JOHN EDWARDS' IMMUNITY

Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), presidential candidate and champeen fund-raiser, is making no head-way as a presidential candidate (his polling numbers are stuck) and is facing investigations over how his funds are raised (low salaried employees and life-long Republicans writing him checks for $2,000 because their plaintiff lawyer bosses are telling them to). Edwards learned early the importance of fund-raising during his Senate campaign when he swore he would not take PAC money and ended up having to fund his campaign out of his personal fortune. So, for his presidential run, he's taking PAC money (he even has his own PAC) and making sure that other people are writing checks. But now this scandal is about to ruin his immunity from allegations that he's just another ambulance chaser.

Although Edwards has been a personal injury lawyer for years, sharing in the huge bounties he receives for suing everyone under the sun when someone gets hurt (regardless of fault, of course), he's been immune to political attacks because of a high profile case represented a little girl whose intestines were sucked out by a drain in a baby pool. He could always point to that family with tears in his eyes and say how proud he is to have helped make her life a little better by making the manufacturer of a drain cover pay for not having a proper warning on the cover.

But now, he's making his trial lawyer status a liability again. Not because of the way he has operated (after all, the little girl!), but because of his associates. While Edwards had been immune from being infected by the generally poor reputation of his industry, he is now wallowing in the mud of the trial lawyers bar, proving by his fundraising that he is the candidate of those smarmy lawyers with the TV ads, the candidate of the ethically challenged shysters who will break the law to see one of their own get elected. And now Edwards, once the champion of the little injured girl, has become one of them.

The immunity is gone. If he actually gains in the polls, you can be sure that Kerry, Dean and Lieberman will exploit these trial lawyer connections.