The New York Times addresses Mssrs. McCain and Obama on the subject of bundling advising both should pledge to make it a priority to rein in the practice should be elected President. The Times goes a step further and says that while addressing bundling is important, full public financing of campaigns should be the ultimate goal.

Heralded as he is for drawing a huge number of small donors to his presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is still collecting plenty of $1,000+ plus checks, as this story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune explains. Obama was in the Minneapolis area for a big fundraising event, at which attendees ponied up $1,000 for dinner and $5,000 for a picture with the candidate. Not even Santa Claus charges that much.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) values his reputation as a reformer and Sen. Barack Obama (D) has boasted about the transparency of his campaign but the New York Times is a little disappointed in both of their efforts on the donor/bundler disclosure front. After a nudge from the paper the Obama campaign updated its publicly available list of bundlers but should they need hounding from the press?

I had no more than a passing relationship with science classes in college but I stuck around long enough to absorb the following: "the plural of anecdote is not data." I don't want to come down too hard on Jim Mills at The Hill, but I think he'd do well to refer to this little aphorism before he picks up his hammer again to drive a stake into the heart of campaign finance reform.

David Donnelly has a new piece up at Huffington Post highlighting that while Obama may be raking in donations under $200, you only have to look to his colleagues on the Hill to see the money is coming from the same old locations.

Yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) announced that he would opt-out of the presidential public financing system. The news got picked up far and wide.