Last week a federal judge stepped in to decide when a political ad is a campaign ad, meaning it has to be reported to the Federal Election Commission, as Sunlight wrote on Friday.

The case was brought by a conservative, Virginia-based nonprofit that wants to run five political ads that appear to be aimed at criticizing President Obama without disclosing them to the FEC. The group, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, sued the FEC after the commissioners, beset by partisan gridlock, could not decide whether the ads were so called electioneering communications—a term of art meaning the ads have to ...