Free Republic

Government spending on homeland security has nearly quadrupled since 9/11, and Americans are grateful they have not suffered another terrorist attack in that time. But it was disquieting to learn undercover Government Accountability Office investigators smuggled bombs and detonators past guards at high-security buildings that house Justice, State and Homeland Security department offices. Ten times in 10 tries in April and May, they got the contraband past the guards, assembled the bombs and carried them in briefcases as they "walked freely around several floors." GAO investigators also lugged bombs into two congressional offices without getting caught. After a good amount...

The push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions, a report by the GAO warns, throwing cold water on a push by Democrats to get more plug-ins on the road. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports...

The U.S. Treasury has apparently found another way to lose more taxpayer money. Perhaps $9 billion down the drain, unless changes are made soon. Last year, when the Treasury doled out some $200 billion from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it also acquired warrants to purchase common stock in banks that received TARP assistance. However, as the law was written, the Treasury must sell those same warrants back to the banks once they have paid back their original TARP loan. What the law does not state is for how much. One of the first banks to pay...

Even the White House cannot spend money not appropriated for a specific purpose by Congress as in using TARP banking money for banks to rescue the auto industry and the UAW

With little fanfare, the Government Accountability Office released a document last week that points to the day when the American dream dies and is buried beneath a middle-class welfare state. You can see death coming for the American dream as surely as you can see cirrhosis coming for a drunk. We are bringing it upon ourselves—although not all Americans deserve what is going to happen. For one, our children don’t deserve it. For another, Americans who have tried to live independent, self-reliant lives don’t deserve it, either. But they are going to be dragged down with everyone else, if we...

(CNSNews.com) – Between 2004 and 2008, the U.S. gave an estimated 242,000 “small” and “light” weapons to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). But now 87,000, or 36 percent, of those weapons are missing and unaccounted for, largely because of a lack of accountability guidelines and weak safe-keeping practices, taccording to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The GAO said the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command and the U.S. Navy have spent about $120 million to buy 242,203 weapons, including rifles (117,163), pistols (62,055), machine guns (35,778), grenade launchers (18,656), shotguns (6,704), rocket-propelled grenade launchers (1,620), mortars, and other weapons...