The FEC currently has just two out of its six board members because of a Senate dispute over the nomination of Hans Von Spakovsky. For months, Barack Obama had a hold on Von Spakovsky's nomination because of Democratic anger over his activities at the Department of Justice (although he has recently been vindicated). Now Obama has released the hold, but Democrats are holding out for a stand-alone vote on the nomination -- instead of the traditional bloc vote -- in order to defeat him. Without a quorum of the board, the FEC is unable to take any enforcement actions. As a result, it cannot implement the bundling rule that Barack Obama and the Democrats are so proud of:

Under last year's ethics and lobbying law revisions, campaign and political action committees affiliated with lawmakers should have completed their first quarter of tracking and identifying the lobbyists who raised large amounts of money by "bundling" smaller contributions.

But the new disclosure requirement cannot take effect without publication of final rules by the FEC, whose work ground to a halt late last year in a congressional showdown over the six-member commission's makeup...

Bundling allows lobbyists to increase their influence with politicians by collecting campaign checks from clients and lumping them with their own contributions. Under current rules, the name of the bundler, who is often a lobbyist, is not revealed.

Barack Obama and Russ Feingold derailed Von Spakovsky's nomination last year, placing a hold on him right before he was to be confirmed. Now that he has been cleared, will Obama call on his Democratic colleagues to allow the FEC to do its work? Or is Obama too beholden to lobbyist fundraisers to allow disclosure to go forward?