Now that an Obama-appointed Federal prosecutor has reopened the issue of illegal campaign fundraising by branding a conservative author with a felony record, Congress needs to revisit the president’s own fundraising practices to ensure that campaign finance laws that apply to some, apply to all.
In Shakespeare’s King Henry V, the king must decide the fate of a drunken soldier who berated him in public: lèse-majesté, a crime technically punishable by death. Henry decides to pardon him despite the sanctimonious pleas of three traitors to execute him, or at least punish him severely. The King warns and counsels them,
If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye
When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d and digested,
Appear before us?
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, an Obama appointee, should have pondered King Henry’s advice before he demanded jail time for conservative author Dinesh D’Souza. Campaign finance laws that do not apply to everybody should apply to nobody, while laws that apply to some must apply to all. D’Souza’s felony conviction makes it necessary to bring up Barack Obama’s own participation in equally illegal fundraising practices during his 2007 and 2008 campaigns.
“Obama’s Illegal Lottery” shows that the Obama campaign raised money through interstate gambling, which must have all three of the following characteristics to be illegal:
1: Payment of consideration (something of value)
2: An element of chance
3: A prize
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