Congress Cartoon

Navy veteran, 100, cheered for standing up to protesters at medal ceremony

A 100-year-old U.S. Navy veteran drew cheers from a crowd in Oregon Saturday after telling protesters shouting "hands-up, don't shoot!" to stop interrupting his medal ceremony and to “show a little respect.”
Dario Raschio was at Portland Community College's Southeast Campus to be honored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, at a public town hall meeting. But shortly after Wyden began speaking, more than 100 demonstrators in the back of the room started shouting, The Oregonian reports.
After 15 minutes of chanting against the deaths of unarmed black men by white police officers, Wyden was able to talk the group into quieting down so he could continue with the medal ceremony.
Raschio joined the Navy at the age of 27 and participated in five campaigns in the Pacific theater, flying observational planes based off the USS Chester. He was awarded a frame filled with medals, including the U.S. Naval Aviator Badge, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the "Ruptured Duck" award and the U.S. Navy Honorable discharge pin.
As Raschio grabbed the microphone to address the crowd, he was heckled by protesters demanding that the U.S. military leave Iraq, The Oregonian reports.
But the centenarian shot back, saying “give me a chance” and “let's show a little respect for this occasion," drawing cheers from the audience.
Raschio accepted the medals on behalf of those who died in World War II and closed his speech by saying "God bless America."
“And you people that are here for a cause, whatever it might be -- show respect to Sen. Wyden,” he added, according to the Oregonian.
Before Raschio could return to his seat, the chanting resumed, with one protester declaring that "for 4.5 minutes we are going to take time to pay respect to everybody who has been killed by police in this nation."
After 45 minutes of chanting, organizers called off the town hall meeting.
"We are certainly going to reschedule it," Wyden said. "It's important to be able to throw open the doors of government to everybody. That's why town hall meetings are so important."

Real Classy?

'ISIS will go to hell': Iraqi Christians struggle to teach kids message of forgiveness

The message on the whiteboard inside the Mar Elia Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region bears a message for the hundreds of Christian families driven from their homes by Islamic State militants: "Be grateful. Be alive. Be happy. Be careful.”
But Christianity's central tenet of forgiveness is a hard sell for children who, after living much of their lives in relative peace with Muslim neighbors, find themselves homeless after their families fled when Islamic State militants ordered them to convert or be killed. With Iraq's Christian population dwindling, the daunting task of helping kids cling to the faith of their parents falls to church elders, who have taken in hundreds of families now living in a sprawling complex of tents.
"It's hard to explain what is happening," Father Daniel Alkhory told FoxNews.com in the predominantly Christian district of Ankawa inside the Kurdish capital of Erbil. "I was teaching them the parable of Ishmael and Lazarus, talking to them about Heaven and Hell, so I used that to bring up ISIS. I asked them where ISIS will go and they said, 'Directly to Hell!'"

Related Image

Expand / Contract

Hundreds of families live in tents set up atMar Elia Chaldean Catholic church in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. (FoxNews.com)

Alkhory tells the story of a Christian in Mosul who had been living next to a Muslim man for more than 20 years when the Muslim man one day suddenly threatened him, ordering him to leave Mosul within 24 hours simply because he was Christian.
"So the Christian man started to pack his things, but before leaving he said he won't leave without saying goodbye to that neighbor," Alkhory recounted. "His neighbor opened the door and was really angry and shouting at him, 'Why are you here? I told you to leave Mosul!' The Christian man said he wouldn't leave without first saying goodbye. His Muslim neighbor started to cry and promised to protect him."

"I asked them where ISIS will go and they said, 'Directly to Hell!'"- Father Daniel Alkhory

In the enormous swath of Syrian and Iraqi land now controlled by Islamic State, the homes and churches of Christians have been looted and burned to the ground. Christians in Iraq once numbered around 1.5 million, or about 5 percent of the population. Current estimates hover around 200,000, their numbers depleted by murder, forced conversions and flight -- mostly at the hands of Islamic State radicals. Those who remain refuse to renounce their beliefs, even under the threat of death. One Christian man living at Mar Elia brandished a large tattoo of Jesus' mother Mary on his arm. Like many others, his faith was discovered by militants and he and his family were forced to flee to the safety of the Kurdish region.
More than 100,000 Christians have fled the clutches of the terrorist organization since its advance across the Nineveh Plains in Iraq, home to some of the world's most ancient Christian communities. The Kurdish region has taken in more than 1.5 million displaced people, including Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities, since June – and according to Alkhory, the word "displaced" is crucial terminology.

Related Image

Expand / Contract

Church leaders try to give the children a sense of normalcy with talent shows and movies. (FoxNews.com)

"Refugees is a bad word and refers to people that don't know each other, but these people here are our family. They are displaced people. We want to take the negative energy out with the words we use," he explained. "And we never call it a camp. It's a center."
"The children are very traumatized. They've lost their hopes and dreams and we try to help them understand that life keeps going," Alkhory said. "But a child is like a flower, we can shape them. We have to take care of them now; otherwise the next generation of ISIS could come from these children. Through all their sadness and depression, they wanted revenge. I knew I needed to build a new environment for them."
That new environment consists of time spent on artistic endeavors such as drawing images and creating shapes in an effort to express their feelings and frustrations, as well as outings to play in the park and dancing. The children recently saw their first-ever 3D movie: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
"They wore the glasses and were just so happy," Alkhory said.
The center even hosts its very own "Got Talent" and "The Voice" competitions, modeled on the hit American versions, where children can perform for friends and family and win prizes. Mass and Bible study each make up critical components of every day.
The flashpoint of the crisis began for the team at Mar Elia at midnight on Aug. 6, when Kurdish troops cautioned a local bishop in Qarakosh that the Christians had to leave as ISIS was closing in. Church leaders began knocking on doors urging families to immediately flee.
"Fifteen families stayed, as they didn't wake up. Sadly, we don't have any contact with them anymore. At the beginning we did, they were describing the horrors and said they couldn't even turn on a light as ISIS would become suspicious," Alkhory noted.
With no realistic prospect of returning to their homes anytime soon, the thousands of displaced families strewn across the Kurdish region have no choice but to start their lives from scratch in unfamiliar territory.
"Father, when can we go home? When can I see my friends?" one young boy asks the soft-spoken Alkhory. The pastor tells the boy he should make new friends at the center now, and maybe one day he will go home and meet his old friends once again.
But “home” as it stands for some 700 families from Christian villages is now a collection of tents donated by several different organizations and placed on Church grounds. The tents are divided into halves for each family, approximately four persons per half. Some organizations have started donated caravans to families, although land shortage remains problematic.

Related Image

Expand / Contract

The children attend school from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the week, with after-school activities running from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. each night.
"I just keep telling the kids you have to forgive. Forgiveness will lead us to so many paths. I don't want them to grow up and be after revenge and be angry," Alkhory said. "We want to make a party for them every day.
"We just want them to be happy and keep smiling," he added. "We just want the children to feel like they are at home."

Ferguson grand juror sues to be allowed to talk about case

ST. LOUIS –  A member of the grand jury that declined to indict a Ferguson police officer in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown contends in a lawsuit filed Monday that the prosecutor in the case has wrongly implied that all 12 jurors believed there was no evidence to support charges.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of the unnamed juror, who wants to be allowed to talk publicly about the case but could face charges for doing so because of a lifetime gag order. The juror also says he or she came away with the impression that evidence was presented differently than in other cases, with the insinuation that Brown, not Officer Darren Wilson, was the wrongdoer. No grand jurors have spoken publicly about the case.
Brown, who was black, was unarmed when he was fatally shot after an Aug. 9 confrontation with Wilson, who is white. The shooting in the St. Louis suburb led to widespread unrest, including some protests that resulted in local businesses being burned and looted. Protests again turned violent Nov. 24, when St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch publicly announced that the grand jury investigating the case had decided there wasn't enough evidence to indict Wilson. Wilson has since resigned from the department.
"In Plaintiff's view, the current information available about the grand jurors' views is not entirely accurate -- especially the implication that all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges," the lawsuit says.
The suit was filed against McCulloch, who oversaw the investigation, because his office would be responsible for bringing charges against the juror. McCulloch's spokesman, Ed Magee, said his office had not seen the lawsuit and declined immediate comment.
"Right now there are only 12 people who can't talk about the evidence out there," ACLU attorney Tony Rothert said. "The people who know the most -- those 12 people are sworn to secrecy. What (the grand juror) wants is to be able to be part of the conversation."
The suit also contends that legal standards in the case were discussed in a "muddled" and "untimely" manner. Jurors could have charged Wilson with murder or manslaughter, but nine of 12 would have needed to agree.
The suit does not seek to allow grand jurors in all Missouri cases to be free to discuss proceedings. But it argues that the Ferguson case was unique, and that allowing the juror to speak would be valuable to the national debate about race and police tactics that followed the shooting.
"The rules of secrecy must yield because this is a highly unusual circumstance," Rothert said. "The First Amendment prevents the state from imposing a lifetime gag order in cases where the prosecuting attorney has purported to be transparent."
After the decision was announced, McCulloch took the unusual step of releasing thousands of pages of witness testimony provided in secret to the grand jury. Grand jurors usually hear a condensed version of evidence that might be presented at trial, but the Ferguson grand jury heard more extensive testimony.
The panel -- which included nine white and three black members -- met on 25 separate days over three months, hearing more than 70 hours of testimony from about 60 witnesses, some of whom provided inconsistent versions of events. McCulloch acknowledged in a radio interview last month that some of the witnesses obviously lied to the grand jury.
Rothert said the grand jury convened in May and heard hundreds of other cases before devoting its attention to the Wilson case in August. The suit contends that McCulloch's office handled the Wilson case far differently than the others, with "a stronger focus on the victim."
Jim Cohen, associate professor at Fordham University Law School and a grand jury expert, said the lawsuit will add to concerns about how the case was handled.
"Believe me, there's already more than a fair amount of skepticism about whether this process was fair, notwithstanding Mr. McCulloch's cynical attempt to pretend that it was fair," Cohen said.
Cohen believes the juror has a strong argument in the lawsuit.
"This matter has been discussed by virtually everybody in the universe with the exception of any person actually subjected to the presentation of evidence," he said.
Last month, state Rep. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat, asked a joint House and Senate committee to investigate whether McCulloch "manipulated" the grand jury. It wasn't clear if the committee would take up that request. Messages were left Monday with May and state Sen. Kurt Schaefer, the committee's chairman.

Outspoken, diverse freshman class joins Congress -- sets sights on economy, jobs

After a Republican wave election that boosted the party's House majority to historic levels and handed them control of the Senate, dozens of new lawmakers are arriving in Washington Tuesday for the 114th Congress -- including several fresh political faces poised to make waves. 
A total of 71 new members, of both parties, arrive in Washington this week. As the new Congress prepares to tackle weighty issues ranging from immigration to the budget to the Keystone pipeline, these freshmen stand to have a big impact on the legislative debate and direction of their respective parties. 
"When the American people voted for Republican majorities in November, they really voted for people who are going to go up there and start working again," Thom Tillis, the incoming Republican senator from North Carolina, told Fox News. "Start sending legislation to the president's desk and get the economy back to a sustained recovery versus this limping along that we've been doing for the past several years." 
Tillis is one of 13 new senators, all but one of them Republican, being sworn in as the GOP takes a 54-seat majority in the chamber. The lone incoming Democrat is Michigan Rep. Gary Peters. 
Among the new House members are incoming Republican Rep. Martha McSally, who after several tries finally wrestled her southern Arizona House seat away from Democrats.
McSally touted her conservative credentials this past weekend, telling “Fox News Sunday” that her focus will be on creating jobs and securing the U.S.-Mexico border.
However, she also pointed out that her home district is full of non-Republicans whom she also must serve in Congress.
“My district is very diverse,” said McSally, a retired Air Force colonel and the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat.
“I think it does represent America, but 50 percent of the people didn't vote for me," she said, pointing to areas of shared concern. "Democrats [and] business owners can agree that they want to grow their small business. Kids graduating from college want to have job opportunities. So, those are not politically charged issues.”
The need to help boost good-paying, full-time jobs has indeed emerged again as a goal for congressional Democrats and Republicans, with leaders from both parties and chambers putting the economy at the top of their agendas.
The Republican-controlled House and Senate could vote in the first couple weeks on legislation to finish building the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which is estimated to create about 42,000 construction jobs. A Senate bill is set to be filed on Tuesday, and the House is planning a vote Friday. Though Republicans are pushing the legislation, some Democrats are expected to support it. But some also are floating amendments which could imperil a deal.  
Other priorities for Republicans include tax reform, changes to ObamaCare and legislation rolling back environmental regulations. 
The House will have 58 freshmen, including 43 Republicans and 15 Democrats, pushing the GOP majority to 246 members, the most since the Great Depression.
The incoming classes will bring new gender and racial diversity to Capitol Hill, with 104 women in the House and Senate and close to 100 black, Hispanic and Asian lawmakers.
The newcomers include the youngest woman elected to Congress, 30-year-old Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, and Mia Love of Utah, the first black Republican woman in Congress.
On Sunday, Love backed House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., after recent revelations that in 2002 he spoke to a white supremacist group. She said Scalise, the No. 3 House Republican, showed “humility” in acknowledging he spoke to the group, though apparently unknowingly. 
“I believe he should stay in leadership,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”
Several new members expressed hope that they could ease the partisanship that often divides Washington and show the public that they really can govern.
"This election was not an endorsement of either party, it was a condemnation of, yes, the president's policies, but also of government dysfunction," said GOP Rep.-elect Carlos Curbelo, who defeated a Democratic incumbent in Florida.
Gallego says they have already discussed areas of cooperation, such as infrastructure investments and bringing down the cost of college.
"We all want the same things in the general scheme of things -- a stable country, a prosperous future,” he said. “We may not agree 100 percent on how to get there, but I think Democrats and Republicans do want to find a way." 
Stefanik, as well as Democrats Seth Moulton, of Massachusetts, and Ruben Gallego, of Arizona, are all House freshmen under 36 and Harvard graduates.
Two House newcomers are not new to Washington at all.
Debbie Dingell is replacing her husband, Michigan Democratic Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress, who retired after nearly 60 years.
And Virginia Republican Barbara Comstock is replacing her onetime boss Rep. Frank Wolf, whom she served as a top aide and chief counsel on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee before joining the Virginia legislature.
The House now has two black Republicans, with Love joining Will Hurd of Texas. The party also has one black senator, 10 Hispanic House members and two Hispanic senators. There are 22 Republican women in the House and six in the Senate.
A number of the new arrivals have served in the military, something that has become increasingly rare on Capitol Hill.
Moulton and Gallego both served with the Marines in Iraq, while another incoming freshman, Republican Lee Zeldin of New York, served with the Army there. 
And Republican Sen.-elect Joni Ernst of Iowa, who attracted a lot of buzz during the midterms, is an Iraq War veteran and lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard.