The Onion “reports” that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has come up with the ultimate way to test our national security vulnerabilities: Releasing the five most dangerous prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, into the United States to see whether we can catch them before they strike. “If the Empire State Building or Jefferson Memorial blows up, for example, then we’ll know we have to make some improvements,” she added. “It’s all part of the process.” […] DHS also confirmed that the terrorists, who vowed nothing would stop them from their ultimate goal of destroying all of America,…
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The U.S. Marshals Service has stored more than 35,000 full-body scans of people who entered a Florida courthouse, according to the watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained a sample of images through the Freedom of Information Act. CNN reports that the Marshals Service images are “more ghost-like and far less detailed” than the backscatter images used by the Transportation Security Administration at airports. But EPIC says the Marshals Service images shows so-called “digital strip search” images can be stored, despite government officials’ insistence that they do not keep them.
In what would be the stupidest potential lawsuit in almost a month, the FBI is threatening to sue Wikipedia for posting its official seal online. The FBI appears to be concerned that no-goodniks could pull the seal from Wikipedia to make phony badges and documents. But seriously, FBI, the cat’s already out of the bag on this one. Heck, even the FBI’s own site has decent JPGs of the seal that can be found by anyone with rudimentary Google skills. Wikipedia’s response letter leans heavily on the snark, and refers to the FBI’s “creative editing” and “strategic redaction of important…
The FEMA for Kids website is an endless source of entertainment for me. There’s no other site that so perfectly encapsulates how clueless the government can be when it attempts to pander to children, as last year’s 9/11 coloring book kerfuffle showed. I just stumbled upon its “Careers for Kids” page, which apparently seeks to get elementary school-age children excited about jobs in disaster response. But most of the photos are of feds sitting at their desks, doing work they describe in stultifying government-ese. Take William Koplitz here, FEMA’s photo desk coordinator. Part of his job is taking photos for…
The U.S. Postal Service today turned to a department veteran to take charge of its troubled mailing and shipping services division. Paul Vogel, who had retired as the Postal Service’s senior vice president and managing director of global business in January 2009, will be the next president of mailing and shipping services as of Aug. 16. The last president, Robert Bernstock, resigned June 4, shortly before the release of an inspector general report that found he steered multiple no-bid contracts to friends and used postal staff and resources to manage his personal businesses. The Postal Service is touting Vogel’s previous…
When the General Services Administration needed workers to clear brush from an overgrown hillside behind a federal courthouse in Pasadena, it decided to think outside the box. Or, more accurately, think outside the species. Rather than hire expensive humans with power equipment to clear the hill, as it had in the past, GSA brought in a herd of goats to eat their way through the offending vegetation. Now, GSA didn’t enter into this decision blindly — it produced a 10-page report on the great goat vs. human debate. The report was mostly just pictures of goats, but it stated that…
Politico is reporting that federal chief performance officer Jeffrey Zeints will be the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget until Peter Orszag’s replacement, Jack Lew, is confirmed by the Senate. Rob Nabors, a former Orszag deputy who has been serving as senior adviser to President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, will return to OMB as acting deputy directo, Politico reports. When Lew is able to take over, he’ll face a tough road trying to advance the administration’s budget-cutting efforts, as my colleague Steve Losey reported recently.
The National Federation of Federal Employees says federal passport specialists are overworked and often don’t have time to thoroughly review passport applications. This burden may be responsible for the State Department’s failure to identify five of seven fraudulent passport applications the Government Accountability Office submitted in a covert operation, the union argued in a press release today. Passport agency workers have to meet productivity quotas and “failing to meet these numbers in the interest of carefully reviewing citizenship documents could lead to termination,” according to the NFFE. Passport specialists were unable to provide input when higher-ups were formulating the quotas,…
The Daily Show returned from vacation last night and weighed in on the Shirley Sherrod foofaraw. Jon Stewart, as always, gave the whole absurd episode the gravitas it required by editing the video of her speech to make it look like she was admitting to ruining the environment (the gold-plated Air Force One and alpaca fighting ring were also particularly nice touches). Stephen Colbert then took it one step further by splicing Mel Gibson’s latest racist and very NSFW rant into a quote from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. But why should Stewart, Colbert and Andrew Breitbart have all…
Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag will appear at the Brookings Institution Wednesday, where he’ll give his last public speech before departing the government. The White House said he will speak about the Obama administration’s economic and fiscal accomplishments and its future plans, as well as take questions from the audience. But if Orszag really wants to grab the crowd — and we all know how much of a charmer he can be — his speech will go something like this: