While the world attempted to figure out why a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane carrying 295 human beings went down over a war zone in Ukraine, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki took to Twitter to discuss lighter matters. In the midst of the chaos, Psaki tweeted praise for an article from the Washington Post entitled "Being informed and fashionable is natural for women". Go To Site

WASHINGTON — The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals. The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. Go To Site

Democrat, Liberal, Government, Politics, Corruption

A State Department team responsible for determining which records should be kept secret felt “immense pressure” not to label any of about 300 e-mails found on Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server as classified, according to interview summaries released by the FBI. Officials from the State Department’s Information Programs and Services office began a review in March 2015 of 296 e-mails that were set to be turned over to a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya...

  The FBI summaries also indicated that “a powerful group of very high-ranking State officials,” referred to as “The Shadow Government,” met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss all things related to releasing or withholding e-mails that were on Clinton’s server, according to the interview notes.

Government, Incompetence, Fraud, Waste, Justice, Corruption, Law

A senior State Department official proposed a “quid pro quo” to convince the FBI to strip the classification on an email from Hillary Clinton’s server – and repeatedly tried to “influence” the bureau’s decision when his offer was denied, even taking his plea up the chain of command, according to newly released FBI documents...

  Documents published Monday morning confirm the account. Notes from an interview with an unnamed FBI official reveal the State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy tried to horse-trade with the FBI, offering additional slots for the bureau overseas if they would de-classify a particular email marked “SECRET.”

Government, Incompetence, Oops

American visas have become literally unobtainable in all consulates worldwide for nearly two weeks as IT specialists have struggled to fix the country’s malfunctioning consular database. The US Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) at the State Bureau of Consular Affairs “is currently experiencing technical problems with our passport/visa system,” US State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf revealed at a media briefing, adding that the database has actually been “experiencing intermittent performance issues for several months” now.

Government, Character, Financial

Police in Kenya say an American diplomat crossed the center line in his SUV while speeding and rammed a mini-bus full of passengers, killing a father of three whose wife is six-months pregnant. The U.S. Embassy rushed the American out of the country, leaving the crash victims with no financial recourse. Latifah Naiman Mariki, now a 38-year-old widow, said Friday that she was almost evicted from her house this week after her landlord demanded rent. Mariki’s deceased husband, Haji Lukindo, was the family’s only source of income…

Government, Incompetence, Character, Financial, Fraud, Waste, Lie, Debt

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook "likes," prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was "buying fans" in social media, the agency's inspector general says. The department's Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its "likes" count between 2011 and March 2013.

Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Assault, Drugs, Ignorance

The IG memo, dated October 23, 2012, contains shocking allegations of overseas criminal conduct by State Department officials including sexual assault , ‘endemic’ procurement of prostitutes (including children), and drugs—all of which were alleged to have been covered-up by various officials at the highest levels of the State Department including Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills. CNN reported Clinton spokesman Nicholas Merrill issued a written statement saying, "We learned of it from the media and don't know anything beyond what's been reported."

Government, Incompetence, Character, Sex, Degeneracy

CBS News reports that is has unearthed documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal watchdog agency, that implicate the State Department in a series of misconducts worldwide. The memo, reported by CBS News’ John Miller, cited eight specific examples, including allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

Democrat, Liberal, Sex, Oops, Ignorance

On Tuesday, Nicholas Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said Clinton was completely unaware of any of the investigations mentioned in the Office of the Inspector General's reports and memos, including the case involving her personal security detail allegedly soliciting prostitutes. "We learned of it from the media and don't know anything beyond what's been reported," Merrill told CNN in a written statement.