H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E

Sen. Barack Obama was critical of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) when they were working for Sen. John Edwards. But now that they are working and spending on his behalf, we have yet to hear a word.

Before the Iowa caucus, ABC News reported that Sen. Barack Obama was apoplectic about the SEIU’s support for Sen. John Edwards. He griped, “You’ve got these outside groups that are helping out candidates and it’s a way of getting around the campaign finance laws,” right after the SEIU-backed 527 plunked down $750,000 in TV ads for Edwards. “Right now groups supporting Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are flooding Iowa and the other early states with millions of dollars in paid ads, phone calls, and mailings,” Obama wrote in a memo, referring to the SEIU.

What a difference a few weeks and a few hundred thousand dollar make. Now, according to Marc Ambinger, the SEIU bosses plan “to spend more than $700,000 over the next week to help Barack Obama in Texas and Ohio.” That doesn’t include the almost $200,000 to pay the salaries of members of SEIU local 1199 to help Obama, $300,000 from the group’s Committee on Political Education (COPE), $400,000 on direct mail in Ohio, $200,000 from the union’s federal political action fund on phone banking, plus $50,000 on what’s called “voter persuasion.”

Everything seems to be A-okay now.