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(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A former Veterans Affairs supervisor has been sentenced for stealing up to $20,000 of government property, a recent Justice Department release announced. From 2010 to 2013, 48-year-old Venita Godfrey-Scott directed her employees to use materials and supplies intended for VA medical center upkeep on her own house. These taxpayer-funded home improvement projects included “a deck in her backyard, carpet installation, and various kitchen, bathroom and basement improvements.” She also instructed employees to buy other necessary materials with her government-issued credit card, and had them work on these projects during normal work hours, when they were being paid by the VA....

Sales of subprime mortgage bonds have withered since the financial crisis, but fresh concerns are arising as issuance of some other types of securitisations surges. Sales of bonds backed by loans used to finance car purchases undertaken by the least creditworthy borrowers have reached pre-crisis levels in the US, prompting a Department of Justice investigation. While losses on subprime auto asset-backed securities (ABS) remained low during the crisis, there are concerns that new specialised lending companies are making riskier loans which are then being bundled into the bonds. Fitch Ratings has been hired to rate only four of the 29...

The European Union's climate chief says it is a pity Prime Minister Tony Abbott will not attend a major UN climate meeting in New York next week. World leaders including US president Barack Obama and UK prime minister David Cameron will attend the UN secretary-general's Climate Summit on September 23. Mr Abbott will not be attending, despite the fact that he is due to attend a UN Security Council meeting in New York the next day. EU commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard said it came as a surprise. "It is, of course, I think, a pity that not everyone...

The highly touted, government-subsidized, unreliable, intermittent and expensive "alternative power" schemes currently in vogue are nothing but a phenomenal waste of money

Democratic state Sen. Roderick D. Wright, convicted earlier this year on felony perjury and voting fraud charges, was sentenced Friday to 90 days in county jail and barred for life from holding public office. After turning down Wright's request for a new trial, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy also sentenced the senator to three years' probation and 1,500 hours of community service. He was ordered to surrender and begin serving his sentence Oct. 31. Some observers have speculated that Wright will serve little or no time behind bars, given his heretofore clean record, the nonviolent nature of...

JACKSON — The Mississippi Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Oct. 2 as a candidate tries to revive a lawsuit that challenged his Republican primary loss to six-term Sen. Thad Cochran. The high court has released a schedule for the appeal by state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Justices said they will handle the case quickly, as McDaniel requested. Justices gave McDaniel’s attorneys until Friday to file legal arguments in his appeal. They gave Cochran’s attorneys a Sept. 24 deadline to file arguments. The McDaniel camp must file a response to Cochran’s arguments by Sept. 26. Judge Hollis McGehee dismissed McDaniel’s lawsuit...

At least three elite golf courses in the wealthy New York community of Westchester turned up their noses at President Obama and declined to let him play during his Labor Day travels to the area, citing concerns of inconveniencing their high-profile clients, a source told New York media. Among the courses: The Trump National Golf Club, the Winged Foot and Willow Ridge, NBC 4 New York reported. The courses would have had to shut down to accommodate the president and his entourage — including Secret Service — during one of their busiest holiday weekends.

By Richard Davies @daviesnow Sep 9, 2014 9:03am Home Depot (HD) Hack Could Be Biggest Card Breach Ever Morning Money Memo: The huge hacking attack against Home Depot’s payment systems could turn out to be the biggest breach of any retailer’s data so far. The company confirmed the data break-in but did not say how many credit and data cards are affected. The total could be as much as 60 million, according to several experts. That would be far more than the total number of cardholders impacted by the breach at Target stores. There is no evidence that any debit...

Head of Marshals Service in Chicago reassigned AP , Associated Press Sep. 9, 2014 4:02 AM ET CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. Marshals Service has announced it has replaced the head of its Chicago office for the past four years in a re-organization, appointing an interim chief for its high-profile northern Illinois district. Darryl McPherson, who was named to the top Chicago post by President Barack Obama in 2010, was recently reassigned to the same office's judicial security division, said Drew Wade, an agency spokesman in Washington. Wade, however, declined to discuss why the 17-year Marshals Service veteran was moved...

The CEO for Fiat Chrysler (remember how an Italian company helped save Detroit?) is begging Americans to kill more polar bears, pollute the air, and continue to melt the polar ice caps… Or something. There’s also an outside chance that he’s just being a responsible CEO by trying to keep his company out of bankruptcy. Whatever the reason, Sergio Marchionne is asking consumers to steer clear of the company’s all electric Fiat.Under the direction of Marchionne, Fiat Chrysler is apparently taking a new approach to keeping the company solvent: Sell cars that people actually want to buy. And he is...

Donald Trump wants hackers to hack into President Obama's college records to check his place of birth. The controversial real estate mogul tweeted Saturday morning: Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Attention all hackers: You are hacking everything else so please hack Obama's college records (destroyed?) and check "place of birth" 5:06 AM - 6 Sep 2014 1,595 Retweets 1,362 favorites Trump's birther remarks have been widely criticized. The administration released Obama's birth certificate in 2011, putting to end unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that Obama wasn't born in the United States. Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

And while my predisposition is to less intervention, I do support intervention when our vital interests are threatened. If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS. I would have called Congress back into session—even during recess. This is what President Obama should have done. He should have been prepared with a strategic vision, a plan for victory and extricating ourselves. He should have asked for authorization for military action and would have, no doubt, received it. Once we have decided that we have an enemy that requires destruction, we must...

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

It begins well enough. A trail of admirers follow Franken as he tours Bryant Avenue, listening to the activists he meets. Behind an ice cream truck, he shakes hands with a disabled vet and, after a lengthy chat, asks an aide to take down the old soldier's contact information. "North Minneapolis is very important," Franken tells us. "We unfortunately have, as a metropolitan area, some of the greatest disparities in terms of everything -- education, employment, and health care. All of this stuff is connected." He expounds on the same point on stage, noting the need to fund early childhood...

It’s that time of year again – when the little juvenile delinquents, future prison inmates, and functionally illiterate junior members of the free shit army pick up their “free” backpacks and “free" school supplies they will never use and shuffle off to the decaying prison like schools in the City of Philadelphia to eat “free” breakfasts and “free” lunches, while being taught government sanctioned pablum by overpaid mediocre union teachers. It’s a repeat of every year for the Phila school district. As the school year approaches they are shocked to report a massive deficit and beg the State of PA...

Multiple banks say they are seeing evidence that Home Depot stores may be the source of a massive new batch of stolen credit and debit cards that went on sale this morning in the cybercrime underground. Home Depot says that it is working with banks and law enforcement agencies to investigate reports of suspicious activity.

Geoff Sherrington writes: National Geographic Magazine had a Global Warming issue in September 2004. New instruments have given new data. By planning now, NatGeo can make a revised issue 10 years later, in September 2014. The 2014 edition should aim to correct what is now known to be wrong or questionable in the 2004 edition. We can help. Here are some quotes that need attention. The first three have some commentary, as is suggested for the remainder.1. “The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80% since 1912.” P.14 This might have been correct at the time of...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reinstated a case brought against Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Iowa by one of its former employees who alleges the abortion giant defrauded and abused taxpayer funds. Susan Thayer, a former facility director of Planned Parenthood, filed a lawsuit in 2011 against the federally funded abortion provider, but a district court judge dismissed the case the following year, states Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents Thayer. According to a press release by ADF, the lawsuit claims that Planned Parenthood submitted “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” to Medicaid...

...Obama arrives in Milwaukee Monday for a rally at Laborfest. Five-thousand people are expected at the Summerfest grounds for the ticketed event. On Saturday the Milwaukee Labor Council handed out tickets to union members and their family..... Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke will meet privately with Obama on Monday. Campaign spokesperson Joe Zepecki said in a statement, “Because the President’s Monday visit to Milwaukee is for an official White House event and not a campaign event, her participation in the public portion of events would not be appropriate.”

Sometimes voter-fraud deniers are forced to discuss the truth of voter fraud. This happened today at the Washington Post (“Fairfax officials say some people may have crossed Va.-Md. line to vote twice in 2012“). While the Post deserves credit from emerging from its cocoon of voter-fraud denial, it deserves scorn for bungling the emergence. Reporter Susan Svrluga notes that “tens of thousands of voters” were registered to cast ballots in both Virginia and Maryland. That’s true, and it is a big problem nationwide. Hundreds of thousands of people are registered to vote in multiple states, and many of them have...