Bush crime syndicate: bringing back Nixonian values

Did I just miss this in the hubbub of the weekend just past? Or was it just underreported?

In the last two weeks, two sources, one of them inside of the Justice Department, have told me that a scheme was hatched in the upper echelons of the Bush Administration shortly after it took office in 2001 or early in 2002. The project identified John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as likely Democratic challengers to President Bush, and identified prominent trial lawyers around the United States as the likely financial vehicle for Edward’s [sic] rise. It directed that their campaign finance records be fly-specked, and that offenses not be treated as administrative matters but rather as serious criminal offenses.

The scheme contemplated among other things that raids be staged on the law offices involved, and that the records seized not be limited to campaign finance—there was an acute interest in all politically oriented documents, in order to seize valuable intelligence on strategic planning from the enemy camp.

[...]

The key factor here is that all the cases involve campaign finance violations which are of a rather mundane nature. And in each case the FEC violations have been hyped into something quite preposterous. The political angle, I am told, is simple: make trial attorney’s money radioactive. Dry up the source. Take out a key element of the Democrats’ campaign finance strategy.

If true, this is far more than just troubling. It signals a shocking, albeit not entirely unexpected (given the Bush crime syndicate's record), disregard for the law, and a criminal conspiracy that stretches all the way to the inner sanctum of the White House.

The saddest part of this is that nowhere are there Congressional leaders like those who took the ball and ran with it 35 years ago during Watergate. Once again, this is likely to be yet another one of those Bush crime syndicate scandals revealed by enterprising investigative reporters and promptly ignored or forgotten by the people who could prosecute them, namely, Congress.

Where are the special prosecutors? Where are the blaring headlines and leads on every news show in the nation?

Oh, yeah ... IOKIYAR. Never mind.

UPDATE (6:00 pm 9/24/07): I'd read the articles about prominent Michigan Democrat and former gubernatorial candidate Geoffrey Fieger, a trial lawyer himself, facing charges for alleged illegal contributions to the Edwards campaign, but I didn't tie it to the alleged DOJ activity ... until now.

Wow. Just. Wow.

(h/t Eschaton commenter ThinlyVeiled)