THE Washington Postreports that Republican groups funded by anonymous donations are kicking the Democrats' keisters this year in independent campaign advertising. Independent groups that don't have to report their donors have spent $80m so far, against just $16m in the entire 2006 mid-terms, and the spending leans 7 to 1 in support of Republicans. Who's funding it? That's the point: we don't know. But it certainly enables some great campaign strategery.

The [America Future Fund] recently entered a previously sleepy race in its home state of Iowa, announcing that it would devote up to $800,000 to campaign against Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley of Waterloo. The campaign kicked off with a commercial alleging that Braley "supports building a mosque at Ground Zero." Braley denies supporting construction of the proposed Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site, saying it's a zoning issue for New Yorkers to decide... Ben Lange, Braley's GOP challenger, denies any connection to the American Future Fund's attacks. "We have no interaction with this group," said Cody Brown, spokesman for Lange. "We're not so much concerned with what these outside groups are doing. We want to have an honest, focused debate on the issues."

Mr Lange is playing this exactly right. Check out his campaign advertisement. I wouldn't consider "Vote for my daddy!" part of a "focused debate on the issues", though I do consider it incredibly cute. But in a year of savagely negative partisanship, Mr Lange's advertisement is scrupulously, relentlessly positive. And it can afford to be! The negative advertising is being handled by the America Future Fund, with which Mr Lange's campaign has no interaction whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the New York Times' Mike McIntyre set out to find out what you'd have to do in order to discover who the actual donors are behind these kinds of expenditures. The verdict? You can't. Mr McIntyre tries to track down a mid-sized nonprofit called the Coalition of American Seniors, which was just formed in June and has so far spent $400,000 on ads featuring smart-alecky babies in diapers attacking the Democratic health-reform bill. After a long odyssey through Delaware post-office boxes and registered service agents, he finds that the group's telephone number rings at the offices of a Florida health-insurance broker; the political consulting firm the group lists seems to refer to just one guy, who refuses to provide any information about who its donors are.

It's all about freedom of speech and political participation, I'm told. I'm trying to imagine an analogy for this situation in a New England town meeting, circa 1789. Maybe there are huge curtains hanging along the walls. Some of the town's citizens sit in the meeting hall's pews, occasionally trying to be heard in little piping voices. They are overwhelmed by booming orations emanating from behind the curtains. "Henry Waddingstone is a British agent!" "Zachary Hurlburt will take away the grazing commons!" Who is speaking? The Coalition for a Grazeable Massachussetts? Who's that? Nobody knows. Nobody ever will.