Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybody’s pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry


There's a lot of back and forth going on over whether or not 527 groups should be eliminated:

Mathew at Centerfield has complained loudly that 527s are bad for the political process.

RedState is not surprisingly gleefully omitting the fact that Bush has benefitted from 527s and was actively for them when they helped him win Florida in 2000. Apparently to them it's only bad to these guys when Bush isn't benefitting at the moment.

WorldNetDaily breathlessly reports that the Democratic 527s have vastly outraised and outmobilized their GOP counterparts. (Gee...no wonder Bush is so anxious to get rid of them).

Jesse over at Pandagon slams Bush for initially taking advantage of 527s, signing the campaign finance law and then complaining because he thought he'd banned them.

Ted from Crooked Timber asks why it's suddenly not okay with the Bush campaign for private groups to pool together and raise money for political gain?

And Matthew Yglesias mocks Bush and MClellan for what he sees as the Campaign/Administration giving no thought whatsoever to their stated position before trotting themselves before the cameras to offer it.

I've been considering the thoughts on this issue both from Bush's supporters and his detractors. I think there are some valid concerns about the 527s in terms of the media reporting everything these groups say as the unvarnished truth. I thought it was the media's job to sift through stories and check out allegations before they reported them. Color me naive.

This seems to boil down, however, to the media not doing their job. The 527s aren't necessarily a pox on our political process, especially under a fourth estate willing to step up and monitor them.

Howard Kurtz might actually have the best take on these groups:

I don't agree that all 527s should be condemned. What they're doing is perfectly legal, and an outgrowth of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. They're also a little less shadowy than they used to be, thanks to disclosure requirements. Why should any group -- environmentalists, unions, corporations, swift boat veterans -- be prevented from buying air time to get their point of view across?

This is a very sensible line of reasoning from my view. But I think more needs to happen. Private groups such as factcheck.org and spinsanity.org provide some oversight of these groups. They tend to be nonpartisan and go out of their way to research and study the ads from 527s. They report if a group is lying or not and support their conclusions with the research they do. You know, kind of like the mainstream media is supposed to do.....