From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Fifty of the nation's largest electric utilities amped up spending on lobbyists by 30% late last year to influence the debate in Congress just underway on one of the biggest issues facing lawmakers: climate change," USA Today reports. "From Duke Energy, with 4 million customers, to American Electric Power (AEP), which sells energy in 11 states, the companies spent a total $51 million in the last six months of 2008, $12 million more than the same period in 2007, a USA TODAY review of lobbying reports shows."

• "So powerful was Representative John P. Murtha at one time that he used to put up billboards in his Western Pennsylvania district declaring that 'the P is for Power,'" the New York Times reports. "Now, however, a string of federal criminal investigations of contractors or lobbyists close to Mr. Murtha, the top Democrat on the defense appropriations subcommittee, are threatening to undermine his backroom clout...In a private meeting with the chairman of the House appropriations committee, Mr. Murtha, the unofficial leader of the 'old bulls' who oversee the subcommittees, was forced to accept a series of new restrictions on his authority to grant earmarks, Democratic aides briefed on the meeting said."

• "According to an extensive report released by the Federal Election Commission today, political action committees spent $135.2 million on independent expenditures in the last election cycle in an attempt either to seat the congressional candidates and presidential hopefuls that would best promote their agenda or to defeat those they thought would not," OpenSecrets.org reports. "That's a 250 percent increase over their independent expenditures in the 2006 election cycle and a 100 percent increase over what they spent to influence elections in the last presidential election cycle in 2004."