Tuesday Morning Federal Newscast – December 7th

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.

• Some lawmakers want to take the president’s pay freeze proposal one year at a time. The Washington Post reports the lawmakers have written to House Appropriations Chairman David Obey asking for the freeze to be limited to 2011, at least for now. The president’s proposal also covers 2012. The lawmakers represent thousands of feds in the Washington-area. They say federal employees are underpaid when compared to their private sector counterparts.
• The Pentagon has lowered the amount of money it can withhold from contractors that don’t do enough to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. GovExec reports the rule clarifies how federal officials will determine when contractor business systems are deficient. Pre-exisiting rules require people doing business with Defense to maintain controls for preventing waste and misuse. This is Defense’s second try at developing system standards.
• The Army’s weight standards could be putting unreasonable expectations on today’s soldiers. USA Today reports that soldiers are starving themselves, taking diet pills and laxatives and investing in liposuction to meet the Army’s standards and avoid losing their careers. Dozens of soldiers responded to a question from Army Times, many saying they use starvation, dehydration, pills or laxatives, and some have used – or are considering using – liposuction. One soldier confessed to using laxatives and starvation before an Army Physical Fitness Test to sustain his career. It isn’t clear how widespread the problem is. Medical experts call it a very dangerous short-term strategy. Soldiers say the Army’s weight standards need to be reviewed.
• The Obama administration is looking to new avenues for possible prosecution in the WikiLeaks release. Attorney General Eric Holder says they’re considering laws in addition to the Espionage Act. Possible charges include theft of government property and receipt of stolen government property. WikiLeaks has released hundreds of classified U.S. diplomatic messages. Most recently, a list of sites worldwide that the U.S. considers critical to national security. Just this morning, we learned that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested by British Police in connection with sexual crimes allegedly committed in Sweden.
• The Library of Congress wants to explain why it has decided to block access to the Wikileaks site across its computer systems, including systems that patrons access in Library of Congress reading rooms. On its website, officials with the Library of Congress explain that the law obligates them to protect classified information, and just because the documents were leaked doesn’t mean they’re no longer classified. The statement on the Library of Congress website indicates that they’re only following Office of Management and Budget guidelines.
• Officials with Army Knowledge Online say that they recognize the computer system is slow, overly secure, and hard to search. Now they say they’re making changes that’ll make their Web portal faster, more agile and even allow for social networking. The Army Times reports the new portal is called GTSY, pronounced “gutsy.” The AKO will be blocked to everyone except people with Common Access Cards. Everyone else, including friends, families and retirees, will get password access to GTSY. They plan to launch GTSY early next year. By December of 2011, the Pentagon wants AKO and 600 other Army sites accessible only through CAC readers.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission has canceled plans to a lease a new data center. NextGov reports agency contracting officials pulled a request for proposals only two months after it was released. The plans had called for a 4,000-square-foot space to house one of two main data centers. The SEC already operates one data center in Alexandria, Virginia. But recently the agency’s inspector general chided management for having lax property leasing policies. And an earlier report said the CIO lacked authority to manage capital planning.

More news links

Republicans achieve top goal in Obama tax-cut plan

Top Marine comments on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

Warrant: NC sailor looked to sell military secrets

Court deals with veterans’ time limit on benefits

Pearl Harbor survivor group: We won’t disband yet

Census estimates US population at 306M to 313M

Gov’t air safety questioned in firefighting crash

Government checking 1.1B new $100 bills for flaws

U.S. Navy bombarded with Facebook complaints on use of ‘Arabian Gulf’ (CNN)

THIS AFTERNOON ON FEDERAL NEWS RADIO

Coming up today on The DorobekInsider:

** The Treasury Department relaunched its Web site — they introduced a blog and moved to the cloud. Why — and why does it matter? We’ll talk to Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Management Dan Tangerlini

** And during the last few days of open season – what should you be doing? Insights from Walton Francis, editor of Checkbook Guide to the Health Plans for Federal Employees

Join Chris from 3 to 7 pm on 1500 AM or on your computer.

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