It started as an accusation made without any evidence by the Center for American Progress and quickly made its way through the mainstream media and quickly to the very lips of the President himself: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was using money collected from foreign dues-paying members for electioneering.

“Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations,” Mr. Obama said. “So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections.”

On Saturday, as if to prove what thin gruel this allegation was, The New York Times debunked it.

But a closer examination shows that there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.

For those of you who care to hearken back to the 2008 campaign, there’s something especially exasperating about President Barack Obama complaining about foreign monies being used to influence American elections.

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

Is anyone really surprised that this wasn’t investigated after the election? It was clear then that Obama was bringing in illegal monies to his campaign; the only question was just how much money.