Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. Planning for every contingency...

   By Bill Allison Jan 3, 2008 8:56 p.m.

   ...is what can make crafting a distributed research project, like Teresa DeRoco used to work for Sen. George Allen. However, DeRoco no longer works for Tew Cardenas LLP. Page 13 of this lobbyist disclosure report filed in August 2007 by the National Association of Manufacturers lists a Teresa DeRoco Cupit; this wedding announcement seems to confirm it's the same Teresa DeRoco who worked in Sen. George Allen's office:

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2. New, improved Senate lobbying disclosure site is up and running

   By Bill Allison Jan 2, 2008 10:19 p.m.

   As I noted here, the Senate Office of Public Records lobbying disclosure site is officially up and running (and had been since New Year's Eve--apparently my browsers kept showing the cached version of the old site--which, for diehard fans of it, is still available here). Pam Gavin, the superintendent of public records, told me that about 90 percent of the 2007 midyear reports in the lobbying database were filed electronically, so much of the year's records will be searchable. And, going forward in 2008, all forms will have to be filed that way, greatly enhancing the value of the database.

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3. Better Online Lobbyist Disclosure -- update

   By Bill Allison Jan 2, 2008 3:32 a.m.

   Last night, I came across an enhanced site for looking up lobbying records posted online by the Senate Office of Public Records. To give an idea of how much better it is, I can tell you that with one search that 22 organizations--including top political donors Citigroup, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, Exxon Mobil and PricewaterhouseCoopers, explicitly mention S. 681, the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. (Perhaps it should be expected that the Swiss Bankers Association also has an interest in the legislation, although one thing I learned some years back when I was researching taxes is that Switzerland is no longer favored by the international tax avoiding, let alone evading, crowd.)

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4. Senate Lobbyist Disclosure Enhanced

   By Bill Allison Jan 1, 2008 4:50 a.m.

   Okay, I'm a total geek -- looking up lobbying records at 15 minutes to midnight on New Year's Eve. (The nine-year-old made it to about 11:15 this year, then conked out...) But I hope I'm the first to report that the Senate Office of Public Records has introduced a greatly enhanced search interface for lobbying records -- one that allows users to search specific lobbying issues.

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5. McCain & Lobbyists

   By Bill Allison Dec 31, 2007 3:18 p.m.

   The Washington Post's Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and John Solomon report on Sen. John McCain's ties to lobbyists--especially the 32 lobbyists who are designated fundraisers (the preferred term is bundlers, but there are more colorful terms available to us) for his campaign.

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6. Tidbits for Iowans

   By Bill Allison Dec 31, 2007 3:56 a.m.

   DLA Piper, the most generous backer of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, lobbies for defense giant Lockheed Martin on environmental issues (perchlorate, and this bill in particular), for First Kuwaiti

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7. DIA update

   By Bill Allison Dec 28, 2007 4:09 a.m.

   Actually, nothing to report. I called DIA, and they're looking into the anomaly.

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8. A $471 million anomaly?

   By Bill Allison Dec 26, 2007 4:30 p.m.
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9. (Federal) Help Wanted

   By Bill Allison Oct 3, 2007 8:46 p.m.

   Via the invaluable blog devoted to developments in federal government ethics, the IEC Journal, I came across this Web course for federal workers on the issues raised by working with government contractors:

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10. Congressional subpoena update

    By Bill Allison Oct 3, 2007 5:11 p.m.

    Via National Journal's CongressDaily:

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11. Congressional Subpoena Watch update

    By Bill Allison Sep 21, 2007 5:55 a.m.

    Just a few notes...

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12. Congressional Subpoena Watch

    By Bill Allison Sep 19, 2007 4:58 p.m.

    The Washington Post reports that 13 members of the House of Representatives have received subpoenas in connection with the trial of Brent Wilkes, one of the contractors alleged to be involved in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery case:

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13. Seeing for myself on earmark disclsosure

    By Bill Allison Jul 30, 2007 9:05 p.m.

    I'm going through the version of the bill N.Z. posted, and came across this language on page 68:

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14. Congressional-DoD correspondence visualization

    By Bill Allison Jul 27, 2007 6:12 p.m.

    Why should the Sunlight Labs guys get all the fun? I loaded the subject lines of the correspondence logs referenced immediately below into Many Eyes, which our co-conspirator Josh Ruihley used to create our Earmarks Visualizations. So what words turn up most frequently in the subject lines of letters members write most frequently about to the Office of the Secretary of Defense? Al Qaeda? Military contracts? National Guard? Body Armor? See for yourself.

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Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Bill Allison