Darrell Issa Reveals Yet Another Potential Obama Administration Scandal: That’s ‘Against the Law’

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Photo Credit: The BlazeU.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials ordered subordinates not to talk to congressional investigators about their investigation into illicit hiring practices and related whistleblower retaliation allegations, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.).

Issa, in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, revealed that the deputy secretary of energy issued a gag order following the release of a highly critical inspector general report last week.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a division of the DOE, allegedly violated DOE hiring guidelines in a manner than disadvantaged military veterans, according to the scathing IG report.

The BPA employees who cooperated with the IG’s investigation were fired, suspended or disciplined in other ways, the report found.

Further, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman “verbally instructed Elliot Mainzer, the individual [Poneman] chose to serve as acting administrator of BPA, that no BPA employees were to talk with anyone regarding these allegations, including congressional investigators,” Issa wrote in a July 17 letter.

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Army’s Giant Surveillance Blimp to Start Tracking Objects in DC Region

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While Congress debates the merits of spending tens of millions of dollars to add missile interceptors on the East Coast while increasing the number already in place out West, a long-running developmental Army radar system is packing up and heading for Maryland.

From May 4 to June 14, Raytheon’s JLENS, or Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, was put through its paces by about 100 soldiers during user assessment tests out in Utah, but the company announced today that the 74-foot-high tethered airship is now headed to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland for a more ambitious operational assessment run by the US Northern Command.

The soldiers who were trained up to use the system in Utah will make the trip with the airship, but since JLENS will be running on a 24/7 basis once on the East Coast—and tracking anything that flies, drives, or floats near the National Capital Region—more soldiers will be trained to operate it before the assessments kick off in 2014.

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Trump: Weiner a ‘Sick Puppy’ That NYC Doesn’t Need

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Photo Credit: LandovNew York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is “a very sick puppy,” and the city doesn’t need him as a leader, says businessman Donald Trump.

“He’s a deviant. He’s got a real, real sickness,” Trump said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”

Weiner’s campaign is a big embarrassment to New York City, Trump said. “New York has enough problems without this.”

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Weiner served in the U.S. Congress representing New York, but was forced to resign in 2011 after it was revealed he sent lewd text messages and photos of himself to women online. He announced earlier this year he was running for mayor and was running first or second in recent polls.

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IRS Pursuing ‘Stateless Income’ Tax Enforcement: Official

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe Internal Revenue Service is pursuing tax enforcement cases against companies over the issue of “stateless income,” a senior agency official said on Wednesday in a reference to corporate profits that are not taxed by any country.

Erik Corwin, an IRS deputy chief counsel, said there were international tax disputes with companies, “most involving consequences of complex restructurings designed either to create stateless income or to affect a tax efficient repatriation.”

“So those are a family of cases that are in the pipeline and being looked at,” he told tax lawyers in a speech in Washington.

Asked by reporters later to elaborate on any litigation, Corwin declined to comment. But tax lawyers said the references to stateless income and profits held offshore could signal a new enforcement approach by the IRS.

“I have not heard the IRS use the term before,” Edward Kleinbard, who coined the “stateless income” phrase in a 2007 research paper, said in a telephone interview.

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Lawmakers Blast Guantanamo’s $2.7 Million Per Prisoner Cost

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Photo Credit: JTF GitmoDemocratic lawmakers pushing to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay said on Wednesday its cost has skyrocketed to $2.7 million per inmate this year and argued it is too expensive to keep open while the country is fighting budget deficits.

“This is a massive waste of money,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the base.

Guantanamo has been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth, and President Barack Obama in May cited its cost – then calculated at about $900,000 per prisoner – as one of many reasons to close it.

Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, testified during the hearing that the current cost of operating the facility has jumped to $454 million in the fiscal year ended September 30, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, or about $2.7 million for each of the 166 inmates.

Smith said overall, $4.7 billion has been spent running Guantanamo since the facility opened in 2002. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: GettyGuantanamo Bay Prison Divides Senate Panel

By Alexei Koseff. Sharp disagreement over the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp dominated the first Senate hearing on the issue in four years.

The meeting Wednesday of a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee, held in the wake of a high-profile hunger strike by inmates and renewed calls from President Obama to close the facility, made clear that deep partisan divisions remain over whether keeping the prison open is a threat to national security or a necessity.

Opened at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Guantanamo was established by President George W. Bush to hold detainees suspected of connections to global terrorism organizations.

Allegations of abuse and torture of inmates have led to repeated calls for Guantanamo’s closure, and Obama has campaigned twice on the issue, though Congress has passed repeated measures to keep the prison open.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who is chairman of the panel, urged Congress to support Obama’s efforts, which would end the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and either release them or charge them in American courts. Read more from this story HERE.

North Carolina Lawmakers Pass Bill Allowing Concealed Handguns in Bars, Restaurants

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North Carolina is on the verge of letting handgun owners with concealed-carry permits bring their weapons into bars and restaurants and other places where alcohol is served, as long as the businesses don’t forbid it.

The bill, passed Tuesday by North Carolina’s House and Senate, is on the desk of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who is expected to sign it.

Backed by Republican lawmakers as well as gun rights groups, the law would also allow concealed-gun permit holders to bring weapons on hiking trails, playgrounds and other public recreation areas.

And it would let gun owners store weapons in their cars on the campuses of public schools or colleges.

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Senate Passes Student Loan Plan

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Photo Credit: APA plan to restore lower interest rates on most college loans won Senate approval Wednesday, despite objections from a bloc of Democrats who warned it could ultimately increase the cost of a degree for many students.

The legislation, which is supported by President Obama and is expected to swiftly pass the House, would reinstate a market-based approach for calculating rates, tying them to the 10-year Treasury note. The new rate for undergraduate Stafford loans would be about 3.8% this year, slightly above the rate that expired July 1.

The final vote was 81-18. Sixteen Democrats, joined by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), voted no.

A market-based system had been in place until 2006, when the rate was fixed at 6.8%. It was later gradually reduced to 3.4%.

Democrats successfully mounted an election-year campaign in 2012 to extend that lower rate for an additional year. As rates were set to return to 6.8% this year, congressional Democrats pushed for another temporary extension. But they found their position weakened by a White House budget plan that supported a return to a market-based plan.

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Book: Jimmy Carter Targeted by US and Foreign Assassins

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Photo Credit: qtschlepperPotential assassins have threatened the life of Jimmy Carter multiple times since he left the White House in 1981, making the one-term Georgian the most threatened former president in history, according to a new book about John F. Kennedy and his assassination 50 years ago.

In “The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy,” Carter told author Larry J. Sabato that he has faced at least three home-grown assassination attempts since returning to Georgia and is constantly warned by the U.S. Secret Service of personal threats during his frequent overseas travel.

“I have had two or three threats to my life after I came home from the White House,” Carter said in the highly-anticipated book due out October 22. “When I go on an overseas trip almost invariably, I get a report from the Secret Service that where I’m going is very dangerous,” he added in the book provided in advance to Secrets.

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Tea Party Candidate Announces Senate Bid Against ‘Mud-Slinging Mitch’ McConnell

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Frankfort, Kentucky – Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin announced he would be running against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky Republican senate primary.

“Never before in American political history has the leader of a party lost a primary election,” Bevin acknowledged in his remarks, given in the rotunda of the Kentucky state capitol. “Never. But never before has it been so important to make that happen.”

Flanked by his wife and nine children, Bevin attacked the GOP as being “a party that is as complicit in our impending deficit crisis as the Democratic party,” according to his prepared remarks.

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Obstruction? NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails

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Photo Credit: George Frey/GettyThe NSA is a “supercomputing powerhouse” with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.

But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees’ email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology.

“There’s no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately,” NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.

The system is “a little antiquated and archaic,” she added.

I filed a request last week for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period. The TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA and I want to better understand the agency’s public-relations efforts.

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