Free Republic

When Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) gets criticized for their controversial practices, they usually offer vague statements and empty reassurances. Last week was no exception. I suppose my recent Girl Scout article hit a nerve. Last week, GSUSA released a statement attempting to respond to the concerns I presented. I thought it was interesting that they responded to fairly insignificant me, a lone teenage girl. You see, Missouri Right to Li­­fe, a major player on the pro-life stage, recently issued a very informative and well-documented policy statement about GSUSA. GSUSA has been curiously quiet about those serious concerns. As far as...

It’s hard to find two women more pro-abortion than Marlo Thomas and Amy Richards. But the Girl Scouts love ‘em. These two feminists headlined a recent Girl Scout-sponsored live screening and panel discussion of the “acclaimed documentary MAKERS,” a feminist, pro-abortion, video narrative of “trailblazing” women whose “pioneering contributions” changed America. What kind of pioneering contributions? I’ll get to that in a minute. (Amy Richards’ ‘contribution’ particularly deserves comment.) But, first, a bit more about the Girl Scout-sponsored event. Billed as an opportunity to “celebrate women and girls,” the screening and discussion took place on May 9, 2013 in New...

<p>A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit.</p> <p>EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse -- used for inventory storage -- is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.</p>

Just a few blocks away from Nationals Park the federal government holds a below-market lease at 2100 2nd Street, SW, Washington D.C. The 600,000 square foot lease doesn’t expire until May 15, 2018 and is valued at least $48 million in rent and likely represents another $40 million in savings below market rates for commercial real estate. But, in a time of tight budgets, when taxes have been raised on all Americans to support Washington’s addiction to spending, bureaucrats at the General Services Administration (GSA) have decided to…wait… abandon the cost-effective space, move the employees to a new, higher rent...

Tell me who you hang out with and I’ll tell you who you are. Anna Maria Chávez, CEO of Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA), offers this pithy saying as her favorite quote. In order to figure out who the Girl Scouts are, I suppose we must follow Ms. Chávez’ logic and look at the organizations that GSUSA associates with. A good place to start would be the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). WAGGGS has member organizations across the globe, the largest of which is GSUSA, contributing approximately a quarter of the ten million members that belong to...

"For the most part, the Obama administration has successfully avoided bad publicity, but it's now being faced with a string of scandals at the worst possible time" The Obama administration has largely been heralded as the most scandal-free in modern history. But now, right in the middle of an election year, President Obama is being saddled with a string of embarrassing — and potentially damaging — incidents. Most recently, The Los Angeles Times released photos of U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses of Afghan insurgents. While the revelation was deeply troubling, that scandal has mostly reflected poorly on the military....

There is certainly no ‘waste not, want not’ badge for Girl Scouts of America, at least not in Southern California where over 13,000 boxes of the organization’s famous cookies were bulldozed to bits in a warehouse as bulldozer operators gleefully yelled ‘Goodbye girl scout cookies!’ After the May incident, when the cookies were sent off to a landfill, leaders of area food banks are up in arms about the so-called service organization's wastefulness. Bruce Rankin, Executive Director of Santa Monica’s West Side Food Bank, watched footage from CBS 2 in Los Angeles, and was shocked as two heavy-duty construction vehicles...

A state pro-life group in Missouri is warning pro-life advocates to be careful of the connections between the Girl Scouts organization and the largest abortion business in the nation.For years, pro-life groups have exposed the links between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood. Now, Missouri Right to Life says that link bears more attention as pro-life citizens across the country have become increasingly concerned about the connections.“After careful examination and consideration, the board of Missouri Right to Life has voted to issue the following policy statement,” Missouri Right to Life tells LifeNews. “Because Girl Scouts USA promotes, both directly and...

Two employees at the General Services Administration have stonewalled Breitbart News, and another has mysteriously "disappeared" as the investigation into the State Department "no bullets" contract with Blue Mountain Group, the British firm that provided security at the American mission in Benghazi heats up.

Sources have told the Daily Telegraph that just five unarmed locally hired Libyans were placed on duty at the compound on eight-hour shifts under a deal that fell outside the State Department's global security contracting system. Blue Mountain, the Camarthen firm that won a $387,000 (£241,000) one year contract from the US State Department to protect the compound in May, sent just one British employee, recruited from the celebrity bodyguard circuit, to oversee the work. The compound was overrun by a mob of Islamic extremists on the morning of September 12 in an apparent planned attack that resulted in the...

Again the University of Notre Dame is under pressure to officially recognize a ‘Gay-Straight Alliance’ (GSA) club on campus.  Pro-homosexual activists are using the incremental, step-by-step approach to wear down Catholic resistance and boil the proverbial frog slowly. According to The Observer, the Office of Student Affairs is “currently reviewing a proposal to create an official gay-straight alliance (GSA) at Notre Dame.”  Although similar applications have been denied in the past, the student-run newspaper prints an ambiguous response from university president Fr. John Jenkins on the issue.  In a recent interview, he says:  “I think it’s time for a fresh...

The White House Big Dig is finally wrapping up, but the Big Reveal is proving to be a pretty big letdown. After nearly two years and $86 million worth of noisy and disruptive construction, the West Wing has emerged from its visual seclusion remarkably unchanged. And deep underground, whatever has been built there remains shrouded in mystery. As the massive underground construction project in front of the White House West Wing ends, the mystery deepens as to what was actually built there--and what's coming next. As the massive underground construction project in front of the White House West Wing ends,...

The General Services Administration’s Julia Hudson was ready to party last month, inviting roughly 1,200 federal employees to celebrate the second anniversary of her appointment as the scandal-scarred agency’s National Capital Region administrator. Refreshments would be served in Hudson’s seventh-floor downtown D.C. office suite, including a cake bearing her image, GSA sources familiar with the event’s planning tell POLITICO. But on the morning of the event, the GSA’s top leadership abruptly canceled it. They were unaware of Hudson’s plans until the night before — and determined to avoid yet another embarrassment to an agency still suffering from the infamous 2010...

Full title: General Services Administration – with the Blessing of the Obama White House – Tells Law Enforcement to “Stand Down” and Not Enforce the Law Against Occupy Protestors According to Records Uncovered by Judicial Watch (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicating that the General Services Administration (GSA), with the blessing of the Obama White House, instructed law enforcement officers to “stand down” and not arrest “Occupy Portland” protestors who were in violation of the law. The records, obtained pursuant to a November 11, 2011, Freedom...

Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, revealed last week that the General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency at the center of a luxury spending scandal, had awarded $44 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses last year, far more than previously reported. Though GSA staff constitute just one percent of the federal workforce, agency bonuses made up 10 percent of government bonuses paid out in 2011. Mica’s analysis of GSA compensation data found a number of bonuses worth as much as $50,000 or more. One employee received an $80,000 bonus, in addition to $180,000 in...

The local Girl Scouts council paid for a sign-language interpreter to attend Megan's Girl Scout meetings, a camping trip and other outings. But a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday on the 12-year-old's behalf alleged that the Girl Scouts abruptly disbanded Megan's Schaumburg troop early this year in retaliation for her mother's efforts to keep the 100-year-old organization paying for the interpreter. ....Megan, who has been deaf since birth, joined the Girl Scouts in kindergarten, her mother said. At the time, her mother requested that an interpreter be present at Scouting activities, and the Girl Scouts agreed to that, she said. But...

Barack Obama has made it clear that he is a big believer in big government and has adopted a economic plan to run trillions of dollars in annual deficits for as long as possible. Obama remains steadfast against making any dramatic cuts in government spending and when pressed to announce some half-hearted effort to cut the size and the cost of government, his administration has resisted the cuts, and has transformed even the puniest efforts to cut federal spending into even greater demands upon taxpayer funds. The Obama Administration’s cost cutting efforts within federal agencies are so ineffective, they often...

$20K for Drumsticks? GSA Blasted for One-Day Quarter-Million Dollar Awards ConferenceBy John Parkinson Jul 19, 2012 3:21pm The General Services Administration is back in Congress’s crosshairs today after the GSA’s inspector general reported to Congress on another installment of “egregious waste of taxpayer dollars” at the beleaguered government agency. Just months after the agency was rocked when a lavish 2010 Las Vegas conference was exposed by the agency’s inspector general, GSA is now facing scrutiny for wasteful spending at another performance awards ceremony for its employees. This time, the agency is being investigated for spending $268,732 on a one-day conference...

0 inShare Fr. Frank gives a blessing to Nicole, Madelyn, Gabe and Rochelle at the GirlScoutsWhyNot.com booth In addition to hearing Lila Rose speak at a general session during the National Right to Life Committee convention a few weeks ago, I also met Rochelle Focaracci and her daughter, Madelyn. Rochelle was a Girl Scouts troop leader, and Madelyn was a Girl Scout. In February 2009, though, one day after World Thinking Day, Rochelle and Madelyn left the Girl Scouts for good. Their reason for leaving was that in 2008, Rochelle had been contacted by her sister about a connection between...

More than a month after he was put on leave when a video surfaced showing him joking about the lavish spending — $823,000 — at a taxpayer-funded General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas, a top official at the agency has quietly returned to his job. David Foley, deputy commissioner of the GSA's Public Buildings Service, was one of the speakers at the convention who has come under sharp congressional scrutiny after an audit uncovered massive waste at the gathering, including a talent show, open bar and red-carpet party. Introduced before his speech at the conference as a “platinum big...