Lawmakers investigating porn-surfing at the National Science Foundation (NSF) say the agency hasn’t done enough to discipline the errant employees, and that their on-the-job activities "may be fostering an intimidating and offensive work environment."

Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) sent a letter detailing their concerns Monday to NSF Director Arden Bement and Steven Beering, chairman of the agency's science board. Mikulski heads up and Grassley is a ranking member of Senate committees that oversee the $6 billion NSF, whose inspector general (IG) Thomas Cross first revealed the pornographic exploits in a report last fall.

You just couldn’t get enough. Well, good news for all you Green Porno fans: the Isabella Rossellini insect mating vehicle is back.

Yes, the actress and model returns today with the second season of the program, which features Rossellini, 56, acting out (in costume and with evocative sound effects) how critters reproduce. Six new episodes will air on SundanceChannel.com.

Rossellini has already explained how bees, dragonflies, fireflies, spiders, earthworms, snails, flies and (fittingly for sex stereotypes of women as predators of men) the praying mantis do the deed. (Rossellini probably wouldn’t have much to act out in the world of termites, some of which reproduce asexually, as we noted last week.) She told Scientific American then that while her costumes sometimes were constricting, she could break out of them while staying in character. "Once I humped them," she said, "they came apart." 

A bipartisan group of senators Thursday introduced a measure that would put a hold on $3 million in operating funds for the National Science Foundation (NSF) after an internal probe revealed that employees there accessed smut on government computers.

The measure, sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa), Barbara Mikulski (D–Md.) and Richard Shelby (R–Ala.), was offered as an amendment to the stimulus package now being debated in the Senate. It calls for the funds to be frozen until the NSF takes certain steps to prevent future Internet porn surfing, including hiring an independent counsel to provide oversight and reporting to Congress on progress made stemming access.

The move comes after the agency in its semiannual report released in September said that its inspector general, Thomas Cross, had uncovered seven cases in which NSF staffers were spending time on taxpayers' dime trolling the Net for porn.

"The kind of behavior outlined in the inspector general's report is outrageous, repugnant and illegal," Mikulski said in a statement. "It won't be tolerated. The NSF must get its act together and take the steps we've outlined to restore the kind of accountability and decency the public deserves from its federal agencies."

National Science Foundation (NSF) employees wasted scads of time and tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars perusing online porn on the clock—and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley (R–Iowa) wants to know how such lapses could occur at a $6-billion federal agency.

The accounts of employees' surfing for smut are documented in the NSF’s semiannual report (pdf), which was published in September and notes seven cases of pornographic exploits among the foundation's 1,500 employees uncovered by Thomas Cross, the foundation’s inspector general (IG).

“The semiannual report raises serious questions about how the National Science Foundation manages its resources," Grassley said in a statement today. "Congress ought to demand a full accounting before it gives the agency another $3 billion in the stimulus bill" set to be debated by the Senate next week. (The House passed an $819 billion version of the package yesterday.)