Public Campaign Action Fund's David Donnelly contributed to this quick "news you can use" piece on Slate about a loophole in the presidential public financing program that lets participants continue to collect private contributions to pay for "compliance" costs associated with using public funds.  There's no set limit on what you can spend on compliance, so millions of dollars have been raised this way.

Here's the part that nudges the eyebrow upwards:

In 2007, the FEC held that since campaigns must tag disclaimers onto the end of any ad ("I'm John McCain, and I approve this message"), they could use compliance funds to pay for up to 5 percent of broadcast advertising. (The FEC initially considered allowing up to 13 percent, but a couple of commissioners balked, and the committee settled on 5 percent, which is a little under the amount of time eaten up in a 30-second ad by the "approval" line.) So while the McCain campaign can't use privately donated money to pay for the first 28.5 seconds of a given TV ad, it's kosher to use that cash for the last second and a half.

The presidential public financing program has served us well since its inception but issues like this, plus the inability of the system to keep up with rising campaign costs suggest it's time to reevaluate and overhaul the program to bring into well...compliance...with the modern campaign environment.