Free Republic

Scribd Link: House Impeachment Trial Brief

In a broad-ranging compendium requested by one of Congress’s most vocal skeptics about climate change, the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday released an agency-by-agency breakdown of spending related to the politically divisive topic. The report tracks spending since 1993 by agency, category and program. Since 1993, agencies have spent more than $154 billion for “activities to understand and address climate change,” a push that has risen in recent years from about $2.4 billion across 10 agencies in fiscal 1993 to about $13.2 billion across 19 agencies in proposed budget authority for fiscal 2017. In the past seven years, for example,...

(CNSNews.com) -- Three people convicted of crimes as a result of a terrorism-related investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) were later naturalized as U.S. citizens by the Obama administration, according to federal auditors. The March 2011 audit (released on April 21, 2011) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled Criminal Alien Statistics: Information on Incarcerations, Arrests and Costs, shows that three individuals were among “defendants where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism but they were charged with violating other statutes [not directly related to terrorism], including fraud, immigration, drugs, false statements, and general conspiracy charges,” referred...

During fiscal years 2002 through 2008, the United States spent approximately $16.5 billion to train and equip the Afghan army and police forces in order to transfer responsibility for the security of Afghanistan from the international community to the Afghan government, according to a report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police’s Firearms Committee. The Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) in Kabul, which is a joint service, coalition organization under the command and control of Defense’s U.S. Central Command is primarily responsible for training and equipping ANSF. As part of that responsibility, CSTC-A receives and stores weapons provided...

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has sent letters to the heads of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Citizenship and Immigration Service, asking what their agencies have done to address problems in foreign-labor programs that were detailed in a recent Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram investigation. Collins wrote in her capacity as chairwoman of the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It's the first official call for answers from federal authorities since the newspaper's series ran in late September. The three-part series detailed concerns about the H1B visa program and the permanent green-card system. H1B visas let skilled...

"The radiation portal monitors properly signaled the presence of radioactive material when our two teams of investigators conducted simultaneous border crossings. Our investigators’ vehicles were inspected in accordance with most of the (Customs and Border Protection) policy at both the northern and southern borders. However, GAO’s investigators, using counterfeit documents, were able to enter the United States with enough radioactive sources in the trunks of their vehicles to make two dirty bombs."BORDER SECURITY Investigators Transported Radioactive Sources Across Our Nation's Borders at Two Locations Highlights of GAO-06-940T, testimony before the Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Non-Proliferation, Committee on International Relations,...

Information on Certain Illegal Aliens Arrested in the United States, GAO-05-646R, May 9, 2005PDFAccessible Text The former Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that as of January 2000 the total unauthorized immigrant population residing in the United States was 7 million. This total includes those who entered the United States illegally and those who entered legally but overstayed their authorized period of stay. A more recent study estimated that there were about 10 million illegal aliens living in the United States as of March 2005. The study estimated that nearly 700,000 aliens entered the United States illegally or overstayed their...