FEDS IN DC CLOSED 25% OF TIME!

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FEDS IN DC CLOSED 25% OF TIME!

Signs say National Mall closed, but immigration reform rally is a go

Charlie Spiering
Washington Examiner
Oct. 8, 2013

A giant stage with lights and an “Immigration Reform Now” banner was set up in the center of the National Mall along with three large portable screens, despite signs and barricades proclaiming the area closed due to the government shutdown. (Photo: Charlie Spiering/For the Washington Examiner)

Even though isolated barricades with “closed” signs remained on the National Mall on Tuesday, the setup for the immigration reform rally said otherwise.

A giant stage with lights and an “Immigration Reform Now” banner was set up in the center of the mall, along with three large portable screens.

On one side of the mall, more than 100 porta potties were set up for protesters who will attend the rally today.

Read more

This article was posted: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 11:00 am

Tags: domestic news

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Infowars

Signs say National Mall closed, but immigration reform rally is a go

Government doors closed, but workers may get paid

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden order lunch at Taylor Gourmet sandwich shop near the White House in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. The president and vice president stepped out of the White House on a surprise and rare off-campus stroll to grab lunch at a neighborhood eatery. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden order lunch at Taylor Gourmet sandwich shop near the White House in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. The president and vice president stepped out of the White House on a surprise and rare off-campus stroll to grab lunch at a neighborhood eatery. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest-serving member of Congress in history, joins fellow House Democrats to discuss the government shutdown, at a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. From left are House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Rep. Nita M. Lowey, D-N.Y., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. There has been no sign of progress toward ending an impasse that has idled 800,000 federal workers and curbed services around the country. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE – In this Oct. 29, 2012 file photo, then-Republican House candidate, now, Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., speaks in Claremore, Okla. Hard-line House conservatives are demanding concessions from President Barack Obama on his health care law in exchange for re-opening the federal government. Arguments to relent have not persuaded these Republican newcomers _ 71 from the tea party class of 2010 and 37 who arrived in Washington earlier this year. Many are too young to remember the last shutdown in 1995 and the political woes it created for the GOP. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, right, joined by members of the Republican Caucus, watches during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. From left are, Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Boehner. Boehner is struggling between Democrats that control the Senate and GOP conservatives in his caucus who insist any funding legislation must also kill or delay the nation’s new health care law. Added pressure came from President Barack Obama who pointedly blamed Boehner on Thursday for keeping federal agencies closed. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Tea Party supporter Greg Cummings of Cincinnati, Ohio, watches a rally with the Democratic Progressive Caucus and furloughed federal employees against House Republicans on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. Cummings attended the rally to blame Senate Democrats for the government shutdown. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Their government has failed to keep the doors open and has told federal workers to stay off the job as the political parties fight over spending and health care in austere times.

Now Congress and President Barack Obama are poised to send this message to the 800,000 sidelined government employees: We don’t know when the impasses will end but you will get reimbursed for lost pay once the government reopens.

With the partial shutdown entering its fifth day, the GOP-run House was debating a bill Saturday that would make sure the furloughed workers get paid for not working. The White House backs the bill and the Senate was expected to OK it, too, but the timing was unclear.

Several Washington-area lawmakers made impassioned pleas to provide relief for federal workers, many of whom live in their districts.

“This is not their fault and they should not suffer as a result,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

Obama’s budget office assessed the plan this way: “Federal workers keep the nation safe and secure and provide vital services that support the economic security of American families. The administration appreciates that the Congress is acting promptly to move this bipartisan legislation and looks forward to the bill’s swift passage.”

The White House has opposed other piecemeal efforts by House Republicans to restore money to some functions of government during the partial shutdown. White House officials have said the House should reopen the entire government and not pick agencies and programs over others.

In the 1995-96 government shutdowns, furloughed workers were retroactively given full pay.

Despite the White House’s declared appreciation of the essential the role of federal workers, there appeared no sign of a breakthrough in getting them back to work.

Lawmakers keep replaying the same script on Capitol Hill: House Republicans pass piecemeal bills to reopen popular and politically sensitive programs — on Friday, disaster relief and food aid for the poor — while Democrats insist that the House vote on a straightforward Senate-passed measure to reopen all of government.

“But the far right of the Republican Party won’t let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote,” Obama said in his Saturday radio and Internet address. “Take that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now.”

There seemed little chance of that.

For one thing, flinching by either side on the shutdown might be seen as weakening one’s hand in an even more important fight looming just over the horizon as the combatants in Washington increasingly shifted their focus to a midmonth deadline for averting a first-ever default.

“This isn’t some damn game,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said as the White House and Democrats held to their position of agreeing to negotiate only after the government is reopened and the $ 16.7 trillion debt limit raised.

Republicans pointed to a quote in The Wall Street Journal from an anonymous White House official that “we are winning … It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts.

At issue in the shutdown is a temporary funding measure to keep the government fully open through mid-November or mid-December.

More than 100 stopgap continuing resolutions have passed without much difficulty since the last shutdown in 1996. But tea party Republicans, their urgency intensified by the rollout of health insurance marketplaces this month, are demanding concessions in Obama’s health care law as their price for the funding legislation, sparking the shutdown impasse with Democrats.

Obama has said he won’t negotiate on the temporary spending bill or upcoming debt limit measure, arguing they should be sent to him free of GOP add-ons. Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, routinely sent Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, “clean” stopgap spending bills and debt-limit increases.

House Republicans appeared to be shifting their demands, de-emphasizing their previous insistence on defunding the health care overhaul in exchange for re-opening the government. Instead, they ramped up calls for cuts in federal benefit programs and future deficits, items that Boehner has said repeatedly will be part of any talks on debt limit legislation.

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Politics Headlines

Government doors closed, but workers may get paid

State Dept: Posts in 19 countries to remain closed

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid online “chatter” about terror threats, U.S. diplomatic posts in 19 cities in the Muslim world will be closed at least through the end of this week, the State Department said.

Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the decision to keep the embassies and consulates shuttered is a sign of an “abundance of caution” and is “not an indication of a new threat.”

She said the continued closures are “merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees, including local employees, and visitors to our facilities.”

Diplomatic facilities will remain closed in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries, through Saturday, Aug. 10. The State Department announcement Sunday added closures of four African sites, in Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius.

The U.S. has also decided to reopen some posts on Monday, including those in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Baghdad.

The Obama administration announced Friday that the posts would be closed over the weekend and the State Department announced a global travel alert, warning that al-Qaida or its allies might target either U.S. government or private American interests.

The intercepted intelligence foreshadowing an attack on U.S. or Western interests is evidence of one of the gravest threats to the United States since 9/11, according to several lawmakers who made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows.

“This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia told NBC’s “Meet the Press Sunday. “Chatter means conversation among terrorists about the planning that’s going on — very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was that chatter that prompted the Obama administration to order the Sunday closure of 22 embassies and consulates and issue the travel warning.

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that the threat intercepted from “high-level people in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” was about a “major attack.”

Yemen is home to al-Qaida’s most dangerous affiliate, blamed for several notable terrorist plots on the United States. They include the foiled Christmas Day 2009 effort to bomb an airliner over Detroit and the explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights.

Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, told ABC the threat “was specific as to how enormous it was going to be and also that certain dates were given.”

The Obama administration’s decision to close the embassies and the lawmakers’ general discussion about the threats and the related intelligence discoveries come at a sensitive time as the government tries to defend recently disclosed surveillance programs that have stirred deep privacy concerns and raised the potential of the first serious retrenchment in terrorism-fighting efforts since Sept. 11.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has scoffed at the assertion by the head of the National Security Agency that government methods used to collect telephone and email data have helped foil 54 terror plots.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a House Intelligence Committee member, said while he takes the threat seriously he hasn’t seen any evidence linking the latest warnings to that agency’s collection of “vast amounts of domestic data.”

Other lawmakers defended the administration’s response and promoted the work of the NSA in unearthing the intelligence that led to the security warnings.

King, a frequent critic of President Barack Obama, said: “Whether or not there was any controversy over the NSA at all, all these actions would have been taken.”

On Friday, the White House announced the weekend closures and the State Department announced a global travel alert.

The warning urged American travelers to take extra precautions overseas, citing potential dangers involved with public transportation systems and other prime sites for tourists.

It noted that previous terrorist attacks have centered on subway and rail networks as well as airplanes and boats. It suggested travelers sign up for State Department alerts and register with U.S. consulates in the countries they visit. The alert expires Aug. 31.

The intelligence intercepts also prompted Britain, Germany and France to close their embassies in Yemen on Sunday and Monday. British authorities said some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn “due to security concerns.”

Interpol, the French-based international policy agency, has also issued a global security alert in connection with suspected al-Qaida involvement in several recent prison escapes including those in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.

___

Associated Press writer Michele Salcedo contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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State Dept: Posts in 19 countries to remain closed

State Dept: Posts in 19 countries to remain closed

A Yemeni soldier inspects a car at a checkpoint on a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. Security forces close access roads, put up extra blast walls and beef up patrols near some of the 21 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Muslim world that Washington ordered closed for the weekend over a “significant threat” of an al-Qaida attack. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

A Yemeni soldier inspects a car at a checkpoint on a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. Security forces close access roads, put up extra blast walls and beef up patrols near some of the 21 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Muslim world that Washington ordered closed for the weekend over a “significant threat” of an al-Qaida attack. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Map shows U.S. embassies and consulates that will close; 3c x 3 inches; 146 mm x 76 mm;

A Yemeni soldier inspects a car at a checkpoint on a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. Security forces close access roads, put up extra blast walls and beef up patrols near some of the 21 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Muslim world that Washington ordered closed for the weekend over a “significant threat” of an al-Qaida attack. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

A ,man walks past the U.S Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. The threat of a terrorist attack led to the weekend closure of 21 U.S. embassies and consulates in the Muslim world and a global travel warning to Americans, the first such alert since an announcement before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 strikes. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

A Yemeni soldier stops a car at a checkpoint in a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. Security forces close access roads, put up extra blast walls and beef up patrols near some of the 21 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Muslim world that Washington ordered closed for the weekend over a “significant threat” of an al-Qaida attack. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid online “chatter” about terror threats, U.S. diplomatic posts in 19 cities in the Muslim world will be closed at least through the end of this week, the State Department said.

Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the decision to keep the embassies and consulates shuttered is a sign of an “abundance of caution” and is “not an indication of a new threat.”

She said the continued closures are “merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees, including local employees, and visitors to our facilities.”

Diplomatic facilities will remain closed in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries, through Saturday, Aug. 10. The State Department announcement Sunday added closures of four African sites, in Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius.

The U.S. has also decided to reopen some posts on Monday, including those in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Baghdad.

The Obama administration announced Friday that the posts would be closed over the weekend and the State Department announced a global travel alert, warning that al-Qaida or its allies might target either U.S. government or private American interests.

The intercepted intelligence foreshadowing an attack on U.S. or Western interests is evidence of one of the gravest threats to the United States since 9/11, according to several lawmakers who made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows.

“This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia told NBC’s “Meet the Press Sunday. “Chatter means conversation among terrorists about the planning that’s going on — very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was that chatter that prompted the Obama administration to order the Sunday closure of 22 embassies and consulates and issue the travel warning.

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that the threat intercepted from “high-level people in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” was about a “major attack.”

Yemen is home to al-Qaida’s most dangerous affiliate, blamed for several notable terrorist plots on the United States. They include the foiled Christmas Day 2009 effort to bomb an airliner over Detroit and the explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights.

Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, told ABC the threat “was specific as to how enormous it was going to be and also that certain dates were given.”

The Obama administration’s decision to close the embassies and the lawmakers’ general discussion about the threats and the related intelligence discoveries come at a sensitive time as the government tries to defend recently disclosed surveillance programs that have stirred deep privacy concerns and raised the potential of the first serious retrenchment in terrorism-fighting efforts since Sept. 11.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has scoffed at the assertion by the head of the National Security Agency that government methods used to collect telephone and email data have helped foil 54 terror plots.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a House Intelligence Committee member, said while he takes the threat seriously he hasn’t seen any evidence linking the latest warnings to that agency’s collection of “vast amounts of domestic data.”

Other lawmakers defended the administration’s response and promoted the work of the NSA in unearthing the intelligence that led to the security warnings.

King, a frequent critic of President Barack Obama, said: “Whether or not there was any controversy over the NSA at all, all these actions would have been taken.”

On Friday, the White House announced the weekend closures and the State Department announced a global travel alert.

The warning urged American travelers to take extra precautions overseas, citing potential dangers involved with public transportation systems and other prime sites for tourists.

It noted that previous terrorist attacks have centered on subway and rail networks as well as airplanes and boats. It suggested travelers sign up for State Department alerts and register with U.S. consulates in the countries they visit. The alert expires Aug. 31.

The intelligence intercepts also prompted Britain, Germany and France to close their embassies in Yemen on Sunday and Monday. British authorities said some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn “due to security concerns.”

Interpol, the French-based international policy agency, has also issued a global security alert in connection with suspected al-Qaida involvement in several recent prison escapes including those in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.

___

Associated Press writer Michele Salcedo contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Politics Headlines

State Dept: Posts in 19 countries to remain closed

US embassies closed on terror fears

4 August 2013 Last updated at 04:03 ET

Several countries have temporarily closed their missions in Sanaa

Twenty-one US embassies and consulates, mostly in the Middle East, are closed for the day in response to fears of an unspecified attack by militants.

A state department global travel alert, issued on Friday, is also in force until the end of August.

The department said the potential for an al-Qaeda inspired attack was particularly strong in the Middle East and North Africa.

President Obama’s senior security team met late on Saturday to brief him.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice led the meeting, which included the secretaries of state for defence and homeland security and the heads of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, the White House said in a statement.

“The president has received frequent briefings over the last week on all aspects of the potential threat and our preparedness measures,” the statement said.

US missions across a swathe of the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia are closed for Sunday – a working day in the Muslim world.

Embassies affected include Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Kabul and Dhaka.

Announcing the decision on Thursday, the state department said embassies could be closed on some other days too.

The embassy closures and US global travel alert came after the US reportedly intercepted al-Qaeda messages.

It has been suggested that they were between senior figures talking about a plot against an embassy.

Plot

Referring to the Middle East, the state department said: “Current information suggests that al-Qaeda and affiliated organisations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August.”

The travel alert called for US citizens to be vigilant, warning of “the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure”.

An unnamed US official has said the threat could be related to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this week.

Several European countries, including the UK, have temporarily shut missions in Yemen.

The UK Foreign Office said its embassy in Sanaa would remain closed until Tuesday.

On its website, the Foreign Office is advising against all travel to Yemen and is strongly urging British nationals to leave.

It says there is “a high threat from terrorism throughout Yemen” and “a very high threat of kidnap from armed tribes, criminals and terrorists”.

A Foreign Office spokesman would not say if the UK embassy closure was due to a specific threat, but a number of British embassies in the Middle East have been warned about increased risks.

“Our travel advice advises particular vigilance during Ramadan, when tensions could be heightened. We are particularly concerned about the security situation in the final days of Ramadan and into Eid.”

The US diplomatic missions closed on Sunday are in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Algiers, Algeria; Amman, Jordan; Baghdad, Iraq; Cairo, Egypt; Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; Djibouti, Djibouti; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Doha, Qatar; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Irbil, Iraq; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Kabul, Afghanistan; Khartoum, Sudan; Kuwait City, Kuwait; Manama, Bahrain; Muscat, Oman; Nouakchott, Mauritania; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Sanaa, Yemen and Tripoli, Libya.

BBC News – Asia

US embassies closed on terror fears