Really, there's no other conclusion to be reached.

Again, there is a reason disclosures like this are required by law. Because if expenditures are not itemized, and you have almost 10% of a campaign's warchest floating around in cash, it can be spent in any number of nefarious ways.

If this is just allowed to just slip by, think of what a horrible precedent it will set. What's to stop a future campaign from declaring 20% of their funds in unitemized "petty cash?" 50%? 100%? Where is the line drawn?

Joe Lieberman owes voters an explanation. He owes reporters a look at the petty cash journal he was required by law to have kept... if he even has it.

Update: Matt Browner-Hamlin, who's been on top of this story from the beginning, has a lot more. He's right. This is getting serious:

The Lieberman campaign essentially paid campaign workers off the books. The article doesn't find people who were necessarily paid more than $100 in petty cash (which would be illegal), but these are all individuals who received over $200 and thus should be itemized on Lieberman's reports. Failure to provide full information about these people, including their names and addresses, is an avoidance of the law. At minimum this information continues to fill out our understanding of the extent to which the Lieberman campaign stopped obeying campaign finance requirements and regulations during the Democratic primary....

The Lieberman campaign's continued silence only strengthens the need to ask questions like O'Leary has done in this article. She has brought out new information that demands answers from Joe; if she can't get them, I hope the FEC will. Every piece of evidence that comes out suggests malfeasance, albeit of varying degrees, by Joe's campaign. Lieberman's actions and Lieberman's silence do damage to the health of our elections. The need for truth has never been more clear than today.