Well, maybe not “relaxation,” and “fun” is questionable, but if they can get through the months of arduous training, they do get to call themselves Marines, which is pretty awesome.

Every year, thousands of recruits do make it through to become Marines, which must be on the minds of those pictured below, who are a part of Echo Company, 2nd Recruit Battalion.

They are so interested that HUD’s business operations were being affected by employees’ streaming the hearing live through the department’s internet connection, according to a HUD memo forwarded on Twitter by Washsingtonian Senior Writer Andrew Beaujon.

That’s a lot of streaming:

What do you think? Should federal employees be allowed to stream live video at work?

Jessie Bur and Madeleine Longwell contributed to this report.

If you have never read the Declaration of Independence, or if it has been a while, read through the text (using the original spelling, punctuation and organization, as described by the National Archives) below:

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

The administration is set to release a report in coming weeks that will outline a large reorganization of the federal government, including the consolidation of all safety-net programs under HHS.

Some of the other changes include cuts to USAID and the State Department, according to Politico. Congress would have to sign off on some of the larger proposals.

“The administration already put a lot of stuff out in this year’s budget related to cuts, but that was the easy stuff,” an administration official said. The upcoming report “is the harder stuff.”

There’s 35,000 spaces in the general registration that started last month, which sounds like a lot. But 31,484 spaces have already been taken as of June 1, according to the race’s website.

The race, which takes place this year on Oct. 7, is a beautiful 10 miles, starting at the Pentagon and taking runners through Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. It’s not an easy 10 miles to be sure, especially crossing back over to Arlington along a treeless, long bridge. But it’s worth the effort.

Military members and runners who’ve run the race at least seven times were given a special opportunity to register before the general registration started on May 23.

Bob Ingalls, a 30-year NASA veteran, had set up six remote cameras to capture the launch last earlier this month of the NASA/German GRACE-FO, a satellite designed to detect the movement of Earth’s water masses and changes in mass within the planet by measuring variations in gravity.

The launch, aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket, was from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Unfortunately, one camera — the furthest from the launch, as it happened — didn’t survive. A brush fire started by the rocket spread and engulfed the camera. The camera got “toasted,” Ingalls said in a press release.

Fortunately, although the camera didn’t survive, the memory card did.

The good news if you live in Washington, D.C., or surrounding states, and you work for the federal government is that your pay is the highest on average than any other state, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s Salary Information for the Executive Branch, for fiscal 2017.

‘If you’re a federal employee in Wyoming, Kentucky or South Dakota, however, you’re still making a decent living, but you’re being paid on average only about 70 percent or so of what you’re D.C. colleagues are making.

Not bad at all.

But which agency pays the best? For that, you’d have to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., two financial-related agencies that required a high degree of experience and specialized knowledge of their workers. Their average salaries last year averaged $184,817 and $145,430 last year, respectively.

To see the average salaries of some other high-paying agencies ― and some of the lowest ― check out this Post article or the Office of Personnel Management summary document.

Not bad, actually.

In fiscal 2016 (the latest year for which data is available), roughly one-quarter to one-half of the workers at the largest agencies, such as the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, are military veterans, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

Other agencies, including some of the relatively smaller ones, such as AID and EPA, employ a significantly smaller percentage of veterans.

There’s been relatively little variation from fiscal 2014 to 2016 in the percentages, as demonstrated in the chart below. And overall, 31.1 percent of federal workers were veterans in fiscal 2016, only a slight bump from 2012 when veterans made up 29.7 percent of the workforce.