Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Super PACs take center stage in primaries

  As our primary selection day approaches, it appears that we are seeing significant campaign attention from the presidential candidates. The move by the Alabama Legislature to make us an early primary state was a good one.

  As is generally the case, we are seeing negative ads. That is not unusual in politics. The reason that they are employed so often is because they work. Otherwise, the media consultants would not use them. The difference in this year’s presidential contests, however, is who is paying for the ads.

Sheldon Richman: How to get money out of politics

  Watching the television pundits fret over campaign finance is amusing, because the solution to their problem is right under their noses. They just don’t want to see it.

  The pundits’ favorite phrase that stands for everything evil in the political system is Citizens United. That’s the nonprofit corporation that sued the government in 2008 when it was told that commercials for its anti–Hillary Clinton documentary couldn’t be shown close to a Democrat primary election without violating McCain–Feingold, the latest campaign-finance law. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that section of the law unconstitutional.