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Monday, September 9, 2013

Mass stabbing prompts Obama to push tougher knife legislation

I fully believe there is no way to stop a madman who is hellbent on terror,
@Bushranger, today's events in Boston have, sadly, proven you correct.
I live in the Boston suburbs and the streets are deserted. I can't hear any cars, either. Like 9/11, everyone in this area jumped in their cars and sped home to be with family. Everybody's pretty freaked.
Please, send your prayers.

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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Anti-Drone Activists To Protest Obama Killing Program

Opponents of President Barack Obama's drone policy are planning a month of protests in April, seeking to intensify attention on the administration's controversial targeted killing program.

Anti-drone activists will go after the military, universities and companies that play a role in Obama's drone program in a month dubbed "April's Day of Action," the Guardian reported:

The protests will begin on April 3 with a rally in New York, followed by three days of protest outside the facilities of companies that make drones, including at San Diego-based General Atomics which makes Predator and Reaper drones.
Later in the month, protests will take place at universities and other institutions that conduct research into drones or help train drone pilots and operators. At the end of the month, rallies and demonstrations will target military bases in the US from where drones operate, including Hancock air base near Syracuse, New York.

Civil liberties and human rights activists have criticized the Obama administration's use of unmanned drones to target suspected terrorists overseas. Congressional lawmakers, too, have sought greater transparency on the drone strikes. The issue garnered national attention earlier this month when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) maintained in a 13-hour talking filibuster that Obama's drone policy abuses executive power.

The secrecy around the program prompted a discussion between Obama and Senate Democrats during a meeting on Capitol Hill this month, in which the president reiterated his intention to keep "privileged information" confidential.

"This is not Dick Cheney we’re talking about here," Obama told the more skeptical senators.

The comment came just one month after the president pledged greater transparency on drones in his 2013 State of the Union address.

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Sunday, June 30, 2013

John Boehner, Sen. Bob Corker Diverge On Tax Deal With President Obama

WASHINGTON -- Sharp differences emerged on Sunday between House and Senate Republicans over the prospect for a budget deal with President Barack Obama, with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) insisting that "the talk about raising revenue is over" even as Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said that the GOP is open to increasing tax receipts by closing loopholes.

"I think there, by the way, is a chance on a deal," Corker told Fox News' Chris Wallace. "I think the president is saying the right things. We have an opportunity over the next 4 to 5 months."

"I think Republicans, if they saw true entitlement reform, would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenue. And it doesn't mean creeping rates, it means closing loopholes. It also means arranging our tax system so we have economic growth. And I think we have been saying that from day one."

Other Republicans, however, would not even echo Corker's comments on the same day. Speaking to ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Boehner rejected any deal that includes higher tax revenue.

"The president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people. We're not going to get very far," Boehner said. "The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over. It's time to deal with the spending problem."

Boehner, however, acknowledged that the prospect of a "crisis" over the debt is a long-term issue, not an immediate pressing threat. Other Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have characterized the federal budget deficit and debt as a much more imminent danger to the health of the American economy.

“We do not have an immediate debt crisis -- but we all know that we have one looming,” Boehner told ABC. “And we have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re going to go bankrupt.”

Shortly after the ABC interview aired Sunday, Boehner's press office released a excerpts of the interview that omitted Boehner's acknowledgment that there is no "immediate" debt crisis.

On CBS, Bob Schieffer highlighted Boehner's comments and asked Ryan whether the government faces an immediate debt crisis. Ryan acknowledged that it does not, but warned about an economic calamity if one happens.

"America is still a step ahead of the European nations who are confronting a debt crisis, of Japan. it's partly because of our resilient economy, our world currency status," Ryan said. "So we do not have a debt crisis right now, but we see it coming. We know it's irrefutably happening."

The type of crisis that is happening in Greece, however, is extremely unlikely to occur in the United States. Unlike Greece, the U.S. borrows money in its own currency, giving it far greater power over its creditors. The long-term threat posed by the government's debt is inflation or increasing interest rates -- problems that could eventually create a drag on economic growth, but which would not result in abrupt shocks to the economic system.

"Republicans want to see a 75-year solution to entitlements," Corker said.

A host of conservative figures criticized Obama this week for telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos that there is no immediate budget crisis.

Social Security currently enjoys a $2.7 trillion surplus, enough to fund the program through 2033 without any changes. Medicare's finances are less robust as a result of the uniquely expensive American health care system. Health care costs in the U.S. are roughly double the rate per person in Canada and the U.K.

But the system has years to be reformed before benefits or taxes would need to be increased, and there is no evidence that long-term health care costs are spooking investors in the present day. The severity of the American federal debt problem is measured by the interest rate on U.S. Treasury bonds. The bigger the debt problem, the higher the interest rate that investors demand to be paid for taking on the risk of buying Treasury bonds. Interest rates on Treasury bonds have been near record lows for years.

This post has been updated to include Paul Ryan's comments.
Clarification: A previous version of this article referenced Sen. Corker's comments about the long-range finances of Medicare and Social Security and indicated that Corker agreed with Boehner's assessment that the deficit is not an "immediate" problem. Corker's staff told HuffPost he believes entitlements are a long-run budgetary problem that pose an immediate crisis.

Earlier on HuffPost:

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Saturday, June 29, 2013

U.S. Drone Policy: Obama Seeking To Influence Global Guidelines

(Repeats with no change)

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, who vastly expanded U.S. drone strikes against terrorism suspects overseas under the cloak of secrecy, is now openly seeking to influence global guidelines for their use as China and other countries pursue their own drone programs.

The United States was the first to use unmanned aircraft fitted with missiles to kill militant suspects in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

But other countries are catching up. China's interest in unmanned aerial vehicles was displayed in November at an air show. According to state-run newspaper Global Times, China had considered conducting its first drone strike to kill a suspect in the 2011 murder of 13 Chinese sailors, but authorities decided they wanted the man alive so they could put him on trial.

"People say what's going to happen when the Chinese and the Russians get this technology? The president is well aware of those concerns and wants to set the standard for the international community on these tools," said Tommy Vietor, until earlier this month a White House spokesman.

As U.S. ground wars end - over in Iraq, drawing to a close in Afghanistan - surgical counterterrorism targeting has become "the new normal," Vietor said.

Amid a debate within the U.S. government, it is not yet clear what new standards governing targeted killings and drone strikes the White House will develop for U.S. operations or propose for global rules of the road.

Obama's new position is not without irony. The White House kept details of drone operations - which remain largely classified - out of public view for years when the U.S. monopoly was airtight.

That stance is just now beginning to change, in part under pressure from growing public and Congressional discomfort with the drone program. U.S. lawmakers have demanded to see White House legal justifications for targeting U.S. citizens abroad, and to know whether Obama thinks he has the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

On Friday, a three-judge federal appeals court panel unanimously ruled that the CIA gave an inadequate response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking records about drone strikes. The CIA had said it could neither confirm nor deny whether it had drone records because of security concerns.

The judge who wrote the ruling noted that the president had publicly acknowledged that the United States uses drone strikes against al Qaeda.

LETHAL ACTION

Strikes by missile-armed Predator and Reaper drones against terrorism suspects overseas began under former President George W. Bush and were expanded by Obama.

The ramp-up started in 2008, the last year of Bush's term, when there were 35 air strikes in Pakistan, and escalated under Obama to a peak of 117 in 2010, according to The Long War Journal ( http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php ).

That jump in use of armed drones resulted from the authorization to use "signature" strikes, which allowed targeting terrorism suspects based on behavior and other characteristics without knowing their actual identity, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said the administration is committed to explaining to Congress and the public as much as possible about its drone policies, including how decisions to strike are made.

"We are constantly working to refine, clarify, and strengthen the process for considering terrorist targets for lethal action," Hayden said.

The administration recognizes "we are establishing standards other nations may follow," she said.

James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said other countries, including Russia, have unarmed reconnaissance drones. China says it has an armed drone, but "we don't know if it works," he said.

"Getting agreement on the applicability of existing humanitarian law to the new technologies is crucial," he said, because China and Russia do not endorse applying laws of armed conflict to new military technologies.

One of the Obama administration's goals is to "regularize" the drone program, making it more a part of accepted U.S. practice in the future, Lewis said. "This is going to be part of warfare."

While the Obama administration moves toward refinement and transparency of standards, drone strikes continue to spark outrage in countries where they are conducted. Washington has sought to portray civilian casualties from drone strikes as minimal, but groups collecting data on these attacks say they have killed hundreds of civilians.

A U.N. human rights investigator who is looking into drone strikes worldwide said on Friday the U.S. campaign had violated Pakistan's sovereignty.

INTERNAL DEBATES

One focus of U.S. officials' internal debate is whether to shift drone operations to the Pentagon from the CIA.

That would allow the CIA to return to more traditional operations of espionage and intelligence analysis, and put the killing of terrorism targets in the hands of the military.

It would probably be a "phased approach" that would account for differences in the threat and political sensitivities, said a second U.S. official. "There would have to be some tailoring."

In Pakistan, where the U.S. military is not in ground combat, the Obama administration would probably not want drone strikes to appear as being conducted by the military.

In Yemen, there may not be the same sensitivities. U.S. military personnel are on the ground working with Yemenis in counterterrorism operations.

The United States has also carried out drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia.

"I think if they moved it, not as a covert action program, but one of the tools of the warfighter, then the result of it is probably going to be more public exposure about what they are doing," Stephen Hadley, national security adviser under Bush, said.

The "center of gravity" in internal administration debates is the goal of greater consistency on how drone strikes are managed, decided upon, and executed, the second official said. (Editing by Warren Strobel and Mohammad Zargham)

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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Obama Daughter Dance Recital: President Attends Sasha's Performance At The Music Center At Strathmore

President Barack Obama walks with daughter Sasha as they leave St. John's Church in Washington, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013, after attending a church service during the 57th Presidential Inauguration.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has attended his youngest daughter's dance recital at an arts center in suburban Maryland.

The White House said 11-year-old Sasha performed during a recital Saturday evening at the Music Center at Strathmore.

Located in North Bethesda, Md., about a half-mile outside the Capital Beltway, Strathmore is a nonprofit arts center that hosts events and classes.

Obama returned to the White House about an hour after arriving at the arts center.

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Sunday, April 21, 2013

Michael Calderone: Obama Doing Local TV Interviews Amid White Press Corps 'Frustration'

Michael Calderone: Obama Doing Local TV Interviews Amid White House Press Corps 'Frustration' HPFB.init();

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Michael CalderoneSenior Media Reporter, The Huffington Post

GET UPDATES FROM Michael Calderone Like 533 Obama Doing Local TV Interviews Amid White House Press Corps 'Frustration' Posted: 02/19/2013 5:46 pm Read more

Media News , Obama Local Anchors , Obama Local News , Obama Press Corps , Calderone: The Backstory , Media News
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The White House press corps has been up arms this week over access to the president, an issue that's long caused tension between reporters and press handlers.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended the administration's record in terms of access on Tuesday, telling reporters that Obama's done 591 interviews since taking office. While Obama has done hundreds of interviews, the president hasn't sat down in several years with major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

But during the 2012 campaign, Obama made time for local TV anchors, a media strategy that rankled some national reporters. The president did 58 local media interviews and just eight national media interviews through roughly the first half of 2012.

That local media strategy appears to be continuing into the 2nd term, even as White House reporters grumble about not getting enough time with the president.

Dan Ashley, an anchor from ABC7 in San Francisco, is heading to Washington this week to interview Obama, according to an article on his station's site. Ashley also tweeted a photo on his way.

Yunji de Nies, an anchor/ reporter for KITV4 News Honolulu, will also be interviewing Obama this week, according to a report on the station's site. She tweeted a photo Tuesday from the White House.

Kevin Ogle, an anchor with KFOR in Oklahoma City, is also interviewing Obama this week.

During the campaign, Obama would typically do round robin interviews with local anchors over an hour or two, a savvy strategy that ensures coverage at the top of newscasts in several markets on the same night. It's unclear how many anchors will be on hand at the White House this week or the set-up for the interviews.

A White House spokesman did not provide a list of interviewers when reached by The Huffington Post, but did not refute reports on local station sites.

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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Is Barack Obama the Antichrist? SERIOUSLY?

The Bible Teaches us that the Antichrist will rise up out of the sea of nations. He will appear as an intelligent, miraculous political leader, who comes to power on a platform of peace, safety and prosperity. Billions will be astonished and the hundreds of thousands of peace groups, peace-lovers, peace-niks. pacifists, green-peace environmentalists, peace-corps and peace makers from amongst all the nations and amongst all the religions of the world will marvel at his peace plans.
This is an ad that I inserted!
There is no doubt that Barack Obama is a master of lies - or rather, David Axelrod is a master of the P.R. lie and Obama just says what Axelrod tells him to. I mean, Obama even uses a teleprompter when speaking to children!
He's a president that takes no responsibility. His motto is, "it's someone else's fault". Even CNN is saying that Obama has no pressure to fix the economy because polls say he can blame the Repubs.
Obama treats women like shit and women still vote for him. OTOH, as the saying goes, "chicks dig jerks".
After four years of a depressed economy, he pulls a bait-and-switch, pulls a fast one and gets people not to notice the economy sucks. Gets him re-elected.
He is a man that lies for his own purposes. And is more interested in power than doing the right thing. With a bank account in the Cayman islands for, uh, campaign contribu..., uh, I mean, brib..., no, uh, well, um...
Today, Bloomberg TV for the first time used the word "apocalypse" when describing this economy's potential dangers. They discussed how Obama's plan is raising taxes on the middle class between 8% and 18%.
When any excuse will work, when public statements take six days because that's how long it takes to put together a focus group - when the truth no longer matters when the President speaks - When lies trump facts while the economy faces destruction - well, what kind of man is that?

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Chris Weigant: Obama Poll Watch -- January, 2013

Maintaining His Gains

President Obama ended up his first term by consolidating the job approval polling gains he made in his re-election. His numbers have settled into a new range, and were remarkably steady all month long. Obama's "second honeymoon" period with the public may not last more than a few months, but for now seems to be holding steady. With the election fading into the past, Obama's in a pretty good position right now in terms of "political capital," but this will likely change as legislative reality sets in.

Let's go to the chart, to see how Obama finished up his first term in office:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

January, 2013

January marked the end of President Obama's first term, and the start of his second. January started off with the endgame of the fiscal cliff negotiations, where Obama scored a clean victory over the Republicans in Congress, by getting income tax rates hiked on upper-income taxpayers for the first time in 20 years. Obama scored his second political victory when the Republicans backed down on holding the world's economy hostage over the debt ceiling issue. They punted the whole decision a few months down the road, but it will likely get solved in the midst of the other upcoming budget battles.

Later in the month, Obama got the benefit of the pomp and circumstance of Inauguration Day, where he used the opportunity to give a much feistier speech than anyone expected. This sets the stage for next week's State Of The Union address to a joint session of Congress (and the American people).

Throughout all of this, Obama's job approval poll numbers stayed pretty rock steady. One outlier poll mid-month brought his average numbers down a tad, but every other poll put him between about 51 percent and 55 percent approval. The one "odd poll out" from Fox put him at only 47 percent, but this wasn't reflected in any other polling.

This resulted in a slight drop in approval, down from 53.1 to 52.7 percent. This ends Obama's longest run yet of increasing approval ratings, as it is the first such drop in the past six months. Offsetting this, Obama's disapproval numbers also dropped slightly, down 0.2 percent to a 42.6 percent average for the month. Partly, this is a result of a lot more "undecided" Americans, as the election hoopla fades. From a low of 2.7 percent the month of the election, the undecided rate was back up to a much-more-normal 4.7 percent for January.

Obama maintained his gains in one important measurement. His approval rating is "above water" (or higher than his disapproval rating) to the tune of 10.1 percent. This, with last month's 10.3 percent rating, is the best "spread" Obama has managed since the end of 2009, and is perhaps the best measurement of how much "political capital" Obama truly has right now. Even after the death of Osama Bin Laden, Obama only managed 8.3 percent, by comparison.

Overall Trends

Before we get to taking a closer look at the trends, we've got a bonus chart today. This is (so far) what we've come up with to extend this chart into Obama's second term. It's really not all that different from the one we've been using for Obama's first term, really.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

We had the option of starting a whole new chart for Obama's second term, and just retiring the first term chart altogether. But this would miss putting Obama's second term numbers into some needed context, so we decided to just extend the X-axis scale to show both terms in one chart. Doing so made the data points look a little strange, so we've removed the "dots" for each month. Unless people have serious objections or brilliant suggestions in the comments today, this is probably what we're going with next month. We'll also likely be "cleaning up" the stats section at the bottom of the column, which is growing alarmingly large.

But let's get on with examining January and predicting the near future, shall we? Obama's trends for January are pretty flat. He didn't improve, he didn't lose much ground. But he did indeed hold onto where he was, which is impressive enough. Obama's five-month streak of increasing approval numbers raised his rating 5.9 percent since last July, and pushed him over 50 percent for the first time since his initial honeymoon period. If he continues polling steadily in the 51-55 percent range, Obama will gain back the 0.4 percent he lost this month (due again, largely, to one outlying poll).

This might signal a return to the pre-election steadiness Obama managed throughout much of his first term. Good news or bad, Obama's poll numbers resisted much "spiking" one way or another and instead mostly followed gentle and steady curves, or spent long periods absolutely flat. Obama got significantly good news in January, from the fiscal cliff victory to the debt ceiling victory to a wonderful inauguration. He's been using the "bully pulpit" with a vengeance, pushing his agenda on gun control, comprehensive immigration reform, and budget issues, but none of this has moved his numbers above the bounce he got from the election. February will have one good moment in the spotlight, as Obama lays out his second term agenda in the State Of The Union speech, but the end of the month is likely to be consumed with congressional squabbling over the budget once again.

If Obama scores an early legislative victory (such as a gun control bill passing the Senate, perhaps), this could give him a small boost. Traditionally, however, honeymoons with the public usually end within a few months (especially in second terms). So the trend heading into the Spring will likely be one of slowly receding job approval. For the moment, if Obama keeps posting numbers with the same steadiness he showed in January, the trendline is one of maintaining his election gains. But once disappointing compromises become necessary to move legislation, Obama's approval ratings are likely to fade. The question will then become how much of a drop he'll experience before he can level them off again. For now, though, he's in better shape than he has been for the past three years.

[Obama Poll Watch Data:]

Sources And Methodology

ObamaPollWatch.com is an admittedly amateur effort, but we do try to stay professional when it comes to revealing our sources and methodology. All our source data comes from RealClearPolitics.com; specifically from their daily presidential approval ratings "poll of polls" graphic page. We take their daily numbers, log them, and then average each month's data into a single number -- which is then shown on our monthly charts here (a "poll of polls of polls," if you will...). You can read a much-more detailed explanation of our source data and methodology on our "About Obama Poll Watch" page, if you're interested.

Questions or comments? Use the Email Chris page to drop me a private note.

Column Archives

[Dec 12], [Nov 12], [Oct 12], [Sep 12], [Aug 12], [Jul 12], [Jun 12], [May 12], [Apr 12], [Mar 12], [Feb 12], [Jan 12], [Dec 11], [Nov 11], [Oct 11], [Sep 11], [Aug 11], [Jul 11], [Jun 11], [May 11], [Apr 11], [Mar 11], [Feb 11], [Jan 11], [Dec 10], [Nov 10], [Oct 10], [Sep 10], [Aug 10], [Jul 10], [Jun 10], [May 10], [Apr 10], [Mar 10], [Feb 10], [Jan 10], [Dec 09], [Nov 09], [Oct 09], [Sep 09], [Aug 09], [Jul 09], [Jun 09], [May 09], [Apr 09], [Mar 09]

Obama's All-Time Statistics

Monthly
Highest Monthly Approval -- 2/09 -- 63.4%
Lowest Monthly Approval -- 10/11 -- 43.4%

Highest Monthly Disapproval -- 9/11, 10/11 -- 51.2%
Lowest Monthly Disapproval -- 1/09 -- 19.6%

Daily
Highest Daily Approval -- 2/15/09 -- 65.5%
Lowest Daily Approval -- 10/9/11 -- 42.0%

Highest Daily Disapproval -- 8/30/11 -- 53.2%
Lowest Daily Disapproval -- 1/29/09 -- 19.3%

Obama's Raw Monthly Data

[All-time high in bold, all-time low underlined.]

Month -- (Approval / Disapproval / Undecided)
01/13 -- 52.7 / 42.6 / 4.7
12/12 -- 53.1 / 42.8 / 4.1
11/12 -- 50.6 / 46.7 / 2.7
10/12 -- 49.4 / 47.8 / 2.8
09/12 -- 49.1 / 47.6 / 3.3
08/12 -- 47.8 / 48.3 / 3.9
07/12 -- 47.2 / 48.1 / 4.7
06/12 -- 47.8 / 47.8 / 4.4
05/12 -- 48.1 / 47.8 / 4.1
04/12 -- 47.8 / 47.1 / 5.1
03/12 -- 47.7 / 47.2 / 5.1
02/12 -- 48.2 / 47.2 / 4.6
01/12 -- 46.3 / 48.3 / 5.4
12/11 -- 45.1 / 49.5 / 5.4
11/11 -- 44.4 / 50.2 / 5.4
10/11 -- 43.4 / 51.2 / 5.4
09/11 -- 43.5 / 51.2 / 5.3
08/11 -- 43.8 / 50.7 / 5.5
07/11 -- 46.2 / 47.8 / 6.0
06/11 -- 48.5 / 46.0 / 5.5
05/11 -- 51.4 / 43.1 / 5.5
04/11 -- 46.4 / 48.2 / 5.4
03/11 -- 48.1 / 46.4 / 5.5
02/11 -- 49.4 / 44.5 / 6.1
01/11 -- 48.5 / 45.7 / 5.8
12/10 -- 45.5 / 48.1 / 6.4
11/10 -- 45.5 / 49.0 / 5.5
10/10 -- 45.5 / 49.1 / 5.4
09/10 -- 45.7 / 49.7 / 4.6
08/10 -- 45.3 / 49.5 / 5.2
07/10 -- 46.6 / 47.4 / 6.0
06/10 -- 47.6 / 46.7 / 5.7
05/10 -- 48.1 / 45.5 / 6.4
04/10 -- 47.8 / 46.5 / 5.7
03/10 -- 48.1 / 46.4 / 5.5
02/10 -- 47.9 / 46.1 / 6.0
01/10 -- 49.2 / 45.3 / 5.5
12/09 -- 49.4 / 44.9 / 5.7
11/09 -- 51.1 / 43.5 / 5.4
10/09 -- 52.2 / 41.9 / 5.9
09/09 -- 52.7 / 42.0 / 5.3
08/09 -- 52.8 / 40.8 / 6.4
07/09 -- 56.4 / 38.1 / 5.5
06/09 -- 59.8 / 33.6 / 6.6
05/09 -- 61.4 / 31.6 / 7.0
04/09 -- 61.0 / 30.8 / 8.2
03/09 -- 60.9 / 29.9 / 9.2
02/09 -- 63.4 / 24.4 / 12.2
01/09 -- 63.1 / 19.6 / 17.3

Chris Weigant blogs at:

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Barack Obama Chicago Violence: Leaders Call For President To Stem Tide Of Homicides In Hometown

Friends, fellow students, and others hold a candlelight vigil at Harsh Park in memory of Hadiya Pendleton on February 2, 2013. Pendleton was the 44th homicide recorded in Chicago for 2013. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Civic leaders at a loss of how to stem Chicago's bloody tide of homicides are calling on the president to help his hometown.

"The president's voice is so urgently needed here," said Rev. Jesse Jackson during a Saturday march, according to The Guardian. "[That alone] would illuminate the condition."

Leading the weekend march in honor of recently slain 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, Jackson argued Obama's presence would spotlight the complex social and economic issues in Chicago that "compound problems related to gun violence."

After the silent march from Pendleton's school, King College Prep to the S Oakenwald park where she was shot, the teen's cousin Shatira Wilkes told CBS Chicago, “Chicago is becoming a place where we are just becoming comfortable with death. I don’t want to become comfortable with death."

Jackson argued Obama's presence in his hometown would demonstrate "ultimate national seriousness" according to NBC Chicago.

Jackson wants the president to approve federal measures that would address the soaring homicide rate, which he called a crisis unlike any other city—and one Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the police department can't handle alone.

The city's homicide rate crept forward, with one person killed and four others wounded in weekend shootings around the city. A Portage Park man was killed in the hallway of his apartment building in the 3900 block of N Central, reports the Sun-Times. Manuel Hernandez was shot in the chest Friday night around 8:30 and was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after.

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Friday, March 22, 2013

Obama Deportation Toll Could Pass 2 Million At Current Rates

WASHINGTON -- As lawmakers debate the Obama administration's commitment to immigration enforcement, a report released last week shows that 2 million people will be deported by 2014 -- more than the total number of deportations before 1997 -- if they continue at the current rate.

Tanya Golash-Boza, an associate professor of sociology at University of California-Merced, found that interior immigration enforcement has expanded rapidly as border-crossings have slowed down, leading to more families being separated by deportation.

Her analysis found that 2.1 million people were deported between 1892 and 1997. From there, the rate of deportations swelled, hitting a record in the 2012 fiscal year with more than 400,000 removals. Apprehensions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement went from 10 percent of those in the Department of Homeland Security overall in 2002 to nearly 50 percent by 2011, the report says. And she found that nearly a quarter of the total deportations between July 2010 and the end of September 2012 involved parents of children who are United States citizens.

The rising rate predates President Barack Obama, who also works under a number of strict immigration laws. Still, he has presided over a significant portion of total deportations.

"On the one hand Obama gets to say, 'I've deported all of these criminals,'" said Golash-Boza, who is writing a book about deportations. "On the other hand, not only are the people minor criminals, but they're also much more likely to be people that are living, working, have children in the United States than even just a few years ago."

The administration has defended its deportation policies as both necessary under current law and as more humane. Policies now place a higher priority on deporting criminals and repeat border-crossers, an argument White House domestic policy chief Cecilia Muñoz made on Thursday.

"The government’s job is to do what Congress tells it to do," Muñoz said on a Google+ Hangout moderated by undocumented journalist and activist Jose Antonio Vargas. "Congress, under the immigration laws that we've got now, Congress requires us to remove people who are removable and gives DHS, frankly, a whole lot of resources to do that job. DHS’s job is to make sure they make the best possible decisions on how they use those resources."

Showing a commitment to enforcement and border security is particularly important as Obama pushes Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Some Republicans argue that undocumented immigrants should not be given a path to citizenship in part because the administration can't be trusted to enforce current law or police the border.

But Obama and Muñoz have countered those claims, pointing to the number of deportations, increased border enforcement and the significant resources devoted to the border.

Immigrant rights groups argue it's far from a good thing that the president can claim record deportations as an accomplishment, even if his administration has increased the percentage of criminals among those deported.

For one thing, the definition of a criminal is broadly defined in immigration law, Golash-Boza said. "The claim that deportation policy has made the United States safer is on very shaky ground" because a relatively small portion of people deported have been convicted of violent crimes, she added.

Obama said in interviews on Wednesday that he cannot halt deportations until immigration reform efforts are concluded, but that new legislation would address the issue of removals.

"There're still obviously gonna be people who get caught up in the system ... that's heartbreaking," he told Telemundo's José Díaz-Balart. "But that's why we're pushing for comprehensive immigration reform. Obviously, if this was an issue that I could do unilaterally I would have done it a long time ago."

But he also told Díaz-Balart he stood behind the enforcement decisions. "I make no apologies for us enforcing the law as well as the work that we've done to strengthen border security," Obama said.

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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Obama Signs Sandy Bill Providing $50.5 Billion In Disaster Relief Into Law

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed into law a $50.5 billion emergency measure for Superstorm Sandy victims.

Congress gave the measure its final approval late Monday. Obama signed it Tuesday night, minutes after returning to the White House from a visit to Nevada.

It took Congress three months after Sandy devastated areas along the East Coast to approve the emergency funding. Obama scolded lawmakers for delaying recovery efforts even as he commended them for providing the long-awaited aid.

Conservatives concerned about billions in debt opposed the measure. Earlier this month, House Republicans removed unrelated spending from the bill.

The Oct. 29 storm was one of the worst to strike the Northeast and is blamed for more than 130 deaths and tens of billions of dollars in property damage.

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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Students With Disabilities Have Right To Play School Sports, Obama Administration Tells Schools

When Kareem Dale, now a special advisor to President Barack Obama, was in high school, all he wanted to do was wrestle. But as a student who was partially blind, that wasn't easy.

Dale's school made it possible for him to participate in the sport by creating a rule that wrestlers always needed to be touching their opponent. "It allowed me to wrestle throughout public high school," Dale said. "That experience of wrestling gave me confidence, it made me healthier, it was really an extraordinary experience."

But hundreds of other students with disabilities may not have had an opportunity in school sports, a 2010 Government Accountability Office report suggested. The U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights on Friday is sending school districts a 13-page guidance document that spells out the rights of students with disabilities to participate in school athletics.

Laura Kaloi, the public policy director for the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the guidance was long delayed. "The GAO issued this report and the Department of Education kind of sat on it," Kaloi said. "I'm really happy to see finally that the Office of Civil Rights is putting out this guidance, making these rights crystal clear."

The guidance follows 84 complaints to the Office of Civil Rights from parents of students with disabilities over the last four years.

The guidance document outlines five principles with specific examples for enforcement of the law, according to Seth Galanter, acting assistant secretary for the Education Department Office of Civil Rights. Schools can't rely on generalizations of a student's disabilities when crafting their sports offerings. They must consider each student and provide "reasonable modifications" to games, but not "fundamental alterations" that would significantly change the game or give students with disabilities an advantage. It requires that sports programs be safe.

School districts also have to provide qualified students with required aides -- during school and after school. For example, a student with diabetes who has a school aide monitor his blood sugar and insulin during the school day is entitled to that aide during extracurricular gymnastics.

The guidance highlights that the "unnecessary separation of kids with disabilities is both discriminatory and harmful," Galanter said.

Parents often run into obstacles when trying to get modifications for their children with disabilities, said Garth Tymerson, a Wisconsin professor who prepares physical education instructors for teaching special-education kids. He said the guidance "will put some fuel into the fire of people who want to get more help." Tymerson added that sports participation is particularly important for students who have disabilities because their obesity rates tend to be higher.

“Sports can provide invaluable lessons in discipline, selflessness, passion and courage, and this guidance will help schools ensure that students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to benefit from the life lessons they can learn on the playing field or on the court,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement.

The issue is personal for some parents, including Kaloi. Her son has dyslexia and dysgraphia. Once, an evaluator explained to her son that he had difficulty processing number sequences. His eyes lit up. "Wow, is that why I can't remember the jumprope routine in physical education?" Kaloi remembers him asking. "My husband and I felt horrible. We focused on the reading, the writing and social studies, but the first thing in my son's mind was, 'Why can't I keep up the jumprope routine?' It made him feel like he couldn't do what the other kids were doing. A lightbulb went off for me as a parent."

But Kaloi said she's unsure how much the guidance will help students. "It takes a really savvy parent to put this document down on the table and say, 'Look, you're doing x, y and z and this document says you can't,'" she said. "But it shows that schools needed a reminder. … We want the same thing any parent wants: We just want them participating in art and music, we want them sitting with friends at lunch."

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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Mary Jo White, Obama Pick to Head SEC, Pushed Former Enforcement Chief As Bank Lawyer

Morgan Stanley needed someone with an inside line to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was 2005, and the investment banking giant's board of directors was hearing that its top candidate for CEO could be implicated in a probe of insider trading at a major hedge fund. Seeking clarity, the board engaged the lawyer many considered the best in the business: Mary Jo White.

White swiftly lived up to her reputation, setting Morgan Stanley's board at ease. According to a report later prepared by the Senate Finance Committee, she emailed and then spoke by phone with the agency's chief of enforcement and learned that the board's CEO choice, John Mack, was most likely in the clear. The SEC investigation -- which had seemed to be leading closer to Mack -- disappeared, and Mack took the helm at Morgan Stanley.

On Thursday, President Obama tapped White to run the SEC as its next commissioner, a powerful role as Wall Street's top regulator and cop. If she is confirmed by Congress, the agency will have at its helm a well-respected attorney who won high-profile cases against mobsters, terrorists and financial fraudsters over the course of nearly a decade as the U.S. attorney for Manhattan.

The agency would also gain a powerful defense lawyer, one who has represented many of the biggest names on Wall Street -- including former Bank of America chief Ken Lewis -- in cases before the SEC.

As the Mack case shows, White was not afraid to push the SEC to get what she wanted. While there is no evidence that White behaved improperly, the episode is an example of what critics often deride as a too-cozy relationship between regulators and defense attorneys, and it almost certainly will be raised by Congress during White's confirmation hearing. These relationships are often further bolstered by the common practice of lawyers moving -- as White will do, if confirmed -- between jobs advocating for Wall Street and jobs policing it.

"This is nothing more than a continuation of the revolving door," said Larry Doyle, the managing partner at the independent advisory firm DM Income Advisers, in Connecticut. Doyle said White's nomination diminishes already weakened public trust and confidence in the system.

Although other critics share Doyle's broad view that the SEC is too close to the industry it polices, many of those who have been toughest on the agency in the past applauded Obama's selection. White's reputation as a fair and independent prosecutor, they said, make her perfect for the job. Moreover, several noted, she worked in private practice before she became a U.S. attorney, and her reputation there is sterling.

"Mary Jo White was a tough, smart, no nonsense, broadly experienced and highly accomplished prosecutor," Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, a nonprofit group, said in a statement. "She knew who the bad guys were, went after them and put them in prison when they broke the law. That’s what must happen if integrity and investor confidence is to be restored in our securities markets."

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who hasn't been afraid to buck the Obama administration in the past, also praised White's nomination. "She is a tough, experienced prosecutor, which is exactly what the SEC needs right now to restore investor confidence," Schneiderman said in a statement.

William McLucas, chair of the securities department at Washington-based law firm WilmerHale, worked alongside White in the 1990s when he served as director of enforcement at the SEC. He praised White and said her status as a Wall Street insider in the latter part of her career would be a public benefit.

"It adds to your perspective. It adds to your understanding. It lends a greater depth and a greater breadth of wisdom to your capacity to serve as a chairman," he said. Looking to benefit those in the industry is "just not the way people like Mary Jo White would approach the job and conduct themselves. She's a public servant first."

White first emerged on the national scene in 1993, when President Clinton appointed her U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the highest-profile jobs for a federal prosecutor. On her watch, the office reeled in a series of big wins, securing convictions against the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and against mobster John Gotti. Her proteges at the office include Robert Khuzami, who recently stepped down as the SEC's enforcement chief, and Patrick Fitzgerald, who successfully prosecuted two former Illinois governors as U.S. attorney in Chicago.

After she returned in 2002 to Debevoise & Plimpton, the law firm where she worked early in her career, White put together one of the best teams of white-collar lawyers in the country. In recent years, the firm has often defended those accused of wrongdoing during the financial crisis.

As an experienced litigator with deep knowledge of law enforcement, White, who has her own spokesman at Debevoise, is often sought out by reporters for her views on financial crime. In Interviews, she has characterized of the origins of the financial crisis in ways that put her at odds with many financial reform advocates who have pushed the Obama administration to bring more cases against bank executives. Its possible those views could complicate her selection to head the SEC.

"The financial crisis was so expensive and so many people were injured that one's instinct is to think that there must have been massive wrongdoing from the top on down," she told The Huffington Post in September. But criminal cases must be built on compelling evidence, not suppositions, and evidence of broad-based misconduct that would rise to that level doesn't exist, White said. She made similar statements on behalf of clients.

"Some have looked to assign blame for every aspect of the financial crisis, even where there is no evidence of misconduct," she wrote in a motion defending Bank of America's Lewis in 2010. She referred to then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's charges against the former bank chief as "a badly misguided decision without support in the facts or the law."

In addition to big-name clients like Lewis, White also became known over the last decade as the lawyer companies hire to conduct an internal investigation -- a probe into possible misdeeds. Many such investigations are never made public.

The Morgan Stanley matter likely would have stayed behind closed doors, too, but for accusations made by a former SEC attorney that the insider-trading investigation into Mack was killed for political reasons. That claim led to hearings by the Senate Finance Committee, and, in 2007, a report critical of how the agency handled the investigation.

In June of 2005, according to the report, White emailed Linda Thomsen, then head of the SEC's enforcement division. The subject line: "URGENT."

Thomsen later testified that she didn't divulge any information about the insider-trading case. That account, however, contradicts what White wrote in talking points used to brief Morgan Stanley's board, according to the Senate committee. Those notes indicate that Thomsen told White there was "smoke" regarding Mack's involvement in the alleged illegal trading, but "surely not fire."

The implication: Thomsen told White more about the status of the case than she let on. Four days after the phone call, Morgan Stanley hired Mack. Soon after, the SEC ended its investigation.

In congressional testimony, Robert Hanson, one of the SEC supervisors working on the case, said Assistant Director Mark Kreitman had told him he knew about the call between White and Thomsen.

"Kreitman also said that it is a little out of the ordinary for Mary Jo White to contact Linda Thomsen directly, but that White is very prestigious and it isn't uncommon for someone prominent to have someone intervene on their behalf," Hanson said.

That such a conversation was "not uncommon," the Senate committee said in its report, "is precisely the problem."

Gary Aguirre, the SEC attorney whose complaints prompted the Senate probe, accused the agency of refusing to pursue Mack because of his "very powerful political connections," an account that emails from Aguirre's former supervisor confirmed, the committee concluded.

In an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday, Aguirre said he believes the White phone call to Thomsen also played a role in killing the SEC's investigation into Mack. "There’s no question in my mind that that phone call from Mary Jo White stopped the whole investigation," he said. "The case was like a railroad heading for a criminal investigation. And it got zapped with a call."

The Senate report was also critical of Paul Berger, a current Debevoise partner who at the time of the insider-trading investigation was a senior supervisor in the SEC's enforcement division. In 2005, Berger reached out through a friend to White to mention his interest in joining the private firm. The report criticized Berger for not immediately recusing himself from the Mack investigation when Morgan Stanley hired Debevoise. "When initially questioned, Berger’s answers concerning his employment search were less than forthcoming," the report concluded.

Berger, who later joined Debevoise as a partner, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The Senate report found the SEC "squandered [an] opportunity through a series of missteps" to fully investigate the insider-trading case, but it did not conclude that White's phone call led to the agency dropping the case, nor did it suggest that she behaved inappropriately.

White also did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday, but other defense lawyers said her actions during the course of the Mack case were entirely appropriate. Pushing for information about a matter of interest to a client is a lawyer's job, they said.

"It shows that she is nothing less than an exceptionally skilled litigator," said Ralph Ferrara, a Washington securities attorney who has known White more than 20 years. "She should have knocked on that door hard. That [the SEC] opened it is on them, not her."

Mark Gongloff contributed reporting.

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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Students With Disabilities Have Right To Play School Sports, Obama Administration Tells Schools

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Mary Jo White, Obama Pick to Head SEC, Pushed Former Enforcement Chief As Bank Lawyer

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