Government at Play
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration… has formed an "alliance" with a "national social justice advocacy organization for transgender people" primarily to promote gender-appropriate restroom access. …part of a larger OSHA program to partner with groups "committed to worker safety and health to prevent workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses." …
…Egypt is formally charging both Obama and Hillary for conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood in the overthrow of their government.…
Secretary of State John Kerry told his Iranian counterpart that he wished the United States had a leader more like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, according to comments made by a senior Iranian cleric and repeated in the country’s state-run media. …
…When Barack Obama came under fire for his mishandling of the horrific treatment of US veterans at the VA in Phoenix, and in fact throughout the entire system, he did what he usually did: deploy Susan Rice to come up with some optics. So we, as a people, were treated to the sight of the Compassionate Leader, who had, after monumental effort and at great personal cost, moved mountains to make sure that No Man Was Left Behind. We were told this action was in keeping with the highest traditions of the US Military, but we were not told that the Man Was Left Behind because he decided to walk away from his post and join the Islamic enemy. Six men, however, were left behind…
The Pentagon has declassified a document that was once labeled “top-secret,” which goes into sophisticated detail about Israel’s nuclear weapons program. The document was released quietly just prior to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to a joint session of Congress.
Israel has never officially confirmed or denied the existence of a nuclear weapon’s program within its borders. …
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is spending nearly $150,000 to test a “mindful eating intervention” on third graders in California.
A grant awarded earlier this month outlined the project that will use the methods of a Zen teacher to try to fight childhood obesity and turn kids into “change agents” to teach others how to eat healthily. …
[FTR: Mindful Webworks has no association with this "mindful eating disorder" thingy.]
The Senate on Tuesday destroyed any lingering hope President Barack Obama might have had for passing his budget plan through Congress this year, by voting down Obama’s plan 1-98. [via The Blaze]
"Hillary Clinton and The New York Times are already in cahoots. Seems that the New York Times posted Hillary Clinton’s state about ‘releasing all her e-mails from the State Department’ before the actual tweet from Hillary Clinton. Busted! …"
"On Tuesday, a former Department of Justice prosecuting attorney said that he believes then-Secretary of State Clinton — probably using her unofficial and illegal email system — was complicit in the leaking of classified intelligence regarding military operation plans formulated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program. …" [Emphasis added.]
"…we’ve always maintained a super-secret internal color-coded system. Following an analysis of Jen Psaki’s interview with Ms. Megyn regarding the unplanned evacuation of the Yemen embassy from yesterday’s post, I think I’ve finally hacked it.…"
Very Funny.
Congressman Steve Stockman Thursday filed a resolution directing the House Sergeant-At-Arms to arrest former IRS Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit Lois Lerner on charges of contempt of Congress. “Asking the Justice Department to prosecute Lois Lerner for admittedly illegal activity is a joke. The Obama administration will not prosecute the Obama administration. How much longer will the House allow itself to be mocked? It is up to this House to uphold the rule of law and hold accountable those who illegally targeted American citizens for simply having different ideas than the President. Democrats have openly stated the House has the powers to arrest those in contempt of Congress and imprison them in the Capitol. I don't want to go as far as Democrats in exercising the House’s powers to arrest. Ms. Lerner will be held in the D.C. jail. It's time to for House to stop tacitly endorsing this administration's illegal activity by refusing to hold him accountable. I expect Democrats to defend and even praise criminal activity. The question is whether Republican leadership will join them in mocking the House and breaking the law." [Powerful!]
Lois Lerner Email: We Should Be Careful What We Say In Emails And, Say, Just Curious: The IRS' Internal Instant-Message System Isn't Archived By Any Chance, Is It?
So first she says that we should be careful what we say in emails, and then asks if the OCS system -- an internal IRS instant-message system -- is also archived, as emails are.
She is told "no."
She responds: "Perfect." …
I'm sure she meant "I'll just change the default setting to archive these instant messages right now, in order to carefully preserve a record of official documents."
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R, TX) [offers $1,000,000 for Lerner's emails]: "We know those emails are out there, we know they can be found. We just need the people to help find them. This is a way to work around the attorney general to achieve justice," he continued, accusing Holder of helping hide the truth and calling for his resignation. "The attorney general can't say attorney general forever. We will get justice."
Two years after activists for same-sex marriage obtained the confidential tax return and donor list of a national group opposed to redefining marriage, the Internal Revenue Service has admitted wrongdoing and agreed to settle the resulting lawsuit. The Daily Signal has learned that, under a consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage. [Will the guilty parties be paying that $50,000, or will it just come from Tax Money? Just guess.]
EPA administrator Gina McCarthy admitted that some of the information and emails they are seeking were "lost" in another of the Obama administration's many "hard drive crashes." The admission prompted Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI) to ask, "What is it with bureaucrats and public employees…the hard drives crash?"
Two weeks later, she said the drive had been sent to a forensic lab for a final attempt, and a few days after that Ms. Wilburn delivered the fatal news: “The sectors on your hard drive were bad which made your data unrecoverable.”
Ms. Lerner replied with thanks, and her philosophical take that “sometimes stuff just happens.” [May it happen to you, you traitorous hag!]
The Internal Revenue Service told Congress Friday it has lost a trove of emails to and from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the agency's Tea Party controversy, sparking outrage from congressional investigators who have been probing the agency for more than a year.
The IRS said it cannot locate many of Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year.
Lois Lerner lost email narrative debunked by IT experts on The Mark Levin Show
The White House is making plans to transfer more detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay despite the mounting political furor over the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl
I’m a DOJ lawyer, so you obviously cannot use my name or any identifying information. But the idea that a “hard drive crash” somehow destroyed all of Ms. Lerner’s intra-government email correspondence during the period in question [2009-2011] is laughable. Government email servers are backed up every night. So if she actually had a hard drive fail, her emails would be recoverable from the backup. If the backup was somehow also compromised, then we are talking about a conspiracy.
"Forget about me [specifically]. Look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee," Holder told the crowd. "What attorney general has ever had to deal withl that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"
Back to Capitalism 101, to wit, that you will get a good deal from privatizing something only if the thing that you're privatizing allows for vigorous and open free-market competition. Absent that competition, privatization just leads to sloth and poor outcomes.
The vice president’s office contends that the loan not being approved until after the 2010 elections is proof that politics wasn’t involved.
“The fact remains that the Department of Energy made the loan guarantee based on its assessment of the project’s merits at the time, not on input from the White House or the office of the vice president,” Mr. Biden’s office told The Times.
The administration made similar arguments about the more than $500 million it awarded to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra LLC.
BrightSource — whose investors include Google Inc., BP Global, Chevron Corp. and Morgan Stanley — doesn’t dispute the fact that it touted the project to influence-peddlers and the most powerful in Washington. While admitting that it ramped up the pressure in early 2011, BrightSource says politics played no role and that Ivanpah was simply deemed a worthy candidate for federal dollars.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., called the recent slew of national-security leaks “probably the most damaging” in this country’s history, warning that people’s lives are in danger and families have already had to be relocated as a result of the public speculation about highly classified operational activities. …first tangible signs of operational fallout from the explosive leaks to the media, which have so far sparked accusations that Obama administration officials released the information for political gain ahead of an election.
Three firefighters are fired and the Baxter Springs fire chief is placed on administrative leave while an investigation is underway into the looting of Joplin businesses on the night of the May 22nd tornado.
Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household... anyone over 18 years of age who refuses to answer "any of the questions" on the census can be fined up to $5,000.... [IMPEACH! REPEAL! REVOLT!]
"It makes U.S. jobs more expensive," Ballmer said, "We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S." If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?
Employers would be required to offer health care to employees or pay a penalty - and all Americans would be guaranteed health insurance - under a draft bill circulated Friday by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's health committee.
A former U.S. State Department official and his wife have been arrested for spying for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, the Justice Department said on Friday.... A Justice Department official said they were motivated by a desire to help the Cuban government, not money....
With the world swirling about it, the House took a moment Thursday to honor pi, the Greek letter symbolizing that great constant in mathematics representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.