Money paid to spouses is one of the primary ways that campaign finance laws are skirted, and the natural question should be, “is this money being paid because of someone’s special abilities, or is it just a pass-through to avoid detection by the FEC?” It’s a question that has legitimately been asked about members of both parties, including John Doolittle, Evan Bayh, Tom DeLay, Chris Dodd, and Tom Daschle. If Senator Lieberman would like to talk about the “merits,” he should explain what his wife has done to merit $328,000 in speaking fees in one year rather than trying to obscure the issue with his theatrical brand of “outrage.”

Cindy McCain claims that her recent trip to South East Asia was a humanitarian trip, not a campaign activity. Yet, suspicious expenses have cropped up in the McCain Campaign’s financial disclosures, Narco News discovered. Disbursements in early July include $7,335.42 to Air Singapore, and $1418.91 the Raffles hotel in Singapore.

Not that they’ll do anything about it, most likely.

It’s good to be the “straight-talker”:

A group that supports public financing of campaigns filed a federal complaint against John McCain’s presidential campaign Monday, calling for an investigation into two financial transactions involving two top McCain aides.

The Federal Election Commission complaint by Campaign Money Watch, a group that has received financing from Democratic leaning donors, questions payments from former finance chair Tom Loeffler to