Some 24 states followed Florida in putting Stand Your Ground laws on their books, at least ten of which are nearly identical to the measure that’s gained national attention after George Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., last month and was not arrested because he said he was acting out of self-defense.

In 2005, Florida passed its Stand Your Ground law, which offers legal immunity to individuals who use deadly force when they believe they are being threatened by another. The National Rifle Association pushed the legislation through state legislatures across the country as an expansion of the nation's gun rights laws.

After Florida passed its law, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) adopted its legislative language as one of the model bills it proposes to legislators across the country on behalf of its member associations, in this case the NRA.

A Sunlight Foundation analysis using automated textual analysis  found that not only are the laws similar, but at least 10 of  the states based their legislation on nearly identical bills to the one Florida passed and ALEC adopted.

Because some states do not make the original legislation available online, there could be even more states that used what became an ALEC model bill to guide their legislation.

The analysis was able to detect striking similarities and identical phrases across multiple bills, including the phrase, “[a] person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm …,” which is just one of the provisions of the law that is intended to protect people who may have killed another person from being arrested or prosecuted.

Michigan’s House Bill 5153 that passed the state legislature in 2006 was the most similar to Florida’s bill, according to the analysis. When compared to the Florida bill it returned the highest rate of matches than any other bill did at 146 fragments matched. The state bill with the lowest matching rate to Florida was Mississippi Senate Bill 2426 at 20 matching fragment counts.

The ten states that were revealed to have varying degrees of similarities to the Florida bill are:

• Michigan
• South Carolina
• West Virginia
• Kentucky
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming
• Kansas
• Mississippi

The NRA hasn’t commented on the Martin case specifically, but has said the Stand Your Ground law is good legislation and to call it otherwise would be a mistake.

Florida State officials have said that it will be more difficult to prosecute the shooter, George Zimmerman, if they decide to do so, because of the law.

Breanna Edwards contributed to this post.

There are almost 27,000 people—or 1/100th of one percent of the United States population—who spent more than $10,000 to influence elections during the 2010 election cycle.

The top 10 people from this elite class of donors together spent more than $23 million on the last election. The majority of that money went to Super PACs used for independent expenditures. Eight contributed their money exclusively to Republican groups and candidates; two contributed exclusively to Democratic groups and candidates.

In total, this tiny group of relatively unknown individuals was responsible for $774 million of the $3.2 billion that poured into the hotly contested mid-term elections. That money went not only to candidate campaigns and political action committees, but to Super PACs, officially known as “independent expenditure-only committees.” After the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United and the Federal Election Commission’s two advisory opinions that followed, individuals and corporations effectively have unlimited giving potential. By giving to Super PACs, they can bypass traditional giving limits.

The group that benefited most from the top 10 mega-donors largesse: American Crossroads. That Super PAC received millions of dollars from seven of the top donors, and $7 million from just one donor, Bob Perry.

Here’s a look at who’s who among America’s top 10 most influential givers:

1. Bob Perry is the CEO of Perry Homes. Perry has been influential in politics and a prominent donor for a number of years. In 2004, he gave $8 million to a number of nonprofit political groups known as 527 committees. Most notably, $4.4 million of that money went to the political group Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which opposed Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid. During the 2010 election cycle, Perry donated $7.3 million to political efforts. All but a small portion of his money for the 2010 election went to American Crossroads, a group cofounded by former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

2. Wayne Hughes, owner and chairman of Public Storage, Inc. According to disclosures, Hughes gave a total of $3.28 million to conservative candidates and committees, with $3.25 million going to American Crossroads. Hughes also gave $4,800 to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

3. Fred Eshelman is the CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development. Eshelman spent $3 million in 2010 funding his own group, RightChange. RightChange registered with the FEC as a Super PAC and spent those millions of dollars to defeat Democratic candidates including Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington.

4. Robert Rowling, CEO and Chairman of TRT Holdings, a holding company that owns Golds Gyms and Omni Hotels as well as oil and gas interests. Rowling spent $2.59 million during the last election on conservative efforts. He gave $2.5 million of that money to American Crossroads.

5. Donald Sussman is the Chairman of the holding company Paloma Partners. Sussman, who earlier this year married Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, gave $1.26 million in 2010 to Democratic candidates. He has also funded a group called the Democracy Fund, a separate but predecessor organization to the United Republic Action Fund. Both of these groups have been affiliated with United Republic, and both have been dissolved.* Sussman gave a little more than $750,000 to the Super PAC Women Vote! and its parent organization Emily’s List. Those two organizations support pro-choice female political candidates.

6. John Ricketts is the founder of TD Ameritrade and still a board member there. In 2010, his total political contributions were $1.25 million. He gave to a variety of Republican candidates, including House Speaker John Boehner.
   

7. Jerry Perenchio is the CEO of the investment firm Chartwell Partners and former owner of the Spanish-speaking television network Univision. In 2010, he gave $1.12 million to conservative candidates and groups, including $1 million to American Crossroads.

8. Trevor Rees-Jones is the president of Chief Oil & Gas. In 2010, he gave $1.1 million to Republican efforts. $1,000,000 of that was given to American Crossroads.

9. Rachel Hunter is the Treasurer for the organization Media Matters and an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune. She’s related to Penny Pritzker who was the national finance chairwoman of the Obama campaign in 2008. In 2010, Hunter gave more than $1 million to democratic groups and candidates. The bulk of that money went to the 527 organization, Bring Ohio Back.

10. John Childs is on the Board of Directors for Club for Growth and is the founder of JW Childs Assoc., a private equity firm. In 2010, he gave a total $923,000 to Super PACs supporting Republicans and to Republican candidates directly. He gave $100,000 of that money to American Crossroads and $650,000 to his own group, Club for Growth.

For a full list of the top donors for 2010, see the embedded spreadsheet below.

Also, as a disclaimer, we think it is important to note that there are funders of the Sunlight Foundation on this list. For example, David Bonderman and Marjorie Roswell are numbers 9 and 103 on the list and have donated to the Sunlight Foundation. Additionally, the founder of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros, is 134th on the list. Open Society Foundations has provided grant support to Sunlight.

*Based on inaccurate information received from a source at United Republic, we originally reported incorrectly that Donald Sussman is a funder of that organization.

Koch Industries, the closely held firm led by conservative and libertarian political donors Charles and David Koch, has a long record of entanglements with federal regulatory authorities; its foreign subsidiaries traded with Iran and some of its foreign employees violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by using bribes to get business deals, according to an exhaustive account by Bloomberg News. That record wasn't sufficient to prevent an executive from the company, Don Clay, from holding a position advising the government on some of the very issues the multi-billion dollar conglomerate has been in trouble for violating, according to official records available through the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Explorer.

Clay, who before joining Koch Industries served as an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, sat on the agency's advisory committee for the the Clean Air Act and on some of its subcommittees that provided advice on various matters including regulation of toxic substances. Records show that Clay sat on multiple EPA federal advisory committees beginning in 1998 -- when he left his official post at the EPA and joined Koch Industries, through 2009.

Clay was in a position to advise the government on how to regulate a company he worked for, which is owned by people regularly fighting for less regulation in general. The EPA did not respond to questions about what issues Clay worked on exactly while he was on the advisory committee.

EPA enforcement data records presented on InfluenceExplorer.com, show details of some of the enforcement actions carried out against Koch Industries and its subsidiaries by the EPA, such as an incident in 2001 where Koch Pipeline dumped over 300,000 pounds of a toxic substance in Iowa, violating the Superfund. The company was fined $2.3 million dollars for that violation.

The table below is taken from InflunceExplorer.com and shows EPA violations by Koch Industries and its subsidiaries dating back to 2001. The data is new to the site and allows access to information that was once hard to obtain.

Case Name	Defendant	Locations	Amount
Invista S.A.R.L. (National Case)	Invista S.A.R.L.	La Porte, Tx and others	$170,099,600
Invista S.A.R.L. (National Case)	Invista S.a.r.l.	Athens, Ga; Calhoun and others	$48,978,944
Invista S.A.R.L (National Case)	Invista S.a.r.l.	Martinsville, Va; Seaford and others	$24,672,736
Allied Paper, Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Admin Order On Consent (Cercla)	Georgia-Pacific, LLC	Kalamazoo, Mi	$14,000,000
Allied Paper, Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Consent Decree Ou 2-Willow Boul	Georgia Pacific Corp	Kalamazoo, Mi	$11,725,509
Koch Pipeline Company	Koch Pipeline Company	Algona, Ia	$2,306,588
Allied Paper, Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River - Kalamazoo Mill And Hawthorne	Georgia-pacific Corporation	Kalamazoo, Mi	$2,029,207
Flint Hills Resources Alaska, Llc	Flint Hills Resources Alaska, LLC	North Pole, Ak	$2,000,000
Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products, Lp	Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LP	Milford, Nj	$2,000,000
Colonial Pipeline Company	Colonial Pipeline Company	Winder, Ga	$1,582,600

During the span of years that Clay held his position on the federal advisory committee, Koch Industries reported spending close to $32 million to influence multiple issues including the environment in 1998 and between 2006-2009, according to information obtained from lobbyist disclosure forms and displayed on TransparencyData.

Clay’s position on the advisory committee, in combination with lobbying efforts, gave Koch Industries an additional avenue to influence government. Not only could the company use its lobbyists to influence lawmakers and administration officials, it also had an inside advisor who could recommend policies preferred by the company directly to the EPA.

Last year the New York Times ran an article on the corporate donations to charities associated with members of Congress. The article showed that corporate and lobbyist donations are able to flow in unlimited sums to the favored causes of specific lawmakers, including to charities bearing the name of the lawmaker. This provides another conduit for influence seeking that falls outside of this normally regulated and disclosed realm. It seems odd that members of Congress do not have to disclose on their financial disclosure reports the non-profits and charities that they are associated with.

Only three of the twenty-one lawmakers mentioned in the New York Times article actually disclosed their association with the charity or non-profit affiliated with them. A further search of contribution records found another six lawmaker affiliated nonprofits, none of which were disclosed by the affiliated lawmaker. This may be due to an oversight in financial disclosure reporting rules. The official rules state:

The identity of all positions held ... as an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee, or consultant of any corporation, company, firm, partnership, or other business enterprise, any nonprofit organization, any labor organization, or any education or other institution other than the United States. This subparagraph shall not require the reporting of positions held in any religious, social, fraternal, or political entity and positions solely of an honorary nature.

This rule only covers obvious conflicts that should be disclosed. It leaves a series of other conflicts out that the New York Times article helps to illuminate including contributions to organizations that a lawmaker founded or are run by family members. This disclosure rule should go as far as influence does by requiring the disclosure of all charities affiliated with lawmakers and their immediate family.

There is a clear connection between these charitable donations of corporations to these organizations and their attempts to gain access and influence lawmaker activity. The New York Times article quoted a spokesman for Duke Energy on his company's contributions to these charities:

Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, acknowledged that the company participates in lawmakers’ charitable events in part to get access to them and push its agenda. “We are not apologetic about it at all: it is part of our overall effort to work with policy makers,” he said. “Social settings are always a good way to get to know people.”

Lawmakers should be required to disclose nonprofits and charities that are affiliated with them even if they do not sit on the board or hold honorary titles. If companies are going out of their way to contribute and list these lawmakers as honorees then lawmakers should have to disclose these affiliations on their annual financial disclosure reports. It seems completely off-base that Rep. Jim Clyburn does not disclose his affiliation with the James E. Clyburn Research and Scholarship Foundation or that Rep. Nick Rahall does not disclose his relationship with the Rahall Transportation Institute.

Furthermore, lawmakers should be required to disclose the affiliations their spouse holds with nonprofits or charities. Huntington Bancshares reports a contribution of $5,000 to the Community Foundation of West Chester-Libery in honor of Rep. John Boehner. No where are we informed that Boehner's wife serves on a committee at the foundation. These kinds of relationships should be disclosed.

There is currently one way to track the contributions made by corporations and individuals to charities on behalf of members of Congress. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 required new disclosure filings regarding contributions made to lawmakers and on behalf of or in honor of lawmakers.

President Obama is likely to select former Commerce Secretary and current JPMorgan Chase executive William Daley as his next chief of staff. A Daley selection, which has been hailed by banks, would plant an official emissary from Wall Street into one of the most important jobs in Washington.

The President once told a meeting of bankers that he was "the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks." That apparently wasn't good enough. Picking Daley would send the message that the pitchforks--normal people--matter less than the continued flow of campaign donations from the uber-wealthy. Barack Obama raised $39 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sector in his 2008 bid for President, the most raised from this sector by anyone in one cycle seeking political office in the United States ever.

Even more problematic than the need to corral donors for 2012 is that Daley's presence would allow him to control the time of the President. Daley could choose who the President sees and what information gets to the President. Based on the praise the financial sector has for the Daley selection, it is clear who those people are and what that information would be. In essence, Daley would act as a stovepipe for the interests of Wall Street, as if bankers didn't have enough influence already.

Daley, the son and brother of two extremely famous mayors of Chicago, began his government career in 1993 as a special adviser to President Bill Clinton. Daley had come to the Clinton administration from an earlier career in both the banking sector and in law. After Daley's work as a special adviser the President appointed him to the board of Fannie Mae. In 1997 Daley was appointed the Secretary of Commerce. In 2000 Daley left the administration to work on the Gore campaign.

After the 2000 election debacle Daley moved into the corporate world. Daley briefly worked as vice chairman of Evercore Capital Partners and then took a job as President of the telecommunications giant SBC Communications.

In 2004 Daley took a job with J.P. Morgan as the head of their Midwest division, located in his hometown of Chicago. Daley was brought on not just for his extensive experience, but his extensive ties to officials in Chicago, including his brother the mayor, and in Washington. In 2007 Daley was elevated to serve on J.P. Morgan's operating committee and was put in charge of government affairs and public policy.

At the same time, Daley did side work, including a stint on a Chamber of Commerce committee on financial regulation. The “Commission on the Regulation of Capital Markets in the 21st Century” ultimately became the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, which played a major role in opposing the regulation of derivatives that was a focal point of the financial reform bill pushed by the president and congressional leadership.

The question finally isn't just whether the country needs a chief of staff to the President who can speed dial Jamie Dimon, but rather what considerations does Daley make as chief of staff that could affect his prior commitments and friendships and his future prospects. People criticized Rahm Emanuel for being in too close contact with lobbyists and corporate leaders, but Rahm's future considerations always appeared to be in the political realm. (Yes, I'm aware that Rahm was on the board of Freddie Mac, but what Democrat didn't get some plum seat on Fannie or Freddie back then. Fannie and Freddie were like the Woodstock of the nineties, everyone was there.) What is more disconcerting is that Daley's future prospects likely lie back in the world of finance.

The chief of staff position is a burnout position. No chief of staff lasts very long and then they're off into the world again. The country doesn't need someone so close to the very industry that brought us all to the brink involved in the day-to-day decision-making and deal-making that the chief of staff position entails.

If the President is concerned about the influence of lobbyists in his administration he should also be concerned about the influence that people like Daley, who have already used the revolving door once, could have on policy outcomes. Choosing Daley would not be a wise choice if the President wants to keep his promises on reducing influence in government.

ed--This post was edited to reflect that Daley was appointed to the Fannie Mae board in 1993, not in 2000 as previously suggested.

Today Sunlight is launching Poligraft, what I think is one of the coolest, most revealing and most interesting tools of the many we have developed.

In fact, this user-driven website and bookmarklet -- which extracts text from any news story, blog post or news release and runs it through a filter to determine the “influence connections” between the entities listed in that text -- is pretty close to a dream come true. And the project has personal roots.

Poligraft creates an enhanced view of the influence connections between politicians and organizations.

More than 20 years ago one of my mentors -- Philip M. Stern, author of The Best Congress that Money Can Buy (Pantheon, 1988) -- put the idea in my head of a one “click” search to see all the influences that focus their attention on Congress. Since Sunlight’s founding that’s been known as “Ellen’s Vision of the One-Click Future” bringing together many disparate data sets to tell the larger story. And while not yet a perfect rendition of that, Poligraft today is one of our efforts to that end, and while not a perfect tool, it’s a very exciting one.

There are knotty problems you’ll find in using it, not the least of which is that without government’s help in establishing a system of unique identifiers for all those who file reports with the government, we still wrestle with lack of name standardization across various filing entities. While we’ve tried hard to sort through that, it’s far from perfect yet.

Poligraft is expandable and to that end in a few weeks we’ll be adding other related data sets -- just as soon as we can get them ready to be integrated. (We’d certainly welcome your suggestions of what else to add as well.)

Here's a short video that explains how to use the tool - it's incredibly easy.

Poligraft is designed for users as both a user-driven website or as a bookmarklet (I prefer this), offering an interactive snapshot of the connections between the players in the text you want to review. All you have to do is to paste the URL or text of a news article, blog post or press release in the text box and Poligraft creates an enhanced view of the interconnections between the people, organizations and relationships described within the text.

Poligraft is built on top of a site we launched a couple of months ago -- TransparencyData.com -- the one stop shop for downloadable influence data sets. And both of these sites are built on the work of the Center for Responsive Politics, the National Institute on Money in State Politics and various other government data sets.

The Knight Foundation funded the work on this project, and we are most grateful for their support of this and many other tools we are creating.

Whether you're a gun owner, a home builder, an environmentalist or all of the above, you probably have no idea who is the lobbying federal government on your behalf, when they’re doing it or how it’s being done.

We got a very brief and narrow glance into that work today.

The key aspect in making a live event useful to citizens is to have an engaged community audience.

Our interactive real-time reporting platform, Sunlight Live, covered a meeting between high powered business association lobbyists and Republican leadership of the House of Representatives.

The event was originally scheduled as a closed-door conversation between lobbyists and Republicans on job creation. After outside groups highlighted the hypocrisy of Republican criticism of Democrats’ closed door meetings, Republican leadership decided that the forum would be openly streamed online as part of America Speaking Out: an initiative by Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) to crowd-source policy ideas.

During the event, only a hour long, Sunlight Live performed a full court press to help the public understand the relationship between these huge organizations and Republican leadership. When any lobbyist was on camera we displayed:

a short biography of the lobbyist

what organization they represent and what issues that organization lobbies on

top recipients from the organization's political action committee (PAC) both in the current cycle and carrerreer totals

Along with our usual influence data on members of Congress, our crack team of investigative journalists (joined by Bara Vaida of the National Journal) blogged their research and reaction in real-time. At any moment Sunlight Live viewers accounted for 70-75% of the total audience for the event.

Here's an extremely succint summary of what the lobbyists pushed for from Paul Blumenthal on our Reporting Team:

1) Stop and roll back everything that the Democrats have done. (Chamber of Commerce, Wholesaler-Distributors and others.) 2) Spend more on infrastructure. This would be stimulus spending. (Builders) 3) No VAT or consumption taxes. (Retail)

Of course, you can play back both the video and our live blog here.

Mark Tapscott of the Washingtion Examiner read my mind and has already posted a constructive critique of the event:

* Whenever lobbyists are involved, campaign contributions ought to be simultaneously detailed, as the Sunlight Foundation did today with the GOP event. The more one party displays, the more the other has to do the same or better.

• Make it as inter-active as possible. Give the audience a chance to submit questions in real-time.

• Provide contact info for all speakers on the screen as they speak.

• Publicize the cybercast in advance as widely as possible and as far in advance as possible.

• Avoid the temptation to turn a civics demonstration into show business or message management.

The key aspect in making a live event like this useful to citizens is to have a community audience engaged in a discourse on the material at hand. We had some great comments in the live blog and on social networks but not nearly enough. Advance notice would have greatly helped build this conversation ahead of time. We also need better uptake from a more diverse set of media partners.

My final feedback is on the lack of critical integration with the America Speaking Out website itself. The groups these lobbyists represent have massive membership lists. It would have better served the audience (and the Republican leadership) had the lobbyists posted the ideas they were bringing to the forum on the web so their membership base and the public at large could respond to them in advance. The meeting could then be a discussion of that reaction instead of spending time reciting bullet points.

With each new event we build out the data behind Sunlight Live. What's next after lobbyist data? We have some amazing ideas and hope to share them with you soon. Get an update on when our next episode will be by following us on Twitter!

Still here? Looking for who showed up to the meeting?

Look no further:

Marlene	Colucci	American Hotel & Lodging Association
John	McClelland	American Rental Association
Geoff	Burr	Associated Builders & Contractors
Steve	Sandherr	Associated General Contractors
Brian	Worth	Independent Electrical Contractors
Jon	Eisen	Int'l Foodservice Distributors Association
David	French	Int'l Franchise Association
Joe	Stanton	National Association of Home Builders
Jay	Timmons	Nat'l Association of Manufacturers
Dirk	Van Dongen	Nat'l Association of Wholesaler-Distributors
Jade	West	Nat'l Association of Wholesaler-Distributors
Dan	Danner	Nat'l Federation of Independent Business
Matt	Shay	Nat'l Retail Federation
Lisbeth	Lyons	Printing Industries of America
John	Emling	RILA
Bruce	Josten	US Chamber of Commerce
Mike	Aitken*	Society for Human Resource Management

_{*Mike Aitken is not listed as a lobbyist - he is a Director of Government Affairs.}

More than a dozen lawmakers inserted statements supporting a biotechnology provision added to the House health care bill that was crafted by lobbyists for the biotechnology firm Genentech. According to the New York Times, "lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress."

The Genentech lobbyists crafted two statements -- one for Democrats and one for Republicans -- for lawmakers to insert into the Congressional Record. The collection of lawmakers is very bipartisan with ten Republicans and eight Democrats issuing near identical statements. (One Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler, inserted the Republican statement.)

For the unstudied examiner these insertions look like amateur work; more a liability than a success for this multi-million dollar lobbying campaign. That may turn out to be true with the Times' story, but the statements made by these eighteen lawmakers can serve a powerful purpose for the biotechnology industry and Genentech in particular.

The words spoken or inserted into the official Congressional Record carry an import that those spoken in a television interview or campaign speech do not. These are official words placed in an archived government document, preserved for posterity. The use of the lobbyist written script by these eighteen lawmakers amounts to full-throated endorsement, not just of the biotechnology provision, but of the interpretation of what that provision means to one particular company, Genentech and their parent company Roche, Inc.

These statements will aid the industry when they lobby the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the implementation of the law and the attendent rules that relate to the biotechnology industry. They also help by putting these lawmakers on the line in official support of Genentech's view of the provision. In turn, these lawmakers will likely see a hefty rise in campaign contributions from Genentech and their friends. Perhaps Genentech or another biotechnology firm will decide to fund a research project in their district. Even better, the lawmaker could earmark a research grant that could only be filled by Genentech.

Insertions into the Congressional Record have caused controversy in the past. In 2000, Rep. Bob Ney placed two statements into the Congressional Record regarding the sale of SunCruz Casinos. It was a bit odd for an Ohio congressman to be getting involved in the middle of a casino boat sale in Florida. Ney placed one statement into the record bad-mouthing SunCruz owner Gus Boulis and another singing the praises of the potential buyer Adam Kidan. It turned out that Ney was on the take from Kidan and his partner Jack Abramoff and wound up pleading guilty to multiple charges in 2006.

In 2006, Sens. Lindsay Graham and Jon Kyl filed a brief in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld arguing that the Detainee Treatment Act, recently passed by Congress, removed Hamdan's case from federal court jurisdiction. In the brief, Graham and Kyl cite themselves having a colliquoy in the Congressional Record during debate on the Detainee Treatment Act. Graham and Kyl were trying to show that the "legislative history," the interpretation of legislation by lawmakers voting on it, meant to remove Hamdan's case from the federal docket. Only problem, the colliquoy never happened. It was inserted at the last minute by the two senators. It's hard to prove that something is legislative history when only two senators were aware of the stated congressional interpretation. The court asserted jurisdiction over the case in a 5-3 vote and sided with Hamdan against the Secretary of Defense.

FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler pulled together a list of congressmen using the Genentech lobbyist language. You can see them below:

Republicans:

Reps. Joe Wilson, Lynn Jenkins, Ted Poe, Darrell Issa, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Lee Terry, Jerry Moran, Mike Conaway, Kay Granger and Kevin McCarthy.

Democrats:

Reps. Bob Filner, Yvette Clarke, Bill Pascrell, Linda Sanchez, Phil Hare, Donld Payne, Robert Brady and Heath Shuler.

As the debate over health care reform legislation has heated up over the spring and summer months, the Senate Finance Committee has found itself at the center of the debate. Leading this debate has been the duo of Max Baucus, committee chair, and Chuck Grassley, committee ranking member. According to campaign finance records filed with the FEC, the duo raised $219,000 from health and insurance political action committees (PACs) from April to June of this year.

The majority of that money was raised by Sen. Grassley, who is up for reelection in 2010 and could face a Republican primary battle. During the height of the debate over health care, Grassley pulled in $165,100 from health and insurance PACs. At the same time, Grassley's language turned from the cautious but open words about reform in 2008 to the abrasive Twitter rants of 2009.

Earlier in the year, Grassley teamed with Baucus to pass an extension of benefits in the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Now, the ranking Republican, while involved in bipartisan talks over a health reform bill, has become a forceful voice in opposition to all plans that have already passed out of other congressional committees and has taken to Twitter to attack President Obama and his call to get a bill completed sooner rather than later. Max Baucus, chair of the Finance Committee, to the chagrin of congressional Democrats has heeded Grassley's plea to slow down the health reform process. The Finance Committee is currently the only congressional committee still debating a bill. This is after holding ten hearings on health care reform in 2008 in preparation for the 2009 debate and holding eight hearings this year. Baucus, despite a pledge to not take health care PAC money after June 1 was still able to raise $55,000 from health care PACs in April and May alone. This is without being up for reelection until 2014.

The majority of the money to the two senators comes from health professionals and pharmaceutical companies. The biggest contributors include Aetna, American Academy of Family Physicians, National Health Underwriters and Healthsouth Corporation.

As the committee continues to debate into the fall, we'll have to wait and see if the PAC contribution continue to pour in. The next reporting date is October 15. By then, a compromise may have already been crafted or the bipartisan talks could have fallen apart.

Sen. Grassley's 2nd Quarter Contribution Total by Date (Dollars Over Time):

To see more on health care sector influence in the Senate Finance Committee, see our coverage here.

Sen. Grassley's 2nd Quarter Contributions:

Abbott Laboratories	$1,000.00	06/05/09
AETNA	$1,000.00	06/26/09
AFLAC	$5,000.00	04/13/09
Amedisys	$5,000.00	05/19/09
Amedisys	$5,000.00	06/19/09
American Academy of Dermatology Assn	$5,000.00	05/26/09
American Academy of Family Physicians	$2,500.00	06/05/09
American Academy of Neurology	$1,000.00	05/19/09
American Academy Physician Assistant	$1,000.00	06/29/09
American Assn for HomeCare	$2,500.00	04/15/09
American Assn of Nurse	$1,000.00	05/04/09
American Assn of Nurse	$1,500.00	06/08/09
American Assn of Orthodontists	$5,000.00	06/30/09
American Chiropractic Association	$1,000.00	06/11/09
American Clinical Laboratory Assoc	$2,000.00	06/23/09
American College of Cardiology	$2,000.00	06/28/09
American College of Physicians Services	$2,500.00	05/18/09
American College of Radiology	$2,500.00	05/22/09
American College of Surgeons	$4,000.00	06/08/09
American Diabetic Association	$2,000.00	05/04/09
American Distetic Assn	$1,000.00	06/01/09
American Distetic Assn	$500.00	06/01/09
American Health Care Assoc	$1,000.00	06/26/09
American Medical Association	$2,000.00	05/26/09
American Medical Group Assoc	$1,500.00	06/10/09
American Nurses Association	$1,000.00	06/29/09
American Occupational Therapy Assn	$2,000.00	05/26/09
American Optometric Association	$1,000.00	06/06/09
American Pharmacists Association	$2,000.00	06/23/09
American Physical Therapy	$1,000.00	04/22/09
American Physical Therapy	$1,000.00	05/22/09
American Society for Radiation Oncology	$1,500.00	05/19/09
American Society of Anesthesiologists	$2,000.00	05/18/09
Assn for the Advancement of Psychology	$1,000.00	05/18/09
Association for Advanced Life	$1,000.00	04/06/09
Association for Advanced Life	$4,000.00	05/14/09
Baxter Healthcare Corporation	$2,000.00	06/29/09
Bayer Corporation	$1,000.00	06/22/09
Biotechnology Industry Organization	$1,000.00	05/04/09
Boehringer Ingelheim Corp	$1,000.00	06/01/09
Bristol-Myers Squibb	$2,000.00	06/29/09
College of American Pathologists	$1,500.00	06/29/09
College of American Pathologists	$3,000.00	06/29/09
Coventry Health Care Inc	$1,000.00	06/19/09
CVS/Caremark Corporation	$1,500.00	05/07/09
CVS/Caremark Corporation	$2,500.00	06/29/09
DaVita, Inc.	$1,500.00	05/11/09
Delta Dental Plans	$2,500.00	06/29/09
Generic Pharmaceutical Association	$2,500.00	06/19/09
Gentiva Health Services	$2,000.00	06/18/09
Gentiva Health Services	$2,000.00	05/06/09
Health Industry Manufacturers Assoc	$2,700.00	06/29/09
Healthcare Distribution Management	$2,000.00	06/22/09
Healthsouth Corp	$2,000.00	05/01/09
Homecare and Hospice	$2,000.00	05/01/09
Invacare Corp	$2,000.00	04/15/09
Kindred Healthcare Inc	$2,000.00	04/27/09
Kindred Healthcare Inc	$3,000.00	04/27/09
Laboratory Corporation of America	$2,500.00	06/19/09
Louisiana Health Care Group	$1,000.00	05/25/09
MedAssets PAC	$2,400.00	05/01/09
National Assn for Home Care	$1,000.00	06/22/09
National Assn of Health Underwriters	$2,500.00	05/26/09
National Assn of Health Underwriters	$1,000.00	05/26/09
National Assn of Health Underwriters	$1,500.00	05/26/09
National Assn of Health Underwriters	$4,000.00	06/29/09
National Association of Psychiatric Health	$2,000.00	05/01/09
National Community Pharmacists Assn	$1,000.00	06/29/09
National Emergency Medicine	$2,500.00	05/26/09
New England Medical Equipment	$500.00	04/15/09
Proctor & Gamble	$1,000.00	06/30/09
Proctor & Gamble	$1,000.00	05/26/09
Psychiatric Solutions, Inc	$1,500.00	05/01/09
Sanofi-Aventis	$1,000.00	04/08/09
Society for Vascular Surgery	$1,000.00	06/26/09
Society of Thomde (sic) Surgeons	$2,000.00	06/02/09
Tenet Healthcare Corp	$1,500.00	06/08/09
The American Association of Neurological Surgeons	$2,500.00	06/30/09
Unitedhealth Group	$1,500.00	05/01/09
Universal Health Services	$1,500.00	05/01/09
Us Oncology Inc	$4,000.00	04/27/09
Wellpoint	$2,500.00	05/04/09
Weyerhauser Company	$2,500.00	05/16/09

The House Republican group tasked with working on health care reform is packed with members who have received substantial campaign contributions from the health care sector. Seven members of the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group are in the top ten Republican recipients of health sector campaign cash since 1989. The Group seats the top four Republican recipients of health sector campaign contributions.

The Health Care Solutions Group is headed by Rep. Roy Blunt, a top recipient of health care contributions, who recently claimed that House Republicans do not need to present an alternative bill to the House Democrats bill. Blunt has received $1.6 million from the health sector since he took office in 2007. The congressman's top donors over the course of his career have been Health Professionals, having given $828,250 to his campaigns.

The House Republican caucus has come under pressure to release a competing bill to the Democrats' proposal. Minority Leader John Boehner, in a departure from Blunt's comments, stated that the Republicans would release a proposal of their own. The House Republicans are relying on the Health Solutions Group to produce a Republican reform plan. The public may want to know more about how the industry influence, seen through exceedingly high health sector campaign contributions, may effect such a proposal. The top Republican recipients of health sector cash received spots on the prominent health care group. Rep. Tom Price, only in office since 2005, is the top recipient of contributions from the health care sector, having pulled in $2.1 million over the course of three election campaigns. The top four Republican recipients, who happen to sit on the Health Care Solutions Group, include Rep. Price, Rep. Joe Barton ($2.1 million), Rep. Phil Gingrey ($1.7 million) and Rep. Blunt. Other top health recipients sitting on the Group are Reps. Nathan Deal ($1.3 million), Dave Camp ($1.2 million) and Michael Burgess ($1.2 million).

Put together, the health sector contributions to the 21 member group comprise fully one-quarter of all health sector campaign contributions to the 178 sitting Republican House members. In combined contributions, the group has received $18.6 million from the health sector. That's a quarter of the $73.1 million that all 178 House GOP members have raised since 1989.

All data comes thanks to OpenSecrets.org.

Health Sector Campaign Contributions to the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group

Name	Contributions (Career)
Price, Tom	$2,126,027.00
Barton, Joe	$2,113,271.00
Gingrey, Phil	$1,783,543.00
Blunt, Roy	$1,653,498.00
Deal, Nathan	$1,334,455.00
Camp, Dave	$1,226,559.00
Burgess, Mike	$1,199,423.00
Boustany, Charles	$1,112,486.00
Shadegg, John	$906,425.00
Johnson, Sam	$846,944.00
Murphy, Tim	$780,322.00
Ryan, Paul	$667,359.00
Herger, Wally	$516,913.00
Graves, Sam	$408,899.00
Brown-Waite, Ginny	$401,755.00
McKeon, Buck	$326,698.00
Kline, John	$297,850.00
Cassidy, Bill	$277,220.00
McMorris Rodgers, Cathy	$259,734.00
Biggert, Judy	$240,650.00
Jenkins, Lynn	$84,600.00
Wittman, Robert	$51,950.00