Gowdy Accuses Dem Counterpart of Blocking Benghazi Investigation

Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), the chairman of the special panel investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, voiced a new level of frustration with his Democratic counterpart today. Gowdy accused Representative Elijah Cummings of helping the Obama administration to hide Benghazi records. 

“Worse than inaction, you have enabled this failure to produce and contributed to a culture of intentional non-compliance and correspondingly incomplete public record [sic],” he wrote in a biting letter to the Maryland Democrat that accompanied the release of longtime Clinton loyalist Sidney Blumenthal’s emails to Hillary Clinton.

The letter marks a departure from the conciliatory tone that Republicans adopted with respect to Cummings after being embarrassed by the public deterioration of his relationship with then-House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa. Gowdy and Issa’s successor, Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz took the helm of their respective committees while promising to work closely with Cummings. 

Months later, Gowdy is running into the same problems that Issa faced. RELATED: Blumenthal’s E-mail to Hillary on Spinning Qaddafi’s Fall Cummings called for Gowdy to release the transcript of Sidney Blumenthal’s private testimony before the committee. Gowdy refused, citing the same concern that the transcript would tip off future witnesses “to lines of inquiry best not made public,” 

just as Issa had before him. “Your stated support of transparency has not been reinforced by your actions and has done nothing to spur the State Department to action so that we may complete the essential tasks we have been assigned,” Gowdy wrote. “If you are genuinely interested in helping accelerate the pace with which our Committee discharges its responsibilities, call President Obama or Secretary Kerry and ask for the complete, timely production of relevant documents. The failure to do so may allow one to conclude your call for transparency is more of a talking point than a committed principle.”

Via: National Review

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Report: Wait lists for vets even longer today than last year

The number of veterans seeking health care but ending up on waiting lists of one month or more is 50 percent higher now than it was a year ago when a scandal over false records and long wait times wracked the Department of Veterans Affairs, The New York Times reported.

The VA also faces a budget shortfall of nearly $3 billion, the Times reported in a story posted online ahead of its Sunday editions. The agency is considering furloughs, hiring freezes and other significant moves to reduce the gap, the newspaper reported.

In the last year, the VA has increased capacity by more than 7 million patient visits per year, double what officials originally thought they needed to fix shortcomings, the Times reported. However, the newspaper added, department officials did not anticipate just how much physician workloads and demand from veterans would continue to soar. At some major veterans hospitals, demand was up by one-fifth, the paper reported.

Citing interviews with department officials and internal department budget documents it had obtained, the Times reported that doctors and nurses have handled 2.7 million more appointments than in any previous year, while authorizing 900,000 additional patients to see outside physicians.

The Times also reported intense internal debate at the VA over a proposal to address a shortage of funds for a new, more effective but more costly hepatitis C treatment by possibly rationing new treatments among veterans. Certain patients who have advanced terminal diseases or suffer from a "persistent vegetative state or advanced dementia" would be excluded under that plan, the paper reported.

Via: Fox News

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Marines looking to deploy on foreign ships because the U.S. doesn’t have enough

Anyone who thinks Barack Obama never saw a dollar he didn’t want to spend . . . OK, that’s probably true, but there are some reasons for spending a dollar for which he doesn’t have much use. And as we all know, the military is at the top of that list. Every dollar spent on the Armed Forces is a dollar Obama can’t spend regulating industry, having the IRS harass his political opponents or illegally subsidizing health care premiums.

.So why build enough ships for the Marines to fulfill their responsibilities. President Leading From Behind doesn’t want the U.S. to be a global leader anyway, and hey, there’s always foreign ships! Maybe they can hitch a ride on them. Now this is the point where you probably think I’m slipping into the absurd to get your attention.

Nope:

Faced with a shortage of U.S. Navy ships, the Marine Corps is exploring a plan to deploy its forces aboard foreign vessels to ensure they can respond quickly to global crises around Europe and western Africa.

  The initiative is a stopgap way to deploy Marines aboard ships overseas until more American vessels are available, said Brig. Gen. Norman Cooling, deputy commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa.

  The Marines will be able to respond quickly to evacuate embassies or protect U.S. property and citizens, a need highlighted by the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

“There’s no substitute for U.S. amphibious” vessels, Cooling said. “We’re looking at other options” in the meantime, he added.

  The Marines have been working with Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and other close allies to determine the suitability of the foreign ships for U.S. personnel and aircraft.

  The units would be designed for limited operations and not major amphibious assaults. A ground force of about 100 to 120 Marines would be deployed along with three or four Ospreys, which fly like airplanes but can take off and land like helicopters.

  The U.S. Navy has 30 amphibious ships but says it needs 38 to fulfill war fighting requirements. It won’t reach that level until 2028 because of budget constraints, according to the Navy.

You know, this is funny, this talk of “budget constraints.” The U.S spends upwards of $3.7 trillion every year, and it’s been that way ever since 2009 when the Democrats passed an $862 billion spending blowout they claimed was a one-time “stimulus package,” but was actually added to the budgeting baseline for subsequent years. You probably didn’t notice that because the Democrat-controlled Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid simply stopped passing budgets. But they didn’t stop spending the money.

So if there are “budget constraints” for the Pentagon, it’s only because Congress and the administration went so completely hog-wild in every other aspect of the federal budget - running deficits north of $1 trillion five years in a row, and having an absolute conniption fit when Republicans tried to demand spending reductions in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

So now we don’t have enough ships for the Marines to do their jobs, and they’re seriously having to seek space on foreign ships.

Nice job, the 52 percent of you idiots who re-elected this guy. 

Via: Canada Free Press

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A disaster foretold — and ignored - LOpht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action

The seven young men sitting before some of Capitol Hill’s most powerful lawmakers weren’t graduate students or junior analysts from some think tank. No, Space Rogue, Kingpin, Mudge and the others were hackers who had come from the mysterious environs of cyberspace to deliver a terrifying warning to the world.The making of a vulnerable Internet: This story is the third of a multi-part project on the Internet’s inherent vulnerabilities and why they may never be fixed.Part 1: The story of how the Internet became so vulnerable Part 2: The long life of a ‘quick fix’ Your computers, they told the panel of senators in May 1998, are not safe — not the software, not the hardware, not the networks that link them together. The companies that build these things don’t care, the hackers continued, and they have no reason to care because failure costs them nothing. And the federal government has neither the skill nor the will to do anything about it.

Above: L0pht hackers Brian Oblivion, Tan, Kingpin, Mudge, Weld Pond, Space Rogue and Stefan von Neumann testify before a Senate panel in 1998. (Douglas Graham/Congressional Quarterly via Getty Images)

“If you’re looking for computer security, then the Internet is not the place to be,” said Mudge, then 27 and looking like a biblical prophet with long brown hair flowing past his shoulders. The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down “by any of the seven individuals seated before you” with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes.

The senators — a bipartisan group including John Glenn, Joseph I. Lieberman and Fred D. Thompson — nodded gravely, making clear that they understood the gravity of the situation. “We’re going to have to do something about it,” Thompson said.

What happened instead was a tragedy of missed opportunity, and 17 years later the world is still paying the price in rampant insecurity.

The testimony from L0pht, as the hacker group called itself, was among the most audacious of a rising chorus of warnings delivered in the 1990s as the Internet was exploding in popularity, well on its way to becoming a potent global force for communication, commerce and criminality.

Hackers and other computer experts sounded alarms as the World Wide Web brought the transformative power of computer networking to the masses. This created a universe of risks for users and the critical real-world systems, such as power plants, rapidly going online as well.

Officials in Washington and throughout the world failed to forcefully address these problems as trouble spread across cyberspace, a vast new frontier of opportunity and lawlessness. Even today, many serious online intrusions exploit flaws in software first built in that era, such as Adobe Flash, Oracle’s Java and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

“We have the same security problems,” said Space Rogue, whose real name is Cris Thomas. “There’s a lot more money involved. There’s a lot more awareness. But the same problems are still there.”

L0pht, born of the bustling hacker scene in the Boston area, rose to prominence as a flood of new software was introducing such wonders as sound, animation and interactive games to the Web. This software, which required access to the core functions of each user’s computer, also gave hackers new opportunities to manipulate machines from afar.

Via: Washington Post

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[CARTOON] Happy Father’s Day

Via: California Political Reviiew

PATHETIC: AP JUXTAPOSES GUN TO TED CRUZ’S FOREHEAD IN PHOTO

This Associated Press photo of Ted Cruz says all you need to know about mainstream media objectivity:

Now, compare to this other AP photo:

Via: The Right Scoop

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Hillary Clinton is going to lose: She doesn’t even see the frustrated progressive wave that will nominate Bernie Sanders

EnlargeIn this photo taken May 20, 2015, Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., poses for a portrait before an interview with The Associated Press in Washington. For Democrats who had hoped to lure Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren into a presidential campaign, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders might be the next best thing. Sanders, who is opening his official presidential campaign Tuesday in Burlington, Vermont, aims to ignite a grassroots fire among left-leaning Democrats wary of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is laying out an agenda in step with the party's progressive wing and compatible with Warren's platform _ reining in Wall Street banks, tackling college debt and creating a government-financed infrastructure jobs program. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)(Credit: AP)

Hillary Clinton went to New York’s Roosevelt Island earlier this month to relaunch her campaign for president. Her first kickoff fell flat, perhaps because she herself didn’t attend, opting instead to send a video greeting card in which people she still insists on calling ‘everyday Americans’ shared their life plans. (To go to school! Plant a garden! Get married!) She came on at the end to say she had plans of her own that include being president, and that she does it all for us.

She delivered a 45-minute speech that told us little more than that three-minute video. She still won’t say where she’d peg the minimum wage or if she’d ever rein in the surveillance state or get us out of Iraq. Most amazing is how she finesses the Trans Pacific Partnership that President Obama so covets. It’s the biggest deal in the history of commerce; its investor tribunals would substitute corporate for democratic will here and around the world — and Clinton hasn’t said boo about it. Some ask how she gets away with it. I’m not so sure she does.

Politicians have always ducked tough issues, but today’s Democrats are the worst. When the TPP came before the House, enough Democrats played it cute to leave the outcome in doubt till the very end. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t tip her hand until just before the vote. Many who voted no never said exactly why. Some want to curb currency manipulation. Some oppose the fast track process, others the secret tribunals or the intellectual property rules that actually restrain competition. If the caucus as a whole has a bottom line, no one knows what it is.

The TPP is a mystery because our leaders wish it so. We don’t know what’s in it because our president won’t let us read it, and not out of respect for precedent or protocol. George W. Bush showed us drafts of his trade agreements. We’re negotiating one right now with Europe, and Europeans get to read those drafts. If a comma gets cut from the TPP, hundreds of corporate lobbyists know in an instant. The only people who don’t know are the American people — and that’s only because our president thinks our knowing would ruin everything.

Via: Salon

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[VIDEO] Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga headlining Clinton fundraising spree

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton embarked Monday on an aggressive campaign dash across the United States, further fueling questions about whether the front-running Democratic presidential candidate is having a harder time than expected locking down the Left in the face of a surprisingly strong challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Clinton is scheduled to attend over 20 fundraisers between Monday and July 3 — including 11 in New York — according to a list obtained by Fox News.

The push comes as Clinton, like all candidates on both sides of the aisle, is required to file disclosures with the Federal Election Commission at the end of the quarter. The bottom line on fundraising is seen as a major sign of strength or weakness for candidates across the board.

The list of Clinton fundraisers coming up includes high-profile events with some pretty big stars, including a concert Wednesday in New York with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, as well as a much-hyped “Evening with Hillary and Jon Bon Jovi” in Red Bank, N.J.

Many of the events come with recommendations on contributions: $2,700 for an individual, the legal primary maximum; or, that an attendee raise at least $27,000.

Clinton is fundraising Monday in Indianapolis and Minneapolis, then heads on Tuesday to Chicago and and St. Louis for more money events. Over the weekend, she made appearances in California and Washington state.

Democratic strategists privately admit there is some apprehension about enthusiasm being a little less than expected for Clinton, though Clinton aides have said the major reason they’re pumping up the fundraising is to keep up with the slew of Republican candidates raking in big money.

Via: Fox News

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CALIFORNIA: Regulators Want All New CA Homes To Use ‘Zero Net Energy’

Placing a big bet on solar power and new regulations, state officials have rolled out ambitious new requirements aimed at slashing energy use in newly-constructed homes.

“Buildings built in California starting in 2016 will have to comply with the nation’s toughest energy conservation standards,” the Central Valley Business Times reported. “The California Energy Commission has unanimously approved building energy efficiency standards that it says will reduce energy costs, save consumers money, and increase comfort in new and upgraded homes and other buildings.”

In single-family homes, that would amount to a drop in energy use by almost a third, relative to 2013 standards, the CVBT noted.

Cost and consequences

The New Residential Zero Net Energy Action Plan, as it has been dubbed, aimed “to establish a robust and self-sustaining market so that all new homes are zero net energy (ZNE) beginning in 2020.” Critics have reiterated longstanding objections to a statewide push of this kind, especially around the prospect of rising energy costs.

“The most complex issue will be valuing the homes, which will cost more upfront,” according to Greentech Media. “Currently, the CPUC is quoting an extra $2 to $8 per square foot after incentives. There will likely need to be incentives or creative utility billing, especially if the homes are providing demand-side services as the CPUC envisions. The CPUC says that the utilities are on board and will have to evaluate locational benefits of having net-zero homes on the system.”

As Greentech Media noted, planners have built in some would-be loopholes designed to make progress on ZNE without imposing the new standards too quickly: “Homes can be ZNE-ready, rather than actually being energy-neutral. That could mean they are solar-ready, for instance, but perhaps don’t have solar panels already installed.”

But even supporters of the plan have cautioned that executing on its goals may be a daunting challenge. At the Huffington Post, one analyst noted, “as California’s clean power goals rise, new capacity could begin to slow.”

Via: California Political Review

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After the Power Grabs: Gov Doesn’t Care What Happens to Us – It’s On to the Next Grabs

How many times has government royally messed up something?  And not fired anyone?  Or done anything that remotely resembles improving their performance?

Oh so very often.  In part because they don’t care – once they have the power, they don’t care what happens to us.  In part because they are too busy planning their next grabs.

A pristine example?

Federal Union Says (Office of Personnel Management) OPM Breach Hit Every Federal Employee

The OPM Breach Is a Catastrophe

First the government must own up to its failure. Then the feds should follow this plan to fix it.

Good luck with that.

China Blamed for Massive Breach of US Government Data

Except:

China Gets Pass from Obama on ‘Devastating’ OPM Hack

Did government yet again ignore the rules they mandate we follow?

Reacting to Chinese Hack, the Government May Not Have Followed Its Own Cybersecurity Rules

At least the government immediately realized the breach, right?

Officials: Chinese Had Access to U.S. Security Clearance Data for One Year

The considerable lag time between breach and discovery means that the adversary had more time to pull off a cyber-heist of consequence….

Well it’s just the one, right?

Second Data Hack Might Be Bigger Than First OPM Breach

The second intrusion “involved a different system and a different set of data, and I think you could logically conclude that … a larger amount of data and information was potentially affected,” (White House spokesman Josh) Earnest said.

Government vigilance – there’s nothing like it.

Via: Human Events

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[VIDEO] Did Hack Include Files of CIA and Military Personnel? OPM Director: ‘I Would be Glad to Discuss That in a Classified Setting’

(CNSNews.com) - When Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta testified in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week she said that the personnel records of about 4.2 million current and former federal employees had been “compromised” by a “cyber intrusion” into the OPM’s computer systems.

She also said that “an additional OPM system was compromised.”

“These systems included information based on the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, as well as other individuals,” Archuleta told the committee under oath.

When Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz asked Archuleta whether this included the files on military and CIA personnel, Archuletta gave him an identical answer to each question.

“I would be glad to discuss that in a classified setting,” she said.

Here is part of the exchange between Achuleta in Chaffetz in which Archuleta says she will discuss “in a classified setting” whether the hack involved files of military and CIA personnel:

Chaffetz: Ms. Archuleta, my question for you is how big was this attack? How many federal workers have been compromised? We've heard 4 million, we've heard 14 million. What's the right number? Your microphone, please.

Archuleta: Sorry. During the course of the ongoing investigation into the cyber intrusion of OPM that compromised the current, the personnel records of current and former federal employees that we announced last week, that number is approximately 4.2 million. In addition, in the investigation of that breach, we discovered, as I mentioned in my testimony, an additional OPM system was compromised. And these systems included information based on the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, as well as other individuals.

Because different agencies feed into OPM background-investigation systems in different ways, we are working with the agencies right now to determine how many of their employees were affected. We do not have that number at this time but we will get back to you once we have more information.

Chaffetz: What's your best estimate? Is the 14 million number wrong or accurate?

Archuleta: As I said before, we do not have an estimate because where this is an ongoing investigation.

Chaffetz: How far back does it go? The information that your telling me--you have former employees, current employees, and potential employees. So, how far back does this information go that was in your system?

Archuleta: Thank you for that question, Mr. Chaffetz. I would have to respond, again, it's because it's an ongoing investigation.

Chaffetz: It has nothing to do with impeding an investigation. You should know what information you have and what you don't, so this is not going to slow down any investigation. People have a right to know. The employees have a right to know. How far back does your information database go that was compromised?

Via: CNS News

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FlashCritic: China Gets Pass from Obama on ‘Devastating’ OPM Hack to Preserve Strategic Dialogue and Summit

The Obama administration continues to play down one of the nation’s most damaging Chinese cyber espionage operations in order to maintain a dialogue with China and host a summit for its leader this fall.

Weeks after the discovery that millions of personal records on federal workers was stolen by Chinese hacker in an intelligence operation, the president and his advisers failed to condemned the state-sponsored security breach whose damage continues to worsen almost weekly.

The Obama administration, in a sign of its apparent unwillingness to take any steps against China for the hacking, will go ahead with the hosting this week of the latest Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington. The dialogue is known for producing little in the way of tangible results of regular meetings between senior U.S. and Chinese officials. The questionable diplomacy is said its supporters to advance U.S. interests. However, keeping secret the Chinese connection to the cyber attack is likely to encourage further attacks.

Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, made no mention in a briefing for reporters whether the Chinese role in the OPM hack would be discussed at the dialogue, which begins Tuesday.

Instead, he said cyber security would be discussed in the Strategic Security Dialogue that he said, “really is germane to building a relationship of trust between the U.S. and China. It’s an important common concern.”

China has denied any role in the OPM attack, as it has done in the past when Chinese hacking has been exposed on numerous occasions.

“We don’t always see eye to eye, but the fact is that global challenges require that we cooperate,” Russel said.

Via: WFB

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Sick of Political Pork, Two Former Hill Staffers Launched $10 Million BBQ Business

Back in early 2006, a Senate budget debate raged into the night. Around 1 a.m., Hill staffers Heath Hall and Brett Thompson found themselves facing a serious challenge: They could not stomach another night of delivery pizza.

What was worse, they grumbled, they couldn’t think of a single spot offering decent barbecue in the entire Washington, D.C. area.

For Kansas City native Heath, and barbecue convert Brett—the son of a man who was literally allergic to charcoal and made up for it by grilling his way through some 300 recipes in “Weber’s Big Book of Grilling” as an adult—enough was enough.

“The Senate was debating pork barrel spending projects and earmarks, and we were debating dinner,” Hall says. “We were talking about how we wished we had some barbecue. So we’re thinking pork barrel spending, barbecue, and that’s where the name came from.”

Fast-forward nearly 10 years and Pork Barrel BBQ products are in over 8,000 stores in the US, Canada, Asia and Europe; there’s a Pork Barrel restaurant in Alexandria, Va.; and, including that staff, they employ around 50 people. The brand is synonymous with first place finishes in barbecue competitions nationwide.

Hall, who speaks slowly and thoughtfully, a slight drawl hinting at his Southern-Midwest roots, contemplates this boom with the laid-back approach of someone deciding what to order off a lunch menu: “When we started putting together our first product, we thought ‘Oh, this will be small and fun and for our friends maybe.’”

He laughs, at both their naiveté and the whirlwind success they never could have expected, adding, “It’s been crazy.”

Via: Daily Signal

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Hillary’s All FOR Voter Suppression!

 It’s like the movie “Groundhog Day.” We are condemned to be forever repeating the same old things, but with slight variations and plot twists. Endlessly. That’s what it’s like watching that Golden Oldie, Hillary Clinton.

What do you think?

Now, she’s beating the drum about voter suppression. She’s trying to convince black voters that the mean old Republicans are trying to prevent them from exercising their hard-won franchise.

What do you think?

To do this, she has to erase a lot of history. That shouldn’t be too hard. Just put a hundred and fifty years of documented evidence in the same place she put her hard drive. If only Nixon had thought of this one.

What do you think?

Hillary seems to forget that every vote cast against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution was cast by a Democrat. Even Hollywood managed to get that much right. The movie “Lincoln” shows opposition to Amendment XIII that ended slavery being led by New York Congressman Fernando Wood—Democrat. (Of course, the movie also shows President Lincoln tussling with moderate Republicans over the Thirteenth. Really? Name just one.)

Civil Rights laws? The nation desperately needed them in the 1860s after the Civil War. Democrats led the opposition to Civil Rights laws in both Houses of Congress.

What do you think?

From the 1860s to the 1960s, opposition to Civil Rights laws was led by the Democrats. Only Democrats. That’s a lot of history Hillary has to erase. Maybe she can get old pal Sidney Blumenthal to help her do the shredding of documents. Or perhaps she can persuade Sandy Berger to run over the National Archives and stuff the inconvenient truths into his trousers.

What do you think?

Let’s take anti-lynching legislation for starters. Beginning in 1922, House Republicans led the effort to make lynching a federal crime. They passed a bill to that effect, but it ran into a filibuster in the Senate — led by (you guessed it) Democrats. So strong was the opposition of certain Democrats to anti-lynch laws that it took thirty years and the Emmett Till tragedy to overcome their opposition.

Via: Daily Caller

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