A NEWS CO-OP IN DC SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE

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Sam Sacks - page 27

Sam Sacks has 859 articles published.

Voters Will Be Left Hanging By State Dept.’s Clinton Email Slow-Walk

The State Department is poised to wait until after the general election to publish informative emails sent and received through a private server by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as top US diplomat. Correspondence revealing just how involved Secretary Clinton was in pushing the contentious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) won’t be released until late November, the International Business Times reported on Monday. Officials at State initially told reporter David Sirota that his Freedom of Information Act request for Secretary Clinton’s messages on TPP would be fulfilled… Keep Reading

LIBOR Probe Snares More Suits

The Department of Justice on Thursday announced indictments against two former traders for their role in manipulating a key interest rate that impacts more than $300 trillion in global financial contracts. Matthew Connolly and Gavin Campbell Black are facing ten conspiracy and wire fraud charges for working to manipulate LIBOR—the London Interbank Offered Rate—in order to increase profits for their employer, Deutsche Bank AG. Connolly was a director at the bank’s Pool Trading Desk in New York. Black served as a director for the bank in… Keep Reading

Former State Dept. Spox Faces Questions Over Distorted Media Clips

The State Department admitted this week that it selectively edited a video clip of a 2013 news conference to remove a reporter’s question about negotiations with Iran. Press Secretary John Kirby confirmed that the inquiry from Fox News reporter James Rosen had been purposefully removed from the video recording of the proceedings. The department had previously claimed the missing portion was the result of a glitch. The edit occurred during the tenure of a previous spokesperson at State, Jen Psaki, who now serves as the… Keep Reading

Federal Environmental Stewards Face Increasing Violence

Numbers released from the federal government show that officials tasked with patrolling public lands and forests are dealing with a growing number of assaults on the job. The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reported that abusive incidents against its officers rose by 87 percent last year. The US Forest Service (USFS) reported a 60 percent uptick in violence against its employees. The data was released by the agencies in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental… Keep Reading

Burying Heads in the Sand: Lawmakers Crippling Their Own Information Source

A research service on Capitol Hill dedicated to keeping Members of Congress up-to-date on policy issues and statistical analyses is again being starved of funding. The $107.9 million proposed for the 2017 budget of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) wouldn’t even cover the agency’s current staffing costs, two Democratic lawmakers stated last week. The House Appropriations Committee approved of the funding level on May 17, in a mark-up vote. CRS had asked for more investment to hire “two defense policy staff, five health policy staff, three education… Keep Reading

Paul Ryan Calls Legislative Push to Protect LGBT Workers “Sabotage”

The Speaker of the House is threatening to lock down the amendment process after Democrats seized on annual spending bills to ensure protections for gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans. Briefing reporters Thursday just minutes after an energy and water appropriations bill failed on the House floor, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) accused the legislative minority of “sabotaging” the process. More than half of Ryan’s GOP caucus voted down the spending measure after Democrats on Wednesday night succeeded in affixing an amendment to the legislation that would… Keep Reading

State I.G., Not Sick of Hearing About the Damn Emails, Finds Clinton Broke Rules

A watchdog report leaked to news outlets on Wednesday concluded that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated the Federal Records Act by improperly using a personal email server during her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat. The State Department Inspector General’s 83-page probe criticized the current Democratic presidential frontrunner for not properly reporting official government emails that were sent and received through the private server. “Secretary Clinton should have preserved any federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing… Keep Reading

Government Spending Billions to Maintain Obsolete 50-Year-Old I.T. Systems

A master database of taxpayer account information used by the Department of Treasury is stored on technology that is more than a half-century-old, according to an audit released by a federal watchdog. That’s just one example noted in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report disclosed Wednesday on aging information technology systems still in use by federal agencies. GAO warned that such IT systems are growing increasingly obsolete, less secure, and more costly to maintain. Included among the aging infrastructure is a 53-year-old IBM computing system used… Keep Reading

Saudi Arabia Lobbying Congress Amid Fresh Calls to Release the 28 Pages

Consultants representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been spotted making the rounds on Capitol Hill and passing around literature to promote the country’s record fighting terrorism. The lobbying push comes amid renewed scrutiny over the Saudi government’s role in the 9/11 terror attacks, and whether the country can be sued by families of the victims. “The effort here is to display how the Saudis are working lockstep with the US on the financial, operational and ideological fronts in countering extremism and fighting terror,” one… Keep Reading

Sanders Bucks Dem Leaders, Calls for Opposition to Puerto Rico Bill

In a message to fellow Senate Democratic caucus members, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday called for the defeat of emergency legislation to address Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis. A bill introduced last week by House Republicans would require the island territory to give up its budget-making autonomy in exchange for debt relief. The measure has the tentative support of the Obama administration and Democratic leadership. Puerto Rico is currently $72 billion in the hole, and already defaulting on financial obligations. Sanders, a presidential hopeful, said in a… Keep Reading

Wyden Leads Charge to Stop D.O.J. From Expanding Hacking Powers Through an Administrative Rule Change

A group of Senators are trying to prevent a Department of Justice rule change from taking effect, which could grant the government broad new powers to hack into people’s computers. The Stop Mass Hacking Act was introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Wednesday to block an expansion of government surveillance made possible by a tweak to federal court procedures. The change to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procure would allow a magistrate judge, in cases where the location of a computer… Keep Reading

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