The foggy 13-year hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Caren Bohn, Mark Hoseball, Tabassum Zakaria, and Missy Ryan from Reuters report on the grueling, and sometimes questionable, plan to kill Osama bin Laden. The 13-year quest to find and eliminate bin Laden, from the November 1998 day he was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the East Africa embassy bombings, was filled with missteps, course adjustments and radical new departures for U.S. security policy. It ultimately led to a fortified compound in a little known Pakistani city named after a long-dead British major.

The Press of Atlantic City reports that the former governor of New Jersey pressured the CRDA to make a $4 million loan to another state agency. Corzine's administration pressed the agency responsible for reinvesting casino dollars to make the loan, former Executive Director Tom Carver said. The loan helped a Democratic Party contributor and Corzine adviser to buy an affordable housing complex in Elizabeth, Union County. After the Department of Community Affairs couldn't repay the loan, the CRDA forgave nearly all of the debt.

John Lauerman and Jonathan D. Salant of Bloomberg News found that for-profit colleges, faced with new federal restrictions, more than doubled their lobbying spending, bringing in six former members of Congress to help make their case on Capitol Hill. Ten education companies and their trade association spent $3.8 million on lobbying in the first nine months of 2010, up from $1.5 million in the comparable period last year, according to reports filed with Congress.

California Watch launched Politics Verbatim, a site that "collects and categorizes the promises, proposals, arguments and attacks" made by Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman in their race for governor of California.  The site was launched with 300 documents and 1,000 excerpts that will be added to daily as the race progresses allowing voters to hold the candidates accountable in during the campaign.

The Orange County Register’s Brian Joseph exposes how overlapping laws allow California state lawmakers to leverage their tax-free travel allowance to buy homes, secure tax deductions and sometimes pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. “This legal patchwork has created a benefit legislators in other states rarely see and blurred the lines between allowance and income.” The Register documents lawmakers who declared homes in Sacramento as their principal residence and then collected allowance to cover their living expenses at the State Capitol as if they were away from home.

MSNBC.com investigative reporter Bill Dedman revealed the influence of Todd Palin, the husband of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, during Palin's time as governor. MSNBC.com staff combed through nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails to show Todd Palin involved in a judicial appointment, monitoring contract negotiations with a public employee union and passing  "financial information marked marked 'confidential' from his oil company employer to a state attorney."  Working with Crivella West, MSNBC  published a searchable database of all the e-mails and detailed the open records request process with the state of Alaska that took more than two years.  In August 2008, the state of Alaska claimed it would cost as high as $15 million for state technicians to find the e-mails.

Andy Curliss of The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) reported that former North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley got at least $50,000 in free golf dues from an expensive club near Raleigh and did not report the gift on the required disclosure forms. The News & Observer's continued coverage of Gov. Easley has led to federal and state investigations the former governor.

A USA Today analysis shows lobbyists paid $35.8 million in 2008 to honor 534 current and former lawmakers, almost 250 other federal officials and more than 100 groups, many of which count lawmakers among their members. "Despite a ban on gifts to lawmakers and limits on campaign contributions, lobbyists and groups that employ them can spend unlimited money to honor members of Congress or donate to non-profits connected to them or their relatives," Fredreka Schouten and Paul Overberg report. The top honoree: Sen. Edward Kennedy, with $5 million. The analysis examined more than 3,600 payments reported for 2008, the first year that lobbyists were required to disclose the contributions, known as honorary expenses.

President Barack Obama's former nominee to become commerce secretary, Sen. Judd Gregg, steered taxpayer money to his home state's redevelopment of a former Air Force base even as he and his brother engaged in real estate deals there, an Associated Press investigation found. Gregg has collected at least $240,017 to $651,801 from his investments there, Senate records show, while helping arrange at least $66 million in federal aid for the former base.

A report by NPR's Robert Benincasa shows that California's teachers' union was giving money to oppose Proposition 8 while members of the union were making donations to support the ban on gay marriage. "Teachers, aides and counselors in California public school systems gave about $2 to support the marriage ban for every $1 they gave to oppose it. The educators gave some $450,000 in individual contributions to advocates supporting the ban and about $210,000 to those opposing it, according to the NPR analysis." The California secretary of state recently released the campaign contribution data for Proposition 8.