White House, NYT leave Bushes out of lead photos from Selma march

The decision by The New York Times to run a front-page image on Sunday of President Obama -- and family -- leading a march to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights clashes, while leaving out of the image former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura apparently was mirrored in the "official White House photo" of the event. 
The official White House blog's Sunday entry on the Alabama march led with a similar image, focusing on Obama and his family, as well as civil rights figures, but leaving out the Bushes.
Both images show Obama walking alongside Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, and even Al Sharpton, as they led thousands across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The White House blog does acknowledge in the caption that the Bushes were there, and the photo at the bottom of the page includes them off to the side.
Part of the problem may have been the staging of the event itself.
Basil Smikle Jr., a Democratic strategist and former advance team member for the Clinton White House, noted that the Bushes were not standing directly next to the Obamas. He told Fox News he would have liked to see both presidents together, at least in the New York Times photo.
"Both presidents should have been close together," he said.  
Regardless, the Bushes were standing but a few feet away from the first family and were included in other photos.
It's unclear whether the Times, which ran its own photo, cropped out the former president in that picture, or simply chose to run an image that didn't include him.
Still, the decision drew criticism on Monday.
"This is a stunning example of media bias," said Deneen Borelli, a Fox News contributor and outreach director for the conservative FreedomWorks.
The Associated Press also ran a variety of photos after they crossed the bridge, some of which show the Bushes and some of which do not. However, it appears the AP did not run photos showing Bush, before they marched across the bridge.
The Times' article on the event did mention the Bushes' attendance, after the jump. The article notes that in 2006, he signed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
FoxNews.com has reached out to The New York Times and the White House for comment.

Jihadi Cartoon

McConnell vows no debt default as deadline nears

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that the Republican-controlled Congress won’t allow the government to default as the Treasury Department quickly approaches its so-called “debt ceiling.”
“I made it clear after November that we won’t shut down the government or default on debt,” the Kentucky Republican told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
McConnell’s promise came two days after Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Capitol Hill that the government loses its authority after March 15 to borrow money to cover approved congressional spending and that his agency would have to resort to “extraordinary measures” as a short-term solution.
To be sure, McConnell acknowledged after winning a tough midterm election bid that voters were tired of an ineffective Congress that too often teetered on shutting down the government over bipartisan issues.
“I hear your concerns,” McConnell said in his victory speech.
Still, Congress came perilously close in recent weeks to at least partially closing the Department of Homeland Security when Republicans tried to tie funding for the agency to efforts to roll back President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Lew told Congress on Friday that he will start using the package of emergency measures he has used in the past to keep the federal government from going over the debt limit next week.
The debt limit has been suspended for the past year, meaning that Treasury could borrow as much as it needed to keep the government running. But the limit will go back into effect on March 15 at whatever level of debt exists at that point.
The nation's debt currently stands at $18.1 trillion.
Treasury can employ certain accounting measures to buy time to keep the government operating without facing a costly default on the nation's debt.
In his letter to congressional leaders on Friday, Lew said he would use the first of those measures on March 13, two days before the debt limit will be re-imposed.
Lew said he would stop issuing on March 13 special-purpose Treasury debt that can be purchased by state and local governments to assist them in financing such activities as construction projects.
The Congressional Budget Office, in a report last week, estimated that the various measures Lew can employ could put off the date the debt ceiling will have to be raised until October or November.
McConnell also told CBS on Sunday that Congress will handle the issue “over a period of months” and that he has a responsibility to work with President Obama, despite their political differences.
He also said he is “very optimistic” about potential compromises with Obama on some issues.
“The American public wants us to look at what we can agree on,” McConnell said.
It was a standoff over the debt limit in August 2011 that prompted the first-ever downgrade of the nation's credit rating by Standard & Poor's, and in October 2013 there was a 16-day partial government shutdown.
"Only Congress is empowered to increase the nation's borrowing authority and I hope that Congress will address this matter without controversy or brinksmanship," Lew said in his letter. "I respectfully ask Congress to raise the debt limit as soon as possible."
While GOP lawmakers have given no indication when they will take up legislation to increase the debt ceiling, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday urged them to move quickly, warning that an unprecedented default by the government on its debt obligations would severely harm the economy by causing consumer and business interest rates to soar.
"There is no reason that the Republican Congress should not act immediately to take the prospect of a catastrophic default off of the table," she said in a statement. "Failure to act would have savage impacts on American families."

Dempsey: Some Iraqi troops show up for training ill-prepared

ABOARD THE CHARLES DE GAULLE –  Some Iraqi army units in line for U.S.-led training to fight the Islamic State group are showing up ill-prepared, the top American general said Sunday.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, speaking to reporters aboard this French aircraft carrier in the northern Persian Gulf not far from Iran's coast, said he sees no reason to send more U.S. military trainers or advisers at this time. More, broadly, he defended the pace of the overall military campaign in Iraq.
"Right now we don't need more advisers on the ground," Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said with his French counterpart, Gen. Pierre de Villiers, at his side on the hangar deck of the de Gaulle.
"We've got trainers and advisers that are waiting for some of the Iraqi units to show up, and when they've shown up -- a handful of them -- they've shown up understrength and sometimes without the proper equipment. The Iraqi government can actually fix that themselves."
The crux of the U.S.-led coalition's strategy for dislodging IS from Iraq is  this: degrade the militants' fighting power and resources through limited airstrikes against positions in northern and western Iraq, as well as in Syria; train and advise underperforming Iraqi security forces; and press the Iraqi government to take firmer steps to reconcile with the disaffected Sunnis.
"This is going to require some strategic patience," Dempsey said.
He said the military part of the conflict could be concluded "in the foreseeable future." The underlying problems -- failures in Iraqi governance and a disaffected Sunni population -- probably will take longer to resolve.
Dempsey spent the day aboard the de Gaulle to highlight U.S.-French military cooperation and to discuss strategies for combating IS in Iraq. He planned to visit Iraq next to discuss the campaign with government leaders and U.S. military commanders.
France is flying a variety of missions into Iraq from aboard the de Gaulle, which began operating in the northern Gulf on Feb. 23 and is scheduled to remain for eight weeks.
Dempsey watched as four French Rafale attack aircraft roared off the carrier's deck en route to Iraq, and later he observed four Super Etendard fighters land after returning from a mission.
French officials said they are flying 12 to 15 missions a day, including intelligence and surveillance flights, airstrikes and close air support missions in coordination with Iraq ground troops. Dempsey said that makes the French a valued partner in a conflict that has about 20 countries flying various air missions but only three conducting maritime operations.
Dempsey arrived aboard the de Gaulle on a U.S. Navy C-2 Greyhound twin-engine aircraft. After meetings with de Villier and other French and American officers, he was catapulted off the carrier in the C-2 for a return flight to a U.S. Navy station in Bahrain. Earlier Sunday he met with Bahrain government officials.
While they met aboard the de Gaulle, an American aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, pulled to within about 1,000 yards. The two carriers have been coordinating their air operations in what Dempsey called a sign of increased U.S.-French military cooperation around the world. In an unusual arrangement, the French carrier is under the operational control of the Americans as part of the IS campaign.
Dempsey was asked by reporters to respond to criticism by some that the U.S. is not using air power aggressively enough in Iraq and Syria. Dempsey said there are valid reasons for limiting the pace of the bombing while other aspects of the conflict are addressed.
"Carpet bombing through Iraq is not the answer," he said, adding that IS fighters have adapted since the U.S.-led bombing began in Iraqi in August.
"This is not an enemy that is sitting around in the open desert waiting for me to come find it and either use U.S. or French aircraft to attack it," Dempsey said. "They did some of that in the beginning and paid the price. So the enemy has adapted and they have developed tactics and techniques that make them a little more difficult to find."
Dempsey said the intensity and scale of the bombing campaign is necessarily limited by a need to avoid civilian casualties and to ensure the best possible intelligence is collected before striking targets.
"We are very precise because the very last thing we want to do is create a condition of civilian casualties on the ground, which would add to these competing narratives about taking sides and it being a religious issue, and Christianity and Islam. And so we have a responsibility to be very precise in the use of air power, and that means it takes time" to build the proper intelligence picture before striking.
"If I had more targets and I could be precise, we could produce more effects on the ground," he added.

GOP Senate battles for Congress to have vote in Iran nuclear deal as talks resume, deadlines near

This is going to turn out Bad.

Democrats and Republicans sparred Sunday over congressional involvement in the Iran nuclear agreement, as President Obama attempted to assure critics that the U.S. won’t accept a bad deal.
The debate intensified as the United States and five other world powers are set to resume negotiations next week with Iran to stop the country from pursuing and achieving a nuclear weapon. The goal of Secretary of State John Kerry and the other negotiators is to agree on the framework of a deal before April toward a final agreement by June 30.
Obama told CBS' "Sunday Morning" that the U.S. would "walk away" from nuclear talks with Iran if there's no acceptable deal and that any agreement must allow Western powers to verify that Tehran isn't going to obtain an atomic weapon.
"If we don't have that kind of deal, then we're not going to take it," he said.
Obama also said the U.S. and others still would have "enough time to take action," if Iran “cheated.”
Iran says their program is peaceful and exists only to produce energy for civilian use.
The GOP-led Congress wants to be able to vote on a final deal before it’s accepted, with Senate leaders trying to figure out whether they can pass legislation on the issue with enough votes to override a presidential veto.
“The Iranian parliament will get to say yes or no on this deal,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think the United States Congress should have that exact same input into the process.”
Johnson said a bill cosponsored by Illinois GOP Sen. Mark Kirk and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez addresses that issue and that the Senate is scheduled to begin working on the legislation in the coming days.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democratic on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he will reserve action until the administration announces on March 24 whether the negotiations were successful. And he argued that the Kirk-Menendez bill deals only with congressional sanctions that have already been imposed on Iran.
The general outline of a proposed deal purportedly includes intrusive inspections, a freeze on sensitive nuclear activity for at least 10 years and a cap on centrifuges and enriched uranium.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists that Congress has a chance to review and vote on any deal. But he acknowledged Sunday that he doesn't have the support yet to override a threatened veto by Obama.
"I'm hoping we can get 67 senators to assert the historic role of the Senate and the Congress in looking at matters of this magnitude,” the Kentucky Republican told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Obviously, the president doesn't want us involved in this. But he's going to need us if he's going to lift any of the existing sanctions. And so I think he cannot work around Congress forever.”
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, before a joint meeting of Congress, argued against the proposed deal, suggesting Iran could easily resume its pursuit of a nuclear weapon after such a relatively short wait and that other Arab nations will follow in Tehran’s footsteps.
Roughly 50 Capitol Hill Democrats boycotted the address, arguing it undermined the efforts of the administration, which was not advised about Netanyahu’s invitation by House Speaker John Boehner.
Among the most outspoken was California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
She told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Netanyahu’s speech was “arrogant” and said he shouldn’t “trash” a potential deal before it’s completed.

Top Senate Democrat urges Clinton to address private email controversy

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to give a full explanation of why she used a private e-mail account for all her official correspondence during her four years as America's top diplomat.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that Clinton "needs to step up and come out and say exactly what the situation was," adding that from "this point on, the silence is going to hurt her."
Feinstein is the first major Democrat to urge Clinton to share details of the account's contents, some of which have been subpoenaed by a special House committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Clinton, thought to be the near-unanimous frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has kept mostly silent on the private e-mail story, which was first reported by the New York Times last Monday. Her use of the account may violate federal rules requiring officials to keep all their communications for record-keeping purposes. The controversy grew later in the week when the Associated Press reported that the account's server had been traced to an Internet service registered to her Chappaqua, N.Y. home.
This past week, Clinton said in a Twitter message that she had asked the State Department to make public all emails she had previously turned over to them, a total of approximately 55,000 pages. However, The Times reported that those messages previously had been selected by members of her staff and were not a complete record of her four years at Foggy Bottom.
She did not address the issue in her most recent public appearance Saturday night during an event in Coral Gables, Florida, for the Clinton Global Initiative University.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the Benghazi committee, told CBS' "Face The Nation" "there are gaps of months and months and months" in the emails the committee had previously received. "It's not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what's a public record and what's not," Gowdy said.
"We're not entitled to everything," Gowdy continued. "I don't want everything. I just want everything related to Libya and Benghazi."
For his part, President Obama said Sunday that he first learned of Clinton's private account through news reports. He went on to praise Clinton for requesting the release of the 55,000 pages of e-mail by the State Department, called her "an outstanding public servant" and defended his administration's record on transparency.