The Hotrodders.com website has launched a satirical spinoff, SpankMyMarketer.com, aimed at exposing "illegal stealth marketing" on behalf of companies including General Motors, Holley, Comp Cams and Dynomax, which they say has been posted on theirs and other auto-related websites.

A new report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) suggests that U.S. universities may be jeopardizing their academic integrity by giving oil, gas, and other polluting industries influence over the research that companies fund on campus.

Although U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney "has cast himself as a Washington outsider and blasted his opponents' ties to lobbyists," in fact he "has more than a dozen federally registered lobbyists raising money for him and several others advising his campaign," reports Jessica Van Sack. Lobbyists involved in his campaign, according to a report compiled by Public Citizen, include former New York Rep.