The battle goes on. There's a very powerful case to establish that these ads were about defeating Sen. Feingold, not lobbying him.

[They were too powerful for Sen. John Sherman (R-Ohio).] If we would not submit to an emperor, ... we should not submit to an autocrat of trade.

This is not so. In any case, the issue is not the executive chairman. It is how to get on with the work of disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

They took an already unacceptable bill and turned it into a charade.

That doesn't mean there are no efforts to influence the minority parties, but the principal efforts almost always involve the party in power, the party or the individuals from that party who can deliver results.

To effectively address the scandals in Washington, which revolve around the multiple ways lobbyists use money to buy influence, Congress must reform the lobbying, campaign finance and ethics rules, and create new means for enforcing these rules.