The big lie keeps churning.
Who's smearing who? The mainstream media is waging a preemptive war against Free Republic to protect the Obamessiah from being exposed by the expert B.S. (Barbra Streisand) detecting Freepers.
The FEC found the Swift Boat attack was way out of line and chastised them for it, but the damage was done. And there are still those who take what they said as gospel.
The FEC said nothing about the veracity of the Swift Vets' charges, of course. That isn't their job. They did write this:
"Following an investigation, the Commission concluded that SwiftVets did not unlawfully coordinate its activities with, or make excessive in-kind contributions to, any federal candidate or political party committee...As they did with virtually all the major 527 organizations active in 2004, the FEC ruled that the Swift Vets intended to affect the election (duh), and therefore should have formed as a political action committee. Former FEC chairman Bradley Smith accused the commission of punishing such groups not for making errors in how they filed, but for "criticizing politicians."
The implication in this article that the FEC somehow refuted any of the Swift Vets' charges against Kerry is, quite simply, a lie.