Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come under scrutiny for his service on the board of Marriott International during a time when the company paid millions to settle charges of taking kickbacks and cheating clients. Given the close relationship Romney has to the Marriott family (Romney’s father was a close friend of the hotel chain’s founder J.

President-Elect Barack Obama's incredible ability to generate small online donations has some members of Congress thinking they can apply his methods to their campaigns. That flies in the face of reality.

President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress have an ambitious agenda come January. And those industries that donated the $5 billion to 2008 candidates will want to make sure their voices are heard.

On Tuesday, Obama's transition team laid out an ethics plan that should assure some voters on the power of lobbyists in his administration.

From The Hill:

The news of Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) $150 million haul in September with an average donation under $100 combined with Obama's decision to opt out of the partial presidential public financing system gave political prognosticators and pundits the opportunity to declare the death of public financing. They signed the certificate and called the morgue.

The New York Times addresses Mssrs. McCain and Obama on the subject of bundling advising both should pledge to make it a priority to rein in the practice should be elected President. The Times goes a step further and says that while addressing bundling is important, full public financing of campaigns should be the ultimate goal.

Heralded as he is for drawing a huge number of small donors to his presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is still collecting plenty of $1,000+ plus checks, as this story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune explains. Obama was in the Minneapolis area for a big fundraising event, at which attendees ponied up $1,000 for dinner and $5,000 for a picture with the candidate.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) values his reputation as a reformer and Sen. Barack Obama (D) has boasted about the transparency of his campaign but the New York Times is a little disappointed in both of their efforts on the donor/bundler disclosure front. After a nudge from the paper the Obama campaign updated its publicly available list of bundlers but should they need hounding from the press?

I had no more than a passing relationship with science classes in college but I stuck around long enough to absorb the following: "the plural of anecdote is not data." I don't want to come down too hard on Jim Mills at The Hill, but I think he'd do well to refer to this little aphorism before he picks up his hammer again to drive a stake into the heart of campaign finance reform.

Senator Barack Obama (D) has decided to opt out of the partial public financing system for the general presidential election, the first candidate to do so since the system was adopted. He is expected to have a fundraising advantage over Republican rival John McCain. In response to Obama's decision, Public Campaign Action Fund has released this statement.

Breaking news: not all lobbyists are evil people. In related news, "lobbying" signifies so many different types of activities undertaken in pursuit of so many goals that to vilify or exonerate the whole profession is a useless enterprise. Instead, let's get after the real danger here: big campaign contributions from lobbyists (and their clients) that come in around about the same time key legislation is being debated and voted on. Lobbying isn't wrong, legalized bribery is.