In yesterday's Congress Daily, we saw that Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) will be resigning from Congress to become president of the Managed Funds Association, a hedge fund trade association:

Control Congress is a website hosting bipartisan discussion on what Congress ought to be working on. Contributor Jack Lohman devotes this post to puzzling out why there isn't more cross-aisle agreement on the subject of full public financing of elections, given the success of Clean Elections systems in both Democrat and Republican-dominated states.

Just as presidential candidates must choose between principle and viability when it comes to opting into the public financing program, opposition from within his own party and from Democrats in next year's election is forcing Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to abandon his opposition to taking PAC money just to stay competitive.

Gilchrest wants to keep his seat but well-funded rivals aren't making it easy to do so and stick with his fundraising principles:

Trent Lott is not alone in cashing in his Senate office chips for a seat at the lobbyist's high rollers table. As Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes in this column on the other Washington, many a lawmaker has heard the siren song of power and profit margins calling them away from public duty and accountability.

The recent lobbying overhaul bill which aims to break up the tight-clutch slow dance between Congress and corporate lobbyists has decades worth of growing lobbyist influence to overcome:

Taxpayers for Common Sense just came out with tallies for the members of Congress who've collected the most earmarks and right near the top of the list are both Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), both of whom are in the middle of corruption investigations.

An appellate court decision on the constitutionality of a search of Rep. William Jefferson's office in connection with a bribery investigation may significantly hamper investigations into other members of Congress. The court's ruling may prevent the future use of wiretapping, staff interviews, and office searches.

In question is the "speech or debate" clause:

An article in The Seattle Times on earmarks for defense spending and its correlation to campaign contributions received by Washington legislators has touched a nerve for readers and sparked this point/counterpoint in the letters to the editor section about the need to address this problem via full public financing of campaigns.

Hey, let's check in with Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) shall we? The embattled legislator has a trial coming up on conspiracy and bribery charges stemming from a scheme that sounds like it was copied all or in part from the text of Nigerian email scams. And the courtroom drama begins...now!

NPR's Marketplace picked up the story of Bill Allen, the VECO Inc. CEO who admitted using campaign contributions to win influence with Congress, and $200 million in contracts. The report notes Allen's plan for VECO and its employess to direct donations to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in particular Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). Most of the money hasn't been returned.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post speculates, via strategically-placed parentheses, about the interest of certain members of Congress in holding Blackwater and other defense contractors accountable for their actions in Iraq. Are the contributions lining their campaign coffers causing some legislators to look the other way?