Its beach time. Hail the noble dolphins. Dolphins signal all is well. There are some amazing stories about dolphins rescuing people at sea.
Dolphin-human interactions are also interesting to read. Male dolphins have been known to get too aggressive with females who come in close contact.
Damn! The Sheriff has himself a new person to ridicule, the Battlefield Superintent.
wait a minute – what kind of females are we talking about in the last sentence? Inquiring minds want to know.
What is the story with Mrs Candland asking for money!!? At least Mrs Nohe didn’t do that!!
Mrs. Nohe sure got excoriated over her involvement. I am betting Mrs. Candland will not. The letter, regardless of how much Pete denies it was political, was very political. The entire situation was highly irregular.
Marine Land in northern Florida is awesome. We swam with dolphins and have a picture painted by a dolphin.
World’s oldest dolphin, Nellie, lives there.
CBO: Senate Immigration bill would help economy
DAVID ESPO and ERICA WERNER 12 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sweeping immigration legislation moving toward a vote in the Senate would boost the economy and reduce federal deficits, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, at the same time it would bestow legal status on an estimated 8 million immigrants living in the United States unlawfully.
In an assessment that drew cheers from the White House and other backers of the bill, Congress’ scorekeeping agency said the measure would reduce federal red ink by $197 billion across a decade, and $700 billion in the following 10 years as increased taxes paid to the government offset the cost of government benefits for newly legal residents.
http://news.yahoo.com/cbo-senate-immigration-bill-help-economy-010711853.html
Comprehensive immigration reform will help boost our economy and bring down the deficit. Congress should pass this reform immediately.
The logo-
I like the logo. My husband doesn’t. I like it because it is shiny and blue. It reminds me of the blue sky overhead and the water on the Potomac.
Its a pretty good logo, especially since logos aren’t supposed to really mean anything but instant identity.
No, it should not replace the seal. That’s not what a logo is for. However, we need a new seal. Time to get rid of the Marijuana leaf that really is tobacco. When was the last time tobacco was grown in Prince William?
How about a nice battlefield insignia? That’s what *I* would do if I wanted to boost tourism.
Live feed of Audit the IRS rally
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/06/live-blogging-the-audit-the-irs-rally-in-washington-dc-with-streaming-video-from-todays-rally/
also on CSpan.org
All of the speakers indicate that someone is picking on them. That attitude bothers me.
Jenny Beth Martin….arrggghhhh.
Phil Kerpen…what is wrong with these people.
Sue Martinek …doesnt understand the restrictions that go along with tax expemt status. I also believe she is lying.
Cargo, do these people seem normal to you?
Ted Cruz (paraphrased)
Abolish the IRS and put those agents on the Southern border for immigration enforcement.
If YOU crossed the border and saw a wall of IRS agents….wouldn’t you turn around.
hahahahahaha!
@Moon-howler
Actually I missed them….had to turn it off and go to the store right after Ted Cruz.
You are lucky. A lot of other speakers were non-americans.
Non-Americans? Which countries were they from?
Italy, UK, a few others.
Bloomberg News 6-19-2013. Pursuant to the NSA disclosures and the Snowden case, the Inspector General of the Office of Personnel Management will tell Congress today that many background checks of US national-security employees have been falsified by government investigators. One invesitgator is said to have submitted no less than 1600 bogus credit checks and then discovered that her own background investigation had been falsified. Ye Gods and all the Little Fishes!
So who do we get to blame for that?
i think security clearances used to be a lot more stringent. I can remember decades ago when someone came around to everyone someone knew. It used to piss me off. I havent had one of those questioning interviews in a long time and I know a lot more people now than I did then.
My friends back to my early teen years were questioned when I got my Top Secret. When asked if I had ever been out of the country before joining the Navy, and I replied, “Guatemala, El Salvador – twice each, Panama, Mexico, Canada…and oh yes…Columbia…”
They “face palmed.” I could see it in their eyes…..and then they asked me AFTER the age of 16…..” I replied…”Take out Panama and Columbia.” Their faces said it all……..
@Cargosquid
Awesome place, I brought the kids there a couple of times.
I don’t think there’s any blame to be passed, it happens in some percentage of all investigations. Stories like these always seem to surface when something like Snowden happens. Things are definitely tighter today than they were, say, 20 years ago. You have more diverse types of investigations being done depending on level of access sought, and not all of them require working three degrees of separation from the subject, so that’s probably what you’re seeing.
Some jerk on the dark wall is assigning people the “tutu taint.” Does that mean that Greg has to wear it since he did some filming for Manassas Ballet?
Greg in tights. The muses are with us.
The same Bloomberg report said that, since 2006, the OPM, which has oversight for much of the clearance system, has brought criminal charges against 18 of these investigators. Another 34 are on tap for criminal proceedings, but OPM claims it is lacking funds to proceed.
Offhand, I would say that this may well be the fault of a general misfunction of government caused by rapid employment growth in both the security and non-security areas after 9/11. Add to that a growing tendency to classify things not just because of national security but because openness could mean political embarrassment or opposition outcry and you probably have a clearance system that is unable to keep up at the current demand rate. Ergo, like Cato said, there will be a certain cadre of dishonest investigators who will fake it or take shortcuts. And the honest ones get driven up the wall by increasing volume. I used to get calls and visits often by feds doing background investigations, but they are almost nonexistent now.
The big downside of this is, of course, that the doors are opened wider for foreign clandestine services or anyone else to plant their moles. However, if we cannot keep up with our primary national security clearance system, how efficient would we be when it comes to, for example, criminal background checks on millions upon millions of immigrants seeking to come in under immigration reform measures? Having dug up more than one mole out of an American mission abroad, I can attest that a problem was a tendency to let the original background investigation slip under both work pressure and the difficulties of doing a truly efficient investigation.
Ah, and I see from today’s testimony on the Hill that we have contracted out a lot of these background investigations, including the one on Snowden himself. So OPM is now investigating the contractor in that case. Even more complicated than I thought.
The whole topic of Snowden just sort of overpowers me.
I know the FBI used to do them, back when Hector was a pup. I guess Manassas was a place for young up and coming bureaucrats back then because I used to get questioned a lot about neighbors etc who had applied for various jobs. Then it aburptly stopped. I havent seen an investigation in 30 years.
Using contractors can be problematic – we are more and more due to requirements to shrink government staffing numbers therefore reducing health care costs resulting in lower taxes. This is the cost of doing business that way. Anyone remember the big outsourcing fiasco in Fairfax with school busses? What a hoot – drivers didn’t show, bus schedules all screwed up, kids everywhere and no where and the fleet maintenance was truly low bid but without performance measurement requirements – capitalism at its best! It failed. Non performance is not acceptable in government particularly in areas of public safety and safety of kids….and as those in public safety already know non performance in background checks is simply dangerous.
Great points, Lyssa. You brought up some things I simply had never thought of.
I question whether a standard background check, even for a high level of classification, would project that an immature, idealistic (for sake of argument, I’ll give Snowdon that characterization, although I don’t share his ideals in this context), narcissist would pull a stunt like this. What one finds out in background checks are things like substance problems, money problems, ideological proclivities for potential enemies, mental instability etc. This appears to be a young person without much sense of history or context who simply decided that his judgment about what was best for the Nation was controlling.
Who is that little piss-ant to decide what is in the best interest of our national security? He is no more than the flea on the butt of an elephant.
Attempts to deceive and character summaries are deterrents or provide some insight. No background check is going to weed out everything. Jumping from private to government mid steam is interesting….many private firms chose not to pursue issues if a cost is involved…so, no history. In government dismissals or wrongdoing require a higher degree of investigation – no write offs so to speak.
The Obama Administration is forging ahead with plans to arm Syrian rebels, justifying the action with claims that the Assad Regime used WMD’s and presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the region. The problem is, these claims are based on “un-verified information”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-syrian-chemical-weapons-claim-criticism-about-lack-of-transparency/2013/06/20/fa799e6e-d925-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html?hpid=z1
What I find very ironic about all this is the Administration’s foreign policy which enabled the Arab Spring has the US intervening what are clearly civil wars. No UN resolutions. No congressional votes in favor of getting involved. Just unilateral actions on the part of the administration. At least the Bush admin had a UN Resolution AND Congressional approval to proceed in Iraq, not to mention Husseins verified use of chemical weapons on the Shia and Kurds in Iraq. Oh, and lest we forget, there was that whole business about Iraqi armed forces repeatedly firing on US military aircraft enforcing the no-fly-zone.
Now, the king of flip-flopping is the SecState and is showering the Egyptian government with foreign aid, not to mention military hardware, and the Obama admin announces it will give Al-Qaeda aligned rebels heavy weapons and stinger missles. I don’t recall the Assad regime ever attacking US personnel. I must have missed the UN vote condemning these actions, and the resolution to intervene. I also missed where the Admin and former SecState came clean on the Benghazi debacle….Nope, all we hear is George Bush started the NSA spying, and there weren’t any WMD’s in Iraq. So, when a civillian airliner gets blown out of the sky by an Al Qaeda terrorist using a stinger supplied to the Syrian rebels, and when the King of Jordan is dealing with the next episode of Arab Spring, and when Tel Aviv is under relentless attack from all sides, will the left continue to sing “Bush Lied, People Died”?
OPM appears to be investigating the Fairfax-based private equity contractor USIS, which was apparently responsible for Snowden’s background investigation (BI) as well as being in charge of about 45% of all such contracted work under OPM oversight. USIS appears to have had its origins as the BI arm of OPM until it was shipped out to the private sector and is now on its second private equity owner. And Lyssa’s cautions are spot on. It looks to me like OPM lost good oversight control over much of the BI program. The 18 investigators charged thus far with crimes were a mix of feds and contractors. You are talking a couple of million BI’s per annum.
Scout may well be right about somebody like Snowden, but you cannot know for sure until you see how USIS screwed up his BI, if they actually did. Of concern is that we seem to have many employees and contractors out there who ostensibly have faulty or falsified BI’s. How many of those have gained access to things that we truly need to keep hush hush, as the Brits say? This thing needs to be fixed. And fast.
Thought of Edward Munch’s famous painting “The Scream” when I
checked my 401K this morning. Arghhhhh!
Quite frankly, I would be more concerned about a local school bus driver with a criminal record than an overpaid consultant for Booze Allan.
Steve: don’t look at those 401K reports. Ever.
Back to your 1058 comment yesterday. I may not be the best informed reader on the Syrian subject, but when did the Obama Administration announce that it will give “Al-Quaeda aligned rebels heavy weapons and stinger missiles.”? The discussions I’ve heard are quite to the contrary – that the Administration feels it is limited to essentially small arms, will not supply man-launched anti-aircraft weapons, and will provide even the limited class of weapons they have discussed only to rebel factions that appear not to be affiliated with militants (no small task figuring out who they might be). It would be an extraordinarily big step to make a decision to give Al-Quaeda elements “heavy weapons and stinger missiles” for the obvious reasons you allude to. I would have thought there would be more play in the press on that than there has been. Did I miss the biggest story of the year (perhaps decade) in my daily reading? Can you provide a link?
I would think the situation in Syria is bad enough if one takes it straight on a hard reality basis. I see no need for exuberant over-decorating. If I just missed something, apologies in advance.
Starry, fill me in -I don’t what you are writing about.
PS: Good exhibits in both Washington and Oslo for Munch’s 150th birthday this year.
R.I.P. Jane Wicker, 1985 grad of Osbourne High School, resident of Bristow, airshow wing walker and stuntwoman, died today in that crash at an airshow at Dayton, Ohio.
What Lyssa said about local school bus drivers not showing up for work. Their backgrounds need to be investigated just as thoroughly as those getting top secret clearance. They hold thelivesif our children in their hands. @Steve Randolphva
VRS had a 13% return on its investments for 2012.
So far this year:
That’s a good start for the year. I wonder when the state of Virginia is going to want to borrow against it again. Make no mistake…part of the VRS problems are because it was used like an ATM by the state. Thanks Delegates. Thanks Governor.
Sorry Starry, I didn’t get the e-mail with the list of what meets
your standards to post about on the “open thread” of this blog.
Looks like the Immigration Bill is in the process of going down in flames. As I like to note, if it couldn’t pass in 2007 with George W pushing his party towards it, it surely can’t pass in the current political context. “Comprehensive” reform will NEVER pass, not in this generation.
The mystery to me is why we continue to allow Congress & the President to do nothing, holding the idea of border security hostage to the idea of “comprehensive” reform, so that they can play politics with the issue.
It looks to me as if the Obama Administration’s plan to use the issue to “box in” the GOP politically has born fruit. The GOP doesn’t know what to do and racial identity politics are hardening against them in a real new way. Meanwhile, on the subject of what’s real and tangible for people rather than political parties, they fiddle while America does a slow burn on the issues of wage disparity and poverty and deficit spending. Our government is irresponsible and we”ve come to accept it as the new normal.
Obviously the tea party wasn’t the answer. They are worse that what was in there in the first place.
I just popped over to TSoN to read the latest attempt to stir up their little group of cowards. I had to laugh. It was a long thread of “anonymous” commenting on other “anonymous” comments, agreeing with “anonymous” and saying “yeah us”. The biggest laugh will be when all of those “anonymous” “birdies” are exposed. Don’t they know that the only conspiracy that can succeed is a “conspiracy of one”? One of the main instigators should know from personal experience there is no honor amongst thieves. Yes, some birdies are talking to their cellmates, but who are the cellmates talking to? Maybe trying to cut a deal?
@Rick Bentley
You want to throw more money on border security (despite that net legal immigration is zero) while simultaneously criticizing the government for deficit spending. These goals are contradictory. No wonder your party is lost in space.
That should have read “illegal immigration” is net zero
The “border security” gambit is a sop designed to smoke out the real motives of opponents of immigration reform. We need billions of dollars of increased border security like we need a hole in the head at this point in our economic recovery, but, as McCain said, if your real concern is border security, this gives you what you say you want. It looks very much now like Immigration reform will go down in flames in the House. The guys in the House won’t suffer much – their districts are secure. But it seems to ensure that the GOP has abandoned, for the coming couple of decades at least, any pretense of providing governance in a legislative sense. They will just provide candidates whose role in life is to perpetuate their own jobs.
‘Border surge’ amendment to immigration bill gets support needed to end debate
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/immigration-bill-faces-another-major-hurdle-senate-monday-151728618.html
Looks like this has a good chance of passing
“You want to throw more money on border security (despite that net legal immigration is zero) while simultaneously criticizing the government for deficit spending. ”
What I want is to use solutions like e-verify to prevent illegal immigrants from holding jobs with fake IDs, and to prosecute employers who illegally hire.
Supreme Court decision in. Parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 struck down. Stay tuned.
@Rick Bentley
Do yo u think everify will fix all the problems? Not sure everify can spot a fake ID.
@Moon-howler
Section 4. It is a follow up to a 2009 decision. Congress needs to update the formula.
What I think is that the nation that can send people to the moon, split the atom, proliferate the internet, and create Google’s search engine can indeed work out a system that will prevent use of fake IDs in most cases. The challenge is by no means a technical one; it is a political one.
One way would be for the government to give everyone an ID, then there would be no need to have a fake one. Not sure that is a solution to your problem though, Rick.
@Rick Bentley
Very true – a very political issue that Congress refuses to address. A few simple rules – like checking SS numbers being used in different locations that are duplicate, invalid or belonging to deceased individuals. Or investigating employers that use mostly 1099 employees, er contractors. But Congress has no desire to reign in the gray market economy, and it does not help when you get, ahem, leaders like Cuccinelli who want to refuse to get a SS number for their children.
In 2008, we had a sound bite for the campaigns – that they were going to fix the economy by eliminating waste fraud and abuse – where has that gone – no where – another area Congress does not want to address, but they will bring up a vote to repeal Obamacare once again next week.
Congress will also continue to bring up anti-abortion measures…again and again but they wont vote on the college loan crisis. More kids will be forced out of higher education starting this July 1.
For that matter, how about a bill forcing states to remove dead voters from the voting lists? If funeral homes were forced to send in one piece of paper to a central location, this matter could be taken care of.
We can put man on the moon, but cross reference voter resistration lists within a state? Oh hell no.
Yep. And the part that infuriates me is that we the people let them do this, and let Obama as well as Bush before him selectively enforce US law for political gain.
And too many of us continue to mouth some nonsense about how the problem can only be attacked through some “comprehensive” solution. “Comprehensive” is a code word for “it is designed to help both political parties”.
Comprehensive should mean a seamless plan so that immigration laws dont look like Frankenstein…as in one plan that takes care of all the issues rather than the patchwork of laws we have now that we call our immigration policy.
@Pat.Herve
Heck, governments are even refusing to check voter rolls when the listed voters outnumber the number of residents.
@Moon-howler
“We can put man on the moon, but cross reference voter resistration lists within a state? Oh hell no.”
That’s considered racist. Just as ACORN.
asK ACORN.
Edit THEN submit….gotta remember that.
“Comprehensive should mean a seamless plan so that immigration laws dont look like Frankenstein” …
Comprehensive DOES mean an excuse for neither party addressing any aspect of illegal immigration unless and until they are satisfied that it will have no negative political consequence for them. And this won’t ever happen, and so the issue won’t be addressed unless and until we stop letting them feed this crap line to us.
It would be very easy to put a caveat in there that illegal immigrants with a status change would not be eligible for citizenship for 20 years.
That takes care of the political advantage.