Barack Obama faced two critical questions: where to play and how to pay.

To answer both, the Democrat reversed course to become the first candidate to reject $85 million in public money for the general election, a decision that will allow the record-shattering fundraiser to raise as much as he can and spend as much as he wants — and, thus, implement his strategy to expand the Electoral College playing field.

Republican Fred Thompson Sunday dismissed reports that he had told voters at a weekend campaign event he was “not particularly interested” in running for president, saying his remarks had been taken out of context.

The former Tennessee senator told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "some in the media take bits and pieces, not you, but some have taken one sentence out of the middle of that and make it sound like something that wasn't intended."

Dozens of donors are nearing the $108,200 cap on federal campaign contributions for the 2008 elections in a sign of the record-breaking cost of the White House race, an analysis conducted for USA TODAY shows.

A total of 113 people have donated at least two-thirds of the amount they can give legally to all federal candidates, parties and political action committees with a year to go in what will be the most expensive presidential race, according to research by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has pulled ahead of rival Barack Obama at the bank as well as in the polls and both continue to crush Republicans in the money race.

Clinton holds nearly $35 million three months before the voting starts, to Obama's $32 million.

The Republican money leader, Rudy Giuliani, reported $11.6 million in the bank for the primaries.

Clinton, who had trailed Obama in fundraising and in money in the bank at the end of June, edged past him with an aggressive third quarter of fundraising.

The presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a candidate for the Republican nomination, announced yesterday that it had raised a surprising $5 million in the quarter that ended Sunday.

Though Mr. Paul, who ran as the Libertarian presidential candidate in 1988, continues to perform poorly in state and national polls, his supporters tend to show fierce enthusiasm, and they have a strong presence on the Internet.

Sen. Hillary Clinton raised $27 million in the third quarter for her 2008 Democratic bid for the White House, a Clinton aide said Tuesday.

All but $5 million of Clinton's funds can be spent trying to win the Democratic presidential nomination in the primaries, the aide said.

More than 100,000 new donors contributed to the New York Democrat, the aide said.

Clinton outpaced Sen. Barack Obama over the last three months, a reversal of positions from the second quarter.

Norman Hsu, the Democratic fundraiser with the habit of fleeing the law, was charged today with bilking at least $60 million from investors in a nationwide Ponzi scheme, tens of thousands of dollars of which was funneled by way of “straw donors” to candidates for national office in violation of federal election law.

In the most sweeping overhaul of congressional ethics rules in a generation, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill yesterday aimed at curbing the influence of lobbyists and repairing Congress' corruption-sullied image.

Democrats promised to pass the bill after they won control of Congress following a campaign in which they denounced the Republican "culture of corruption" on Capitol Hill.

"The Democratic Party used to stand for the ordinary working man," he said, "But the Clintons and the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council] sold out the Democratic Party to Wall Street.

"Look at where all the money is being raised right now for Hillary, Obama and Edwards. It's the hedge funds, it's Wall Street bankers, it's the people who brought you what you have today. Please wake up . . . they're lock, stock and barrel in their pocket."

A more complete compilation of statistics by Phreadom shows that presidential candidate Ron Paul leads all 2008 presidential candidates in military contributions from the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and war veterans. Presidential candidate Ron Paul leads with an impressive one-fourth* of all contributions this second quarter according to newly released data from the FEC.