BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THERE IS ACTUALLY A FEDERAL AGENCY THAT IS WORSE THAN THE VA: The Department of Veterans Affairs is a bureaucratic nightmare, to be sure, but the evidence is steadily mounting that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is much, much worse. But the funny thing is, overseeing a federal department whose financial books often make no sense doesn’t seem to hurt the politicos who become HUD Secretary. Julian Castro, the current incumbent, for example, could be America’s next vice-president.

CLINTON FOUNDATION DONOR/LIBERAL FUNDER’S ILLEGAL DRUG TRIALS KILLED FIVE PEOPLE: But Obama’s Justice Department didn’t prosecute him. Swiss billionaire Hans Wyss – he of the $5 million promise to Hillary’s “No Ceilings” Clinton Foundation project – escaped prosecution after being the unnamed co-conspirator “Person No 7” in a 2009 federal indictment. He ordered four corporate subordinates to conduct illegal human drug trials. Ultimately, five people died in the trials. The subordinates went to jail, but Wyss didn’t. Now Citizens United – yes, that Citizens United –  is demanding documents from Obama’s Justice Department on why.

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, who has been all over Wyss for three years, has the story on the Citizens United Freedom of Information Act requests. Wyss is on the Center for American Progress board of directors and one of the liberal think tank’s most generous funders. He also funds huge land grabs in the Western U.S. by enviro groups. Wyss is like George Soros but without the Hungarian accent. “Veddy, veddy bad man,” as Seinfeld’s Babu might well say.

IS BERNIE SANDERS PLAYING OLD-FASHIONED POSTAL PORK BARREL POLITICS? He’s got a Senate hold on five presidential nominations to the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors. That means the three people now left on the 11-member board are running the Post Office. Maybe the fact Bernie opposes a Post Office plan to close one of Vermont’s two big postal processing centers has something to do with his holds? Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group connects the letters, uh, the dots.

FIRST AMENDMENT COVERS EVERYBODY … EXCEPT DONORS TO CONSERVATIVE AND TEA PARTY NON-PROFITS: That’s apparently the view of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is trying to force non-profits in the Golden State to disclose the names of their donors to state officials. “It’s a violation of both the organizations’ First Amendment rights to solicit donations, and the donor’s right to be solicited,” said Washington, D.C. super-lawyer Cleta Mitchell, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Katie Watson.

HILLARY WAS PAID $225K A POP FOR WALL STEET SPEECHES THAT REPORTERS WERE BARRED FROM COVERING: Not only were reporters kept out, but Clinton refuses today to release transcripts. What was she promising Goldman Sachs Group, the Carlyle Group, Morgan Stanley, et. al. that she didn’t want reporters to hear then or us to read now? The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock obtained a copy of Hillary’s Harry Walker Agency speaking engagement contract and much more.

QUICK, WHO SAID THIS? “IT’S FRIDAY, JAN. 22, 2016, AND WE’RE WRITING THIS as yet another alarmist-MSM-declared Storm of the Century hits the Northeast. Seriously, folks: It’s Winter and when it get cold enough, any precipitation takes the form of snow. But before we go any further, since we’re on the subject of white stuff, a quick thought on another manifestation evoked by this photo forwarded by George Lawlor:”

Sorry, but you have to go to The Daily Gouge blog site to see the photo, which is hilarious. The Daily Gouge is the creation of Thom McKee, former Navy F-14 pilot, commercial developer par-excellence and upstate New York humorist responsible for the infamous story of the three-legged pig. I promise, you will thank me for telling you about this guy, especially after he explains the pig.

EPA AWARDS HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN GRANTS IT CAN’T SHOW IMPROVE AIR QUALITY: Diesel emissions, for example, are particularly harmful to air quality, so EPA awarded multiple grants between 2009 and 2014 aimed at reducing such emissions. And $532 million later, an EPA spokesman – who understandably insisted on not being named – conceded to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton that “we cannot definitively establish cause and effect on one project’s impact on a city’s air quality.” The DCNF IG analysis is based on a database of more than 100,000 EPA grants compiled by Open The Books. BTW, if you aren’t familiar with Open The Books, you should be because those guys are doing incredible work bringing government spending at all levels out in the open.

THERE THEY GO AGAIN: IRS officials are being lambasted today for erasing yet another computer hard-drive, this time one that a federal judge had previously ordered to be preserved. House Oversight and Government Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen erasing hard-drives has been a continuing problem, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.

“It is stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect,” said Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio Republican, in a letter to Koskinen made public late Thursday. The hard-drive is involved in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Microsoft. A federal judge hearing the FOIA lawsuit told IRS to preserve the hard-drive. Then it was erased. Law is for the little people, doncha know.

AND IN OTHER NEWS FROM YOUR NATION’S CAPITAL: Federal civil service managers aren’t supposed to use “administrative leave” – aka paying bureaucrats not to come to work – as a tool for inducing poor performers to quit. But the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak finds solid evidence that agreeing to administrative leave for as much as two years in return for the letter of resignation is common in the federal bureaucracy. Why? Because such informal settlements are far easier than enduring the endless paperwork required to fire a bureaucrat and federal employee unions are sure to appeal, appeal, appeal.

BEING AN OBAMACARE BOSS MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY: Andy Slavitt, President Obama’s choice to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which manages Obamacare and its struggling co-ops, is testifying before the Senate today. Half of those co-ops have gone belly-up, costing taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.6 billion. But don’t expect Slavitt to say he’s sorry, even though he’s been the acting CMS administrator and the deputy before that. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock, who has covered the co-ops from their inception, is on the story today.

FEDS SPEND $75 MILLION DESIGNING AND CONSTRUCTING SPACIOUS NEW BUILDING … FOR THE WRONG AGENCY! What is about the General Services Administration that attracts such corruption, incompetence and idiocy? Whatever it is – GSA is Uncle Sugar’s housekeeping agency – nobody there consulted with the Federal Protective Service about what it needed in the new building. When the building was completed, FPS looked it over and refused to take it.

Why? Because, it turns out, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson, GSA didn’t talk to FPS because GSA thought it was building the facility for the Army Corps of Engineers! Trust me, Watson isn’t making this up, her report is based on a Government Accounting Office analysis. GSA oversees more than 5,900 federal facilities. Your government is in the best of hands.

IT MAY NOT BE A SMOKING GUN BUT, BOY, IS IT GONNA HURT! New email release shows Hillary resisted urging by careerists at State Department to use state.gov email and equipment. Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross has the story, based on a document release forced by federal court.

THANKS FOR FIGHTING FOR AMERICA, VETERAN. WANT TO CLEAN VA TOILETS?: That’s often VA’s message to vets seeking jobs in the department. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak “scraped” thousands of VA job vacancy announcements and found menial janitorial duties were most frequently offered to vets:

“The VA is currently advertising for 3,000 positions, some seeking multiple people each. Only about 50 job ads, seeking an estimated few hundred workers, are accepting applications exclusively from veterans. And of those, all but a handful would have a returning hero trade a rifle for a mop and $13 an hour. At the same time, more than a thousand vacancies, many with no highly specialized skills required, were being advertised as open only to current civil servants.”

It’s mainly a result of VA’s collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees labor organization, which, as Rosiak previously reported, puts current union members first in line for open positions. And then we wonder why VA so often seems not to give a rat’s patooty about America’s returning heroes?

IS 23-CENTS-AN-HOUR CHEAP LABOR OR SLAVE LABOR? That’s the minimum wage in the African nation of Ghana and it’s why long-time Clinton confidant Cheryl Mills thinks investors should invest in that nation’s textile industry. Her firm, BlackIvy LLC, was established after she and Hillary Clinton left the State Department in 2013 and specializes in consulting work in West African nations.  Talk about cheap labor? That ought to devastate what’s left of the textile industry here in the U.S. Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has the rest of the story.

SHRIMP ON A TREADMILL IS BACK AND YOU’RE STILL PAYING FOR IT: That little guy running on an underwater treadmill is a YouTube classic but the backstory is that he was part of a widely criticized research project funded by federal taxpayers. Well, he’s back and taxpayers are again funding his running in a $1.3 million National Science Foundation grant, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton. The bigger story is how NSF refuses to disclose even the most basic details about its grants. Why? Because federal laws like the FOIA are just for the little people, not federal bureaucrats.

TRAVEL THE GLOBE! STAY IN 5-STAR HOTELS! ENJOY FINE FOOD! All you have to do is be a federal bureaucrat whose job occasionally requires work overseas. The *best part, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson, is the taxpayers foot the bill really generously.  (* Unless you’re a taxpayer. Then it’s the worst part.)

COULD THERE REALLY BE THREE TIMES AS MANY SUNDAY CHURCHGOERS AS FOOTBALL WATCHERS? Turns out there are, at least if NFL data on its TV ratings and the Gallup Survey on church attendance can be believed. So why is utter ignorance about the most basic Christian beliefs espoused by millions of Americans so prevalent in the MSM? I humbly offer some thoughts here.

THIS EXPLAINS A LOT ABOUT THE SNAFU OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “THE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS:” The government’s master agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees favors union bureaucrats over veterans in hiring. And when the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak “scraped” thousands of current VA job opening announcements, he found the reason why when vets are hired at VA they typically get mops, not management duties.

THINKING ABOUT FLYING SOMEWHERE SOON? Might want to think about this – Improving technology is almost always a blessing but there are occasional exceptions in unintended or unexpected consequences. Take those automatic pilots on commercial airliners. A new report from the Department of Transportation Inspector General says pilots’ manual skills are declining as computers increasingly take over the bulk of flight direction.

“While airlines have long used automation safely to improve efficiency and reduce pilot workload, several recent accidents, including the July 2013 crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214, have shown that pilots who typically fly with automation can make errors when confronted with an unexpected event or transitioning to manual flying,” the IG said, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Ethan Barton. So the question is, what are the airlines and FAA doing about this development? Not much, the IG says.

REMEMBER THOSE DISAPPEARING ROSE LAW FIRM BILLINGS FOR HILLARY CLINTON? You know, the ones that mysteriously showed up in the Clinton White House personal residence more than two years after a subpoena was issued for them by the Whitewater special counsel.

It’s Deja Vu all over again today in the Hillary Email scandal. Seems the State Department waited until late Friday to tell a federal court that thousands of previously undiscovered documents related to the former Secretary of State’s use of a private email and server have been found. Non-profit government watchdog Judicial Watch announced the discovery today.

HERE’S WHY HILLARY WILL BE INDICTED: Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova predicts chaos in a few months when Attorney General Loretta Lynch declines to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite an FBI recommendation to indict the former Secretary of State. Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group interviews of congressional and government ethics insiders suggest an indictment for Hatch Act violations isn’t likely. The outlook is far more ominous for Clinton on an indictment for negligence in handling classified information.

“MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION EVER” IS ALSO THE MOST SUED FOR FOIA GAMES: An analysis of court records between 2001 and 2015 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found that a record number of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits were filed against federal agencies during 2015. The combined total of 421 in 2014 and 498 in 2015 represents a 54 percent increase over the two-year total for 2009 and 2010. Such suits are typically only filed after months of delays, dickering, threats and negotiations between federal officials and requesters seeking government documents the FOIA says are owned by taxpayers.

ONLY 13 PERCENT OF VA’S TOP 300 HOSPITAL EXECS ARE VETERANS: Wait a minute! The Veterans Preference Act became law in 1944 and ever since then returning veterans are supposed to have a leg up for good government jobs, right? So why are there so few veterans running the key facilities of the agency whose sole reason for being is caring for veterans?

Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analyzed the bios and talked to highly educated, skilled veterans who were repeatedly rejected by VA. How can this be? I don’t know, maybe the first priority of the career bureaucrats running VA is protecting themselves rather caring for veterans???

BIG TOBACCO SEES BIG PROFITS COMING IN LEGALIZED MARIJUANA: Want to be the Marlboro Man of Marijuana? The tobacco giants see legal marijuana in their future and $50 billion in new profits. And, oh by the way, did you know Richard Nixon’s Justice Department funded studies by the tobacco industry on what legalization would mean for them and how best to take advantage of it? Here’s a sample:

“We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and providing a pick up for people who are bored or depressed,” the tobacco memo added. “The human needs that our product fills will not go away. Thus, the only real threat to our business is that society will find other means of satisfying these needs.”

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has what may be the least expected news of 2016.

NO WONDER HILLARY GETS SUCH A SWEET DEAL ON THOSE DEBATES! Turns out the former Secretary of State and presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee has a special arrangement with the Democratic National Committee. Essentially, it’s an incentive for hyper-dollar donors to max out to Hillary and give extra-generously to the DNC. Hillary scratches Debbie’s back, Debbie scratches Hillary’s back, while Bernie and Marty get screwed. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak quotes several campaign finance experts who say it’s unprecedented.