TV News LIES

Elon Musk accused Congress of wasting money that could be better spent on innovation by vastly overpaying for each space launch.

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said the monopoly held by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that provides all the space launches for the Air Force, has proven expensive and outmoded, and should be replaced by a competitive structure.

Military commanders will keep their authority over sexual assault prosecutions, after the Senate blocked a proposal to radically overhaul the way the military justice system deals with serious crimes.

This is a major setback for New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, who has spent much of the last year holding hearings, talking to survivors, and collecting support for her proposal, which would have removed decisions about serious crimes like sexual assault from the chain of command and placed it with military prosecutors. The vote on whether to move forward failed to cross the 60 vote threshold, 55-45.

Congressional aides involved in preparing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s unreleased study of the CIA’s secret interrogation and detention program walked out of the spy agency’s fortress-like headquarters with classified documents that the CIA contended they weren’t authorized to have, McClatchy has learned.

After the CIA confronted the panel in January about the removal of the material last fall, panel staff concluded that the agency had monitored computers they’d been given to use in a high-security research room at the CIA campus in Langley, Va., a McClatchy investigation found.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., cut off Rep. Elijah E. Cummings’ microphone and adjourned this morning’s hearing on the IRS while Cummings was still speaking — marking a new low in the pair’s rocky relationship.

The dust-up came at the end of the hearing where IRS official Lois Lerner again pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify — when Cummings, the ranking member of the panel and a Maryland Democrat, sought to ask a question and make a statement on the IRS inquiry.

Eight Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, joined Republicans in a vote to block President Obama's nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

"[Adegbile's] nomination was adamantly and vocally opposed by conservatives due to his participation in an appeal filed on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal— an internationally-known prisoner convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner."

The Senate vote was 47-52 against Adegbile's nomination.

Arkansas Rep. Josh Miller (R), who is paralyzed and completely dependent on Medicaid, has spoken out recently in strong opposition to the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Arkansas lawmakers must re-approve funding for the expansion, with a 75 percent supermajority, to keep the program intact. Approval of the bill is still a few votes short, including Miller's.