Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear Joe Johns' report on lobbying and the financial industry. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Joe Johns and Justine Redman
AC360°

It may be a recession on your street, but good times are rolling along K Street in Washington DC – otherwise known as the home address for lobbyists.

Health care has become one of the most crucial political issues of 2009, and more than $293 million has been spent on health care lobbying so far this year. At this rate, 2009 looks like it will set a new record for lobbying.

The heat is still on, as the future of health care reform rides to a large extent on the power of individual members of congress. Today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he will introduce a bill including a "public option," when only a few weeks ago, a "public option" was considered as good as dead. These last few days, TV airwaves have been a seeming barrage of politicians and pundits frantically pushing their agendas. Whether it's Reid or other pivotal Senators such as Olympia Snowe, with every move they make, a frantic dance of lobbyists has preceded it.

According to figures published by the Center for Responsive Politics, there are currently 3,185 lobbyists working all sides of the health care issue. Congress has 535 members. That means there are nearly half a dozen lobbyists for every elected official on Capitol Hill on this topic alone.

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Joe Johns | BIO
CNN Correspondent

Former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards talked a campaign aide into claiming he fathered a child born to Edwards' onetime mistress, sources familiar with the issue said Monday.

Edwards admitted to his affair with Rielle Hunter in August 2008 after months of denials, but said he could not have been the father of Hunter's daughter, who was born the previous February. Former Edwards staffer Andrew Young has said he was the girl's father - but has recanted and says he made it because he believed in Edwards, lawyers and others familiar with the matter told CNN.

Young was married with children when he claimed to have fathered Hunter's child. He never signed any affidavits or legal papers, however, and reversed his claim after Edwards, as one of the sources put it, dropped Young "like a hot potato."

The news comes as a grand jury in Edwards' home state of North Carolina is investigating payments made to Hunter - who had been hired as a campaign videographer - by the former senator's campaign and supporters. Hunter was photographed entering the courthouse where the grand jury was meeting in August.

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This is a former slave house on Friendfield Plantation, where Michelle Obama's family has roots.

Joe Johns | BIO and Justine Redman
AC360°

In many places across the South you can walk in the footsteps of slaves, and if you understand the history, it is not a happy journey. The same is true at Friendfield Plantation outside Georgetown, South Carolina.

It's not exactly "Gone With the Wind," but what makes this overgrown 3,300 acres of marsh and pine trees stand out is this: The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields.

It makes Friendfield Plantation a symbol of something more than servitude. It's the symbol of something that's never happened before: One important segment of an American family's journey from the humiliation of slavery to the very top of the nation's ruling class.

CNN recently was the first television network allowed to visit the plantation and shoot video. It's not a museum. It's just private land, still with shadows of its past.

Friendfield's most distinctive historical feature, perhaps, is the dirt road known as Slave Street.

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Editor's Note: For more on the case for and against legalizing marijuana, tune in tonight to hear Joe Johns' full report on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Inside the licensed and legal cannabis garden in Portland, Oregon.

Joe Johns, AC360° Correspondent
Justine Redman, AC360° Producer

We're in Portland, Oregon, working on our story about the case for legalizing marijuana, and we arranged to go see a garden where licensed and legal marijuana is grown to to provide medical marijuana for designated patients. The owner gave us the address, and soon we were driving through a quiet Portland neighborhood, trying to imagine how there could be a pot farm in such a tightly residential area.

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Rick Strandlof said he was an Iraqi war veteran, went to the Naval Academy and was a marine.

Strandlof spoke out on behalf of war veterans.

Joe Johns | BIO
CNN Correspondent

Charismatic and inspiring, people seemingly couldn’t get enough of the compelling personal story he had spun – that he was a graduate of the Naval Academy, was at the Pentagon on 9-11, and was injured in combat in Iraq. For much of 2008, the people of Colorado believed this purported war hero - a forceful public advocate on behalf of veterans and a vocal critic of the Iraq War. He also worked tireless to elect anti-war candidates, appearing in several political ads.

The only problem? It was all a lie – down to his name. Rick Duncan was really Richard Strandlof.

We spent three days basically following up on a lot of fine reporting in Denver by KUSA's Jace Larson and the local newspapers. As you can probably imagine, reporting on someone who had moved from state to state, and spent a good amount of time living as somebody else, is a little tricky. The CNN Research Library found over 300 people with the name Rick Duncan in Colorado alone.

We had to cross-check and confirm a lot of stuff ourselves - contacting the Pentagon, the Naval Academy, members of Congress, the FBI, local veterans, prosecutors, and many others - to try to establish that Strandlof wasn't who he said he was. I even talked on the phone with a man who identified himself as Strandlof's ex-boyfriend (Strandlof is gay).

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Justine Redman and Joe Johns
AC360º Producer and Correspondent

Grilled at a Senate hearing Wednesday, the President of Chrysler couldn't answer a question about whether 15 Chrysler employees stand to get $20 million in bonuses.  Keeping them honest, we want to know the answer too. Please send us your confidential tips to AC360KTH@CNN.com

Here is an excerpt from a Senate committee hearing yesterday on GM and Chrysler plans to close dealerships, and how to protect dealers and consumers:

SENATOR MCCASKILL: This is a difficult question, Mr. Press, but I looked and I have - we've gotten some information that came to us back channel about the DIP budget, and this is the debtor in possession budget in the bankruptcy. And it talks about the budget for the old company. And what troubles me in there, there's an acknowledgement that there may be up to 15 employees of old Chrysler working on this bankruptcy and there is a pool in this budget of up to $20 million for bonuses.

I can't imagine what kind of kick in the gut that would be if we were to learn in the next two weeks that some of the old Chrysler folks - which are getting paid their salaries, which they should, you guys are doing hard work.

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Amanda Dinnigan, 10, is paralyzed and on a respirator after a car accident two years ago. Her parents were trying to sue GM for an alleged defective product.

Joe Johns | BIO
CNN Correspondent

This was one of those stories that sounds almost bland until you start putting in names and faces and conflict and drama. And then it hits you in the gut.

We did a "real impact" piece on the GM bankruptcy, focusing on a family out of Long Island that had had a horrible auto accident –now suing, or trying to sue, GM for an alleged defective product.

Amanda Dinnigan, just 10 years old, was riding in the third row seat of a GM SUV in 2007 with mom driving, when the vehicle slammed into a tree. Amanda had her seatbelt on... but instead of protecting her the way seatbelts are supposed to do, her parents say it snapped her spine.

Now Amanda is now paralyzed and breathes with help from a respirator. She has to be hoisted into and out of bed. And the parents are suing GM and other companies in the line of production because they allege that there was a flaw in the design of the seatbelt.

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Joe Johns | BIO
CNN Correspondent

Today the Democrats, who used to be tattooed as the party of gun control, started making it look like they're not so willing to wear that tattoo anymore.

So when Senator Tom Coburn attached a provision to allow guns in national parks, a bunch of Democrats went along with it. Ok, some were holding their noses.

But the truth is some Democrats have finally decided that politically at least there is a real risk when you dismiss the concerns of guys in parts of the country like West Virginia and Oklahoma. In those states, people go to gun shows for recreation. It's part of the culture.

So ok, it might sound strange to people living in big cities worried about criminals with guns when they hear about this thing.

After all, national parks are places where you take your kids. But they are also places where you go camping and if a bear or wolf or coyote comes calling, you are gonna wish you had a gun around. That's part of the logic.

Plus there is the idea that depending on what state you are in it could be perfectly legal to carry a weapon. But when you go into the park and you still have your gun and you can be arrested.

Gun rights supporters have been trying to change this for years.

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Check out a preview of the AC360° Special "Extreme Challenges: the Next 100 Days." The full special airs this Thursday at 11p.m. ET.