CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: John Edwards donor to plead guilty to illegal donations. “A prominent Los Angeles trial lawyer has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for giving employees and a relative a total of $20,000 to donate to former Sen. John Edwards’s presidential campaign in 2003, court documents show. The L.A. attorney, Pierce O’Donnell, has agreed to serve six months in jail and to pay a fine of $20,000, according to a plea agreement filed Thursday afternoon in federal court.”

At this point, you’ve got to figure that pretty much anything else he did with the money would have been better.

Plus this: “The case does not appear to be related to the election-law indictment pending against Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat accused of participating in an illegal scheme to transfer more than $900,000 in cash and gifts to cover up an affair and out-of-wedlock child he fathered during his unsuccessful 2008 bid for the presidency.”