The Daily Muck

Norman Hsu, who yesterday was ordered by a Mesa County judge to be held on $5 million cash bail, is calling attention to an old fund-raising technique call “bundling.” Bundling became important after the 2002 McCain-Feingold law limited the contributions individuals could make to political parties because bundlers can skirt the law by rounding up contributors and delivering contributions as a “bundle.” According to the Times, Hsu enlisted 260 people to give a total of $850,000 to Hillary Clinton for President and delivered hundreds of thousands to other candidates. (Los Angeles Times)

Kim Long, author of The Almanac of Political Corruption, Scandals & Dirty Politics, reminds us that the “good old days” were full of the same political patronage, scandal and sleaze that we find today. His book goes back to colonial times but Long also notes a “close precedent” to the Larry Craig story from 1964 in which Walter Jenkins, LBJ’s chief of staff was caught by undercover officers in a sexual encounter with another man in the basement of the Men’s Room of a YMCA near the White House. Though Jenkins was a close friend of LBJ’s, he was dumped within 24 hours because the election was one month away. The history lesson according to Long — “it makes you wonder about the sensitivity of the public and the media to these types of things.” (Harper’s)

A report distributed to Congressional offices in March, but not made public until now, reveals that Department of Commerce employees have been indulging in unauthorized, improper first- and business-class travel. ABC News notes that, “Ironically, the inspector general responsible for discovering the improper travel, Johnnie E. Frazier, resigned in June, facing multiple investigations into numerous allegations of abuse and mismanagement, including that he fraudulently charged the government for improper travel.” (ABC News)

Only Maine and Nebraska deviate from the winner-take-all electoral system in presidential elections. But California Republicans are looking to change that through a ballot initiative that has already won approval from California’s Secretary of State. The plan, which proposes to divide California’s electoral votes by congressional district and give two electoral votes to the statewide winner, would have given President Bush 22 of the state’s 55 electoral votes in the 2004 election. This math has Democrats scrambling to keep the initiative off the ballot. (CQ)