Lansing's WILX channel 10 reports:

The U.S. Department of Treasury has placed a federal tax lien on the committee to the tune of $19,535 in unpaid taxes that date back to 2003.

That would have been Granholm's 2002 inaugural committee. Some of the events happened in early 2003.

When we called someone who had been on the committee, Chris DeWitt, he said that was the first the campaign had ever even heard of the lien.

Emphasis mine.  Because the AP reports...:

Granholm campaign spokesman Chris De Witt says the campaign found out about an IRS lien Wednesday. Campaign accountants hope to resolve the situation and are trying to determine if there's a debt, how big it is and how it came about.

Apparently the Gov and the LG discovered they'd been cheating the federal government out of taxes for the first time on Wednesday and on Thursday.  Which is tough, because like your kids' public school guidance counselor tells them, you only get one first time.  Unfortunately, it doesn't even look like DeWitt is practicing "safe spin."  The original WILX report below indicates the IRS sent as many as four warning letters to Granholm and Cherry over the last few years.  In other words, they had their first time a loooooong time ago.  That's right.  They've been around the block a few times.  At least four.  Five counting Wednesday.  Six, I guess, if you believe DeWitt twice.  Floosies.  

And like anyone who makes a habit of those sorts of things, you wind up catching things you wish you hadn't.  Like other liens for other tax violations.  You can call them T.V.'s.  Tax violations.  And I'd forgotten all about that.  My bad.  Should have remembered.  I apologize.  (Let it never be said I can't admit a mistake.)

Yesterday when I posted the news that Granholm and Cherry were caught red handed cheating on their taxes it just plain slipped my mind that this wasn't the first time the Governor has been in trouble for this sort of thing.  But Saul over at MRP and the Detroit Free Press remind us:

Late Thursday, the Michigan Republican Party issued a statement skewering Granholm for "tax evasion," and likening the IRS lien to an $800 lien placed against the Wayne County home of Granholm and her husband in 2006 for failing to file unemployment insurance reports on their nanny.

I guess the point is, we should have seen this one coming.  Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry did.  Yesterday.  Or Wednesday.  Or four other times in years past.  Or all of the above.  They're not sure but they'll lie and tell you whichever one makes you happiest.