While the campaign finance reform crowd ducks under the table, there is one vociferous group making noise. Like clockwork, Asian-American groups were first out of the gate protesting public scrutiny of the foreign donors and whining about profiling. Deja vu all over again. "It would be wholly inappropriate to link this in any way to the '96 campaign cycle investigations, just because both involve Asian-Americans," Lawrence Barcella, a lawyer for Hsu, who is a top donor to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, told Politico.com.

No. It's because both involve the craven Clintons, a trademark incuriosity about the backgrounds of big donors and a network of generous contributors of notably meager means.

Executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York, Margaret Fung, a prominent voice who decried every last newspaper story about convicted campaign finance felon John Huang during the 1990s, recycled her old talking points again: "It links Norman Hsu and the Paw family to other Asian-American donors in previous campaigns, solely because of their race. It insinuates that Asian-Americans are more prone to making improper donations and have been doing this for years. What is this obsession with Asian-American donors?"

What is this knee-jerk obsession with crying racism and wallowing in collective ethnic grievances? It's not just about "Asian-American" donors. It's about felon and fugitive donors of a rainbow of races and backgrounds. It's about the Clintons' -- and the Dems' -- systemic corner-cutting, campaign corruption and double standards. There is a Chinese saying: "When you drink water, always think about the source."

Peering into the poisoned well isn't "racism." It's the duty of a responsible republic.