Pentagon says six Guantanamo Bay detainees transferred to Uruguay

The U.S. government said early Sunday that it had transferred six detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for over 12 years to Uruguay for resettlement as refugees. 
All six men had been detained as suspected militants with ties to Al Qaeda, but had never been charged. A Pentagon statement on Sunday identified the men as four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian. They are the first Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be sent to South America. 
They had been cleared for release since at least 2010 but they could not be sent home and languished as the U.S. struggled to find countries willing to take them.
Among those transferred is 43-year-old Syrian Abu Wa'el Dhiab, who was on a long-term hunger strike at Guantanamo to protest his confinement. He was at the center of a legal battle in U.S. courts over the military's force-feeding of prisoners who refuse to eat.
The other Syrians sent to Uruguay on Saturday were identified by the Pentagon as Ali Husain Shaaban, 32; Ahmed Adnan Ajuri, 37; and Abdelahdi Faraj, 39. Also released were Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan, 35, and 49-year-old Adel bin Muhammad El Ouerghi of Tunisia.
The latest release brings the total number of prisoners at Guantanamo to 136 -- the lowest number since the first month the prison opened in January 2002. The U.S. has said that the men pose no threat, but cannot be allowed to return to their countries of origin. 
"We are very grateful to Uruguay for this important humanitarian action, and to President Mujica for his strong leadership in providing a home for individuals who cannot return to their own countries," U.S. State Department envoy Clifford Sloan said.
Mujica had agreed to take the men in January, but the Pentagon didn't notify Congress of its intent to transfer the detainees to Uruguay until July. The Associated Press reported that administration officials have been frustrated that the transfer took so long and blame outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for not approving the move sooner. 
The handoff was further delayed until after Uruguay's October presidential election and late-November runoff when the transfer became a campaign issue. On Friday, Mujica reiterated his willingness to accept the detainees in an open letter to President Barack Obama that appeared on the Uruguay leader's official website. 
Obama pledged to close the prison upon taking office but was blocked by Congress, which banned sending prisoners to the U.S. for any reason, including trial, and placed restrictions on sending them abroad.
The slow pace of releases has created a tense atmosphere inside the prison. A hunger strike that began in February 2013 totaled about 100 prisoners at its peak, including Dhiab and Faraj.
The restrictions on sending them overseas have been eased and the U.S. has released 19 prisoners so far this year. Officials say several more are expected by the end of the year.
Prisoners have been sent to countries around the world but this is this largest to the Western Hemisphere. Four were sent to Bermuda in 2009 and two to El Salvador in 2012.

More municipal bans on fracking pose setback to domestic energy boom

The surge in domestic-energy production that has created millions of new jobs and abundant natural gas and oil is now facing a potential setback, cities across the country imposing bans on the widely-used deep-drilling process known as fracking.
At least three U.S. cities and two counties in the November elections voted in favor of such a ban. And courts in Pennsylvania and New York have recently ruled in favor of letting cities have some control over the drilling.
There is little surprise that Texas is at the forefront of the fight between energy companies and other fracking supporters and critics who say the drilling process is noisy, pollutes water supplies and triggers earthquakes.
Most of the attention in Texas is now on Denton, a college town near Dallas that sits on the Barnett shale formation that is full of natural gas.
The city became the first in Texas to impose the ban and has emerged as a test case for municipalities across the state trying to halt the drilling -- particularly in the face of the powerful energy industry and the Texas General Land Office, which owns 13 million acres of land across Texas and uses revenue from the mineral rights to fund public education.
Denton residents approved the ban in a Nov. 4 referendum that promptly resulted in at least two lawsuits including one by the land office and the Texas Oil & Gas Association, an industry group.
The ban on fracking went into effect Tuesday, but the situation appears headed for a lengthy legal battle.
"Whatever happens next will take place in a courtroom," Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, a group aligned with producers, told Reuters.
Property rights are a part of Texas' cultural fabric. But the desire to develop hydrocarbons such as oil and gas is equally powerful.
Another factor is that property rights are separate under state law from mineral rights, making it possible to own one but not the other.
The process of fracking involves shooting a mix of pressurized water, sand and chemicals to split rock formations and release the gas and so-called tight oil.
Fracking supporters say the industry in 2012 supported 2.1 million jobs across the country and contributed nearly $284 billion to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, according to most recent figures.
In Ohio, which is home to the Utica shale gas field and is enjoying a manufacturing renaissance as a result of fracking, the cities of Youngstown, Gates Mills and Kent on election day rejected proposed bans. However, the city of Athens approved one. They join the Ohio cities of Broadview Heights, Mansfield, Oberlin and Yellow Springs in the banning of fracking within city limits.
California voters in San Benito and Mendocino counties passed bans, while those in Santa Barbara defeated one. Santa Cruz County had already enacted one, and Los Angeles was already in the process of imposing a temporary ban. At least on local referendum has passed in Colorado, but the courts have ruled against it.
In Texas, the fight against fracking also pits municipalities against the Texas Railroad Commission, which governs the oil and gas industry.
"Regulation doesn't work very well in the state of Texas because the Railroad Commission doesn't work on the public's behalf," said Dan Dowdey, who is asking Alpine city commissioners to ban fracking in the nearby Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale formations, though the closest drilling is more than 100 miles away.
And residents of Reno, which had its first recorded earthquake last year and hundreds since then, took their first step this past spring toward a ban. The ban limits fracking activities to operators who can prove the injections won't cause earthquakes.
Cities might never be able to prove definitively that fracking causes earthquakes.
Texas hired its first seismologist to investigate the potential link after Reno Mayor Lyndamyrth Stokes led an effort to get the Railroad Commission to halt the drilling in her area. Stokes say the seismologist told her that making such a definitive connection would be impossible.
On Monday, potential 2016 Democratic White House Candidate Hillary Clinton, who will need a domestic-energy platform, tried walking the narrow line between fracking supporters and critics.
“It is crucial we put in place smart regulations and enforce them including deciding not to drill when the risks to local communities, landscapes and ecosystems are just too high,” she told the League of Conservation Voters in New York. But “natural gas can play an important bridge role in the transition to a cleaner, greener economy.”

South African hostage killed during US raid was to have been released, aid group says

Pierre Korkie

A South African hostage killed during a U.S.-led raid to free him and an American captive from Al Qaeda militants in Yemen was to have been released Sunday, an aid group has claimed. 
The South Africa-based Gift of the Givers said Saturday that a deal had been reached late last month to free teacher Pierre Korkie, 56, that included a "facilitation fee" paid to his kidnappers. Korkie had been kidnapped along with his wife, Yolande, in the Yemeni city of Tazi 18 months earlier while doing relief work. She had been released in January of this year without ransom. 
"A team of Abyan (Yemeni) leaders met in Aden [Saturday] morning and were preparing the final security and logistical arrangements, related to hostage release mechanisms, to bring Pierre to safety and freedom," Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of Gift of the Givers. "It is even more tragic that the words we used in a conversation with Yolande at 5:59 [Saturday] morning was: 'The wait is almost over.'"
The Associated Press, citing sources close to the negotiations, reported that the militants had initially demanded a $3 million ransom for Korkie's release. Although that demand was dropped, the kidnappers did insist on the "facilitation fee," according to the aid group. The undisclosed amount was raised by Korkie's family and friends, according to the South African Press Agency.
U.S. officials said Korkie and American freelance photographer Luke Somers were apparently shot by an Al Qaeda militant early in a roughly 5-to-10 minute firefight after the team of roughly 40 U.S. commandos were discovered approaching the compound where the men were held. Officials said that based on the location where Somers and Korkie were being held, there was no possibility that they were struck by American gunfire.
U.S. forces pulled Somers and Korkie onto V-22 Ospreys, and medical teams began performing surgery in midair. One hostage died during the short flight; the second died after the Ospreys landed on the USS Makin Island, a Navy ship in the region.
No American forces were killed or sustained serious injuries in the raid. Yemen's government said four of its forces were wounded.
The predawn raid was the second rescue attempt in as many weeks to free Somers following a threat late Wednesday by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, backed by intelligence reports, that he would be killed on Saturday morning unless unspecified demands were met.
President Barack Obama said he ordered the raid because Somers was believed to be in "imminent danger." The president, in a statement, condemned Somers' killing as a "barbaric murder," but did not mention Korkie by name, offering condolences to the family of "a non-U.S. citizen hostage."
"It is my highest responsibility to do everything possible to protect American citizens," Obama said. "As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located."
On Nov. 25, American special operations forces and Yemeni soldiers raided a remote Al Qaeda safe haven in a desert region near the Saudi border. Eight captives, including Yemenis, a Saudi and an Ethiopian, were freed, but Somers was not there. He and five other hostages had been moved days earlier, officials later said.
Roughly a dozen people are believed held by Al Qaeda militants in Yemen.
U.S. officials said that threat prompted Obama to move quickly. Using information obtained during the first raid, U.S. officials believed Somers was being held Shabwa province, a stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist group's Yemeni branch. Officials believed a second hostage was there, too, but did not know it was Korkie.
By Thursday evening, the Pentagon had sent the White House a proposed plan, which Obama approved the following day. Officials alerted Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who gave his support.
Hadi has been a critical U.S. partner in seeking to undermine Yemen's dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate. With the permission of Yemen's government, the U.S. has for years launched drone strikes against militant targets in the country and provided Yemen with hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance. Civilian casualties from the drone strikes have stoked anger in the country, however.
When Obama announced U.S. airstrikes this year against militant targets in Syria and Iraq, he held up the Yemen effort as a comparable model.
Yemen's highest security body, the Supreme Security Committee, issued a rare statement Saturday acknowledging that the country's forces had carried out the raid with "American friends." The committee said all the militants holding the hostages were killed in the operation.
Korkie was a dedicated teacher, a family friend said. "Teaching was his life. His heart took him to Yemen. He loved teaching the poor," said Daan Nortier, who is acting as a family spokesman.
Lucy Somers, the photojournalist's sister, told The Associated Press that she and her father learned of her brother's death from FBI agents just after midnight Saturday.
"We ask that all of Luke's family members be allowed to mourn in peace," she said, speaking from Kent, England.
Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 as he left a supermarket in Sanaa, according to Fakhri al-Arashi, chief editor of the National Yemen, where Somers worked as a copy editor and a freelance photographer during the 2011 uprising in Yemen.
Before her brother's death, Lucy Somers released an online video describing him as a romantic who "always believes the best in people." She ended with the plea: "Please let him live."
In a statement, Somers' father, Michael, also called his son "a good friend of Yemen and the Yemeni people" and asked for his safe release.
Fuad Al Kadas, who called Somers one of his best friends, said Somers spent time in Egypt before finding work in Yemen. Somers started teaching English at a Yemen school but quickly established himself as a one of the few foreign photographers in the country, he said.
"He is a great man with a kind heart who really loves the Yemeni people and the country," Al Kadas wrote in an email from Yemen. He said he last saw Somers the day before he was kidnapped.
Al-Arashi, Somers' editor at the National Yemen, recalled a moment when Somers edited a story on other hostages held in the country.
"He looked at me and said, 'I don't want to be a hostage,'" al-Arashi said. "'I don't want to be kidnapped.'"

Landrieu loses reelection bid in Louisiana to Republican challenger Cassidy

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her reelection bid Saturday in a runoff race with Republican challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy, despite a relentless, against-long-odds effort.
Landrieu, who was seeking a fourth term, trailed by double digits and had lost most of her support going into the election. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting late Saturday, Cassidy had received 56 percent of the vote, to 44 percent for Landrieu.
Landrieu barnstormed the state this week, driving some 1,200 miles in a rented SUV, stopping in little towns and bigger cities, making one last appeal to voters to give her another term in Washington.
“There is no quit,” Landrieu said in her concession speech. “It’s been nothing but a joy to serve this state for over 34 years.”
Cassidy’s win extends the GOP's domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama's tenure.
Republicans will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now.
“Once again, voters have spoken clearly,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said. “They have rejected the Democrat agenda and the Obama-Clinton policies that have produced higher healthcare costs and job-killing regulations.”
The race mirrored contests in other states that Obama lost in 2012, with Landrieu joining Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan and Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor in defeat. Democrats ceded seats in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia after incumbents opted not to run again.
Like victorious Republicans in those races, Cassidy, 57, made his bid more about Obama than about his own vision for the job. An Illinois native and medical doctor, Cassidy made few public appearances during the runoff, seeking to avoid missteps that could change the race.
But in a state where 73 percent of white voters on Nov. 4 told pollsters they "strongly disapproved" of the president, that was enough to prevent Landrieu, 59, from finding her footing. Cassidy also enjoyed a prodigious advertising advantage in the runoff: Of every dollar spent by outside groups during the one-month runoff, 97 cents benefited the congressman.
Landrieu had narrowly led a Nov. 4 primary ballot that included eight candidates from all parties. But at 42 percent, she fell well below her marks in previous races and endured a one-month runoff campaign that Republicans dominated via the airwaves while national Democrats financially abandoned her effort.
In the South, Democrats will be left without a single governor or U.S. senator across nine states stretching from the Carolinas to Texas. The House delegations from the same region are divided almost entirely by race, with white Republicans representing majority-white districts, while majority non-white districts are represented by black or Hispanic Democrats.
Landrieu tried several messages over the course of her losing effort.
Most recently, she had hammered Cassidy as being unfit for the job and interested more in partisanship than helping Louisiana. She directed her most pointed criticism at Cassidy's medical teaching job with the Louisiana State University hospital system. Calling Cassidy "Dr. Double Dip," Landrieu suggested the congressman collected a $20,000, taxpayer-funded salary for little or no work, describing gaps and discrepancies in Cassidy's LSU time sheets. LSU said it's looking into the time sheet questions.
She argued that the race shouldn't be about Obama, but also targeted advertising on radio stations geared to the black community, where the president remains popular.
Her anchor argument was that her senatorial seniority was a boon for Louisiana, particularly her chairmanship of the Senate's energy committee, an important panel for this oil-rich state. But that argument was gutted on Nov. 4 when Republicans won the Senate majority, meaning Landrieu would have lost her post even had she won.
Landrieu, who said a campaign canvasser was fatally struck by a vehicle Saturday, managed last month to get the Democrat-controlled Senate to vote on her bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have helped with voters in oil-rich Louisiana. But the measure failed when she could not get one more Democrat to vote in favor of the plan.

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Relatives gather to mourn Bosnian man murdered in St. Louis hammer attack

 

As relatives of Zemir Begic prepare for his funeral Saturday, neither they nor police detectives appear to have any idea what caused a pack of teens to beat him to death with hammers on a St. Louis street.
Begic, who emigrated from war-torn Bosnia almost two decades ago in search of a better life, was bludgeoned to death Sunday, allegedly by a group of hammer-wielding teenagers, one of whom has been charged as an adult. 
Begic was driving with his fiancee, Arijana Mujkanovic, and a male passenger at about 1:15 a.m. Sunday in St. Louis when five teenagers began pounding his vehicle with a hammer, according to police. When Begic confronted them, he was struck in the mouth, face, head and body with hammers and died at a nearby hospital.
Robert Joseph Mitchell, 17, has been charged with first-degree murder, while two other suspects, ages 15 and 16, remain in police custody. A fourth suspect is still at large.
On Saturday, relatives will bury him in Waterloo, Iowa, where Begic, the oldest of four siblings, used to live with his father and stepmother.
"When he walked into the room, somehow everything shined," Begic's cousin, Alma Begic, told FoxNews.com from her home in Waterloo. "He loved music and soccer."
"I don’t think there's a person who can say anything bad about him," she said. "He was so loved." 
According to a criminal complaint released Tuesday, Begic and his fiancee were walking to their car when they heard a group, including at least one of the defendants, yelling. As Begic drove away, one of the teenagers, "jumped on the back of his car and began hitting it," the complaint said. Unsure of what was happening, Begic stepped out of his vehicle and was approached by the individuals, one of whom "taunted" him and "challenged him to a fight," according to the document. Begic was then allegedly assaulted by four men and struck with a hammer and fell to the ground. Three others continue to beat him before the group fled on foot, police said.
No motive has been identified in the Begic murder, according to investigators. But members of the close-knit Bosnian community are questioning whether Begic's death and other crimes committed within the past year in the neighborhood are racially charged -- and they're calling on a larger police presence on St. Louis's south side. Begic was white, while Mitchell and one of the two juveniles are black, and the other is Hispanic.
Seldin Dzananovic, a 24-year-old Bosnian, claims he was attacked by a group of teenagers with hammers in the same neighborhood about an hour before Begic's murder. Dzananovic said he sustained only minor cuts and bruises.
A resident of the Bevo neighborhood who spoke to FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity due to safety reasons claims he and his family experienced a similar attack and said there is a disturbing pattern of violence against white Bosnian residents in the area.
"Investigators do not believe the attack on Mr. Begic had any connection to him being of Bosnian descent," St. Louis Police spokeswoman Schron Jackson said in a statement to FoxNews.com. In subsequent emails, Jackson made clear: "Investigators don't believe the incident is in any way related to Ferguson" and "The incident is not being investigated as a hate crime."
The St. Louis Police Department is now working in conjunction with the city prosecutor to determine a motive. Authorities told FoxNews.com there is no evidence at this time suggesting the murder was racially motivated.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Begic's fiancee, Arijana Mujkanovic, suggested the attack was targeted and involved her mother's former boyfriend. Mujkanovic, however, told FoxNews.com that she had "no solid evidence" to support what she described as a "hunch."
"I didn't say I was 100 percent certain that it was a setup," Mujkanovic said of her comments to the Daily Mail.
Mujkanovic told FoxNews.com that Zemir and her mother's ex-boyfriend had a physical altercation almost three months ago when Zemir stepped in to defend his fiancee's mother.
"He [the former boyfriend] stopped his car and got out and he was going to attack my mother and Zemir defended her, Mujkanovic claims. 
"He was going around saying how Zemir was going to be gone and how I was going to be left without him," she said of the ex-boyfriend. She claims her family reported the threats to police and they "really didn’t do anything."
Mujkanovic, however, acknowledged she had no proof the murder was targeted and said she "had no idea" whether the teens knew her mother's ex-boyfriend, who is Bosnian. 
"All we want is justice for Zemir," said his younger brother, Rasim, a 20-year-old pre-med student at the University of South Dakota.
Rasim said he is not ruling out the possibility the murder was racially motivated, saying he wants police "to investigate everything." 
Begic was a teenager when he and his family fled Bosnia in the aftermath of a bloody civil war in 1996. In America, he found work, friends and love before meeting a cruel fate.
"He was my role model," Rasim said. "He would have given you the clothes off his back."
Alma Begic, who declined to speculate on a motive, described her cousin as race-blind. She said Begic loved his sister's children who are African-American on their father's side.
"He was so accepting in a culture where there's a lot of pressure to marry within your own ethnicity and religion," she said of Begic. "He never judged anybody."

US, South African hostages 'murdered' during failed rescue attempt in Yemen

American hostage Luke Somers died during a joint rescue mission by the U.S. and Yemen Saturday morning.
Somers was still alive, but badly injured when U.S. Special Forces reached him in the rescue mission, a Yemeni national security official told Fox News. The official also said it was Al Qaeda militants who shot Somers
Somers would die later as he was being transported away for medical treatment.
Ten militants were killed between the rescue attempt and the drone strike prior to the mission, the Yemeni official confirmed.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement that Somers and a non-U.S. hostage were "murdered by the AQAP during the course of the operation."
South African hostage Pierre Korkie was the other hostage killed in the operation, the Gift of the Givers, a South African aid group confirmed.
President Obama released a statement early Saturday morning condemning the "barbaric murder" of Somers by the Al Qaeda terrorists.
The United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence, and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located," Obama said. "And terrorists who seek to harm our citizens will feel the long arm of American justice."
Obama also said he authorized the mission because the U.S. had information that Somers' life was in imminent danger.
A Yemen top security official said Somers was set to die Saturday at the hands of Al Qaeda militants.
Obama, Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry all expressed their condolences to Somers' family.
The sister of Luke Somers first learned of her brother's death from FBI agents. Lucy Somers told the Associated Press her family asks for peace.
Yemen's local Al Qaeda branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, posted a video Thursday that showed Somers, threatening to kill him in three days if the United States didn't meet the group's demands, which weren't specified.
The news of the failed rescue comes after a U.S. drone strike in Yemen that numerous alleged Al Qaeda militants early Saturday, a security official said. The drone struck at dawn in Yemen's southern Shabwa province, hitting a suspected militant hideout, the official said.
At least six suspected militants were killed in an airstrike in the same province last month. Later Saturday, tribal leaders said they saw helicopters flying over an area called Wadi Abdan in Shabwa province.
In a video Saturday, Lucy Somers and her father pleaded for the group to let Luke Somers live.
In a statement Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby acknowledged for the first time that a mysterious U.S. raid last month had sought to rescue Somers but that he turned out not to be at the site.
The U.S. considers Yemen's Al Qaeda branch to be the world's most dangerous arm of the group as it has been linked to several failed attacks on the U.S. homeland.
Somers was kidnapped in 2013 leaving a supermarket in Yemen. He was working as a freelance photographer for the Yemen Times at the time.

Landrieu battles stiff headwinds ahead of weekend's Senate runoff

NEW ORLEANS –  If Mary Landrieu loses the runoff election for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana this weekend, it won’t be for lack of trying.
The three-term Democratic senator has been barnstorming the state this week, driving some 1,200 miles in a rented SUV, stopping in little towns and bigger cities, making one last appeal to voters to give her a fourth trip to Washington.
“This election Saturday is going to be close,” she told an audience of mostly black voters in Grambling. “But we have had victory before and we are claiming victory again.”
Indeed, Landrieu has had some tough races. In her first Senate campaign, in 1996, she won the runoff by one-third of 1 percent. But this year, she faces headwinds quite different than the ones the rookie candidate did 18 years ago.
First is the changing political direction of Louisiana. Since 1996, the state has been steadily tilting right. White voters have been abandoning the Democratic Party here in ways that may make it impossible for a Democrat to be elected to federal office in all but the most heavily minority congressional districts.
Second is President Obama. He is deeply unpopular here – in particular – because of the oil and gas drilling moratorium he declared in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
While Landrieu plays down the president’s effect on her campaign, it’s like she is towing a trailer with its brakes fully locked behind that rented SUV.
But when asked who would be to blame should she lose on Saturday to Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, Landrieu is quick to say responsibility rests on her shoulders.
“I would imagine that people just didn’t think that I didn’t work hard enough or deliver more for the state and they decided to elect someone that they thought would be better,” Landrieu told Fox News.
In an effort to turn her fortunes around, Landrieu has thrown a couple of namesake long bombs deep downfield. The first was right after the November election, when she used all of her influence to ram a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline through the Senate. But her own team swatted the Hail Mary down, coming up a single vote shy of the 60 needed to pass.
Late last week, Landrieu tried another throw into the end zone, spinning up a controversy about Cassidy’s part-time job teaching at Louisiana State University’s medical school. Landrieu claims Cassidy was paid for work he didn’t do – including billing LSU during days he was in Washington, D.C. She went so far this week as to suggest Cassidy had committed “payroll fraud” and would face subpoenas over the matter. She also charged that Cassidy violated ethics rules by earning a salary outside his duties as a member of Congress. The Louisiana Democratic Party even found a willing medical practitioner to put their name on an official complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics. Another Democratic group in Washington filed a second complaint.
While Landrieu does have a smattering of LSU time sheets, as well as emails discussing Cassidy’s reduction from full-time professor to part-time, what she lacks is any smoking gun to back up her allegations. 
When asked about that absence of hard evidence, she deflected. “Well, my opponent’s the one who has to prove that he worked, and there’s no evidence at all that he worked to pick up $50,000 a year,” Landrieu told Fox News. 
It’s unclear which voting bloc Landrieu believes the charges will resonate with. But she has stridently pushed it for the past week.
“I wish I had known about this a month or two ago, because I really would have worn him out over it,” she told Fox News.
Cassidy’s only public comments on the charges came during last Monday’s sole runoff debate. “Absolutely false” is how he described them. His supervisor at LSU backs him up on that assertion. The congressman also sought and received permission from the House Ethics Committee to continue teaching at LSU.
But Cassidy has ducked any further inquiries from the press about it. After Monday’s debate, he scooted out a side door while Landrieu fielded questions from the media. On Wednesday, Cassidy abandoned the campaign trail and showed up in Washington to participate in several House votes. When approached by Fox News in the halls of Congress, Cassidy refused to talk about the LSU controversy, saying to do so would only serve to perpetuate the story and benefit Landrieu.
Even if Cassidy did play fast and loose with time sheets and ethics rules, it likely comes too late to make any difference. Many voters made up their minds long ago.
Landrieu’s best – perhaps only -- hope for victory is a huge black voter turnout. But indications from early voting are that she may not get it. Democratic early votes for the runoff were down 18 percent from the Nov. 4 election -- 18,000 fewer blacks voted early. At the same time, Republican votes were up 4 percent. The potential net change for Cassidy is 26,000 votes. That’s more than Landrieu’s entire margin of victory on Nov. 4.
At campaign stops, Landrieu tries to mobilize black voters, deriding Cassidy as “disrespectful” to the president, suggesting that if Cassidy is elected, Republicans will try to impeach Obama.
Voters nod in acknowledgement and engage in a lively call-and-response with the senator when she makes such charges. Whether that enthusiasm will translate to the polls on runoff day, though, is an open question.
This election is significant in that it may extend the Republican majority in the Senate to nine seats.
But it is also important from the perspective of political history. Should Landrieu lose, the last vestiges of the old Democratic South will be swept away. She is the last remaining Democratic statewide officeholder across the entire region. Should Cassidy defeat her, Republicans will hold every Senate seat, governorship and legislature from Texas to the Carolinas.
Polls suggest that will be the likely outcome of Saturday’s election. In the RealClearPolitics average, Cassidy is up a whopping 18 points.
Landrieu is desperately fighting for a last-minute big score, but at the moment, Cassidy has the ball and is merely trying to run out the clock.

Whistleblower alleges agency cover-up over $300M ‘boondoggle’ to protect Obama nominee

Senior officials at the Social Security Administration (SSA) tried to hide a damning report on a $300 million computer system that lawmakers have called a “boondoggle” in order to protect President Obama’s nominee to lead the agency, a whistleblower claimed in an interview with FoxNews.com.  
Whistleblower Michael Keegan told FoxNews.com that McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, issued a draft report in December 2013 saying the agency had spent $288 million over six years for a new computer system processing disability claims that has yet to launch.
But Keegan said he was present at a meeting of senior officials in May of this year where they decided to sit on the report as long as Carolyn Colvin’s nomination for commissioner was pending.
“They hid the report,” he told FoxNews.com.
Keegan said it was discussed at that May meeting that Colvin, the acting commissioner, had been briefed on the findings.
He added: “There is absolutely no way that [Colvin] could be in the dark” on the effort to hide it.
Keegan spoke with FoxNews.com after Republican senators threatened earlier this week to block Colvin’s nomination until a probe of the computer project is done. Keegan, who worked as associate commissioner for facilities and left the agency earlier this year, explained that he brought his concerns to Congress over the summer.  
The McKinsey report itself, a final version of which was released in June, said the project, which remains in the testing phase and predated Colvin’s time at the helm, was beset by delays -- and agency leaders had decided to “reset.”
The study found that while the plan is “conceptually sound,” execution “has fallen short.” For the past five years, the report said, the release date “consistently” was projected 24-32 months out.
The report, together with Keegan’s allegations and the concerns of lawmakers, point to trouble ahead for Colvin’s nomination. Obama nominated Colvin, who has served as acting head since early 2013, in June of this year to be commissioner.
Several top-ranking lawmakers have been beating the drum about the $300 million computer system since the summer, including about the possibility of a cover-up.
House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and other lawmakers wrote in July that whistleblowers had told them “senior agency staff placed a very close hold” on the report to make sure details were kept “secret” until after Colvin’s confirmation. They called these claims “deeply disturbing.”
Further, they wrote that the agency effectively “wasted” $300 million on the “IT boondoggle.”
Around the same time, Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, who leads the House Social Security subcommittee, wrote to Colvin questioning whether the agency had “something to hide.” He called the “wasted” taxpayer dollars a “disgrace.”
Lawmakers’ concerns culminated earlier this week when all Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee wrote to Colvin complaining about the “disturbing” allegations over “mismanagement and waste.”
They cited an “interim” report by the agency’s inspector general “that raised, but did not resolve” issues with officials’ conduct, and an ongoing “criminal investigation.”
They wrote: “Moreover, we have received information from whistleblowers that the ongoing investigation has centered around the activities of certain members of your immediate office, including several high-level agency officials. We cannot in good faith allow a nomination for any position that requires the advice and consent of the Senate to proceed to a vote as long as the specter of a potential criminal investigation surrounds the nominee and/or those in their inner circle.”
The lawmakers urged Colvin to address her role regarding this inquiry before they can vote on the nomination before the full Senate.
A Social Security spokeswoman told the Associated Press, in response to the senators’ letter, that Colvin “is not personally the subject of any criminal investigation."
Spokeswoman LaVenia LaVelle said agency officials previously briefed lawmakers on this matter and "the acting commissioner will respond timely and fully to the members' requests, and continue to cooperate with Congress and any related investigation."
Colvin also told the AP that she's "always met the highest ethical standards." 
Asked Friday about Keegan’s specific claims, LaVelle told FoxNews.com the agency “cannot comment on an open investigation.”
She referred FoxNews.com to the inspector general’s office, which also could not comment and said the case is now being handled by its counterpart in the Small Business Administration. An aide in that office would not discuss the probe, but confirmed they were reviewing an "allegation of wrongdoing involving SSA personnel." 
The finance committee advanced Colvin’s nomination earlier this year, but it still hasn’t passed the full Senate. The problems could mean her nomination is pushed off to the new Congress next year, when Republicans have full control.
Morris Fischer, an attorney representing Keegan, called the computer project a “debacle.”
Keegan left the agency over the summer, after he says he was retaliated against for earlier complaints.
He said he first brought his concerns to Congress after watching Colvin claim during a House subcommittee hearing in February that the agency’s IT projects were on track and under budget.
“I knew that that was totally false,” Keegan said.