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Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2009 AT 2:56 PM Ethics Update Posted by Norm Eisen We have previously reported six limited waivers that have been granted by the White House pursuant to the President’s Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel – the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history. Three of these waivers involved lobbying-related issues and three did not. We blogged about them here, here, and here. Several months ago, the public interest community suggested that we also make available in a central place limited waivers...

SHELTON, Conn. - A 13-year-old boy on a sleepover was found dead in what police suspect was a heroin overdose, and his friend's sister and ex-husband were charged with manslaughter. Frank Korondi was spending Friday night at the home of a 10-year-old friend, authorities said. During the night, police said, the friend's sister, 23-year-old Angela Krasowski, picked up the boys and took them to the home of her ex-husband, James Krasowski, 32. On Saturday morning, police responding to a 911 call from the home found Frank unresponsive on the bathroom floor. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Police were...

Weldon to reveal new 'Able Danger' details Unit reportedly provided info on terror danger prior to USS Cole attack Posted: November 9, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who says the Defense Department is maligning a special unit called "Able Danger" to cover-up warnings of terror attacks, will hold a press conference this morning to provide new details of his findings. The vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees will hold the press conference at 12:30 p.m. Eastern to discuss the latest findings of his own investigation. He claims Able Danger provided...

CHOOSE A NAME FOR THIS LATEST CLINTON SCANDAL-- How about "WALLGATE" or "TREASONGATE"?

"...In April, CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, who served as the Clinton Justice Department’s deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997, created "a roadblock" to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw..."

"...So it's my clear belief that the wall itself developed this culture which restrained in a substantial way the exchange of information in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. The Bellows report, which was part of some recommendations following the Wen Ho Lee case, indicated that it was part of the culture at the FBI that if one made a mistake and shared information that was later deemed to be inappropriate, it was called a career- ender, so that the risk of a person sharing information improperly was at least known in the culture of the law enforcement community to...

According to The New York Times (8 July 2003): "the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said today that its work was being hampered by the failure of executive branch agencies, especially the Pentagon and the Justice Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents and testimony." Several alternative media have joined the bandwagon. George W. Bush is accused of obstructing the investigation...Former Jersey governor Thomas Kean, the commission's chairman is presented as an honest and uncompromising individual, who is courageously confronting the US government: "Without greater cooperation, Kean said, ''we cannot do the job we are supposed...

"...It was a deeply rewarding experience to work with highly capable colleagues and for such distinguished and thoughtful commissioners. Our commission sessions had long and occasionally heated discussion, but it was always productive and the commissioners themselves were devoted to achieving bipartisanship and unanimity. They understood very well that their impact would be greatest if they were unanimous..."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation...is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks...

...The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003...

The Author of this hatchet piece: Daniel Benjamin, co-author of "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House, 2002), was on the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999. Now to the excerpts: === In reporting for our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," Steven Simon and I found that Clarke was not alone. Several top U.S. government officials agreed in interviews that the new administration had been unwilling to revise its understanding of America's security position and too slow to recognize the danger of Al Qaeda. A three-star general, Kerrick had served at the end of the Clinton administration...

The birth of this nation was not without its labor pains. Right from the start there was dissension among the Founding Fathers - especially when it came to drafting a new constitution. The “federalists,” stressing the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation, called for a stronger national government. The “antifederalists,” on the other hand, believed that this centralization of power could only lead to tyranny. States’ rights advocate Richard Henry Lee saw the inherent problems of what the federalists were proposing: “To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should...

<p>WASHINGTON — An experimental computer program designed to analyze intelligence gave U.S. Special Forces a mission recommendation in 2000 that some say could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.</p> <p>The U.S. Military Special Forces Command at McDill Airforce Base came up with a chart of Al Qaeda's entire international network in the period prior to the November 2000 election, but the recommendation, which reached the desk of Clinton Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Hugh Shelton was never implemented, according to eight-term Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Wesley Clark's campaign aides criticized rival presidential candidate John Edwards on Tuesday for using retired Gen. Henry "Hugh" Shelton as an adviser, saying it proves Shelton's recent criticism of Clark is not credible. Clark's communications director Matt Bennett wrote Edwards that he was astounded that the North Carolina senator had retained Shelton as an adviser. "This choice undermines the spirit of civility that you urged your fellow candidates to uphold," said Bennett's letter. Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in September that Clark was relieved of his assignment as NATO commander because of...

The U.S. Army must be enlarged or its commitments scaled back, according to retired Gen. Henry Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997-2001. "The Army cannot sustain the operations tempo they currently have," Shelton said in a telephone interview this week. "The Army currently has 232,000 soldiers deployed overseas. You cannot sustain 232,000 with an active force of only 485,000." Shelton will discuss the war on terror and peacekeeping in Iraq at a banquet sponsored by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants on Oct. 21. A telephone interview with reporters was...

WASHINGTON, OCT. 2 — You can tell a lot about a politician by the way he handles a crisis. Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the newest Democratic presidential hopeful, confronted his most important challenge in 1999, when he was the senior commander of NATO and the alliance went to war to stop Slobodan Milosevic from repressing the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo. It is no secret that General Clark's relationship with the Pentagon was strained during that conflict. So it is also not surprising that reporters have begun to mine that period for the sort of score-settling anecdotes that often...

Retired Gen. H. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark has some "integrity and character issues" and won't be getting his vote. Shelton, who was Joint Chiefs chairman on 9-11, made the comments at a celebrity forum at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, Calif., earlier this month, the Los Altos Town Crier reported. After a presentation reviewing the historic events of his 38-year military career, Shelton took questions from the audience. One question came from Dick Henning, moderator of the event: "What do you think of Gen. Wesley Clark and...

Bull Durham stars give to food bank COOPERSTOWN - Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Ron Shelton, the co-stars and director of the film "Bull Durham," have each contributed $1,000 to the Cooperstown Food Bank The checks, which arrived Wednesday, followed an earlier $377 check, sent to the food bank through the efforts of the "Bull Durham" crew. The $377 was contributed by people who attended a 15th anniversary screening of "Bull Durham" last month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. During that screening, Robbins passed a hat to collect money for the food bank. Ellen St. John, food bank director,...