Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. (upper right), consulting with an Apple Store employee while hunched over a store counter Monday. (Photo by Ed O’Keefe - The Washington Post) Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. — a big fan of Apple’s iPad and iPhone — rushed into the Apple Store in Bethesda Monday night in a fast and furious fashion (pardon the pun) for an appointment with Genius Bar employees.

The Federal Eye spotted the attorney general rushing in with his security detail in tow around 7:15 p.m. Very few of the dozens of customers and store employees seemed to notice or care that the nation’s top lawyer was consulting with an employee, first about his iPhone and then his iPad. (See the photo above.)

Holder’s latest visit to the store was much less awkward than a trip he made in June, where he was confronted by store employee Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency official who at the time faced charges of unauthorized possession of classified documents.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is proposing $130 million in budget cuts that include closing regional offices of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. (Win McNamee - GETTY IMAGES) Dozens of career antitrust lawyers at the Justice Department are likely to quit if the department goes through with plans to close four regional offices, according to several of the attorneys.

Officials this month announced plans to close four regional offices of the department’s antitrust division, in Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas and Philadelphia, and to move 94 attorneys and support staff members to offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and division headquarters in Washington. The plans would allow the department to consolidate operations and focus on larger criminal investigations, and department officials said they would pay to relocate the attorneys and support staffers willing to move.

(Andrew Harrer - BLOOMBERG)

The IRS commissioner has warned Congress that plans to cut the tax collector’s budget would add to the nation’s budget deficit and seriously hurt customer service.

Legislation proposed by Senate appropriations that would slice $525 million from the Internal Revenue Service, and a House bill that would reduce agency spending by $650 million “would lead to noticeable degradation of both service and enforcement and would have a serious detrimental impact on voluntary compliance for years to come,” Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman said in the letter. The IRS budget is about $12.5 billion.

The budget cuts also would force long waits for customer service, he said.

(Jonathan Alcorn - BLOOMBERG) A proxy battle between Google and Microsoft in their ongoing war to provide lucrative cloud computing services to the federal government appears to have resulted in a decision favoring Microsoft.

The General Services Administration, which is spearheading a contract program to help federal agencies use Web-based e-mail services, must rework the deal to better address terms that would have allowed technology firms to base computing centers in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia, but not in more tech-friendly countries like Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a decision published Monday by the Government Accountability Office.

Two small contracting firms, Annapolis-based Technosource Information Systems and Reston-based TrueTandem, filed bid protests with GAO, arguing that GSA’s deal would have allowed winning contractors to base their computing centers in the war-torn countries that GSA considers Trade Agreements Act-designated countries, but not in countries with developing tech sectors, like Brazil, India and South Africa, which are not considered TAA compliant.

Once again Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked, and once again she said no. ( So could we please stop asking her?)

The secretary of state once again said Monday she does not plan to run for president in 2016, adding that she’s looking forward to writing, teaching and one day becoming a grandmother.

Speaking on NBC’s “Today” show, Clinton said it’s time for other Democrats to run for president. “I have made my contribution, I’m very grateful I’ve had a chance to serve, but I think it’s time for others to step up,” she said.

(David Paul Morris - BLOOMBERG) Federal employees who use government-issued charge cards may soon face regular credit checks, strict limitations on purchases and regular reviews to see if they still need the card.

A House committee last week unanimously approved the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act, which has already passed the Senate and is soon poised for a full House vote. The measure, originally introduced by Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), is in response to years of watchdog reports detailing the abuse, misuse and lax oversight of government-issued charge cards meant to pay for travel expenses and other small purchases, including office supplies.

Through the years, federal employees have used the cards to purchase kitchen appliances, cruises, to pay gambling expenses and even for tabs at legalized brothels.

Ron Bloom, photographed July 27, 2009, in Detroit. (Paul Sancya - ASSOCIATED PRESS) President Obama’s former top adviser on manufacturing has been tapped by the nation's letter carriers to develop new business ideas for the U.S. Postal Service.

Ron Bloom, who helped restructure the automotive industry and has negotiated several large labor deals over the course of his career, served until August as Obama’s top manufacturing policy adviser. He announced Sunday that he will advise the National Association of Letter Carriers as the 280,000-member union attempts to strike a new multi-year deal with the cash-strapped Postal Service.

NALC President Fredric V. Rolando said Sunday that the union is also hiring the financial advisory company Lazard “to explore and expand the range of solutions available to the Postal Service, as well as their long-term business issues and strategies for the future.”

Members of the American Legion placed more than 1,000 American flags on the headstones of veterans in May at a cemetery in Minnesota. (Andrew Link - AP)

The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee ordered his staff to begin an investigation Friday into allegations that some of the nation’s largest lending institutions have cheated veterans and taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars by charging illegal fees in home refinancing loans.

Committee staff members met Friday with officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs to discuss the charges, which are made in a whistleblower lawsuit unsealed this month by a federal court in Atlanta.

“I will reserve judgment on the appropriate next course of action, to include the potential for a full Committee hearing, after having the opportunity to review the results of the staff investigation,” Rep. Jeff Miller, (R-Fla.), chairman of the committee, wrote in a letter Friday to Rep. Bruce Braley, (D-Iowa), the ranking member of the committee’s subcommittee on economic opportunity.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate panel that oversees federal personnel issues. (Andrew Harrer - Bloomberg) Congress should freeze the pay of federal employees for a third year and retool calculations of their retirement benefits to help pay down the federal deficit, two senators responsible for federal personnel issues said Friday.

Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chairman of and ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said they regret recommending a third year of pay freezes, “but people across the country are struggling, most especially those who are suffering from historic levels of unemployment. And all Americans, including those of us in the public sector, must help get our country out of the hole we are in.”

Lieberman and Collins also endorsed tallying federal workers’ retirement benefits based on an employee’s five highest years of compensation, instead of the three highest years. But any change should limit any adverse effects on workers nearing retirement eligibility.

Disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff might hope his upcoming book sells well, but he won’t see all of the profits from it. A federal court has garnished money earned from “Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist” and will use it to pay back the author’s victims.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an Oct. 11 order instructing Worldnetdaily Books, the Washington-based publisher of the upcoming tome, to turn over any money it owes Abramoff under the book contract or other agreements.

The court noted that after he was convicted of fraud, corruption and conspiracy stemming from shady lobbying deals, Abramoff was ordered to pay back more than $23 million to his victims, mostly to Native American tribes who were his clients. He still owes more than $22.7 million, the court said.

Abramoff’s first-person account of his rise and spectacular fall, including a three-and-a- half year stint in federal prison that ended last June, is slated to hit bookstands Nov. 14. Other books have chronicled the convicted lobbyist’s tale, but Abramoff’s self-penned tale is being billed as a “corrective” version of the story.

A spokeswoman for the publisher said that the company couldn’t comment since it had not yet received the garnishment order and that Abramoff would not be available for comment because he was observing the Jewish holiday.