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It was bad enough that the 2012 defense authorization bill signed by President Obama set America on a downward spiral of military mediocrity.
He also issued a signing statement, something he once opposed, saying that language in the bill aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on the U.S. Standard Missile-3 — linchpin of our missile defense — might impinge on his constitutional foreign-policy authority.
Betraying our secrets is easy for a president who betrayed allies Poland and the Czech Republic to placate Moscow.
As we gut our military budget and scrap major weapons systems, Russia continues to rearm. It recently announced the deployment of its new RSM-56 Bulava submarine launched ballistic missile — a three-stage weapon that can carry up to 10 individually targeted warheads.
A just-released Syracuse University study indicates that the government is overstating its enforcement of the immigration laws by a staggering amount.
According to TRAC, Syracuse’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has overstated the number of immigration law violators apprehended by a 5:1 ratio. And that’s the good news. Deportations were overstated by 24:1 and detentions by 34:1.
TRAC says that ICE has represented, not only in press releases but in congressional testimony, that in 2005 it apprehended 102,034. The records it produced, however, show only 21,339. It further claimed 166,075 deportations but documented only 6,906; and said it had detained 233,417 when the paperwork shows only 6,778.
TRAC notes that the Obama administration delayed complying with its FOIA request for nearly two years (it was submitted in May 2010). TRAC argues that ICE has either geometrically inflated its performance or grossly violated FOIA in withholding information. ICE, according to TRAC, has also attempted to obstruct compliance with FOIA by claiming that Syracuse University is not an academic institution, by insisting that previously provided statistical data was suddenly considered “unavailable,” and by charging over a half-million dollars in processing fees.
The new strategy is based purely around the roughly $490 billion in cuts to the defense budget over 10 years that Congress decided on last summer. According to those familiar with the report, the future U.S. military will have the ability to fight only one major land war at a time. Any addition battles would have to be fought primarily from the sea and air.
Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent?
Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer.
How did it happen? Buried within the enormous 2009 stimulus bill were provisions encouraging states to develop data systems for collecting copious information on public-school kids. To qualify for stimulus money, states had to agree to build such systems according to federally dictated standards. So all 50 states either now maintain or are capable of maintaining extensive databases on public-school students.
The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status. In its view, public schools offer a golden opportunity to mine reams of data from a captive audience.
The department’s eagerness to get control of all this information is almost palpable. But current federal law prohibits a nationwide student database and strictly limits disclosure of a student’s personal information. So the department has determined that it can overcome the legal obstacles by simply bypassing Congress and essentially rewriting the federal privacy statute.
Last April, the department proposed regulations that would allow it and other agencies to share a student’s personal information with practically any government agency or even private company, as long as the disclosure could be said to support an evaluation of an “education program,” broadly defined. That’s how the CDC might end up with your daughter’s health records or the Department of Labor with your son’s test scores.
And you’d have no right to object — in fact, you’d probably never even know about the disclosure.
The White House’s relationship with the reporters who cover it has blown hot and cold throughout history. And this year, some reporters say, things have taken a decidedly frosty turn.
When a reporter gets something wrong or is perceived as being too aggressive, the response is often swift and sometimes at top volume, reporters say.
“They shoot first and ask questions later,” said Julie Mason, who has reported on the George W. Bush and Obama White Houses for the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Examiner and Politico. In one of the e-mails that reporters have dubbed “nastygrams,” White House press secretary Jay Carney branded one of Mason’s stories “partisan, inflammatory and tendentious.” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, reacting to comments Mason made in a TV discussion, sent her an e-mail that included an animated picture of a crying mime — a visual suggestion that she was whining.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense confirmed during a Tuesday morning conference call with members of Congress that the administration will be reducing the National Guard troop presence on the border with Mexico by 75 percent, according to Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe.
The briefing featured U.S. Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner David V. Aguilar, Border Patrol Chief Michael Fischer and DOD Assistant Secretary Paul Stockton.
The administration representatives revealed that the National Guard’s presence on the border will be reduced from 1,200 to 300 troops and their budget will decrease from $120 million to $60 million.
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According to Michelle Obama’s press office, the first dog was planning to go to Hawaii with the first lady and the Obama daughters. The Associated Press reported that he in fact had made it there. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser quoted an eyewitness who said he had seen the Portuguese Water Dog having his walk.
So what is Bo doing back in Washington shopping at PetSmart?
Either all these reports are mistaken, or Bo was told his vacation was over and that he had to return to the White House to keep a lonely president company – and participate in a silly photo op presenting Obama as an average guy who likes to head out to the PetSmart.
SolyndraGate was no isolated case of corrupt government misspending. The U.S. Navy was just forced to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels from an Obama-connected firm at an outrageous $16 per gallon.
The massive Obama stimulus was supposed to generate millions of jobs, but the $535 million loan guarantee it gave to solar panel maker Solyndra on the eve of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy illustrated the fundamental incompetence of Obama’s neo-Keynesian economic ideology.
Now we find the Navy partnering with the Agriculture Department to purchase hundreds of thousands of gallons of alternative biofuel in place of standard JP-5 fuel for Navy aircraft — the biggest federal purchase of biofuel ever.
It’s part of the White House’s “we can’t wait for Congress” strategy as the 2012 election year looms. But JP-5 typically costs less than $4 a gallon. If a family on a budget started filling up with $16-a-gallon gas, it might want to adopt the motto, “we can’t wait to go broke.”
