CNN has been putting their summer interns to good use. This week, the interns' assignment was to contact all 100 U.S. Senators and ask for a list of their earmark requests. It should come as no surprise that all those politicians promising a more open government are full of sh hot air.

Only six senators gave us their requests and five said they made no earmark requests. Nineteen said they would not give us their requests and 70 did not return calls.

CNN has a list of how the senators responded here. [PDF format]

Broken down by party:
7 Republicans explicitly refused to release their requests.
12 Democrats explicitly refused to release their requests.
4 Republicans complied.
2 Democrats complied.
2 Democrats and 2 Republicans had no earmark requests.

You can do the math, but the remaining senators didn't even bother to respond.

This follows on last week's similar request made to House members.

Last week, of 435 members of the House of Representatives, 312 did not respond to our requests. Of the remainder, 47 gave us their requests, 68 said they would not and six said they had not made earmark requests.

Control of the Congress changed hands this year -- but arrogant attitude remains the same.

On a related note: Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho is looking for a new press secretary -- or he should be after this bit of idiocy.

And then there was the press secretary of Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho. She said the senator couldn't release his list because it would violate a 1970s federal privacy law.

Privacy law? Whose privacy? Crapo's? That's got to be the stupidest statement I've heard all week -- and the Democrats had a debate the other night!