Today is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. If you think it’s going well, ask your local Presidential candidate how he likes those SuperPAC ads.

Several actions are taking place today.

When Bill Daley was relieved of the Chief of Staff part of the Chief of Staff job, I thought he’d just end up as an appendage, a corporate bagman. But over the past several weeks, the White House has stepped away from the corporate-friendly pose they cultivated with the Daley appointment, and Daley became far less relevant. Today he resigned to join the reelection campaign.

An en banc ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals contends that corporations are actually not people, when the case in question considers an individual writing and mailing “death threats” to corporations.

So this is interesting. The Montana Supreme Court basically threw down a challenge to the US Supreme Court to revisit the Citizens United decision, by upholding a state law that mandates corporate contribution limits.

Yes, of course Newt Gingrich was a lobbyist, because that’s the only reason political figures get paid millions of dollars by corporations. It’s not to give advice. They have large payrolls with all the strategists they’ll ever need. The only thing they don’t have are front men to make sure their strategies get put into action on Capitol Hill.

The dynamic is clear. Once SOPA (and its Senate counterpart Protecting IP Act, or PIPA) became high-profile among the Internet community, the lazy endorsements from companies and various hangers-on became toxic. And now those supporters are scrambling, hollowing out the actual support for the bill. Suddenly, a bill with “widespread” corporate support doesn’t have much support at all. And remember, the corporate support was the only thing propping up SOPA; it’s not like there’s a grassroots army urging Internet censorship.

In the couple months since Alabama passed HB 56, among the harshest immigration laws in the nation, they have: a) seen crops rot in the fields because farmers cannot find workers to pick the fruits and vegetables, which has cost the state potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue; b) threatened the water service of potential undocumented immigrants; c) forced charities to seek citizenship papers from their recipients, even though that provision and others have been blocked by multiple courts; d) witnessed frustrated employers speak out about the loss of legal Hispanic workers, who have left the state in droves; e) led to 15% of Hispanic students being afraid to attend school; f) arrested top executives of two automakers, Mercedes-Benz and Honda, who were in the state overseeing their plants there.

John Broder looks back today at the Obama Administration’s decision to delay ozone standards. As has been reported several times before, he finds the meddling hands of Cass Sunstein and Chief of Staff Bill Daley. At least Sunstein, the head of OIRA, has some tenuous connection to regulations, if not science and the environment. But if you thought that it makes no sense for a White House Chief of Staff to be involved in ozone regulation, well, you’re right.

Chief of Staff Bill Daley is giving up day-to-day operations at the White House, with Pete Rouse taking over. I’m not sure there’s anything else to the job other than day-to-day operations; that’s kind of what a Chief of Staff does, unless he’s the corporate bagman.

While the media remains focused on Herman Cain’s sexual harassment allegations, the more damaging story may be a budding campaign finance scandal. It seems a network of private corporations, possibly linked to the Koch bros, directly paid for many of the campaign’s early events, in violation of federal laws.