Not white and black, or red and blue ... Given how well their campaign slogans mesh together, it's no wonder John Edwards put his defunct catchphrase to good use and backed Barack Obama for president.

The Obama campaign has turned big-name endorsements into an art, revealing a few key supporters every time Hillary Clinton's fortunes seem to be on the rise. Edwards' announcement is no exception — Clinton just swept the West Virginia primary, and according to ABC's Political Radar, had been planning some key fundraisers over the next few days. In addition to hitting her debt-ridden pocketbook, the votes Obama will likely receive from Edwards delegates more than offset the pledged delegates she won last night.

It's not just delegates: As the Radar points out, the move was "a dramatic attempt by the Obama campaign to answer concerns regarding Obama's appeal to working-class voters." The Wall Street Journal's Political Wire sneers:

Edwards could give a boost to Obama’s candidacy by attracting the exact sort of voter that has been Clinton’s strength — white, working-class voters from rust-belt states who are drawn to a populist political philosophy. ...

People close to Edwards have said that he sees deep flaws in both Clinton and Obama. He thinks Obama lacks the fire to wage war against special interests in Washington, and objects that Clinton takes money from lobbyists and is part of the inside-the-beltway aristocracy, which he considers to be the problem with American politics.

If you're looking for hard numbers, NPR points out that 7% of the West Virginia vote went to the former vice presidential candidate, even though he's no longer running. And, at a point when Obama is campaigning against John McCain rather than against Clinton, Edwards might help him finally close the deal — or end the agony, as The Washington Post's The Fix observes:

Edwards is widely seen as one of the major party figures who had remained on the sidelines in the race between Clinton and Obama. That he has stepped in to the fray in hopes of, perhaps, bringing this race to an end should send a powerful signal to undecided superdelegates about the direction of the contest. 

Edwards is the picture of modesty about the power of his endorsement in this MSNBC interview, but you have to wonder about the timing on his end: Is he late to the party or the crucial tiebreaker? Is this a bid for the vice presidency? They'd certainly make a cute ticket.

The Moderate Voice isn't enamored, though. They have a thing or two to say about unifying the party:

If the endorsement is meant to show solidarity by one party member toward one of the candidates, that is a fait acoompli. Unifying the party at this point is likely premature. Unifying isnt done by one person saying ‘unify now.’ It is a far more many layered process that includes more meeting and greeting with many groups and people. That would be later. Not now.

Slate's Trailhead blog, however, says Edward's swing Obama-ward "isn’t the last round of battle; it’s the first round of cleanup":

Enter John Edwards. By endorsing Obama now, Edwards isn’t handing him the nomination. He’s minimizing the damage wrought upon the all-but-inevitable nominee. Clinton insists a drawn-out election isn’t hurting the party. But it is clearly exposing huge holes in each candidate’s armor. By weighing in now, Edwards is reassuring Democrats—and perhaps telegraphing to Kentucky voters—that Obama is a safe choice.

John Edwards: Kingmaker? Deal-closer? Irrelevant? VP material? Post your take below. Also, check out Google's quotes page to judge if Edwards let the cat out of the bag days ago.

Given my obsession with the celebrity endorsement, I couldn't resist posting this one, courtesy E! Online:

Barack Obama just scored another Hollywood endorsement.

E! reality star Kim Kardashian is backing the Illinois senator in his bid for the White House. She revealed her support last night at the launch party for ex-jailbird Joe Francis’ Girls Gone Wild magazine at Area nightclub in L.A.

“I had dinner with him [Obama] once, and he just seemed very firm about the change, and that’s, like, his motto,” Kardashian said, referring to the slogan "Change We Can Believe In."

As E! is quick to note (and the Obama camp must be grateful), accidental celeb Kardashian did not dine with the senator alone -- the meeting took place at an event.

If celebrity endorsements are already fairly useless unless they're wackily self-aware enough for an image boost, what about the endorsement from the useless celebrity? Useful, or extra useless? Yes, I know the answer to that. Well, at least Kardashian can put some of her sex-tape cash toward Obama's campaign -- a quick search through the Center for Responsive Politics turns up no evidence of a donation.

In more than 20 years as a journalist in Pittsburgh, I used to listen with fascination to strange tales from the political subculture of Pennsylvania’s other metropolis: Philadelphia. Candidates for statewide office from the western part of the state would confide in our editorial board that “it’s like another world over there.”

One feature of that world was the practice of providing campaign workers with copious amounts of “street money” to boost voter turnout. Cash sometimes changed hands on Election Day in Pittsburgh, too, but, as with murder rates, the Steel City was a piker compared to the City of Brotherly Love.

Now the cost of doing political business in Philly is tripping up Sen. Barack Obama. According to a Times report, Obama is balking at disbursing dollars to party faithful, a decision that could save the Obama campaign as much as $500,000 on April 22, the day of the atypically important Pennsylvania primary, while costing him an undetermined number of votes.

Obama’s priggishness about street money contrasts with the situation ethics he has displayed on the question of accepting public financing –- and spending limits –- if he is the Democratic nominee. As the Times pointed out in an editorial last month, Obama promised to accept public financing if the Republican nominee did. After John McCain agreed to that deal, the Obama campaign began to waffle.

Now Obama is arguing that his campaign has created “a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.” Parallel universe is more like it.

If private Internet fundraising can be repackaged as public financing, so can street money for mercenary campaign “loyalists.” As George Costanza might say, it’s financing and it’s handed out in public ... so it’s public financing.

Whoops, different  Fabian — not current speaker Fabian Nunez, but Fabian Wesson, wife of former speaker and current Los Angeles City Councilman Herb Wesson, has opened a committee to explore a 2010 run for the 47th Assembly District seat of speaker-elect Karen Bass, when Bass is termed out. Bass took the seat after Herb Wesson was termed out. All are Democrats.

Fabian Wesson is no stranger to Sacramento or Los Angeles politics. She is a consultant to Mervyn Dymally, the assemblyman-turned-senator-turned-lieutenant-governor-turned-congressman who is now back in the Assembly and running to go back to the Senate. Wesson also is a member of the Coliseum Commission and the California Science Center board.

Fabian (pronounce it FAY-bee-an, like the teen idol of the 1950s and '60s, not FAH-bee-an, like the current speaker) Wesson said she's still thinking over whether to pursue the seat, especially since she now has Herb home full-time after his six years of jetting to Sacramento and back.

So where is the 47th Assembly District? Take your pick — it covers Westside communities like Century City and Westwood but stretches east to take in the Miracle Mile and South Carthay and south to Culver City, Ladera Heights, Hyde Park and Crenshaw.

Today's the deadline for the 30 Los Angeles Superior Court judge candidates on the June 3 ballot to file their latest fundraising reports, and it will be interesting to see who the big money-raisers are -- and who is funding their campaigns.

Fundraising is part of the perpetual quandary of California judicial races. Candidates don't like asking for money, but of course they want to win, and one of the best ways to won is to send out lots of carefully targeted mail, which in turn costs money.

Judicial candidates often consider themselves above politics and many bristle when one of their number actively raises cash from the same partisan business or labor interests that fund legislative races or ballot measures. But is it any cleaner for judicial campaign money to be donated by attorneys who will later plead their cases in front of the victors?

Warnings of pay-to-play justice have been increasing in volume in recent years, and the alarm was sounded again over the weekend in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by James Sample of New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. Sample cites egregious instances of jurists from Illinois and Wisconsin refusing to recuse themselves from cases involving companies that helped put them on the bench. Then there's the current case from West Virginia that sounds like something from a John Grisham novel.

in fact, Grisham was quoted as saying he didn't have to look any further than the Charleston Gazette for an idea from his latest novel. Now "The Appeal" is being cited as an outrageous not not outlandish illustration of the corrupting influence of campaign cash in the courtroom. In the book, a chemical company goes after a favorable ruling by funding a judicial candidate and planning to reap the reward.

Last month, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Larry Starcher recused himself from a case involving coal company A.T. Massey, Inc. on conflict of interest grounds and called upon a colleague, who Starcher said received $4 million in campaign donations from Massey and associates, to do the same. See the court's press release here, but for the full impact click on the last word of the statement for a pdf of Starcher's full opinion. It's full of anger against his colleague, but here's the key part:

"I know hardly a soul who could believe that a justice who benefitted [sic] to this extent from a litigant could rule fairly on cases involving that litigant or his companies...."

It's different in California, but just how different? on the Supreme Court level, we don't have partisan challenges; appellate justices are appointed by the governor, conformed by a three-member panel, and retained or rejected by voters every 12 years. Still, the 1986 ousters of Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, and Chief Justice Rose Bord, continue to provoke court-watchers, who debate whether the removal campaign was really spurred by the three jurists' votes to overturn death sentences or whether, instead, it was a business-led drive to end a string of pro-consumer rulings.

Most trial court judges are appointed by the governor (there is no confirmation process). Appointees can be challenged at the end of every six-year term, but if no one files to run against them, they are deemed elected and don't even get on the ballot. This year only one judge has been challenged: Ralph W. Dau. Such challenges usually fail, but remember that in 2006, Judge Dzintra Janavs was defeated by bakery owner Lynne Olson.

Ten other Los Angeles Superior Court seats opened up and will go to voters because the governor did not appoint anyone to fill them. If history is a guide, many, though not all, of those candidates are raising money from lawyers who can be expected to appear before them if they win.

A panel of California lawyers, administrators and judges -- including some who were elected to their seats -- is grappling with the thorny issue of judicial independence and impartiality. Members have zeroed in on judicial elections and campaign  fundraising. A Judicial Campaign Finance Task Force next meets in Burbank on April 28. A companion task force studying terms of office and selection of judges meets the same day in San Francisco.

Someone -- it's not yet clear who -- launched a write-in challenge to six Los Angeles Superior Court judges, making the June 3 ballot just a little bit longer.

The nomination period closed earlier this month with 10 contested races without incumbents and only one sitting judge, Ralph W. Dau, drawing an election challenge. That left the other 144 sitting Los Angeles Superior Court judges (about a third of the bench) who are up for election or re-election this year breathing sighs of relief; since no one filed against them, they were automatically elected without their names even going on the ballot.

But not so fast. A rarely exercised procedural provision for write-in candidates allows challengers extra time to file, and the Metropolitan News-Enterprise reported Friday that a write-in challenge has been lodged against Judges Juan Carlos Dominguez, Hector M. Guzman, Daniel S. Lopez, Daniel P. Ramirez, Jose Sandoval, and Michael Villalobos. All six must now appear on the ballot, even though there will be no opponent listed.

That now leaves 138 judges who were deemed elected in March. Most of them are unknown to people outside the legal profession, unless they were judges who happened to preside over a high-profile case -- O.J. Simpson criminal trial judge Lance Ito, for example, was just deemed re-elected without a vote -- or perhaps related to someone in politics or government, such as May Lou Villar, sister of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, or Fred Fujioka, brother of Los Angeles County chief executive Bill Fujioka. They, too, were among the gross of judges deemed elected this month when no one filed to run against them.

Top of the Ticket reports that former ambassador Roland Arnall has died at UCLA Medical Center.

Arnall's Ameriquest was a leader in subprime mortgage loans and was variously depicted as a predator on low-to-moderate income home buyers and the deliverer of the American dream to people otherwise priced out of the housing market. In 2006 the company paid millions of dollars to resolve investigations by 49 states, including California.

Arnall was a major donor to Republican candidates and causes, including President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he and his wife, Dawn, also gave lavishly to Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, and City Council members Bernard Parks, Wendy Greuel, Jose Huizar and Jack Weiss.

Villaraigosa borrowed the Ameriquest jet in November 2005 to fly to the Detroit funeral of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. He was heavily criticized for his ride, and ultimately paid $438 to cover the cost of the flight. Critics persisted, saying the cost was much higher than the equivalent price of a round-trip commercial air ticket.

Arnall helped found the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

He became U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands two years ago.

The U.S. Supreme Court is continuing its modified limited hangout when it comes to allowing the public to hear (but not see) its oral arguments in newsworthy cases. This week the court announced that  it will provide same-day release of the audio tapes of the March 18 arguments over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. This is the third argument this term to get the same-day treatment.

March is turning out to be the equivalent of sweeps weeks for judicial junkies: The California Supreme Court this week made available audio and video of arguments over the constitutionality of the state’s limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples.

I analyze court decisions so a living, so I can justify my interest in oral arguments without admitting to be the Supreme Court equivalent of those C-SPAN junkies who watch every congressional hearing, think-tank panel discussion and book signing at Politics and Prose.  For listeners with better things to do, Supreme Court arguments can be soporific. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people who tuned into the three hours (!) of argument over the McCain-Feingold law in 2003 are still asleep.

An argument over gun control is about as sexy as it gets in the court — which isn’t very sexy at all. And if past arguments are any guide, the justices and the lawyers will discuss the Second Amendment  in the same mystifying shorthand they use when arguments aren’t being recorded for release. Don’t expect even Antonin Scalia to offer up a sound bite on the lines of “If you want my gun, you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand.”

But concede that most oral arguments won’t garner a big Nielsen share (or the equivalents for MP3s). Why not make audio of all arguments available on the same day — or even in real time?

Even better, of course, would be video of the argument, an innovation that will be introduced over the dead body of Justice David H. Souter. With video, you can be sure who is asking the question.  Audio alone can lead to confusion unless it’s being aired on television over sketches of the justices. No one would mistake Souter’s New England accent for the Chicago twang of Justice John Paul Stevens, but (especially when they ask short questions) Chief Justice John Roberts could be confused with Justice Anthony Kennedy or Justice Samuel Alito.  And if another female justice is appointed to the court, her voice might be hard to distinguish from that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — especially if the  new Madame Justice were a New Yorker.

No justice, male or female, will be confused with Justice Clarence Thomas, because he almost never opens his mouth. All the more reason for putting video cameras in the court. At least then we could watch Thomas’ facial expressions.

Writer Todd Balf wonders if race was a factor in the demonization of ex-Olympian Marion Jones, and cartoonist Nick Anderson takes a shot at Congress and its steroid-use hearings. Israeli novelist Amos Oz argues for a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, and Ronald Brownstein gives a play-by-play of Obama's eight-contest sweep. Joel Stein discovers the Christian Oscars aren't so different from the nondenominational ones — except when they are:

Though the Christian Oscars looked just like any other awards show, there were some differences. The Oscars don't start with a prayer. And they don't have a letter in their program from President Bush wishing them a successful event. I stared at it for a long time, wondering if all his correspondence begins, "I send greetings." I got the feeling that Bush expected that, during his presidency, he'd get to meet aliens.

The editorial board gets tangled up in the tussle between free speech and campaign finance law, and wonders why Germany, the erstwhile "sick man of Europe," is beating the U.S. in export rates. The board also cheers on the University of Southern California's 25-year lease deal with the Coliseum Commission:

USC gets to stay at home. And there can be little doubt that the Coliseum is home. The university's consistent presence over the life of the stadium has protected the asset's value. Olympics -- two of them -- came and went, as did two NFL teams, but the Trojans have been a constant and deserve the long-term commitment that the commission has finally provided.

Readers respond to the board's take on charter schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District. "It's important that the charter schools not measure student achievement exclusively in terms of success on a college track," Joyce Wolfe points out, and Dain Olsen shoots back:

The Times is advocating the wholesale abandonment of the LAUSD's secondary schools to the charter movement. If this is not tantamount to a radical dismissal of the foundations of democracy, of equality and access to a free, high-quality education for all, I don't know what is.

Hail to thee, Paulites, Paulettes, Pauline Order, Ronettes, Ronnies, Ronalitos, whatever you choose to call yourselves. May the cosmos bless you for posting more than 150 comments on my last piece of chum, which is now updated.

I beg your forgiveness for having let practically all of these comments fester for 16 hours unmoderated, after having put all of you through an onerous verification process. Actually, I do not beg your forgiveness, for that is an insult to the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven forever, the sin that not even eternity can wipe out. Cast me without your ranks, Ronites, but do accept my eternal gratitude to you for bringing life to our empty tables.

And on behalf of the L.A. Times thank you for feasting at the more plentiful board of Top o' the Ticket.

Since Amina has nicely laid out the candidates' financial pole positions, and since the paultards have come out in force to upbraid me for an ancient Ron Paul-related post (this is the thanks the L.A. Times gets for providing him a forum to deliver the night's best line at the GOP's Golden State debate?), it's a good time to talk about the campaign cock-up of the fourth-place Republican contender. To wit: Is the Paul campaign guilty of gross fiscal mismanagement? And even if you believe the dollar is worthless without a gold standard, is it really that easy to turn so many millions into so little achievement?

At Reason, Dave Weigel does a little digging into Paul's delegate count, and finds some reason for hope. Paul's campaign makes even more impressive delegate claims, though the staff seems to count delegates on the same obscure sliding scale it uses to make dollars vanish. Paul's fundraising was in its way even more miraculous than Mike Huckabee's polling surge. And there was something heartening, as the Paul surge grew, in the candidate's refusal to frame his campaign as some kind of consciousness-raising effort. Even if you never believed he was really running for president, it was good to know that he believed it.

Did his campaign? The newsletter brouhaha certainly suggests Paul applies a laissez-faire philosophy to all sorts of management areas, but did his campaign really need this many screwups, ballot emergencies, voting snafus and of course conspiracy-minded excuses for its own incompetence?

I expect no quarter from the Paulites, but I say all this with sadness. It's been clear for at least six months that Dr. No's campaign was shaping up to be more than just a novelty. Ron Paul tapped in to a wide array of interests, and his appeal went well beyond the simple "opposition to the war" explanation arrogant journalists favored. But let's just say he could have tapped in a lot deeper and with more lasting results. It's not like we don't need the help right about now. The country is seeing the beginnings of a real leftwing backlash and the Republicans are about to nominate a "national greatness" conservative who is in every respect the anti-Goldwater. (Good luck getting any libertarian leverage from those Paul delegates at the convention.) Couldn't Ron Paul have just spent 12 months focusing on the task at hand?

Update: Welcome, Pauline Order of Ron!

Half the time I feel like you don't even know I exist, Ron Paul fans, so yes, welcome! Please stay and chat, and I'll get your comments through the pipelines as quickly as possible. Sorry for taking the night off, folks, and really, whatever you want to call yourselves -- they wouldn't be so crude at the L.A. Times but I do have friends who use the word "paultards," and only with love -- it's up to you to name yourselves. As long as I caught your eye.

Everybody else, please don't skimp on the comments. Plenty of brilliant stuff, interesting conversations forming, and rave reviews such as these:

"factually inaccurate and sophomorically naive"

"I think you wrote this just to get people to see your article."

"What exactly were you trying to say..."

"Hey Timmy your article was lame, like high school lame..."

"Another attempt by the MSM to discredit an honest and forthright individual..."

"I stopped reading the article after the first sentence, when you referred to..."

"I don't know what you expect Ron Paul to do, take the order, cook the meal, wash..."

"I'm not being sarcastic. I swear on my neighbor's cat I'm not."

"Wanting to stop the murder in Iraq is not incompetence, it is morally justified..."

"The most reliable friend you can have in American politics [is] ready money." So spoke Republican presidential hopeful Phil Gramm in 1995, and he wasn't kidding. Greenbacks have long been the barometer of the health of a campaign, and recent revelations — that Mitt Romney is "suspending" his campaign, and Hillary Clinton just gave her own bid a $5-million shot in the arm — only serve to emphasize that. Here's a quick round-up on former and current hopefuls, and how the money talked:

THE DEMOCRATS

Barack Obama: Obama is breaking all kinds of records — his campaign just announced that it collected $7.2 million in just the two days following Super Tuesday. That’s partly because while the Obama campaign brings in the big donors to rival Clinton’s, he also taps a vast reservoir of people who give in smaller amounts. It’s an interesting indication of the demographics the candidates attract, and a clue as to where the popular momentum is headed.

Hillary Clinton: The erstwhile frontrunner racked up some major wins on Tsunami Tuesday, California included — but not enough to secure a decisive victory. Having to dig into her own pockets makes her campaign look less promising. On the other hand, the Clinton campaign just released numbers that put its post-Tuesday fundraising at $7.5 million. 

John Edwards: Poor Edwards. He took the high road, committed to public financing and ran on a fraction of what his main rivals had in the bank. But in the end, the public let this populist presidential hopeful down.

THE REPUBLICANS

Mitt Romney: If using your own cash to beef up your campaign is a bad sign, Romney doomed his presidential bid from the start. The former governor of Massachussetts has poured around $50 million of his personal fortune into his now “suspended” campaign. If I were one of his grandkids, I’d be pretty pissed.

The editorial board asks who pays Schwarzenegger's extravagant travel bills:

Arnold Schwarzenegger was already so rich, his supporters claimed, he wouldn't need to make political deals with campaign donors. Look, they said, he's not even going to take his salary! What a deal for California!

What a deal indeed. Instead of taking a salary, Schwarzenegger takes overseas trips that feature private jets and luxury suites. His purpose is ostensibly to promote California, but his expenses are paid by donors who want something from him, like a signature or a veto at bill-signing time. Those donors funnel their cash to the governor, in anonymity, through something called the California State Protocol Foundation. Because it's a nonprofit organization, campaign laws that limit how much contributors can give simply don't apply.

The board highlights positive developments in North Korean diplomacy, and wonders which industry will make a worse transition to the Internet age -- film or music. 

Columnist Jonah Goldberg explains why "Hillary" is no longer an "abracadabra word" for voters, but "Obama" is. Writer John Kenney has his JFK moment. Pew Charitable Trusts' Jane Danowitz says mining companies should pay the full price for extracting ore, rather than leaving taxpayers with the clean-up. And writer Matthew DeBord puts in his vote for turnstiles on the L.A. subway.

Letter writers react to LAX's close calls. L.A.'s Joan Winters asks, "[D]oesn't it make more sense to regionalize air travel in the L.A. area rather than expand the airport and get those bulldozers going on the north runway?"

Okay, so probably no public personality can compare in influence and power to Oprah, who has thrown in her lot with the unbelievably lucky Barack Obama. But 'tis the season for celebrity endorsements, and it seems like this year anyone and everyone is taking a primary interest in the candidates — who in turn are more than happy to take advantage.

Hillary's still standing tall, even though Oprah passed her over:

The Clinton campaign, in an e-mail to The Associated Press, said of Winfrey: ''We're fans and we think it's great she is participating in the process. Everyone has wonderful supporters, and we're proud of ours'' — such as Steven Spielberg, Magic Johnson and Barbra Streisand, who threw her support behind Sen Clinton on Tuesday.

Then again, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is siding with Obama. You're not out of the woods yet, Sen. Clinton.

It's got to be frustrating, what with so many political celebs shopping around. Earlier this year, the reverend and former White House candidate Jesse Jackson declared, "I reaffirm my commitment to vote for Sen. Barack Obama.... Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed." But in a meeting with The Times' editorial board, he flip-flopped, admitting, "I have very strong feelings for Hillary because we've worked together 30 years." Now, he's even giving a nod to John Edwards, apparently at Obama's expense. In an op-ed for the Chicago Sun-Times, he wrote,

"The Democratic candidates — with the exception of John Edwards, who opened his campaign in New Orleans' Ninth Ward and has made addressing poverty central to his campaign — have virtually ignored the plight of African Americans in this country."

Your more garden-variety stars are also prone to sowing their political wild oats. According to the Huffington Post, before she settled on Hillary, Barbra Streisand "covered her bases and [gave] $2300 to Obama, Edwards and Clinton. "

On the Republican side, forget Pat Robertson backing Rudy Giuliani. Mike Huckabee is milking his Chuck Norris endorsement for all it's worth, even as he flaunts one of his most recent prizes — former pro-wrestler Ric Flair, aka The Nature Boy. Meanwhile, according to AP, brothel owner Dennis Hof decided to throw his lot in with Ron Paul, adding, "I'll get all the (working girls) together, and we can raise him some money...I'll put up a collection box outside the door. They can drop in $1, $5 contributions."

For all you pundits wondering what fueled the Huckabee and Paul surges, look no further.   

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul set his party's one-day fundraising record on a day more traditionally left to celebrating the foiling of a terrorist plot. Thirty-seven thousand donors ponied up over $4 million. Reactions from around The Interwebs....

Atlantic Monthly associate editor Matthew Yglesias asks who's giving money to Bill Clinton:

Disclosing who's contributing to Bill Clinton's foundation after his wife wins the election would be about four years too late. The voters ought to have this information before the election, when it could still make a difference. Indeed, we really ought to find out who his donors are before the nomination is settled.

If the former president wants his gesture of transparency to be taken seriously, he ought to disclose right away. After all, by sponsoring a law to mandate disclosure of donations to presidential foundations and agreeing that Bill would voluntarily comply, the Clintons have already conceded the key points of principle.

And it's impossible to view the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton campaign as entirely separate enterprises.

Columnist Patt Morrison explores Blackwater's domestic work and says, not in our backyard. Gen. Kevin P. Chilton explains how, 50 years after Sputnik, a Chinese missile test demonstrates the need to secure our satellites in space. Cal State Long Beach's Tyler Dilts asks why CSU administrators are getting big raises when faculty salaries are low and tuition high.

The editorial board asks why the Bush Administration has let so few Iraqi refugees into the country. The board praises state Treasurer Bill Lockyer for starting a conversation about California's deficit denial, and takes a look back at Sputnik and the space race.

Readers react to the editorial board's take on MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ads. See why both Richard Morse of Redondo Beach and Encino's Michael K. Finnigan think the board falsely equated MoveOn.org with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's campaign against Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

The editorial board explores racial tensions in Jena, La.:

Jena, La., has been portrayed by big-city reporters, who swarmed to the small town Thursday when it became the center of a racial protest, as a place caught in a time warp. African Americans, who make up about 12% of the town's population of 3,000, live in their own neighborhood, are buried in their own cemetery and reportedly can't even get their hair cut at the white barbershop. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have likened Jena to Selma, Ala., which became a national symbol of Jim Crow repression in the 1960s.

Many white residents, meanwhile, find such criticism bewildering. To them, Jena is just a pleasant, friendly place to live and work. They say everything would be fine if all the media and outside protesters -- agitators, they would have been called in a not-so-bygone day -- would just clear out and leave them alone.

The reality is probably somewhere in between.

The board says Dan Rather's lawsuit is killing the cult of the anchor, and notes that campaign-money "bundlers" should be subject to disclosures laws.

Columnist Rosa Brooks rails against the Bush adminstration's auctioning off its war duties in Iraq, while Army Infantry captain Timothy K. Hsia says contractors are necessary to supplement over-stretched troops. Columnist Joel Stein reports back on his night at the Emmy Awards, and attorney Laine T. Wagenseller wonders if the city can zone away her love handles.

Readers respond to Republican senators' refusal to change war strategy. Laguna Niguel's Kurt Page says, "Another campaign slogan down the drain. 'Family values' is a goner, and now so is 'support the troops.'"

The Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins, camera in hand, treks out to the badlands of San Mateo County to find the seemingly modest house of the Paw family, who in conjunction with their associate, New York-based wheeler-dealer Norman Hsu, have made generous contributions to the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York). The numbers:

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

That total ranks the house with residences in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan's Upper East Side among the top addresses to donate to the Democratic presidential front-runner over the past two years, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of donations listed with the Federal Election Commission.

The article takes hypothetical pains not to say that the Paws are being given money by wealthier people to invest in Clinton's political future, but just to note that if, in some alt.reality, they were doing that, it would violate campaign finance laws. The story is far from probative: The Paws have a large family with some seemingly successful children (one manages a mutual fund). Their son Winkle acknowledges the family's association with Hsu (excuse me, Mr. Hsu), and least persuasive of all is the campaign-finance-investigation-by-architecture-review portion of the story:

The Paw's Daly City home is a one-story house in a working-class suburb of San Francisco. On a recent day, a coiled garden hose rested next to a dilapidated garden with a half-dozen dried out plants. The din of traffic from a nearby freeway was occasionally drowned out by jumbo jets departing San Francisco International Airport.

Don't let that "working-class" business fool you, comrade. Daly City, a little slice of Purgatory just below the Heaven of San Francisco, is as outrageously priced as only a town on the Peninsula can be. I know an Orthodox priest who spent nearly $800,000 on a D.C. dump not much different from the one in Mullins' photo — and that was in the late nineties, long before the market peak. I find it not at all surprising that an extended family that can get its paws on this lime-green palace would be able to spend $200,000 becoming "Hillraisers." Still, this is an interesting piece of enterprise journalism, even if you, like me, are one of those crazy people who believe how you spend money in exercising your First Amendment right to express your political views is your own damn business. And with the warning that life ain't easy for a boy named Hsu, I commend you to the full story.

It's an inside-the-Beltway story in more ways than one: A boring procedural standoff over an issue that itself is of interest largely to political junkies: whether registered lobbyists who play rainmaker for members of Congress seeking re-election should disclose for public inspection how many contributions they have “bundled.”

Both houses of Congress have passed legislation to require disclosure of bundling, a practice that subverts the limits on individual contributions contained in federal election law. But a conference committee to resolve different versions of this and other ethics reforms has been stalled by an objection from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who is afraid that a conference might inter disclosure requirements for another Washington folkway — special-interest “earmarks.”

Now, in an attempt to make an end run around deMint’s “hold,” congressional leaders are talking about skipping a conference and having the House and Senate enact identical ethics bills.

But there’s a catch: Roll Call reports that Senate Democratic leaders are redrafting the bundling-disclosure provision to “shift responsibility for the disclosure from lobbyists to the candidates themselves.” This could make it harder for the public to keep track of which lobbyists are bundling and into whose laps those bundles are being dropped.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing if election law could allow the public to know who’s bundling contributions for which candidates — presidential as well as congressional. But that doesn’t alter the case for bundling disclosure as part of the reporting required of lobbyists, who arguably get a bigger bang from their bundling than other financial angels.

Demographer Richard Alba argues that the Senate's revived immigration plan could preclude racial justice for native-born Americans:

Rather than having to invest in the often deplorable schools attended by home-grown minorities — disadvantaged African Americans and the children of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia — the U.S. could simply attract the cream of the talent from other countries, individuals whose educations have been paid for by their home societies.

It's true that many of these immigrants also will be nonwhite — the racial diversity at the top of American society seems certain to increase either way. But failing to exploit the impending opportunity to reduce our racial cleavages will leave a huge native population to continue to suffer from blocked opportunities.

Author Pico Iyer explains the funny economics of flying business class, and Benjamin Zycher argues that divestment won't work against Iran. Columnist Jonah Goldberg wonders if Americans are the only ones who want a peaceful, democratic Middle East.

The editorial board demands a vote for the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives. It criticizes California Assembly members for reversing years of local campaign reform efforts, and keeps an eye on City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, who reluctantly came clean on who crashed his city car.

Letter writers react to The Times' coverage of Gaza. South Pasadena's Robert Aronoff asks, "In all fairness, will The Times now refer to Gaza as 'occupied Gaza'?"

Ralph James Savarese answers all the insensitive questions about his decision to adopt an autistic child:

To this day, I can't believe how callous people were; the strange anxiety that adopting a child with a disability provoked. And the anxiety just kept coming. "Healthy white infants must be tough to get," a neighbor commented. No paragons of racial sensitivity, we were nevertheless appalled by the idea that we'd do anything to avoid adopting, say, a black child or a Latino one....The last eight years have been devoted almost exclusively to my son's welfare: literacy training, occupational therapy, relationship building, counseling for post-traumatic stress — the list goes on and on. But what strides he has made.

The World Policy Institute's Frida Berrigan names the U.S. the world's number one arms pusher. Columnist Niall Ferguson says global politics is a lot like Shakespearean tragedy, and we're at the start of Act V. And columnist Gregory Rodriguez interviews "M. Butterfly" playwright David Henry Hwang in what may be his "post-multicultural phase".

The editorial board berates the county for failing to put its campaign finance data in a searchable online database. It urges the House of Representatives not to go easy on lobby reform, and tells the FCC it went too far in censuring XM shock jocks Opie and Anthony.

Letter writers aren't too keen on the Senate immigration plan. In the words of Sierra Madre's Rosemary Hagerott, "it's 1986 again."

"Five years ago today, President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Today, American politics is so clean you could eat off it," says Ryan Sager in the New York Sun. That second sentence is sarcasm, dontcha know, and Sager rattles off the many ways the McCain-Feingold law, as it is popularly known, has either failed in its goal of cleaning up politics or succeeded in its goal of moving the political process further away from the citizenry.

The results so far: There is no evidence political corruption has been decreasing; major party candidates are on track to break all first-quarter fundraising records next month; incumbent-reelection rates—even in the face of last November's Democratic surge—remain well over 90% in the House and nearly 80% in the Senate; and the 2002 law has been used to punish small participants in the political process, not help them. I'll live the closing argument to Sager:

Last but not least—and here we get to the real nub of campaign-finance regulation—McCain-Feingold supporters promised that the bill would curb the scourge of "negative" and "dirty" advertising. "It is about slowing political advertising," Ms. Cantwell said during the debate. "Making sure the flow of negative ads by outside interest groups does not continue to permeate the airwaves."

Of course, curbing and "slowing" speech critical of politicians by "outside interest groups" (a.k.a. "citizens") is in no way a permissible goal under the First Amendment. But, ultimately, the politicians may have failed in this most nefarious goal. And it's not just the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who showed the way around it.

While the Supreme Court has so far upheld the patently anti-Constitutional ban on advertising by citizens' groups 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election, the rise of Internet politics may eventually supercede this atrocity. Witness the anti-Hillary Clinton "1984" ad that caused such a stir on YouTube just last week. Such ads, cheaper than dirt (it costs money to distribute dirt, YouTube's free), will only be more important with every election cycle.

For this reason, look for Congress to start taking an interest in "unregulated" Internet speech any day now. Money has never been the issue. Cleansing our speech of impure thoughts about politicians is the real agenda.

Courtesy of Brian Doherty.

Bradley A. Smith says mourn, mourn America, for the Swifties and Move[o]n, for we shall not see their like again.