SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT

The whole drive for campaign finance reform has for the most part been driven by the awful shenanigans of Clinton's 1996 campaign. In that campaign, Chinese sources poured cash into his coffers, which is illegal, and the operatives responsible fled the country in droves, never to return. Foreigners cannot contribute cash to the US political scene, to candidates or parties. That is as it should be.

So now we get "reform" and it has the imprimatur of both parties, the President and even the Supreme Court behind it. It's supposed to clean up the system, but the reality is that it has limited criticism of elected officials close to election time. The first amendment has been hemorraghing ever since.

And CFR apparently didn't even fix the foreign cash problem--groups like MoveOn.org apparently can in fact get money from foreign sources, which they will use in tacit alliances with candidates of their choice. In MoveOn's case, that will be left-wing Democrats. Left wing candidates will be able, apparently, to ally themselves with these groups so long as there's no paper trail, thus allowing foreign sources to effect our political process. It's wrong for left or right wing candidates or any others, by the way. To the extent possible, we should insulate our political process from foreign influence. If we don't, we're essentially selling out our government to the highest world bidder. In other words, expect China to return to American politics in a big way. Do any of you think that will be a good thing?

We could end up in the not too distant future with a President elected largely because he was able to generate cash from sources outside the United States.

Wait--we already had one, in 1996. So now, campaign finance reform has made the whole thing legal.

^&%*! politicians.