"So its fair to treat campaign donations as personal income and use it for personal vacations, new cars, etc? Campaign donations are tax deductible to those that wrote the checks."
Campaign donations are NOT deductible for those who make the donations. For some strange reason, however, politicians actually have to pay many of the people who work for their capaigns; even Hillary does. Delay choe to make some of those payments to relatives, who then had to report and pay income taxes on the money they received. This is a perfectly normal, ethical transaction, unless it can be proved some kind of tax evasion was involved. The weakness of the whole case against Delay shows in the fact that there aren't any charges that this consitiuted tax evasion or illegal, improper tax free diversion of campaign funds. Delay has not treated his campaign donations as personal income.
Good thinking!!!