Mokhiber: Ari, during the last election cycle, the President accepted campaign contributions from seven political action committees of seven corporate criminals.

I'm wondering, do you think that is ethical?

And shouldn't the dignified thing to do be to give the money back and say -- since it is not that much money, we are not going to take money from political action committees of convicted criminals?

And I have a follow-up.

Ari Fleischer: You and I have been through this many times before. Political action committees comes from corporations -- that's the source -- come from voluntary contributions of employees of the corporations. That's the funding source.

Mokhiber: I think you were right the first time.

The follow-up is this -- one of those convicted criminals was General Electric. And they are lobbying the EPA heavily on a decision of whether or not to dredge the Hudson River from PCBs. The Governor of New York, Republican, the Governor of New Jersey, Republican, want the dredging to happen, even though it is going to cost GE hundreds of millions of dollars.

The President has expressed concerns about the dangers of PCBs. How is he going to come down on it?

Ari Fleischer: I'm not involved and I really have no information on this specific issue. I'm not sure that is a White House issue. You might want to check with the agencies.

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-Thanks to Russell Mokhiber

White House reporter Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter - www.corporatecrimereporter.com. He co-authors the weekly Focus on the Corporation column with Robert Weissman which Common Dreams publishes. He can be reached at: russell@nationalpress.com