"South Carolina’s House speaker is affiliated with a political action committee that has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and private contracts to sitting state lawmakers."

"According to publicly filed data analyzed by The Post and Courier, the Speaker's PAC has channeled about a half-million dollars in the last four years to the S.C. House Republican Caucus, to the state Republican Party and to more than 130 mostly incumbent Republican candidates for legislative office."

"To keep tabs on super PACs, and as of today, super donors, The Center for Public Integrity has a project to "out" the shadowy political organizations that have flourished in the wake of the Citizens United ruling."

Consider the Source "provides narrative to behind the flow of money and how the election is influencing a flood of new spending." To see their latest donation/spending figures, click here.

This month, members of the General Assembly are gathering in Richmond, while "legislators are buzzing about the exclusion of four major Republican candidates from the presidential preference ballot in Virginia on Super Tuesday."

"Missing in that conversation is any discussion of a loophole that gives political parties power to say whether or not candidates have met the letter of the law. Unlike independent candidates, who are required to have their ballot petitions certified by a local registrar, Republican and Democratic chairmen across Virginia are given unlimited discretion and no oversight."

"Teachers have long been seen as a "voting block" that will turn out on election day. A WINK news investigation challenges that assumption. It also uncovers a problem education advocates say they've battled for a long time: overall, it is hard to get teachers to turn out to vote."

With help from NICAR, data research found that teachers living in Lee County, Florida didn't turn out as expected for the Lee County Supervisor of Election.

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"Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in 2009 as part of the Green Movement to protest a disputed presidential election. The government crackdown that followed included some women being imprisoned, tortured and raped. This report shares some of their stories." Jeffrey Brown with The Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS NewsHour reports on the aftermath of the Iranian protests, with startling accounts from the women on the front line.

Joe Yerardi, of the Columbia (Mo.) Missourian, found that retired St. Louis businessman Rex Sinquefield has spent millions to bankroll numerous campaigns in Missouri in the past two years. "The donations, which total more than $13.3 million, are the result of Sinquefield's personal wealth, his ideological passions and Missouri's lax campaign finance laws, experts and politicians say." His donations have been bipartisan, though favoring Republican campaign committees nearly 3-to-1.

An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that Governor Rick Perry has given more than $16 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to companies with investors or officers who are large campaign donors.  The governor has denied any sort of political influence on how the tech funds are awarded.

California Watch launched Politics Verbatim, a site that "collects and categorizes the promises, proposals, arguments and attacks" made by Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman in their race for governor of California.  The site was launched with 300 documents and 1,000 excerpts that will be added to daily as the race progresses allowing voters to hold the candidates accountable in during the campaign.

A computer-assisted analysis by Bloomberg News reporter Jonathan D. Salant of Federal Election Commission data found corporate political action committees siding with vulnerable Democratic incumbents, the candidates that Republicans need to beat if they are to take back control of the House of Representatives this fall.