When Bill DeWeese was House Democratic leader in 2002, he gave his Harrisburg aides $1,000 or $2,000 bonuses.

Six of the recipients contributed identical or nearly identical amounts to Mr. DeWeese's re-election and the House Democratic Campaign Committee that year or in 2003, records show.

Nine other recipients that year made lesser contributions to the two committees.

The bonuses and contributions came to light in the discovery phase of a criminal investigation into allegations that the House Democratic caucus used tax dollars to subsidize campaigns.

Two recipients of the 2002 bonuses told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that they did not recall being instructed or pressured to donate money to the campaign committees.

But the fact that 15 of the 16 bonus recipients also were contributors illustrates the close relationship between government service and political activity -- the sort of behavior that also figures in what is known as the Bonusgate investigation.

A defense lobbyist and his family made $1.5 million in political contributions from 2000 through 2008 as the lobbyist's now-embattled firm helped clients win billions of dollars in federal contracts. A sizable chunk of those campaign dollars went to the House members who control Pentagon spending.

Paul Magliocchetti, founder of the PMA Group, and nine of his relatives -- two children, his daughter-in-law, his current wife, his ex-wife and his ex-wife's parents, sister and brother-in-law -- poured contributions into the coffers of candidates, political action committees and national and state party committees, according to a CQ review of public documents.

During this time, PMA grew from a start-up to the 11th-richest lobbying outfit in the country.

The top beneficiaries were a select group of Democratic members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, other allies of the top Pentagon appropriator in the House, Rep. John P. Murtha , D-Pa., and the company's own political action committee, which in turn made contributions to many of the same lawmakers.

A state lawmaker today will introduce legislation to levy sales tax on political advertising, but a prominent campaign consultant said that's akin to taxing freedom of speech.

Television or radio ads by political candidates would be subject to the 6 percent tax, said Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Penn Hills.

He would use the estimated $6.6 million in revenue to help pay for adultBasic health care, state subsidized medical insurance for low-income workers.

The tax would apply to presidential candidates, those seeking statewide offices, and candidates for the General Assembly.

A political action committee supported primarily by Gov. Rendell stands accused of circumventing city campaign-finance rules and failing to disclose contributions to, among others, three of five Democratic candidates in the 2007 Philadelphia mayor's race.

The Philadelphia Board of Ethics went to court Tuesday to compel the PAC - Pennsylvanians for Better Leadership - to pay $30,000 in fines and amend its campaign-finance reports to show the missing information.

"You have a politically connected and well-funded PAC that has been operating outside of the law by failing to make the required disclosures," said Shane Creamer, executive director of the ethics board. As a result, he said, "The public hasn't had an opportunity to understand what this PAC has been doing."

The lawsuit, which the ethics board filed in Common Pleas Court, alleges 20 violations committed in 2007. The board did not allege any wrongdoing by Rendell, a Democrat, who donated $160,000 to the PAC in 2007.

Specifically, the suit cited 13 instances in which the PAC did not reveal $49,000 worth of donations it made to city, state, and federal candidates. Among them were U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (who received $5,000 on March 1, 2007); U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah ($2,000 on March 9, 2007); and state Rep. Dwight Evans ($10,000 on March 1, 2007). All were candidates in the Democratic mayoral primary.

The Lehigh Valley area's U.S. House members secured $11.4 million in spending projects in 2008 for clients of the PMA Group, an embattled lobbying firm under investigation for possible illegal campaign contributions.

The "earmarks," compiled by the government watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, came as the five members -- Democrats Patrick Murphy, Allyson Schwartz, Tim Holden and Paul Kanjorski and Republican Jim Gerlach -- collected a combined $90,000 from the firm's political action committee and its employees and their family members in the 2007-2008 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

They weren't alone. The firm, whose offices were raided by the FBI last year and plans to cease operations in March, according to reports, gave $3.3 million to House members through its PAC and contributions from employees and their family members between 2001 and 2008, Congressional Quarterly reported Thursday.

Campaign money raised for local elections sometimes gets spent in unusual places -- like Europe.

Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl each spent money meant for electioneering on trips to Europe last winter, according to campaign finance reports filed this month. Both traveled with their wives, and tapped the money provided by supporters to cover costs not picked up by organizations that paid for official parts of the trip.

The $1,033 spent on European travel by Mr. Onorato's campaign, and the $1,911 by Mr. Ravenstahl's political committee, were the farthest-flung expenditures reported from a year that saw many local officials deciding how to use campaign funds to go to events like the Democratic National Convention. The disclosures also come on the heels of Mr. Ravenstahl's and Mr. Onorato's use of campaign money to go to Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa.