White House Big Dig ending, but what comes next?

(I'm lovin this,it's so awesome! secret tunnel stuff at the white house. I'm proud to be an American!)

By MARK S. SMITH, AP
10 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The White House Big Dig is finally wrapping up, but the Big Reveal is proving to be a pretty big letdown.

After nearly two years and $86 million worth of noisy and disruptive construction, the West Wing has emerged from its visual seclusion remarkably unchanged. And deep underground, whatever has been built there remains shrouded in mystery.

Plus, if you ask what the next phase is in this massive, four-year project, the official answer is "TBD" — to be determined.

The construction project — officially a long overdue upgrade of White House utilities — began in September 2010 with the excavation of a huge, multistory pit in front of the West Wing, wrapping around to include West Executive Avenue, the street that separates the White House from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. A tall, green construction fence sprang up that blocked America's most famous office complex from public view.

But now the fence has come down, revealing the familiar whitewashed sandstone facade and the lone Marine guard who stands watch at the entrance to the West Wing lobby.

Bulldozers have covered up the hole. Contractors have repaved the asphalt driveway. National Park Service crews are mostly finished re-grading, re-sodding and replanting. Their goal has been to return the area to its original appearance.

So what, exactly, did all the digging, hammering, welding and concrete-pouring accomplish?

The General Services Administration, which oversaw the work, said it was to replace aging water and steam lines, sewers, storm sewers and electrical wiring conduits. Heating, air conditioning and fire control equipment also are being updated, officials said.

However, what reporters and photographers saw during the construction appeared to go well beyond that: a sprawling, multistory structure whose underground assembly required truckload after truckload of heavy-duty concrete and steel beams.

The GSA maintains this structure is merely "facilitating" the utility work. But neither the agency nor the administration will elaborate on its function. Last year, when the project began, GSA officials denied the construction was for additional office space or another bomb shelter. The existing White House bunker, known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, is under the East Wing and dates to the Roosevelt administration.

The GSA went to great lengths to keep the work secret, not only putting up the fence around the excavation site but ordering subcontractors not to talk to anyone and to tape over company info on trucks pulling into the White House gates.

Meantime, for most of those who work in the West Wing, the project has been a huge headache. Sometimes literally.

It's meant shouting to be heard over jackhammers and backhoes, and long walks on arching ramps to circumvent the extensive work zone. The GSA even built a temporary concrete-and-steel platform to elevate TV reporters and their cameras so the White House North Portico could still be seen over the fence. The platform, like the fence, is now gone. And no one's happier than West Wing denizens whose windows were blocked off.

"Now that the sights and sounds of construction workers and their equipment are gone, my outlook on the North Lawn of the White House has, literally, brightened," said deputy press secretary Josh Earnest.

But the respite may be short-lived.

Future phases of the project, whose total price tag tops $376 million, are expected to involve more excavation elsewhere on the North Lawn — the well-groomed park that tourists see from the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue — and possibly inside the East and West wings. GSA officials say wrap-up work is actually continuing on the underground utilities, albeit out of sight.

And they resolutely refuse to identify the next major work area, or to say when that construction will begin.

"The scope of any additional work in the West and East wings has not been determined, so the timing, obviously, hasn't been finalized," said agency spokeswoman Mafara Hobson.

Police: Pa. woman offered roadside stripteases

(why don’t insurance companies offer this kind of road side assistance? Where is triple X triple A?)

UNIONTOWN, Pa. — A southwestern Pennsylvania woman has been jailed on charges she was flagging down motorists and offering to take off her clothes for cash.

Online court records don't list an attorney for 35-year-old Jackie Hatter, of Uniontown. She remained jailed Wednesday unable to post $25,000 bond.

The Herald-Standard of Uniontown ( http://bit.ly/QJggDe) reports Hatter was arrested about 8:40 a.m. Sunday and charged with disorderly conduct and marijuana possession. Police say they were told she was stopping cars to offer the striptease at an intersection in the city about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh.

Police say Hatter was mumbling incoherently and fighting with officers.

A preliminary hearing on the charges has yet to be scheduled.

Pa. man makes no bones about buying 2 skeletons

SCHNECKSVILLE, Pa. — A pair of skeletons for sale at a Pennsylvania auction house went for more than a couple of bones.

A Lancaster County antiques dealer bought both skeletons Tuesday at Tom Hall Auctions in Schnecksville. A male skeleton in a tuxedo went for $900 and his Bible-carrying female counterpart went for $950.

The skeletons are believed to be of German or Irish origin in the late 19th or early 20th century. They each were owned at one point by a New York mortician's museum and the Independent Order of Oddfellows, the likely origin of their accessories.

Auction winner Bill Wood says he bought the skeletons to go along with another he has at Old Mill Antiques, his Strasburg shop. He plans to resell all three.

US ambassador killed in consulate attack in Libya

(clearly these guys have no sense of humor or at least don’t have a sense of scale. If someone makes fun of your prophet make fun of theirs. In fact I propose pick on a prophet day! A day when everyone gets to ridicule, joke about, make images of, etc the prophet of your choice, Joseph Smith,L.Ron Hubbart,  Mohamad, whoever the hell is in charge of the Raelians, Jesus, Malachi, any ole prophet)

By ESAM MOHAMED and MAGGIE MICHAEL, APTRIPOLI, Libya — A mob enraged by a film ridiculing Islam's prophet killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans in a fiery attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. President Barack Obama strongly condemned the violence, vowed Wednesday to bring the killers to justice and tightened security at diplomatic posts around the world.

The attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens — the first U.S. diplomat to die in the line of duty since 1979 — came on Tuesday's 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strike and presented a new foreign policy crisis for the United States in a region trying to recover from months of upheaval.

Libya's interim president, Mohammed el-Megarif, apologized for what he called the "cowardly" assault on the consulate, which also killed several Libyan security guards in the eastern city. Violence also flared in Egypt, where crowds protesting the film at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo climbed its walls and tore down an American flag, which they replaced briefly with a black, Islamist flag.

The protests were touched off by an obscure movie made in the United States by a filmmaker who calls Islam a "cancer." Video excerpts posted on YouTube depict the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres.

Stevens, 52, died as he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff when the mob of protesters, including gunmen armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade, attacked.

The crowd, which numbered several thousand strong, moved on the consulate Tuesday evening, firing in the air outside the compound. The consulate is a one-story villa located in a fenced garden in downtown Benghazi. A small contingent of Libyan security forces protecting the facility also fired in the air, trying to intimidate them, said Wanis el-Sharef, the deputy interior minister of Libya's eastern region.

But faced with the mob's superior size and firepower, the Libyan security withdrew, el-Sharef said. Gunmen stormed the building, looted its contents and torch it, he said.