Mike Allen's Playbook reports the FEC numbers to be filed today by potential 2012 presidential candidates. Mitt Romney leads the way with $1.8 million, Sarah Palin follows with $866,000, and Tim Pawlenty comes close with $723,501.
Ezra Klein's Wonkbook weighs in on the financial regulatory reform bill, which could pass today, or on Saturday:
In the end, it's both much more and much less than "Wall Street Reform," which is the Democrats preferred term for the bill. In the "more" column, the legislation creates a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will have authority over everything from credit cards to payday lenders, influencing many industries that we tend to think of as Main Street businesses. In the "less" column, the structure and size of Wall Street will, with some exceptions relating mainly to the Volcker rule and derivatives, remain intact.
Chris Cillizza's Morning Fix previews Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's speech to the Young Republicans in Washington this morning. McConnell will focus on Americans' belief in checks and balances, stressing that a Republican congress will be able to bring about a different kind of change than the one Barack Obama promised.
The Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet notes a Bloomberg poll that found that 73 percent of respondents think that offshore drilling is "just too dangerous and should be banned in U.S. waters" and that the Deepwater Horizon explosion was a "freak accident."*
ABC's The Note links to a Boston Globe story about how, in a particularly tough election year, Democrats from certain states are cozying up to the NRA.
*This post formerly read that 73 percent of Bloomberg respondents thought the deepwater drilling moratorium was "unnecessary." This assertion directly reflected Bloomberg's article about the poll, but has been revised to reflect the polling language.