Domestic Glance
In calculating the agency’s rate of improper payments, Medicare officials told outside auditors to ignore government policies that would have accurately measured fraud, according to the report. For example, auditors were instructed not to compare invoices submitted by salespeople against doctors’ records, as required by law, to make sure that medical equipment went to actual patients.
As a result, Medicare did not detect that more than one-third of spending for wheelchairs, oxygen supplies and other medical equipment in its 2006 fiscal year was improper, according to the report. Based on data in other Medicare reports, that would be about $2.8 billion in improper spending.
Report Rejects Medicare’s Boast of Cutting Fraud
Bush protesters get $50,000 state settlement
State records show that a $50,000 judgment has been awarded to two retired school teachers who were strip-searched during a 2004 campaign stop by President Bush.
Hair Samples in Anthrax Case Don't Match
Federal investigators probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks recovered samples of human hair from a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., but the strands did not match the lead suspect in the case, according to sources briefed on the probe.
Watchdog: Bush turning intelligence agencies on Americans
President Bush seems to be slowly turning the nation's massive surveillance apparatus upon its citizens, and some worry that administration assurances to protect civil liberties are nothing but empty promises.
"This kind of concentrated power, exercised in secret, is a lit fuse with our Constitution likely in danger of being burned,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.
N.Y. Plans to Monitor Every Car in Manhattan
The New York City Police Department is working on a plan to photograph the license plates of every vehicle entering Manhattan in an effort to guard against a terrorist attack.
The plan, called Operation Sentinel, calls for photographing and scanning the license plates of cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels, and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity, The New York Times reports.
Homeland Security organizes new division
Concerns about foreign spies and terrorists have prompted the Homeland Security Department to set up its own counterintelligence division.
The new directive comes as the federal government increases its counterspy efforts across all agencies and raises the awareness of intelligence vulnerabilities in the private industry as well as in protecting government secrets.
US court won't resurrect lawsuit in CIA leak
A federal appeals court has refused to resurrect a lawsuit that former CIA operative Valerie Plame brought against members of the Bush administration.
Plame accused Vice President Dick Cheney and several former high-ranking administration officials of revealing her identity to reporters in 2003. She and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, say that violated their constitutional rights.
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