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David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, are suing the federal Office of Personnel Management for “unlawfully withholding information it normally provides the public about some 900,000 of its civilian employees, including those working for such agencies as the EPA, OSHA and FEMA.” The suit was filed under the…
Read MoreJonathan Marino of The Washington Examiner looked into crime in public schools in Montgomery County, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. He found “internal reports, dozens of court records, and interviews with educators, parents and law enforcement officials tell troubling stories of abuse & mdash; and reveal hundreds of cases where some principals failed to…
Read MoreJason Hoppin and MaryJo Sylwester of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press analyzed Minnesota Department of Revenue data on taxable sales at establishments that sell alcohol to see if there was any evidence of widespread economic hardship due to smoking bans that were enacted in some areas of the Twin Cities on March 31. Because tax…
Read MoreTodd Pack of The Tennessean examined the voting record of Sen. Bill Frist (R) over the past 11 years, finding the senator has a pattern of supporting bills friendly to HCA Inc., the Nashville-based hospital company that is the foundation of the Frist family’s wealth, and to hospitals in general. Frist has faced criticism in…
Read MoreFarmsubsidy.org is a project coordinated by the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting (DICAR) and EU Transparency, a nonprofit organization in the United Kingdom. The Web site obtains detailed data relating to payments and recipients of farm subsidies in every EU member state and makes this data available to European citizens. Subsidies paid to farmers…
Read MoreABC News used data reported by the country’s universities and analyzed reports of campus crime to determine which colleges had the highest reported violent crime rates. The analysis divided the schools into four categories — largest to smallest and were available from 2002 and 2003. "In the smallest category, schools with 2,100 students or fewer,…
Read MorePete Thamel and Duff Wilson of The New York Times used academic transcripts and documents obtained through a freedom of information request to show that University High, a correspondence school which has no classes and no educational accreditation, offered students little more than a speedy academic makeover. "Athletes who graduated from University High acknowledged that…
Read MoreDavid E. Kaplan, with Bay Fang and Soni Sangwan, of U.S. News & World Report found that Dawood Ibrahim, a world-class mobster and engineer of the 1993 multiple bomb blasts in Bombay, is on Washington’s radar screen for lending his smuggling routes to al Qaeda and supporting jihadists in Pakistan, based on interviews with counterterrorism…
Read MoreDan Keating and David S. Fallis, with contributions from Bobbye Pratt, of The Washington Post used District of Columbia purchasing records to show that of $2.5 billion in purchases last year, the city spent roughly $425 million in unauthorized payments and no-bid contracts. "District officials routinely violate city spending laws by avoiding competitive bidding, masking…
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