The first big deadline for presidential candidates to report their campaign fund raising donations is approaching at the end of June.

Among the GOP hopefuls, Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minn) is getting a lot of attention for her past ability to turn big political statements into campaign cash. She welcomed a million dollar windfall into her campaign coffers the day after a 2008 appearance on "HardBall" with Chris Matthews, where she described the Obamas as anti-American. Many are calling these controversial statements and sloganeering "Money Blurting." But will Bachman’s blurts be enough to siphon donations away from the money making machine that is the Mitt Romney campaign and other candidates?

When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United, there were all kinds of doomsday predictions about the impact of the ruling. Most famously was Barack Obama's comments during his State of the Union address:

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said. "Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

These mid-term elections are seeing massive amounts of money being raised and spent both left and right, from party committees to outside independent groups — much, much more money than the last mid-term elections in 2006. Over $260 million has been spent by outside groups, who have been able to remain largely anonymous since the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, earlier this year. 

But what are contributors expecting in return for their millions of dollars? 

We’re nearing the end of the campaign trail for candidates seeking to win over voters in this November’s upcoming mid-term elections.  Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich and Mike Shear, chief political reporter for the Caucus Blog at our partner The New York Times, are joining us every Tuesday to give us updates on what the candidates are up to on the trail.

With just weeks until midterm elections, millions of dollars are being poured into political campaigns. But with fewer disclosure requirements since Citizens United v. FEC, few groups have disclosed the names of donors who pay for their political ads. New York Times reporter Mike McIntire talks about the difficulty he faced trying to trace the source of money an ad by the vaguely-named "Coalition to Protect Seniors."

We’re headed into midterm season and today we talk about money: specifically, the money flowing into campaigns this season, including who’s getting it, how they’re getting it and who it’s coming from. The difficulty is, our political system has many different mechanisms that get money to candidates.  

New Supreme Court rulings now let independent expenditure committees, or "SuperPACS" and other political action committees accept and spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign ads that either support or defame candidates. They can do this without having to disclose who their donations are coming from or how much money is donated. 

According to a new report, spending on state Supreme Court elections has doubled in the last decade. According to polls, three in four Americans believe money spent on campaigns for judgeships can affect later courtroom decisions; some states are calling for methods to protect the court system from special-interest money donated during election season.

The Senate will vote today on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill already approved by the House, that would require corporations to disclose their spending on federal political campaigns and to reveal their identities in any political ads they fund. The bill is being seen as the Democrats' answer to the Supreme Courts's ruling on the Citizens United case, which allowed big corporations, domestic and foreign, to spend unlimited amounts of money on American elections.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court effectively overturned The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, the campaign finance reform passed in 2002.  Senators John Mcain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) designed the law to limit the influence of big business and labor unions on elections. 

We've gotten many, many calls and email messages this week from you, our listeners, about the special election in Massachusetts, the chances for national health care reform and yesterday's Supreme Court ruling.

The Supreme Court's decision yesterday in Citizens United v. FEC will significantly change the legal landscape for campaign finance, allowing corporations, unions and other organizations to spend as much as they like for ads supporting a particular candidate or party.

In what will certainly be looked back upon as a landmark and highly controversial decision, the Supreme Court reversed longstanding restrictions on campaign finance yesterday: specifically, laws restricting corporations and corporate money during election season.

Today's Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC represents the most significant campaign finance and perhaps First Amendment decision we've seen from the Court in a very long time. The decision struck down the part of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance law (BCRA) that banned corporations and unions from using their treasury funds to run candidate specific ads before a federal election. The decision treats corporations like individuals, focusing on the value of their speech as opposed to the unique identity of the corporation as speaker. Previous decisions, now overruled, had held that corporations presented a unique corruption threat to the political process: "that immense aggregations of wealth [amassed] through the corporate form" posed dangers that individual expenditures did not.

A relatively innocuous (albeit negative) documentary on Hillary Clinton released during the 2008 election season may lead to something bigger than itself.  Today, the United States Supreme Court will return from its summer vacation to hear a case instigated by the film. It is, in fact, the second time the case has been brought before the nation's highest court, but this time it comes with greater weight: the potential to overturn campaign finance laws that have existed for the last 100 years. To take us from the film to the court case we are joined by Nate Persily, law professor at Columbia University; and Adam Liptak, Supreme Court correspondent for our partner the New York Times. 

For more, read Adam Liptak's article, Supreme Court to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Documentary, in the New York Times.

Check out some of the documentary, Hillary: The Movie or watch part one below: