Federal Drive

Friday Morning Federal Newscast – December 24

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. T...

Federal News Network Staff

December 24, 2010 9:26 am

2 min read

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

A whistleblower bill failed to get the two-thirds vote it needed to clear the House. The bill would have allowed whistleblowers who were fired or demoted to appeal in federal court. Some lawmakers, however, were concerned the bill would encourage leaks from sensitive government jobs.
White House officials have told the Defense Department to cut $78 billion in its budgets over the next five years, starting with $12 billion in 2012. One budget source told Federal Times that Pentagon officials “are scrambling” to figure out how to trim DoD costs in the future.
Language to limit parking at the Mark Center to 1,000 spots has been eliminated from the Defense authorization bill. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) had included the language out of concern that the 6,400 employees commuting to Alexandria would cause major traffic disruptions. Instead, the bill now requires the Army to provide a plan to mitigate traffic congestion.
The defense spending bill also calls for DoD to look at commercial cloud computing services, NextGov reports. On cybersecurity, the bill removed a provision to create a White House National Office of Cyberspace, but does retain language to create pilot programs with industry to detect cyber threats against the military.
NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist is featuring NASA technology that now has commercial use in its annual publication NASA Spinoff. Among the space agency’s innovations used today are wingtips on commercial planes and fuel cells on buildings to generate electricity.
And he’s off…As of this morning, Santa has already made stops in Fiji, the Marshall Islands and parts of Russia, according to the NORAD Santa tracker. The U.S.-Canadian military organization has tracked Santa’s flight for more than 50 years.