If Romney did indeed stay at Bain longer than he’s claimed, it’s potentially more than just a political problem, but a criminal one as well, a top ethics watchdog in Washington tells Salon. Romney filed two personal financial disclosure forms with the Office of Government Ethics in 2007 and 2001 relating to his presidential runs stating explicitly that he “has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way,” since 1999.

“I think if Mitt Romney was aware that he was still the head of Bain, and if he filled out a form that failed to include that information, that’s potentially criminal. Intentionally providing inaccurate information can be a crime,” Melanie Sloan, the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) told Salon.

Specially, it would violate the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, 18 USC § 1001, a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison. “I can’t really imagine why he would have done this. But it does seem like a big problem. And it does seem like — how would he not know?” Sloan said. “Filing accurate financial disclosure forms is not optional. They’re not suggestions.”

It doesn’t take meticulous preparation, or much work. Researching the real world is like falling off a log.

Often a response here involves simply pulling up an old bookmark, since 95 percent of the arguments here are ones that have been repeated about forty times.

That retention thing again. Liberals have to throw away information.

I’m working on selling a self-published book, marketing a second one to agents, and writing a third one.

This is what I do on my breaks. That, and surf information sites and online comics…

In fact, you seem to be very well informed and thoroughly armed with meticulously prepared counterarguments for someone who feels these are all trivial and inconsequential issues.

You’re an open book, TB. You wear your heart on your sleeve where everyone can see it except you.

How did that one blogger put it? “One candidate put his money in Swiss banks. One candidate puts my money in Greek economics.”

Here’s a Gallup poll on how many people give a shit that Romney is rich: i.e. the people who wouldn’t vote for him for any reason anyway.

Don’t forget the other poll: two conservatives for every liberal.

I’m sure Mitt wouldn’t lie to the SEC and the IRS because they have the resources to catch him and the authority to fry his jive ass. But there’s no doubt that lying about, say, “he couldn’t have possibly shut down that steel mill because he was away on Olympic duty” would be very bad press for him, although strictly not against the law. He used that excuse on his Massachusetts campaigns and the evidence now shows he was on the Bain payroll while he was off in Utah grooming the slopes. Nothing illegal about that, just a lie. There is nothing illegal about stashing your excess dough in foreign banks either (as long as you report it to the Fed). But you will note how evasive he has been about allowing anyone to have access to any IRS evidence of that (those infamous tax returns he won’t show us).

The IRS has all this information, but it can’t release it without Romney’s permission. Mitt is smart, he won’t lie to the taxman because he knows he can go to jail. But he’s perfectly willing to lie to the rest of the world. It’s not even hypocritical on his part, in the Mittster’s moral universe, lying about his financial dealings (as long as it isn’t illegal) is perfectly ethical. In fact, to the Conservative businessman, the inalienable right to lie about or obscure your financial dealings is the very definition of “freedom”.

The Constitution contains no explicit guarantee of a “right to privacy” , a concept that would have been alien in the 18th century, where only the tiny minority who owned their own property lived in their own houses. The Bill of Rights, however, does allude to types of privacy, such as belief (1st Amendment), against the domestic billeting of troops, (3rd Amendment), and the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination, which has been interpreted widely and liberally and has deep roots in British Common Law.

The 4th Amendment, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” is of course, the biggie. It keeps the taxman from gathering info on what you’ve got stashed away, exactly what the bourgeois merchants and planters of the 13 colonies were really concerned about: bullion and documentary evidence of property, and the ability of the Crown to tax it.

Interpretations of the Constitution that reflect more modern sensibilities have been primarily from liberals. Recall how Judge Bork in his confirmation hearings actually argued that no general right of privacy existed.

“Gentlemen of property” don’t need to have the government protect their privacy, they have guards and walls and lawyers for that. What they really care about is that no one know where they stash their loot, and how much they’ve got. They call that “liberty”.

After all, it already is a Shiny Object.