Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. Muzzled under Bush, NASA Scientists Still Face Hurdles Publicizing Findings

   By Luke Rosiak Dec 15, 2009 4:14 p.m.

   As President Barack Obama meets in Copenhagen with world leaders to address climate change, a recent government report notes that, even after NASA took steps to address the political considerations that led to the suppression or downplaying of studies of climate science from 2004 to 2006, researchers at the space agency are still unclear about whether they can share the results of their taxpayer-funded studies with the public.

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2. Sunlight puts House office disbursements in database form

   By Luke Rosiak Dec 2, 2009 4:24 p.m.

   Six months after promising to do so, the House on Monday, Nov. 30, published online its quarterly log of expenditures by members' offices. Until now, reporters and citizens who wondered how a congressman spent the taxpayer money allocated for operationslargely mundane expenditures on payroll and office supplies, but occasional spending on items such as luxury carshad to peruse tattered binders in a dingy basement or order a copy from the Government Printing Office.

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3. Entering digital age an expensive proposition for GOP

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 23, 2009 6:54 p.m.

   The Republican National Committee shelled out $1.4 million dollars over the last six months for Web sites and services, much of which was spent on GOP.com, the party's major Web presence that was unveiled this month, new Federal Election Commission expense reports show.

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4. Scaled-down missile defense system comes after ramped-up lobbying effort

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 21, 2009 8:28 p.m.

   Lobbyists for the nation of Poland marked a win today as the country expressed relief at a scaled down US-sponsored missile shield, as the Associated Press reported, a turning point in negotiations between the countries in which Poland relied not just on diplomats, but on K Street lobbyists paid hundreds of thousands of dollars , too. The Obama administration last month agreed to dramatically scale down an Eastern European defense system that offended Russia and put a wary Poland on edge. The Bush plan would have used Poland as a potential launching point for missiles intercepting projectiles from Iran, but some viewed its ulterior target at Russia.

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5. Foster, now facing Hastert's son, still dipping into personal wealth

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 20, 2009 6:17 p.m.

   A bid by the son of longtime House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert to defeat the man who replaced his father is far from a sure thing, but if nothing else, a respectable showing by the younger Hastert could keep the incumbent, Bill Foster, from replenishing his personal bank account.

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6. Bailout beneficiaries give hidden 'bundles' to House Committee overseeing industry reform

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 15, 2009 6:54 p.m.

   As the House Financial Services Committee begins to consider financial industry reform legislation (discussion drafts started appearing on the committee's Web site on Sept. 25), will we see the same kind of hidden "bundles" flowing to members that we saw going to key members of the Senate Finance Committee from health care interests and their lobbyists? That one-two punch flooded Sen. Max Baucus' campaign coffers with more than $450,000 from 11 health care interests--and 109 lobbyists who represented them--from Jan. 2007 through the end of June, 2009.

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7. The upper chamber and the slower filing

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 15, 2009 4:10 a.m.

   With ten minutes to go before the midnight filing deadline, the only senator whose campaign finance report has made it through FEC.gov is Barbara Mikulksi. All available Senate filing summaries as of 11:50pm, as compiled by Sunlight, are downloadable here.

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8. It's 11:00. Do you know where your candidates are?

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 15, 2009 3:11 a.m.

   Third-quarter campaign finance reports for House and Senate members are due at midnight, in just about an hour. Here at the Sunlight Foundation's Real Time Investigations, we're experimenting with a new utility that monitors the Federal Election Commission's Web site for reports as they trickle in--in, well, real time.

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9. Rep. Wexler heads to think tank funded by big Democratic donor

   By Luke Rosiak Oct 14, 2009 7:57 p.m.

   Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is resigning from Congress and accepting a job at the Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation, a nonprofit with offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., that's funded by Slim-Fast founder S. Daniel Abraham.

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10. Most Senate supporters of electronic FEC filing still disclose on paper

    By Luke Rosiak Oct 13, 2009 3:54 p.m.

    With all the foot-dragging that has accompanied legislation requiring Senate candidates to disclose campaign finance information electronically--common-sense legislation with no real opposition that comes years after the House entered the digital age--it's an oft-overlooked fact that they can already file electronically if they choose to, and a few do.

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11. Defense contractors join Turkish lobbying effort in pursuit of arms deals

    By Luke Rosiak Sep 17, 2009 2:13 p.m.

    The Defense Department's request last week for congressional approval of the sale of $8 billion worth of PAC-3 missiles to Turkey was the latest victory for a disparate group of interests including defense contractors, finance and energy corporations, trade groups, the Turkish government and a well-financed network of domestic advocacy nonprofits. Intersecting interests have led them to join forces and lobby on a number of issues, including the characterization of distant historical events.

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12. Turkey's influence over lawmakers surfaces in Ohio hearing

    By Luke Rosiak Sep 10, 2009 10:28 p.m.

    Labeling the killing of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923, many at the hands of Ottoman government, an act of genocide has been a controversial issue in Turkey, among some historians, in the U.S. Congress, and now in the unlikely venue of the Ohio Board of Elections, where recent hearings indirectly considered the government of Turkeys connection, if any, to Turkish advocacy groups in Washington.

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13. Bush Era Visitor Logs Show Visits from Evangelicals, Conservatives and a Foreign Lobbyist

    By Luke Rosiak Sep 4, 2009 10:06 p.m.

    In addition to promising to release most White House visitor logs to the public, the Obama administration released nine pages of logs of former Vice President Dick Cheney's visitors and some 250 pages from George W. Bush's. The retroactive disclosures came in response to a lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought records of meetings with evangelical leaders and Stephen Payne, a lobbyist who allegedly sold a foreign leader access to Cheney in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in "donations" to Bush's presidential library.

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14. Downloadable table of all earmark requests

    By Luke Rosiak Sep 4, 2009 5:13 p.m.

    Sunlight has compiled a list of House earmark requests--available here--for fiscal year 2010 which were disclosed this year for the first time under new rules, but scattered across hundreds of Web sites and in nearly unusable formats.

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Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Luke Rosiak