Wisconsin Professor tells Students Tea Party, Republicans at Fault for Slimdown

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Photo Credit: UWLAX.EDUA Wisconsin college professor warned her students they wouldn’t be able to get all of their homework done because of the partial government shutdown, and put a partisan spin on the bad news.

“Some of the data gathering assignment will be impossible to complete until the Republican/tea party controlled House of Representatives agrees to fund the government,” University of Wisconsin La Crosse Assistant Geography Professor Rachel Slocum told students in an e-mail.

“The Census website, for instance, is closed,” she continued. “Please do what you can on the assignment. Those parts you are unable to do because of the shutdown will have to wait until Congress decides we actually need a government. Please listen to the news and be prepared to turn in the assignment quickly once our nation re-opens.”

At least one student in the online course reported the professor’s political spin to the education blog The College Fix, which first reported the story.

Slocum could not be reached for comment, but a school official told FoxNews.com the issue was addressed.

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Least Essential? Some Agencies Have 0 Employees on Job During Slimdown

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Photo Credit: APFiscal hawks say the silver lining to the partial government shutdown, which is entering its second week of scaled-back services, could be the picture of government waste it paints for taxpayers.

A look through the shutdown contingency plans of the federal government shows some little-known commissions and agencies — like the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — don’t have anybody reporting for work during the partial shutdown.

The ability of the government to run without any of the people from any of these agencies on the clock is prompting some watchdog groups to question why, then, do the agencies need to exist in the first place?

“Think of all the money we could save as a nation,” Judicial Watch said in an Oct. 7 post. “Besides bringing attention to these largely unheard of agencies, the shutdown – caused by Congress’s inability to agree on a funding bill – is also shedding light on just how bloated the federal government is, with an astounding workforce that’s seen nearly 800,000 furloughed this week.”

Government bodies that have exactly zero people on the job this week include the USDA Risk Management Agency, where all 430 employees are furloughed, and the Federal Maritime Commission, where all 120 workers are furloughed.

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Ready to Hear Latest Lie about Obamacare?

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Photo Credit: WNDThe Obama administration is gushing that Obamacare will change the lives of three uninsured women – but none of the women have actually enrolled in the program.

Twitchy noted that the HHS blog “offers the stories of three women as if they’re Obamacare ‘success stories.’”

However, a close reading of their statements reveals Caroline, Kate and Elizabeth say they are “looking to buy,” “still shopping” and “still trying to decide.”

The HHS blog says Caroline, a 27-year-old substitute teacher and part-time guidance counselor in Washington, D.C., who has been uninsured since 2009, wants to “get insurance on the Marketplace” so she can avoid expensive emergency hospital bills.

According to HHS, Kate, a 30-year-old consultant for a non-governmental organization said she is “overwhelmed” by her options on the Marketplace and is “still shopping to make sure I make the right decision.”

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‘Shutdown’ Day 7: Government Buys $47,174 Mechanical Bull

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Photo Credit: mechanicalbullsales.comThe government shutdown may be keeping furloughed federal workers at home, but on Monday the U.S. Army contracted to buy a mechanical bull.

The $47,174 contract was awarded on Oct. 7 to Mechanical Bull Sales Inc. of State College, Penn.

According to the General Services Administration (GSA) listing, the National Guard of Utah made the request for a “bull which needs to be durable and low maintenance.”

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Anonymous to March on DC on Guy Fawkes Day

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Photo Credit: APDemonstrators involved with Anonymous, a loose collective of online “hacktivists,” will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5 to march for a vast, nearly innumerable number of causes and issues.

Flyers began appearing around downtown D.C. over the weekend advertising the “Million Mask March,” which will take place on Guy Fawkes Day.

Anonymous members, when they appear in public, are known for donning masks of Guy Fawkes, who unsuccessfully tried to blow up the England’s House of Lords on Nov. 5, 1605, and restore Catholicism to England.

The group supports leakers of government secrets, such as Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden. It was also closely allied with the now-moribund Occupy movement.

Anonymous hackers often target large governments and companies who oppose their interests with malicious cyber attacks.

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Al Sharpton, ‘PoliticsNation’ Advertisers Targeted in New Boycott

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Photo Credit: Earl Gibson III/GettyA group of conservative activists, tired of what they see as a persistent and little remarked liberal bias in the news media, are set to begin a series of boycotts aimed at advertisers who sponsor what they see as left-wing networks, outlets, and journalists.

On Sunday they announced their first target, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil-rights leader turned MSNBC talk-show host whose PoliticsNation has grown in influence and audience since making its debut two years ago.

“Sharpton is a racial extortionist who has instigated racial animosities, violence, and division in America for the last forty years,” write the boycott’s organizers. “In better times, Sharpton would be stigmatized and condemned for the damage he has done. But today he is a primetime host on MSNBC—the charter cable news network for NBC News, and a favored outlet for the Obama administration’s spin doctors.”

The boycott is part of Truth Revolt, a new project by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a right-wing foundation that has focused on what it calls liberal bias in Hollywood and on college campuses. Truth Revolt, which says its purpose is to “unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases,” is led by Ben Shapiro, an editor-at-large for the conservative website Breitbart News and the author, most recently, of Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America.

The first Sharpton sponsor the group is targeting is Ritz Crackers, owned by Chicago-based Mondelez International. Shapiro said Truth Revolt chose Mondelez because it bills itself as a “family-friendly company” and because it was one of the few advertisers to respond to the group’s inquiries about why it supports the Sharpton show.

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ATF Tries to Block Whistleblowing Agent’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Book

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Photo Credit: APThe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case from publishing a book for pay, claiming his retelling of the Mexico “gun-walking” scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times.

ATF’s dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson’s protection as a whistleblower.

The ACLU is slated to become involved in the case Monday, informing ATF it is representing Mr. Dodson and filing a formal protest to the decision to reject his request to publish the already written book, sources told The Times, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

The battle also could have repercussions on Capitol Hill, where the two lead investigators who helped uncover the Fast and Furious scandal, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, Calif. Republican, had written a foreword to the book, the sources said.

ATF officials declined Sunday night to discuss Mr. Dodson’s specific matter, citing personnel privacy. But the officials said it was possible for an agent to be rejected for publishing a book for pay but get permission to publish it for free. No manuscript for any Fast and Furious book has received approval for unpaid publication, however, the officials said.

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Shutdown: 83% of Government Still Operating

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Everyone knows the phrase “government shutdown” doesn’t mean the entire U.S. government is shut down. So in a partial government shutdown, like the one underway at the moment, how much of the government is actually shut down, and how much is not?…

I asked a Republican source on the Senate Budget Committee for an estimate. This was the answer: “Based on estimates drawn from CBO and OMB data, 83 percent of government operations will continue. This figure assumes that the government pays amounts due on appropriations obligated before the shutdown ($512 billion), spends $225 billion on exempted military and civilian personnel, pays entitlement benefits for those found eligible before the shutdown (about $2 trillion), and pays interest costs when due ($237 billion). This is about 83 percent of projected 2014 spending of $3.6 trillion.” So the government shutdown, at least as measured by money spent, is really a 17 percent government shutdown.

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Analysis: IT Experts Question Architecture of Obamacare Website

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Joe SkipperDays after the launch of the federal government’s Obamacare website, millions of Americans looking for information on new health insurance plans were still locked out of the system even though its designers scrambled to add capacity.

Government officials blame the persistent glitches on an overwhelming crush of users – 8.6 million unique visitors by Friday – trying to visit the HealthCare.gov website this week.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw development of the site, declined to make any of its IT experts available for interviews. CGI Group Inc, the Canadian contractor that built HealthCare.gov, is “declining to comment at this time,” said spokeswoman Linda Odorisio.

Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems.

For instance, when a user tries to create an account on HealthCare.gov, which serves insurance exchanges in 36 states, it prompts the computer to load an unusually large amount of files and software, overwhelming the browser, experts said.

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Maher Mocks WWII Vets Visiting Closed Memorial: ‘Nobody Said They Were the Brightest Generation’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APLiberal comedian Bill Maher ridiculed the group of World War II veterans for visiting the barricaded World War II memorial, telling his audience that the Greatest Generation wasn’t the “brightest generation.”

“The other that was apparently so important for the Republicans to keep open was the World War II Memorial in Washington. That was closed, so a bunch of the World War II vets knocked down the barriers and stormed it,” Maher said on his Friday HBO “Real Time” program, making a sardonic face at the audience.

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