May, 13 2009, 03:48pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Email:,contact@whistleblowers.org,Phone: (202) 342-1902
Former Federal Procurement Executive Will Testify At House Hearing On Federal Employee Whistleblower Protection
On Thursday May 14th at 10 AM,
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding
a hearing "Protecting the Public from Waste, Fraud and Abuse: H.R.
1507, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009." Bunnatine ("Bunny") H.
WASHINGTON
On Thursday May 14th at 10 AM,
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding
a hearing "Protecting the Public from Waste, Fraud and Abuse: H.R.
1507, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009." Bunnatine ("Bunny") H. Greenhouse,
the highest-ranking procurement official in the Army Corp of Engineers
to oppose the no-bid, cost-plus contracts to Halliburton for the
reconstruction of Iraq will be testifying in her personal capacity in
support of the legislation.
Ms. Greenhouse, a vocal supporter of whistleblower rights, has written a new letter urging Americans to contact Congress and President Obama. In her letter,
Ms. Greenhouse explains that despite being stripped from her position
following her first testimony before Congress, she decided to testify
again because "all employees who report improprieties and waste, fraud,
abuse of taxpayer dollars should be protected from retaliation."
David K. Colapinto,
General Counsel of the National Whistleblowers Center, will also be
testifying at the hearing. Mr. Colapinto will be explaining why
national security whistleblowers need protection and how they can be
protected without jeopardizing national security.
Please
visit the National Whistleblowers Center website: www.whistleblowers.org for a
list of hearing witnesses and links to written testimony, transcripts, and a live feed of the hearing.
Since 1988, the NWC and attorneys associated with it have supported whistleblowers in the courts and before Congress and achieved victories for environmental protection, government contract fraud, nuclear safety and government and corporate accountability.
LATEST NEWS
'Flawed and Dangerous': US Appeals Panel Upholds Potential TikTok Ban
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First Amendment advocates on Friday criticized a U.S. appellate court for upholding a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company does not swiftly sell the social media platform used by an estimated 170 million Americans.
Signed by President Joe Biden in April, the law gives ByteDance until January 19 to divest from TikTok. Three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the parts of the law considered by the panel "do not contravene the First Amendment" nor other parts of the Constitution of the United States.
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States," Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in an opinion the company is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Responding to the decision on social media Friday, Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said that "the D.C. Circuit's decision today to uphold the TikTok ban is enormously disappointing. If allowed to stand, it would give the government far too much power to restrict Americans' speech online."
Jameel Jaffer, who was on a friend-of-the-court brief as director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, issued a similar warning after the ruling was released.
"This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans' access to information, ideas, and media from abroad," he said. "I hope the D.C. Circuit's ruling won't be the last word—and I doubt it will be."
Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project, also looked ahead to the next court fight.
"The D.C. Circuit decision upholding the TikTok ban will immeasurably harm the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in the U.S. and globally who use the app to create, to share information, to get their news, and promote their businesses," she said in a statement. "We hope the next phase of review of this misguided and overbroad law will be a chance to right this wrong and prevent it from going into effect."
In addition to arguing the law is unconstitutional, attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance "have claimed it's impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically,"
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office one day after the law's divestment deadline, previously supported banning the platform, but during the latest campaign, he pledged to try to "save TikTok." According toThe Washington Post:
Trump is expected to try to halt the TikTok ban, people familiar with his views on the matter told The Washington Post in early November, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Alan Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department, said Trump could take any of three actions to help TikTok fend off the ban: persuading Congress to repeal the law, directing his new attorney general not to enforce it, and declaring that ByteDance has satisfied the statute by performing a "qualified divestiture" of TikTok.
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The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel Wednesday has sparked a wave of dark humor and fresh fury at the for-profit U.S. healthcare system.
The barbs at UnitedHealthcare—the country's largest private insurer—included a mock denial of coverage letter posted to the subreddit r/nursing in a thread on Thompson’s murder.
"We regret to inform you that your request for coverage has been denied," the letter reads. "Our records indicate that you failed to obtain prior authorization before seeking care for the gunshot wound to your chest." The Daily Beastreported a spoof rejection letter was also posted to a since closed thread on r/medicine.
Police are in their third day searching for Thompson's killer, who shot the healthcare executive multiple times in front of a Hilton hotel in Midtown before fleeing the scene. The New York Police Department has released an image that shows a man authorities deem "a person of interest wanted for questioning" in connection to the Wednesday killing, perCNN. The image was captured at a hostel in Manhattan, according to CNN, citing law enforcement.
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"Thoughts and deductibles to the family," read one comment below a video of the shooting posted by CNN, according to The New York Times. "Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network."
One woman whose mother with stage four breast cancer was forced to battle insurance to get new treatments approved toldNew York magazine that she experienced "a little surge of Schadenfreude," when she heard of Thompson's death.
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