Many politicos and folks that follow politics have been watching the trial of former Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards in North Carolina.

Edwards’ once-promising career as a popular U.S. Senator and vice presidential nominee have been irrevocably shattered with the exposure of the sordid manner in which he treated his now deceased wife, Elizabeth Edwards, the mother of most of his children.

I doubt that Edwards would get much of an approval rating for anything, whether it be public office or husband of the year. However, he should not be prosecuted for what he stands indicted for in this trial.
 
The federal charges against Edwards cross a threshold that protects free speech, alleging the candidate and those who legally donated to his campaign have violated election laws in a criminal manner.

When we, as Americans, allow prosecutors with unlimited prosecutorial discretion to determine how voluntary campaign contributions are collected and dispensed, liberty and freedom will be cast aside and the government will begin to regulate all free speech, including political free speech.

There’s a growing trend to criminalize politics at all levels.  The Edwards trial is only one of many high-profile criminal cases that put the full weight of the United States Government against a political or elected official.

The prosecutorial misconduct in the trial against former Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens is another shocking example of misuse of the criminal prosecutorial desecration to destroy an individual politically and socially.  The misdeeds and prosecutorial misconduct was so obvious and deliberate that the prosecutors have either been dismissed or removed, and the federal judge is still investigating the matter.  Sen. Stevens, who died in a plane crash, was not alive to see justice finally prevail, at such a great cost. He lost a razor-thin re-election that occurred one week after the bogus ‘conviction’ that was later overturned.

The Edwards case is built on sand. Campaign contributions or gifts are not tax dollars. When the federal government and over-zealous prosecutors use nuance, blue smoke and mirrors to conjure up an indictment for obviously disgusting behavior, the legal system begins a slide down the slippery slope of prosecutorial misconduct.

What Edwards did was retain a campaign videographer with campaign money, sleep with her, produce a child and then obtain donations to help cover it up.  Disgusting and immoral behavior – but not criminally illegal.

I, too, have been the target of prosecutorial misconduct with my criminal prosecution for not putting a seven-word disclaimer on a campaign flyer.  I am the only person in America who actually went to jail over what is normally a $50 civil fine, due in part to the political hatred of me by the local Democrat state attorney, who once boasted that he would “prosecute Doug Guetzloe any day of the week."

The criminalization of politics must stop or the very foundation of this great republic, established in a revolution bathed in the blood of patriots, will crumble.

The sacred guarantee of “justice for all” will become “justice for the few,” and the greatest legal system that mankind has ever known will cease to exist.

Doug Guetzloe is the Host of The Guetzloe Report and the founder of Ax the Tax, a grassroots group that has helped taxpayers successfully defeat tax increases throughout Florida.