The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going on the offensive against Freedom's Watch, alleging that the conservative group is illegally coordinating with the National Republican Congressional Committee and violating its tax-exempt status.

With Republicans facing a dire situation -- a slew of open congressional seats combined with lackluster fundraising for the NRCC -- Freedom's Watch has stepped in to fill a hole, running negative ads against Democratic candidates Don Cazayoux in Louisiana and Travis Childers in Mississippi.

Ads run against Cazayoux in Louisiana's 6th District special election campaign attempted to tie the candidate to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and to portray Cazayoux as a tax-and-spend liberal. (Despite these efforts, Cazayoux won the election last week.)

Those spots prompted the DCCC to file two complaints with the Federal Election Commission, accusing Freedom's Watch, which it calls "a shadowy outside group," of coordinating with the NRCC in violation of its status as on outside group, and of directly advocating the defeat of a Democratic candidate. "The facts indicate that Freedom's Watch, Inc. is operating in complete violation of federal campaign finance laws," Executive Director Brian Wolff wrote in a letter to the FEC, calling on the agency to immediately investigate the situation.

DCCC complaints led at least one Baton Rouge, La., station to pull the ads off air. A Mississippi ad attacking Childers was also pulled less than a week later, and the DCCC filed a third FEC complaint over the Mississippi spot.

The NRCC flatly rejects the notion that it has been inappropriately coordinating with Freedom's Watch. Press Secretary Ken Spain told the Washington Times: "If Democrats want to waste their time and resources on filing politically motivated complaints, then we hope they continue to do so. Their obsession with this conspiracy theory has gone from being ridiculous to the point of sheer lunacy."