Posts

Judicial Watch Sues DHS For Information Surrounding Release of 36,000 Criminal Aliens

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: TownHallBy Katie Pavlich.

Government watchdog Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for information surrounding the release of 36,000 criminal aliens into American communities earlier this year. The lawsuit comes after DHS officials failed to respond to a May 15, 2014 FOIA request in the amount of time required by law.

In the lawsuit, Judicial Watch is seeking “Any and all records of communications including, but not limited to, emails and memoranda, to or from personnel in the office of the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (including its component offices, such as the Office of Public Affairs), from May 1 to May 15, 2014, concerning, regarding, or related to the report published by the Center for Immigrations Studies concerning the release of 36,000 criminal aliens.”

Read more from this story HERE.

________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: GettyGOP Chairman Touts Immigration For Economy, Sidelines Obama’s Amnesty

By Neil Munro.

Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus outlined a November immigration platform that emphasized the contribution of immigrants to economic growth, but downplayed opposition to President Barack Obama’s immigration-boosting actions.

“We need to make sure America remains a place where people aspire to work and dream and live,” Priebus said in a morning speech in Washington D.C. “Our country should be a welcoming place for those who want to come here and do it the right way,” he said in a speech that was intended to offer a GOP alternative to Obama’s policies.

But GOP populists pushed back, saying Priebus is not sufficiently anti-amnesty.

“The elephant in the room is amnesty for illegal immigrants, and if the Republicans fail to take a strong stand against it, they will squander an opportunity and continue to lose elections,” warned Jenny Beth Martin, head of the Tea Party Patriots, in a press statement.

“Americans oppose amnesty, and it is a winning issue for conservatives,” she said, and added a sharp warning to Priebus.

Read more from this story HERE.

IG Report: IRS ‘Improperly Withheld’ FOIA Request Information

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Sept. 30 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the IRS may have violated taxpayer rights by improperly withholding or not adequately searching for and providing information responsive to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

TIGTA also found that “sensitive taxpayer information was inadvertently disclosed in response to nine (16.4 percent) of the FOIA/Privacy Act and four (7.4 percent) of the I.R.C. § 6103 information requests reviewed.”

“TIGTA reviewed a statistically valid sample of 55 FOIA/Privacy Act information requests from a population of 3,415 FOIA/Privacy Act requests and found nine (16.4 percent) in which taxpayer rights may have been violated because the IRS improperly withheld or failed to adequately search for and provide information to requestors,” the report, titled Fiscal Year 2013 Statutory Review of Compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, said.

The IRS hired 21 new disclosure specialists in Fiscal Year 2012 and 24 new specialists in 2011, TIGTA said.

“The influx of new employees may be a contributing factor to the increased instances of taxpayer information being either erroneously withheld or not provided in error,” TIGTA said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Health and Human Services Department Sought to Spend an Estimated $159 MILLION Per Year on New Employees to Help Run Obamacare

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters Documents obtained from the Health and Human Services Department through a Freedom of Information Act request show that on the day the Affordable Care Act became law, the agency received fast-track authority to hire 1,814 new high-level employees to put Obamacare into practice, at a likely cost of more than $159 million per year.

It’s unclear whether those employees were ever hired. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

But the hiring request was approved by the Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management despite a government-wide hiring freeze.

Judicial Watch, a nonprofit that has told MailOnline it files ‘hundreds’ of such FOIA requests, showed MailOnline the documents on Thursday. They show that HHS designated the hiring as a project worthy of ‘direct-hire appointing authority,’ a mechanism designed to sidestep normal restrictions on how much federal agencies can spend on personnel.

An analysis by MailOnline indicates that the annual base pay for those 1,814 employees, many of them slated for hiring at the highest salary levels available, would exceed $127.7 million.

Read more from this story HERE.

Navy Vet’s FOIA for the NSA’s Data Collection on Him Rejected Due to “National Security”

/3 Comments/in , , /by

Clayton Seymour, a 36-year-old IT specialist from Hilliard, Ohio, recently sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the NSA, curious as to whether any data about him was being collected.

What he received in response made his blood boil.

“I am a generally law abiding citizen with nothing I can think of that would require monitoring,” Seymour wrote to me, “but I wanted to know if I was having data collected about me and if so, what.”

So Seymour sent in an FOIA request. Weeks later, a letter from the NSA arrived explaining that he was not entitled to any information. “When I got the declined letter, I was furious,” he told me. “I feel betrayed.”

Seymour had decided to request his NSA file after coming across a recent post of mine instructing Americans on how to properly request such files from the FBI and NSA. A Navy vet and two-time Obama voter who supported the President’s platform of greater governmental transparency, Seymour was shocked by the letter he received.

Read more from this story HERE.

FOIA: 201 IRS Agents Working Full Time on Union Work, Not Government Business

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Americans for Limited Government, the Internal Revenue Service revealed this month that 201 of its employees work full-time on union activities…

The redacted list of 201 IRS employees, whose names have been blacked out, features only those employees who are entirely engaged in union work. The list does not include employees who spend part of their time on government work and other portions on union work, according to ALG.

The list of 201 employees offers job titles, salary information, and some location information. The job titles appear innocuous and make the work appear to be focused on agency business rather than union business. Titles include “Internal Revenue Agent,” “Revenue Officer,” “Tax Specialist,” “Rev Officer,” “Clerk,” “Contact Representative,” “Case Advocate,” and the like. Some boast six-figure salaries, with the highest paid employee on the list earning $138,092.

[Americans for Limited Government President Nathan] Mehrens explained that in many cases employees are hired for a certain job classification but end up doing union work.

“This person was hired to file things,” Mehrens said of one of the employees listed on the documents under the job title “File Clerk.” ”But instead of filing things this person is doing union work. So somebody else presumably has to pick up the slack and handle that. There is not a job classification for ‘union steward’… so they are in these positions and instead of actually doing the work that would fit the job classification they are basically excused from doing that job in order to work on behalf of the union.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Court of Appeals: CIA Was Right to Withhold Photo’s of Dead Bin Laden

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APA federal appeals court Tuesday backed the U.S. government’s decision not to release photos and video taken of Osama bin Laden during and after a raid in which the terrorist leader was killed by U.S. commandos.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia turned down an appeal from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the images.

The Defense Department said it didn’t turn up anything pertinent to the FOIA. The CIA had found 52 such records, but withheld all of them, citing exemptions for classified materials and information specifically exempted by other laws.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the appeals court said that the CIA properly withheld publication of the images of the al Qaeda leader. The court concluded that the photos used to conduct facial recognition analysis of bin Laden could reveal classified intelligence methods, and that images of bin Laden’s burial at sea could trigger violence against American citizens.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawmakers to Investigate EPA FOIA Scandal

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: dantekgeekRepublican lawmakers are launching an investigation into claims that the Environmental Protection Agency, while giving preferential treatment to environmental groups, made it harder for conservative groups to obtain government records.

“According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for environmental allies, effectively subsidizing them, while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” wrote Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Darrell Issa and Sens. David Vitter, Chuck Grassley and Jim Inhofe in a letter to the EPA.

Citing a report by The Daily Caller News Foundation, Republicans are asking the EPA to hand over all Freedom of Information Act fee waiver requests, responses to requests, and FOIA officer training materials since the beginning of the Obama administration.

Read more from this story HERE.

Vitter: EPA Lied About Official’s Use Of Private Emails For Government Business

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, charged today that Environmental Protection Agency officials “lied” about the extent of former Region 8 Administrator James Martin’s use of private email accounts to conduct official business.

“EPA should start owning up to the facts piling up before them. Their blatant disregard for proper procedure and transparency is now being regularly exposed, and EPA’s leadership must be held accountable,” Vitter said. An EPA spokesman has been asked for a response.

Vitter’s charge comes on the eve of Sunshine Week, which begins Sunday, March 10, 2013. Sunshine Week is intended to commemorate passage of the federal Freedom of Information Act in 1966, which guarantees the public the right to obtain copies of all government documents not otherwise exempted from disclosure.

Sunshine Week coincides with the birthday of James Madison, who wrote the First Amendment and its guarantee of freedom of the independent press.

Martin resigned shortly after Vitter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, announced on Jan. 29, 2013, a joint investigation of the EPA official’s email practices.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Oversight Panel Opens Bipartisan Probe On FOIA Compliance

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APHouse Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and ranking minority member Elijah Cummings have opened what could be the most comprehensive congressional review in three decades of executive branch compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

Issa is a California Republican, Cummings a Maryland Democrat. Such joint legislative efforts are rare on Capitol Hill, thanks in part to the hyper-partisan atmosphere found in Congress these days.

In a six-page, single-spaced letter dispatched earlier this week, Issa and Cummings posed multiple questions to Melanie Ann Pustay, director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy.

Pustay’s office is tasked with enforcing compliance among executive branch departments and agencies with the FOIA.

President Obama issued an FOIA memorandum on his first day in office in which he directed federal officials that the law “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

Read more from this story HERE.