(Updated Feb. 6, 11 a.m.)
Outside groups have spent at least $212,000 on television advertisements aimed at torpedoing former Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Obama's controversial nominee to head the Pentagon, with a Senate Armed Services Committee vote on his nomination set to occur as early as Thursday.
The spending was picked up by Sunlight Foundation's Political Ad Sleuth, which tracks political ad buys. The figures almost certainly understate the amount of money being pumped into the anti-Hagel campaign: Political Ad Sleuth relies heavily on ads uploaded to the Federal Communications Commission's online database; currently only ...
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A new estimate from the Federal Election Commission puts total spending for the 2012 election at more than $7 billion -- $1 billion more than previously thought. 
Even before he was elected last November to represent Chicago's southern exurbs in the House, Illinois Democrat Bill Foster decided to sell his stake in Electronic Theatre Controls, a company he founded with his brother. Foster jettisoned the shares -- worth at least $5 million -- "to minimize potential conflicts of interest when voting on legislation that might impact his personal finances," according to his press secretary. 
If there were any question of the clout big media wields in Washington, the fate of Derek Khanna, the House Republican staffer who called for scaling back the copyright protections these interests benefit from, should leave no doubt. Khanna, whose copyright paper was mistakenly published online by a House Republican policy making body, then quickly withdrawn after protests erupted from major media firms and their congressional allies, was 
A super PAC that deliberately disguised its connection to Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson emerged from the shadows to drop nearly $1.7 million in a single day this week to oppose President Barack Obama's reelection, one of a series of money bombs in a week where outside spending threatens to top $200 million.
