Barack Obama is on a permanent campaign to not only win reelection but also to transform America. A new tactic has come to my attention via our friends at Investors Business Daily.

An increasing percentage of American business managers are similarly distracted, since over the last 20 years, regulation by prosecution has emerged as a significant new form of government control over the marketplace. This practice threatens not only private-sector businesses but also individuals' rights and the rule of law.

In 1991, the U.S. Sentencing Commission issued guidelines that, in essence, gave corporations and other organizations "credit" for "cooperating" in criminal investigations. The next year, the government entered into its first "non-prosecution agreement" with Salomon Brothers, which paid a civil penalty to avoid criminal trial.

Modern-day regulation by prosecution dates to 1999, when attorney general Eric Holder - then a deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department - issued a memorandum that formalized federal policy for determining whether a business has cooperated with a criminal investigation.

Federal pressure on corporations picked up after the dot-com stock-market bubble burst, and the 2002 conviction of Arthur Andersen, which precipitated the firm's collapse, signaled to companies that fighting overzealous prosecutors was futile.

Subsequently, nonprosecution and deferred-prosecution agreements (NPAs and DPAs) governing corporate behavior became far more commonplace...

Government lawyers have thus come to wield enormous power over business operations. Prosecutors have forced companies to reverse long-standing corporate policies, to sack management and directors, and to install prosecutor-appointed "business monitors" to oversee corporate activities.

The exercise of such prosecutorial power is disturbing.