On the staff at State (contract or otherwise) sneaking into Obama’s, Clinton’s, and McCain’s passport records:  

"It’s a classic point that I’ve made about government from the beginning of my experience with it. It’s the failure of the people at the top to know ...

The recent National Intelligence Estimate stating that Iran stopped trying to develop a nuclear weapon in 2003 has been hailed as a sign of a newly courageous intelligence community in articles in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  I hope the articles are right, but I have ...

In a recent column in The Washington Monthly, Charlie Peters gets to the heart of the matter:

It seems incredible to me that at least thirteen Republicans wouldn't stand with the Democrats to demand that soldiers at least be given fifteen months at home before being sent back to Iraq.  Why can't they put themselves in the shoes of those soldiers?

In a recent column in The Washington Monthly, Peters notes that

I hasten to remind [the reader] that the same tendencies . . . are common to all bureaucracies, which is why they must always be scrutinized by the press and the public.  What happens is that bureaucracies gradually tend to turn from initial dedication to the performance of their mission to a dedication to their own comfort, meaning a preoccupation with job security, promotions, and pay raises, and the avoidance of accountability of any kind.

One argument advanced in favor of our staying in Iraq is that the Iraqi police and army still need to be trained.  We have been training them for four years!  Why have we failed to get them up to speed?  I have yet to see the newspaper or magazine article ...

In case you missed the most recent farm subsidy scandal, it's the news that the Department of Agriculture paid $1.1 billion to farmers who were no longer farming because they happened to be dead.  One farm in Illinois, according to the Washington Post's Sarah Cohen, collected $400,000 on behalf of ...

One bureaucracy that has a splendid record of efficiency has been put on a near-starvation diet by the Bush administration.  "Staffing at the Social Security Administration will soon be at its lowest level since 1974," reports the Washington Post's Stephen Barr.  "The number of disability claims waiting for hearing decisions ...

The Small Business Administration canceled 8,000 loans to hurricane victims without notice to the borrowers.  When the borrowers sought an explanation, they were told, according to Ron Nixon of the New York Times, “that they had voluntarily given up their loans,” which was not true.

Why this fiasco?...

UG Note:  Charlie Peters is "tilting" again.  Here's a tidbit from his latest, which can be found in the Washington Monthly magazine.

The chilling effect of hypothetical fines

You may recall that after the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, a number of news stories mentioned that the fines against coal ...

Fred Apelquist note:  This segment from Charles Peters’ “Tilting at Windmills” is especially interesting in light of yesterday’s (May 30) U.S. Supreme Court decision to ignore “on the job” first amendment rights protection for whistleblowers.

The ”our snack room is filthy’” whistleblower

The American Foreign Service Association presents four ...