Free Republic

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

meet ACORN whistleblower Karen Inman...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

Junk Science: The EPA may be considering closing the watchdog office that exposed the flimsy evidence of man-caused warming. So much for the administration's promise to "restore science to its rightful place."Recently we commented on the plight of Dr. Allen Carlin, the EPA senior research analyst at the National Center for Environmental Economics who dared to say, in essence, that emperor Al Gore and his environmental sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency wore no clothes. The EPA had been working on an "endangerment finding" that would say carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, was...

It doesn't take a long memory to recall that during the campaign, Barack Obama pledged to protect whistleblowers. However, something seems to have happened after he landed in the White House. Now his administration is trying to weaken protection for national security whistleblowers using legislation now in the hands Congress.

Recently fired former Americorp IG has filed suit in federal court demanding his job back. Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who was summarily fired in June amid controversy over his investigation of a politically-connected supporter of President Obama, has filed suit alleging that the firing was "unlawful," "politically driven," "procedurally defective" and "a transparent and clumsily-conducted effort to circumvent the protections" given to inspectors general under the Inspectors General Reform Act of 2008.

There is an old saying, "it's not the crime but the cover up". Martha Stewart is a good example. Her initial crime would have likely lead to a somewhat hefty fine had she admitted to it. Because she attempted to cover it up, she wound up going to jail. The story of the formation of ACORN 8 can be summed up by a new saying, "it's the crime AND the cover up".

A leading Republican senator maintains that President Obama is violating a campaign promise with his claim that he can bypass whistle-blower protections for executive branch officials who give certain information to Congress. The lawmaker, Senator Charles E. Grassley (R)of Iowa, sent a letter to Mr. Obama on Friday that condemned a signing statement the president attached to the $410 billion catchall spending bill he signed into law last week. A signing statement, occasionally issued by presidents upon their signing a bill, is a document that instructs executive branch officials on how to carry out the new law. In this statement,...

In a remarkable screw-up, a Department of Justice official today accidentally distributed to the media a document containing the names of nearly 20 confidential witnesses interviewed during a federal probe targeting the operators of a fraudulent investment scheme. In announcing felony charges against two men for their roles in an alleged $15 million Ponziesque swindle, the spokesman for Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (he of Rod Blagojevich- and Scooter Libby-prosecuting fame) e-mailed reporters a 62-page U.S. District Court complaint filed against John Walsh and Charles Martin, principals of the now-defunct One World Capital Group. Included in the document was a...

Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him. In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. ...That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not. They slapped on handcuffs and took him to...

An unlikely Internet frontier is Paris, Texas, population 26,490, where a defamation lawsuit filed by the local hospital against a critical anonymous blogger is testing the bounds of Internet privacy, First Amendment freedom of speech and whistle-blower rights. A state district judge has told lawyers for the hospital and the blogger that he plans within a week to order a Dallas Internet service provider to release the blogger's name. The blogger's lawyer, James Rodgers of Paris, said Tuesday he will appeal to preserve the man's anonymity and right to speak without fear of retaliation. Rodgers said the core question in...

A second former employee of the U.N. anti-poverty agency is seeking whistleblower protection from the U.N. Ethics Office, claiming he was fired in retaliation for raising complaints to his superiors, his legal adviser said Thursday. Mathieu Credo Koumoin, a native of the Ivory Coast who worked for the U.N. Development Program in West Africa, sent a letter to U.N. ethics chief Robert Benson on Tuesday, asking him to review his case under the U.N.'s new whistleblower protection rules, said his counsel, Jeanne-Marie Col. The request comes weeks after Artjon Shkurtaj, the former operations officer for UNDP in North Korea, also...

Cases show fraud exposers have been vilified, fired, or detained for weeks One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse. For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods. Link to MSNBC

Attorneys for the Metropolitan Airports Commission and U.S. Airways pushed their case in the Minneapolis federal court Tuesday against six Imams kicked off a flight. The lawyers for MAC and U.S. Airways asked the judge to throw out the Imams’ lawsuit against them. From there, the judge will decided whether to dismiss the entire lawsuit, allow parts of it to go forward, or to approve the entire case for trial. All six Muslim leaders were kicked off a November flight after some passengers said they were acting suspiciously. The Imams were released after being questioned by the FBI and the...

Homeland Security: A bill to protect citizens who report terror threats became law only Friday, yet it's already working to back down terror-supporting bullies. The so-called "Flying Imams" dropped passengers as defendants in their bogus case just days after Congress reached a deal to shield terror tipsters from race-bias suits. The Muslim clerics were kicked off a US Airways flight in November after passengers warned crew members the clerics were behaving like the 9/11 hijackers. Democrats shamefully tried to strip the provision out of homeland security legislation President Bush just signed. It took a former Democrat — Independent Sen. Joe...

Former Gov. George Ryan was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison today following his historic conviction for steering lucrative state business to cronies in return for vacations, gifts and other benefits for himself and his family. "People of this state expected better, and I let them down," Ryan said in a statement delivered to the courtroom before the sentencing. Federal prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 8 to 10 years. But defense attorneys argued before U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer that even a sentence of up to 30 months could deprive Ryan, 72, of the last healthy...

Recent surveys measuring public opinion and confidence in congress all arrived at the same conclusion: over seventy percent of Americans have lost faith and confidence in the United States Congress. The public no longer trusts this body of politicians who were elected to represent the people and the peoples’ interests. Instead, they now view these “representatives” as servants of special interest groups, corporations and high-powered lobbyists. Americans are tired of watching and listening to elected officials who refrain from taking a strong stand on crucial issues, and who almost never state their positions with conviction and sincerity. In the eyes...

WASHINGTON - When British Petroleum (BP) shut down a vital oil pipeline, the company blamed "unexpectedly severe corrosion" in transit pipes. Yet only five months ago, BP's aging pipeline created the largest-ever oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope. Federal regulators blamed the spill on "internal corrosion" and said in some areas the walls of the pipes were so corroded they were almost paper-thin. So critics and industry experts say the latest problem was hardly a surprise. "I think this was predictable and preventable," says Phil Flynn, an energy analyst with Alaron Trading Corp. In fact, allegations about BP's maintenance practices...

Blowing It My Two Cents on Leaks By David J. Aland [10 January 2006] As a new naval officer and engineer, I quickly learned the difference between a blowing whistle and a leak. Working around high-pressure steam, I learned that if you hear a high-pitched whistle nearby, stay away. It doesn’t matter if it is a whistle or a leak – because if the whistle is being caused by escaping steam at over 1,000 pounds per square inch and almost 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it’ll kill you if you get too close. That’s the thing about distinguishing between whistle-blowers and leaks....

On September 23, 2005 at The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., National Judicial Conduct and Disability Law Project, Inc. and Whistleblowers for an Honest, Efficient, and Accountable Government will jointly host their first annual, Fall summit with keynote speaker, attorney Jesselyn Radack. An organizations and authors' expo to be featured. TOPIC: The nonpartisan nature of government waste, fraud, and abuse. For details, visit www.njcdlp.org/Fall_Event.html