The same old same old with Hillary's fund-raising

This weekend the Los Angeles Times did an investigative story about some donors to Hillary's campaign's intensive efforts to tap into the potential of Chinatown and found more questionable donations.

The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.

And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs -- including dishwasher, server or chef -- that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.

Of 74 residents of New York's Chinatown, Flushing, the Bronx or Brooklyn that The Times called or visited, only 24 could be reached for comment.

Many said they gave to Clinton because they were instructed to do so by local association leaders. Some said they wanted help on immigration concerns. And several spoke of the pride they felt by being associated with a powerful figure such as Clinton.

Some are legitimate because they have hopes that Clinton will help pass legislation to allow more immigrants for family reunification and others are donating simply because of the influence of local leaders telling them what to do. But even the Washington Post editorial page is queasy over the additional appearance of impropriety in the Clinton fundraising machine.

This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign's zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment. After the fundraising scandals of President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, the dangers of vacuuming cash from a politically inexperienced immigrant community should have been obvious. But Ms. Clinton's money machine seized on a new source of cash in Chinatown and environs. As the Times reported, a single Chinatown fundraiser in April brought in $380,000. By contrast, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry raised $24,000 from Chinatown in the course of his entire campaign.

As with the warnings it dismissed about the mega-bundles being brought in by fundraiser Norman Hsu, the Clinton campaign saw the red flags here. After the April fundraiser, when some of the donors' stated occupations seemed out of line with the amounts they were giving, the Clinton campaign wrote to contributors asking them to confirm that the money was their own. In the case of seven $1,000 contributions, donors did not respond and their checks were returned, according to the campaign. The campaign says that the others, including one who told the Times that he did not give the money, reaffirmed the legitimacy of their contributions.

It's certainly true, as campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson says, that "Asian-Americans in Chinatown and Flushing have the same right to contribute as every other American." The campaign argues that it did what it could to ensure that contributions were legal. The alternative, the campaign says, would be to prevent those with foreign-sounding names from participating in the political process. But there's another alternative: to strengthen a vetting process that seems geared more toward justifying the acceptance of checks than toward uncovering problems.

Meanwhile, Carl Hiassen looks at the money that some Democrats, including the Clinton campaign, have accepted from members of the law firm of Milberg Weiss that has been indicted for fraud and corruption.

The odor of the criminal probe has been hovering around Milberg Weiss for some time, but apparently many top Democrats don't mind the stink. Twenty-six candidates, including Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida, have accepted campaign checks from donors connected to Milberg Weiss since the 2006 indictments.

Edwards took $4,600 from Lerach this year. Biden collected $2,700. Hillary Clinton grabbed $3,000 from Lerach, and a total of $4,600 from two other former Milberg Weiss lawyers.

She has also accepted $4,600 from the firm's co-founder, Melvyn I. Weiss, who stands charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Surprisingly, a Clinton spokesman told The Times last week that Clinton doesn't intend to return Weiss' money. We'll see.

....In this instance, the mystery is why Clinton and the other Democrats would take a nickel from anyone so prominently linked to such slimy allegations. There are plenty of reputable (and affluent) trial lawyers who've never been indicted for anything.

One possible excuse is that the candidates didn't know about the Milberg Weiss scandal, which would mean they'd been living in a subterranean cave without the benefit of newspapers, TV or the Internet.

Another defense would be that they didn't know about the Milberg Weiss donations, which seems farfetched considering the firm's heavy connections to the party. After all, its lawyers kicked in $500,000 toward the construction of a new headquarters for the Democratic National Committee.

The final possibility -- and the only believable one -- is that the candidates knew all about the indictments and accepted the money anyway, hoping nobody would notice.

It's not illegal for a politician to accept campaign contributions from a defendant in a pending bribery case, or from somebody who's copped a guilty plea.

But it sure looks bad, not to mention hypocritical.

It also becomes extremely hard to position yourself credibly on the side of ethical reform, and to attack your GOP opponents for fostering a ''culture of corruption'' in Washington, D.C.

There's nothing worse than corrupting the justice system for profit, which is what Milberg Weiss is accused of doing. With the trials pending, the Democrats should have treated those campaign checks like an anthrax valentine.

Now it's too late. All that is left to do is plead ignorance and sheepishly give back the money.

Especially if you're Hillary.