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.

Koch Industries’ wholly owned subsidiary Flint Hills Resources, based in Kansas, tossed in $1 million to help win passage of Proposition 23, the initiative to roll back California’s 2006 law to reduce greenhouse gases.

It makes perfect sense. Koch Industries is deep into fossil fuel. To the extent the Kochs can bring about their regulation-less vision, they and their corporation would become richer still.

Successful passage of Prop 23 would kill California’s AB 32, a landmark law to reduce carbon emissions in the state. California’s new law can only do so much to restructure the country’s energy economy on its own, but the size of the state’s economy, combined with the visibility of its politics, is what makes petroleum industry chiefs like the Kochs so nervous about the law going into effect. As David Koch once told Morain in 1993, while sponsoring a different California ballot initiative, “If you can win the voucher initiative in California, it can win elsewhere. It is such a highly visible state.”

Now the Kochs are at it again, spending big money on Prop 23, and they’re getting help from their nonprofit organization, Americans for Prosperity, which has recently been accused of engaging in an improper amount of direct political advocacy. According to David Spady, the group’s California director, “Prop. 23 is our highest priority.”

Admittedly, among the many vile and incendiary charges leveled against Obama, this latter one was at least moderately clever. But California GOP leaders, among them Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, recognized that an attack of this sort have no place on a party website and urged county party chairman Craig MacGlashan to take it down.

You can take a look at a screenshot of the since-removed material, including two invocations of Obama’s wife, Michelle, on the Sacramento Bee website.

And you can see what it looks like for a civilian to get waterboarded here:

If you’re still feeling a little masochistic after watching that, take a look at the anti-Obama political cartoons, more vitriolic than funny, that now dominate the Sacramento GOP site.