Brown Cartoon

California bill requiring college students to give consent before sex becomes law

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that makes California the first in the nation to define when "yes means yes" and adopt requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports.
State lawmakers last month approved SB967 by Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. Campus sexual assault victims and women's advocacy groups delivered petitions to Brown's office on Sept. 16 urging him to sign the bill.
De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Rather than using the refrain "no means no," the definition of consent under the bill requires "an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity."
"With one in five women on college campuses experiencing sexual assault, it is high time the conversation regarding sexual assault be shifted to one of prevention, justice, and healing," de Leon said in lobbying Brown for his signature.
The legislation says silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. Under the bill, someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep cannot grant consent.
Lawmakers say consent can be nonverbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples as a nod of the head or moving in closer to the person.
Advocates for victims of sexual assault supported the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenge the notion that victims must have resisted assault to have valid complaints.
The bill requires training for faculty reviewing complaints so that victims are not asked inappropriate questions when filing complaints. The bill also requires access to counseling, health care services and other resources.
When lawmakers were considering the bill, critics said it was overreaching and sends universities into murky legal waters. Some Republicans in the Assembly questioned whether statewide legislation is an appropriate venue to define sexual consent between two people.
There was no opposition from Republicans in the state Senate.
Gordon Finley, an adviser to the National Coalition for Men, wrote an editorial asking Brown not to sign the bill. He argued that "this campus rape crusade bill" presumes the guilt of the accused.
SB967 applies to all California post-secondary schools, public and private, that receive state money for student financial aid. The California State University and University of California systems are backing the legislation after adopting similar consent standards this year.
UC President Janet Napolitano recently announced that the system will voluntarily establish an independent advocate to support sexual assault victims on every campus. An advocacy office also is a provision of the federal Survivor Outreach and Support Campus Act proposed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Susan Davis of San Diego, both Democrats.

Top Senate Republican Barrasso warns against lame duck Holder replacement

The simmering bipartisan battle over whether the Senate will try to swiftly replace retiring Attorney General Eric Holder heated up Sunday, with a top Senate Republican saying such a move would show the “desperation” Democrats feel about possibly losing control next month of the upper chamber.
“It does need to wait,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Senate’s Republican Policy Committee, told “Fox News Sunday." “I am opposed to any successor during the lame-duck session.”
Political analysts essentially give Republicans a slightly more than 50 percent chance of winning a net total of six seats on Nov. 4 to take control of the Senate. However, the GOP would not officially take over the chamber until January.
Barrasso said if the Democrat-controlled Senate appoints a President Obama nominee it will mark the first time since the Civil War that an attorney general has been appointed in a so-called “lame duck” session -- the period between when new senators are elected and the other party takes control of the chamber.
Though Republicans are no fans of Holder, Barrasso said any attempt by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to swiftly replace him would be the “final act” is his failed leadership of the chamber.
Holder, who resigned on Thursday, is the country’s first black attorney general and is considered an unflinching champion of civil rights in enforcing the nation's laws.
He led the Justice Department since the first days of Obama's presidency and is the fourth-longest serving attorney general in U.S. history.
However, he has faced strong criticism during his tenure -- at times bipartisan -- for a succession of controversies including a failed plan to try terrorism suspects in New York City, the botched gun-running probe along the Southwest border that prompted Republican calls for his resignation, and what was seen as a failure to hold Wall Street accountable for the financial system's near-meltdown.
The Republican-controlled House voted two years ago to make Holder the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress -- for refusing to turn over documents in the gun-running operation known as Operation Fast and Furious. The administration is still fighting in court to keep the documents confidential.
Barrasso called Holder “a presidential protector and a puppet of the administration.”
“We need an attorney general for the people,” he said.
Independent Maine Sen. Angus King told Fox News that he thought Holder was a “good man” but that he was “bothered” by him failing to go after Wall Street after the crisis.
“Not a single prosecution,” King said.
He also said he hasn’t heard of a potential nominee, and that he wants to see whether Obama puts forward a name and if that person might in fact garner immediate bipartisan support.
“So, I'm going to wait and see,” said King, pointing out members of this Congress are on the payroll until January and have a duty to vote.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest seemed to call for a quick confirmation, pointing out that Bush administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates was confirmed by Senate Republicans in December 2006, a month after they lost control of the chamber.
White House officials said Obama had not made a final decision on a replacement for Holder.
Some possible candidates that have been mentioned among administration officials include Solicitor General Don Verrilli; Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole; former White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler; Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; Jenny Durkan, a former U.S. attorney in Washington state, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a former Rhode Island attorney general.
Holder also aggressively enforced the Voting Rights Act, addressed drug-sentencing guidelines that led to disparities between white and black convicts, extended legal benefits to same-sex couples and refused to defend a law that allowed states to disregard gay marriages. He oversaw the decision to prosecute terror suspects in U.S. civilian courts instead of at Guantanamo Bay and helped establish a legal rationale for lethal drone strikes on suspects overseas.
Only three other attorneys general in U.S. history have served longer than the 63-year-old Holder: William Wirt in the administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, Janet Reno in the Bill Clinton administration and Homer Cummings for Franklin Roosevelt.
Holder also is one of the longest-serving of Obama's original Cabinet members. Two others remain: Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Obama says US 'underestimated' rise of ISIS, admits 'contradictory' Syria policy

President Obama acknowledged Sunday that U.S. intelligence officials "underestimated" the threat posed by the Islamic State and overestimated the Iraqi army’s capacity to defeat the militant group.
The president said in an wide-ranging interview on CBS' “60 Minutes” that the Islamic State militants went "underground" after being squashed in Iraq and regrouped under the cover of the Syrian civil war.
"During the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos," Obama said.
The president said his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has acknowledged that the U.S. "underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” He also said it was "absolutely true" that the U.S. overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi army.
However, Obama also acknowledged that the U.S. is dealing with a conundrum in Syria, as the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State is helping Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the U.N. has accused of war crimes. 
"I recognize the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance," Obama said. "We are not going to stabilize Syria under the rule of Assad," whose government has committed "terrible atrocities."
However, Obama called the threat from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and other terror groups a more "immediate concern that has to be dealt with."
"On the other hand, in terms of immediate threats to the United States, ISIL, Khorasan Group -- those folks could kill Americans," he said. 
The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has taken control of large sections of Iraq and Syria. The Khorasan Group is a cell of militants that the U.S. says is plotting attacks against the West in cooperation with the Nusra front, Syria's Al Qaeda affiliate.
Both groups have been targeted by U.S. airstrikes in recent days; together they constitute the most significant military opposition to Assad. Obama said his first priority is degrading the extremists who are threatening Iraq and the West.  To defeat them, he acknowledged, would require a competent local ground force, something no analyst predicts will surface any time soon in Syria, despite U.S. plans to arm and train "moderate" rebels.
"Right now, we've got a campaign plan that has a strong chance for success in Iraq," the president said. "Syria is a more challenging situation."
In discussing Iraq, Obama said the U.S. left the country after the war with “a democracy that was intact, a military that was well-equipped and the ability then (for Iraqis) to chart their own course.”
However, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “squandered” that opportunity over roughly five years because he was “much more interested in consolidating his Shia base and very suspicious of the Sunnis and the Kurds, who make up the other two thirds of the country,” the president said.
Obama said military force is necessary to shrink the Islamic State’s capacity, cut off financing and eliminate the flow of foreign fighters. He said political solutions are also needed that accommodate both Sunnis and Shiites, adding that conflicts between the two sects are the biggest cause of conflict throughout the world.
 Earlier Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner questioned Obama's strategy to destroy the Islamic State group. Boehner said on ABC's "This Week" that the U.S. may have "no choice" but to send in American troops if the mix of U.S.-led airstrikes and a ground campaign reliant on Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and moderate Syrian rebels fails to achieve that goal.
"These are barbarians. They intend to kill us," Boehner said. "And if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price."
However, Obama again made clear he has no interest in a major U.S. ground presence beyond the 1,600 American advisers and special operations troops he already has ordered to Iraq. When asked if the current conflict was not really a war, Obama said there are clear distinctions between this campaign and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We are assisting Iraq in a very real battle that's taking place on their soil, with their troops," the president said. "This is not America against ISIL. This is America leading the international community to assist a country with whom we have a security partnership."
"That's always the case," Obama added. "We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us."