The files — which, among other information, detail the times ads aired, how much they cost, and whether stations rejected ad buy requests from campaigns — are currently available only on paper at stations.

The FCC rejected a push by the industry to water down the measure. But the rule as passed also has serious limits. For example, the data will not be searchable or uploaded in a common format.

The rule will first apply to affiliates of the four major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) in the top 50 TV markets. All other stations will have until July 2014 to come into compliance.

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It all starts with the so-called "social welfare" groups that have become bigger players in the political world in the wake of Citizens United, which knocked down restrictions on campaign activity by such groups.

Tax experts say it's possible that businesses are using an aggressive interpretation of the law to wring a tax advantage out of their donations to these groups.

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A decade ago, it was Republicans who were pushing for disclosure of donors to nonprofit social welfare groups who are now pouring millions into political attack ads and House Democrats who opposed them.

Now the parties have exchanged positions.

The groups in question are nonprofits known as 501(c)(4)s, after the section of the tax code that describes them.

The best-known of the newer c4's are the Karl Rove-affiliated Crossroads GPS, which last year raised a $33 million war chest to support Republicans, and the Obama-affiliated Priorities USA, which is expected to play a similar role for the president. Like super PACs, c4's can accept unlimited donations. But Super PACs have to reveal their donors; c4's do not.

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The propriety and legality of the NYPD's activities is under dispute. Mayor Michael Bloomberg – who claimed last year that the NYPD does not focus on religion and only follows threats or leads – is now arguing that, as he said last week, "Everything the NYPD has done is legal, it is appropriate, it is constitutional." Others disagree. In fact, Bloomberg himself signed a law in 2004 prohibiting profiling by law enforcement based on religion.

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That’s a significant number, especially given that Mormons, who represent 7 percent of the state’s population, made up a quarter of caucus-goers in 2008, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

It's worth remembering here that Nevada is considered a swing state and Romney could benefit from what Ed Kilgore calls a Mormon "frontlash" in a general election contest against Barack Obama. In the primary, Kilgore points out, Mormons "will also matter on February 28 in Arizona (6% LDS), and in later caucuses in Idaho (27% LDS) and Wyoming (11% LDS), right down to heavily-Mormon Utah, which ends the whole nominating process on June 26."

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Three senators and and 18 representatives -- all Democrats -- have signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the deal (and remember, the administration still isn't saying what equipment, exactly, it's sending to Bahrain). Here's the key section of the letter:

We recognize the limited nature of the sales, and we acknowledge that the Bahraini government has taken some positive steps with respect to human rights in recent months. However, it has not done enough to justify the sale of any military items or services to Bahrain. Moreover, if the Administration wishes to reward the Bahraini government for any progress, there are other methods that do not involve strengthening the Bahraini military or security forces.

Tragically, even a brief survey of reports from reliable sources makes clear that the Bahraini government continues to perpetrate significant human rights violations.

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It hasn't gotten any notice since Adelson became a player in presidential politics, but it turns out that the trove of diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks contains an interesting anecdote about how Adelson aggressively promoted his casino and hotel business in the Chinese territory of Macau -- and a run-in he had with the central government in Beijing.

First, some context. The news broke last March that Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corp. is under federal investigation into whether it has complied with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The act makes it illegal to bribe foreign officials to obtain business deals.

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Unlike fundraising by the candidates' official campaigns, which tend to rely at least in part on small donations from grass-roots supporters, the super PACs raise massive sums from a very small number of wealthy people. Who those donors are is important because they presumably will have influence with (or on) their favored candidate and potentially the next president.

Priorities USA Action, the Obama super PAC, raised $1.2 million and had 38 individual donors in the second half of 2011. Out of those, 33, or 86 percent, were male. (I did not include corporate or union donations in these calculations.)

The disparity is even wider with the Romney super PAC, Restore our Future, which raised $17 million in the second half of 2011. Out of 146 individual donors, 134, or 92 percent, were male.

This is hardly a new phenomenon.

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One of the big headlines out of the filings Tuesday is that Harold Simmons, a Texas billionaire, gave the Karl Rove-affiliated American Crossroads an impressive $7 million over the course of just a couple months in the fourth quarter of 2011. That's nearly 40 percent of the $18 million the group raised last year; an affiliated group, Crossroads GPS, whose donors are secret, raised more than $30 million.

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As of this writing, the filings of the super PACs backing Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have not yet appeared on the FEC's website. But we have learned something about the pro-Jon Huntsman group, Our Destiny PAC: It was funded primarily by Huntsman's father, Jon Huntsman Sr.

Huntsman Sr. is the founder and chairman of the Huntsman Corp., a giant chemical company, and he was on Forbes' list of the 1,000 richest people in the world in 2010.

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First, we got a reminder that there are still 50,000 pages of government record relating to the JFK assassination that are being kept secret, nearly a half-century after that event. That's despite the 1992 passage of the JFK Act, which specifically called for the "expeditious" release of these records.

Second, the New York Times reported on an almost comically long delay in the government response to a Freedom of Information of Act request the newspaper filed in 1997. A response to the Times request was finally sent out earlier this week.

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It now appears that those efforts may have paid off.

The Obama administration has gone ahead with selling arms to the regime despite opposition in Congress.  And we only know about the sale because some anonymous congressional sources came forward to alert the media. Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy has the story:

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The super PACs operating in the GOP primary have managed to delay disclosing their donors until next month, but the identities of who funded these groups will be public. Groups in a different category -- those that don't ever disclose donors -- haven't started operating in any prominent way, but you can be sure they will in the fall.

I've recently explored how we got to this point. But what about the prospects for reform of a system that so many are disillusioned with?

To learn about what's going on, I spoke to Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, who has been working on campaign finance issues for more than three decades.

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So it comes as a bit of a surprise that a top anti-poverty advocate in Washington credits Gingrich with saving an important federal program designed to help the poor.

The episode in question dates back to Gingrich's time as speaker of the House in the 1990s. During his tenure, Gingrich delivered a $100 million -- or more than 25 percent -- budget boost to Community Action Agencies (CAA), which use federal dollars on a range of locally controlled community projects designed to help address the causes of poverty.

Federal money to the CAAs goes to projects on education, job training, nutrition and the like. That infusion of money was an about-face from 1995, when the new Republican majority in the House had proposed eliminating funding for Community Action Agencies after they took power under Speaker Gingrich.

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That take on the Obama reelection campaign strategy is in line with what we’ve been hearing for months out of the White House, which previewed the concept to the Washington Post as early as October, just as the Occupy movement was getting underway.

The tension or perhaps contradiction with this strategy is that, as I’ve been documenting, this administration and the Democratic Party are not fundamentally anti-Wall Street institutions. They have deep ties to the financial services industry.

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Ted Koppel asked Gingrich the key question: what do the Adelsons get if you win?

Gingrich, in response, suggested it all comes down to U.S. policy toward Israel.

Here’s the video, via Mondoweiss:

Koppel: But there has to be a so-what at the end of it. So if you win, what does Adelson get out of it?

Gingrich. Well, he knows I'm very pro-Israel. And that's the central value of his life. I mean, he's very worried that Israel is going to not survive.

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It's no surprise that Romney is using the lobbyist card: Polls consistently show that the American public view lobbying as one of the worst professions when it comes to honesty and ethics. More surprising is that the Gingrich campaign has not turned the tables on Romney by looking at the recent lobbying work of several of Romney's top aides.

I recently reported that informal Romney advisor Charlie Black, for example, lobbied for the DREAM Act, putting him directly at odds with Romney's position on the immigration legislation.

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“Over the last 15 years since he left the House, he talks about great bold movements and ideas,” Romney told a Florida crowd this week. “Well, what’s he been doing for 15 years? He’s been working as a lobbyist, yeah, he’s been working as a lobbyist and selling influence around Washington."

In fact, Gingrich has never been a registered lobbyist -- a distinction that Gingrich invoked in the Monday night debate -- but his "strategic advice" work for Freddie Mac looked a lot like what can be colloquially described as lobbying, or at least something close to it.

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And, if one measures by reduction in the aggregate number of troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the president is right. But it's also true that Obama has presided over a significant escalation in the war in Afghanistan.

One can see that in charts of American troop levels, and also, as a new Congressional Research Service report shows, in the number of American soldiers and Afghans being killed and wounded. Click the chart for the full image:

(The 2012 figure is so low because it's only a few weeks into the year.)

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Now Chris Dodd, senator turned Motion Picture Association of America chief, is out with an informative interview warning lawmakers -- particularly Democrats -- not to count on Hollywood's historically generous campaign contributions. He told Fox late last week:

Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake. ...

I would caution people don't make the assumption that because the quote 'Hollywood community' has been historically supportive of Democrats, which they have, don't make the false assumptions this year that because we did it in years past, we will do it this year. These issues before us -- this is the only issue that goes right to the heart of this industry.

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