Today, the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee included a $25 billion preemptive bailout of the nuclear industry, in the form of loan guarantees for new reactors, in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

A wealthy businessman who raised money for leading Democratic Party politicians, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding three major banks out of $292.2 million in loan transactions.

That means that those nonprofit groups, which are not required to disclose their donors, can now use corporate contributions to buy political commercials, and the corporations can potentially operate behind the anonymity of their donations.“Clearly, that’s where the action’s going to be,” said Kenneth A. Gross, a Washington lawyer who advises corporations on political law.

$5.7 million -- went to non-profit groups connected to the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute...."It's all conducive to building cordial relationships that you can later cash in on."

As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation under consideration by his Senate Finance Committee.

The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it might be ready to give corporations a free-speech right to spend their money to elect or defeat favored candidates.

Coming off of a bruising election that left all four campaign committees with massive debt, the Senate Democratic leadership and House and Senate GOP leadership have already scheduled major fundraising trips to Florida this month, all designed to encourage PACs and lobbyists to max out early in the 2010 election cycle.

The bill for the 2008 U.S. elections has been paid, and it comes out to a record $4.1 billion -- almost $20 per registered voter.

Back when campaign spending was limited by law, there was an effective quota on taking money from special interests. After the cap was reached, it was more effective to do favours for voters than corporate interests. One way to do this was to support consumer protection initiatives.

'Democrats seem to lack a common man who can just win a good, old-fashioned election," said Rep. Tom Reynolds. "They've got seat-warmers, seat-sellers and the making of pillows for the seats of royalty. No wonder the public wonders what's going on in Washington."

Some of the biggest corporate names in the Washington influence game backed Republican incumbents before the 2008 elections, only to donate to their Democratic vanquishers afterward.

The price of admission to the U.S. House of Representatives keeps going up. More than half of the winning candidates in November -- 252 in all -- raised more than $1 million for their races.

Aides to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) scheduled pricey luncheons, roundtables, readings, VIP receptions and policy dinners with campaign officials and advisers, offering donors a taste of his potential administration.

``It's the final nail in the coffin for general-election public financing,'' said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group.

The Wall Street financiers and firms whose problems have prompted a $700 billion federal bailout are no strangers to Capitol Hill or to politics. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties...

Democrat Barack Obama has captured $9.6 million in donations from employees working for securities, mortgage and drug companies, compared with McCain's $6.6 million.

[R]ecords show that one-third of [Obama's] record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, raised in contributions of that size.

While many candidates decry special interests' influence in Washington, new reports show campaigns received $140 million from lobbyists in the first half of 2008.

The campaigns would have to report the occupations of the bundlers and the specific amounts they are credited with raising. This was a terrific idea. It's too bad that the bill's sponsor, Barack Obama, is failing to follow the rules he set out.

In May 1998, at the urging of the state's coal industry, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill condemning the Kyoto global warming treaty and forbidding state efforts to regulate greenhouse gases. Barack Obama voted "aye."

Mr. Farber’s activities are a public display of how corporate connections fuel politics — exactly the type of special influence that Mr. Obama had pledged to expunge from politics when he said he would not accept donations from lobbyists.

"What's most significant here is what this means for the future," said Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School. "It tells us that the long-standing limits on corporate and union campaign spending are in grave danger."

Sen. Obama's disclosure last week that he will forgo public campaign financing -- and the spending limits that go with it -- appears to be turning his campaign from a reliance on small donors to a well-worn political fund-raising path: the quest for soft money.

If Obama and McCain are truly interested in changing Washington, they must both, in unequivocal terms, commit to public campaign financing.

Obama often boasts he is "the only candidate who isn't taking a dime from Washington lobbyists," yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government.

Mr. Obama could become the first nominee since Watergate to run a campaign fueled entirely by private money.

A federal bribery and political-influence investigation at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command here is turning a harsh new light on companies that lobby Congress for no-bid defense contracts.

Meet Alan Schwartz, welfare recipient. As the chief executive of Bear Stearns, he's getting rather more public assistance than your typical welfare mom -- specifically, $30 billion in federal loan guarantees to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over his firm.

The study found that the presidential candidate who gave more money to the superdelegates received their endorsements 82 percent of the time.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are running for president as economic populists, are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain in campaign contributions from the troubled financial services sector.

Mr. Paterson said no state funds had been used as he carried out his affairs. He said he may have used his campaign credit card for some expenses that he did not detail, but said, if so, he would have reimbursed his campaign for the spending.

Just 12 months ago, Senator Barack Obama presented himself as an idealistic upstart taking on the Democratic fund-raising juggernaut behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Nader, perhaps better than anyone else, has grasped the long, disastrous rise of the corporate state....And it is better to stand up and fight, even in vain, than not to fight at all.

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign said Thursday that it stood by a year-old pledge made with Senator Barack Obama that each would accept public financing for the general election if the nominee of the opposing party did the same. But Mr. Obama’s campaign refused to reaffirm its earlier commitment.

Corporate America is pouring money into the U.S. presidential campaign at an unprecedented rate, with a torrent of donations coming from the businesses behind the subprime mortgage crisis.

Obama is the largest beneficiary of money from companies that have a stake in nuclear energy's future. The Braidwood plant's owner, Exelon Corp., has donated $275,000 to Obama over his career.

In the past decade, 18 lobbying firms, corporations and labor unions have purchased town houses or leased office space near the Capitol...Despite a strict new ban on gifts to lawmakers, lobbyists routinely use these prime locations to legally wine and dine members of Congress while helping them to raise money, campaign records show.

Antoin Rezko, a Chicago developer and a longtime contributor of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, was jailed yesterday in Chicago after a judge decided he posed a flight risk and revoked his $2 million bond.