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CNN pushed the candidates into fighting, and that's why the debate mattered

The charge against Wolf Blitzer and company is that they tried to get the Republican presidential candidates to argue with each other.
And the problem is?
Obviously, debate moderators can go overboard with the “he said this terrible thing about you” approach. But that didn’t happen Tuesday night in Las Vegas.
Not that Donald Trump was buying it.
He said during the debate that it was “very sad that CNN leads Jeb Bush, Governor Bush down a road by starting off virtually all of the questions, ‘Mr. Trump this…’” As for the undercard debate, “I thought it was very unfair that virtually the entire early portion of the debate was Trump this, Trump that, in order to get ratings, I guess.”
By Trumpian standards, that wasn’t much of an attack. This is a guy who calls journalists losers and dopes on Twitter (and he went after Fox’s Charles Krauthammer, George Will and Steve Hayes at a rally yesterday). It sounded more like half-hearted grumbling.
The billionaire has a huge lead in national polls and most state polls. Of course any debate is going to focus on him. That’s why Blitzer’s first question was about his temporary Muslim travel ban.
But Trump’s plan was to avoid fisticuffs with his rivals, and he largely succeeded, except for the moment when Jeb Bush got under his skin and he shot back, “I’m at 42 and you’re at 3!”
Some credulous pundits hyped the Nevada showdown, which drew 18 million viewers, by saying Trump and Ted Cruz would rip each other. I predicted that Trump would be on his best behavior. He doesn’t like to punch people in the nose in a debate setting, unless he’s punched first.
Dana Bash tried by saying that Trump had “said Senator Cruz is not qualified to be president because he doesn’t have the right temperament and acted like a maniac when he arrived in the Senate.” Exactly right, he had said that to Chris Wallace. But Trump, almost mockingly, said Cruz has a wonderful temperament and patted his arm.
Cruz, in turn, was asked about negative remarks he made about Trump in a private fundraiser, and stuck with the bromance strategy.
That’s their strategy. But why shouldn’t journalists point out the difference between what the candidates are saying elsewhere and what they were willing to say on that stage?
Blitzer tried it with Bush, saying he had called Trump’s Muslim proposal “unhinged.” The former governor wouldn’t repeat the word.
CNN had more luck with the two Cuban-American senators, who were itching to go at each other. “Senator Rubio,” Blitzer asked, “you’ve been critical of Senator Cruz’s strategy. You say his voting doesn’t match his rhetoric. Why?”
Rubio hit Cruz for voting to curtail NSA surveillance. Cruz hit Rubio for pushing a liberal immigration bill, and Rubio hit back by saying the Texan had offered a provision allowing a path to legalization.
When people say the networks are too invested in having the candidates fight, that is exactly the kind of fight we should want in a debate. The two men had a series of substantive exchanges about important policies, and while they wandered into the weeds of legislative language, the contrast between them was stark. Without aggressive moderators, you get recycled stump speeches.
It was a debate dominated by the war on terror, and the moderators could not get any candidate to retreat even slightly from their history of tough talk. Trump wouldn’t budge on closing part of the Internet to fight terrorists. Cruz wouldn’t budge on bombing ISIS until the sand glows in the dark.
Even mild-mannered Ben Carson, in what I thought was a loaded question from Hugh Hewitt, didn’t flinch when asked whether he was okay with military action killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Debates can get rough, and of course the networks like conflict. But wouldn’t you rather want to know what a candidate would do before he or she becomes president?
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Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

As lawmakers clash over refugees, Syrian immigration quietly tops 100,000 since 2012

A proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States has ignited a bitter debate in Washington, but more than 10 times that number of people from the embattled country have quietly come to America since 2012, according to figures obtained by FoxNews.com.
Some 102,313 Syrians were granted admission to the U.S. as legal permanent residents or through programs including work, study and tourist visas from 2012 through August of this year, a period which roughly coincides with the devastating civil war that still engulfs the Middle Eastern country. Experts say any fears that terrorists might infiltrate the proposed wave of refugees from United Nations-run camps should be dwarfed by the potential danger already here.
“The sheer number of people arriving on all kinds of visas and with green cards, and possibly U.S. citizenship, makes it impossible for our counterterrorism authorities to keep track of them all, much less prevent them from carrying out attacks or belatedly try to deport them,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“I think it's reasonable to assume that the U.S. Government ran the minimum intelligence traces required at the time of entry."
- Fred Burton, Stratfor

Numbers obtained from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show 60,010 Syrian visa holders have entered the U.S. since 2012, including 16,245 this year through August. Additional numbers provided by a Congressional source showed another 42,303 Syrians were granted citizenship or green cards during the same period.
"It is highly unlikely that the 102,313 Syrians who were admitted over the past three years were effectively vetted," said spokesman Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Even in countries where we have a strong diplomatic presence, the sheer volume of background checks being carried out precludes the kind of thorough vetting that is necessary."
The Syrians being admitted are coming directly from their homeland, usually through the U.S. visa program, as opposed to the refugees President Obama is seeking to take in through U.N.-run refugee camps. Most have secured legal entry before they arrive.
"Refugees are part of the admitted category," said Jaime Ruiz, spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "Their cases are approved prior to arriving into the U.S."
Those who escaped Syria’s grinding civil war, which has killed an estimated 300,000, and made it to the U.S. are more likely to be those with the money and means to access the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, say experts. But even that system is susceptible to fraud.

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Syrian refugees wait for mattresses, blankets and other supplies, and to be assigned to tents at the Zaatari Syrian refugees camp in Mafraq, near the Syrian border with Jordan. (AP)

President Obama’s proposal raised immediate concerns that ISIS, which vowed to infiltrate refugee camps, could use forged documents to enter the U.S. White House assurances that refugees would be carefully screened met with renewed skepticism after it was revealed that terrorist Tashfeen Malik obtained a fiancée visa despite notable red flags. Malik, who together with her husband killed 14 and wounded 21 in a terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif., Dec. 2, listed a phony Pakistani address and reportedly had a history of posting jihadist messages on social media platforms - although FBI Director James Comey disputed that on Wednesday.
Malik’s entry into the U.S., combined with so many Syrians already here, is even more concerning than the proposed refugees, according to Fred Burton, of the global intelligence firm Stratfor.
"I'm more fearful of those currently inside the U.S. predisposed to strike locally as with the San Bernardino model," Burton said. “I think it's reasonable to assume that the U.S. government ran the minimum intelligence traces required at the time of entry."
Mehlman said the same concerns raised in regard to the refugees – mainly that no reliable documents can be issued in a country in complete meltdown – apply to the Syrians already here.
"All civil order has collapsed, and meaningful background checks are impossible,” Mehlman said. “Instead, we rely on cross-checking databases. However, many people with ties to terrorist groups are not in any databases, which means there is no way we can identify them before they arrive here."
A government official who expressed astonishment at such large immigration numbers from a relatively small country, said approximately half are legal permanent residents and the remainder came here on visas, the latter of which remains a point of contentious concern.
Screening of all immigrants and refugees must be tightened, said Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
"This administration has forbid our front line security professionals from more broadly incorporating social media information into the visa application process, something that might have kept this attacker out of our country," said McCaul, R-Texas. "We need more robust vetting and screening of all visa applicants.”
Additional data obtained from CBP found that while five Syrians have been apprehended in 2014 and another five in 2015 attempting to cross over the southern border from Mexico, the northern border escapes public and political scrutiny. In 2014 eight Syrians were apprehended by Border Patrol attempting to cross into the U.S. from Canada. Since 2011, 1,229 Syrians have been granted entry from Canada.

San Bernardino killers reportedly buried in small funeral

Muslim cemetery

The Muslim couple who killed 14 people when they opened fire at a San Bernardino, Calif.  holiday party earlier this month were buried Tuesday at a funeral guarded by FBI agents, Reuters reported Wednesday.
Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were reportedly buried in a Muslim cemetery hours away from San Bernardino in a ceremony attended by about 10 people, including members of Farook’s family and people who used to pray with the couple at mosques.
An attendee told Reuters it took a week to find a graveyard willing to accept the bodies of the jihadi couple who were killed in a gun battle with police.
According to Reuters, the funeral followed traditional Islamic rituals, where the bodies were cleansed and wrapped in white cloth and buried.
Most Muslims in the San Bernardino community refused to attend burial or perform funeral prayer.
“I don’t forgive him myself,” a mosque-goer who did not attend the funeral told Reuters. “I pray mercy for him, and we Muslims know God is merciful. But he’s also just.”
Farook and Malik’s rampage on Dec. 2 killed 14 and wounded 22 others at a holiday party for county workers at a Southern California social services center.
The Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino said Wednesday that repairs to two buildings should be completed by Jan. 4. But the building that houses a conference center where the shooting took place has substantial damage, and is closed indefinitely.
The other buildings received some damage as police searched them. They were locked down after the Dec. 2 shooting for repairs and a subsequent investigation.

Pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli arrested on securities fraud charges

Martin Shkreli

The outspoken pharmaceutical CEO made famous for dramatically increasing a drug used by AIDS patients was arrested early Thursday on securities fraud allegedly connected to a separate firm he started in 2011.
Bloomberg News reported that Martin Shkreli, 32, was arrested in his New York City home. Prosecutors reportedly allege that he illegally took stock from Retrophin Inc. and used it to pay off other, unrelated dealings.
The report notes that Shkreli was later sued by the Retrophin board. Federal prosecutors accuse Shkreli of employing a complicated shell game after his fledging hedge fund lost millions. The arrest had nothing to do with drug pricing, the report said.
The Bloomberg report noted Shkreli’s meteoric rise from being raised by immigrant parents who worked as janitors in Brooklyn. Bloomberg said "Shkreli both epitomizes the American Dream and sullies it."
Public outrage boiled over this fall after news that Turing increased by more than 5,000 percent the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat a life-threatening infection, jacking it up from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug whose patent expired decades ago, is the only approved treatment for a rare parasitic infection called toxoplasmosis that mainly strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.
After the outcry in September over Daraprim, Shkreli said the company would reduce the $750-a-pill price. Last month, however, Turing reneged on its pledge. Instead, the company is reducing what it charges hospitals for Daraprim by as much as 50 percent. Most patients' co-payments will be capped at $10 or less a month. But insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially driving up future treatment and insurance costs.
The drug price increase prompted an investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging on Turing Pharmaceuticals and other companies.
"The Turing and Valeant price spikes have been egregious," Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who heads the panel, said at a hearing last week.
A spokesman for Turing said the company was declining to comment on the hearing. Turing, with offices in New York City and Switzerland, had said in reference to the Senate panel's investigation that it looked forward "to having an open and honest dialogue about drug pricing."

Defense Secretary Carter used personal email in first months on the job

Pentagon admits Ash Carter used personal email for business

Defense Secretary Ash Carter used his personal email account to conduct some of his professional correspondence during his first months on the job earlier this year, the Pentagon admitted late Wednesday.
Carter's use of the personal account was first reported by The New York Times, which said that he had been confronted about his email habits by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough this past May, three months after Carter took office as defense secretary.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook released a statement saying that Carter believes his use of personal email for work-related business was a mistake. Cook declined to say whether it was a violation of Pentagon email policies. Cook also said Carter stopped the practice, but Cook did not say when.
Carter also acknowledged the move was a mistake in an interview with CBS' “This Morning” on Thursday. He said he occasionally used his iPhone to send messages to immediate staff, but stressed no classified information was involved.
The Times reported that Carter was assigned a government email account when he assumed his office in February, but continued to conduct most of his business on his private account, often sending messages via his iPhone or iPad. According to the paper, a former aide to Carter said that his boss used his personal account so often during that period that staffers feared he would be hacked.
Pentagon policy since 2012 has been to bar all employees from conducting government business on personal email. Last year, a law signed by President Obama barred federal officials from receiving or sending emails from personal accounts unless the messages were either copied or forwarded into government accounts within 20 days. It was not immediately clear whether Carter followed that directive.
The Times report comes in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information by using a private account for all her emails while secretary of state. According to the Times, Carter continued to use his personal email at least two months after Clinton's practices were revealed in March.
The Times said the emails it received under the Freedom of Information Act were exchanges between Carter and Eric Fanning, who was his chief of staff at the time and is now the acting secretary of the Army.

The emails were on a variety of work-related topics, the Times said, including speeches, meetings and news media appearances. In one such email, Carter discussed how he had mistakenly placed a note card in a "burn bag," the Times reported. Such bags are typically used to destroy classified documents.

Cook said Carter "does not use his personal email or official email for classified material. The Secretary has a secure communications team that handles his classified information and provides it to him as necessary."

Carter "takes his responsibilities with regard to classified material very seriously," Cook said.