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BEIJING — A fire in gold mine in eastern China killed at least 14 workers and trapped eight underground, a state work safety official said Saturday. The fire that broke out Friday afternoon at the Lingnan Gold Mine in Zhaoyuan city in eastern Shandong province had been put out but rescuers were still working to free those underground, according to the chief of the state work safety administration's policy law and regulation department. He identified himself by his surname as Li. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said the fire initially trapped 50 workers, but all but the eight had been...

Idaho Republicans held their convention over the past weekend, approving a platform containing some mighty interesting parts of the Tea Party platform -- from state nullification of federal laws, to protecting the institution of marriage from transgendered people, to to a Glenn-Beckesque embrace of gold and silver money. State Rep. Marv Hagedorn (R) told the Associated Press that the push to go further right was a product of disgust with the current status quo from the Obama administration. "It does reflect a change," said Hagedorn. "But it's not a change in our party, it's a change in the White House."...

A key prosecution witness testified Wednesday that she was instructed by the national finance director for Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to falsify costs for a star-studded fundraiser held on the eve of the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. Gretta Nock, a professional event planner, said she did not think it was her place to question Clinton Finance Director David Rosen and went along with the alleged scheme. Rosen is charged with causing the Clinton Senate campaign to underreport more than $800,000 in expenses to the Federal Election Commission. As a result, the campaign was able to spend more "hard"...

Peter Paul, the whistleblower who threatens to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, will be interviewed by Frank Beckmann on Thursday, May 5 at 10:30 am Eastern. Beckmann is on WJR, the ABC radio affiliate in Detroit. LISTEN ONLINE: CLICK. Paul made appearances on Wednesday with Tony Snow and Sean Hannity. The interviews were in-depth and did an excellent job of explaining Hillary Clinton's problem with her Hollywood fundraiser put on by Paul in 2000. Had Hillary's campaign finance director David Rosen reported accurately to the FEC, it would have cost her dearly in hard money and threatened her campaign with...

"HOW'S THE NEWS ON SOFT MONEY GOING?" MAURICE I. MICHAANE '03 There's good news and bad news on the campaign finance reform front . The good news lies in the unprecedented agreement between New York Senate candidates Hillary Rodham (D) and Rep. Rick Lazio (R) to forgo millions of dollars worth of soft-money advertising on their behalf and to urge independent groups not to mount ad campaigns for them. The bad news arises from evidence that, despite the campaign finance scandals of 1996, the White House guest rooms are still being used by President and Mrs. Clinton to raise money...

.............To their credit, a few journalists are now seeing the scales fall from their eyes. The Washington Post's David Broder, dean of the Beltway press corps, now admits that "it is virtually impossible to control the flow of money from the private sector into the political world. . . . The best one can hope is that new rules do not produce more unintended negative consequences than benefits. McCain-Feingold is flunking that test." Sen. George Allen, who once occupied Thomas Jefferson's seat in the Virginia Legislature, says that the only way to honor the First Amendment's protections of political speech...

For those who think that there is too much money in politics (and think most of it is Republican) there is just one word -- Soros. That is George Soros, the left-wing radical billionaire who has pledged to personally spend tens of millions of dollars to try to unseat George Bush in 2004. Defeating the Bush administration -- which he recklessly likened to Nazis and communists -- has become an obsessive focus of Soros life. His recent $10 million contribution to the new Democrat activist group America Coming Together was the largest single donation from an individual in history. Soros...

<p>WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court's affirmation of campaign-finance reform is sending California Democrats to the Internet and Republicans to see how state money- raising laws can help them fill the gap the ban on soft money is going to create.</p>

<p>Less than two weeks before the Supreme Court hears arguments on Sept. 8 regarding the constitutionality of the provisions of last year's campaign-finance-reform legislation, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) issued its summary of January-June hard-money contributions to federally registered political-party committees. That six-month period represents the first official fundraising tally since national political parties were banned from raising soft money by the McCain-Feingold bill.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The three national Republican Party committees have collected $57 million so far this year, far outpacing their Democratic rivals in all but the closely divided Senate. And the GOP's spring fund-raising galas are still to come. The Republican National Committee raised $29.3 million from January through March and began this month with $16 million on hand and no debt, spokesman Jim Dyke said Wednesday. The Democratic committees raised about $20.6 million in all, with the Democratic National Committee collecting about $8.4 million in the first quarter. It also had no debt. The RNC raised nearly as much...

But in the competition for federally regulated dollars -- known as hard money -- Republicans held a 2 to 1 advantage...

By John Whitesides WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican National Committee (news - web sites) brought in a record $31.7 million in the year's first quarter while its Democratic equivalent raised $26 million, but Democrats lagged badly in regulated "hard-money" donations that can be spent directly on campaigns. Republicans raised $26.3 million and the Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) about $9 million in the "hard-money" funds that will become the currency of campaigns under a new law that takes effect after the Nov. 5 mid-term congressional elections. That law, signed by President Bush (news - web sites) last week,...

<p>Pulling far ahead of its Democratic counterpart, the Republican National Committee has raised a record $31.7 million this year, most of it as unregulated "hard money."</p> <p>From January to March, the RNC made $26 million — more than $8 out of every $10 — in hard money from donations that are limited in size but can be spent without restrictions.</p>