DOJ Spends Millions On ‘Nonmission’ Luxury Travel For Attorney Generals, FBI Director

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Government Accountability Office report reveals that the Justice Department has spent $11.4 million to fly the Attorney General and FBI director on FBI luxury jets for travel unrelated to the agency’s mission.

Iowa Republican and ranking judiciary committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley — who requested GAO look into Justice Department aircraft being used to for “nonmission” reasons — released the report Thursday.

“These luxury jets were supposedly needed for counterterrorism, but it turns out that they were used almost two-thirds of the time for jet-setting executive travel instead,” Grassley said. “Nobody disputes that the Attorney General and the FBI Director should have access to the secure communications, but, for instance, there’s no reason they can’t take a less expensive mode of transportation, or cut their personal travel.”

The GAO looked at nonmission jet use from 2007-2011. In that timeframe, the report explains, the “three individuals who served as Attorney General (AG) and the Director of the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) accounted for 95 percent (659 out of 697 flights) of all Department of Justice (DOJ) executive nonmission flights using DOJ aircraft at a total cost of $11.4 million.”

According to the report, personal flights accounted for 24 percent of nonmission flights and that the AGs and FBI director reimbursed that travel “in accordance with federal requirements.” Yet, as the report notes, that reimbursement “is generally less than the cost of operating a government aircraft” as it is largely reimbursed at the cost of a commercial rate.

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Revolving Door: Speaker Boehner’s Right-Hand Man Heads To K Street

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Barry Jackson, a long-time senior adviser to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is heading to K Street.

Jackson has agreed to join Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck as a strategic adviser, delivering a coup to one of the top-earning lobby firms in Washington.

The blockbuster hire brings a premier Republican name in Washington politics to the firm. In Jackson, Brownstein Hyatt will have one of the Speaker’s longest-serving and most trusted aides, giving the firm access and insight into the House GOP majority that few can match.

Jackson managed Boehner’s first House campaign in 1990 and served as the Ohio Republican’s chief of staff for 10 years. He also worked in the White House as a senior aide to former President George W. Bush during his two terms.

Jackson returned to the House in January 2010 as Boehner’s chief of staff after the lawmaker’s top aide, Paula Nowakowski, passed away. He held that position until June last year.

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Hysteria: White House Warns of Sequester Cuts For Non-Existent Agency

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Photo Credit: Examiner The administration has been warning of dire consequences if a deal is not passed to stop the cuts required by the sequestration deal. On Monday, Reason’s Mike Riggs said that the administration warned of cuts to an agency that has not existed since June 2012.

In Sept. 2012, the Office of Management and Budget sent a detailed 394-page report to Congress detailing how much would be cut from each federal agency in compliance with the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012.

The first line item listed on page 133 of the report says that under sequestration the National Drug Intelligence Center would lose $2 million of its $20 million budget.

There’s only one problem. According to the Department of Justice, the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) closed on June 15, 2012 — three months before the report was issued.

“On June 15, 2012, the National Drug Intelligence Center will close. This web site will no longer be maintained,” a notice says at the archived site.

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American Student Punished For Refusing To Recite Mexican Pledge Of Allegiance?

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Photo Credit: Dario Lopez-Mills A Texas high school student has filed a federal lawsuit against her school after her Spanish teacher allegedly gave her a failing grade for refusing to recite the Mexican pledge of allegiance.

The lawsuit says the McAllen Independent School District violated 15-year-old girl Brenda Brinsdon’s constitutional rights, saying that the “Supreme Court forbids teachers from compelling schoolchildren to pledge their allegiance to a country.”

The complaint also states that the student was not allowed to recite the American Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish in front of the class as an alternative assignment. The teacher, Reyna Santos, gave her a different assignment on the Independence of Mexico to which she received 13 out of 100 points.

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Palin: Washington Buying Bullets For Us

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Photo Credit: WNDImagine the worst-case scenario if the sequester goes through. The market nosedives. The economy implodes. Empty shelves. Riots. The feds hit the streets in force to restore order in a “national emergency.”

Sounds like something in a Third World country or Greece. It could never happen here, right? Think again, says Sarah Palin.

The former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee believes the federal government is “stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.” Palin says the feds are afraid of what might happen if the sequester goes into effect.

She writes on her Facebook page: “If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.”

The sequester will trigger $85 billion in immediate cuts to federal funding and $1.2 over 10 years unless lawmakers reach a deal by Friday.

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Beijing Preparing for War?

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Photo Credit: APUnited States intelligence agencies recently detected China’s military shifting road-mobile ballistic missiles closer to its southern coast near the disputed Senkaku Islands amid growing tensions between Beijing and Japan over the islands dispute.

U.S. defense officials said the movements are being watched closely as China’s military is also holding large-scale military exercises that some fear could be a trigger for a conflict with Japan that could involve U.S. forces. The officials did not provide details of the missile movements that were tracked by U.S. aircraft, ship-based, and satellite surveillance systems in the region.

Disclosure of the missile movements comes as White House national security adviser Tom Donilon on Monday met in Seoul with China’s state councilor Liu Yandong. The two were in South Korea to attend the inauguration of South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Tensions remain high between Japan and China over Tokyo’s nationalization last year of several uninhabited islands between Okinawa and Taiwan called the Senkakus. China claims the islands as its territory. At issue are large undersea oil and gas deposits sought by both energy-poor countries.

The officials confirmed the missile movements near the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian after Chinese press outlets first reported them.

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Video: Woodward Says Obama’s Decision Not To Deploy Carrier ‘A Kind Of Madness,’ White House Threatens

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Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.

CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.

“It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, ‘You’re going to regret doing something that you believe in,'” Woodward said.

“I think they’re confused,” Woodward said of the White House’s pushback on his reporting.

Earlier today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a “kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time” for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.

See video on White House threat:

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Alaska Democratic Party’s Lame Attempt at Demagoguery – Epic Fail!

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The State Senate Judiciary Committee had its first hearing on SB 49 yesterday, a bill designed to define “medical necessity” with respect to Medicaid-funded abortions. And as one might expect, the Democrats have already began their assault on proponents of the measure.

To no one’s surprise, they appear to be trying to resurrect the Demogogue-in-Chief’s manufactured “war on women.”

The five-member panel made up of two Democrats and three Republicans includes just one woman, a fact opponents of the bill appear eager to exploit for political purposes.

For a brief period, part way through the hearing, Senator Lesil McGuire stepped out of the room. While she was gone, someone in the room snapped a picture of the four male members of the Committee, which the Alaska Democratic Party was happy to tweet.

Clearly, they were trying to lead folks to believe that it was an all male panel. Well, we’re onto them.

As if reverse sexism is somehow relevent to the facts of medical science anyway . . .

Not only was the Democrat Party’s insinuation false, if anybody cares, the hypocrisy of it all was compounded by the fact that two out of the three doctors who testified on behalf of the legislation were women.

Apparently, Senator Bill Wielechowski had no legitimate objections to the bill either, as he spent almost all of his time cross-examining the expert witnesses, obviously trying to discredit them by scoring cheap political points.

Nice try.

When will the Democrats step up to the plate and actually engage in the public policy debate, instead of playing sophmoric games in an attempt to emotionally manipulate public perception?

Chances are, it won’t happen any time soon. That’s just how they roll.

Scalia: The Voting Rights Act Is A ‘Racial Entitlement’

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Photo Credit: GettyConservative Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism about the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 during oral arguments today, signaling that a key provision of the landmark civil rights legislation might be struck down.

Justice Antonin Scalia sparked controversy when he referred to Section 5 of the law as “the perpetuation of a racial entitlement,” sparking immediate backlash from the left.

Section 5 requires states with a “history of racial discrimination” to have any changes to their voting laws approved by the Justice Department’s civil rights division or Washington, D.C.’s federal court.

Scalia explained that he was not convinced the law was legitimate simply because Congress had voted to reauthorize it five times, most recently in 2006 by a 99-0 Senate vote and similarly overwhelming House vote. He said that the “normal political process” couldn’t be applied to this situation and questioned Congress’ political motives for reauthorization.

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White House Denies Involvement In ICE’s Decision To Release Detainees (+video)

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyThe White House and the Department of Homeland Security were unaware of Immigration Customs and Enforcement’s decision to release detainees until the agency announced it, administration officials said Wednesday.

“This was a decision made by career officials at ICE without any input from the White House, as a result of fiscal uncertainty over the continuing resolution, as well as possible sequestration,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday.

Personnel at Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington were also unaware of the decision until the announcement was made, a department official told POLITICO.

ICE announced Tuesday that it has released several hundred undocumented immigrants in recent weeks as funding cuts loom. The detainees will instead be monitored in less expensive ways, the agency said.

[Editor’s note: Notice how precisely Carney’s prepared statement is tailored to the question asked by this reporter, if I didn’t know better I might think the whole thing was staged. Surely the White House Press Corps wouldn’t go to such lengths to bail the President out of a sticky situation?]

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