Four days after the House briefly debated rival campaign finance reform bills that both overlooked the AFL-CIO's political excesses, Big Labor got another break. A Clinton-appointed federal judge last Monday blocked the Federal Election Commission from its scheduled release the next day of thousands of documents that neither the union nor the Democratic National Committee wants made public. This is evidence from the notorious 1996 national election, for which the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO joined in questionable practices leading to the re-election of Bill Clinton. The supine FEC last year dismissed a Republican complaint that the party and the labor federation coordinated activities in violation of the law. At issue since then has been investigative files that Democrats and labor complain reveal too much of their political strategies. Their concerns produced last Monday's injunction by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler of the District of Columbia, whose career is closely tied to liberal-labor Democrats. Unless reversed, her edict would keep evidence out of the hands of congressional and Justice Department investigators until the five-year statute of limitations for embezzlement under the Landrum-Griffin Labor Reform Act expires in November. Labor appears to be getting another free pass.