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DENVER — Bankers should beware of the Obama administration’s newly issued green light for banks doing business with the legal marijuana industry, according to the head of the Colorado Bankers Association. Memos released Friday by the Justice Department and Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network were intended to give banks leeway to open accounts for marijuana businesses in states like Colorado and Washington that have legalized retail pot. Instead, the guidance “only reinforces and reiterates that banks can be prosecuted for providing accounts to marijuana related businesses,” said the CBA in a Friday statement. “In fact, it is even stronger...

Influential members of Congress have asked its investigative arm to probe the beleaguered Cover Oregon health insurance exchange, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., announced Thursday in Medford. Walden joined with Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-Penn), Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts (R-Penn), and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich) to sign a Feb. 12 letter requesting an investigation to Gene Dodaro, the U.S. Comptroller General who oversees the Government Accountability Office.

**SNIP** The order will go into effect Jan. 1, 2015, and each new federal contract thereafter will have to comply with the new wage requirement. With that in mind, Mr. Perez said the number of contractors benefiting will rise over time. “Some will benefit year one. More will benefit year two. Even more will benefit year three,” he said, but added more calculations are necessary to determine how many workers will be affected. Also, the labor secretary insisted the order won’t bust budgets even though some federal contractors will be taking home bigger paychecks.

A leaner union contract had been imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association was not happy about it.

On January 27th Florida state representative Dan Eagle (R-Cape Coral) put forward a bill to prevent any "agent of the state or its political subdivisions [from participating] with or [assisting] federal agents in the enforcement of federal firearms laws." According to the Tenth Amendment Center, the bill also bars the state from "[providing] material support of any kind to federal agents in the enforcement of these laws." Eagle explained the bill thus:

From Politico: The Obama administration cannot enforce the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage requirements against a Catholic nuns’ order for the time being, if the nuns tell the government they object to providing that coverage, the Supreme Court ruled Friday afternoon. The Supreme Court’s action could defuse for the time being a showdown between religious employers and the federal government over the procedures for providing contraceptive coverage to employees of hospitals, nursing homes and other entities run by religious groups.

Congress passed a historically low number of laws in 2013, but the executive branch bureaucrats who write the nation's federal regulations remained as busy as ever, as Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, demonstrated with a single picture. "Behold my display of the 2013 Federal Register," Lee wrote in a caption for a photo posted to his Facebook page on Friday. "It contains over 80,000 pages of new rules, regulations, and notices all written and passed by unelected bureaucrats. The small stack of papers on top of the display are the laws passed by elected members of Congress and signed into law...

WASHINGTON, December 20, 2013 — Federal employees are wondering whether the President will close the government on Christmas Eve. The order to close the government for Christmas Eve 2012 came on December 21, 2012. According to Government Executive, “Obama gave federal employees a half day on Christmas Eve in 2009, when it fell on a Thursday and Christmas on a Friday. He did not order any extra holiday time in 2010 or 2011.” **SNIP** As of the publication of this article, the White House has not given any indication about Christmas Eve closures.

When Taylor started his company, Novitas, in late 2012, his plan was to work his connections, hire the right people and find something big. The end of the wars and deeper-than-expected federal budget cuts this year were making it harder for start-ups, like Taylor’s, to win government work. But the government was still spending nearly $200 million a day on contracts in the Washington area. Most people didn’t have the connections or insider knowledge to get at this money. Taylor was one of the few who did.

A Marketwatch column points out that the "Fed wants to exit QE but keep long-term rates low". This is as realistic as saying that "I want to get rich but I do not want to work". They cannot keep rates down without buying UNLESS the Treasury takes over, literally prints the money off their presses - then buys their bonds themselves at auction instead of the Federal Reserve buying. One of the things that keeps these scoundrels in the administration out of prison is that...

Saying that the cost of the Fed's $85-billion-a-month asset-purchase program "far exceeds" its benefits, Fisher urged reducing it "at the earliest opportunity," and to articulate a clear, well-defined path for ending it by a certain date. Doing so, he said, could make the Fed's change of policy course easier for markets to digest. When the Fed last signaled it was gearing up to end its bond-buying program, in May and June, investors pushed up market rates faster and farther than the Fed had expected. The rise in rates threatened to slow an already fragile recovery, and was one factor in...

America is being strangled in red tape by bureaucracies. I've talked in the past about how progressive liberals are circumventing the legislative process by issuing government regulations with no oversight and no accountability. Yet us poor serfs are liable to be fined or imprisoned if we run afoul of the imperial edicts. The latest example is how the EPA is shutting down the last remaining lead smelter in the USA at the end of the year, which will have a disastrous impact upon the cost and availability of ammunition. If progressives can't pass gun control laws, then they'll go behind...

Our government was designed that citizens elected officials to represent them and work together to create legislation to govern our land. While America is not a true democracy in the strictest sense, being a Republic, this method of governing has led a great deal of influence onto laws by the average voter. This allows unpopular legislation to be shot down by an angry public, despite the wishes of the progressive elite that they know better than us common serfs. However, this bond between citizen and government is being subverted by a relatively new menace: regulation. This is where federal agencies...

“Go West, young man” is a popular quote from Horace Greeley in 1865. “Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.” – Horace Greeley I see much hasn’t changed since 1865, but Greeley’s advice was wrong if we look at real median household income. The blue line is for the nation as a whole, the red line is for Washington DC. realmedhi So, go east young man, if you want to...

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) is introducing legislation that would nearly double the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax that is traditionally used to pay for federal transportation projects. Blumenauer's bill would increase the gas tax by 15 cents, matching a proposal that was included in the 2011 Simpson-Bowles budget reform recommendations. The legislation would result in drivers paying an extra 33.4 cents per gallon on their purchases, in addition to state taxes. Transportation advocates have pushed for a gas tax increase to close an approximately $20 billion shortfall in infrastructure funding that has developed as cars have grown more fuel efficient. The...

Prosecutors estimate that from 2000 to 2013 Beale was absent from his EPA duties for a total of 2.5 years, claiming to be working for "Langley" or on a special EPA "research project." In 2008 he was gone for six months but never submitted a leave request. Around May 2011, Beale claimed to be retiring and celebrated with colleagues on a dinner cruise. An EPA manager admitted to not seeing Beale at the office after that, though not noticing until November 2012 that Beale was still on the payroll...

So much money to be had if you know where to look. The avalanche of cash that made Washington rich in the last decade has transformed the culture of a once staid capital and created a new wave of well-heeled insiders. The winners in the new Washington are not just the former senators, party consiglieri and four-star generals who have always profited from their connections. Now they are also the former bureaucrats, accountants and staff officers for whom unimagined riches are suddenly possible. They are the entrepreneurs attracted to the capital by its aura of prosperity and its super-educated workforce....

A Washington Post analysis of the latest census data shows that more than a third of Zip codes in the D.C. metro area rank in the top 5 percent nationally for income and education. But what makes the region truly unusual is that so many of the high-end Zip codes are contiguous. They form a vast land mass that bounds across 717 square miles. It stretches 60 miles from its northern tip in Woodstock, Md., to the southern end in Fairfax Station, and runs 30 miles wide from Haymarket in Prince William County to the heart of the District up...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the government has too much power. Thirty-two percent now say the government has the right amount of power. Few say it has too little power.

A federal judge Tuesday gave the go-ahead to a lawsuit challenging Obamacare insurance subsidies — but refused to immediately block them while the case proceeds. The latest legal challenge focuses on whether the controversial 2010 law allows for subsidies in all states — or only in states that have set up exchanges. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia chose to set up online marketplaces where people without private health insurance can shop for it. The federal government is running the exchanges in the remaining states. Subsidies, in the form of tax credits, are available to people with annual...