Super PAC timing raises questions

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76839.html

Call it coordination or call it coincidence, but it’s clear there’s no robust mechanism, and little government appetite, to dissuade moneyed campaigns and super PACs from dancing near or around rules governing concerted activity and messaging which, strictly speaking, isn’t legal.

That’s largely because the high bar for proving a campaign or super PAC violated established law. And the Federal Election Commission has of late internally disagreed on what actually constitutes coordination between a federal campaign and political committees making independent expenditures that support them.

Punishments, rare as they are, would almost certainly come in the form of fines that could effectively be paid out of a moneyed campaign’s petty cash drawer and come months, even years after an alleged infraction.