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The Environmental Protection Agency, on the heels of the controversy at the IRS over missing emails, is facing a probe of its own over whether it improperly scrubbed text messages. The EPA inspector general's office announced this week it is launching an audit into the agency's policies for keeping text messages. The audit was prompted by a complaint from Republicans on the House science committee, worried the EPA may have "deleted thousands of text messages" that should have been preserved. Jennifer Kaplan, spokeswoman for the EPA inspector general's office, confirmed the complaint prompted the audit. "Our auditors were persuaded that...

Nicki Minaj is about as thick-skinned as they come, but she opened up about a decision that left her heartbroken back in her teen years. The 32-year-old rapper spoke to Rolling Stone about a pregnancy that ended in abortion while she was still in high school. "I thought I was going to die," she says when she found out she was pregnant. "I was a teenager. It was the hardest thing I'd ever gone through." According to Rolling Stone, the father of her unborn child was an older guy from Queens that she dated while still attending Manhattan's Fiorello H....

The Army has forwarded the results of its investigation of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl's disappearance to a four-star general who will decide if any disciplinary action is warranted. The general could decide on a number of possible outcomes, ranging from no further action to a possible court martial for the soldier held by the Taliban for five years after he left his post eastern Afghanistan. "After a thorough investigation and a comprehensive legal review, the investigation concerning Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been forwarded to a General Courts Martial Convening Authority, Gen. Mark Milley, commanding general of Forces Command," the Army said...

Two New York City police officers were shot dead "execution style" in Brooklyn on Saturday. Not much is known about the gunman, who was identified by officials as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, except that he was a suspected gang member from Baltimore who allegedly posted on social media that he wanted revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two black men that died at the hands of police. According to the New York Daily News, Brinsley, who was pronounced dead, had ties to the '"Black Guerilla Family" prison gang, which is also known as "Black Family" or the...

Six months after the military began an investigation into the disappearance of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his capture by the Taliban, which held him for five years, the results remain under wraps as senior Army officials determine what to do next. Bergdahl was recovered in Afghanistan by U.S. troops in a controversial swap for five Taliban officials on May 31. He had disappeared from his small patrol base on June 30, 2009, under a cloud of suspicion and fear as it became clear he been captured by militants. The Army in June launched a new investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance...

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in United States v. June, a case that has received little attention, but will have far-reaching implications. The case boils down to this: Can the federal government actively conceal material evidence in order to escape liability? Common sense says no. The Obama administration says yes. June involves the Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA) and a doctrine called “equitable tolling.” Prior to 1946, the doctrine of sovereign immunity prohibited citizens from filing suit against the government. That all changed in 1946, when a military plane crashed into the Empire State Building, killing and...

An abortionist who failed to report several cases of statutory rape to authorities as required by law may get off without a criminal record, paying a modest fee and serving a minimal amount of community service. Dr. Ulrich “George” Klopfer failed to report an abortion he performed on a 13-year-old girl in South Bend, Indiana, in 2013. Having sex with a minor 13 or younger in the state of Indiana is prosecuted as a felony, and abortionists must report performing abortions on young girls to the Department of Child Services and the Indiana State Department of Health within three days....

The “independent” watchdogs that are supposed to root out waste, fraud and corruption inside U.S. government agencies often help cover it up, according to a scandalous newspaper exposé that reveals sometimes they actually become the lapdogs of the agencies they’re charged with overseeing. Published this month by the capital area’s conservative newspaper, the four-part series exposes the state of inspectors general tasked with keeping an eye on the government. In all there are 72 inspectors general—with heads appointed by the president—thanks to a decades-old law that passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress. The idea is to have a completely...

Abortion giant Planned Parenthood wants to be thanked despite the fact that they murder unborn children, are founded in eugenics, and hide child sexual abuse. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Planned Parenthood’s president sent out an e-mail asking the abortion giant’s supporters to send their staff a “thank you card” because she believes that they provide, “care and compassion.” “The nurses and doctors, the receptionists and administrators, everyone — they just emit this complete sense of calm and compassion,” Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards writes,“They care, genuinely, about every single person who walks through their doors. All that matters is the...

The Department of Homeland Security is poised to ditch all records from a controversial network monitoring system called Einstein that are at least three years old, but not for security reasons. DHS reasons the files -- which include data about traffic to government websites, agency network intrusions and general vulnerabilities -- have no research significance.

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever. The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system. “They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

HHS Issues Special HIPAA Bulletin on EbolaPrivacyLaw360, New York (November 10, 2014, 6:24 PM ET) -- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday issued a bulletin reminding health care centers and others about what information can and cannot be disclosed about Ebola patients...

Has anyone stood up in a Presidential Press Conference and simply asked: "Mr. President, why have you sequestered virtual every document from your past?" And if it hasn't been asked, why not?

Ebola be Gone! At the urging of the Obama Administration, the Associated Press and other news outlets have agreed not to report on suspected cases of Ebola in the United States until a positive viral RNA test is completed. The administration and liberal activists were upset with coverage in the run-up to the midterm elections. [whining tweet from The New Yorker] Who said political hack Ron Klain was not a good pick for Ebola czar? In case you haven’t noticed… Media outlets are no longer reporting on suspected Ebola cases at the urging of the Obama administration. Downtrend reported: There...

November 4, 2014BREAKING: DOJ Turns Over 64,000 Fast and Furious Documents Held Under Obama's Executive PrivilegeKatie PavlichAfter years of legal battles between the House Oversight Committee and Attorney General Eric Holder, 64,280 redacted Operation Fast and Furious documents held under President Obama's assertion of executive privilege since 2012, have been turned over by the Department of Justice after an order from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson. The Justice Department was originally ordered to turn over a list of documents, better known as a Vaughn Index, with explanations as to why documents fall under executive privilege claims by November...

Scandal: Documents obtained by a government watchdog group list emails between the attorney general and his wife regarding a White House statement on the "gun walking" scandal the White House wants kept secret. The release of the government's Vaughn Index of documents that the administration withheld from the House Oversight Committee's investigation of Fast and Furious may not be the October surprise that the Obama administration hoped for. It raises more questions than it answers and shows the absurd extent of the administration's cover-up. On July 18, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ordered the Justice Department to produce, in...

Late last night the Department of Justice complied with a court order and turned over a list to government watchdog Judicial Watch , known as a Vaughn Index, of Fast and Furious documents being held from Congress and the American people under President Obama's assertion of executive privilege. Not surprisingly, DOJ failed to fully comply with the requirements of providing a Vaughn Index. The Vaughn index explains 15,662 documents. Typically, a Vaughn index must: (1) identify each record withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption. The...

[snip]Ron Klain, appointed last Friday by President Obama to direct the nation's response to the Ebola crisis, sent his regrets Monday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which had invited him to testify this Friday, a committee aide told Fox News. Klain was invited to join Defense and Health and Human Services department officials also slated to testify at the hearing. “The White House has informed us that he has not yet officially started and will not be able to attend Friday,” the committee aide told Fox News.

Congressman Peter King (R-NY) is outraged after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials dismissed Ebola after a "cursory" exam of an African man, who died on a plane to JFK Airport Thursday in a fit of vomiting. The unnamed 63-year-old had boarded an Arik Air plane out of Lagos, Nigeria the night before, a federal law enforcement source told the New York Post. While in the air, the man vomited in his seat repeatedly, and before landing in New York he died on the plane. The 145 frightened passengers were kept on board as CDC officials and police...

I read a lot of terrible abortion stories for my job, but some break my heart more than others.A few weeks ago, I came across a column in the New York Magazine written by an abortion doula. Curious, I clicked on the story and read about the young woman, who provides emotional support for women as they have abortions.I began to feel more and more horrified as I read about her work and her attempts to justify really terrible things. She writes: “A year ago, when I was just starting out, Mitchell met with me and the other trainees to...