TV News LIES

In fact, in the last six months, there have been 172 IEDs reported in the United States, according to a government count that an official revealed Tuesday in answer to questions about U.S. preparedness. The official shared the figures, which were gathered before Monday’s explosion, only on the condition that neither the official nor the official’s office be identified.

The official shared information in an email that indicated most American IED attacks were small: “Homemade fireworks, childish pranks and other such non-terror related activities.”

On April 9, McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay reported that the Obama administration has “targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified ‘other’ militants” in drone strikes, a revelation that contradicts previous administration claims of pursuing only senior-level operatives who pose an imminent threat to the United States.

It was an investigative story clearly in the public interest, shedding new light on the government’s long-running targeted-killing program in Pakistan. But now Landay, a veteran national security reporter for the McClatchy newspaper chain, is concerned that the Obama administration could next investigate him in hopes of finding the sources for “top-secret U.S. intelligence reports” cited in the story.

Unnecessary government programs are costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars annually, a new government study found.

The study, issued Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) following a three-year investigation, found 31 new areas of redundant or wasteful spending. Added to the findings of similar reports issued in 2011 and 2012, the study brings the total areas of duplicative spending to more than 160, according to the report, which also lays out scores of recommendations to counter the problem.

Thou shalt not teach public school students sex education — or give them lessons on HIV and AIDS — in classrooms owned by the Catholic Church.

As a result of a longstanding but little-known agreement between church and city officials, dozens of city schools that lease church-owned buildings must take students off site for sex education.

The unusual arrangement rankles some parents and students who believe students should get sex ed and lessons about HIV/AIDS — which are mandated by law — in their home classrooms.

The U.S. Constitution and Ohio state law prohibit courts from jailing people for being too poor to pay their legal fines, but in several Ohio counties, local courts are doing it anyway. The ACLU of Ohio today released The Outskirts of Hope, a report that chronicles a nearly yearlong investigation into Ohio’s debtors’ prisons and tells the stories of six Ohioans whose lives have been damaged by debtors’ prison practices.

“Being poor is not a crime in this country,” said Rachel Goodman, Staff Attorney at the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “Incarcerating people who cannot afford to pay fines is both unconstitutional and cruel—it takes a tremendous toll on precisely those families already struggling the most.”

Security concerns have prompted a federal prosecutor in Houston to withdraw from a big racketeering case involving the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, which has been a focus of the investigations into the slayings of the Kaufman County district attorney and an assistant.

Assistant U.S. attorney Jay Hileman on Tuesday notified attorneys representing 34 defendants, The Dallas Morning News and TPM reported. A Justice Department prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who is already involved in the case will take over.