WatchDog TipSheet

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has completed two reports useful to journalists.

The fifth annual report card produced by OpenTheGovernment.org offers hard numbers from a range of indicators that Bush Administration secrecy continues.

The Environmental Protection Agency looks determined to keep the public from knowing whether a pesticide on which it has waived safety rules may be a factor in the worldwide bee die-off known as "colony collapse disorder."

A Congressional Research Service report on terrorism and security issues facing sewage treatment and drinking water plants, dams and reservoirs, and other water infrastructure is full of ideas that reporters could turn into local stories — if only they were allowed to see it.

This database is useful for environmental and energy reporters looking for mischief perpetrated by government officials and the industries who influence them with money.

Senate sponsors of a bipartisan Senate bill to strengthen agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have crafted a compromise version and reintroduced it in hopes of speeding Congressional action.

An EPA database that has not been made public shows alarming levels of the pesticide atrazine are showing up in water bodies around the U.S.

At a time when public understanding of complex science and environmental issues grows critical, CNN laid off its entire science/enviro team and NBC's The Weather Channel fired the staff of the "Forecast Earth" environmental program.

The Energy Department in December 2008 published an 11th-hour proposed amendment to the Bush administration's secrecy rules that shroud the policies that brought Americans Enron, California blackouts, and $4 gasoline.