Reps challenge DHS ammo buys, say agency using 1,000 more rounds per person than Army

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  Shown here are Federal Premium hollow point bullets.AP

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security is using roughly 1,000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the U.S. Army, as he and other lawmakers sharply questioned DHS officials on their "massive" bullet buys.

"It is entirely ... inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition," Chaffetz, R-Utah, said at a hearing. 

The hearing itself was unusual, as questions about the department's ammunition purchases until recently had bubbled largely under the radar -- on blogs and in the occasional news article. But as the Department of Homeland Security found itself publicly defending the purchases, lawmakers gradually showed more interest in the issue. 

Democratic Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., at the opening of the hearing, ridiculed the concerns as "conspiracy theories" which have "no place" in the committee room. 

But Republicans said the purchases raise "serious" questions about waste and accountability. 

Chaffetz, who chairs one of the House oversight subcommittees holding the hearing Thursday, revealed that the department currently has more than 260 million rounds in stock. He said the department bought more than 103 million rounds in 2012 and used 116 million that same year -- among roughly 70,000 agents. 

Comparing that with the small-arms purchases procured by the U.S. Army, he said the DHS is churning through between 1,300 and 1,600 rounds per officer, while the U.S. Army goes through roughly 350 rounds per soldier. 

He noted that is "roughly 1,000 rounds more per person." 

"Their officers use what seems to be an exorbitant amount of ammunition," he said. 

Nick Nayak, chief procurement officer for the Department of Homeland Security, did not challenge Chaffetz's numbers. 

However, Nayak sought to counter what he described as several misconceptions about the bullet buys. 

Despite reports that the department was trying to buy up to 1.6 billion rounds over five years, he said that is not true. He later clarified that the number is closer to 750 million. 

He said the department, on average, buys roughly 100 million rounds per year. 

He also said claims that the department is stockpiling ammo are "simply not true." Further, he countered claims that the purchases are helping create broader ammunition shortages in the U.S. 

The department has long said it needs the bullets for agents in training and on duty, and buys in bulk to save money. 

While Democrats likened concerns about the purchases to conspiracy theories, Republicans raised concern about the sheer cost of the ammunition. 

"This is not about conspiracy theories, this is about good government," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said. 

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the full Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he suspects rounds are being stockpiled, and then either "disposed of," passed to non-federal agencies, or shot "indiscriminately." 

If that is the case, he said, "then shame on you."

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Obama criticized for using dated, disputed gun stat to sell background checks

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    Gun owner on Connecticut's tough new proposals

As President Obama prepares to head to Colorado on Wednesday to push gun control legislation, some are calling into question the validity of a key statistic he’s using to tout his message on near-universal background checks.

During several speeches, Obama has said 40 percent of all gun purchases were made without a background check.

But that number is nearly two decades old and comes from a poll with a relatively tiny sample size. Gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association, as well as The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” are calling out the president’s stat, saying his numbers on background checks need a background check of their own.

During a speech last week, Obama asked, “Why wouldn’t we want to make it more difficult for a dangerous person to get his or her hand on a gun? Why wouldn’t we want to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases to take place without a background check? Why wouldn’t we do that?”

The oft-cited figure, it turns out, was pulled from a 1997 study done by the National Institute of Justice. In the study, researchers estimated about 40 percent of all firearm sales took place through people other than licensed gun dealers. The conclusion was based on data from a 1994 survey of 2,568 households. Of those, only 251 people answered the question about where they got their guns.

PolitiFact tracked down the co-author of the study, Duke University professor Philip Cook, and asked him if he thought the 40 percent estimate is accurate.

“The answer is I have no idea,” Cook reportedly told PolitiFact. “This survey was done almost 20 years ago.”

The National Rifle Association has questioned the 40 percent claim and says it’s a misrepresentation by gun control advocates to trump up support for universal background checks.

Another problem with the study is the sample size, 251 people, which is relatively small, and the data is open to interpretation.

“With this sample size, the 95 percent confidence interval will be plus or minus six percentage points,” The Washington Post fact-checker wrote on Tuesday. “Moreover, when asked whether the respondent brought from a licensed firearms dealer, the possible answers included ‘probably was/think so’ and ‘probably not,’ leaving open the possibility the purchaser was mistaken.”

When all of the “yes” and “probably was” answers were added together, 35.7 percent of those asked said they did not receive a gun from a licensed firearms dealer. If you round the number up, it becomes 40 percent but because the sample size is so small, rounding the number down to 30 percent could also be accurate, the paper noted.  

But not everyone agrees with The Post’s fact checker.

“While slagging the president may be good for business, the effect of (the newspaper’s) false ruling is to undermine legitimate efforts to keep the public safe, and to obscure the real enemy of reliable data on gun violence,” Tommy Christopher of Mediaite wrote in a rebuttal Tuesday.

“It is possible to conclude that as few as 26.4% of gun owners in that study 'purchased' their gun without a background check, 20.4% if you factor in the margin of error,” he said.

The administration has not responded to questions surrounding the number and why they continue to use it to promote their gun control measures.

The president isn't the only one who's used the 40 percent figure to make a point. Many others stumping for the cause have pulled from the same info pile.

On Jan. 24, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand stated the importance of background checks during a television interview.

“The background checks bill is vitally important.  It’s going to basically say you can’t buy guns without getting a background check. Today, about 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check.”

Seven months earlier, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used the same statistic to skewer the National Rifle Association following the Colorado movie theatre massacre.

“There’s a loophole where you can sell guns without a background check,” he said last year, on July 22.  “Forty percent of guns are sold that way.”

For months, both sides of the debate on gun control – from the local level all the way up to the national level -- have accused the other of inflating figures and manipulating data.

Obama, in using an array of stats and studies and polls, has tried to make the case that the Senate is considering common-sense proposals that most Americans support. Amid resistance from some lawmakers, the president is ramping up his campaign for the legislation. He plans to visit Denver on Wednesday, followed by a stop next Monday in Hartford, Conn., the state that was the site of the deadly mass shooting in Newtown in December.

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FAA to close 149 air traffic towers, senator calls for using untapped research money to save them

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  March 9, 2010: In this photo, an American Eagle flight waits for release from the air traffic control tower at Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, Ill.AP/The Pantagraph

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday that it will close 149 air traffic control towers, in a move one lawmaker said was akin to "removing stop lights and stop signs from our roads." 

That  lawmaker, Republican Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, also claims the FAA could save the towers by tapping into millions of dollars in unspent FAA research money. 

Yet the FAA moved forward Friday with plans to shut down the air traffic control facilities, describing them as a necessary cutback due to the sequester.

"These were very tough decisions," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a written statement. 

The cuts will affect small airports starting April 7. The closures will not force the shutdown of any of those airports, but pilots will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves over a shared radio frequency with no help from ground controllers under procedures that all pilots are trained to carry out. The FAA decided to keep open 24 towers that were on the original list of possible closures. 

"We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of non-towered airports," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement. 

But the plan has raised concerns about the impact on safety and the potential financial effect on communities that rely on airports as key economic engines for attracting businesses and tourists. 

"The administration's decision to shutter these air traffic control towers is short-sighted and dangerous," Moran said in a statement "Closing control towers is equivalent to removing stop lights and stop signs from our roads. It is clear that this administration is putting its top-line message, that spending cannot be cut without severe consequences, before the safety and well-being of Americans." 

Moran is pushing an amendment to take $50 million from "unobligated FAA research and capital funds" from past spending bills and use that to save the air traffic control towers. The amendment did not receive a vote when proposed as part of the recently passed 2013 stopgap spending bill -- it's unclear whether it could get a vote Friday as an amendment to the 2014 budget resolution. However, any amendment to the 2014 budget package would have no effect this year, and the senator is considering introducing the proposal as a stand-alone bill. 

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association also blasted the decision announced Friday, while spreading the blame between Congress and the administration. 

"The closure of these air traffic control towers will reduce the overall margin of safety of our entire aviation system," association president President Paul Rinaldi said. "Ultimately, the partisan posturing in Washington that led to sequestration is the reason for today's decision and its destructive effects on aviation. The FAA made a bad situation worse by not utilizing a well-thought-out process for evaluating the value of air traffic control towers before ordering their closure." 

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., also voiced concern that "75 percent of the towers the Obama administration is closing are located in Republican congressional districts." 

Under the sequester, the FAA has to trim $637 million for the rest of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The agency said it had no choice but to subject most of its 47,000 employees, including tower controllers, to periodic furloughs and to close air traffic facilities at small airports with lighter traffic. The changes are part of the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, which went into effect March 1. 

All of the airports targeted for tower shutdowns have fewer than 150,000 total flight operations per year. Of those, fewer than 10,000 are commercial flights by passenger airlines. 

Airport directors, pilots and others in the aviation sector have argued that stripping away an extra layer of safety during the most critical stages of flight will elevate risks and at the very least slow years of progress in making the U.S. aviation network the safest in the world. 

Airlines have yet to say whether they will continue offering service to airports that lose tower staff. Any scaling back of passenger service could have major economic impact for communities. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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White House invitations recreated using computer, despite $277G spent on calligraphers

Are three White House calligraphers really worth $277,000? 

While the three-person calligraphy staff was paid that much in salary last year, according to White House records, WUSA 9 in Washington, D.C., conducted an experiment of sorts -- using a computer to mimic the kind of White House invitations the calligraphers are responsible for. 

When they put a side-by-side of the real and impostor invitations on Facebook, the channel reports, few could tell the difference. 

The salary of White House calligraphers, among other White House staffers, have come under scrutiny as the administration starts to make budget cuts to comply with the recently enacted sequester. 

The chief calligrapher makes close to $97,000. Dozens of other senior aides and advisers made six-figure salaries last year. At the same time, the White House is moving to furlough workers -- and has come under criticism over a decision to close public tours, though that decision may now be under review. 

Click for more from WUSA9.

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Rachel Maddow calls Scalia a 'troll,' like blogger 'using N-word'

Editor's note: A version of this opinion piece appeared on the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog.

Imagine for a moment a Fox News host calling one of the liberal Supreme Court justices such as Sonia Sotomayor a "troll."

Liberal heads would explode across the fruited plain including in newsrooms from sea to shining sea.

With that as pretext, check out what MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Comedy Central's Daily Show Thursday:

RACHEL MADDOW: It's weird to see Antonin Scalia in person. It’s weird.

JON STEWART, HOST: Does he, you know, I only read some of the transcripts of what he was saying. And he was saying certain thing like, “We've got to get rid of this because it's one of the last vestiges of racial preferences,” the Voting Rights Act I guess.

MADDOW: He said that, he said when Congress re-upped the Voting Rights Act, they looked into whether or not it was still necessary. Ten months of debate, 21 hearings, 15,000 pages of evidence, and in the Senate they voted 98-0 yeah we still need that. But he said, “That vote really, what does that vote mean?”

STEWART: Didn’t he say something like, “We told them to fix this in 2006 but clearly they won’t or can't, so we have to do it for them?”

MADDOW: Because it’s not, it’s not a real vote. It’s a racial entitlement now. Voting is a racial entitlement, something that you are entitled to on the basis of your race. 

Wait a second. Do you know how that sounds? 

But I think he does know how that sounds, and that's the neat thing about being there in person because you can see oh, actually, he's a troll. He’s saying this for effect.

STEWART: I see.

MADDOW: He knows it’s offensive and he knows he's going to get a gasp from the court room which he got. And he loves it. He's like the guy in your blog comment threads using the N-word. “Ahh! Oh, made you mad? How about if I say this? Did it make you mad? Did it make you mad?”

STEWART: Does he do anything like this, did he go, “Oh, and by the way, I have something for you?” Ba-boom. [Raises middle finger] Was he like, he’s just that guy?

MADDOW: He's that kind of guy.

STEWART: Wow!

MADDOW: So, when we're all shocked that he said something so blatantly racially offensive – we’re talking about the cornerstone of the Civil Rights Act -- he's thinking, “Oh, yeah, I did. That’s right.”

STEWART: Ba-boom.

MADDOW: Yeah, so that's, that’s neat to see. It’s also neat to see Sonia Sotomayor from way down at that “I’m new here” end of the bench sort of lean around the bench and give him what for. All of her questions are technically to the lawyers, but she is talking to Antonin Scalia every time, and it's like a brawl between them. It’s just so great.

STEWART: Are the people that have been there a long time and know Scalia when he says it do they do one of these, but the new kid is a little shaken by that or just angered by that at least?

MADDOW: Ready for it and has a rejoinder that’s going to, that would make him feel embarrassed if he wasn't a troll who loves to make people mad.

Let's rewind the tape here, so to speak: “He’s a troll… He's like the guy in your blog comment threads using the N-word.”

I guess that despite the outrage that would happen if a Fox News host said this about a liberal jurist, Scalia is fair game because he’s conservative.

So, here's an exit question: Are these media double standards starting to make you sick?

Noel Sheppard is associate editor of the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.org. He welcomes feedback at NewsBustersNoel@gmail.com.

View the original article here

Rachel Maddow calls Scalia a 'troll,' like blogger 'using N-word'

Editor's note: A version of this opinion piece appeared on the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog.

Imagine for a moment a Fox News host calling one of the liberal Supreme Court justices such as Sonia Sotomayor a "troll."

Liberal heads would explode across the fruited plain including in newsrooms from sea to shining sea.

With that as pretext, check out what MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Comedy Central's Daily Show Thursday:

RACHEL MADDOW: It's weird to see Antonin Scalia in person. It’s weird.

JON STEWART, HOST: Does he, you know, I only read some of the transcripts of what he was saying. And he was saying certain thing like, “We've got to get rid of this because it's one of the last vestiges of racial preferences,” the Voting Rights Act I guess.

MADDOW: He said that, he said when Congress re-upped the Voting Rights Act, they looked into whether or not it was still necessary. Ten months of debate, 21 hearings, 15,000 pages of evidence, and in the Senate they voted 98-0 yeah we still need that. But he said, “That vote really, what does that vote mean?”

STEWART: Didn’t he say something like, “We told them to fix this in 2006 but clearly they won’t or can't, so we have to do it for them?”

MADDOW: Because it’s not, it’s not a real vote. It’s a racial entitlement now. Voting is a racial entitlement, something that you are entitled to on the basis of your race. 

Wait a second. Do you know how that sounds? 

But I think he does know how that sounds, and that's the neat thing about being there in person because you can see oh, actually, he's a troll. He’s saying this for effect.

STEWART: I see.

MADDOW: He knows it’s offensive and he knows he's going to get a gasp from the court room which he got. And he loves it. He's like the guy in your blog comment threads using the N-word. “Ahh! Oh, made you mad? How about if I say this? Did it make you mad? Did it make you mad?”

STEWART: Does he do anything like this, did he go, “Oh, and by the way, I have something for you?” Ba-boom. [Raises middle finger] Was he like, he’s just that guy?

MADDOW: He's that kind of guy.

STEWART: Wow!

MADDOW: So, when we're all shocked that he said something so blatantly racially offensive – we’re talking about the cornerstone of the Civil Rights Act -- he's thinking, “Oh, yeah, I did. That’s right.”

STEWART: Ba-boom.

MADDOW: Yeah, so that's, that’s neat to see. It’s also neat to see Sonia Sotomayor from way down at that “I’m new here” end of the bench sort of lean around the bench and give him what for. All of her questions are technically to the lawyers, but she is talking to Antonin Scalia every time, and it's like a brawl between them. It’s just so great.

STEWART: Are the people that have been there a long time and know Scalia when he says it do they do one of these, but the new kid is a little shaken by that or just angered by that at least?

MADDOW: Ready for it and has a rejoinder that’s going to, that would make him feel embarrassed if he wasn't a troll who loves to make people mad.

Let's rewind the tape here, so to speak: “He’s a troll… He's like the guy in your blog comment threads using the N-word.”

I guess that despite the outrage that would happen if a Fox News host said this about a liberal jurist, Scalia is fair game because he’s conservative.

So, here's an exit question: Are these media double standards starting to make you sick?

Noel Sheppard is associate editor of the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.org. He welcomes feedback at NewsBustersNoel@gmail.com.

View the original article here