HHS Official Jumps Ship in Scathing Letter of Resignation: ‘Worst Job I’ve Ever Had’

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Photo Credit; ORIA Department of Health and Human Services official resigned from his post in a scathing letter that ripped the agency for profound dysfunction.

David Wright headed the Office of Research Integrity for two years and wrote in his letter dated Feb. 25 that his time with the agency left him “offended as an American taxpayer.”

The job was apparently not only unsatisfying, it was downright offensive, Wright said in the letter, which was first obtained by ScienceInsider.

It was “the very worst job I have ever had,” he said.

The Office of Research Integrity is responsible for reviewing possible misconduct in agency research projects.

Read more from this story HERE.

Man Known as Kissing Sailor in WWII-Era Picture, Dies

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Photo Credit: APA man who became known for claiming he was the sailor kissing a woman in Times Square in a famous World War II-era photo taken by a Life magazine photographer has died. Glenn McDuffie was 86.

McDuffie died March 9 in a nursing home in Dallas, his daughter, Glenda Bell, told The Associated Press.

A mail carrier and semi-professional baseball player after he returned from World War II, McDuffie’s life became more exciting about six years ago when Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson was able to identify him as the young man leaning over the woman in his arms to kiss her.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cop Arrives at Traffic Accident, Shoots Air Force Airman, Chief Calls it ‘Appropriate Force’

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Photo Credit: WTVM screenshotAn Alabama police chief has determined that one of his officers used “appropriate force,” when the cop arrived at the scene of a traffic accident and immediately shot an apparently unarmed Air Force airman.

The airman, 20-year-old Michael Davidson, was shot in the chest and nearly bled out before receiving medical aid, according to the Raw Story.

Davidson was driving to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He may have been driving erratically, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.

Read more from this story HERE.

Zuckerberg Phones Obama to Blast Him about NSA

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Photo Credit: UPIFacebook Inc. chief executive Mark Zuckerberg blasted the US government’s electronic surveillance practices on Thursday, saying he’d personally called President Barack Obama to voice his displeasure.

“When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government,” Zuckerberg said in a post on his personal Facebook page.

“I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform,” the 29-year-old Zuckerberg continued.

The phone call and Zuckerberg’s 300-word missive on Thursday come amid a series of revelations about controversial government surveillance practices that were leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

“The president spoke last night with Mark Zuckerberg about recent reports in the press about alleged activities by the US intelligence community,” a White House official said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Flash Point: Russian Forces Massing Along Ukrainian Border

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By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ALISON SMALE. With a referendum on secession looming in Crimea, Russia massed troops and armored vehicles in at least three regions along Ukraine’s eastern border on Thursday, alarming the interim Ukraine government about a possible invasion and significantly escalating tensions in the crisis between the Kremlin and the West.

The announcement of the troop buildup by Russia’s Defense Ministry was met with an unusually sharp rebuke from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who warned that the Russian government must abandon what she called the politics of the 19th and 20th centuries or face diplomatic and economic retaliation from a united Europe.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, it will not only be a catastrophe for Ukraine,” she said in a speech to the German Parliament. “We, also as neighbors of Russia, would not only see it as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union’s relationship with Russia. No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Kerry Gives Russia Monday Deadline to Reverse Course in Ukraine or Face “Very Serious” Consequences

By Susan Crabtree. Secretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.

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Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.

U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.

The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department’s budget.

“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue … there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Global Warming Activists Sign Petition to Lower Sun’s Temperature

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Several hundred global warming activists converged on Washington, D.C. earlier this month, protesting the Keystone Pipeline and urging radical solutions to limit carbon emissions.

Of course, those radical solutions did not include limiting their own personal carbon emissions. At least one honest interviewee, who flew from Colorado to the nation’s capital, admitted that he would not give up air travel, no matter how polluting.

But some attendees were more committed to the cause, even signing petitions to lower the sun’s temperature. Watch it all here:

US Achilles’ Heel: Entire Power Grid could be Taken Out with Small, Targeted Attack

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Attackers could bring down the entire power grid of the United States in just a few moves, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report, citing an unreleased federal study, says a blackout could last more than a year.

The United States is divided into three major power networks: Texas, the western half of the U.S. and the eastern half.

Coordinated attacks in those three grids, pictured above, would knock out power to nine of the nation’s 55,000 electric substations. That would be enough to achieve a nationwide blackout.

The substations take in electricity from power plants and send it out to homes and businesses. The map below shows the flow of power out of those plants.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Pushing Back Against Imperial Presidency With “Enforce the Law Act”

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The House of Representatives passed the “Enforce the Law Act” Wednesday, a bill designed to push back against the numerous unilateral moves the Obama administration has used to circumvent the law.

Five Democrats joined Republicans in passing the bill by a 233 to 181 vote.

H.R. 4138, sponsored by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), would authorize the House or Senate to sue the executive branch for not enforcing laws and provide an expedited process through federal district courts. The bill is one of several the House GOP is pushing to combat the “imperial presidency.”

Republicans say the legislation is necessary in light of the numerous administrative actions taken by President Barack Obama to change and selectively enforce laws, including immigration, marriage, welfare rules, and his signature legislative achievement, Obamacare.

The administration has unilaterally altered Obamacare at least 20 times. Most recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that millions have been exempted from the individual mandate due to a rule change.

Read more about this push back against the imperial presidency HERE.

Federal Government’s ADMITTED Metadata Gathering Program Reveals EVERYTHING about Your Life (+video)

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New research published by Stanford Univeristy Wednesday reveal phone and Internet metadata collected by the NSA can expose far more information about an individual than the agency admits, including, “medical conditions, financial and legal connections, and even whether they own a gun.”

Two of the school’s computer science graduate students were able to uncover the sensitive personal details of individuals from phone data details, like the numbers of callers and recipients, the location of callers, phone serial numbers and the length of conversations — all of which are data the signals intelligence agency collects in bulk both domestically and internationally.

Of the 33,688 unique numbers called by the study’s 546 study volunteers, students were able to positively identify a specific individual in 18 percent of those calls. They were also able to discern 57 percent made at least one medical call and 40 percent made a financial services call.

Computer scientists Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler, the doctoral students that authored the study, say metadata are “extremely sensitive and revealing,” and “can yield a wealth of detail about family, political, professional, religious and sexual associations.”

“It would be no technical challenge to scale these identifications to a larger population,” Mayer told Stanford News, referencing similar metadata analysis the NSA is almost certainly already engaged in.

Read more about the NSA’s metadata gathering program HERE.

Obama’s Military Cuts Could Cost Army Half of its Combat Brigades, Destroying Readiness

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Photo Credit: opposingviews.comThe Army could need to cut brigade combat teams — the Army’s self-sustainable deploying units — nearly in half to accommodate the Pentagon’s plans to slice the Army’s size to below 450,000 soldiers after 2017.

Gen. John Campbell, the Army’s vice chief of staff and second-highest ranking member, in an exclusive interview with The Hill said the service was already planning to reduce its combat brigades, basic Army units of 5,000 soldiers that can be deployed and sustain themselves overseas.

The brigades were scheduled to reduce from 45 in 2013 to 32 by 2015, but now the number will shrink further. “That 32 is tied to 490,000, not 450,000. … At 450,000 or 420,000 we can’t keep the same amount,” Campbell said…

Cutting active-duty brigades by that much could dramatically alter U.S. capabilities overseas…

It would leave the Pentagon with fewer brigades to deploy around the world for military and humanitarian work. It would also reduce opportunities for training, and could limit U.S. support for some international missions.

Read more about Obama’s military cuts HERE.