A letter (pdf) sent to Jackson by DeGette and Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Ed Markey states:

A natural gas rig at the entrance to Battlement Mesa in Garfield County on Colorado’s Western Slope (David O. Williams photo).

“Two companies — Frac Tech and Weatherford — have informed the Committee that they inadvertently provided inaccurate data in response to the Committee’s request for information on the type and volume of products used in hydraulic fracturing between 2005 and 2009. As a result of these errors, our original analysis on the use of diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing underestimated the true extent of use by more than 500,000 gallons.

“The companies’ errors … demonstrate the difficulty in obtaining accurate information about the contents of hydraulic fracturing fluids and reinforce the need for mandatory and uniform national disclosure of this information to EPA.”

The committee report in January revealed oil and gas service companies, including industry leader Halliburton, injected more than 32 million gallons of diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in 19 states between 2005 and 2009, including more than 1.3 million gallons in Colorado.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the oil and gas drilling process of injecting mostly water and sand – with smaller amounts of undisclosed chemicals – deep into oil and gas wells to fracture tight rock and sand formations and free up more hydrocarbons.

The fracking process was exempted from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. DeGette and other members of Congress say diesel fuel, which is made up of some cancer-causing carcinogenic compounds, was never included in that 2005 exemption. In August they followed by asking the EPA to better define diesel fuel.

Oil and gas industry representatives, including the head of the state lobbying group Colorado Oil and Gas Association, agreed that diesel fuel was not part of the exemption but pointed out that the EPA never held an official rulemaking on the use of diesel fuel in fracking.

DeGette and other leading Democrats now want the EPA, which just announced it will regulate some aspects of fracking waste water disposal, to engage in a rulemaking process on diesel fuel.

DeGette and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis are two of the lead sponsors of a bill that would require full public disclosure of chemicals used in fracking. Most oil and gas companies oppose such a move for proprietary reasons, arguing that fracking occurs far below groundwater supplies and has never been shown to contaminate drinking water. That contention is disputed.

CitizenLink leans on high-profile religious-right attorney and Republican National Committeeman James Bopp Jr. to make the case against disclosure.

“We are certainly going to pursue the case vigorously, because the result of the judge’s decision is going to literally be a free-fire zone when we talk about the court sanctioning harassment of people who participate in our democratic process,” Bopp said. “Absent the prospect of protection in future cases, I think the whole idea here by the homosexual lobby is they now have a threat. They [will seek the names of donors] and put them on the Internet. So they already know they’ve got a weapon of intimidation, and without the courts’ protection, they’ll continue to use it.”

The ruling upholding California’s campaign finance disclosure laws was handed down by U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. on Thursday. California requires political campaigns to disclose the identity of anyone who donates more than $100.

During the 2008 heated Prop 8 campaign, gay-rights websites like Californians Against Hate that opposed the ballot initiative posted information such as the names, addresses and employers of donors to the campaign. In Washington state a similar proposal saw the same kind of websites appear. There, the sites included Whosigned.org and Knowthyneighbor.org.

CitizenLink refers readers to the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation’s report on harassment against Prop 8 supporters. Heritage authors placed the harassment into three categories: vandalism, hostility and slurs, and violence and threats of violence.

Vandals also hit houses of worship. Perpetrators used orange paint to vandalize a statue of the Virgin Mary outside one church. Offices at the Cornerstone Church in Fresno were egged. Swastikas and other graffiti were scrawled on the walls of the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco, a parish known widely as being “gay-friendly.” In San Luis Obispo, the Assembly of God Church was egged and toilet-papered, and a Mormon church had an adhesive poured onto a doormat and keypad. Signs supporting Prop 8 were twisted into a swastika at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Riverside. Someone used a heavy object wrapped with a Yes on 8 sign to smash the window of a pastor’s office at Messiah Lutheran Church in Downey.

In a previous ruling on the matter, Judge England pointed out that, if there were crimes committed by supporters of either side of the debate, they could and should be prosecuted. He said, as for the rest, the heated exchanges were part of the political process and weren’t reason to limit the ability of Californians to fully inform themselves on an issue they were being asked to decide at the ballot box.

Bopp plans to appeal England’s decision once the written version is made available for review.

Bundlers are individuals connected to a political candidate who offer to collect money on the candidate’s behalf and then ‘bundle it’ together. They are usually the largest contributors to candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Campaigns are not required to disclose their bundlers, and in fact, none of the Republican candidates have publicly named their donors who are giving money on behalf of other contributors. President Obama has elected to disclose his bundlers.

“When you release this level of information, it invites scrutiny, and the campaigns are shy about letting the public see the influence peddling that goes on behind the scenes,” said Michael Beckel, spokesman for The Center for Responsive Politics. “We know that there are perks and incentives involved for bundlers. This can be as small as being able to have a face-to-face conversation with a candidate at an event, or you might end up with an ambasadorial appointment abroad.”

According to iWatch news, this is a departure from the 2008 presidential campaign, when all the major candidates released their bundler information.

President Obama received at least $55 million this year from his bundlers, and more than 40 bundlers each brought in over $500,000. The minimum donation from a bundler is $50,000.

In contrast, individual donations for the campaign averaged $56 per person. According to Obama for America, more than 606,027 people have donated individually.

Bundlers are just one part of a growing trend of organizations and individuals contributing to political campaigns on behalf of donors that prefer anonymity. Other organizations that fall under the 501(c) tax code, like Americans for Prosperity, co-founded by the infamous billionaire David Koch, are not held to any disclosure rules as long as their primary purpose isn’t political.

But Judge George Buth sentenced Comer to time served for the six months he had already spend in the jail. He also revealed that the woman who accused Comer of failing to disclose his status was now his wife — and the couple had a child.

Comer’s wife was present in the courtroom for the sentencing.

The Press reports that Comer’s wife, and another woman who alleged he had sex with her without disclosing his status, are not infected with the virus. It is not uncommon in such HIV disclosure cases for the victims to not become infected. Michigan law, however, does not criminalize transmission of the virus, it criminalizes sexual penetration “however slight” when the person with HIV fails to disclose his or her HIV positive status.

While the time served is a good deal for Comer, that may not be the end of his time behind bars. Comer was paroled in April 2009 from prison. He has been sentenced to prison for a conviction in 2008 for stealing a financial transaction device and for possession of less than 25 grams of cocaine. For those charges, Comer was sentenced to four years in prison. Because he was on parole, Michigan Department of Corrections officials could revoke his parole and send him back to prison.

But will a vote on a new, leaner bill make it onto the Senate’s packed lame-duck schedule? Democrats following the issue assure me that they’re fighting to include it in the mix, but they’re up against a lot of competing demands that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) must juggle, from the Start Treaty to an omnibus appropriations bill to food safety to the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. They also note that a stripped-down version of the bill couldn’t be called up at a moment’s notice — like Reid was able to do the last time he called a vote on DISCLOSE — but would instead have to be introduced the old fashioned way and would probably eat up between two and three days of precious Senate floor time as a result.

The biggest issue weighing on the Democrats’ decision, by far, is whether a disclosure-only bill would actually convince any GOP senators to change their mind on the issue. Both Democrats and campaign finance advocates make it clear that they’ve been reaching out the offices of Republicans like Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe (R) and Susan Collins (R) since the spring, asking for their views on what they’d like to see (or not see) in the bill. In recent months, however, that line of communication has basically gone dead.

So would a disclosure-only bill represent the right show of good faith to win back their support? Or would it simply lead to a symbolic floor vote in which Democrats force Republicans to take a stand on the issue of disclosure? I’m waiting to hear back from Snowe and Collins’ offices to get their version of events and whether they think there’s any hope of reviving the conversation, and I’ll write about it if and when I hear back.

Rep. Mark Kirk, who could become the next senator from Illinois, said at a recent debate, “I think all of the groups entering Illinois to support my opponent and the ones trying to support me should reveal their donors and be fully transparent.” Likewise, Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck: “I think it is important that people know who is paying for the ads.”

So do we. If Mr. Kirk or Mr. Buck end up in the Senate, we hope that they – and other colleagues will cut off the flow of secret money before even more gushes forth in 2012.

You could make a case for adding Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul to the list, too, at least when it comes to the issue of barring federal contractors from lobbying or contributing to congressional campaigns.

“What I would do is that for every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I would put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won’t lobby or give contributions,” he told Rush Limbaugh, “because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and immediately lobby for more money.”

And even Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller has been up in arms about a new Super PAC, Alaskans Standing Together, which is spending loads of corporate money from the parent companies of federal contractors to back his opponent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. He’s even gone so far as to file a complaint about the issue to the otherwise loathed Federal Elections Commission.

Does this mean that any of these candidates would back legislation like the DISCLOSE Act in its present form? Probably not, but it shows that while conservative candidates who possess Paul’s libertarian streak might be all for free corporate spending, they’re not for cozy corporatist arrangements either. To the extent that these interests overlap with those of campaign finance reformers, you might yet see some cooperation after all.

As for the rest of us, we can celebrate what with any luck is the death of campaign-finance reform and the revival of more robust political competition. Thirty-five years after it began in the wake of Watergate, the liberal crusade to limit campaign spending has proven once again to be a hopeless failure.

In the spirit of charity (or the fact that many campaign finance laws are still on the books and don’t look to be in any danger of being struck down by the courts), however, the Journal is willing to offer the reform community something of a grand bargain that entails striking down all campaign finance limits and the Federal Election Commission in exchange for full disclosure:

These columns have long supported disclosing political contributions as part of a larger deregulation that allowed any American to give as much as he wants to any candidate. This is the Virginia model and it works well, as it did at the national level for decades before the goo-goos got into the act. Lately, however, as we’ve watched Democrats and liberals attack Target Corp. and other businesses for donating to independent groups, we wonder if even disclosure is wise. But as the price for a wholesale repeal of all campaign-finance limits and putting the Federal Election Commission out of business, we’re willing to compromise.

So how about it, goo-goos? Your standard bearer on Capitol Hill looks like a goner, and the Supreme Court has rightly gutted your schemes to limit political money as a violation of the First Amendment. John McCain is still around, but we doubt any Republicans will be foolish enough to follow him again down this primrose path. Accept the fact that money can’t be purged from politics, and we’ll even give you something in return for admitting reality.

It’s a nice offer, sort of, but it ignores two realities. The first is that the Supreme Court just yesterday rejected an appeal from the conservative group SpeechNow.org, which sought to limit the scope of what it had to disclose to the FEC about its donors and activities. The decision was consistent with other opinions offered by the Roberts court — including Citizens United — which indicate that full and prompt disclosure is both constitutional and desirable, so it seems strange that Democrats would feel the need to trade anything for the cause.

The second, sadder reality is that while the Journal still appears to (tepidly) endorse the concept of disclosure, recent Senate votes on the DISCLOSE Act indicate that every single Senate Republican has abandoned it. Several GOP Senators, of course, have indicated that their objections to the bill lay not in disclosure but in its smaller provisions — like the one limiting the speech of large government contractors — which they say provide an unfair advantage to unions in election contests.

It’s for this reason that the reform community is getting increasingly vocal about Democrats trying to pass a stripped-down, disclosure-only bill during the lame duck session. In doing so, they either can get their desired disclosure (without trading anything) or force Republicans in the Senate to cast a vote on whether they still think transparency is a good idea after all.

Why does Lungren’s opinion matter? Assuming he wins re-election and Republicans capture a majority of seats in the House, he’s slated to take over the chairmanship of the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over campaign finance legislation. Last week he sat down with the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Morain and explained his ideas more fully:

As Lungren’s sees it, the main problem with the system is that there are caps on direct donations to candidates. An individual cannot give more than $2,400 per election to a congressional candidate. Lungren would obliterate limits, permitting donations of unlimited size directly to candidates and political parties. That, he says, would limit the role of independent groups. [...]

“You’re going to have money flowing, and I would rather have the money flowing to the candidates,” Lungren said. “You’d still have a lot of money, but (donors) would be identified with the party and with the candidate.”

Lungren might be right that doing away with direct campaign contributions would go a long way toward cutting out the middleman of outside groups, but he’s also jumping into the one area of campaign finance where the Supreme Court still holds that the threat of corruption and quid pro quo arrangements between donors and candidates remains very real. His idea is basically a nonstarter with those seeking to reform campaign finance laws in Washington, but he’s the guy that they’d most likely have to go through to get anything passed in the House.

Lame duck sessions aren’t known for passing legislation that’s at all controversial, but some advocates are arguing that it’s Congress’ last chance to get something meaningful pertaining to donor disclosure or public financing passed, and Lungren’s remarks are doubtless adding urgency to that mission.

If you’re more of a visual learner, however, you’ll be happy to see that The New York Times has published a story that includes a fun video and also the following chart that breaks down campaign finance law in the post-Citizens United world:

Interestingly enough, some issues, like the accurate and complete disclosure of political donations to campaign ads, were a big problem even before the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. the FEC. The recent court case opened up the possibility that corporations could spend directly on ad campaigns on behalf of candidates, but most were already well acquainted with the shell game of giving to nonprofit corporations with like-minded views in order to hide their own political activity. The difference now, however, is that these nonprofits are allowed to get involved directly in the game of advocating for candidates, as long as it doesn’t become their primary mission.

Because it’s become the focus of so much popular fear and resentment, however, Citizens United has become an useful rallying point for those seeking to repair the campaign finance disclosure system through legislation like the DISCLOSE Act.

Reid and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the Democratic Whip, spent the majority of their time ripping the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and reminding Republicans that, once upon a time, they too supported increased transparency and disclosure of campaign spending as an alternative to strict limits on total dollar amounts. Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) continued to claim that Democrats are raising the issue at at time when they should be focused on jobs and the economy — and that the bill is an attempt to rig the electoral system to their advantage.

Reid began things by surveying the current election spending landscape. “Nameless, faceless individuals are spending huge amounts of money – corporate money and other money — for which there is certainly no transparency whatsoever,” he said. “I repeat, no transparency. That’s what the debate’s about today. It is important the American people know how outrageous the Supreme Court’s decision was.”

Durbin, for his part, turned a portion of his speech into a trivia game of sorts, asking listeners to guess the senator who made the following comment. ”What we ought to have is disclosure. I think groups should have the right to run those ads but they ought to be disclosed and they ought to be accurate, end of quote. Who said that?” Durban asked the Senate. “The Senator from Kentucky who has just come to the floor — the minority leader — in the context of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill in 2002.”

The Democratic Whip also went on to quote Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) – “I don’t like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable. To the extent we can I tend to favor disclosure” — and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) – “I think the system needs more transparency, so people can more easily reach their own conclusions” — in an apparent attempt to publicly shame Republicans for their change of hearts.

Neither Democrat made mention of the Republican Senators from Maine — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — and their previous championing of campaign finance measures, however. As Senators who might conceivably still vote for the measure, Snowe and Collins were clearly deemed off-limits for such rhetorical attacks.

McConnell, meanwhile, spent little time criticizing the specifics of the bill, instead trying to tie the Democrats’ decision to revive the DISCLOSE Act to other efforts in the Senate this week surrounding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the DREAM Act, grouping them all together as an attempt to play politics before the election. “This is a bill that’s back on the floor no other reason than our friends on the other side have decided that this week is ‘politics only week’ in the Senate,” he claimed. “That’s all this is: pure politics.”

The Minority Leader also coined a new name for the bill — “an incumbency protection act for Democrats in Congress” — and argued that, “now, after spending the last year and a half enacting policies Americans don’t like, they want to prevent their opponents from criticizing what they’ve done…. They’re trying to rig the system to their advantage.”

Both parties, in a sense, are engaged in a game of chicken on the DISCLOSE Act. Democrats think the disclosure of political spending is a political winner and a no-brainer for most Americans, so on the campaign trail they’ll be happy to highlight Republican obstructionism if McConnell and his compatriots once again block a vote tomorrow. Republicans, for their part, are gambling that they can convince the public that the bill favors unions and other special interests partial to Democrats, weaving the measure into a tapestry of right-wing election paranoia that stretches back to ACORN and now The New Black Panther Party, chalking it up as once last ditch attempt by Democrats to steal the elections.