Air Force draft consolidation plan would strip top generals of authority over base operations

Senior Air Force leaders have drafted a budget-driven plan that would strip the three- and four-star generals who oversee major commands of their authority to manage their bases.

A draft of the plan obtained by The Washington Times shows that the Air Force is aiming to consolidate support operations under the umbrella of a single center, known as the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center.

The tricky endeavor would shuffle day-to-day base management issues — such as construction, maintenance and procurement of equipment and supplies — from under the authority of the senior generals who command the bases to the leadership of a two-star general who would run the support center, according to the draft proposal.

The plan was born out of a directive from Air Force leadership last year to reduce headquarters operations costs at least 20 percent by 2019. It cites reductions contained in the Budget Control Act that were implemented by the Obama administration in 2011.

The consolidation would affect the service’s 10 major commands, each of which specializes in areas such as technical training, management of non-nuclear combat air power and global air mobility.

The generals who oversee those commands function as senior executives, ensuring that core programs and missions run efficiently and effectively, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. Base management has included a measure of autonomy.

The proposal is similar to the way the Army and Navy are organized, but the Air Force has long resisted consolidation of support services, noting that bases are more integral parts of their operations than they are to other military branches.

Douglas Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said budget pressure is so extreme that Air Force officials have had “to come down very quickly on certain ramps to attain certain goals.” That pressure, he said, drives “some pretty aggressive moves” that achieve short-term objectives but “can undermine things in the long haul.”

“Today’s leaders have no other choice,” he said.

General vs. general

Senior Air Force officials say the plan will save money by eliminating redundancies in areas such as personnel. They say in the document that the shuffle will provide the Air Force with “a once in a lifetime opportunity to more effectively and efficiently manage installation resources.”

But one Pentagon official with knowledge of the plan and its potential implementation said it could cause rifts between generals who command the bases and the two-star generals who would be charged with overseeing the assigned resources.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, speculated that such a move could create communications issues capable of obstructing day-to-day operations such as base repairs, training and finance decisions.

Space planning, engineering programs, cyberforce training management and readiness training are just a few of the dozens of the capabilities that will be ripped from the control of the major commanders and realigned under support center management, according to the draft plan.

“I personally don’t think it’s going to work,” the official said.

Air Force top brass are reviewing the draft plan. If all goes well, they should approve it within the next several days, the official said. At the end of the month, Air Force officials will regroup and decide how to move forward.

It remains to be seen how the plan will be received. The official said the three- and four-star generals who run the major commands were not receptive to an earlier version in which they would have been required to cede a greater measure of authority to the support center’s control.

The “concept of operations” document — or initial draft — shows that the support center would have control of services such as fuel distribution, vehicle and support equipment, material management, small-arms training and ammunition allocation. Although the official said some of that framework was altered after the generals reviewed and rebuked the proposal, it is unclear how much of the framework was carried forward to the revised plan.

Retired Gen. Charles F. Wald, former deputy commander of U.S. European Command, said the Air Force has to implement structural changes because it cannot afford to chew through its budget at the current rate. Gen. Wald, who is now vice chairman and federal practice advisory partner for Deloitte, said the plan to consolidate base operations authority under the umbrella of a single support center on the surface “makes perfect business sense.”

“I think we should have done this 20 years ago,” he said. “Here’s the problem: I would have done it if I had known how to do it. I didn’t.”

Gen. Wald said Air Force generals who have resisted the plan probably are concerned that the support center will cost them power and prestige.

“The majority of people, when they think they’re losing oversight or authority or the size of their command or whatever, they don’t want to do that because — to a lot of people — how big you are what your footprint is, is indicative of how important you are,” he said.

Role of Congress

The Pentagon official said the Air Force has experienced difficulty nailing down an expected amount of savings, but that might not hinder the progress the Air Force is making toward getting lawmakers to embrace the plan, Gen. Wald said.

Gen. Wald said Air Force officials likely have informed House and Senate staffers of their intentions, paving the way for a receptive conversation.

A Senate Armed Services committee staffer said Monday that the Air Force draft document has not made its way to the top echelon of congressional staff.

Air Force officials originally wanted to begin implementing the plan in October and staff the support center with 350 people. The draft document shows that although some personnel would be allowed to continue work for the major commands, they could function only as liaisons or specialists.

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said the service is determining whether that 350 number will stick and how much personnel will be reduced out of each major command. The numbers, she said, are still fluid.

If all goes according to plan, however, the support center will be fully operational by the end of 2016, per the document.

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Feds Fund 12 Offshore Wind Turbines… At $12 Million Each

The Obama administration has announced funding for three offshore wind power projects off the New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia coastlines. The administration has pledged up to $47 million for each project to bring a total of 67 megawatts (MW) of green power online.

The price tag for all this green power: a staggering $11.75 million per wind turbine. In terms of energy, the twelve offshore wind turbines will cost $2.1 million per MW. But the high price tag has not deterred the Obama administration from funding the costly wind projects.

“Offshore wind offers a large, untapped energy resource for the United States that can create thousands of manufacturing, construction and supply chain jobs across the country and drive billions of dollars in local economic investment,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

According to Windustry, a utility scale wind turbine cost from $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW. Most “commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.”

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that the costs of offshore wind power are still high at $204 per megwatthour (MWh) — compared with the costs of onshore wind power at $80 per MWh.

Each of the projects can get up to $47 million in federal funding. Dominion Virginia Power will get funding to construct two 6-MW offshore wind turbines that could produce enough energy to power 3,000 homes, according to the Energy Department.

Five 5-MW wind turbines will be built off the cost of Atlantic City, New Jersey that will act as a laboratory for researchers who wish to study the impacts of offshore wind. Coos Bay, Oregon will get six 5-MW that will be built 18 miles off the coast in 1,000-foot deep water. The Energy Department says that over 60 percent of U.S. offshore wind resources are in deep waters, in particular on the West Coast.

“The Energy Department is working with public and private partners to harness this untapped resource in a sustainable and economic manner. The offshore wind projects announced today further this commitment — bringing more clean, renewable energy to our homes and businesses, diversifying our energy portfolio, and reducing costs through innovation.”

Environmentalists and many Republicans have hammered the Obama administration for its support of wind power. Republicans argue that the wind industry has benefited from subsidies and green energy mandates for decades and federal funding for such projects are wasteful.

Environmentalists are angry with the administration for not holding wind power companies accountable for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of birds every year. One study from 2013 said that 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats were killed by wind turbines every year, many of these birds are even federally protected.

The first energy company to be punished for bird deaths came in November 2013. A subsidiary of Duke Energy had to pay $1 million in fines for the killing of 160 birds at two wind farms in Wyoming.

But this has so far been the only wind energy case that federal officials have prosecuted. And it looks like there may not be many more as the Obama administration allowed energy companies to get 30-year permits to kill federally protected birds and eagles, enraging environmentalists.

“ABC has heard from thousands of citizens from across the country who are outraged that the [Interior Department] wants to let the wind industry legally kill our country’s iconic Bald and Golden eagles,”  said Michael Hutchins, National Coordinator of ABC’s Bird Smart Wind Energy Campaign.

“The rule lacks a firm foundation in scientific justification and was generated without the benefit of a full assessment of its impacts on eagle populations,” Hutchins added.

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House Creates Benghazi Select Committee with Help from Seven Democrats

Seven Democrats crossed party lines and joined House Republicans to establish a Select Committee to investigate the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on Thursday night. 

These Democrats were Reps. Ron Barber (D-AZ), John Barrow (D-GA), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), Patrick Murphy (D-FL), Collin Peterson (D-MN), Nick Rahall (D-WV), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). The resolution passed 232-186.

Speaker Boehner has yet to announce which members will be part of the committee, but some lawmakers gave their thoughts as to what kind of representatives should be chosen.

“I think Trey Gowdy is a good choice for chairman. The Select Committee became essential. You needed one committee to bring it all together and to bring all the parties in the room at one time,” said Rep. Peter King (R-NY) to Breitbart News. “As long as the [members chosen] are professional. We have to be careful that we don’t overplay this. There’s real evidence here. We have to be responsible—starting with Trey. He’s very responsible,” he said, noting the importance of having members on the committee who “are solid” and “know how to ask questions and conduct themselves intelligently.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), a longtime outspoken advocate for a Select Committee and member of the Judiciary Committee, told Breitbart News that Republican leadership needs to be careful who they choose for the committee.

“They got a good guy in Trey Gowdy, who's probably the best cross examiner in the House. But it means the difference between getting to the bottom of things as the Watergate committee did—of course, in that case, you had Republicans trying to help get to the bottom of things instead of trying to delay and obfuscate,” Gohmert said. He added, “But if you don't have the best cross examiners—the people who know how to make a case—then you end up with wonderful, well-meaning people that let a real problem like Whitewater get away from them with not much in the way of results. So it's very important who he puts on there. And I hope he gives it proper consideration."

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Breitbart News he believes the Benghazi issue is “worn out,” saying, “I think we’ve worn Benghazi to a thread.”

However, Conyers recommended Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as his top picks for members of the Select Committee.

Nadler himself appeared surprised when Breitbart News told him that Conyers thought he would represent Democrats best on the Committee. “I haven’t given it a thought at all,” Nadler said, explaining, “The whole [Benghazi Select Committee] thing is a fraud. There’s no scandal there. They’re trying to make a big political thing there. It’s ridiculous.”

Speaker Boehner is expected to announce names for the Benghazi Select Committee on Friday.

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Dissenting Scientists Label White House Climate Report As ‘Pseudoscience’

Climate scientists have said the White House’s National Climate Assessment (NCA) resembles pseudoscience more than actual science.

The National Climate Data Center released its third NCA on Tuesday, which warns of an ever-worsening environment and extreme temperature rises due to man-made carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. But it has been panned in some quarters.

“This National Assessment is much closer to pseudoscience than it is to science,” wrote scientists Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger of the libertarian Cato Institute in their comments submitted to the Obama administration.

“It clearly believes that virtually everything in our society is tremendously dependent on the surface temperature, and, because of that, we are headed towards certain and inescapable destruction, unless we take its advice and decarbonize our economy, pronto,” Michaels and Knappenberger added.

The NCA says that the U.S. average temperature has risen between 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit to 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, with most of that increase occurring since 1980. This temperature rise, the report argues, has been linked to increased extreme weather, like hurricanes and droughts, as well as ecosystem imbalance across the country.

The NCA warns that the average temperature could increase another 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming decades, causing more extreme weather, sea level rises and deaths. The NCA suggests a slew of regulatory solutions from cap-and-trade to green energy subsidies to mitigate global warming.

“It is to provide cover for a massive regulatory intrusion, and concomitant enormous costs in resources and individual liberty,” Michaels and Knappenberger wrote. “History tells us that when scientists willingly endorse sweeping governmental agendas fueled by dodgy science, bad things soon happen.”

Michaels’ and Knappenberger’s 75-page critique of the NCA points out the many weak points and flaws present in the government’s analysis of the impact of global warming. For example, the NCA relies on not only peer-reviewed scientific literature, but also non-peer reviewed work from environmental activist groups — which the government did not disclose.

The libertarian Cato scholars point to environmental and political advocacy groups cited in just the NCA’s chapter on water resources. The groups include the Union of Concerned Scientists (who are not actual scientists), the Southwest Climate Alliance and the Water Climate Utility Alliance.

Michaels and Knappenberger also pointed out that the measure of climate sensitivity used by the report is 40 percent higher than what more recent scientific literature points to. Climate sensitivity is the measure of how much warming would occur if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were doubled. The current literature puts that number at about 1.5 degrees Celsius, but the government used estimates from the United Nations’ 2007 climate report putting climate sensitivity at 2 degrees Celsius to 3.3 degrees Celsius.

One of the most pointed criticisms made by Michaels and Knappenberger hit the Obama administration’s claims on extreme weather. But as the two scientists point out, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there little evidence of increased extreme weather.

“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change,” the IPCC said in its latest climate assessment.

“The assessment is woefully ignorant of humanity’s ability to adapt and prosper in response to challenges,” wrote Michaels and Knappenberger. “The quintessence of this is the truly dreadful chapter on human health and climate change.”

Evidence presented by University of Colorado climate scientists Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. also shows that there has been no increase in extreme weather events due to global warming.

“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said in his testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last year. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

“Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900,” Pielke added. “The same holds for tropical cyclones globally since at least 1970.”

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John Boehner gives Benghazi committee broad powers

House Speaker John A. Boehner laid out details of his proposed Benghazi investigative committee Tuesday night, calling for a 7-5 split between Republicans and Democrats — drawing a stern response from Democrats who said that is unfair and taints the investigation from the start.

Mr. Boehner said the committee won’t have a set deadline for finishing its investigation, but will go until it has the answers to questions about the run-up to the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, the administration’s handling of the attack, and the White House’s effort to shape public perception of the attack afterward.

“It is unfortunate that it has to come to this, but when four Americans are killed by terrorists in a well-coordinated assault, the American people will not tolerate the evasion we have seen from the White House,” the speaker said.

He said the investigation had to have an open-ended time frame because the Obama administration has demonstrated it isn’t willing to cooperate.

His resolution, which Republicans are preparing for floor action later this week, would give the committee chairman — whom Mr. Boehner has said would be Rep. Trey Gowdy — the power to issue subpoenas.

Democrats have objected to the outlines of the committee makeup and powers.

In a letter to Mr. Boehner late Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer insisted the membership be changed so there are an even number of Democrats and Republicans, and said decisions about whom to subpoena should be made only with the agreement of both parties.

“If you truly want this new select committee to be bipartisan and fair — and to be taken seriously by the American people — we call on you to reconsider this approach before bringing this measure to the House floor for a vote,” the two lawmakers said.

The new investigative committee would supersede all other House committees that are already conducting investigations. All of their files would have to be turned over to the new committee.

That would effectively end the ongoing investigation into Benghazi that House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has been running.

In one cost-saving move, Mr. Boehner proposed that the new investigative committee try to borrow staff from existing committees.

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Hard-Hitting NSA Reform Bill Starts Moving Through Congress

The most significant National Security Agency legislative overhaul, the USA Freedom Act, saw fresh movement toward a vote in Congress Monday after more than six months of delay since it was introduced last year.

The House Judiciary Committee announced plans to move the bill to markup on Wednesday, where it will have to clear a committee vote before moving to the full House floor for a vote. According to congressional aides cited in a Guardian report, the bill is expected to move through the committee with bipartisan support.

“This will start to look like a reasonable path forward for surveillance reform,” the aide said.

After initial skepticism, Virginia Republican representative and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte will now support the bill despite push back from House Republican leadership, whom preferred a more docile bill from the House Intelligence Committee allowing the government to subpoena data without prior judicial approval.

Co-written and sponsored by PATRIOT Act author and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the bill is by far the most in-depth overhaul of NSA legality and procedure since the leaks of classified Internet and telephone bulk surveillance programs by former agency contractor Edward Snowden last year.

The bill specifically rewrites PATRIOT Act Section 215 and FISA Section 702, which are the primary sources of legal justification for the mass collection and surveillance of Americans’ and foreign citizens’ phone records, Internet communications, metadata and more.

Significant support for the USA Freedom Act already extends into the Senate thanks to Democratic co-author, judiciary chair, president pro tempore and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. The bill carries the nearly unanimous consent of the tech community and a comparable ratio of privacy and civil liberties advocates.

Roughly an hour after the House Judiciary Committee’s announcement, the intelligence committee announced it will markup its bill, the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act, on Thursday.

“This bill directly addresses the privacy concerns many Americans have expressed over bulk collection. The bill ends bulk collection of telephone metadata and increases transparency while maintaining the tools our government needs to keep Americans and our allies safe,” committee leaders Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland said in a joint statement Monday.

“We believe this bill responds to the concerns many members of Congress have expressed and can be the compromise vehicle to reform FISA while preserving important counterterrorism capabilities,” the committee leaders said.

The intelligence committee announcement effectively sets off a race to Speaker of the House John Boehner, who will decide which bill will be brought to the floor, and it what order.

Though the committee compromised some of the bill’s original language to allow the NSA to collect phone data on Americans based on ”reasonable articulable suspicion” and the records of people two degrees separated from a target, it only permits individual collection – not bulk, sweeping dragnet collection and storage.

The bill has 143 House cosponsors and 21 cosponsors for the Senate version. Sensenbrenner, Goodlatte, Virginia Republican Randy Forbes and Democrats John Conyers of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Bobby Scott of Virginia will present the legislation to the committee on Wednesday.

“As the Committee of primary jurisdiction, we have conducted robust oversight of the intelligence-gathering programs operated under FISA and have come to the conclusion that these programs are in need of reform to protect our privacy, including prohibiting bulk collection under Section 215,” the six congressmen said in a joint statement.

“Over the past several months, we have worked together across party lines and with the Administration and have reached a bipartisan solution that includes real protections for Americans’ civil liberties, robust oversight, and additional transparency, while preserving our ability to protect America’s national security. We look forward to taking up this legislation on Wednesday and continuing to work with House leaders to reform these programs.”

The White House has yet to take a position on either bill facing markup in the House later this week.

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Grass Roots Groups Join in Campaign to Terminate Common Core Standards Project

Breitbart News has learned that American Principles Project (APP), one of the nation’s leading organizations working to defeat the Common Core standards, will release a letter on Monday morning addressed to Gov. Mary Fallin (R-OK), chair of the National Governor’s Association (NGA), asking her to terminate the Common Core project.

The letter, signed by grass roots groups and individuals opposed to the Common Core initiative, is addressed to Fallin as governor of Oklahoma and as chair of the NGA. The NGA is co-author of the Common Core State Standards and co-owner of the copyright to the centralized standards along with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Fallin has been supportive of the Common Core standards, but a bill that repeals the standards in Oklahoma has passed both chambers of the legislature and an amended bill may end up going to conference. The repeal of Common Core and a decision not to simply “rebrand” them in some fashion could place Fallin in an uncomfortable position due to her role as NGA chairman.

Indiana became the first state to officially repeal the Common Core standards, but Gov. Mike Pence (R) has drawn the ire of grassroots groups who oppose the standards by signing off on replacement standards that are strikingly similar to Common Core and, in some cases even inferior.

“I support passing legislation that increases classroom rigor and accountability while guaranteeing that Oklahoma public education is protected from federal interference,” Fallin cautiously said in a statement that reflected the NGA position that the Common Core standards were led by states without intrusion by the federal government.

“The American people know that government has drifted away from them and no longer responds to their will,” said Emmett McGroarty, director of APP Education, in an email statement to Breitbart News. “This letter details how state government has been turned into the tool of the federal executive branch, rather than responding to the will of the people.”

“Governor Fallin, though, has a wonderful opportunity to stand up for the American people and the Constitution that is intended to protect their rights, including their right to have a say in what their children learn and who teaches it to them,” McGroarty added.

Accompanied by a “Joint Statement Regarding the National Governors Association’s Common Core Standards Initiative and the Constitutional Structure,” the letter to Fallin was sent exclusively to Breitbart News in advance of its release, and states:

NGA’s activities, including its ownership, development and propagation of the Common Core, have caused profound harm to our constitutional structure. NGA has enabled corporations and other private interests to drive education policy and, concomitantly, compromised the power of parents. It has enlisted the power of the federal government to bring about these changes and, in so doing, has weakened the power of states to defend the authority and rights of parents and other citizens.

More specifically, NGA has assisted the federal government in employing a strategy against the states that has divided and conquered the state checks and balances that are intended to guard against federal overreach.  It has presided over the development of math standards that lock children into a defective education, one that does not prepare children for studies in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or for admission to competitive public and private universities. It has presided over the development of English standards that fail to prepare children for authentic college work in the humanities and that weaken the formation of strong citizen-leaders and individuals of substance who are fully capable of exercising their liberties.

The pushback against the Common Core rests on parents’ love for their children and their defense of the Constitution that protects their rights to form their children and direct their education. It is a movement based on truth, and on highly informed citizens –citizens who follow in the footsteps of the Founders. It is a movement that continues to grow and which will be victorious.

We respectfully ask that, as chair of the NGA, you end the Common Core project. We respectfully submit that your decisions on this matter will define your legacy.

Signers include Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins of American Principles Project; Phyllis Schlafly and Glyn Wright of Eagle Forum; Jim Stergios and Jamie Gass of Pioneer Institute; Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America; Tim Wildmon and Sandy Rios, American Family Association; Paul Caprio of Family Pac Federal; Stacy Mott of Smart Girl Politics Action; William A. Estrada, Esq. and J. Michael Smith, Esq. of Home School Legal Defense Association; Michael Farris of Parentalrights.org; talk show host Donna Hearne of Bott Radio Network; and Michelle Malkin, Conservative syndicated columnist.

Parents and other visitors to the letter’s website may also sign the letter.

In their joint statement, the signers emphasize that NGA is “not a governmental entity,” “does not have grants of legislative authority from the states,” and, as a private organization, is “not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests of other sunshine laws.”

The statement retraces the genesis of the Common Core initiative, including the United States Education Department’s (USED) Race to the Top (RttT) program, that lured states into adopting the Common Core through stimulus bill competitive grants, and Common Core’s massive funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has awarded grants for the development, promotion, and implementation of the standards to: NGA, CCSSO, the National Association of State Boards of Education, PTA’s, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation (teachers union), the National Education Association Foundation for the Improvement of Education (teachers union), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and WestEd, among many other groups and organizations.

“NGA has taken the lead role in persuading the federal government to foist the Common Core standards, and indeed the entire Common Core system, onto the states,” reads the joint statement.

The signers go on to describe the Common Core standards as being “of poor quality,” and “age-inappropriate for young children.” The initiative’s changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations in order to collect student data are identified as “patently unfaithful to the underlying statute.”

In addition, the joint statement argues, “the NGA’s Common Core efforts pose a grave threat to the constitutional structure and to the rights of parents and other citizens.”

With regard to the role of the USED in the Common Core initiative, the signers describe it as “constitutionally incoherent:”

USED does not interact directly with the citizen, but rather works through state departments of education, which it funds in exchange for policy obedience. This deceives parents and other citizens. What appears to have been a decision by a state board or state department of education to change a policy or regulation or to request the legislature to change a law is often, in truth, an adaptation made at the behest of the federal government. State government loses its integrity when this happens.

As NGA chairman, Fallin has presided over the organization’s America Works initiative in which the need for the Common Core standards is emphasized in order to prepare students for “skilled” labor jobs, a goal that demonstrates the desire of government and corporate elitists to manage the workforce in the United States.

According to the NGA:

Preparing America’s 21st century workforce to stay competitive not only calls for national attention but demands gubernatorial leadership. Governors across the United States are providing that leadership. As demand for skilled workers continues to rise, governors are playing an increasingly pivotal role in aligning states’ education and training resources with the needs of their growing economies. Because governors are responsible for both public education and economic development, they are uniquely positioned to foster stronger connections between education and the workforce. Using a combination of the policy components outlined above, governors can do more to align the education pipeline with the needs of employers and thus benefit their citizens and their economies.

Through Governor Fallin’s leadership, the National Governors Association will continue to support governors and other state leaders in their efforts to increase the educational and economic opportunities available to all citizens.

According to APP and its collaborators, however, “It is inexplicable that the NGA and its partners would not condemn the federal government’s incentivizing education policy-making - pitting one state against the other in a scramble to change policies to garner points in a federal grant competition.”

“The Common Core scheme represents the worst of opaque, quasi-governmental chicanery accomplished at the expense of individual constitutional rights,” the letter’s signers conclude. “The Framers never would have imagined this.”

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House GOP: Obama withholding Benghazi email is ‘criminal’

House Republicans accused the Obama administration Thursday of “perhaps criminal” behavior for having withheld for months key email that sheds light on how the administration framed its post-Benghazi talking points, potentially violating a congressional subpoena.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Secretary of State John F. Kerry will have to come before Congress to explain why his department refused to release the email until forced to do so by a judge.

Meanwhile, a retired Air Force brigadier general who was in the U.S. Africa Command’s headquarters the night of the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic post in Benghazi testified that he and others quickly realized the assault was spawned by terrorists. The general said it was either negligence or willful ignorance that led the White House, amid a re-election campaign, to say the violence was ignited by anger over a video.

Several high-profile Republican senators said the revelations, combined with questions still unanswered, should spur Congress to create an independent investigative committee to get the answers.

“If the White House won’t explain it, Secretary Kerry should come to the Capitol to explain why he defied an official congressional subpoena. And the White House needs to understand that this investigation will not end until the entire truth is revealed and justice and accountability are served,” Mr. Boehner said.

Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm, obtained the email under an open-records request enforced by a court order. The email shows a top White House national security official shaping how U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice should talk about the attack on a round of Sunday political talk shows. The email said blame should be placed on an Internet video.

The White House dismissed the rekindled questions.

“This is a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy,” press secretary Jay Carney said.

But he altered his explanation from Wednesday, when he said the reason the email wasn’t turned over in response to requests was that it wasn’t about Benghazi. Instead, Mr. Carney said it was a State Department decision and Mr. Kerry’s department would have to provide the answers.

Mr. Carney did acknowledge Thursday that the email mentioned Benghazi once, in a question about how administration officials should respond to a report in a British newspaper that the U.S. ignored a warning 48 hours before the attack.

Mr. Carney said Republicans in Congress should drop the Benghazi investigation and instead focus on the economy. He also said the president is focused on finding the perpetrators who killed four Americans in Benghazi.

“If anyone doubts that, they should ask … any friends and family members of Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Carney said.

Republicans in Congress counter that Mr. Obama also promised to bring the perpetrators of the Benghazi attack to justice, yet nobody has been apprehended more than 18 months later. The government has secured a sealed indictment in federal court that reportedly names a number of suspects including Ahmed Abu Khattalah, the founder of Ansar al-Sharia.

Immediately after the attack, the Obama administration said it was a mob protest spawned by an Internet video mocking Islam. Such a protest broke out in Cairo on Sept. 11, 2012.

But Republicans said the CIA, the Defense Department and parts of the State Department quickly realized that the Benghazi attack was not a protest. They question why the White House deployed Ms. Rice to the talk shows nearly a week later to repeat that message.

Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and the House’s top investigator of Benghazi, said Thursday that it was “perhaps criminal” of the Obama administration to withhold the email.

“The facts are coming out that this administration has knowingly withheld documents pursuant to congressional subpoenas,” Mr. Issa said as he opened a hearing into the administration’s handling of the deadly attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Testifying at the hearing was Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell, who was overseeing intelligence for Africom the night of the attack and said the military knew early on that the violence wasn’t about a video.

He also said the decision not to respond with military action likely was made outside of the Defense Department. He said the military was waiting on a request from the State Department — a request that never came.

“Basically, there was a lot of looking to the State Department for what they wanted and the deference to the Libyan people and the sense of deference to the desires of the State Department in terms of what they would like to have,” the general testified.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California Republican, said Gen. Lovell’s role didn’t give him reliable insight into the scope of options available to commanders.

“The Armed Services Committee has interviewed more than a dozen witnesses in the operational chain of command that night, yielding thousands of pages of transcripts, e-mails, and other documents. We have no evidence that Department of State officials delayed the decision to deploy what few resources DoD had available to respond,” Mr. McKeon said in a statement.

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Boehner’s Last Two Opponents Were Fired From Their Jobs

John Boehner’s last two serious challengers for his Ohio eighth district congressional seat both got fired during their campaigns — and one of them was told explicitly that he was getting canned for running against Boehner.

The Daily Caller exclusively reported Monday that Boehner’s tea party primary challenger J.D. Winteregg was fired from his job as an adjunct professor at Ohio’s Cedarville University for running an anti-Boehner campaign ad accusing the speaker of “Electile Dysfunction.” Winteregg is challenging Boehner in the district’s May 6 Republican primary.

“I would say the raciness of it, sure,” was the reason the Christian college fired Winteregg, Cedarville University spokesman Mark Weinstein told TheDC, referring to the sexual innuendo in Winteregg’s ad. Weinstein also told FoxNews.com that “(At Cedarville) we don’t get into politics.”

But Cedarville University chancellor Dr. William Brown participated in a press conference Monday in Ohio calling for Boehner, his congressman, to pass immigration reform. Brown participated in the event one day before joining a group of pastors in flying to Washington, D.C. to meet with their representatives to discuss the issue. Cedarville University has featured an internship in Boehner’s congressional office as an official discipline-related experience for students.

Winteregg is not the first Boehner challenger to lose his employment while on the campaign trail.

Justin Coussoule, a West Point graduate and former army captain working as a purchasing manager for Cincinnati-based consumer products manufacturer Procter & Gamble in Ohio when he ran against Boehner as a Democrat in 2010, was fired from his job for taking on the veteran lawmaker.

“In Justin’s case he was faced with resignation or termination from Procter & Gamble. They were surprised that anyone would want to run against John Boehner because he had been, as they said, so good for their business,” Alliea Phipps, Coussoule’s 2010 campaign manager, told TheDC.

A vice president of government relations at Procter & Gamble took Coussoule out for coffee after he first decided to run against Boehner, and pressured him not to do it.

“The exact phrase was, ‘Why would you want to run against John Boehner? He’s been so good for our business,” Phipps said. But Coussoule decided to run anyway, taking out a loan on his house and signing up campaign staff to work for free.

Boehner reportedly owns between $15,0001 and $50,000 in Procter & Gamble stock, which he reported on his 2012 financial disclosure. Boehner held only between $1,001 to $15,000 in the company’s stock, according to his 2009 disclosure, which he filed before the race against Coussoule. His 2010 disclosure shows him holding between $15,001 and $50,000 in the company’s stock. Procter & Gamble contributed $5,000 to Boehner’s 2010 campaign.

In April 2010, shortly before Coussoule became the Democratic nominee in the race in May, a Procter & Gamble official told him that he needed to resign or be terminated, specifically because he was running for Congress in the eighth district, according to Phipps.

The company specified that its policy forbidding him from keeping his job if he won the primary only applied to him. Coussoule chose to be terminated. Coussoule’s wife, who also worked at the company, was transferred out of state several weeks before the election. Coussoule, who had two small children, decided to move with her after the election, and now no longer lives in Ohio.

“They have a policy of giving their employees a hiatus to run for office. Justin had filed for that before the primary. They had another employee who was an elected official and another employee who was running for [local] office in 2010,” Phipps said. “He followed all of their procedures and their processes to the letter. He had done everything procedurally that he should have done.”

Boehner defeated Coussoule 66 to 34 percent in the November 2010 election. Phipps noted that “[Boehner] actually had to come home and campaign. It was the first time ever.”

Boehner has been forced to mount a campaign in his district this year to hold off Winteregg, paying people to go door-to-door for him and sending out mailings touting his campaign slogan, “One of Us.”

“So a Democrat is trying to help fabricate some kind of ridiculous conspiracy theory? This just shows the Obama political machine will do whatever it takes to try and weaken the Speaker’s campaign to cut spending, repeal ObamaCare and create jobs,” Cory Fritz, spokesman for Boehner’s political office, told TheDC.

Procter & Gamble did not return a request for comment.

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Supreme Court raises concerns over warrantless cellphone searches

The Supreme Court raised concerns Tuesday about whether police have the constitutional right to search the cellphones of people they arrest.

The justices addressed the privacy rights issue during oral arguments in a pair of cases in which defendants were convicted and sentenced to prison partly because police obtained key evidence from their cellphones after a warrantless search.

Justice Elena Kagan worried that those searches violate privacy rights because "people carry their entire lives in their cellphones."

"A person can be arrested for driving without a seat belt and the police could take that phone and look at every single email that person has written, including work emails, including emails to family members — very intimate communications," she said.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she doesn't understand "why we've cut the warrant out of the picture."

The Fourth Amendment says that police generally need a warrant before they can conduct a search and that the warrant must be based on "probable cause" evidence that a crime has been committed.

But the Supreme Court has made exceptions when people are arrested, saying that police don't need a warrant to search the belongings a suspect is carrying at the time of his or her arrest.

Police, as well as the Justice Department, have argued that searches are vital to ensure evidence isn't tampered with or destroyed.

But privacy advocates and defense lawyers say that because cellphones potentially contain vast amounts of personal information unrelated to a person's arrest, they should be off limits to a police search without a warrant.

Attorneys for the police and federal government told the justices that police are interested only in evidence pertinent to a person's arrest and aren't interested in gleaning personal information from cellphones.

"You can just rove through the phone. You need to keep a scope focus," said Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben.

But some justices suggested it's unrealistic for police to immediately know what information is relevant and what isn't — particularly in the heat of making an arrest.

Justice Stephen Breyer said it's not unreasonable to suggest that police could accidentally collect too much information from a person's cellphone in the heat of an arrest.

"The point of a warrant is that a person who is not involved and is objective listens to what the policeman is saying, knowing that sometimes, like me or any other human being, a police can get a little carried away," he said.

The government also argued that searches of cellphones pose little legal difference than when police search the contents of a person's wallet at the time of an arrest, which they already have the authority to do.

But Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that cellphones pose different privacy challenges than wallets.

"I don't think it odd to say we are living in a new world," he said.

In one of two cases, a California state court upheld the conviction of David Leon Riley after San Diego police found evidence on his smartphone that he belonged to a gang and was involved in a gang-related shooting. Prosecutors used video and photographs found on the smartphone to persuade a jury to convict Riley of attempted murder and other charges.

In the other case, from Boston, a federal appeals court said the warrantless search of a cellphone belonging to Brima Wurie violated the Fourth Amendment. After arresting him on suspicion of selling crack cocaine, police examined the call log on his older model "flip phone" and used the information to determine where he lived. When they searched his home after obtaining a warrant, they found crack, marijuana, a gun and ammunition.

Attorneys for California and the federal government added that because many smartphones have encryption features, it's imperative police have immediate access to the devices before they are disabled or locked — either by the owner or by someone remotely.

The justices appeared somewhat less concerned over warrantless searches of older cellphones, which aren't connected to the Internet.

Justice Antonin Scalia said that "our rule [of law] is, if you're arrested, police can seize it and examine it."

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EPA Chief Promises To Go After Republicans Who Question Agency Science

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy has issued a warning to Republicans who continue to question the integrity of the agency’s scientific data: we’re coming for you.

McCarthy told an audience at the National Academy of Sciences on Monday morning the agency will go after a “small but vocal group of critics” who are arguing the EPA is using “secret science” to push costly clean air regulations.

“Those critics conjure up claims of EPA secret science — but it’s not really about EPA science or secrets. It’s about challenging the credibility of world renowned scientists and institutions like Harvard University and the American Cancer Society,” McCarthy said, according to Politico.

“It’s about claiming that research is secret if researchers protect confidential personal health data from those who are not qualified to analyze it — and won’t agree to protect it,” she added. “If EPA is being accused of secret science because we rely on real scientists to conduct research, and independent scientists to peer review it, and scientists who’ve spent a lifetime studying the science to reproduce it — then so be it.”

Republicans Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas have led the charge on pressing the EPA to make publicly available the scientific data behind its clean air regulations. McCarthy promised she would make such data publicly available during her confirmation process last year. Now her refusal to cough up the data has angered Republicans.

“EPA’s leadership is willfully ignoring the big picture and defending EPA’s practices of using science that is, in fact, secret due to the refusal of the agency to share the underlying data with Congress and the American public,” said Vitter.

“We’re not asking, and we’ve never asked, for personal health information, and it is inexcusable for EPA to justify billions of dollars of economically significant regulations on science that is kept hidden from independent reanalysis and congressional oversight,” Vitter added.

The EPA has used non-public data to justify 85 percent of $2 trillion worth of Clean Air Act regulation benefits from 1990 to 2020. The agency also uses such datasets to assert that Clean Air Act regulation benefits exceed the costs by a 30:1 ratio originates from the secret data sets.

House Republicans have backed a bill that would block the EPA from crafting regulations based on “secret” data. Republicans argue that such data was used to craft onerous regulations, like one promulgated in late 2012 to reduce soot levels.

That soot rule is supposed to yield $4 billion to $9 billion in benefits per year, while costing from $50 million to $350 million, but the data backing that claim up is not publicly available.

“For far too long, the EPA has approved regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country with no public evidence to justify their actions,” said Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert, who introduced the bill.

“Virtually every regulation proposed by the Obama administration has been justified by nontransparent data and unverifiable claims,” said Smith, who cosponsored the bill. “The American people foot the bill for EPA’s costly regulations, and they have a right to see the underlying science. Costly environmental regulations should be based on publicly available data so that independent scientists can verify the EPA’s claims.”

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GOP Leadership Plotting to Pass Amnesty in August, May Put AZ, TX in Play for Dems

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the House GOP Conference Chair, said that amnesty legislation could come to the floor by August.

Her comments come after multiple House Republicans have ramped up support for amnesty legislation and discussed bills they plan to introduce in the coming months. 

“I believe there is a path that we get a bill on the floor by August,” McMorris Rodgers said, according to the Spokesman-Review. “We’re going to have to push that this is a legal status, not amnesty,” she said.

According to NBC 5, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) "will soon introduce a bill that will establish a path to citizenship for the minor children of illegal immigrants and a guest worker program."

"If the only illegal act they committed was coming into the country without proper documentation we'd put them on a path to legalization," Barton said.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) said the Republican leadership is "as close as we have ever been" and, though "it is still a big, big, heavy lift... I think we’re going to get there.”

“I think we finally have the policy right,” Diaz-Balart told Roll Call. "And what we’re finding is more and more people out there as they’re seeing it, different aspects of the policy, are starting to say, ‘Hey, that is something that makes sense.’”

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) wrote to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has said he was "hellbent" on passing amnesty and mocked conservative opponents who opposed it, to let him know that he would support amnesty legislation because it would help the party.

“It would be in our country’s national interest as well as the interest of our party if this could be achieved and I want to assure you of my support as this effort goes forward,” King wrote to Boehner.

But studies and polls suggest that amnesty legislation, in addition to lowering the wages of American workers, would go against the political interest of Republicans, contrary to the claims made by amnesty proponents. 

According to a Washington Post report, amnesty legislation could put states like Arizona and Texas in play for Democrats. 

In addition, two national polls, conducting by NBC News/Wall Street Journal and ABC News/Washington Post, have also found that a plurality of Americans are less likely to vote for candidates who support amnesty legislation. 

And when Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) promote granting work visas to all of the country's illegal immigrants and allowing them to remain in the country, he is promptly greeted the next day by Hispanic leaders in Wisconsin who call him "offensive."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who recently said not passing amnesty is "a stain on America's honor," said last year that amnesty proponents would make a final push for legislation after the GOP primaries, many of which are in May and June, are done. Prominent Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) have said that this year is the last chance to pass sweeping amnesty legislation.

And though momentum for amnesty legislation has stalled after Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) blasted the GOP leadership's "immigration principles," as amnesty, the Republican leadership seems intent on making that final push for amnesty legislation during this Congress. 

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