Rachel Maddow demonstrates 'objective journalism." Being Defazio's attack dog isn't really a proper journalistic role. She could have had Defazio or a representative on with Art Robinson and let that person make charges and let Robinson answer them, and vice versa. Instead she interviewed Defazio earlier in what Breitbart.tv describes as "a softball love-fest." Breitbart isn't unbiased either, but it shows the interview, and it's clear that she is sympathetic to him and is playing up the anonymity of whoever is running ads against him. She lets him make a lot of charges about this group without challenge; laughs at his jokes, etc. He names Koch Industries and Exxon with no proof and basically asks no tough questions.

After watching both "interviews" it's clear that in interviewing Robinson she trotted out all of Defazio's attack points and makes them like a prosecutor. With Defazio, none of the complaints about him were mentioned. I still don't know what they are, but I imagine they're the same as those made against other Dems who helped pass our trillion dollar deficits. None of that was addressed. Art Robinson is a PhD in physics who disputes global warming theory, which Maddow treats as heresy, and in 1995 wrote that homosexual behavior was linked to the spread of AIDS, which belief he says has been altered in the light of subsequent research. What that has to do with voting for Obamacare, TARP and the Stimulus That Wasn't, or the economy and high unemployment, I don't know, but I do know that those are the most relevant issues in this election, and she avoided them altogether.

In her attempt to smear Robinson to his face, she kept claiming she was just "trying to get to know him better," but a lot of her questions were about the anonymous group running ads against Defazio in his district. she didn't have any other excuse for her inquisitorial attacks. Robinson was having none of it and turned her "questions" back on her, called them lies and refused to let her play her game.

In 2004, 2006 and 2008, the Dems benefited from copious attack ads funded by groups like MoveOn.org and other groups funded by millionaires and billionaires. The story is detailed by Byron York in his book, The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. And it's pretty clear that the Democrats pioneered this tactic of using private groups to run their political ads as a way around the campaign finance laws, as they used those laws to limit Republican spending. It was a successful strategy, but it won't continue to be, because Republicans are doing the same thing now and when the Dems complain, they're only calling attention to their own practices of accepting unvetted funds, possibly from foreign donors and large donors in multiple sub-$200 gifts under fictitious names.

Americans need to have a beefed up way of tracking these things and publicizing them, as well as sending those who violate them to jail. Campaigns are too big, long and expensive to reverse elections, but we know enough by now about the ways people use to skirt or violate the laws and we need to give someone the power to make sure they don't help those who use them.