The following is a pretty remarkable lie, even for Obama.
Here he is, commenting on a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner:
“My tradition is not to remark on cases where there still may be an investigation.”
Yep, that’s his tradition, alright…
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Photo Credit: Satanic Temple
It’s for Festivus, a non-commercial festival “for the rest of us,” is close to coming back as a 6-foot stack of empty beer cans.
The Florida Department of Management Services this week approved the proposed holiday display from the Satanic Temple, which a year ago was rejected because the agency said its proposal was “grossly offensive.”
The temple’s entry was one of five displays that got approval to be put up in the first-floor rotunda of the Capitol for the end-of-year holiday period.
Two additional requested displays, including one to mark the sitcom-created Festivus holiday, are pending final approval.
The state agency offered no explanation with its approval of the displays.
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Photo Credit: AFP
“I’m going to use my assets and resources in the new year to work with this Congress… to have a well-understood agreement about what the law should be, and how we as communities, and farm communities, and tech communities, create circumstances where we can have people be in this country and work, and where not one person is quote ‘thrown out’ or ‘deported,’” said Rep. Pete Sessions, the chairman of the powerful House rules committee, told a group of Democratic legislators.
The committee has the power to kill or boost members’ bills because it decides how each bill will be considered in floor votes.’
Sessions’ promise of de-facto amnesty to Democrats was welcomed by Chicago Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who frequently describes unauthorized migrants as members of his community.
“My heart was filled with a lot of joy when you said that people who are working here, who don’t present a danger, basically should be set aside, that those aren’t the people we should be going after,” said Gutierrrez, four hours and 16 minutes into the hearing.
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Photo Credit: iStock Photo
Kenneth “Wayne” McLeod ran a company called Federal Employees Benefit Group, and the DEA hired him to give at least 130 “seminars” for members of its workforce. He marketed an investment opportunity for 8 to 10 percent returns in tax-free income.
“DEA officials permitted McLeod to promote himself and his businesses in DEA facilities, and using DEA official channels,” according to the Department of Justice inspector general.
At least some DEA agents at the seminars questioned McLeod’s financial advice and stopped using him for a time, but the seminars soon returned after McLeod donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DEA Survivors Benefit Fund. At one DEA conference, he presented an over-sized $20,000 check to the charity.
“We believe that this enhanced McLeod’s ability to gain and maintain access to the DEA,” investigators wrote.
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Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
By voice vote late Thursday, the Senate gave final congressional approval to a measure that would shut a loophole that allowed suspected Nazis to be paid millions of dollars in benefits, clearing it for the White House. Under the bill, benefits would be terminated for Nazi suspects who have lost their American citizenship, a step called denaturalization. U.S. law currently requires a higher threshold — a final order of deportation — before Social Security benefits can be stopped.
The legislation was introduced after an Associated Press investigation published in October revealed that Social Security benefits have been paid to dozens of former Nazis after they were forced out of the United States.
The House unanimously approved the bill on Tuesday on a 420-0 vote.
The White House and the Social Security Administration signaled support for denying benefits to former Nazis following the AP’s report. The Justice Department said it was open to considering proposals that would terminate the Social Security payments.
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The internet giveth, and the internet taketh away. Today the internet was in full-blown “giveth” mode, when the PAC “Stand With Hillary” released this absolutely glorious gem of a country song begging her to run for president in 2016.
You literally can’t make this stuff up.
My favorite kind of parody is when extreme earnestness and mockery are indistinguishable. This: https://t.co/vycBxq2faA
— Michael Munger (@mungowitz) December 4, 2014
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Photo Credit: MC1 Rex Nelson / Navy
The women were recorded aboard the ballistic missile submarine Wyoming, Gold crew, which is home ported in Kings Bay, Georgia. Navy officials are investigating an unidentified 24-year-old male who is accused of making and distributing the videos, according to a Nov. 14 incident report circulated among the service’s most senior leaders. The sailor was identified only by his rank: second class petty officer.
The videos are believed to show at least three female officers while showering or undressed that were recorded over more than a year, according to a source who has spoken to one of the alleged victims.
It amounts to a huge scandal for a community that has prided itself on an otherwise smooth integration effort, begun four years ago when women first entered submarine training. And it comes as the Navy moves towards its next milestones, integrating Virginia-class attack subs and then the enlisted submarine ranks.
A ballistic missile sub typically has 15 officers and 140 enlisted on board, with unisex heads in “officer country.” When a woman is using the shower, for example, she puts up a sign to indicate the head is in use by a female officer and men must wait to enter until it’s unoccupied.
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Reports of sexual assaults in the military up by 8 percent
By Charles Hoskinson.
The number of reported sexual assaults in the military rose 8 percent in the past year, which the Pentagon said is a sign of significant progress but is likely to increase pressure for changes in how the cases are handled.
There were 5,983 cases reported in fiscal 2014, up from 5,518 in the previous year, according to a study released Thursday.
Pentagon officials attributed the increase to greater efforts to encourage victims to come forward, prevent retaliation and make prosecutions more victim-friendly.
“In this particular crime, an increase in reporting is a good thing,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, head of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault and Prevention Response Office.
“The Department of Defense has been taking aggressive action over the past year and a half to stop sexual assault,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said. “We believe that our efforts to prevent sexual assault are beginning to have an impact.”
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$25,000 for a Christmas party.
$11,000 for premium coffee services.
Millions more for questionable construction costs.
All this was billed to taxpayers by an obscure federally funded science group, according to a scathing new inspector general report.
The audit, conducted by the National Science Foundation inspector general and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, detailed spending by the Colorado-based National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The nonprofit, designed to operate a network of ecological observatories across the continent, is solely funded by the National Science Foundation.
The report found that spending at the group has gotten out of control.
“Given the present lack of controls, there is virtually no accountability over the contingency funds … NSF does not have sufficient safeguards over the significant and unsupported contingency costs included in NEON’s award budget,” the report said.
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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner
By Paul Bedard.
Less than a week after ’fessing up that it found some 2,500 documents potentially showing that the IRS shared taxpayer returns with the White House, the Obama administration has reversed course and won’t release the trove to a group suing for access.
In an abrupt decision, the Treasury inspector general’s office said that the documents are covered by privacy and disclosure laws and can’t be provided to Cause of Action, despite a promise last week to hand over some 2,500.
The decision coincides with publication by the Washington Examiner this week of “Watchdogs, lapdogs and attack dogs,” a four-part series examining the successes and failures of the inspectors-general system, including multiple instances in which IGs provided cover for agency managers seeking to avoid more rigorous evaluations.
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Photo Credit: Daily Caller
By Patrick Howley.
The Obama administration said that it is withholding all of the thousands of pages of documents related to the White House’s coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the IRS conservative targeting scandal.
Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff, took the documents that were set to be released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Lew cannot release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information because that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.
The Daily Caller reported that the Treasury Department’s inspector general found nearly 2,500 pages of documents that chronicle investigations into the confidential taxpayer information that the White House exchanged with the IRS.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Daily Caller
Harkin, a liberal senator who’s in favor of a single-payer health-care system, told The Hill Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act turned out too complicated and doesn’t actually make health care more affordable for most people. As chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Harkin was instrumental in constructing Obamacare and getting the bill passed, but is retiring this year.
“We had the power to do it in a way that would have simplified healthcare, made it more efficient and made it less costly and we didn’t do it,” Harkin told The Hill. “So I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all.”
Harkin’s the second high-profile Democrat to pull his support from the law. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said in November that Congress should not have passed Obamacare because the law does not help the middle class.
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