WORDS STRUCK. Story here. “House debate on a capital formation bill on Wednesday quickly turned into a heated political fight between Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), prompting Hensarling to ask — successfully — that Frank’s words be stricken from the record.”
QUESTIONS ON POLL. Story here. “Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR) is seeking another route round New Hampshire’s problematic push polling law – it has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to intervene.”
ATTACK MICROSITES ON FB? ClickZ.
CU AT THE FEC. Politico. “It’s been more than two years since the Supreme Court tossed out restrictions on corporate and labor unions’ spending on political ads, but the Federal Election Commission is just getting around to overhauling its rulebook.”
OFA VOTER MINING. The Times. “So Mr. Obama’s re-election team is sifting through reams of data available through the Internet or fed to it by its hundreds of staff members on the ground in all 50 states, identifying past or potential supporters and donors and testing e-mail and Web-based messages that can entice them back into the fold.”
SUPER PACS IN H RACES. The Times. “On Wednesday, lawmakers and political experts were still weighing whether Ms. Schmidt’s loss meant that her political luck had simply run out or was a sign of things to come. But her defeat clearly illustrated both the power of third-party groups to successfully intervene in races where they may not have gone before and the threat to all incumbents in a country that is down — way down — on Congress.”
DONORS AND JOBS. The Post. “Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration.”
TEA V. TAX AGENCY. Roll Call. “Tea party outrage over a spate of IRS letters to conservative groups has revived a long-standing dispute over the agency’s controversial role in policing politically active nonprofits.”
ETHICS IN ID. Story here. “House and Senate Democrats turned a spotlight on ethics early in the session, after several high-profile missteps by their Republican colleagues last summer.”
CLOSING LOOPHOLES IN ME. Story here. “A legislative committee has approved a bill to close an ethics law loophole that has allowed high-level state officials to avoid reporting millions in state payments to organizations run by themselves or their immediate family members.”
PLEA IN NJ CASE. Story here. “The former executive director of the South Amboy Housing Authority last week admitted his role in a scheme to funnel illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic election campaign of Joseph Vas for U.S. Congress in 2006, as well as evading taxes, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.”
DC RAIDS. Story here. “The FBI and IRS raided [Jeffrey] Thompson’s home and office on Friday as part of what Thompson’s firm called an ongoing ‘federal investigation into campaign finance in the District of Columbia.'”
HAVE A GREAT DAY.