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Seventy-three percent of veterans agreed with former Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, that the national debt (now hinged at $17.5 trillion, $7 trillion more than when Obama took office in January 2009) is “the greatest threat to our national security.”
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The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that while for the most part the reward program for IRS workers complied with federal regulations, employees who had themselves failed to pay their federal taxes and had discipline problems were also rewarded.
“While not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration,” Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George said.
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By Jamie Weinstein.
Though President Obama declared last week that the debate on Obamacare is over, legendary conservative commentator George Will says otherwise.
The Daily Caller recently conducted an extensive interview with the Washington Post columnist on politics, culture and his new book, “A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred,” which TheDC will be featuring over the next several weeks.
“Of course [Obamacare] can be repealed,” Will explained in this segment of the interview. “Or it can be repealed piecemeal…
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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner
By Associated Press.
People who have accounts on the enrollment website for President Obama’s signature health care law are being told to change their passwords following an administration-wide review of the government’s vulnerability to the confounding Heartbleed Internet security flaw.
Senior administration officials said there is no indication that the healthcare.gov site has been compromised and the action is being taken out of an abundance of caution. The government’s Heartbleed review is ongoing, the officials said, and users of other websites may also be told to change their passwords in the coming days, including those with accounts on the popular WhiteHouse.gov petitions page.
The Heartbleed programming flaw has caused major security concerns across the Internet and affected a widely used encryption technology that was designed to protect online accounts. Major Internet services have been working to insulate themselves against the problem and are also recommending that users change their website passwords.
Officials said the administration was prioritizing its analysis of websites with heavy traffic and the most sensitive user information. A message that will be posted on the health care website starting Saturday reads: “While there’s no indication that any personal information has ever been at risk, we have taken steps to address Heartbleed issues and reset consumers’ passwords out of an abundance of caution.”
The health care website became a prime target for critics of the Obamacare law last fall when the opening of the insurance enrollment period revealed widespread flaws in the online system. Critics have also raised concerns about potential security vulnerabilities on a site where users input large amounts of personal data.
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Speaking at what is known as the “Davos in the Desert” event in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Monday evening, Bush said the United States needed “robust guest worker programs” and an expansion of H1-B visas for the high-tech industry,” even though the notion that there is a shortage of American high-tech workers has been called a myth. He also called for a “tough but fair path to legalized status” for all of the country’s illegal immigrants and an end to immigration quotas for countries.
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The brands – and apparently even some of their familiar trademark symbols – appeared in tests questions for students ranging from third to eighth grades, reports The Post-Standard of Syracuse.
Over one million students were required to take the tests.
Parents, teachers and school administrators have speculated that the kid-friendly brand names are a new form of product placement.
Education materials behemoth Pearson, which has a $32 million five-year contract to develop New York’s Common Core-related tests, has barred teachers and school officials from disclosing the contents of the tests.
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Photo Credit: REUTERS
Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Tuesday that the exercises will last about a month, and initially involve about 600 troops.
An Army company of about 150 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy, will start the exercises Wednesday in Poland. Additional Army companies will head to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and are expected to arrive by Monday for similar land-based exercises in those countries.
Under the current plan, U.S. troops would rotate in and out of the four countries for additional exercises on a recurring basis.
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Debbie Rohr lives with her husband and twin teenage sons in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas.
The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rosebushes. It’s a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life.
She just never imagined that it would be her childhood home, a return to a bedroom where she once hung posters of Olivia Newton-John and curled up with her beloved Mrs. Beasley doll.
Driven by economic necessity — Rohr has been chronically unemployed and her husband lost his job last year — she moved her family back home with her 77-year-old mother.
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Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration’s conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.
A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline…
Al Gore, call your office.
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Under Obama’s proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP.
America has never been subjected to a ten-year stretch of taxation at that level.
In the twelve fiscal years preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1930 through 1941), federal taxation averaged 5.3 percent of GDP.
In the five fiscal years encompassing U.S. involvement in World War II (1942 through 1946), federal taxation averaged 16.1 percent of GDP.
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Photo Credit: AP / Evan Vucci
The change, if adopted following an ongoing review ordered by President Barack Obama, could shield tens of thousands of immigrants now removed each year solely because they committed repeat immigration violations, such as re-entering the country illegally after having been deported, failing to comply with a deportation order or missing an immigration court date.
However, it would fall short of the sweeping changes sought by activists. They want Obama to expand a two-year-old program that grants work permits to certain immigrants brought here illegally as children to include other groups, such as the parents of any children born in the U.S.
John Sandweg, who served until February as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he had promoted the policy change for immigrants without serious criminal records before his departure and that it was being weighed by Johnson. An immigration advocate who’s discussed the review with the administration also confirmed the change was under consideration. The advocate spoke on condition of anonymity because the proceedings are confidential.
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Photo Credit: Alex Leary / The Tampa Bay Times / AP
By Linda Feldmann.
President Obama has long insisted he does not have the power to waive deportations of illegal immigrants on his own.
But under pressure from political allies, Mr. Obama may be headed for some changes of immigration policy via the Department of Homeland Security. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson is considering limiting deportations of undocumented immigrants who do not have serious criminal records, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Obama set the stage for the reported recommendations last month, when he ordered Secretary Johnson to review how current immigration law is implemented, with an eye toward conducting enforcement “more humanely,” as the White House put it.
The change of policy, if adopted, “could shield tens of thousands of immigrants now removed each year solely because they committed repeat immigration violations, such as reentering the country illegally after having been deported, failing to comply with a deportation order, or missing an immigration court date,” the AP reported.
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