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The United States has quietly unblocked almost $500 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority which had been frozen by Congress for months, a top US official said Friday. The news that the funds had finally been freed up came after US President Barack Obama met top Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a landmark visit to Israel and the West Bank earlier this week.

In the classic movie “History of the World Part 1,” Mel Brooks famously said, “It’s good to be the king!” He was playing King Louis XVI, the French monarch who eventually lost his head over his excesses while the people suffered. Democrats enjoy acting like they are the peasants in the modern-day version of that struggle, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although they may talk a good game, “Let them eat cake” is their mantra … only, since they seek to control everything we do, including what we eat, it’s sugar-free carrot cake. Corruption starts at the...

A tearful Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla) blamed “heartless Republicans” for the “severe hardships” the sequester is imposing on members of her staff. “Nearly half of my office staff has been forced to forgo lunch on a daily basis because of the cruel budget cuts that have been forced down our throats by the GOP,” the Congresswoman claimed. The “toll of suffering” has been less than half because “some have been able to make do with sack lunches of leftovers or peanut butter sandwiches they bring from home,” she explained. “This is not a solution that can be applied across-the-board, though....

March 21, 2013 WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: MY AIDES CAN'T AFFORD GOOD MEALS Mike Flynn On Tuesday, FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her colleague VA Rep. Jim Moran openly whined about the impacts of spending cuts on their personal office budgets. Moran fretted that, with the looming sequester cuts, he may have to cut one staffer from his office. Wasserman Schultz upped his ante, however. She, almost literally, suggested that her staff were on the brink of starvation, due to the cuts. Speaking at a hearing of the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, Wasserman Schultz worried that prices of meals in...

<p>On Tuesday, FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her colleague VA Rep. Jim Moran openly whined about the impacts of spending cuts on their personal office budgets. Moran fretted that, with the looming sequester cuts, he may have to cut one staffer from his office. Wasserman Schultz upped his ante, however. She, almost literally, suggested that her staff were on the brink of starvation, due to the cuts.</p>

Wasserman Schultz on Sequester

The US Senate passed the Patty Murray (former pre-school teacher, now Chair of Senate Budget Committee) budget by a razor thin majority of 50-49. Her budget calls for $1 trillion in ADDITIONAL taxes over the next 10 years and an increase in Federal debt of $7.3 trillion. Needless to say, the Murray budget never balances. No wonder parents don’t want her teaching personal finance to their children! The House of Representative have passed the Ryan budget which actually DOES balance the budget over ten years by a vote of 221-207. Needless to say, it took the Senate 4 years to...

The US Senate passed the Patty Murray (former pre-school teacher, now Chair of Senate Budget Committee) budget by a razor thin majority of 50-49. Her budget calls for $1 trillion in ADDITIONAL taxes over the next 10 years and an increase in Federal debt of $7.3 trillion. Needless to say, the Murray budget never balances. No wonder parents don’t want her teaching personal finance to their children! The House of Representative have passed the Ryan budget which actually DOES balance the budget over ten years by a vote of 221-207. Needless to say, it took the Senate 4 years to...

Sequestration chatter isn’t going away any time soon, and one of the expected headlines is making the rounds again this week. Air traffic control towers at nearly 150 airports across the nation are going to sit empty, forcing pilots to figure out safe landing procedures by a combination of the seats of their pants and furiously cracking open fortune cookies. In other words, you’re all going to die. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday told 149 regional airports across the country it would begin closing their air traffic control towers in April, but said it would spare another 40 towers...

<p>Automatic federal cuts are bringing staffers to the brink of starvation, suggested Debbie Wasserman Schultz, at a recent House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.</p> <p>Restaurants on the House side of Congress are increasing in cost so much that aides are being “priced out” of a good meal, she said, as Fox News reported.</p>

ven as President Obama highlights impending cuts to national parks because of the sequester, he plans to use his power as president to designate five new national monuments Monday, according to an administration official. The new monuments will be: the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico; the San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington State; the First State National Monument in Delaware and Pennsylvania; the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio and a monument commemorating Harriet Tubman and her role in helping black slaves reach freedom through the the Underground Railway in Maryland.

(Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it will close 149 air traffic control towers at small airports across the country beginning on April 7 as it copes with automatic federal spending cuts. The White House and transportation leaders have warned for weeks that the $85 billion in federal cuts known as "sequestration" would force smaller airports across the country to curtail operations. The across-the-board cuts started kicking in on March 1 because Congress was not able to reach an alternative budget deal to replace them. The FAA must absorb $637 million in cuts by September 30. Transportation...

The US aviation authority plans to close 149 air traffic control towers in response to steep budget cuts that took effect this month. Towers will close at small airports but the facilities will remain open, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Pilots will have to co-ordinate takeoff and landing by themselves after 7 April using a shared radio channel. On 1 March, $85bn (£56bn) was cut from this year's budget after Congress failed to reach a budget deal. "We heard from communities across the country about the importance of their towers and these were very tough decisions," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood...

US President Barack Obama has pledged to Jordan an additional $200m (£131m) to help deal with the growing number of Syrian refugees in the country. After talks in Amman, Mr Obama said the funds - if backed by Congress - would help provide more humanitarian aid. Some 450,000 Syrians have fled to neighbouring Jordan since the unrest began in 2011, putting huge pressure on the Jordanian authorities. Meanwhile, Jordan's King Abdullah ruled out closing Jordan's border with Syria. President Obama said he would ask Congress to provide additional funds as "budget support" to help the Syrian refugees. He said this...

Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.) explains how stupid the sequester is in this neat video. He shows how it's the equivalent of declining to order the optional DVD player for the back of your new truck. Click excerpt link for the video and remember to share it with your friends!

FBI Director Robert Mueller protested Tuesday that the steep rise in requests for background checks for gun purchases since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School could be a problem because of the cuts imposed by sequestration. Background check requests from licensed gun dealers have risen by 50%, from an average of 54,000 each day to 81,000 every day since Sandy Hook. As a result, the FBI has expanded its staff of 300 to 500 so the background checks can be finished in three days.

Senate lawmakers voted Wednesday to prevent the Obama administration from making painful sequester-tied cuts to military tuition assistance as well as meat and poultry inspectors. The votes, which came in the form of amendments to a spending bill, marked the first by Congress aimed at easing the impact of the sequester. A number of lawmakers have complained the administration is making the automatic budget cuts more painful than they need to be with its budget decisions. The first amendment approved by the Senate Wednesday was pushed by Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and would restore tuition assistance...

The Department of Education’s sequester cuts are taking a brutal toll on federally-funded schools on Native American reservations, but the federal agency still found money to create a new six-figure job promoting “Educational Excellence for African-Americans.” Johns had been serving as a senior education policy adviser to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Before that, he was a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Fellow in Rangel’s office. Johns’ salary in the new job is $123,758, according to a department official.

A follow up to this story, in which it was reported that “waves” of illegal immigrants were being released from jail buoyed by the excuse of budget cuts via the sequestration. After that news came to light, an official from the Department of Homeland Security ‘resigned’, and the White House started claiming that it wasn’t waves of criminals being released, but rather “a few hundred”.

Just hours after an explosion killed seven Marines in his home state, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid used the fatal training accident as an opportunity to talk about the potential impact of the sequester on military readiness. The Senate Democratic leader initially took to the floor Tuesday to mourn the deaths of the seven Marines, killed during a training exercise at Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada. “My thoughts are with those who are injured and of course the families of those who lost loved ones,” Reid said. But then, after explaining that the Marines were at the depot for training, Reid...