The fundraising part of the loophole has been in the news lately: Some donors to Romney's SuperPAC simply set up shell corporations and gave through the corporations, whose ownership is opaque. Their identities, so long as they don't inadvertently disclose them, will remain secret. But a SuperPAC supporting John Edwards, and playing a supporting role in his trial, has already experimented with using shell corporations on the other end of the equation: spending." "The net result: To turn these committees into black boxes, which report to the Federal Election Committee the total amounts raised and spent, and nothing else.”

At the last possible moment to save his reelection, the economy is beginning to hum, as evidenced by Friday's jobs report. And Obama's Republican opponents are shaping up to be as formidable as, well, marshmallows. While Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are making each other unelectable, the president is singing Al Green, congratulating Super Bowl winners, playing with science projects, raising obscene amounts of campaign cash and watching his poll numbers soar.

Democrats are currently more excited about voting this fall than Republicans are, a sign that doesn’t bode well for the GOP effort to reclaim the White House, according to a new poll Wednesday.
Almost six in ten Democrats, 58 percent, said they are “very excited” to vote later this year, compared to 54 percent of Republicans that said the same, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted for Daily Kos.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Ohio finds just 33% of voters approve of Gov. John Kasich (R) to 53% who disapprove. If voters could do the 2010 election over again they'd vote for Ted Strickland (D) by a whopping 20 point margin, 56% to 36%, numbers that not coincidentally track closely with the margin voters rejected collective bargaining restrictions proposed by Kasich last fall.  Also interesting from the poll: An astounding 42% of voters have no opinion whatsoever about Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), "the highest figure we've found for any sitting senator."
 

His candidacy all but dismissed just days ago, Rick Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri on Tuesday, an unexpected trifecta that raised fresh questions about Mitt Romney's ability to corral conservative support. The results on Tuesday shook the political world, which appeared to once again make the mistake of believing the Republican race for the presidency was finally set on a stable trajectory.