Xi Jinping, the vice president and presumptive next president of China, today visits the White House on a four-day tour of the United States. While some hope the trip will help ease tensions between the two nations, China is an increasingly popular boogeyman on the campaign trail here, especially in political attack ads.

You've probably seen the controversial ad that Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl.

The spot cost Hoekstra's campaign $144,000 and helped his opponent Debbie Stabenow raise $150,000 in the week after it ran.

But Hoekstra's ad is hardly alone recently in stoking fears of China.

Mark Amodei of Nevada, running for Congress in a special election last year, cut an ad claiming that raising the debt ceiling so empowers China that to do so is to "risk our independence." A fictional, triumphant Chinese news report shows the People's Liberation Army marching in front of the U.S. Capitol as a joyous choir sings. "It's not too late to stop this nightmare," Amodei says.

In September he won election with 58% of the vote.

And it's not just local campaigns using such tactics. In a number of 2010 commercials, the National Republican Campaign Committee equated support for the stimulus to favoring Chinese interests over American ones. "Staggering debt here, sending jobs to China. Who is he working for?" the narrator intones in ads against Chris Carney and Zack Space.

In a spot funded by the NRCC and approved by candidate Spike Maynard, images of "Made in China" labels flash ominously across the screen before Maynard's opponent Rep. Nick Rahall is accused of voting "to help foreign companies create Chinese jobs making windmills."

Another NRCC ad asks "Is Baron Hill Running for Congress in Indiana, or China?"

Of course, this xenophobic aesthetic is not limited to Republicans. An ad the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee ran against Sen. Pat Toomey in 2010 sounded remarkably similar. "Maybe he ought to run for Senate ... in China," its narrator declares. Lots of Chinese flags accompanied by gong sounds are thrown in for good measure.

In another equally unsubtle DCCC ad against Toomey, "He's not for you. :(" pops out of a fortune cookie.

The Democratic National Committee put out a video in 2010 accusing Karl Rove and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of "stealing our democracy" with "millions from secret donors." "It appears they've even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections. It's incredible!" the narrator cries over an image of Chinese yuan stacking up. No evidence is cited for this claim.

And a 2010 ad from MoveOn.org "connects the dots" from Rep. Mark Kirk to the Chamber of Commerce directly to China, Russia and India. "Exactly who is Mark Kirk working for?" the ad asks, indignant. Just like the NRCC.

The classic of the genre, though, may be from the 501(c)(3) Citizens Against Government Waste. In the widely-viewed 2010 ad, a Chinese professor in a high-tech classroom from the year 2030 explains how America "failed" like other great nations. "Of course, we owned most of their debt ..." he says with a laugh, "so now they work for us."

As of last year, less than 10 percent of U.S. public debt is owed to Chinese investors.

Have you seen any other ads raising the specter of big, bad China? Let us know in the comments.

Some 76 members of Congress provide at least some disclosure of their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests online, citizen researchers have found. The majority posted their requests to their official congressional Web sites while 11 disclosed their earmark requests directly to the media--a complete list is available here.

We also learned that 46 members of Congress have foregone earmarks for fiscal year 2009. Ten members of Congress told researchers they will not disclose their earmark requests to the public, preferring to keep their constituents in the dark. Those are the findings of a collaborative study by citizen journalists organized by the Sunlight Foundation, and joined by our friends at Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense -- thanks to both organizations for their help.

To create more transparency about the earmarking process, we asked citizens to call their members of Congress and ask if they'd voluntarily disclose their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests. Sunlight has the full list, we'll update it if more members release their earmark requests.

In the meantime, you can peruse the list to see who requested $5,000,000 for Archer Daniels Midland to evaluate solid fats in the American diet, who asked for a $15 million earmark for defense contractors L3 Titan Group, MBDA, Raytheon and Boeing, or who requested some $300,000 to fix a parking garage in Punta Gorda, Fla. An important note: These members had the integrity to inform the public of what there spending requests were -- we can question their priorities and criticize their choices, but we should acknowledge their openness.

There are 413 members who don't want you to know what they're asking for, who don't want any criticism of their choices. They're the ones who deserve the most criticism.

It's earmark season--the time of year when the House and Senate Appropriations Committees approve the major spending bills that fund the government, and start rolling out the lists of earmarks in the reports that accompany each bill. While who's asking for what in this earmark el Dorado on the Potomac is already known to the insiders on the Appropriations Committee, the public is left in the dark. National Journal's CongressDaily recently reported that the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee knows there are about 100 earmarks in their bill, how much they cost, and who asked for them, but chooses not to share that information just yet. The public, apparently, will have to wait until the subcommittee is ready to share its spending handiwork.

So let's see if, while we're waiting for the official disclosures from the committees, we can prevail upon members to be a bit more forthcoming. Sunlight, in conjunction with Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste is asking for your help to reveal which lawmakers post their earmark requests online.

There are a small number of lawmakers—some 46 of them—who have posted some information about their earmark requests to their official Web sites. We are providing a list of them that includes links to the their requests. We also list the names of 46 other members who say they won't request any earmarks. Is your member listed? If not, why not? Call your members of Congress and ask them to fully disclose all their earmark requests for next year’s budget on their official Web sites. After you have spoken with your lawmakers (or, most likely, their staff), use the embedded form as to what they said and we’ll update the chart on daily basis.

We think, at a bare minimum, lawmakers--both Senators and Representatives--should release the same information that House rules require them to send to the Appropriations Committee. They should disclose the recipient of the earmark, a description of the project the earmark would fund, and the address of the recipient. They should additionally disclose the amount of money they asked for. See if you can get them to post a list, or find out why they choose not to, then let us know what you find. Be sure to include the name of the person you spoke to in the office.

Lawmakers have broad discretion on the requests they make for earmarks, and often justify them by saying earmarks serve their constituents. So we encourage constituents to call their members and ask what's being done to benefit them. (To look up contact information for Senators, go here, and you can find contact info for Representatives click here, then click your state, then the member's name, and go to the member's site.

(For a definition of earmarks, see Section 521 of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, available here.