“The top ‘super PACs’ supporting Republicans in the fall elections have raised more than three times as much money as super PACs aligned with Democrats, $158 million to $47 million, a [Boston] Globe analysis shows. Here’s a graphic showing the biggest donors.

A Civitas poll has Romney up 50-45% in North Carolina.

“Most Americans now say they would like to see the critics of the health care law stop trying to block its implementation and move onto other national problems, a poll released by the Kaiser Family Foundation on Monday found following last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding the overhaul,” the Boston Globe writes.

Political Wire: “Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) vetoed Republican bills that would have ‘required a photo ID for absentee voting, restricted voter registration drives and mandated a ballot box affirmation of citizenship,’ the Detroit News reports.”

Crossing the line? AP: “Justice Antonin Scalia ended his 26th year on the Supreme Court with a string of losses in the term's biggest cases and criticism that he crossed a line from judging to politics. Scalia's willingness to do battle with those on the other side of an issue long has made him a magnet for critics. But some of his recent remarks stood out in the eyes of court observers.” More: “Ten lawyers who appear regularly before the Supreme Court, including two former Scalia law clerks, were interviewed for this story and said they too had taken note of Scalia's recent comments. But mindful that they might appear before the high court or be in a position to submit legal briefs, they all declined to be identified by name.”

And: “Summarizing his views in court, Scalia commented on President Barack Obama's recent announcement changing the deportation rules for some children of illegal immigrants. And in his written opinion, he referenced anti-free black laws of slave states as a precedent for state action on immigration. Both drew critical notice.”

Take a look at the health-care oral arguments from Day 2, which we wrote about, and you can see some tense exchanges between Scalia and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, including Scalia sarcastically calling Verrilli’s argument for the taxing authority of Congress “extraordinary” and dismissing his argument as “blah, blah, blah.” That’s in addition to his “broccoli” and health club comments.

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took a poke at the controversial Citizens United decision Wednesday night and said his former colleagues have probably already had second thoughts about it.

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens speaks at a lecture presented by the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark., Wednesday, May 30.

The 2010 decision paved the way for the SuperPACs to which wealthy individuals, corporations, and labor unions can give unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose candidates.  Stevens was among the justices who dissented in the court's 5-4 ruling.

In remarks prepared for delivery at the University of Arkansas, Stevens predicted that the court will soon be forced to issue rulings that will undermine a key part of the Citizens United ruling -- that the First Amendment "prohibits the suppression of political speech based on the speaker's identity," including the fact that the speaker is a corporation.

The court's decision left undecided whether the same free speech right applies to foreign corporations. In due course, Stevens said, the court will be called upon to decide that question, forcing it to craft an exception "that will create a crack in the foundation of the Citizens United majority opinion."

"The court must then explain its abandonment of, or at least qualify its reliance upon, the proposition that the identity of the speaker is an impermissible basis for regulating campaign speech.  It will be necessary to explain why the First Amendment provides greater protection of some non-voters than to that of other non-voters," he said.

Stevens said a recent Supreme Court action may also undermine Citizens United.  In January, the justices upheld a lower court ruling that said two non-citizens could not make political contributions to political candidates.  It's therefore now settled, Stevens said, "that the identity of some speakers may provide a legally acceptable basis for restricting speech" through contributions.

Unlike most retired Supreme Court justices, John Paul Stevens has not been reluctant to criticize the rulings of his former colleagues.

Just one month after he was named Mitt Romney's top energy adviser, Oklahoma billionaire Harold Hamm contributed $985,000 to the top pro-Romney Super PAC -- a donation that was the second largest the group collected in April, according to a new campaign disclosure filing today.

The cash infusion from Hamm, the chairman and CEO of Continental Resources -- a firm that touts itself as "America's Oil Champion" -- is a new example of how big Super PAC donors can make their policy views heard by the campaigns they are supporting.

Hamm, whose company is the largest leaseholder of the Bakken, the giant shale formation in North Dakota, has been an outspoken critic of President Obama's energy policy, including his decision to postpone the Keystone pipeline and push legislation to curb tax breaks for oil exploration.

After meeting Obama at a White House event last July, Hamm complained the president "blew him off" after he tried to press him about the abundance of domestic oil supplies, according to a Business Week story last January. "It was like, 'if you’re in the oil and gas industry, you don't matter,'" Hamm was quoted as saying in the story headlined, "The Man Who Bought North Dakota."

On March 1, Romney -- during a campaign stop in Fargo, North Dakota -- announced that Hamm would serve as chairman of the candidate's "Energy Policy Advisory  Group" charged with developing a new "pro-jobs, pro-market, pro-American" energy agenda, according to a statement put out by the campaign that day. Hamm said in the statement he was backing Romney in part because he was "acutely aware" of "how outrageously [Obama] has attacked energy producers in particular."

On April 3, Hamm made his $985,000 contribution to Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney Super PAC, the group reported today. That accounts for a little more than one-fifth of the $4.6 million the group raised last month.

Hamm had already contributed $2,500 -- the legal maximum for the primary season -- to the Romney campaign last October, as well as $61,600 to the Republican National Committee in two installments in last September and this February.

But the huge new donation to the Romney Super PAC -- which can accept unlimited contributions -- could potentially raise questions about the connections between his donations and his role in shaping campaign policies that might benefit his company. So far, the campaign has not publicly disclosed the other names of the energy advisory group, making it impossible to determine whether they have also given money to the Super PAC or the campaign.

“We haven’t announced it yet,” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an email when asked the names of other members of the campaign energy advisory group. A spokeswoman for Continental Resources, Hamm's company, declined to answer any questions about Hamm's role in the Romney campaign, referring a reporter to the campaign itself.

Senate Democrats decried the influx of millions in unregulated dollars in the 2012 elections, announcing Wednesday that they will hold hearings looking into the impact of super PACs.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrats' messaging chief in the Senate, announced that the Rules committee will begin hearings this month on super PACs.

Joined by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Al Franken (D-MN), Schumer pointed to Mitt Romney's victory in Florida's Republican primary as evidence of the outsize influence of super PACs. He then bashed Karl Rove-tied groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS for raising money by the millions without having to disclose all of its donors.

"It doesn't pass the smell test to say some of these groups aren't coordinated," Schumer said, pointing to the example of a super PAC in favor of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, an erstwhile GOP presidential contender, which was funded by Huntsman's father.

A number of super PACs made their filings with the Federal Election Commission by midnight last night, a deadline that Schumer said was "laughable." The New York senator said it made more sense to disclose those records before voters participated in January's Republican primaries.

"We think the disclosure should be as instantaneous as possible. The voters deserve to know the ugly truth of whose behind these Super PACs," he told reporters.

Schumer also didn't spare Democrats, who also have used super PACs.

"No matter who does it, the system needs to be fundamentally changed," he said.

Using charts with Karl Rove's name on them, Schumer said the donations made in secret to non-profit groups were the most troubling. He pointed to the $33 million dollars raised by Crossroads GPS as reported in the FEC filings this week.

"This is a mystery as to who is giving the money. Could it be one person who gave $33 million dollars? Could it be somebody who might have foreign links? Or huge contracts with the government ? We have no idea," he said.

The senators placed the blame on the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

"Everyone has the right to do it. No one is going to unilaterally disarm. So we're now forced into this system," Franken told reporters.

Whitehouse mocked the idea that Super PACs operate independently of the candidate. He said these donations lead to corruption. 

"You cannot pretend that people who are giving millions of dollars in support of a candidate anonymously aren't communicating that to the candidate and aren't going to come back and expect some kind of pay and we will never know who they were and what they promised," he complained.

It's not just Democrats who are worried about the corrupting influence of these new, monied groups.

We have -- on both sides of the aisle -- these incredible amounts of money and I guarantee you there will be a scandal," Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) said last Sunday on Meet the Press. "There is too much money washing around politics, and it's making the parties irrelevant."

Schumer expects the Rules committee will hold hearings sometime in February to look at ways to make disclosure of donors more regular and to improve the coordination rules between outside groups and campaigns.

By NBC's Michael Isikoff

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul bankrolling Newt Gingrich’s super PAC isn’t trying to “buy” a presidency, his top political consultant tells NBC News.  He’s just following in the footsteps of another powerful business tycoon, Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy. 

“I don’t think it’s buying a presidency any more than it was when Joe Kennedy helped his son,” Sig Rogich, a veteran Republican operative who serves as Adelson’s government affairs consultant, said in an interview about the massive donations that the casino mogul has made to Gingrich’s super PAC.

Adelson, 78, who has a personal fortune estimated at $21 billion, “plays to win” and “puts his money where his mouth is,” Rogich added. 

In the last three weeks, Adelson and his Israeli-born wife Miriam have pumped $10 million into the Winning Our Future Super PAC. Those donations provided a critical cash infusion that helped revive Gingrich’s candidacy, bankrolling attack ads against Mitt Romney in South Carolina and now Florida.  They’ve also made the Adelsons the largest known donors so far in a presidential race awash with money under new rules allowing unlimited donations to so-called super PACs. 

But the contributions have also raised new questions about Adelson’s outside role in influencing the campaign.  Those questions could intensify as a result of potentially provocative comments he has made about Israel uncovered by NBC News. 

Scott Audette / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich makes a point during the Republican presidential candidates debate in Jacksonville, Florida January 26, 2012.

Adelson owns a newspaper in Israel, 'Israel HaYom,' that backs conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and adamantly opposes any peace settlement with the Palestinians.

But while Adelson and Gingrich have bonded on the issue of a hawkish Mideast policy, especially over the threat of a nuclear Iran, some of the casino mogul’s comments could prove embarrassing.

In a talk to an Israeli group in July, 2010, Adelson said he wished he had served in the Israeli Army rather than the U.S. military—and that he hoped his young son would come back to Israel and “be a sniper for the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. (YouTube video of speech)

“I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform.  It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF ... our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back-- his hobby is shooting -- and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF,” Adelson said at the event.

“All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his talk.  

Asked about those comments, Rogich said: “No one could possibly ever think that he is anything but a loyal American.  He’s shown that time and time again.”

Rogich cited major donations that Adelson has made to medical research and other philanthropic causes that were far bigger than his political contributions, he said.

As for Israel, Rogich said: “I think that the fact that he is a Zionist and believes deeply in the preservation of Israel is so commendable.”

Newt Gingrich, who stirred controversy recently by calling the Palestinians "an invented people," appears on the cover of Sheldon Adelson's newspaper, Israel HaYom, blasting the Obama administration for its policies on Iran. "The Obama administration is denying reality," reads the headline in Hebrew. "The refusal to confront evil could cause a second Holocaust."

Gingrich, who stirred controversy recently by calling the Palestinians “an invented people,” appeared on the cover of Adelson’s Israeli newspaper blasting the Obama administration for its policies on Iran.

“The Obama administration is denying reality,” reads the headline in Hebrew. “The refusal to confront evil could cause a second Holocaust.”

When Gingrich was questioned about the money from Adelson this week, he immediately cited the casino mogul’s backing of Israel as a major reason he had received his support.

“Sheldon Adelson is very deeply concerned about the survival of Israel and believes that the Iranians represent a mortal threat to Israel and the United States,” Gingrich said in an interview while on the campaign trail in Florida.  “And he is deeply motivated by the question of having a commander-in-chief strong enough and willing to make sure the Iranians do not get nuclear weapons.”

Asked if he had promised the casino mogul anything in exchange for the money to the super PAC, Gingrich replied: “I promised him that I would seek to defend the United States and the United States allies.”

Adelson’s interests extend beyond Israel.  His personal fortune comes from a casino empire that stretches from the Vegas strip to the gambling havens of Singapore and Macau.  But his business interests have also provoked legal troubles.  

Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands,  disclosed last year that it was being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations by a former top company executive that Adelson directed him to put a local government official on its payroll in Macau — a potential violation of a U.S. anti-bribery law.  The firm has denied the allegations, saying they come from a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled former employee.

Adelson also earned a reputation in Las Vegas as a fierce foe of labor unions after he bought the legendary Sands Hotel, home base of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, and then blew it up in 1996.

About 1,500 casino workers lost their jobs.  Adelson built a spectacular new hotel in its place, the Venetian, but locked out the state’s powerful Culinary Workers Union, which resulted in street protests and lawsuits.

Union official D. Taylor (sic) said that Adelson’s security officials at the Las Vegas Sands Hotel tried to have the protestors outside his hotel arrested, but Las Vegas police refused.

“He claimed that he owned the sidewalks,” Taylor said.  Georgia Democratic “congressman John Lewis led us on the sidewalks to say that nobody’s going to own the people on the sidewalks,” he added. “Sheldon then appealed the decision of the police not to arrest us all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Taylor said Adelson lost that battle — the courts upheld a finding of anti-labor practices against his company — but now the casino mogul thinks he can purchase a presidency.

“I think it’s very scary that any one candidate would be so beholden to one persona, a billionaire, who obviously has a very specific agenda that he wants to achieve,” said Taylor.

But Rogich, Adelson’s consultant, said that agenda consists of nothing more than trying to elect a good friend who he believes “would be a great president.”

“And that’s what this process is all about — that’s why we call it America,” he said. “You have the right to spend your money how you’d like to spend it.”

DES MOINES, Iowa -- What is on President Obama’s Christmas list?

It's Newt Gingrich being the eventual Republican nominee, according to a pro-Romney Super PAC.

“President Obama wants just one thing this Christmas,” reads the piece of literature from the political action committee, Restore Our Future.

The mailer goes on to link Gingrich with President Obama -- specifically having both supported taxpayer-funded abortions and redistribution of wealth. (The abortion charge is ironic, given that Romney supported abortion rights until six years ago.)

“Two men. Neither is conservative. Neither is consistent. Neither should be president,” the flip side of the mailer reads.

The Super PAC has been running some $3 million in negative TV ads against Gingrich, as well as releasing numerous mailers with similar messages.

All the Restore Our Future mailers, including this new Christmas one, asks caucus-goers to ask themselves one thing on Jan. 3: “Who is the consistent conservative who can actually defeat President Obama? IT’S NOT NEWT GINGRICH.”