All Blog Posts from Investigative Round-Up

The Washington Post:

Long before a pair of gate-crashers penetrated a White House state dinner, the Secret Service had detailed for its internal use a lengthy list of security breaches dating to the Carter administration -- including significant failures in the agency's protection of the president. (read the article)

The Center for Public Integrity:
The U.S. High Speed Rail Association’s October conference opened like any large Washington gathering. The congressmen were seated in the front row. A powerhouse Beltway law firm laid out prints of its lobbyists’ biographies on a display table. And as the upscale J.W. Marriott meeting room went dark, a short film offered romantic visions of bullet trains in America’s future. (read the article)

Washington Post:
Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban. (read the article)

The Washington Post:
Louisiana officials called on the Obama administration Thursday to compensate residents after a federal judge's ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for some of the worst flooding in and around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. ( read the article)

The Washington Times:
During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings. (read the article)

caseKabulThe Washington Times:

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has begun an official inquiry into the dismissal in May of a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during the November general elections.

(read the article)

The NY Times:

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, according to a survey released Wednesday.

(read the article)

The Washington Times:

U.S. national security agencies remain woefully short of foreign-language speakers and translators nearly eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in a war on an enemy that often communicates in relatively obscure dialects, current and former officials say. (read the article)

The Washington Times:

Four years after Hurricane Katrina exposed major deficiencies in the capacity of governments to evacuate and care for the disabled during a natural disaster, America's most vulnerable citizens are barely considered in most emergency plans, according to a report being issued Wednesday by the National Council on Disability. (read the article)

The Politico:
Rep. Pete Sessions — the chief of the Republicans’ campaign arm in the House — says on his website that earmarks have become “a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.”
Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps.
(read the article)