In an interesting development the House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved legislation that would block Gitmo, Illinois from coming to fruition. In fact, they’ve blocked any Gitmo terrorist from being transferred anywhere into the interior of the USA. This is a blow to Obama’s desires to shut Gitmo down and to bring terrorists to a prison near you.

Wednesday the committee approved a defense bill for 2011 that includes language to prevent moving detainees into any US facility inside our borders and also blocked any funding to even study the possibility.

The bill does, however, state that the Secretary of Defense must submit to Congress a full report that “adequately justifies” any such proposal in the future which seems to signal that they haven’t shut the door on the possibility of a later opening of a detainee facility inside US borders.

This would appear to be a case of Congress telling the president that he overstepped his position when he announced that he had the power to transfer terrorists to the states.

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Bureaucrats gone wild! Taxpayers charged for international trysts, golf, skiing, and other government junkets

Military officials bought thousands of dollars worth of alcohol, food and other amenities for congressional overseas junkets

Delaware airport that “hardly ever sees a paying passenger” has received $12.3 million from the federal Airport Improvement Program for a runway construction project

Tennessee library pays for Rock Band video game session and Monday Night Football with a $5,000 federal Community Building Through Video Games in Libraries grant

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The House and Senate are wrapping up work on the last appropriations bill of the year and rumors are swirling that the controversial Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, also known as the “Akaka Bill,” will be included in the Defense Appropriations bill.  The defense measure is proving to be controversial, because House and Senate appropriators are using it to carry non related matters like a $1.9 trillion debt limit increase, an extension of unemployment benefits and the Native Hawaiian measure.

The Native Hawaiian bill, a long time priority of Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), would set up a race based government of “indigenous, native people of Hawaii.”  Opponents argue that this bill is unconstitutional and unwise.  National Review Online sounded the alarm bells today and sources on Capitol Hill confirmed to Big Government that a version of the Native Hawaiian Bill may end up in the Defense Appropriations bill.  (more…)

Well, not yet, but this is certainly encouraging. On Tuesday, we brought you the story of Sen. Bennett’s request to carve out $5 million from vital maintainance funds to provide ‘digital scrapbooks’ to National Guardsmen. Big Government was able to shine a spotlight on an earmark buried deep inside a Committee Report to the Defense Appropriations bill. On Thursday, CNN picked up our story and confronted Sen. Bennett on the Senate steps to ask about the ’scrapbook earmark’.

Watch the whole wonderful thing.

An amendment will be offered Tuesday to strip out this and several other earmarks. Capitol Confidential is getting results.

The Senate is currently working on the Defense Department Appropriations. The legislation provides the framework for spending $625 billion for the nation’s defense. Yes, even today, in Obamamerica, that is a lot money. No surprise, then, that this enormous pot-o-money attracts a load of earmarks.

Now, an earmark itself doesn’t necessarily increase the total amount of money being spent. It simply allows a Congressman or Senator to slice off a small chunk of money and REQUIRE that it be spent in the way they think best.  Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this (see Murtha, John).

The least bad is that the money isn’t spent effeciently. A slightly worse problem is that the earmark consumes money that isn’t then available for what may be more pressing needs.  Which makes earmarks in the Defense spending bill, um, troublesome. Are politicians really the best choice for deciding how to allocate specific resources to defend our nation and protect our uniformed men and women?

Let’s take a current example:

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