“For all the shambles Congress has made of this year’s public agenda, the reigning politicians of Washington are diligently attending to their own private wish list, which emphasizes ever greater protections for incumbents like themselves.

Waiting like a ship in the night for a quick, opportunistic vote is a Republican proposal that could devastate existing campaign controls by allowing politicians to collude with big-check donors from corporations, unions and lobbying blocs to finance unlimited amounts of campaign ads on the Internet. This would signal the return to unregulated soft-money politicking that a wiser and warier Congress outlawed three years ago.” (New York Times editorial)