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Obama Aide ‘Yelled’ at Woodward
Presidents should know not to mess with Bob Woodward. The Washington Post journalist got a rude awakening last week when he called an aide to President Obama to warn that an article he was writing would question the president’s account of the sequester’s origins. Woodward said he was yelled at for over an hour, then received an apology email that ended “I think you will regret staking out that claim.” The White House denies it was a threat. “They have to be willing to live in the world where they’re challenged,” Woodward says. “I’ve tangled with lots of these people … I don’t think it’s the way to operate.”
Cop humiliates Sen. Graham at gun hearing: ‘You’re wrong’ on background checks
At a Senate hearing on gun violence Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was humiliated by a police chief who abruptly interrupted his talking points to insist that he’s “wrong” on how enhanced background checks for gun buyers would work.
Echoing the National Rifle Association, Graham argued before the Senate Judiciary Committee that enhanced background checks are not needed because the laws currently on the books are not enforced well enough.
“When almost 80,000 people fail a background check and 44 people are prosecuted, what kind of deterrent is that?” he asked. “I mean, the law obviously is not seeing that as important, if it’s such an important issue, why aren’t we prosecuting people who fail a background check?”
“Just for the record, from my point of view, the point of a background check…” Milwaukee police chief Edward A. Flynn began. “Senator…”
“How many cases have you made?” Graham pressed. “How many cases have…”
“You know what?” Flynn said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a paper thing.”
“Can I ask the questions?” Graham interjected.
“I want to finish the answer,” Flynn replied.
“I want to stop 76,000 people from buying guns illegally,” he said. “That’s what a background check does. If you think we’re going to do paperwork prosecutions, you’re wrong.”
The Senate committee’s audience erupted into applause, which committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinsten (D-CA) asked to quiet down.
Graham added that he wants Americans to know that in the coming decade there will be less money for police, “so you may have to defend yourself,” ostensibly with firearms.
Amazingly, Graham himself voted against more funding for local police, fire departments and teachers when he cast a ballot against the American Jobs Act in 2011. He called the bill “nothing more than an expansion and continuation of the policies which have made our economy worse than when [President Barack Obama] took office.”
“We have priorities, we make gun cases,” Flynn continued. “We make 2,000 gun cases a year, senator. That’s our priority. We’re not in a paper chase. We’re trying to prevent the wrong people from buying guns, that’s why we do background checks. If you think I’m gonna do a paper chase, then you think I’m gonna misuse my resources.”
At a prior Senate gun hearing in January, Graham bragged that he personally owns an AR-15 assault rifle, the same customizable assault rifle platform that was used to kill 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. At that hearing he urged fellow lawmakers to resist calls to ban high capacity magazines, like the ones used in Newtown, because “there could be a situation where a mother runs out of bullets because of something we do here.”
This video was published to YouTube on Feb. 27, 2013, as snipped by ThinkProgress
US: $60 million in new aid to Syria opposition
The Obama administration said Thursday that it will provide the Syrian opposition with an additional $60 million in assistance and — in a significant policy shift — will for the first time provide nonlethal aid like food and medical supplies to rebels battling to oust President Bashar Assad.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the new support and the decision to back the rebel fighters on the sidelines of an international conference on Syria in Rome, where European nations were also expected to signal their intention to provide fresh assistance to the opposition, possibly including defensive military hardware.
“No nation, no people should live in fear of their so-called leaders,” Kerry said.
He said the U.S. decision is designed to increase the pressure on Assad to step down and pave the way for a democratic transition. The aid is also intended to help the opposition govern newly liberated areas of Syria and blunt the influence of extremists.
Kerry said Assad “is out of time and must be out of power.”
“For more than a year, the United States and our partners have called on Assad to heed the voice of the Syrian people and to halt his war machine,” Kerry said. “Instead, what we have seen is his brutality increase.”
Kerry added, “The United States’ decision to take further steps now is the result of the brutality of superior armed force propped up by foreign fighters from Iran and Hezbollah.”
Washington has already provided $385 million in humanitarian aid to Syria’s war-weary population and $54 million in communications equipment, medical supplies and other nonlethal assistance to Syria’s political opposition. The U.S. also has screened rebel groups for Turkey and American allies in the Arab world that have armed rebel fighters.
But until now, no U.S. dollars or provisions have gone directly to rebel fighters, reflecting concerns about forces that have allied themselves with more radical Islamic elements since Assad’s initial crackdown on peaceful protesters in March 2011.
AP
Senate Democrats, GOP to stage votes on rival cuts
Across-the-board spending cuts all but certain, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are staging a politically charged showdown designed to avoid public blame for any resulting inconvenience or disruption in government services.
The two parties drafted alternative measures to replace the cuts, but officials conceded in advance the rival measures were doomed.
At the White House, President Barack Obama invited congressional leaders to discuss the issue with him on Friday — deadline day for averting the cuts, which would slash $85 billion from the military and domestic programs alike.
Democrats controlling the Senate are pushing a $110 billion plan that would block the cuts through the end of the year. They would carve 5 percent from domestic agencies and 8 percent from the Pentagon but would leave several major programs alone, including Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps, while limiting the cuts to Medicare to a 2 percent reduction to health care providers like doctors and hospitals.
The Democratic plan proposes $27.5 billion in future-year cuts in defense spending, elimination of a program of direct payments to certain farmers, and a minimum tax rate on income exceeding $1 million as the main elements of an alternative to the immediate and bruising automatic cuts, known in Washington-speak as a “sequester.”
Republicans were sure to kill the Democratic alternative with a filibuster. They were poised to offer an alternative of their own that would give Obama the authority to propose a rewrite to the 2013 budget to redistribute the cuts. Obama would be unable to cut defense by more than the $43 billion reduction that the Pentagon faces and would be unable to raise taxes to undo the cuts.
The idea is that money could be transferred from lower-priority accounts to accounts funding air traffic control or meat inspection. The White House says such moves would offer only slight relief, but they could take pressure off Congress to address the sequester.
Democrats are sure to vote the GOP measure down. Both the House and the Senate are set to send their members home Thursday afternoon, even as the deadline to avoid the cuts looms the next day. Though bound to fail, the rival votes will allow both sides to claim they tried to address the cuts even as they leave them in place and exit Washington for a long weekend.
Obama on Wednesday summoned top congressional leaders for a White House meeting on Friday. Given longstanding, intractable differences over Obama’s insistence that new tax revenues help replace the cuts, the meeting was not expected to produce a breakthrough.
Another topic for Friday’s discussion is how to avoid Washington’s next crisis, which threatens a government shutdown after March 27, when a six-month spending bill enacted last year expires.
AP
Rosa Parks statue unveiled in U.S. Capitol
More than half a century after she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, Rosa Parks has an immovable place in the U.S. Capitol – the first black woman to be honored with a statue there.
President Barack Obama and congressional leaders from both parties said at an unveiling Wednesday that the depiction was fitting.
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