The endgame is beginning in one of the most crucial Senate races in the nation, between former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin. With the race a virtual tie and Thompson trailing badly in fundraising ($5.7 million to Baldwin's $11 million), Karl Rove's dark money group Crossroads GPS has stepped in to massively subsidize Thompson's campaign, painting Baldwin as "too extreme" for Wisconsin in a pounding rotation of TV, radio, and direct mail.

by Sara Jerving and Mary Bottari

In a new lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), big energy extractors are pushing for carte blanche in their interactions with foreign governments, making it harder to track whether their deals are padding the coffers of dictators, warlords, or crony capitalists. The United States Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and the National Foreign Trade Council filed a lawsuit on October 10, 2012 against a new SEC rule, which requires U.S. oil, mining and gas companies to formally disclose payments made to foreign governments as part of their annual SEC reporting.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested to business owners they tell their employees how to vote on a June conference call organized by the National Federation for Independent Business (NFIB), an organization the Center for Media and Democracy has recently exposed as a partisan lobbying group advancing big business interests.