After Citizens United, which was decided two days after Democrats lost their 60-seat majority in the Senate, there was a push to respond to the Supreme Court ruling with some legislation adding transparency and disclosure to the process. If the Massachusetts race went another way it would have passed; Democrats consistently got 59 votes in the Senate for the DISCLOSE Act. But Republicans wouldn’t budget because they reasoned that the new campaign finance system – actually not a system at all but a recipe for massive spending by corporations and the wealthy – would advantage them. In 2010 they were right.

The DISCLOSE Act would have mandated disclosure of most campaign spending. Having failed to achieve that through Congress, Chris Van Hollen is attempting to force the FEC to make certain rules to that effect through a lawsuit.

Wisconsin is more than just ground zero in a fight over the future of public sector unions, it is the embodiment of the Republican Party’s commitment to bare-knuckle political warfare; their willingness to push the law to its limits to gain long-term political advantage for the party. While it is most evident in Wisconsin, this effort to structurally reshape our laws for the benefit of elected Republicans is happening all over the country.

If the DISCLOSE Act passes in the lame duck session, I’m a spotted egret.

This ad has been credited for helping to bring Joe Sestak back into the Senate race in Pennsylvania. The latest poll, from Reuters-Ipsos, shows a dead heat, after Sestak trailed for months. Just like in his primary victory over Arlen Specter, Sestak stormed back in the final stages and now could pull off the upset, which may come down to the ring communities in the Philadelphia suburbs. But while one ad could bring Sestak back from the brink, it’s the overwhelming number of ads attacking him that has defined the race – a model devised and carried out by his opponent years earlier.

With the Democratic Party now awakening to the horrifying reality of unlimited secret corporate spending on elections, I have but one simple request, and that is for them to change their mascot from the donkey to a deer caught in a car’s headlights.

The Citizen’s United ruling has clearly unleashed a flood of outside corporate spending on our elections, and we don’t even know who is trying to shape our government with their millions. The beneficiary of all this new secret campaign spending is overwhelmingly the Republican Party.

This pathetic whining from Democrats about problems they could and should have fixed is deeply depressing. It is like watching someone starve to death because they are too lazy to walk to their fully stocked kitchen.

We learned Wednesday from The Hill that many Democratic Senators don’t actually support all the great things they claim they have “fought for.” They lied to voters; they refuse to take the small step that would actually allow them to become law.

There’s nothing magic about a super-majority, it has not been found to make better or wiser policy, and in the present circumstances it leads to nothing but gridlock, as the nation’s challenges lay unaddressed. Maybe the filibuster is fine if it isn’t used very much, but you cannot expect that in a partisan era. All it does it facilitate broken government.