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POGO: “For the second year in a row, a little-known but massive Pentagon agency won’t be able to complete an independent audit. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) handles more taxpayer dollars in a year than several Cabinet-level departments, but auditors have informed agency leadership that they will not be able to complete their audit for fiscal …
POGO: “The House of Representatives has new rules for itself that will foster stronger accountability and ethics, and protect whistleblowers. At the beginning of each legislative session, Congress adopts rules that cover everything from voting procedures to the names of committees to who is admitted into the halls of Congress to dress codes for Members. …
AP: “The Environmental Protection Agency hit a 30-year low in 2018 in the number of pollution cases it referred for criminal prosecution, Justice Department data show. EPA said in a statement that it is directing “its resources to the most significant and impactful cases.” But the 166 cases referred for prosecution in the last fiscal …
Casey Trees: “Every other year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation releases a State of the Bay. Similar to our annual efforts with the Tree Report Card, this report is a comprehensive measure of the Bay’s health based on 13 indicators in three categories: pollution, habitat, and fisheries. The report finds the bay “dangerously out of balance,” …
Via FAS/Secrecy News: “If the President were to declare a national emergency in order to justify building a “wall” on the border with Mexico, there would be certain legal authorities that he could invoke to initiate construction operations. But the scope of those legal authorities is uncertain and would almost certainly trigger litigation to challenge their …
Bloomberg – Banks and governments are testing quantum key distribution technology to guard their closest secrets: “Commuters inching through rush-hour traffic in the Holland Tunnel between Lower Manhattan and New Jersey don’t know it, but a technology likely to be the future of communication is being tested right outside their car windows. Running through the tunnel is …
The New York Times – photographs of all but one (Liz Cheney of Wyoming) of the women (80% of them are Democrats) of the 116th Congress of the United States of America. “Just over a century ago, Jeannette Rankin of Montana won a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming the first woman ever elected …
The New York Times: “The hunt for the millions of books stolen by the Nazis during World War II has been pursued quietly and diligently for decades, but it has been largely ignored, even as the search for lost art drew headlines. The plundered volumes seldom carried the same glamour as the looted paintings, which …
Via Linkedin – Microsoft CLO/President: By Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne “This past year we’ve addressed some of history’s most important innovations in our Today in Technology blog and video series. Our focus is always on what we can learn from the past and apply to today’s issues. Today we look back at more recent …
Via Axios – PERMISSIONLESS: What It Means, How It Happened, Will it Last: “While the Internet revolution enabled “permissionless” business models in finance, entertainment & politics, such unregulated disruptors are under growing attack. From the tech sector to the White House, many object to the divisions these new actors exacerbate or the externalities they often …
WSJ [paywall] The Big Hangup: Why the Future Is Not Just Your Phone The once-revolutionary smartphone is losing its power to amaze—and maybe its singular hold on our live: “Steve Jobs took to a stage a dozen years ago this week to introduce a revolutionary new product to the world: the first Apple iPhone. That …
Pew: “The ongoing shutdown of large parts of the federal government – now at 18 days and counting – has left hundreds of thousands of federal workers either furloughed or working without pay indefinitely, reduced staffing at national parks to skeleton levels, and closed down popular museums. It’s also squeezed the daily flood of data from federal …
