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The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, located in Brooklyn, was on lockdown shortly after 4:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon after an anthrax threat, a court official confirmed to TPM. A source in the courthouse passed along an email from the court clerk informing court personnel of the threat. “An envelope was received with an anthrax threat and a white power and was released in the main clerk’s office on the first floor. Only one staff member came into direct contact with the powder,” the email read. “At this time and until we get an all clear...

Republicans want to limit the number of bullets federal agencies can purchase so American gun owners can buy more.

WASHINGTON, April 27 (UPI) -- The U.S. House voted overwhelmingly to keep the Federal Helium Program, set up after World War I to guarantee U.S. dirigibles would have the gas they needed. The vote Friday was 394-1, The Washington Post reported. The helium program has been a target of small government advocates for decades. President Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate it and President Bill Clinton put it on his reinventing government target list -- along with aid to beekeepers and wool producers. He succeeded in killing the latter two programs but they were revived a few years later, the Post...

Lax marijuana laws may soon become a reality in the United States. ... National support is rising for this cause.[5] Cohen’s proposal comes as a bipartisan coalition of House representatives have sponsored the Respect Marijuana Laws Act.[6] It would exempt businesses that comply with state marijuana laws from federal prosecution.[7] Moreover, Kentucky senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul recently supported the passage of a regulatory framework allowing industrial hemp in their state.[8][9] McConnell is a figurehead for the GOP establishment. Paul represents the rising libertarian caucus. Ergo, the Republican Party may soon change its position on pot.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Twenty-four current and former Internal Revenue Service employees have been charged with stealing government benefits, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The IRS employees were indicted on charges that they illegally received more than $250,000 in benefits including unemployment insurance payments, food stamps, welfare, and housing vouchers, the U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said in a news release. Prosecutors say 13 of the IRS employees face federal charges of lying about being unemployed while applying for or recertifying their government benefits. They each face up to five years in prison if convicted of making false statements to receive...

Markets were mostly closed on Friday. When they re-opened on Monday, investors seemed unmotivated. Neither the Dow nor the price of gold moved appreciably. Gold ended the day right on the $1,600 mark. Not much to report in other words. Here in Argentina, most things were closed on Monday… and closed again today, too. Who do these Argentinians think they are… French? snip But Bernanke? Is there any evidence than any central banker from the beginning of time until 2 April 2013, added a centime or a farthing to the wealth of the world? snip How about Nancy Pelosi or...

The Federal Government will never be won back. Focusing effort on it is to squander time that could be spent preparing defense of state, family and freedom against tyranny of evil. Conservatives and Repubhlicans are operating from Delusions. Let it Go or Die... (Video)

Despite deficit woes, Obama pushes forward on bizarre projectsWhile the U.S. Senate, for the first time in years, has adopted a budget, it includes $1 trillion in new taxes, adding to the record deficit. The budget also doesn’t align with a House plan that spends hundreds of billions of dollars less. Both, however, project spending more than the government receives far into the future. But even so, frogs, Uganda and pine cone projects apparently are so important to the Obama administration that it’s worth borrowing money and paying interest to fund them.

From the “That’s Not Already the Rule?� File: Citing figures indicating that more than 100,000 federal employees owe more than $1 billion in federal taxes, a House committee on Wednesday approved legislation that would require the firing of government workers who are “seriously tax delinquent.”The legislation, introduced by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, advanced through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It now has to pass the full House to be implemented into law.“Most taxpayers file accurate tax returns and pay the taxes they owe on time, regardless of their income,” Chaffetz, a Republican, said during the hearing Wednesday. “Federal...

(CNSNews.com) - Federal spending was up $30.5 billion in the first five months of fiscal 2013 compared to the first five months of fiscal 2012, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury. The federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30. In the first five months of fiscal 2012 (October through February), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, total federal spending was approximately $1,473,999,000,000.00. In the first five months of fiscal 2013, total federal spending was $1,504,547,000,000.00. Thus, federal spending was $30,548,000,000.00 more in the first five months of fiscal 2013 than it was...

Not so long ago in this republic, most parents of school-age children would frequently visit grocery stores where they would use their own money to buy things like peanut butter and jelly, and bologna and cheese to make lunches for their kids to haul to school in brown paper bags. It was an American tradition. Now, like other great things about America, brown-bag lunches are being driven to extinction by politicians seeking inordinate government control over our lives. In fiscal year 1969 (which started in 1968), there were approximately 47,906,000 American children enrolled in elementary and high schools,

Empty Boast: As we have noted before in our Issues & Insights pages, President Obama has taken credit for an energy boom he had nothing to do with. A government agency now confirms what many have known to be true. The Congressional Research Service has released a report, "U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production in Federal and Non-Federal Areas," that corroborates what we've said. "All of the increase (in oil and natural gas production) from FY2007 to FY2012 took place on non-federal lands, and the federal share of total U.S. crude oil production fell by about seven percentage points,"...

WASHINGTON - From military personnel to postal workers, federal employees are on the hook for $3.5 billion in unpaid 2011 taxes, according to a report obtained by WTOP. The amount is a nearly 3 percent increase compared to the year before. About 312,000 employees owe the government a total of $3,519,410,517, according to the Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative (FERDI) released on March 8 by the IRS. The total number of delinquent workers dropped between 2009 and 2010 but jumped more than 11 percent in 2011. The number of delinquent civilian taxpayers is the highest since 2005. Roughly 9.8 million people...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of federal workers and retirees who owed delinquent income taxes jumped by nearly 12 percent in 2011, the Internal Revenue Service said Friday. Nearly 312,000 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3.5 billion in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2011, the agency said. The year before, about 279,000 workers and retirees owed $3.4 billion. Overall, the 9.8 million workers included in the data had a delinquency rate of 3.2 percent. That's better than the general public. The IRS says the delinquency rate for the general public was 8.2 percent.

A federal judge has struck down an Idaho law prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks, ruling that the so-called fetal pain law violates U.S. Supreme Court prohibitions against unduly impeding a woman’s ability to seek an abortion before her fetus is able to live outside the womb. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise declared the 2011 law -- similar to limits adopted in at least seven other states -- to be unconstitutional in a ruling that took the Idaho Legislature to task for acting against the advice of its own attorney general. “The Idaho Legislature’s enactment of the [fetal...

Additional clips of a United States Department of Agriculture sensitivity training class feature USDA employees being told to recite, “If we work for a federal agency, we’ve discriminated in the past.” The clips, released by the conservative government accountability group Judicial Watch Thursday evening, are the second installation of revealing footage obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request the organization made last May. According to Judicial Watch, the documents reveal the sensitivity training was delivered to USDA employees at least 16 times last year in an attempt to boost employees’ “emotional intelligence.”

As the final deadline for creating state health insurance exchanges passed Friday, New Jersey, Tennessee and Florida said they would not work with the federal government on establishing insurance markets required under ObamaCare. Exchanges are online markets required under the federal health care law where consumers will be able to buy individual private policies and apply for government subsidies to help pay their premiums. In his announcement Friday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said his administration is committed to complying with ObamaCare, but "only in a manner that is the most effective and efficient for the residents of New Jersey,...

The president of the American Federation of Government Employees says a one-percent increase is "absolutely unconscionable." The head of the largest federal employee union said Saturday that President Obama's proposal to increase pay for federal employees by 1 percent was "absolutely unconscionable" and "simply not enough." "It is not enough to allow federal employees to make up lost ground from two-plus years of frozen pay. It is not enough to allow workers, most of whom earn very modest salaries ranging from $24,000 to $70,000, to maintain living standards. And it is not enough to send a message with any kind...

President Obama will propose a 1 percent pay raise for federal civilian employees in the administration’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal, the Washington Post has learned. At the same time, the House plans to vote soon on legislation that would extend the current freeze on basic pay rates through the end of calendar 2013. The freeze was originally set for two years and scheduled to expire at the end of last year, but it was extended until a temporary budget measure expires next month. When the measure expires, federal employees will receive a 0.5 percent raise for the remainder of 2013,...

The Republicans are doomed. Conservatism is over. President Obama is conducting a mop-up operation at this point. That’s the basic consensus in places like New York City; Washington, D.C.; and other citadels of blue America. And let’s be fair, liberals have every reason to gloat — a little. The GOP has its troubles. Long-term demographic trends; often-irrational animosity from Hollywood, the media, and academia; a thumbless grasp of the culture on the part of many Republicans: All of these things create a headwind for the party and the broader conservative movement. But here’s the weird part. That’s all true of...

Mr. Lyndon Larouche, a well respected journalist and political activist received word from his sources within the United States government that President Barack Hussein Obama has been indicted by a Federal Court

Paper checks will be abolished for all federal benefits, including Social Security, eventually, but people who currently receive checks will have some extra time to adjust to the new rules. Individuals who apply for Social Security, Veterans Affairs or other federal benefits on or after May 1, 2011, will have to select an electronic payment method -- either a debit card that will be reloaded each month or direct deposit to a bank account. The direct deposit option, which is safer than a check and involves no fees, is the best option for most people. But current beneficiaries who receive...

A Texas lawmaker says he plans to file the Firearms Protection Act, which would make any federal laws that may be passed by Congress or imposed by Presidential order which would ban or restrict ownership of semi-automatic firearms or limit the size of gun magazines illegal in the state, 1200 WOAI news reports. Republican Rep. Steve Toth says his measure also calls for felony criminal charges to be filed against any federal official who tries to enforce the rule in the state. "If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person...

RUSH: "Federal regulators for the first time are laying out rules," this is from the AP, "aimed at making sure that people who borrow money for mortgages can afford to repay them." Do you realize what this means? Do you realize what this means? "Federal regulators for the first time..." It's 2013! For the first time? This is a tantamount admission. Nobody's calling it this, except I, El Rushbo, except me. I'm telling you: It's a tantamount admission that the subprime mortgage mess was exactly what it was. It was people who were given loans that could never pay 'em...

Federal agents charged four Georgia men they say are part of a fringe militia group with plotting to attack government officials with explosives and the biotoxin ricin, prosecutors in Atlanta announced Tuesday. A government informant recorded the men discussing plans to manufacture ricin, a highly poisonous substance derived from castor beans, and attack Justice Department officials, federal judges and Internal Revenue Service agents, according to court papers released Tuesday afternoon. Prosecutors said the public was never in imminent danger. All four suspects were in custody and are scheduled to make their initial court appearances Wednesday in Gainesville, about 50 miles...

Some days, it seems like there’s just no limit to what you can do with an executive order. The most recent addition to the list of many hundreds of EOs signed by Barack Obama lifts a freeze on the pay rates for certain DC denizens. The largest beneficiary of this largess (skimpy though it may be) is a name which may come as a surprise. President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President...

My Cato Institute colleague, Chris Edwards, put together a remarkable (and depressing) chart showing that federal bureaucrats get almost twice the level of compensation as workers in the productive sector of the economy. Defenders of the bureaucracy (including a federal pay panel dominated by bureaucrats) claim that government employees actually are underpaid because…well…just because.My modest contribution to the debate was to put together a chart based on the Labor Department’s JOLTS data, which shows that bureaucrats are far less likely to voluntarily leave their jobs than folks in the private sector, which is very strong evidence that they are being...

It’s no secret that federal workers are feeling worn down. They’ve had their salaries frozen and are at the center of a partisan debate over the value of their work. A report due out Thursday, based on the largest sample ever of the workforce of 2 million, confirms a steady decline in morale and ebbing commitment. Despite positive feedback at some agencies, job satisfaction across the government has hit its lowest point in almost a decade. Just 52.9 percent of employees at the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, for example, are satisfied with their jobs, making it the lowest-ranked large...

Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments.

Federal officials take down 132 websites in 'Cyber Monday' crackdownBy Brendan Sasso - 11/26/12 12:20 PM ET U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and European officials seized 132 websites on Monday for allegedly selling counterfeit merchandise in a coordinated crackdown timed to coincide with the holiday shopping season. It is the third straight year that the government has seized websites on "Cyber Monday" — the marketing term for the Monday after Thanksgiving, when many online retailers offer steep discounts and promotions. ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit coordinated with officials from Belgium, Denmark, France, Romania, the United Kingdom and the European Police...

Federal employees—who work on average a month less than private-sector workers and get paid more—are lobbying for higher pay. Government unions know that Congress is looking for ways to nip and tuck the federal budget, and they’re counting on being left out of the deal. “The Federal-Postal Coalition—a group representing more than two dozen federal employee unions—pleaded with Congress on Monday to spare their members in any deal related to the ‘fiscal cliff,’” Government Executive reports. Government unions went all out to re-elect the President—the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spent more than any other outside group on Obama’s campaign....

Should federal workers get a raise? With salaries and benefits paid to the government’s civilian workers totaling $271 billion in 2011, deciding whether to extend the freeze enacted last year on cost-of-living increases has important budgetary consequences. Unfortunately, the government’s methodology for comparing pay is too flawed to offer real guidance. The Federal Salary Council, an advisory body of academics and leaders of public employee unions, suggested last month that federal workers are underpaid by an average of 35 percent relative to nonfederal employees. The council’s data come from the “President’s Pay Agent,” the bureaucratic entity that conducts the federal...

wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both. Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the “fiscal cliff” is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a “cliff” but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out...

AFGE to Congress: Oppose Any Cuts to Federal Employee CompensationNov. 15, 2012, 11:54 a.m. EST WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The largest federal employee union--the American Federation of Government Employees--is urging Congress to oppose any additional cuts to federal employee compensation during deliberations to address deficit reduction. **SNIP** "Federal employees have given up $60 billion (over 10 years) in the unprecedented two-year pay freeze, and the 0.5 percent raise delayed to April 2012 saves an additional $28 billion. That's a total of $88 billion," Moten added. "Adding the $15 billion in savings from the UI bill's 2.3...

On November 9, 2012 the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) issued a press release indicating that “Workers at the Transportation Security Administration made history today when they voted to ratify the first-ever collective bargaining agreement at the agency. The agreement between the American Federation of Government Employees and TSA was ratified with a vote of 17,326-1,774.” The AFGE represents over 650,000 employees of the federal government. It is the largest union for non-postal federal employees and the largest union for D.C. workers who report directly to the mayor. Brian Koenig writes that the AFGE “coerces members to fork over...

Capital and labor will flow to the best-performing states, pushing the lagging ones to raise their games. India is a country of huge regional diversity and massive income inequality, with 22 official languages and 28 states, each with different social, cultural and political traditions, as well as vastly varying levels of industrialization and infrastructure. Under IndiaÂ’s constitution, states have always held considerable powers, playing a leading role in law and order, electricity, education, land, and roads. Several states have begun holding regular summits to advertise themselves to foreign investors, while chief ministers jet off to places such as China and...

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is proud to announce the launch of a breakthrough database that provides a dramatically improved measure of the federal regulatory burden. RegData is the first database to count the actual number of restrictions in the Code of Federal Regulations, as opposed to the former method of simply counting total pages. The interactive tool enables a far more focused view of the regulatory burden by measuring the growth of regulation by industry. While previous methods provided an idea of the growth of overall regulation, they told nothing about how those regulations affected specific sectors...

Three years after the Department of Education announced a contest called Race-to-the-Top for $4.35 billion in stimulus funds, some parents, teachers, governors, and citizen and public policy groups are coming to an awful realization about the likely outcomes: • A national curriculum called Common Core; • Regionalism, or the replacement of local governments by federally appointed bureaucrats; • A leveling of all schools to one, low national standard, and a redistribution of education funds among school districts; • An effective federal tracking of all students; • The loss of the option of avoiding the national curriculum and tests through private...

A large majority of likely voters believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax -- even if it is as little as one percent of what they make. Seventy-nine percent say everyone should pay something, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats. According to the IRS, last year approximately 41 percent of tax filers did not pay federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center estimates that will increase to 46 percent this year. Most voters (73 percent) are at least somewhat familiar with...

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations...

On Thursday, members of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis took a tour of the Bakken area. The trips was planned so that Bank President Narayana Kocherlakota and his staff could gather more information on what is currently happening in the region from an economic standpoint. “Obviously, what’s happening here in the Bakken —we took a tour today between Minot and Williston—is quite special,” said Kocherlakota in meeting with the press after the tour. “Just the level of economic vitality is quite different her relative to anywhere else.” With all the struggles in the national economy, western North Dakota is...

Government workers at all levels are taking a larger share of all compensation and getting paid more than in the past. Yet, an editor at a national magazine claims government is the smallest since the 1960s. "We now have our smallest government in 45 years," said Jordan Weissmann, an associate editor at The Atlantic. Weissman based his opinions on an analysis done by The Hamilton Project, a public policy offshoot of The Brookings Institution. But Weissmann’s claim is based on the number of government jobs as a percent of the total population. It deserves a closer look. James Hohman, fiscal...

The spending plan proposed by Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s pick as the Republican vice presidential candidate, has drawn strong opposition from federal employees. Under the proposed House Republican budget, which Ryan sponsored as chairman of the Budget Committee, savings from the federal workforce would total $368 billion over 10 years. The two-year freeze on basic federal pay rates, scheduled to expire at the end of this year, would be extended through 2015 for a total of five years. “The Path to Prosperity,” as the budget plan is named, also calls on federal workers to make an...

House to vote on bill terminating federal workers who don't pay their taxesBy Pete Kasperowicz and Bernie Becker - 07/30/12 09:27 AM ET The House will vote on legislation as early as Tuesday that would require the federal government to terminate workers with "seriously delinquent" tax debts. The bill, which also would prohibit the government from hiring people who are late on their tax payments, tries to deal with the roughly 100,000 federal workers who are usually behind on their taxes each year. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the bill’s sponsor, has cited IRS data indicating that these workers owed a...

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) are rallying this week to pass a bill known as the “Marketplace Fairness Act” that will impose sales tax on internet purchases under the bill of “Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief.” The new tax is a deadly spike being driven into our already handicapped economy. A tax on internet sales would harm America in a time when the economy is already fragile. Many companies have used the internet to sell their products in a quicker and more efficient means. Consumers will now see the prices they pay on...

In just three short years, President Obama and Secretary Duncan have quietly been laying the ground work to put this country on the path toward a national education system. While many are celebrating the premature death of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a greater threat looms on the horizon which has received little attention. Make no mistake about it; through waivers and federal grants, this administration is changing our K-12 educational system as dramatically as our health-care system but without the statutory authority granted by our elected officials.

The House oversight committee voted Wednesday to demand a broad audit of the Federal Reserve system by congressional investigators - a major move lawmakers said is designed to bring accountability to the murky workings of the independent board. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who turned the push for an audit into a powerful campaign slogan and whose criticism of the Fed’s monetary policy drew hundreds of thousands of voters into the political process.

Pensions = $11.7 Billion Health Care = $1.5 Billion Education = $1.6 Billion Defense = $53.3 Billion Welfare = $3.0 Billion Protection = $0.2 Billion Transportation = $4.4 Billion General Government = $0.7 Billion Balance = $3.5 Billion Interest = $7.7 Billion Other Spending = $9.6 Billion Total Federal Spending = $97.3 Billion Total Federal Revenue = $99.8 Billion Federal Budget Surplus = $2.5 Billion

The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military. The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same...