When my staff inquired about requesting minority witnesses for this hearing, we were informed that you would allow only one. Based on your decision, we requested as our minority witness a third-year Georgetown University Law Center student named Sandra Fluke. I believed it was critical to have at least one woman at the witness table who could discuss the repercussions that denying coverage for contraceptives has on women across this country.

In response, your staff relayed that you had decided as follows:

“As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.â€

It is inconceivable to me that you believe tomorrow’s hearing has no bearing on the reproductive rights of women. This Committee commits a massive injustice by trying to pretend that the views of millions of women across this country are meaningless, worthless, or irrelevant to this debate.

Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting in partnership with mortgage investigation firm, Aequitas, announce the findings from an audit of 382 San Francisco homes that went through foreclosure during 2009, 2010, or 2011. The audit shows that 84% of sampled foreclosures contain at least one clear violation of California’s foreclosure laws. The results provide quantifiable support for greater mortgage industry oversight and legislative change.

The audit began last fall after irregularities and compromised documents were discovered as homeowners facing foreclosure came to the Assessor-Recorder’s office looking for property records in order to modify their loans or refinance. A county recorder’s office is responsible for keeping the official public records of property ownership and state law dictates how the mortgage industry must file those records.

“When it became clear that property records were severely undermined, a red flag was raised,†says Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting. “Those records are supposed to be filed with this office and many were simply missing or had serious inconsistencies. How can we expect homeowners to have a fighting chance of saving their homes when they can’t even find who currently owns their debt?â€

These documents reveal that the agency had paid over $11 million to an outside company, General Dynamics, to engage in monitoring of social networks and media organizations and to prepare summary reports for DHS. According to DHS documents, General Dynamics will “Monitor public social communications on the Internet,†including the public comment sections of NYT, LA Times, Huff Po, Drudge, Wired’s tech blogs, ABC News. DHS also requested monitoring of Wikipedia pages for changes and announced its plans to set up social network profiles to monitor social network users.

DHS required General Dynamics to monitor not just “potential threats and hazards,†“potential impact on DHS capability†to accomplish its homeland security mission, and “events with operational value,†but also paid the company to “Identify[] reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond or recovery government activities.”

Within the documents, DHS clearly stated its intention to “capture public reaction to major government proposals.†DHS instructed the media monitoring company to generate summaries of media “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS.”