Florida lawmakers are dividing their time between work at the statehouse by day, and working the room at nearby fundraisers by night with more of latter than the former as the dash for cash gets frenzied. A prohibition against soliciting money during the regular session means compressing all the fundraising into a cartoonishly hectic chunk.

Everyone agrees that the hunger for money among legislators has grown more acute:

The Denver Post is concerned about groups and individuals finding sneakier ways to circumvent the spirit of campaign finance regulations. Not sold on the Clean Elections solution to money's pervasive influence on politics, the Post advocates better transparency about where the money funding the ads, mailings, calls, and events is coming from.

Colorado's increasing visibility on the national political landscape means people in the state are in the eye of the election storm:

Ron Paul, oil spills, and the guy from Men's Wearhouse all get a cameo in this New York Times op-ed by author Dave Eggers. For Eggers, a photo op with a presidential candidate at a swanky fundraising event in the Oakland hills is a subtle reminder of just how bad the campaign money chase has become.

Deborah Goldberg begins this article in The Nation parsing the recent Supreme Court decisions on political advertising and arguing that while disclosure requirements are all well and good, full public financing of campaigns is the ultimate answer to the battles both in court, and in the public sphere, about the best way to regulate campaign finance.

Hey, so you know what makes a good campaign? In the eyes of Sean Parnell of the Center for Competitive Politics (affiliated with the Center for Title Redundancy) it's money, money, money! At least, so his editorial in The Hill today would indicate. He does a jig on the grave of presidential public financing and cheers a future where money dominates politics.

Brody Mullins at the Wall Street Journal labels the prevalent practice of bundling "the chief source of abuse in the American campaign-finance system" and when he does the math and talks to the people in the fundraising trenches, it's clear his charge has merit.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is taking another position directly contrary to this interests of voters by attempting to strong-arm the Senate into confirming Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. Is von Spakovsky qualified? Only if you count an extensive background in suppressing voting by minorities, and in using his perch at the Justice Department to advance a partisan agenda. The Louisville Courier-Journal has more.

Jay Mandle, professor at Colgate University and part of Democracy Matters, an organization that involves students in supporting Clean Elections efforts, has this article up at the Huffington Post tracking the level of public faith in government relative to the amount of private money in elections.

CQPolitics digs in to the campaign promises of John Edwards and Barack Obama to not accept direct contributions from federal lobbyists in their respective bids for the White House. Emily Cadei spoke with Public Campaign's Nick Nyhart for the article, and he talked about why this promise, though a good start, does not fully address the way lobbyist cash can influence elections.

Some excerpts from the piece:

Cabell Brand is a Virginia businessman and a longtime anti-poverty activist and he's written a strong editorial in the Roanoke Times in support of full public financing of campaigns at the federal level as outlined in the Fair Elections Now Act. He argues that every issue we grapple with has a money in politics angle, and only when we address that angle can we make real policy change.