From Professor Jay Mandle at Democracy Matters, this month's edition of Money on My Mind, a study of a pressing policy issue - the troubled economy - through the lens of money in politics.  To read the essay click on "read more."

Law professor Lawrence Lessig made a name for himself arguing for less restrictive copyright laws in what he called the Fair Use Project. Now he's decided to shift his focus to the problem of money in politics and how to change the way money and access interact in Washington. Here he talks with Dan Slater of the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog about what prompted him to take up the fight.

The sub-prime mortgage slump, the alarming number of zeroes appended to the average student loan balance, and any number of banking industry shenanigans: there's a campaign finance story behind each one. And as Williams Collins concludes in this article for the East Texas Review, the moral of each story is that we need full public financing of elections.

This post is part the first installment of a new series that will explore the favors that lawmakers already under an ethical cloud for various lobbying and money and politics scandals give to their biggest contributors. Today's focus: Rep. Richard Pombo.