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Via Demand Progress – a national grassroots group – August 24, 2015: “Dear Chairman Blunt, Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Schumer, Ranking Member Brady,and Vice Chairman Harper: We write in support of expanded public access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports. Longstanding congressional policy allows Members and committees to use their websites to disseminate CRS products …
FCW.com: “An official timeline of the Office of Personnel Management breach obtained by FCW pinpoints the hackers’ calibrated extraction of data and the government’s step-by-step response. It illuminates a sequence of events that lawmakers have struggled to pin down in public hearings with Obama administration officials. The timeline makes clear that the heist of data …
CRS report vai FAS – Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Federal Aggravated Identity Theft – Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. August 20, 2015. “Aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment for two years or by imprisonment for five years if it relates to a terrorism offense. At least thus …
CRS via FAS – The Intelligence Community and Its Use of Contractors: Congressional Oversight Issue. L. Elaine Halchin, Specialist in American National Government. August 18, 2015. “Contractors have been and are an integral part of the intelligence community’s (IC’s) total workforce (which also includes federal employees and military personnel). Yet questions have been raised regarding …
“The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) partners with the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register (OFR) to make the electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) available in XML format for bulk data download from GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys). OFR provides eCFR files to GPO and then GPO converts files into XML. The eCFR …
Politico.com,Robert Epstein: “America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one—except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers—would know how this was accomplished. Research I have been directing in recent years suggests that Google, Inc., has amassed far more …
A Macroeconomic Analysis of the President’s 2016 Budget August 21, 2015 Report – “The President’s policies would make U.S. output larger over the next decade than it would be under current law – mostly by changing immigration laws. Such economic effects would feed back into the budget in ways that would reduce deficits.” “Each year, after …
Analysis by Food Research & Action Center Download First Half of 2015 Food Hardship Rate by State “The impact of the economic recovery plus the increased share of households in need that is receiving SNAP (food stamps) is showing positive results, based on evidence from the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey (pdf) that reveals a …
DOJ news release: “The Justice Department announced today that U.S. Investigations Services Inc. (USIS) and its parent company, Altegrity, have agreed to settle allegations that USIS violated the False Claims Act (FCA) for conduct involving a contract for background investigations that USIS held with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The companies have agreed …
“Despite bipartisan support from many organizations, Capitol Hill still hesitates to grant public access to taxpayer-funded formal reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The Project On Government Oversight has long reported on the importance of opening these reports to the public. POGO worked with many open-government allies to urge Members of Congress to change the …
National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: A Glimpse at the Legal Background, Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. July 31, 2015. “Five federal statutes authorize intelligence officials to request certain business record information in connection with national security investigations. The authority to issue these national security letters (NSLs) is comparable to the …
CRS – Iran Nuclear Agreement: Selected Issues for Congress. Kenneth Katzman, Coordinator Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs; Paul K. Kerr, Coordinator Analyst in Nonproliferation. August 6, 2015. “The nuclear agreement between Iran and six negotiating powers (“P5+1:” United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China), finalized on July 14, 2015, raises a wide variety of …
