Crossroads, CREW, and Crowdsourcing

At Slate, David Weigel writes:

Michael Warren called up CREW to ask if it would follow up Melanie Sloan's criticism of American Crossroads GPS by going the extra mile and disclosing their own donors.

"CREW does not discuss its donors," said communications director Garrett Russo. I asked him why not, since Sloan said Crossroads GPS was guilty of hypocrisy for not doing the same thing.

"CREW does not discuss its donors," Russo repeated. "That's about all I can tell you."

Helpful! American Crossroads GPS, loving it, sends over a statement from spokesman Jonathan Collegio:

Democrats generally miss the difference between private and government entities, which explains why they are the party of high taxes, suffocating anti-business regulations and everlasting recessions. While Crossroads GPS fully follows the disclosure laws that govern private nonprofits, the Obama administration is breaking laws that govern the free flow of information from federal bureaucracies to taxpaying citizens.

None of this is meant to equate CREW and ACGPS. CREW does name liberal targets and file ethics complaints against Democrats; ACGPS is not in the business of attacking Republicans. But the very idea that ACGPS or any other group is hypocritical for crowdsourcing research on government transparency is ridiculous.