Say Anything Blog

Despite plenty of evidence of illegal and fraudulent fund raising activities by the Obama campaign - much of which implicates Obama campaign officials with being complicit with it - the Federal Election Committee apparently isn’t going to do an audit.

But don’t worry folks.  The McCain campaign will be undergoing a full audit that will, potentially, take years and cost millions.

Like one of Obama’s friends once said: “Guilty as sin, free as a bird, it’s a great country.”

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

I fail to see where the volume of Obama’s contributions are significant.  If he took money illegally then he took money illegally.  End of discussion.  And we know the Obama campaign took some money illegally.  We know the Obama campaign disabled online security measures to allow fraudulent contributions to flow into his campaign.  This should be investigated, and the findings should be made public.

As for partisanship keeping Obama from having to face scrutiny and transparency, that’s a real shame.  And Democrats, who are undoubtedly the ones blocking this from happening even as they pay lip service to things like “open, honest and transparent government,” should be held accountable for it.