According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

So, now, the VA intends to spend $12 billion over five years to upgrade the agency’s IT systems, which is supposed to include interoperable software that can be used between the VA and the Pentagon. The VA began investing in this project in July 2011—back when the agency and the Defense Department were still spending money on the joint healthcare records system.   read more

Another 25% said that they would support intervention if Assad used chemical weapons. The Obama administration said in June that Syria had already done this, so “a large share of people who answered that the United States should intervene if Assad uses chemical weapons are apparently unaware that this line has already been crossed,” Fisher wrote. Regardless of how many Americans want their country involved in the Syrian civil war, Obama is reportedly weighing his military options.   read more

One internal document showed NSA officials were very pleased once they began eavesdropping on UN talks by tapping into the video conferencing system. “The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!),” the document reads, according to Der Spiegel. The 1970s program “Blarney” involved the cooperation of at least one American telecommunications company, while going after “diplomatic establishment, counter-terrorism, foreign government and economic” targets.   read more

In the case of those who worked on Obamacare, more than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who helped draft the law have become lobbyists since 2010. They now operate out of offices on K Street, the traditional home of lobbying firms in Washington, DC, assisting large corporations, such as GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, as well as Delta Air Lines, UPS, BP America and Coca-Cola.   read more

Law enforcement officials and drug policy analysts told the newspaper that the figure was inflated because NDIC relied on self-reporting by police, instead of using documented criminal cases involving Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Some local police chiefs were surprised to learn that the NDIC claimed cartels were operating in their cities. “That’s news to me,” Randy Sobel, chief of police in Middleton, New Hampshire, told the Post.   read more

Lots of retirements would reduce the size of the federal payroll, which would be a welcome cost-saver. Agencies could hire younger replacements with key skills, like cybersecurity and information technology. However, in some cases, replacing retirees who have specialized skills may not be easy to do. These people would include nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy and experienced air traffic controllers who have spent decades carefully guiding aircraft across American airspace.   read more

In an attempt to clear up this backlog, the VA instituted a “credit system” with claims workers to encourage faster processing of paperwork. More than $5.5 million in bonuses were handed out under the system, which inadvertently encouraged VA employees to process less-complex claims first. Consequently, claims from veterans with more complicated cases languished, creating more delays and problems.   read more

$2 billion is no small amount of money. But, considering that total expenditures by the federal government only went down from $3.457 trillion in 2010 to $3.455 trillion today, the reduction isn’t all that much. Another way to look at it is this: federal spending fell by only 1/20 of 1%.   read more

There are 81 public defender offices across the U.S. that handle 60% of all criminal defendants in the federal court system. These offices first were hit with a 10% budget cut earlier this year after sequestration kicked in. In the 2014 fiscal year, the offices could suffer another 23% reduction, plus another 10% cut due to additional budget trimming measures.   read more

Solzhenitsyn’s three-volume narrative about the Soviet-era forced labor camps was written between 1958 and 1968, smuggled out of the U.S.S.R., and first published in the West in 1973. The word “gulag” has been used by critics to describe Guantánamo. Solzhenitsyn’s work isn’t the only book kept from detainees. Last month, all of John Grisham’s books were banned at the prison.   read more

Under the Affordable Care Act, employers will be required to cover healthcare insurance for part-time employees working 30 hours or more a week. To get out from under this new requirement, cities and counties are trimming these workers’ hours so they have 29 or fewer hours per week. Local officials say they must take these steps because of limited resources, even though the mandate won’t go into effect for another 16 months.   read more

A surgeon left the operating room during a procedure, forcing residents to continue unsupervised until another surgeon was found. Although he was suspended for 14 days without pay, the surgeon got $11,189 in performance pay, nearly three-quarters of what he could have gotten.   read more

The IRS, according to the complaint, has flouted the intent of the statute by writing regulations that gut its social welfare requirement. Although the regulation “recognizes that electoral activity does not fall within the scope of activity promoting social welfare,” it also states that it is sufficient for an organization to operate “primarily” to promote social welfare, rather than “exclusively” so.   read more

Public health advocates, anti-tobacco activists and corporate watchdog groups are criticizing the Obama administration for capitulating to big tobacco lobbyists by gutting a proposal to ensure that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) cannot be used to undermine anti-smoking laws and regulations. The TPP is a broad trade treaty being negotiated—in secret—by the U.S. and 11 other countries.   read more

Starr was principal deputy assistant secretary and director of the diplomatic security service. He also served as the acting assistant secretary for DS from October 2007 to July 2008 following the resignation of Richard J. Griffin in the wake of controversies regarding the killing of Iraqi civilians by private contractors. After retiring from the Senior Foreign Service, Starr served as United Nations under-secretary-general for Safety and Security from May 2009 to January 2013.   read more

Over the last 50 years, the jobless rate for blacks has consistently been twice as high as the rate for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 1963 the ratio of black unemployment to white unemployment was 2.2; in 2012 it was 2.1. In 1967, the median black household earned 55% of what the median white household earned. By 2011, that gap had nudged up only to 59%.   read more