I’m not even sure what to say about this revelation from Michael Isikoff of NBC: A senior federal bureaucrat pretended to be working under cover for the CIA in order to avoid work.

The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors.

John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his “historic” lies are “offensive” to those who actually do dangerous work for the CIA.

Beale’s ruse was finally discovered after he very publicly “retired,” but continued to collect his salary. 

A chilling report by USA Today finds that there’s a mass killing in the U.S. about once every two weeks:

Since 2006, there have been more than 200 mass killings in the United States. Well-known images from Newtown, Aurora and Virginia Tech capture the nation’s attention, but similar bloody scenes happen with alarming frequency and much less scrutiny. USA TODAY examined FBI data – which defines a mass killing as four or more victims – as well as local police records and media reports to understand mass killings in America. They happen far more often than the government reports, and the circumstances of those killings – the people who commit them, the weapons they use and the forces that motivate them – are far more predictable than many might think.

[Photo credit: brian.ch, Creative Commons.]

From Andrea Elliott’s stunning multi-part profile of Dasani, a preteen girl raising her seven siblings in Fort Greene. Dasani is one of New York’s 22,000 homeless children:

Adults who are homeless often speak of feeling “stuck.” For children, the experience is more like a free-fall. With each passing month, they slip further back in every category known to predict long-term well-being. They are less likely to graduate from the schools that anchor them, and more likely to end up like their parents, their lives circumscribed by teenage pregnancy or shortened by crime and illness.

[Photo credit: spotreporting, Creative Commons.]

Marc Bussanich of Labor Press attended Hillman’s “Changing Face of Unionism” panel on Monday. Read his write-up of the panel discussion featuring Rich Yeselson, Bruce Raynor, Andy Stern, and Sarita Gupta with moderator Raj Goyle.