FEC pay for play

The Bush White House will leave no sector of the federal government under utilized as a carrot or stick for its political agenda. Case in point, the FEC, usually a bastion of party hacks, who collectively agree to let the big parties do whatever they want within reason. But now, Bush has appointed a replacement whose wife just testified before Fitzgerald's Grand Jury on the Plame Affair. How much can we really trust her testimony?

Let's hear from anti-campaign finance reform ex-FEC member (appointed by Clinton) Bradley Smith:

"Lenhard’s name has been in play – indeed, more than in play, the presumptive nominee - for two and a half years, not one. The first scare release was issued back in the summer of 2003.

Of course, the plot could be more devilish than we think. Clearly Lenhard was offered the opportunity to serve on the FEC, knowing that his wife would become a player in the Rove scandal, and then was left hanging by the White House for two years while they made sure that his wife lived up to her end of the bargain.

Will the corruption never cease?"

The end line of this line of logic is that Bush will pardon lots of people say January 2009 and resign a tad early to have Cheney pardon him too.