Harold Ford, Jr. is on a bit of a streak at the moment, and it's not the favorable kind. His press-conference crashing stunt last week seems to have backfired. He's also now involved in a war of words with Steve Cohen, the Democrat running to replace him in TN-9, where Ford, Jr.'s brother lost out in the primary but is running as an Independent. And there's the new Mason-Dixon poll I mentioned earlier showing that Bob Corker has edged back into the lead. But there's more.

In the Tennessean today, questions about Ford's presence at a Playboy party at the 2005 Superbowl continue to linger, in part because the Ford campaign has done a truly miserable job of dealing with the issue.

And yesterday Bob Corker was on the trail with Rudy Giuliani pounding Ford over his refusal to vote in favor of a non-binding resolution in the House condemning President Clinton's pardon of 16 members of the Puerto Rican terrorist organization FALN back in 1999. Instead of voting for or against the resolution, Ford voted "present." The resolution passed in the House by a vote of 311 to 41 with 72 present. A similar measure passed the Senate by a vote of 95-2.

The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports:

According to Michael Powell, Ford's senior adviser, Ford said publicly at the time that he would not have pardoned the individuals, but "the measure was brought to the floor in a partisan attempt to embarrass the president. It was a nonbinding resolution."

Maybe so, but this is the kind of issue that makes a fairly cut-and-dried impression on voters, and it's probably a vote that Ford wishes he could have back.