Democrat who won a House seat in a Los Angeles-area special election Tuesday, has had a long and varied career in local and state politics.

But she also has an undergraduate degree in mathematics, earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and taught psychology at the community college level for 20 years.

Hmmm..... a psychologist who also knows how to add AND subtract.

Five-term Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, the leading 2010 Senate candidate prospect for Illinois' Republicans, avoided one big hurdle with the withdrawal of a potentially strong challenger for Feburary's GOP primary.

But even with Monday's decision by state GOP Chairman Andy McKenna to step aside, it may be a while before it's clear whether Kirk will be able to completely avoid serious primary competition -- from a candidate backed by conservatives who are not thrilled with Kirk's record as one of the more centrist Republicans in the House.

The Senate contest in Illinois, which has the earliest 2010 primary of any state, will in fact be an indicator of how "pragmatic" the party's conservative base is willing to be in an effort to regain some of the massive amount of ground the party lost in the past two election cycles -- particularly in states such as Illinois, that have been trending strongly Democratic.

Serving out the full term as governor to which you were elected and sworn into under your state's constitution used to be known as responsibility to the citizens who elected you.

But leave it to Sarah Palin to redefine serving out your full term as "going with the flow."

In fact, Palin's exact words - when she made her startling announcement on Friday that she is quitting just two and a half years into her four-year term - were, "Only dead fish go with the flow." This was wisdom that Palin said she'd acquired during the days she and her husband spent in commercial fishing up there in Alaska.