Going Down the Road

How quickly the joy fades. Only weeks ago, reformers were shouting hosannas because Washington had finally passed the McCain-Feingold bill, banning that nasty stuff called "soft money"--the unlimited sums of virulently corrupting campaign donations that corporations and others make in order to buy government favors.

But even as the joyous trill of the hosannas reverberated across the land, the fine-print loopholers were scrambling to scuttle the ban. And lo, along came the scurrilous, anti-reform members of the Federal Election Commission to do the dirty deed. In a series of perverse decisions, the six commissioners have ruled that--hocus pocus!--while national parties cannot take soft money, other entities set up by the national parties can. In other words, the party money-grubbers are banned from putting these corrupting funds in their front pockets, but they can sew huge, new, FEC-approved back pockets into their organizational trousers and fill them with all the soft money they can grab. As Lily Tomlin has noted, "No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up."

Tarheels Show the Way

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