…that John McCain is blatantly breaking the law?

Here’s the deal. There’s a law that covers federal financing of Presidential campaigns. You know that little checkbox on your tax return? Where you can donate money to the fund? Well, if a candidate accepts that money, they have certain restrictions and limits on how much they’re allowed to raise and spend.

John McCain is in violation of that law. He accepted the federal money as collateral for a loan; that’s the same (according to the law) as accepting the money. That means he is limited in how much money he can raise, and spend, in the primary election- and he’s already gone over that limit.

Yet he continues to raise and spend money, which is clearly a violation of the law.

McCain is trying to claim that he “withdrew” from the federal program. That’s what Howard Dean did when he was running, so that makes it okay (according to McCain). The problem is that Dean hadn’t actually used any money from the program, and Dean asked for- and received- permission to withdraw from the program.

McCain asked the FEC for permission, and was denied, because he’d already used some of the money.

Now what really pisses me off about this is two things. First, McCain used to stake out positions against exactly this kind of issue with money in politics, so it’s yet another example of how he’s thrown aside his former convictions because they were in the way of becoming President.

But second, and more importantly, is that he’s plainly in violation of the law… but you don’t see ANYTHING about it on the mainstream media reports, do you? Instead, we get speculation about whether or not Obama’s minister has said stupid stuff in the past.

In other words, the media is yammering on about stuff around someone other than (but connected to) a candidate while IGNORING an actual news story about a candidate!

What’s more news? That someone a candidate knows might be vaguely racist, or that another candidate is actually breaking the law on a nearly daily basis?

And conservatives whine about the media being unfair. Puh-leeeze.