The Pentagon notified Congress on Wednesday it will be furloughing its civilian workforce of 800,000 employees if sequestration goes into effect March 1.
Defense officials have warned lawmakers that sequestration will devastate the military and lead to a hollow force, but the civilian furloughs will be one of the first major impacts felt by the across-the-board cuts.
he Pentagon furloughs will affect civilians across the country. Pentagon officials have said that civilians could face up to 22 days of furloughs, one per week, through the end of the fiscal year in September. The employees would receive 30 days notice before being furloughed.
“We are doing everything possible to limit the worst effects on DOD personnel — but I regret that our flexibility within the law is extremely limited,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wrote in a message to the department. “The president has used his legal authority to exempt military personnel funding from sequestration, but we have no legal authority to exempt civilian personnel funding from reductions.”
Have a grand scheme to help conservatives oust establishment Republicans, take over the party, and win the White House in 2016? Well, you could just win $10,000 for your trouble.
Richard Viguerie, the Conservative fund-raiser and chairman of Conservative HQ, announced “The Liberty Prize,” a contest that will award a “$10,000 prize, plus fame, appreciation and the opportunity to save America” to the conservative who comes up with the best plan to “take over the Republican Party, win the November 2016 elections, and govern America by 2017.”
"Washington, D.C.-(ENEWSPF)- The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, is condemning the efforts of a small group in Indiana working to ban gay and lesbian students from attending the Sullivan High School prom this year. One student who supports the ban told a local NBC affiliate: 'We want to make the public see that we love the homosexuals, but we don't think it's right nor should it be accepted.'
"The high school says it cannot ban gay and lesbian students from attending, but school officials can do more to condemn the efforts underway and send a message that singling out LGBT students is unacceptable. One student referred to a prom that would prohibit LGBT youth as a 'good' prom, while a special education teacher in the area said she believes allowing LGBT kids to attend the high school’s prom is 'offensive.'' [MORE]
A grassroots movement has been turned into a money-making political brand...
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of joining the lovely Abby Huntsman on HuffPost Live to discuss Sen. Rand Paul's Tea Party response to the State of the Union address. While the discussion was lively and touched on several issues, Abby's questions generally focused on a common theme: Why the hell did the Tea Party feel the need to give an address separate from the GOP response, which was delivered by Sen. Marco Rubio? I wondered the same thing when I read a transcript of Paul's remarks — then I actually saw footage of Paul giving the speech, and the answer was staring me right in the face. Literally.
Obama spoke in front of Joe Biden, Speaker John Boehner, and an American flag. Rubio chose a window in the speaker's conference room as the backdrop for his speech. Paul could have chosen from a wide variety of settings. How about the Jefferson Memorial? Or the desk in his Senate office building, flanked by two American flags? Instead, Paul delivered his address in front of a giant advertisement: "Restore Liberty — Honor the Constitution….WWW.TEAPARTYEXPRESS.ORG." If Paul managed the Boston Red Sox and was giving a postgame press conference, the backdrop advertisement would not have gotten my attention. But Paul, in theory, was supposed to be giving a policy speech to the entire country, not raising money for a PAC.
Which brings us back to the original question: Why did Paul even speak on Tuesday night? ...
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck says that it’s “reasonable” to investigate whether President Barack Obama’s nominee for CIA director converted to Islam because the theory is “plausible.”
Last week, former FBI agent John Guandolo, who resigned after engaging in a sexual relationship with a witness, told radio host Tom Trento that John Brennan “did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia.”
“His conversion to Islam was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him,” Guandolo asserted. “The fact that foreign intelligence service operatives recruited Mr. Brennan when he was in a very sensitive and senior U.S. government position in a foreign country means that he either a traitor … [or] he has the inability to discern and understand how to walk in those kinds of environments, which makes him completely unfit to the be the director of Central Intelligence.”
According to Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck is "America's premiere storyteller."
Glenn Beck didn't say whether that meant his stories are true or not.
The right-wing radio/internet host is bringing the "stage spectacle" titled "Glenn Beck's Man In the Moon" to the USANA Amphitheatre on July 6.
For a mere $1,250 per person (that's not a typo), you can get the Gold VIP ticket package. That includes admission to a rehearsal - yes, a rehearsal - two days before the event.
On the day of the show, you'll get breakfast; admission to a meet-and-greet with Beck; a barbecue dinner where you can "get to know your fellow VIPs; "awesome" parking; the best seats in the house; a laminated badge "to show everyone your VIP status; and a poster "beautifully designed and signed by Glenn Beck himself."
Whoa!
The most startling item on the list is admission to a Friday "Glenn unplugged" event described as "an intimate session in which Glenn will talk about things he would never talk about on air."
Wait - there are things Beck holds back from his no-holds-barred radio show? Really?
Michael Charney's insight:
Here's my favorite line, from his promo material: "It's Glenn Beck's imagination come to life." Damn... that sounds scary to me... MC
Earlier today Move to Amend, a noble organization leading the charge to return true democracy into the hands of the people, announced that it will introduce a Constitutional Amendment into Congress.
...Sorry to say, but I have a problem with that. I have a problem with any special interest drafting legislation on behalf of Congress while claiming the “We the People” mantle. In fact....
The idea clearly plays to the nation's enchantment with taking action to thwart evil, but it's a philosophy that many Americans worry could be dangerous in a school setting.
For the full Forum conversation visit http://www.theforumchannel.tv/ Ann Coulter and Al Franken discuss the validity of Ann's sources at The Connecticut Foru...
Legislation filed recently in the Lone Star State would, among other points, require a study on the effects of having to become partially or completely independent of the federal government in case Washington is unable to function due to financial chaos....
The journey of Darren Wagner will help you touch the surface of an ocean of despair that has washed over Newtown and Sandy Hook, Connecticut. We had to stop filming after Darren told this story to Annabel. She was overcome with tears and could not muster a follow-up question. Behind the camera, I was crying too.
When we resumed, Annabel asked Darren about parenting, and social expectations of masculinity. Not so implicit was the fact that he had been crying, and his two teenage sons were right upstairs.
Before the Sandy Hook massacre, Darren had never really talked to his sons about his 11-year career as a Deputy Sheriff in Ohio. He had never told them about the horrific gun violence he had investigated, the tragedies he had witnessed, the "regret to inform" conversations he'd had, over and over again. He had never told them how gun violence had caused him to leave the law enforcement field and seek a peaceful life, a journey that led him to their mother, Georgia, and a quiet life in Australia, where Georgia and their two sons were born. [MORE]
Washington, D.C.--(ENEWSPF)--February 19, 2013. Today, in advance of the Perry and Windsor Supreme Court hearings next month, the Center for American Progress and Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders released the results of a national voter survey showing an increase in public opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, as a clear case of discrimination and support for equal treatment for legally married same-sex couples under federal law—even if the individual polled is generally opposed to marriage equality.
“When the Defense of Marriage act was enacted into law in 1996, no one envisioned that nine states would have legalized, or be in the process of legalizing, marriage equality for same-sex couples. Today the law deprives thousands of loving and committed same-sex couples the federal benefits and protections that are afforded to all other married people,” said Winnie Stachelberg, Executive Vice President for External Affairs at the Center for American Progress. “This poll confirms that a majority of Americans disagree with the inherent unfairness in giving only some legally married couples the benefits that go hand in hand with these unions.”
The poll, conducted by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research and Voter Consumer Research, finds that... [MORE]
I know this may surprise many of you, but Presidents’ Day isn’t really about getting the best deal on a new Ford or checking out the white sale at JCPenny.
It’s about acknowledging the hard work that it takes to be President, and it’s about respecting those who have taken on this enormous challenge. Sadly, few seem to see it that way anymore…. MORE
This article is saying that more people respect the sales from retail storres rather than respecting our past presidents for everything they have done, good or bad.
This Sunday's NYT's magazine cover story, Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence? has me thinking a lot about the parallels between the GOP and many school leaders. Neither group understands the power of a Web 2.0 world. For both groups, "the yawning digital divide" between them and their counterparts (Democrats and more Web 2.0 ed leaders) is huge. One telling moment in the article highlights the failure of GOPs to undersand the social power of the Net.
Under the stewardship of Zac Moffatt, whose firm, Targeted Victory, commandeered the 2012 digital operations of the Romney campaign, American Crossroads and the Republican National Committee, Team Romney managed to connect with 12 million Facebook friends, triple that of Obama’s operation in 2008; but Obama in 2012 accrued 33 million friends and deployed them as online ambassadors who in turn contacted their Facebook friends, thereby demonstrably increasing the campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts in a way that dwarfed the Republicans’. (added emphasis)
It is this failure to recognize that it isn't that you have friends on Facebook, but rather how those friends connect with others that tells the better tale of social media and its use. I think of this when I work with clients who explain that their district technology leaders have a locked down approach to the use of the Internet at school. These leaders, much like the GOP, proudly tout wireless environments, but then explain that they do not allow hand held devices, students or teachers bringing in and using their own devices, student or teacher using Google apps (such as Google drive/Docs, hangouts), Twitter, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Wikis, or student blogs that are posted on the Internet--to name but a few. They think they are with it because they use email. Inevitably we get to the safety discussion and I wonder at how misdirected this approach (not the sentiment) is.
As a mom, I want to protect my son too. That means having the harder discussions with him about his responsibility while on the Internet and about his growing capacity to hack alongside his responsibility to respect other people's property (intellectual, virtual, and real). Barring him from the Internet given the way we live would be akin to barring dogs from barking, leaves from falling. It just isn't going to happen and frankly I am glad to say that. Our responsibility as parents and as district leaders is not to withhold the world we live in from our children, but rather to continue to help young people navigate and negotiate a changing world in responsible and responsive ways.
And yet, many schools still value an insular world and their leaders seems to think this makes them responsible. It makes them safe and their children less so. Sneering at those who use Twitter in the classroom, making snarky comments about staff or students who advocate the use of Skype or Google hangouts, or bragging that you prohibit google docs for teachers and students does not make you appear as educator of the year.
An insular world is not possible and education leaders who propose such nonsense are as obsolescent as the GOP strategists who engineered Romney's stunning loss. Suffering such foolishness harms our children, limits our teachers, and reduces the critical and creative potential of all.
Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.
The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.
The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1 million or more.
Hours after being arrested at an anti-Keystone XL oil pipeline protest, actress Daryl Hannah sparred Wednesday with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “You have children, right?
Georgia congressman Paul Broun claimed after Tuesday’s State of the Union address that “There are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns.” Explainer readers may remember Broun as the...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday threatened to block votes on President Barack Obama's nominees for CIA director and defense secretary until the administration gives more...
Michael Charney's insight:
Just unbelievable. Vote "nay" if you want, but to prevent a vote because you didn't get what you wanted on a different topic is just being a bully. It's childish and irresponsible.
GOP favorite Malkin to speak The Register-Guard Malkin is among the conservative commentators who disagree with Republican strategist Karl Rove over how best to strengthen the Republican Party and win control of the Senate.
Assailants stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday after one of the highest profile sorcery-related murders in this South...
Michael Charney's insight:
This is unquestionably tragic, but I have to say that I was afraid I was going to read that it happened in Paul Broun's district, he of the deer-head speech....
The head of President Barack Obama’s new dark-money group says Citizens United “needs to be overturned.”
Jim Messina, the former manager of the president’s reelection campaign, is currently leading the formation of Organizing for Action, the tax-exempt 501(c)4 that is not required to disclose its donors or the amounts they give.
“I think Citizens United needs to be overturned, either legislatively or by the states,” Messina told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd Tuesday evening at a Chicago Institute of Politics event. “We were able to have a grassroots, internet fundraising that no one had ever seen before, and we could combat it like that. And that’s the grassroots way to do it, but long-term, Barack Obama is a once-in-a-generation politician and, you know, every person running in 2016 for president, my advice for them is go get a Super PAC.”
OFA is in the process of wooing corporate donors, despite the public line that the fundraising effort will be grassroots-focused.
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