Here's a neat fact out of the Kentucky Senate race: on average, Sen. Mitch McConnell's campaign aired a TV ad every five minutes during the week after Labor Day.

That's about 2,200 ads overall — more than any other Senate candidate during ...that time, and roughly twice as many ads as his Democratic challenger (Alison Lundergan Grimes) aired.

From now until Election Day, we'll be summarizing highlights from the past week's Senate ad buys each Thursday. That's also when we'll update our nationwide ad-tracking interactive: http://bit.ly/1Cnp9rC See More

The 2008 financial crisis wreaked havoc upon the U.S. housing market, and nowhere was hit worse than Florida. Its lingering souvenir of that subprime mortgage fallout? A backlog of hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases.

Eager to clear... this backlog, the state set up a parallel legal system strictly for rapidly disposing of foreclosure cases. Florida's goal is to clear 256,000 cases each year, or about 700 each day — provided everyone works weekends and doesn't go on vacation.

To be sure, most cases involve homeowners who cannot pay their mortgage and aren’t fighting the foreclosure. But to those who feel they have a legitimate right to their home, Florida's foreclosure court system has become a nightmare where defendants' rights come second to speed. See More

A new super PAC urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president may need to change its name, or risk enforcement action by the Federal Election Commission.

"Ready for Warren PAC" isn't supposed to use a federal political candidate's name... without being authorized by that candidate. (For inquisitive readers wondering how the two-year-old "Ready for Hillary" PAC is still around, it's because Clinton isn't an active federal candidate.)

Warren has said many times that she will not run for president in 2016, and her attorney said last month she wants no association with the super PAC. See More

In many ways, Mayday PAC is a super PAC with a death wish. Its goal is to diminish the role of money in politics, and it would like to see super PACs disappear altogether.

But in other ways, Mayday PAC's influence works just like that of a...ny other special interest group — its more than $1.6 million investment in New Hampshire Senate candidate Jim Rubens certainly scrambled today's critical primary election.

Mayday PAC chose to support Rubens, along with four other candidates so far, because he shares their goal of campaign finance reform. “I would not have a chance without the super PAC,” Rubens told us. “Now I do.” See More

Congress returned to Capitol Hill today, and on the Senate side, lawmakers debated a constitutional amendment that would reset parts of the U.S. campaign finance system to what it looked like before the 2010 'Citizens United' ruling.

For a... refresher on the limits and restrictions at stake in this week's debate, here are two ever-popular explainers we've written on recent campaign finance rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the ‘Citizens United’ decision (with bonus info on the 'SpeechNow' ruling): http://bit.ly/1j0J99v
On the 'McCutcheon' decision: http://bit.ly/1pog8L0 See More

In an attempt to help Republicans take control of the Senate, six nonprofits in the Koch brothers' political network have together aired more than 43,900 TV ads during this election cycle so far.

That breaks down to nearly one out of ever...y 10 Senate race ads across the entire U.S. Because these groups are social welfare nonprofits, they have no obligation to make their funders public.

We've visualized ad buys by political players in all 27 Senate races (including a few liberal dark money groups), you can explore our database here: http://bit.ly/1Cnp9rC See More

A report from the internal watchdog for the Department of Defense finds that billions in U.S. aid to Afghanistan has been tracked so poorly, the Pentagon has no way of knowing how that money was spent. Furthermore, the Defense Dept. plans t...o provide Afghan security forces with another $13 billion over the next four years, and the inspector general said even that sum “may be subject to wasteful spending and abuse.”

Devoted fans of our posts might notice, this is a problem other watchdogs have brought up before — what's notable about last week's report is the fact that problems with accounting and mismanagement in Afghanistan came up years ago and still aren't under control. See More

If you live in a Senate battleground state, our newest data-driven interactive will probably re-affirm something you already know: political players are buying up a lot of TV air time.

What you might not know: who's buying that ad time, an...d for how much. You can explore the source of these ad buys, see where your state ranks in terms of overall spending and find out how much candidates are fueling the ad blitz versus outside groups. See More

$153 million. That's the estimated cost of more than 428,000 TV ad spots for Senate races we'd seen as of last week.

Only about half of these ads were paid for by candidates themselves. Outside groups like super PACs and political nonprofi...ts were responsible for most of the rest.

We've identified nine Senate races in battleground states that will likely decide which party will control the upper chamber of Congress for the final years of President Obama's term — see which ones made the cut and why. See More

A Russian bank currently facing sanctions by President Barack Obama over the Ukraine crisis is hoping to improve its relationship with the U.S. government — last week, it hired two influencers who probably have a good idea of how that gover...nment works.

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former Senator John Breaux, D-La. are the main lobbyists who will attempt to influence on behalf of a subsidiary of Russia's third-largest bank, Gazprombank.

Lott and Breaux left public service almost a decade ago and are among more than 300 members of Congress who’ve become lobbyists. See More

Over the past ten years, more than 200 bills in state legislatures have taken aim at defying federal control over firearms, an investigation from News21 found.

More than half of those bills have come in the last two years after the shootin...g at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. All but three have been introduced since President Barack Obama took office. But underneath the policy jargon lies a culture of firearms woven into the heritage and politics of states whose histories were shaped by guns.

“(The federal government) is diving off into areas unchecked that they’re not supposed to be involved in,” said Montana state Rep. Krayton Kerns. “Not only is it our right in state legislatures to do this, it’s our obligation to do it." See More

Americans are twice as likely to die from turning guns on themselves as they are to be murdered with one.

A national News21 analysis of 2012 data found 18,602 firearm suicides in 44 states compared with about 9,655 firearm homicides in 49 ...states. That means at least 50 people died per day from firearm suicide; 26 died from firearm homicides.

“I think what we see in the media, whether it’s newspapers or television or movies, there have been people shooting at one another with guns, but rarely do you hear information about suicide,” said Matthew Miller, a researcher who studies suicide. See More

This is 10-year-old Dalton Davis. He's participating in a patrol drill in the woods of Batesville, Miss., with the Citizens Militia of Mississippi.

Fear of the federal government’s interference with Second Amendment rights and suspicion th...at elected officials are ignoring the “will of the people” have provoked a resurgence of self-described patriots across the country who say they are preparing to defend themselves and their rights by any means necessary, according to an investigation by News21.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identified 1,096 “anti-government” patriot groups in the U.S. in 2013, an increase from about 150 groups in 2008. See More

“State police and highway patrol get their orders from the governor, I get my orders from the citizens in this county.”
-Mike Lewis, sheriff of Maryland's Wicomico County

With more states passing stronger gun control laws, rural sheriffs a...cross the country are taking the meaning of their age-old role as defenders of the Constitution to a new level by protesting such restrictions.

And as News21 found, some sheriffs are refusing to enforce the laws altogether. See More

Homicides are down across most of the country, but little has changed for three, embattled cities: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Flint, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey.

In Baton Rouge, the homicide rate is seven times higher than the national a...verage. Eighty-five percent of homicides involved a firearm, and the victims in 68 percent of those homicides were 30 or younger.

We been lucky to publish pieces from "Gun Wars," a News21 investigation into rights and regulations in the United States. News21 reporters visited Baton Rouge, Flint and Camden to talk with people impacted by gun violence there. We'll be sharing more of their work from this series over Labor Day weekend. See More

Earlier this week, we reported on a discrepancy we found in lobbying activity — a review of lobbying contracts we got through court filings revealed a lot more information about influence activities than what the public can normally access....

But getting our hands on these rarely seen lobbying contracts also meant we got to see how much lobbyists at a D.C.-based firm make per hour.

The "most senior" lobbyist commanded $1,250 an hour for contract work beyond an arranged flat-fee. But on the junior level, the hourly fee detailed in the contract was $100 an hour. See More

Right now, much of this 400-acre industrial park outside Tullahoma, Tennessee is a cornfield, but its developer hopes it will someday host large data centers and other technology companies.

The cornfield, believe it or not, is only five m...iles away from being able to connect to Tullahoma's city-run, fiber-optic Internet service with gigabit capacity. A Tennessee state law, and considerable support by private Internet service providers like AT&T, keeps this high-speed connection within Tullahoma city limits. Tennessee is one of 20 states that bans or restricts municipal broadband.

The battle over Tennessee's state law has gone national — as the FCC is currently considering pre-empting these blocks on broadband expansion. Their decision has big implications for the cornfield outside Tullahoma, as well as the more than 130 other cities across the U.S. that offer Internet connections. See More

When the Supreme Court's 'McCutcheon v. FEC' ruling came down last April, Democrats quickly came out against the decision — saying that doing away with aggregate limits would open the door to even more special interest money in elections.

...Now, with just over two months until Election Day, a handful of those same Democrats will be directly benefiting from 'McCutcheon.' A new "jumbo" joint fundraising committee, a fundraising vehicle made possible by the Supreme Court's ruling, launched this week to help 26 left-leaning candidates and party committees.

“I’m thrilled to help the Democrats demonstrate their hypocrisy,” said Dan Backer, the conservative attorney behind the 'McCutcheon' case. “There is no fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to generating as much money as possible for their campaigns.” See More