Remember BMW Direct, that sketchy direct mail company that raised money for down ballot candidates, but kept most of it in "fees"?

Well, they're back.

This morning, the New York Times ran a story mentioning BMW Direct, whose COO is also chairman of the Freedom's Defense Fund -- a PAC which has been running ads with "racial overtones" in a pivotal swing county in Michigan.

Well here at TPMmuckraker, we've been talking about BMW Direct and its office-and- employee-sharing PAC since early July:

BMW Direct, a direct-mail fundraising firm, has been raising money for groups called Freedom's Defense Fund and The Madison Project.

It's not clear what Freedom's Defense Fund supposedly does. It shares an address at the same office as BMW Direct. It does not appear to have a Web site.

So we already knew that Michael Centanni was working overtime to be Chief Operating Officer of BMW Direct while he was holding down a job as the chairman of the Freedom's Defense Fund, but we weren't quite sure what it was that the FDF did exactly.

Well, it looks like they're funding targeted, swift-boat like TV campaigns against Obama in the small swing county of Macomb, Michigan.

If Macomb seems familiar, that's because it's a highly visible battleground in a swing state. As the Times describes, Macomb is populated with "white, unionized auto workers who believe Democrats [have] abandoned them for, in part, the poor and African-Americans."

And just a few weeks ago, the county was thrust into the spot-light when the Macomb GOP chair told the Michigan Messenger they'd be using foreclosure lists as a way to challenge voters on election day.