Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the daughter of former president Richard Nixon and his wife Pat, has donated $2,300 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the maximum amount allowed for the primary election cycle.

It was a story of connections. But were they real?

“Hillary’s Mystery Money Men,” first appeared on the website the Real News Project on Oct. 18.

The story was then reprinted in the Nov. 5 issue of The Nation and it has circulated widely on the Internet.

It either opens a window on to a significant shift of a controversial Republican money man to the Democratic camp, or it overstates the actions of a hedge-fund savvy financier who may have been hedging his bets by contributing to several candidates.

The piece by Russ Baker and Adam Federman argues that “notorious financier Alan Quasha” was a secret force behind the presidential campaign of New York’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be U.S. attorney general might have passed for a meeting of the Yale Law School alumni association.

Mukasey, class of 1967, was introduced to the committee by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., also Yale Law class of ‘67.

What’s so funny about the 2008 presidential race?

Not much so far, unless you count Rudy Giuliani taking a cell phone call from his wife while he was giving a speech to members of the National Rifle Association, a moment that became a YouTube hit.

But, take heart; JibJab.com is back and making fun of the scary side of politics.

JibJab, you may remember, is the Internet humor site that produced the flash animation video, This Land is Your Land for the 2004 presidential race.

The video established the JibJab brand and significantly improved its fortunes.

The This Land video featured singing heads of George W. Bush and John Kerry dissing each other to the tune of the Woody Guthrie song.

It’s the sort of windfall that not-for-profits don’t receive every day.

A little more than a year old, the Alliance for Climate Protection gained $750,000 when former Vice President Al Gore was named co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Friday.

Gore announced that he would give his share of the prize to the alliance, a Palo Alto, Calif., organization he formed last year.

The group’s goal is to increase awareness about threats to the environment from global warming.
It helped put on this July’s Live Earth concerts in seven cities around the world.

One of the most powerful and civic-minded families in western New York has a link to the company that issued one of the largest beef recalls in U.S. history.

Robert Gioia, a Buffalo businessman and philanthropist, is a former chairman of Topps Meat Company, which said Friday that it was going out of business because of a recall of 21.7 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with a potentially fatal strain of E. coli bacteria.

Thirty people in eight states have been sickened, legal action looms, and some wonder why the U.S. Agriculture Department didn’t warn consumers sooner.

The Clinton campaign took a defensive crouch yesterday after reports that a company headed by one its top advisers had counseled Blackwater CEO Erik Prince.

A subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm headed by Clinton strategist Mark Penn, helped prepare Prince for his congressional testimony Tuesday.

However, Penn told Politico that he was not involved in the account, and said the firm’s work for Blackwater was “a temporary assignment based on a relationship that has concluded.”

Billionaire Ron Burkle has a new crash pad in New York, complete with a heated swimming pool and a panic room.

Burkle, one of former President Bill Clinton’s best friends, has purchased a swank Manhattan apartment for a whopping $17.5 million, plus nearly $100,000 a year in maintenance fees. Burkle already owns the lavish Green Acres estate in Beverly Hills, where frequent Democratic fundraisers are held.

The three-level apartment with 5 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms doesn’t have a doorman and is situated in a fairly uninteresting part of lower Manhattan.

Until recently, Norman Hsu was a trustee of good standing at New York’s New School.

University president Bob Kerrey defended Hsu against the early criticism. But first it was revealed that Hsu had an outstanding arrest warrant for a 1991 fraud charge and then Hsu skipped a court date in California.

“I thought that I knew him,” Kerrey told the New York Times. “But obviously I didn’t.”

The Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign announced yesterday that it would give to charity $23,000 received from Norman Hsu, a major Democratic supporter who has an outstanding arrest warrant for a 1991 fraud charge. Campaign officials pledged to review thousands of dollars in other donations from Hsu.

California authorities said Hsu left the state in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors. Hsu now lives in New York, where he is in the apparel business. On campaign finance reports, he lists his companies as Next Components, Dilini Management, Cool Planets, NBT and others.

John Edwards, the candidate who has stacked his campaign on fighting poverty, was embarrassed once again last week by John Edwards the multimillionaire.

Edwards, who declared his candidacy from the decimated Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and who has repeatedly criticized foreclosures on mortgages held by victims of Katrina, is a major investor in Fortress Investment Group, one of the companies foreclosing.

Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou are the best of friends.

But, as the New York Times notes today, they’re likely to avoid talking politics.

Winfrey endorsed Obama on “Larry King Live” in May, and is planning a fundraiser for him at her California home. Angelou is featured on Clinton’s web site, backing her candidacy and describing the importance of women running for high office.