More than lavish dinners, snazzy mailers, and email blasts, GOP candidates are flocking to the best fundraising tool this election season: Fox News. As Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV) so aptly pointed out, just one mention of a campaign website on a “friendly press outlet” like Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show can translate into millions of campaign cash. Delaware’s colorful senate candidate Christine O’Donnell (R) even flaunted Hannity’s support before a meeting of GOP strategists, saying “Sean Hannity’s in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys.”

Indeed, Hannity’s TV and radio spots are proving to be more GOP fundraiser than anything else. And no other Republican candidate has benefited more than former Fox News host and Ohio gubernatorial candidate John Kasich (R). Hannity has hosted Kasich at least ten times since he’s declared his candidacy. After Kasich promoted his campaign website in his ninth visit to Hannity’s TV show last week, Hannity responded “I want to put this — put some emphasis on this because this is really important. Explain to people why — we cannot afford to lose that race?” But it was in their tenth exchange on Hannity’s radio show yesterday that Hannity and Kasich clearly spelled out this fundraising relationship:

HANNITY: John Kasich, we’re watching Ohio really really closely. We appreciate you being with us and thanks for taking time out of your busy day and we wish you the best. This is a very important election, I think, for the country. And we’ll be watching in the next 14 days, and on election night, we’ll be watching very closely.

KASICH: And Kasich for Ohio.com. K-A-S-I-C-H. We need your help all over the country.

HANNITY: By the way, there are some in the liberal media think that I really meant to support Barney Frank over you and the fact that I, as a conservative commentator, support you shock some people. But you know what I stand proudly in Kasich’s corner with an endorsement as long as it doesn’t hurt you.

KASICH: We need all the help you can give us, Sean. They love you out here.

HANNITY: Alright, John Kasich. This is an important race, really important race.

Listen to it:

If Angle’s $40,000 intake is any indication, there is no way that Hannity’s endorsement could hurt. As Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik noted, the only thing Hannity’s actions hurt is the credibility of Fox as a news organization. “What Hannity allowed Kasich to do [on last week's show],” Zurawik states, “crosses the line as to what’s acceptable for any news organization, and we all know it isn’t the first Hannity time has done this. If Fox News management wants mainstream critics to defend the organization’s right to be treated like a news organization, it needs to behave like one — all the time. Hannity’s bosses need to publicly put an end to such partisan on-air fund raising now — not sometime in November after the election.”

But Kasich’s distinguished “friendship” with Hannity’s boss Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox News’ parent company News Corporation, led to repeated donations directly to the Republican Governors Association rather than any kind of reprimand. And with almost every major contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination on the Fox News payroll and all but one speaking exclusively on Fox, GOP candidates can count on a long, fruitful relationship with the network that, contrary to Hannity’s belief, will shock absolutely no one.

For more on how Fox News factors into the GOP, check out today’s Progress report here.

In a debate today hosted by local television station WHYY, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell seemed unable to name a single sitting Democratic senator. Asked which Democrats she would be willing to work with were she elected, O’Donnell paused for a long moment, before saying Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. O’Donnell acknowledged that Clinton is no longer a senator, but said she hopes to be on the Foreign Relations Committee and would be able to work with her in that capacity. When her opponent, Democrat Chris Coons, suggested O’Donnell couldn’t name any Democratic senators, she responded by shouting out the name of Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman:

MODERATOR: Give me a name, Christine, of someone in the U.S. Senate, across the aisle that you’re comfortable working with.

O’DONNELL: [Pause] Well, she’s not a senator any more, but I would definitely have to say Hillary Clinton. [...]

COONS: One of the real risks as we go forward, is that if we elect someone who literally cannot name a single currently serving senator in my party with whom she would work –

O’DONNELL: Senator Lieberman!

COONS: Someone who has no experience crossing the biparistan divide.

Watch it:

Of course, this isn’t the first time O’Donnell has been stumped by a simple question. In a different debate on Monday, O’Donnell seemed confused about the text of the First Amendment, despite the fact that she has touted herself as a Constitutional scholar in the past.

For more on O’Donnell’s record, check out our ThinkProgress report: The Old Adventures of New Christine.

As of last week, all 50 state attorneys general had opened investigations into the mortgage practices of some of the nation’s largest financial institutions, following the revelations that many of these banks had foreclosure documents approved by “robo signers” — employees who were signing thousands of foreclosure documents a day, without verifying basic information. Additionally, the banks’ incompetence and malfeasance extends to basing evictions on “lost and forged documents and, as Reuters’ Felix Salmon reported, knowingly selling investors mortgage bonds they knew were toxic.”

Responding to pressure from the media and progressive politicians, a handful of large banks, like JP Morgan Chase, have self-imposed moratoria on foreclosures. Bank of America amd GMAC Mortgage also self-imposed moratoria, but then lifted them shortly after.

Yet, one sheriff is not waiting for the big banks to correct their own behavior or for the government to step in and set things right. Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart recently assembled a team to investigate the foreclosures in his area. His team found that out of 350 cases reviewed, “only 17 of them had the proper paperwork.” Following the investigation, Dart announced Monday that he would be halting all evictions of homeowners — a step he took two years ago at the height of the financial crisis — and would not take part in any foreclosures unless the banks could provide the documentation to prove that the evictions were legitimate and legal:

Beginning Monday, and for the second time in two years, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is refusing to carry out evictions. The latest moratorium will apply to those people living in homes whose lenders aren’t able to provide documentation that the eviction is legitimate and legal. “All I am looking from them is an affidavit saying, ‘The cases you have in your system are all reviewed. All the documents were done correctly. They were all legally done. And you are not enforcing illegal orders,’” Dart said Tuesday.

He said his team recently reviewed 350 cases and found that only 17 of them had the proper paperwork. The banks involved included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC/Ally Financial and their subsidiaries.” This is so outrageous. These poor people are being put through this day in and day out, by people who don’t do their jobs,” he said. “It’s so hard for me to stomach these people. This isn’t just we are taking their bike away, or their car away. This is their house.”

Dart held a press conference Monday to announce his decision. He told reporters, “This is not the lotto. This isn’t something where we roll the dice and say, ‘You know what? Possibly this has been done legally. Maybe it hasn’t, but in the meantime you and your children go find some place to live. There’s plenty of homeless shelters out there.’ We can’t do that.” Watch it:

The Obama administration has thus far resisted calls for a national moratorium on foreclosures. Leading progressive politicians and economists continue to argue in favor of a moratorium. Meanwhile, individual states are taking their own measures to try to stop fraudulent foreclosures, with New York leading the way by requiring lawyers bringing foreclosure claims “to file an affirmation that they themselves have taken reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of documents filed in support of residential foreclosures.” (HT: Michael Moore)

Florida is one of at least 20 states designing an immigration bill similar to Arizona’s SB-1070, which requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they think might be in the country illegally. State Rep. William Snyder (R) introduced the legislation in August, and Rick Scott, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for governor, favors such a bill.

Snyder has denied criticisms that such legislation could be used to discriminate against Latinos, saying in a recent radio interview that “race, ethnicity, and national origin cannot be used in making arrests. It’s immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional.” However, the bill he introduced does appear to do just that — it exempts all Canadian and Western Europeans from extensive scrutiny. The exception, first reported by the Miami New Times, says a person will be “presumed to be legally in the United States” if he or she provides “a Canadian passport” or a passport from any “visa waiver country.” Four Asian nations and all 32 Western European countries make up the visa waiver list.

So under the proposed law, Canadians and Western Europeans will simply be presumed to be here legally, and they are not required to document it. “That language makes it clear that police are targeting only a specific minority,” Susana Barciela, policy director at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, told the New Times.

After running ads during the Republican primary explicitly calling for an Arizona-style immigration law in Florida, Scott has been largely silent on immigration since the general election began. But last week, Scott said he would support Snyder’s bill if it passed. At a Univision gubernatorial debate earlier this month, he reiterated his support for an Arizona-style law, but said that his support was on the condition that “none of our law enforcement is ever put in a position that they are even accused of any racial profiling.” Watch it:

Either Scott is not aware of what’s in the bill he’s promised to support, or he doesn’t find an exclusion for predominantly white countries to be “racial profiling.”