The Clintons get to keep on raising foreign money

The Wall Street Journal wrote over a week ago that the Clintons were getting a sweetheart deal from the Obama administration, which allows them to keep on fund-raising from interested parties abroad:

When Henry Kissinger was invited merely to co-chair the 9/11 Commission, the political left went bonkers about his foreign clients. In this case we have a Secretary of State nominee whose husband may have raised more than $60 million from various Middle East grandees, and Washington reacts with a yawn. Maybe someone will even ask about it at her nomination hearing today.

A Senator should ask, because this has the potential to complicate life for the new President. All the more so because under terms of his agreement with Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton will be able to keep raising foreign cash as long as the donors send the checks to a Clinton entity other than the “Clinton Global Initiative.” Instead of being immediately disclosed, future donations will only be made public once a year and the exact amounts and dates of previous donations will never be made public.

While Mr. Clinton will submit some donations from foreign governments to Administration scrutiny, he need only do so if the donations are new or are of a significantly larger magnitude from a previous donation. In other words, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman can keep giving millions without U.S. government review even while Mrs. Clinton is America’s chief diplomat. These disclosure limitations suggest that the Clintons seriously out-negotiated Team Obama. We hope the President-elect does better with Iran.

That looks really, really bad. Is there any historical precedent for it?

On a side note, this sort of thing will bring conservative media back to life. It’ll be good to see once great outlets get back to reporting important but little-known instances of bad government instead of defending well-known instances of poor judgment. Remarkable how quickly it happens.