The number of native-born, working-age Americans who aren’t working has shot up by almost 9 million since 2007, and by almost 15 million since 2000, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration group.

By late 2012, roughly 50 million native-born working-age Americans weren’t working, up from 40 million in 2000, according to the March 13 report, titled “Still No Evidence of a Labor Shortage.”

The army of idle Americans is important for the immigration debate, because advocates for greater immigration say foreign workers are needed to fill slots that can’t be taken by Americans.

The 50 million idle Americans include many who are studying, have chosen not to work or have retired early.

But the government data shows that 16.7 million native-born Americans wanted — but did not have — full-time work in 2013, up from 10.5 million in late 2007, and 7.8 million in 2000.

Read more from this story about working age Americans out of work HERE.

A new Gallup poll shows the American people say climate change is one of the problems they worry about the least.

The polling firm asked Americans how much they worry about 15 separate issues facing the country, with the economy, federal spending, and health care ranking at the top. Fifty-nine percent said the economy and jobs were an issue they worried about “a great deal,” and 58 percent and 57 percent said the same for federal spending and health-care affordability, respectively.

But climate change ranked second-to-last, with just 24 percent saying they worried about it a great deal, 25 percent saying they worried “a fair amount” about it, and 51 percent saying they cared about it “a little” or “not at all.” Gallup has also found that concern for environmental issues over the last decade and a half has reached an all-time low, at 31 percent, compared to a high in 2007 of 43 percent.

Read more about why Americans are not worried about global warming HERE.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura PoitrasStung by internal security lapses, U.S. intelligence officials plan to use a sweeping electronic system to continually monitor workers with secret clearances, current and former officials told The Associated Press.

The system is intended to identify rogue agents, corrupt officials and leakers and draws on a Defense Department model under development for more than a decade, according to officials and documents reviewed by the AP.

Intelligence officials have long wanted a computerized system that could monitor employees, in part to foil leakers like former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden, whose revelations bared massive U.S. surveillance operations. Such a system might also detect troubling signs in those who already hold security clearances, such as the shooter in last year’s mass killings at Washington’s Navy Yard. Many of the nearly 4 million government employees who hold secret clearances would be scanned by the new system, officials say.

An administration review of the government’s security clearance process due this month is expected to support continuous monitoring as part of a package of comprehensive changes.

Privacy advocates and government employee union officials expressed concerns that electronic monitoring could intrude into individuals’ private lives, prompt flawed investigations and put sensitive personal data at greater risk. Supporters say the system would have safeguards.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: Newsbusters After months of pressing the CBS News brass to get out of her contract, reporter Sharyl Attkisson was finally granted her request. While that is good for her, it ought to underline how CBS has abandoned hard-hitting reporting in the Obama era.

Politico’s Attkisson headline was “The right loses its hero at CBS,” and liberal blogs tried to guess how long it would take for her to sign up with Fox News Channel. That might happen. Roger Ailes loves scooping up talent from other networks. That’s meant as an insult, of course. Only those dreadful right-wing propagandists challenge Team Obama.

But it’s insulting on a different level altogether. I do not know Ms. Attkisson, but I suspect she’d be insulted to be viewed as any partisan group’s “hero.” She would not have been employed for CBS for more than 20 years if she was a Democrat-wrecking right-winger. She’s merely a “polarizing figure” for failing to do what Dan Rather called “kiss ass, move with the mass.”

Remember this the next time a pompous liberal anchorman like Brian Williams laments that “politics is broken.” Journalism is broken. There is no such thing as journalistic independence. When a veteran reporter stands out like a sore thumb by merely trying to get answers for the American people on how a fiasco like Benghazi happened, she is not the issue. Her network purporting to be in the news business is.

Attkisson had every reason to want out of her contract. According to the Tyndall Report, in 2007,she was the 18th most used reporter in major network nightly news, with 160 minutes on the evening newscast. In 2008, she held steady at 18th, with 145 minutes, and in 2009, she was 19th, with 152 minutes. She hasn’t landed in the top 20 since…Obama scandals bubbled up, and she started covering them.

Read more from this story HERE.