In Time of Sequesters, Federal Government Posts 27,000 Job Openings

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Photo Credit: Charles DharapakThe budget cuts known as sequestration were supposed to wreak havoc, forcing the shrinking of critical workforces including airport security officers and food inspectors. But since sequestration kicked in March 4, the government has posted openings for 4,300 federal job titles to hire some 10,300 people. The median position has a salary topping out at $76,000, and one-fourth of positions pay $113,000 or more, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of federal job listings.

Altogether, the jobs will pay up to $792 million per year. Including job postings that have been open since before sequestration, the government is in the market for 27,000 employees who will make up to $1.8 billion a year.

The jobs posted since sequestration include 2,800 positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 519 at the Indian Health Service and 50 at the Smithsonian Institution.

They also include service jobs seemingly designed to ensure that existing government employees live well.

The Defense Department is recruiting 71 bartenders and 123 waiters. If they worked full-time, these employees would earn more than $3.4 million a year. Nearly half of these positions were first posted after sequestration kicked in.


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America’s Oldest Veteran to Spend Quiet Memorial Day at Texas Home

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Photo Credit: APFor his 107th Memorial Day, Richard Arvine Overton, who saw many of his fellow soldiers fall in the line of duty in World War II and even more die over the following decades, is planning a quiet day at the Texas home he built after returning home from World War II.

He wouldn’t want it any other way.

Overton, who is believed to be the nation’s oldest veteran, told FoxNews.com he’ll likely spend the day on the porch of his East Austin home with a cigar nestled in his right hand, perhaps with a cup of whiskey-stiffened coffee nearby.

“I don’t know, some people might do something for me, but I’ll be glad just to sit down and rest,” the Army veteran said during a phone interview. “I’m no young man no more.”

Overton, who was born on May, 11, 1906, in Texas’ Bastrop County, has gotten used to being the center of attention of late. In addition to being formally recognized by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell on May 9, Overton traveled to Washington, D.C., on May 17 as part of Honor Flight, a nonprofit group that transports veterans free of charge to memorials dedicated to their service. Despite serving in the South Pacific from 1942 through 1945, including stops in Hawaii, Guam, Palau and Iwo Jima to name a few, it was Overton’s first time in the nation’s capital.

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CAIR Pushes ‘Hijab Friendly’ Policy in American Prisons

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is working to make American prisons more “hijab-friendly,” according to a report from Al Arabiya.

“I’m working on several pending cases in different states… and I’m in touch with an attorney for the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights,” Nadhira al-Khalili, legal counsel for CAIR, told the Saudi-owned news outlet.

The goal for CAIR is to make the hijab a permissible, official staple of Muslim women’s attire, including for photos, in prisons nationwide.

Al Arabiya reports that Novi, Mich. has already agreed to allow Muslim women to cover their heads during detainment.

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GOP Pushes for Independent Investigations of DOJ, IRS

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Photo Credit: J. Scott ApplewhiteSenators say Holder can’t ‘review’ himself on news media snooping

By David Eldridge. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s direct involvement in the Justice Department’s decisions to spy on the press should disqualify him from heading any review of the unfolding controversy, Republicans said Sunday.

Questions have been raised about the attorney general’s role in two Justice Department investigations of leaks, one involving a massive seizure of Associated Press phone records and another an aggressive probe of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s private emails.

According to multiple media reports, Mr. Holder personally approved targeting Mr. Rosen. He earlier told Congress that he had recused himself from the decision to seize AP phone records.

President Obama, responding to critics from both parties who say the Justice Department is undermining press freedoms, said Thursday he has directed Mr. Holder to lead a “review.” That idea has been flatly rejected by Republicans, several of whom voiced their objections on Sunday’s political talk shows.

“A total conflict of interest,” Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, said Sunday on CBS‘ “Face the Nation.” Read more from this story HERE.

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GOP reiterates push for independent IRS investigation

By Valerie Richardson. Republicans ramped up calls Sunday for an independent investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny.

“This really does call for a special counsel,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, on “Fox News Sunday.” “The culture of going after tea party groups that were on the president’s case about ‘Obamacare’ did not accidentally happen. I think it comes from the top with the tone.”

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, reiterated his call for a special counsel to investigate the scandal, warning that President Obama risks losing his “moral authority” as the nation’s leader unless he shows that he’s taking the problem seriously.

“I think the constellation of these three scandals ongoing really takes away from the president’s moral authority to lead the nation,” Mr. Paul said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Nobody questions his legal authority, but I think he’s really losing the moral authority to lead this nation. And he really needs to put a stop to this. I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat; nobody likes to see the opposite party punishing you for your political beliefs, using the power of government to do so.”

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, defended a letter he wrote to the IRS in October 2010 asking the agency to look into the tax-exempt status of Crossroads GPS, a group founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove. Read more from this story HERE.

Murdered U.S. Ambassador Stevens a Muslim?

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Photo Credit: WNDMurdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens had a “very romantic relationship” with Islam, according to a Libyan official who was a personal friend to the late American representative to Benghazi.

“What I am saying is that his Excellency, the late ambassador, had a very personal private matter, a very romantic relationship with the mystical side of Islam,” stated Sabri Malek, the spokesman for the Democratic Party in Libya, in an interview today.

Malek was speaking on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio.

Continued Malek: “Many Westerners find themselves converging on a romantic relationship with the mystical side of Islam. Sufism, it’s a very unique corridor. It allows you to find out more beyond your ego fears. So that kind of mysticism was very attractive to the ambassador.

“And he indulged through various Sufi channels,” said Malek. “Because Libya is one of the richest North African states in the source of such schools.”

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White House Misleads Again: IRS Misconduct Didn’t End in 2012

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Photo Credit: National Review ‘The misconduct had stopped in May of 2012,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Monday about the IRS’s improper targeting of conservative groups. Not so, say two D.C. attorneys, each representing a number of conservative groups that — after years of waiting and countless rounds of invasive questions — have yet to receive recognition from the IRS.

The American Center for Law and Justice, headed by chief counsel Jay Sekulow, plans to file suit in federal court in the coming weeks on behalf of more than two dozen conservative groups that claim their harassment at the hands of the nation’s tax authority continued long past the White House’s purported end date — and, for a number of them, continues still. Of the 27 organizations the ACLJ has represented to date, ten still have not received approval, two years after applying. Two others gave up.

Take the Albuquerque Tea Party. In December 2009, it applied for 501(c)(4) status, which would exempt the group from corporate taxes but does not make donations tax deductible). Its application is still pending — and the group received a letter from the IRS promising its status was “currently being reviewed” just one month ago.

Linchpins of Liberty, a Tennessee-based conservative leadership-development organization, applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status in January 2011. Two years later, their application is still pending as well — and the IRS sent its most recent dilatory letter on May 6 of this year, four days before the agency admitted its political targeting and a full year after the White House claimed the activity had ceased.

Says Sekulow, “Without question, the IRS misconduct of harassing and abusing our clients was still in high gear from May 2012 through May of this year. . . . To suggest this tactic ended a year ago is not only offensive, but it is simply inaccurate as well.”

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Where’s the Global Warming? Upstate New York Gets 3 Feet of Snow

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Photo Credit: APA Memorial Day weekend storm has dropped three feet of snow on a New York ski mountain near the Vermont border.

Whiteface Mountain spokesman Jon Lundin says 36 inches of white powder has blanketed the nearly 5,000-foot tall mountain in the Adirondacks. That has forced the Olympic Regional Development Authority to close Whiteface Veteran’s Memorial Highway on the backside of the

Lundin says the snow began lightly falling Saturday and steadily dropped Sunday, finishing in the evening.

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Tea Party Gets a Bump After Being Targeted by IRS

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Photo Credit: APThe Tea Party movement is showing signs of a resurgence following the revelation that the IRS targeted groups and other politically conservative organizations for the past several years.

A recent poll shows Americans have a more favorable opinion of the less-government, anti-tax groups. And one of the biggest groups in the grassroots movement told FoxNews.com this weekend that fundraising and donations have increased since news of the IRS targeting broke earlier this month.

However, one of the biggest remaining questions is whether the Tea Party can take the momentum in the 2014 elections.

The movement started in 2009 as a reaction to the federal government’s multibillion-dollar bank bailouts in the recession and played a major role in the 2010 midterm elections by backing conservative candidates who helped Republicans take control of the House. However, critics during the 2012 election cycle repeatedly argued the movement had become less relevant.

“We’re definitely seeing a spike in both interest and contributions,” Sal Russo, co-founder of the California-based Tea Party Express, told Fox on Saturday.

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Rand Paul: Obama ‘Losing Moral Authority’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images President Barack Obama is in danger of losing his moral authority to lead the nation, Rep. Rand Paul, R-Ky., says.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Paul said the three controversies currently swirling around the administration weaken his leadership ability.

“Nobody questions his legal authority, but I think he’s really losing the moral authority,” Paul said. “I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, nobody likes to see the opposite party punishing you for your political beliefs.”

Paul was referring to IRS agents targeting conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status prior the previous election cycle. Some have charged that agents wanted to suppress Republican voter turnout, though administration officials say the agents simply used bad judgment.

Asked whether he was aware of anyone at the IRS breaking the law, Paul responded that he didn’t know. But he noted that Lois Lerner, the head of tax-exempt organizations at the agency, took her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself when asked to testify before Congress last week.

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By 22-Point Margin, Voters Favor Obamacare’s Repeal

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard It would be a major understatement to say that Obamacare has had a bad spring. Around the time of Lincoln’s birthday, registered voters told Fox News that, by a margin of 6 percentage points (48 to 42 percent), it would “be better to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009” than it would be “to leave the new health care law in place.” Three months later, as we head into Memorial Day, nostalgia for the good ol’ days of 2009 now beats Obamacare by a whopping 22 points (56 to 34 percent).

That’s saying something, because, back in 2009 — largely as a result of Republicans’ refusal to do much of anything on health care in the nearly decade-and-a-half between their defeat of Hillarycare and their defeat at the hands of Obama — Americans clearly weren’t very happy with the health-care status quo. Every one of the half-dozen polls published by RealClearPolitics in the first half of 2009 — before Obamacare clearly took shape — showed Americans favoring efforts to reform our health-care system. Now, Obamacare is even more unpopular than the unpopular pre-Obamacare status quo — and that has been true for nearly four years.

None of this, however, should lull Republicans into thinking there’s no need for them to advance conservative, limited-government reforms in lieu of Obamacare’s liberal, big-government model of centralized control over American medicine. For at least two main reasons, it’s crucial that the GOP push not only for the full repeal of Obamacare, but also for real reform.

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