WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- Capital Comment -- Daily news notes, political rumors, and important events that shape politics and public policy in Washington and the world from United Press International.
A stamp of disapproval -- Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan watchdog organization, is taking the U.S Postal Rate Commission to task over their recommended 7.7 percent rate increase. CAGW Vice President Leslie Paige calls the move "A Band-Aid on a gaping financial wound."
"In the long run, this rate hike will not serve anyone's best interests. ... These rate increases are coming faster and are ever more draconian. We've had three hikes in four years and none of them have stemmed the flow of red ink," Paige says.
The group wants Congress to force the Postal Service to engage in cost-cutting measures before asking for more money from taxpayers. These measures include a hard hiring freeze, the elimination of the USPS advertising budget, an immediate stop to all e-commerce activity and a complete inventory of all properties coupled with an audit of all construction expenditures.
"In the long run," Paige says, "the postal service must be demonopolized and reborn as a purely private sector enterprise."
It's worth a shot -- The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, based in Bellevue, Wash., is asking the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire Arms to investigate whether gun-control advocate Sarah Brady violated federal and state gun laws when she purchased a rifle for her son Scott.
Brady writes about the purchase in her newly released autobiography "A Good Fight."
"From all appearances," the group's chairman, Alan Gottleib, said, "Sarah Brady exploited one of those so-called loopholes in the (federal) Brady law, for which she arduously campaigned, to get a gun for her son. The gun was allegedly a gift, but for someone who has demanded background checks for every other American before they can take possession of a firearm, we think the public deserves to know why she evidently felt it was okay to skirt that requirement for her own son."
A spokesman for Brady's pro-gun control group says that interfamily background checks are not required under the federal Brady law, named for her husband James, the former White House press secretary who was injured in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
In her book, Brady says that the shop were she purchased the rifle, located in the state of Delaware, ran the federal and state background checks mandated by law on her -- but does not indicate whether those checks were also run on her son, for whom she made the purchase. The Delaware Department of Justice says the state does not have an exemption for family gifts
From the home office in Washington... -- The Department of the Interior has released its first annual list of the top 12 projects to restore America's parks.
"Parks have so many important projects going on across America that we couldn't keep it to the usual 'Top 10,'" Interior Secretary Gale Norton said. "Maintenance and natural resource initiatives rarely get the attention of a new park's grand opening or a ribbon-cutting for a new visitor center, but they are a critical component of our mission to protect America's parks for future generations to enjoy and cherish."
The list includes New York City's Federal Hall National memorial, which received $16.5 million and was recently cited by an environmental group as one of the nation's parks most in need of attention.
Mighty morphing campaign contributions -- The Democratic National Committee should soon have a new home, thanks to the generosity of the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban.
Saban, who is probably best known to the public as the man behind the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers," recently gave the DNC a check for $7 million towards the construction of a new party headquarters.
If the DNC intends to name the building for Saban in recognition of his generosity, they may also want to name a floor for Fox's Rupert Murdoch -- whose news operations are routinely decried by liberals as being right wing and biased -- when they do it. Until recently, Murdoch, whose Fox television network has been the home to the Power Rangers and its many iterations, and Saban were co-owners of what was once evangelist Pat Robertson's Family Channel.
The partnership dissolved when Saban exercised his option to have Murdoch buy him out of his 49.5 percent share in Fox Family Worldwide at a time when Murdoch was attempting to purchase the DirecTV satellite television operation from Hughes Aircraft.
Saban's demand resulted in the sale of what was then The Fox Family Channel, among other properties, to Disney. Some of the cash from that deal, which Murdoch's News Corp. said was valued at "approximately $5.3 billion, including the assumption of approximately $2.3 billion in debt" no doubt found its way into contribution after spending some time in Saban's back account.
Personnel notes -- Mark Acton, formerly of the Republican National Committee's Office of Legal Counsel, is the new special assistant to George Omas, chairman of the federal Postal Rate Commission... Jeri Clausing, who was one of the first journalists to cover the Internet full time, has moved to the Business Software Alliance, a trade group, where she becomes director of public relations... David Williams, lists time in the office of New York Republican-turned Democrat U.S. Rep. Michael Forbes among his accomplishments, is the new director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the political arm of the pro-abortion rights group... Longtime congressional staffer Jim Backlin, who was last seen as chief of staff to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., has taken over as the new top lobbyist at the Christian Coalition. ... Veteran reporter Jerey Seib is the new Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
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