Two years after the departure of President George W. Bush, the White House has still not appointed 12 of the mandated 69 agency Inspectors General, and is leaving open slots at several scandal-plagued agencies, including the departments of justice, labor and urban development. (more)
Correction: Mann didn’t “ask” Wahl to delete the emails, he just forwarded him a request to delete the emails. (more)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory failed to properly track cocaine, amphetamines, opium and black tar heroin that undergoes forensic evidence testing and other uses, leaving personnel unable to determine if the drugs had been misused or misappropriated, according to a federal report released Thursday. (more)
1.) Desperate Dems attempt to rebrand the Obamacare repeal effort — House Republicans politely declined to remove the word “killing” from the “Repealing the Job Killing Health Health Care Law Act,” so Democrats decided to come up with a phrase of their own. “The Patient’s Rights Repeal Act” is what they settled on. Incidentally, the GOP’s name is pretty accurate: In June, the Boston Globe reported that “a 2.3 percent excise tax on companies that supply medical devices like heart defibrillators and surgical tools to hospitals, health centers and ambulance services will cost medical device manufacturers an estimated $20 billion in new taxes over the next decade. And they say that will force them to lay off workers and curb the research and development of new medical tools.” A report released by Senators Coburn and Barasso in October found that the outlook was equally bad in other industries. Meanwhile, “patient’s rights” is pure hogwash–as any depressed owner of a now useless health savings account will tell you. (more)
A Metro safety report compiled in September garnered media attention Tuesday after the blog Unsuck DC Metro reported on a section that described employees using Metro tracks as a toilet. (more)
1.) House Republicans have not announced what they would cut from budget if they had power to cut budget — “House Republican leaders are so far not specifying which programs would bear the brunt of budget cutting, only what would escape it: spending for the military, domestic security and veterans,” reports the New York Times. “The reductions that would be required in the remaining federal programs, including education and transportation, would be so deep — roughly 20 percent on average — that Senate Republicans have not joined the $100 billion pledge that House Republicans, led by the incoming speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, made to voters before November’s midterm elections.” Even with security/defense/old people/catfood cuts off the table, there are still a few agencies that could stand to lose some weight: FCC, both DoE’s, FDA, IRS, NASA, &c. We could go on, but why bother? “Even if adopted by the House, the Republicans’ budget is unlikely to be enacted in anything like the scale they envision, since Democrats retain a majority in the Senate and President Obama could veto annual appropriations bills making the reductions.” (more)
1.) Incoming congress knows that water wears down the rock not by force, but with constant falling — “To prevent deficit reduction from being used as an excuse for tax hikes, Republicans are getting rid of the ‘Pay-As-You-Go’ rule and replacing it with a ‘Cut-As-You-Go’ rule,” reports The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward. “The rule will require that any legislation that seeks to increase mandatory spending (which is spending that once added to the federal budget recurs year after year and is thus permanent) cuts spending by a similar amount.” If successful, this would change the entire economy of the House. “As [Blunt] put it, ‘Let’s turn the activists for big government on each other, instead of letting them gang up on the taxpayer,’” said Majority Leader John Boehner. “Through this public discussion, we might end up finding out that neither program has a whole lot of merit in the first place.” Instead of trading horses, people will start shooting them. This means fewer horses to feed. (more)
Everybody knows about ACORN, the dead, but not really dead activist group charged with all sorts of improprieties and illegalities, the most significant of which is voter fraud, including registering Mickey Mouse to vote. (more)
One of the former U.S. attorneys who was targeted in a report by the Department of Justice for overspending on travel expenses soon is demanding correction and an apology from the agency. (more)
Vice President Joe Biden is huddling with the Obama administration’s stimulus oversight czar and a key former Clinton administration scandal guru after postponing the Obama White House’s first face-off with top GOP oversight chairman-to-be Rep. Darrell Issa. (more)
While the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery and indentured servitude in 1865, both practices are alive and well today in U.S. Government combat zone contracting. That’s despite the fact that a law that was designed to end these abhorrent practices has now been in place for ten years. (more)
The inspector general for tax administration at the Treasury Department will investigate the allegation that an Obama administration official may have improperly accessed and discussed private taxpayer information. (more)
Glenn Fine, Inspector General of the Justice Department, is planning to investigate “the enforcement of civil rights laws by the Voting Section of the Department’s Civil Rights Division,” according to a letter he sent today to Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Frank Wolf, R-Va., which was obtained by The Washington Examiner. (more)
U.S. monetary support for groups lobbying in favor a new proposed constitution that legalizes abortion in Kenya may be greater than previously thought. (more)
The U.S. government agency that prints passports has for years failed to resolve persistent concerns about the security risks involved in outsourcing production to foreign factories, a joint investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity has found. (more)
Federal officials who oversaw drilling in the Gulf of Mexico accepted gifts from oil companies, viewed pornography at work and even considered themselves part of industry, the Interior Department inspector general says in a new report (pdf). (more)
So what happens when you watch, nay, ogle copious amounts of porn while on your computer at work? Well, if you work for the Securities and Exchange Commission … absolutely nothing. (more)
WASHINGTON — A group of House Republicans is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission’s inspector general to investigate whether agency officials engaged in unauthorized disclosure of charges against Goldman Sachs. (more)
GM proudly reported on Wednesday that General Motors Co. repaid $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada. GM Chief Executive Ed Whitacre wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the company is paying back the loans “in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule.” Whitacre said no one — neither taxpayers nor the company itself — was happy that GM needed government loans. “We believe we can best thank the citizens of the U.S. and Canada by making sure that their investments are hard at work every day, building high-quality, fuel-efficient vehicles our customers can count on,” Whitacre wrote. (more)
In a letter to sent today to DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Rep. Darrell Issa alleged that the Department of Health and Human Services is unprepared for the demands of Democrats’ impending health-care bill, and bases that supposition on the department’s performance during the last year. (more)
