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What do you get when you cross George Orwell's “Animal Farm” with John Belushi's “Animal House”? “Government Gone Wild”! If you assume that's the title of a porn movie about U.S. Secret Service agents cavorting with prostitutes in foreign countries, or employees of the U.S. Government Services Administration (the GSA manages federally owned property) whooping it up in Las Vegas at taxpayers' expense, Think Again. The hard truth is that the larger government grows, the more Orwellian and “Animal House” its conduct. Belushi's character, Bluto, exercised no greater restraint around free beer than did GSA Regional Director Jeff Neely and...

The former right-hand man for the official at the heart of the General Services Administration spending scandal pleaded guilty in a long-running embezzlement scheme just months before that fateful Las Vegas convention in 2010 -- a case one lawmaker now sees as a warning sign ignored. "They were living in some strange bubble," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said of GSA employees, in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." The senator, in announcing Sunday that he's urging the GSA inspector general to launch a probe of the entire agency for evidence of similar abuses, invoked the case of Daniel Voll. Looking...

White House press secretary Jay Carney accuses former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) of "politicizing" the Secret Service incident in Colombia, the GSA scandal and soldiers posing with dead Afghans for implying it represents a breakdown in White House oversight. "What they're doing is trying to turn these incident, one that's still under investigation into, you know, political advantage and obviously you recognize that, everyone here recognizes that," Carney said. Full transcript of the exchange below.

What can we learn from allegations against a half-dozen supervisors in the Government Services Administration for wasting, and perhaps stealing, taxpayer dollars on foolishness in Las Vegas, and against a dozen Secret Service agents for dangerously procuring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, while there to prepare for a visit by the president? If the allegations are true -- and they seem to be -- the behavior of these government workers reflects a view of government hardly consistent with the idea of limited government and public trust. The United States is the only nation in history founded on the principle that...

General Services Administration officials permitted a high-ranking employee to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on lavish travel junkets, despite an inspector general's dire warning about the executive's pattern of waste, fraud and abuse, officials said Tuesday.GSA Inspector General Brian Miller warned Martha Johnson, then head of GSA, in May 2011 about Neely's pattern of inappropriate and unbridled spending, including a $823,000 Las Vegas conference for 300 GSA employees in October 2010. A month later, a GSA official informed a White House lawyer about an investigation of "fraud and wasteful spending" at GSA Despite those warnings, Neely received a...

Tribune Media Services One doesn't have to be Tom Clancy to develop a plot of political intrigue that could actually have taken place in Cartagena. In 2007 an investigation by Telemundo and NBC News found that, "the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it."

Leadership: What do the GSA spending scandal, the Secret Service sex scandal and Leon Panetta's expensive weekend trips home have in common? They stem from a culture of irresponsibility set by the man in the White House. When President Obama came to Washington, he promised to usher in a "new era of responsibility," one where everyone would recognize "duties to ourselves, our nation and the world." But Obama has delivered the opposite. He's used the presidency to lavish himself and his family with hugely expensive perks. He's used the Treasury as a piggy bank to reward donors and friends. He's...

Twin GSA, Secret Service scandals pose new threat to ObamaBy Amie Parnes - 04/19/12 06:22 PM ET The General Services Administration (GSA) and Secret Service scandals have been a distraction for the White House as it moves toward the general election and fights the perception of an out-of-control government. The double dose of scandals has made it difficult for the White House to get its message out, and Republicans have piled on, pushing a tone of cynicism and disappointment with a government they say needs to be reined in. Obama’s likely opponent, Mitt Romney, said this week that he would...

The senior government executive who organized the lavish Las Vegas conference at the center of a General Services Administration spending scandal took dozens of trips for the agency. The boss's wife accompanied him on some of them — and taxpayers picked up the tab. Deborah Neely wasn't always just sharing husband Jeffrey E. Neely's hotel rooms at resorts from Las Vegas to the Pacific islands. She handled party arrangements, directed event planners to spend government money and arranged lodging for relatives on the GSA trip to Las Vegas in 2010, an unusual role revealed in transcripts of interviews that the...

April 17, 2012 G$A’s Vegas $candal Leads Straight to Harry Reid Bryan Preston And ultimately, to President Obama’s demagoguery. In 2009, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged the White House and individual federal agencies to lift government travel bans on “cities known as resort towns” like Las Vegas — the site of a controversial $823,000 General Services Administration conference in 2010.Reid and then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel exchanged letters in the summer of 2009, with Reid urging the administration to publicly support government meetings and conferences in cities like Las Vegas. Emanuel wrote to Reid that he...

Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We've graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the scandal is still small potatoes compared to the potential billions GSA is pouring down the Big Labor drain. Whistleblowers and an independent inspector general investigation estimate that the GSA's Sin City conference cost taxpayers an estimated $1 million in 2010. Washington bureaucrats squandered another $234,000...

The government official on the frontlines of the scandal involving a wasteful government conference, U.S. General Services Administration regional commissioner Jeffrey Neely, will invoke his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination, his lawyer Preston Burton tells ABC News. He won’t comment on the $822,751 conference, many of the expenditures for which the GSA Inspector General called “excessive” and “wasteful.” He won’t comment on the bizarre awards ceremony, or the commemorative coins, the mind-reader/motivational speaker. Mr. Neely bares a bit more in a photo collection on his wife’s Google+ page. There visitors can see photos of Neely staying in a luxurious suite...

When in doubt, President Obama is quick to push for more government regulations as a universal cure to all problems. No matter what the problem, be it health care, financial reforms, small business growth, taxation, Team Obama tells Americans that new regulations that will expand governmental control and operations, are vital. What Obama fails to realize is that more regulations piled atop the already huge regulatory thicket, are not the solution to the problems this nation faces. Moreover, new regulations and the corresponding expansion of government, are likely to create far more problems and continue to hobble economic growth. Daily,...

The General Services Administration official tasked with organizing a now-infamous $822,000 Las Vegas conference plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights ahead of a scheduled Monday grilling on the Hill. On Thursday, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) served a subpoena to require Jeff Neely to appear before the committee, according to Democratic committee documents obtained by POLITICO. Neely’s attorney on Friday informed the committee Neely will exercise his right against self-incrimination and requested not to attend the hearing. “Requiring Mr. Neely to travel from California to appear before the Committee when you have been advised that...

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Wednesday that five employees associated with the recently scandal-plagued Government Services Administration went to Hawaii for up to a week in 2011 to attend an hour-long groundbreaking on space leased by the federal government for the FBI. ... In October 2010, a GSA division spent more than $823,000 at an employee-training conference in Las Vegas. During the investigation and the release of the Inspector General's report this month, videos surfaced of employees do skits about the lavish spending.

Washington (CNN) – House Republicans released new information exposing excess spending by the General Services Administration beyond the now infamous 2010 Las Vegas convention. The agency appears to have spent $330,000 to relocate an employee from Denver to Hawaii, and likely "millions" on others over a two year period. That information comes from an interview with a GSA event planner conducted by an investigator with the GSA inspector general in March, 2011. The transcript of the interview was provided to CNN by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It is unclear from the transcript whether the government was reimbursed...

Latest Doc Dump Shows GSA's Johnson Planned to Meet with Solyndra but Changed MindBy John Parkinson | ABC OTUS News – 8 hrs ago The House Energy and Commerce committee released documents late Wednesday that show former General Services Administration administrator Martha Johnson had planned to meet with Solyndra in California at the same time GSA employees attended a lavish Las Vegas conference, but she changed her mind just days before her trip. An investigation into that conference and other wasteful spending at GSA led to Johnson's resignation earlier this month. Johnson did not attend the Solyndra meeting scheduled for...

The GSA Was Doing an In-Your-Face to Taxpayers RUSH: The GSA employees who made a big deal out of spending taxpayers money, mocking us. This was an in-your-face thing. This was done on purpose. These people are, in their minds, untouchable. Nothing can happen to them. They are government employees. This was in our face. This was designed purposely, these party videos and the messages attached, all the fun and all the mocking, using taxpayer money, that's an in-your-face move. This is not "look at me, notice me." There might have been some of that in there, but the target...

Fed Workers Caught Singing 'Go Green' Songs To Obama Fire it up 4/9/2012 | FOX NATION.COM "Martha and Bob to take the lead... You Know They Need Us So... POTUS wants a press event..." The Committee On Oversight & Government Reform have released a brand new video today, via their YouTube channel, that continues to expose the General Services Administration's (GSA) "lack of judgment exhibited during the 2010 Western Regions Conference." In this video, GSA federal government workers film a music video tribute to President Obama about their field office "going green" From the official press release... More GSA “American...