The N.C. Military Foundation spent $49,000 on lobbying in 2007.

According to state and federal lobbying disclosure forms, the nonprofit started by Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue to promote defense spending in North Carolina spent about a quarter of its consulting budget on lobbyists in its first full year.

With a tight budget, the group relies heavily on outside consultants, including two lobbyists, Jimmy Broughton and Mark Harkins. Executive Director Will Austin also does some lobbying of state government, and lobbyist John Mashburn also did some work in 2007.

The lobbyists are a bipartisan group.

Broughton is a former chief of staff to Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, Mashburn was general counsel to Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, Harkins was chief of staff to Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, and Austin was an assistant to Democratic Sen. John Edwards.

Broughton, Harkins and Mashburn work for Raleigh firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

In 2007, the foundation reported spending $9,340 for Broughton and Austin to lobby the state government, and $40,000 for Broughton, Harkins and Mashburn to lobby the federal government.

That year, it spent about $212,000 on outside consultants.

Blackwater has hired North Carolina's biggest and most powerful law firm as its new lobbyist in Washington.

Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice has signed up five lobbyists to work for the private security contractor, including Jimmy Broughton, former chief of staff for archconservative Sen. Jesse Helms; Mark Harkins, former chief of staff for Rep. Brad Miller, a liberal Democrat; and John Mashburn, former general counsel for Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

The lobbyists will have plenty of work: Blackwater relies on the U.S. government for more than 90 percent of its revenue. Blackwater is under investigation for the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilian dead. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been digging into Blackwater's finances and conduct in Iraq and elsewhere.

Womble's mascot is Winston the Bulldog. Hopefully Winston will get along better with Blackwater than the New York Times dog.

Crossposted from Joe Neff's Blackwater Current blog.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr wants to know about the tuberculosis patient.

As a member of the Senate health committee, the Winston-Salem Republican is asking questions about a man with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis who crossed the Canadian border this spring, Barb Barrett reports.

Burr and Sen. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, have requested answers from U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt about quarantines and health emergencies.

Their questions follow the case of an Atlanta-area man who traveled overseas after being diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. The man, a U.S. citizen, eluded authorities and snuck back into the United States across the Canadian border.

"This incident highlights that gaps in the system still remain," Burr and Gregg wrote in a letter to Leavitt on Monday.

Their questions for Leavitt after the jump.

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