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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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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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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