TV News LIES

More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds that were earmarked for Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm, a fact noticed by at least one congressional leader who's eager to spend it elsewhere.

In June, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ordered data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on how much remains unspent from the Community Development Block Grants that were earmarked in hurricane relief funds for Gulf Coast states after the 2005 storms. The answer: about $5.4 billion, comprising $3 billion of the $13 billion earmarked for Louisiana and $2 billion of the $5.5 billion for Mississippi.

The Bush administration made a "fatal mistake" by talking up facts and figures without painting a broader picture of the obstacles in its widely criticized Hurricane Katrina response effort, ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown said Thursday.

Brown told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the talking points he and other federal officials used at the time didn't tell the whole story.

A mother whose daughter is suffering a rare form of cancer at an area hospital could be asked to leave early next month. Barbados resident Petrah Gooding brought her 7-year-old daughter Niamh Stoute to Atlanta in November to be treated for neuroblastoma at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Aflac Cancer center.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement extended Niamh’s nine-month visitor’s visa to allow her to continue receiving treatment, but Gooding was told she would have to leave her daughter’s side on Sept. 2.

When police arrested Anthony Graber for speeding on his motorbike, the 25-year-old probably did not see himself as an advocate for police accountability in the age of new media. But Graber, a sergeant with the Maryland Air National Guard, is now facing 16 years in prison, not for dangerous driving, but for a Youtube video he posted after receiving a speeding ticket.

The video, filmed with a camera mounted on Graber's motorcycle helmet designed to record biking stunts rather than police abuse, shows a plain clothes officer jumping out of an unmarked car and pointing a pistol at the motorcyclist.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

World Vision, the Christian humanitarian organization, can fire employees who disagree with its theological tenets, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday (Aug. 23). In a 2-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that World Vision is a "religious corporation" and therefore exempt from a federal law that bars faith-based discrimination.

"I am satisfied that World Vision has met its burden of showing that the 'general picture' of the organization is 'primarily religious,"' wrote Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain. "World Vision is a nonprofit organization whose humanitarian relief efforts flow from a profound sense of religious mission."'