Free Republic

The companies that build futuristic airport scanners take a more old-fashioned approach when it comes to pushing their business interests in Washington: hiring dozens of former lawmakers, congressional aides and federal employees as their lobbyists. About eight of every 10 registered lobbyists who work for scanner-technology companies previously held positions in the government or Congress, most commonly in the homeland security, aviation or intelligence fields, a Washington Post review of lobbying-disclosure forms and other data shows. Industries routinely employ well-connected lobbyists to seek favorable legislation and regulations in the nation's capital. But the extent of the connections to the federal...

Last month, William F. Weld, a candidate for governor of New York, set state Republican politics astir by telling of an encounter with Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato that cast his fellow Republican in a bad light and offered an explanation for their simmering feud. Mr. Weld said that in 1996, when he was governor of Massachusetts and running for the Senate, he received a $750,000 check from Mr. D'Amato that was delivered with an expletive-filled warning. Mr. D'Amato vigorously denied the encounter, calling it "a bunch of baloney" and asserting that he had never even spoken to Mr. Weld in...

For the last few months, William F. Weld's bid to become governor of New York has had a sharp thorn in its side: the outspoken opposition of the onetime kingmaker of state Republican politics, former Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, who has said that Mr. Weld is "without any real experience" in New York. Yesterday, Mr. Weld struck back in force, telling how their feud dated at least to a 1996 encounter in which Mr. D'Amato gave him $750,000 in donations for his Senate campaign that year against John Kerry of Massachusetts. The donations, according to Mr. Weld, came with an...