On Wednesday, as Wisconsin Senate candidate and former governor Tommy Thompson (R) was forced to defend statements he made about turning Medicare into a voucher program similar to what was proposed in the Paul Ryan budget he has supported, he was scheduled to attend an “oil and gas industry luncheon” in Washington, D.C—an industry whose billions in subsidies

On Wednesday night, Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and her opponent Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass) are both holding campaign fundraisers.

Warren is hosting a policy team trivia night fundraiser in Somerville, Ma.—the cost to attend is $20 per person or $100 for a team of five. Brown’s is a little different—he will be at Chef Michel Richard’s restaurant Central in Washington, D.C. where individuals need $1,000 to attend (and $2,500 to host).

Today, a group of Senators will push to add a health care repeal amendment to the FAA re-authorization bill, legislation that is likely to be voted on this evening. Forty-seven senators have already co-sponsored the stand alone repeal legislation (S. 192), so we can safely say they'll vote for the amendment.

Yesterday evening the Senate passed a watered down version of the energy bill that the House of Representatives passed last week. The oil and gas industry, and their allies in the Senate to whom they’ve given millions in campaign contributions, kept their billions in tax giveaways; while investment in alternative energy sources was deferred.

Tomorrow's an exciting day! The Senate Rules Committee is set to hold the first hearing on the Fair Elections Now Act (FENA) to bring full public financing to congressional elections. Set to testify at the hearing are Sens. Richard Durbin and Arlen Specter who are the lead co-sponsors of FENA, our President and CEO Nick Nyhart, and other notable reformers, election law experts, and prominent political figures.

Well, we've tried asking nicely but it hasn't worked so far so today, together with the Sunlight Foundation who have led this from the very beginning, we are taking things up a notch in our effort to get Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to reveal who is holding up a bill that would require Senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically.

The Senate is considering legislation (possibly voting on it today) that would ban spouses of senators from lobbying any part of the chamber—unless the spouse was lobbying a year before the senator was elected.

In his speech on the floor of the Senate announcing his intention to introduce a full public financing bill, Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) asked his colleagues to think beyond initial ethics reform to a more comprehensive solution: "I hope it will only be the beginning and that we can move, even in this session of Congress, to meaningful hearings and the passage of public financing of campaigns that will truly reform the way we elect men and women to office at the Federal level and restore respect to this great institution of the U.S.

David has a new article up at TomPaine.com on the Senate's latest "reform" bill - and just how ineffective it is. Check it out here.