Note to recent college graduates: go into business defending members of Congress. You will make a killing. Young, Stevens, Doolittle, Hayworth, Lewis, Renzi, Mollohan, Jefferson, Weldon...the Justice Deparment has a bone to pick with all of them so they're shelling out hundreds of thousands in legal fees. No such thing as a free lunch, especially when Abramoff and his ilk are buying.

E.J. Dionne heralds the rise of the small donor in today's Washington Post, pointing to the Supreme Court drubbing of campaign finance regulation and Barack Obama's successful online small-donor fundraising efforts as evidence that new methods must be explored to adjust the balance of campaign contribution power.

Shankar Vedatam writes in the "Department of Human Behavior" feature in the Washington Post about what exactly campaign contributions buy you on Capitol Hill: he says it's not a matter of buying votes, but of "cutting in line" as it were when it comes to setting legislative priorities.

Vedatam cites this anecdote to illustrate the distinction:

Calling the history of reforming campaign finance laws "Sisyphean," Jack Beatty writes in The Atlantic Online on the recent Supreme Court ruling weakening certain provisions of BCRA and how the fight to counter the influence of money on U.S. elections is over 100 years old and nowhere near over.

Teddy Roosevelt got the ball rolling in 1905:

The Orlando Sentinel has been supportive of full public financing of congressional elections in the past and this recent Supreme Court decision to remove some of the limits on television advertisements by corporations and unions moved them to editorialize in favor of public financing again as a way to level the electoral playing field in light of this recent ruling.

Here's their argument:

Remember Senator Mitch McConnell's efforts to shield the Republican Senator who put an anonymous hold on S.223, a bill to require electronic disclosure of Senators' campaign finance reports, even though McConnell is on the record in support of transparency? Well, it's just gotten stranger.

All that money flowing into Washington, DC to finance the campaigns of elected officials is throwing a definite golden pall across the Capitol dome: Washington political operators are getting richer as campaign and lobbying spending increases and power and money are braiding together as never before.

Byron Williams, an Oakland-based pastor and writer contributes this column to The Huffington Post on the Fair Elections Now Act. Williams voiced his support for FENA in an April column on HuffPo, and he's not shy about putting the ball in the voters' court when it comes to pressing for this kind of change.

Yesterday, Senate Republicans intervened on behalf of a put-upon, impoverished, and under-represented constituency: Big Oil. They blocked a measure that would have provided $32 billion in incentives for renewable energy via a tax on oil companies -- with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his over $450,000 in life campaign donations from the oil industry at the helm.

Ari Berman at The Nation, who writes frequently about money in politics issues and Clean Elections, covers the Senate Rules Committee hearing on the Fair Elections Now Act yesterday.

Berman isn't much impressed with the arguments presented against public financing, dismissing many as misunderstandings of the bills contents or efforts at incumbent protection. He assesses the bill's chances down the road: