At a time when even the opaque Federal Reserve says it is trying (although not trying hard enough) to make government transparency a top priority, the confidentiality of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports stands as a curious anomaly. Every year CRS receives over $100 million in taxpayer fu...

We were very pleased to read in Roll Call today (subscription required) that the Obama administration is no longer considering appointing a former lobbyist to head an important Department of Justice (DOJ) office that oversees legal policy and judicial nominations. Earlier this month, press reports s...

Governmentattic.org has posted several documents from the Federal Reserve in response to a FOIA request about the Fed's lending activities related to the credit crisis.  We spent some time combing through the documents, and as previous news reports suggested, the Fed's reputation for o...

Though it may look like disaster.  Those of you outraged by the news that 67 computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are "missing" and that 13 have been lost or stolen--in this year alone--probably should (maybe shouldn't?) check out the latest report from the National...

Five years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) began investigating whether KBR was among several companies that paid $180 million in bribes to win contracts to construct a natural gas liquefaction plant in Nigeria.  Last September, former KBR execut...

Accountability got mugged today when congressional leaders stripped federal whistleblower protections from their compromise stimulus bill. There were, however, a couple of bright spots, with improved language for the government database that will track the flow of stimulus funds to the state and loc...

It's no secret to friends of POGO that we were not enamored of the appointment of Mary Schapiro to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  We were afraid she had spent too much time working for toothless self-regulatory outfits like the National Association of Securities Dealer...

Another day, another tax headache for President Obama. Just a few hours after Nancy Killefer withdrew her candidacy to serve as Chief Performance Officer, we've learned that Tom Daschle has now withdrawn his nomination to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. Daschle had neglected...

In the wake of the financial meltdown, many believe that the entire U.S. regulatory framework must be revamped (see, for instance, the recent report by the Government Accountability Office and Jesse Eisenger's column in Portfolio ).  The latest group to add their voice to the debate is the...

In its most recent biennial report on federal programs that are at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) added a new item: the “Outdated U.S. Financial Regulatory System.â€�  And with good reason: as the GAO has detailed, changes in ...