Free Republic

A report from the Social Security Administration Inspector General (IG) found 4,317 instances where a non-citizen was able to obtain two Social Security numbers, including 542 instances that happened since 2001. “We identified 4,317 instances where the Numident record of 2 SSNs assigned to non-citizens contained matching first, middle, and last names; dates and places of birth; gender; and fathers’ and mothers’ names,” the IG reported on Dec. 10, 2012. Numident—which stands for Numerical Identification System—is the master file of applications for social security numbers. The IG found that SSA had issued multiple numbers to 4,317 non-citizens from 1981-2011. The...

The government’s special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (the “TARP” bank bailouts) – Neil M. Barofsky – wrote a stunning editorial for Bloomberg yesterday, concluding: Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again. Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we hope...

When Eric Holder ordered Justice Department Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar to begin an investigation of possible wrongdoing in Operation Fast and Furious it was with just one purpose in mind—enable the Attorney General and other DOJ officials to refuse to answer questions or provide documentation concerning the “gunwalking” debacle because there is an “ongoing investigation.” It’s a neat little legal trick the Obama Regime has pulled on more than one occasion. But although Holder used this dodge of his own creation to keep congressional committee members at bay for nearly a year, it appears the OIG report is just about...

A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all. Ms. Gyamfi made no secret of her hatred of conservatives and Republicans when I worked in the Voting Section from 2001 to 2002. Later, when I moved to...

Remember the Gerald Walpin affair? Republican Sen. Charles Grassley does. Walpin was the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the organization that runs the AmeriCorps service program. In June 2009, Walpin received a call from Norman Eisen, who was then the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. Eisen told Walpin he had an hour to either resign or be fired. Eisen's call appeared to violate the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which is designed to protect inspectors general from political interference. The Act requires the president to give Congress 30 days'...

We had to know: What sort of muffin could we bake if we spent $16 a pop? How good is a $16 muffin? Find out for yourself Last week's news that the government supposedly paid $16 apiece for breakfast muffins at a Justice Department conference set off critics of government spending. Hilton Worldwide, the hotel company that hosted the 2009 confab in Washington, disputes the accuracy of the claim in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general. The hotel called it an accounting thing, explaining that the price included various drinks and gratuity charges, in addition to the muffins....

The acting U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction resigned unexpectedly Thursday afternoon, removing the White House's only real contender for the post and injecting new uncertainty into a troubled watchdog office. Herb Richardson, who assumed his post in February, told National Journal in an interview that he will be leaving for a job in the private sector. Richardson had been in the job for just under six months and was undergoing a frustratingly long wait to see if the Obama administration would formally tab him for the post on a permanent basis. People familiar with the matter say that...

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine should finish one major piece of business before his announced retirement next month: the investigation into Justice's Civil Rights Division.On Sept. 12, Mr. Fine announced that while he's precluded by law from investigating a "specific piece of litigation" such as the Black Panther voter-intimidation case, "we do have the authority to conduct [a] broader program review ... regarding the Civil Rights Division's enforcement of voting rights laws." Mr. Fine vowed to review "whether the Voting Section has enforced the civil rights laws in a non-discriminatory manner." Substantial testimony, backed by a record of...

When the Obama White House announced its moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP-Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in April, the administration insisted that they followed the recommendations of its panel of experts. This story blew up when the panel of experts insisted that they had not recommended any kind of blanket moratorium, and that one simply wasn’t necessary to address the deficiencies at MMS that contributed to the catastrophic fire and spill. A new report from the Inspector General probing the White House response accuses the administration of rewriting key sections of the report in order to...

A government watchdog has issued a report saying it found no evidence that the Obama administration illegally funded groups seeking to legalize abortion in Kenya for the first time with changes to the constitution -- a conclusion that immediately was blasted by one of the administration's top critics on the issue. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, the top Republican on the House Africa panel, said the report by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) inspector general was "poorly researched, superficial, incomplete and a whitewash." "This was not a well-researched investigation," he said in a written statement. "We had...

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division — in the wake of the New Black Panther Party case — is being investigated by the department's office of inspector general to determine whether voting section employees have been harassed for participating in specific investigations or prosecutions. In an end run around policy barring IG investigations of Justice Department litigators, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said his office will review what types of cases are being investigated, whether there have been changes in enforcement policies and procedures, and whether the civil rights laws are being enforced in a non-discriminatory manner. Christopher Coates, the...

The Securities and Exchange Commission inspector general has agreed to a request from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to probe the timing and political motivations of the SEC’s $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs in a mortgage securities fraud case:m SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz agreed in April to a request from U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, that he probe whether politics prompted the lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. (Snip) Aside from the timing, many observers scoffed at the settlement. The $550 million settlement is pocket change compared to Goldman’s $162 billion in assets

A report to be released tomorrow by the Treasury Department's Special Inspector General for the Toxic Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) will contend that President Obama's push for General Motors and Chrysler to close thousands of dealerships across the country as part of their government bailouts "may have substantially contributed to the shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls, all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impacts

A letter from Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) to Glenn Fine — inspector general of the U. S. Department of Justice — asking the IG to launch an investigation into the dismissal of U.S. v. New Black Panther Party — has been made available exclusively to Pajamas Media some hours before its formal release by the congressman.Wolf is the ranking member of the Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee — the committee that controls appropriations for the Department of Justice. Though a Republican, Wolf is known as a moderate and a firm supporter of the Voting Rights Act.This is...

On the last three days of March, teams of temporary Census Bureau workers visited the types of places, including what the bureau calls "targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations" (TNSOL), where homeless people are known to congregate. These workers were carrying out the "Service-Based Enumeration" (SBE) phase of the Census, which counts the nation's homeless population. The bureau gave these workers two instructions that seemed peculiar: When they counted a homeless person, the workers did not need to take the person's name or date of birth, and if a presumed homeless person insisted he or she had already been counted by the...

White House Blocks Testimony by First Lady's Ex-Top Aide in Walpin Case Republican efforts to interview a former top aide to Michelle Obama in the controversial case of a fired inspector general have been stymied by the White House, the the top Republican looking into the case said Tuesday Republican efforts to interview a former top aide to Michelle Obama in the controversial case of a fired inspector general have been stymied by the White House, the top Republican looking into the case said Tuesday. The White House counsel's office has blocked Republican investigators from interviewing Jackie Norris, former chief...

Oversight: After an unjust firing and campaign of character assassination, the former AmeriCorps inspector general has been cleared of acting improperly. Now where does he go to get his job and reputation back? On June 10, Gerald Walpin was fired with one hour's notice as the watchdog of AmeriCorps in violation of a federal law requiring Congress to be given a heads-up 30 days in advance. He then fell victim to a campaign of character assassination. When pressed for a reason for the sudden and improper dismissal of a federal watchdog, the White House responded with a letter to Sens....

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has blocked the ambassadorial nomination of Alan Solomont, currently chairman of the board of the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, in retaliation for what Grassley says is the administration's stonewalling of Congress over documents relating to the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Specifically, Grassley has sought, and been denied, information relating to the White House's role in the decision to fire Walpin. Solomont, a major Democratic donor, is chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps. His term ends in October, and President Obama has nominated him to be U.S....

The Treasury Department has decided not to challenge the independence of the government watchdog agency that Congress created to oversee spending of the $700 billion rescue package for the financial sector.

AMAZING!!!!....Talk about irresponsibility to the point of stupidity! Obama's Inspector General (along with all of her aids) needs to be thrown out of office post haste, for not exercising accountability!!! -- where's the outcry by working class Americans that are literally being robbed of trillions of dollars!!! This should be sent to all people on your lists...quite amazing, but not surprising...boy, are we in trouble...!!!!!!!!! YOU WILL BE BE STUNNED WHEN YOU WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO.