Did Sen. McConnell send Sen. Ensign to do his dirty work? The Senate has been battling over S. 223, the bill that would require electronic filing of campaign finance reports by Senators (the House already does this). Turns out the efforts to obstruct the bill may have been coming from Sen. McConnell's office the whole time.

An investigation into the anonymous hold placed on the bill pointed to Sen. John Ensign (albeit with McConnell's knowledge) who recently introduced a "poison pill" amendment to the bill. Now the Sunlight Foundation is reporting that a "unanimous consent agreement" from the office of Sen. McConnell is making any further debate on S.223 conditional on discussion of an amendment identical to Ensign's amendment -- in other words, the Ensign amendment originated in McConnell's office. Rather than come right out and oppose the electronic filing bill, McConnell's manipulating things behind the scenes to kill it. Hardly a surprise coming from the Senate's biggest opponent of new campaign finance policy, but an ironically shady approach to defeating a measure designed to improve transparency.