By The Huffington Post News Editors
SAN FRANCISCO — A bill aimed at pressuring the Boy Scouts of America to lift its ban on gay members by making the organization ineligible for nonprofit tax breaks cleared its first vote on Wednesday in the California Legislature.
The Senate Governance and Finance Committee voted 5 to 2 to move the first-of-its-kind bill to the Senate Appropriations Committee for review.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
By The Huffington Post News Editors
From Climate Central’s Lauren Morello:
Key weather and climate satellites would get a boost under a new Senate spending proposal.
The $984 billion measure, which Senate Appropriations Committee leaders introduced late Monday, would fund the federal government from March 27 until Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
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By The Huffington Post News Editors
WASHINGTON — More than four years after the financial crisis, not a single Wall Street executive has been jailed for playing a role in the creation of the toxic financial products that fueled the real-estate bubble, which were in some cases designed simply to fail.
That track record may make it difficult for the Department of Justice to earn the sympathy of the public as it warns that spending cuts will hamper its ability to investigate Wall Street fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigations told lawmakers in a recent letter that across-the-board cuts resulting from sequestration “will cause current financial crimes investigations to slow as workload is spread among a reduced workforce. In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence.”
Investigations yet unseen may also be harmed. “In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence. The capacity to undertake new major investigations will be constrained,” FBI Director Robert Mueller III wrote in the letter, addressed to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.