Mark Kirk's Week in the Hot Seat: A Timeline

Mark Kirk's horrible, terrible, no-good very bad week keeps getting worse.

Everything was sunny for Kirk, the Republican candidate for Barack Obama's Senate seat in Illinois, as he headed into Memorial Day Weekend. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., a Democrat, was reportedly about to back his campaign, and he had won extra credit with Jewish groups by supporting a bill to prohibit federal funding for companies in violation of the Iran Sanctions Act.

But by the end of the week, storm clouds were gathering. And by now, of course, his campaign is swept up in a veritable perfect storm of unfavorable headlines. Here's a recap of how it all went down.

Thursday, May 27: Steve Benen, a blogger for the Washington Monthly, mentions that Kirk had misrepresented his military service by claiming to be "the only member of Congress to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom." It turns out that while Kirk did serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom, he wasn't actually in the conflict, a semantic detail that has cost others (see Blumenthal, Richard) a headache or two. But initially, no other outlets follow-up on Benen's post.

Saturday, May 29: The Washington Post reports that Commander Kirk did not in fact win the U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year Award in 1999 as he had claimed. Kirk is forced to admit on his blog that he had made a mistake.

Tuesday, June 1: Kirk's Operation Iraqi Freedom gaffe blossoms into a full-blown scandal as the media starts taking a closer look at his resume in light of Saturday's Post piece. Talking Points Memo notes that Kirk's misdirection on his service go back years, and were first picked up in 2005 by Terry Welch on the blog NitPicker.