This just came across the PR newswire:

[11:23PM EST]California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday that he has returned $50,000 in campaign contributions made by Oracle to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest as he leads an investigation into the state's controversial contract with the software company. "Full, fair, nonpartisan and nonpolitical investigations have always been the standard for this office," Lockyer said in a statement. "Returning the campaign contributions from Oracle will help ensure that partisans don't undermine public confidence" in the investigation, he said. "I would have returned it sooner, but I hadn't been caught yet." He said.

Yes I work for Microsoft. Yes not liking Oracle is really easy from that perspective. But what the hell does Bill Lockyer have to do with California's buying software from Oracle?

Oracle is giving him money to incent him to continue the pressure on Microsoft in court. It is really disturbing to me to read about how much money is being funnelled to Attorney's general by Microsoft's competitors. I'm curious, did Microsoft contribute to the campaigns of the Attorney's general who settled their suits? We know that Microsoft paid their legal fees, but was there any palm greasing as well?