I woke up this morning to find about 100 pieces of comment spam waiting for my review. If you’re not familiar with this stuff, the current versions are disguised as innocuous or mildly positive messages. “Great blog, don’t know why I didn’t find it earlier. I’ll be back often,” or something along those lines. But the email address given always includes the poison pill linking back to a product of some kind, or unknown website. I go through and delete them, blacklist the repeating IP addresses, and wish there were some easier way….Anyway, that’s a long explanation for why your comments often are held until I have a chance to separate them from the constant barrage of spam.

Now…if you haven’t been paying attention, the government’s prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards for campaign law violations stemming from payments made by personal friends to Edwards’ girlfriend, allegedly in an illegal attempt to aid the campaign by keeping their affair secret.

But the case has taken an interesting turn with the entry of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The group sought and won the right to submit an amicus brief in support of Edwards, over the objections of prosecutors.

The CREW brief is available here. The motion seeking permission to file the amicus brief can be found here.

According to CREW’s press release:

CREW, which generally supports the Department of Justice (DOJ) against politicians charged with corruption, took the unusual step on filing on the side of Sen. Edwards because of the unique nature of the case. There have been no previous prosecutions or Federal Election Commission (FEC) enforcement actions based on remotely similar facts.

Federal law prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal use, such as rent and vacations. In recent years, the FEC has held spending campaign funds on clothing and personal trainers violates this ban. Therefore, under current law, campaign funds could not legally be spent on the personal expenses of a candidate’s mistress. DOJ is arguing any expenditure that even peripherally benefits a candidate would be a legitimate campaign expense. Such an interpretation of the law would effectively allow candidates to use campaign funds for nearly anything.

“Here, the government argues Ms. Mellon and Mr. Baron paid Ms. Hunter’s expenses to allow Sen. Edwards to maintain his image as a “family man” by hiding his affair from the American public,” said Ms. Sloan. “So under this theory, paying the expenses of the mistress of a known philanderer wouldn’t be a campaign contribution, while covering such costs for the girlfriend of someone who presents himself as a loyal husband is. That can’t be right.”

Muddying the waters further are allegations the prosecution is political. The prosecutor who pushed the case, a Republican, resigned immediately after the Edwards indictment to run for Congress.