Catnip for the media: Bill Clinton's tangential tie to an appalling sex scandal

Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex abuser, is a billionaire with a lot of celebrity friends.
They included Mick Jagger, Ivana Trump, Mike Bloomberg, Tony Blair, Ehud Olmert…oh, and Bill Clinton.
Who do you think is getting the most media attention?
That’s right, the former president is now “tied” to a guy who allegedly was surrounded by a number of underage girls and spent 13 months in prison for solicitation of prostitution. The Epstein scandal has been drawing big headlines in the British press because one woman charges that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew, which Buckingham Palace denies.
“Bill Clinton drawn into Prince Andrew sex scandal,” says a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Now it’s perfectly fair to question Clinton’s judgment in hanging around with a man who turned out to be a sleazebag. Between 2002 and 2005, Clinton sometimes flew on Epstein’s jet to the tycoon’s private Caribbean island, where Epstein is alleged to have kept underage girls as sex slaves, according to press reports that followed a lawsuit against Epstein.
A tantalizing story line—but here are some other details.
Clinton apparently broke off his friendship with Epstein after the police investigation of him was reported, a probe that led to the 2008 conviction.
And the woman who charges that Epstein forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew and other men says she never had sex with Clinton, and doesn’t think anyone else associated with Epstein did.
Still, the salacious tale has led to all kinds of chatter, along the lines of Will This Affect Hillary’s Campaign? And Clinton’s history with the likes of Monica Lewinsky naturally arouses suspicion.
But is it fair for media outlets to imply or insinuate that Bill was up to his old hanky-panky, even if it’s with a wink and a nod? Wthout so much as an allegation to that effect?
Another Epstein friend, Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz, is in a very different situation, since an unnamed woman in the lawsuit (Jane Doe No. 3) alleges that she had sex with him. The high-profile lawyer is filing a defamation suit, denied the allegations on the “Today” show, and told the Wall Street Journal that this was a “totally fabricated, made-up story…I have never had sex with an underage woman. They made up this story out of whole cloth. I’m an innocent victim of an extortion conspiracy.”
Needless to say, there are lots of charges and countercharges flying here. And the British part of the scandal is fascinating.
For instance, it emerged three years ago that Epstein gave Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, Fergie, 15,000 pounds to help pay off her debts.
The digital list of Epstein’s contacts (which includes not just Clinton but 20 of his aides and associates) was used in an attempt to subpoena him for questioning in the lawsuit, but that effort failed.
If a serious allegation against the 42^nd president surfaces in this mess, that is fair game for the press. But we ought to be careful about plunging into guilt by association.

Econ book acclaimed by left based on faulty premise, factual errors, study finds

A book by a French economist who became a darling of 99 percenters and his lefty peers is riddled with errors, cherry-picked data and flawed premises, according to two new studies.
Thomas Piketty's “Capital in the 21^st Century,” which New York Times columnist and Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman called “the most important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade,” calls for an 80 percent income tax to stop wealth inequality from increasing. The book earned its author an invitation to the White House to meet with Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
But it contains more than 10 factual errors, according to one new study accepted by the Journal of Private Enterprise and conducted by economists Phillip Magness of George Mason University and Robert P. Murphy of the Institute for Energy Research. The errors they report range from relatively simple mistakes such as getting several historical dates wrong to mis-attributing a massive tax increase to President Franklin Roosevelt that was actually passed by President Herbert Hoover, to incorrectly claiming that the minimum wage never increased under either George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush, who both oversaw increases.
The authors write that they see a pattern in the errors.

“He cherry-picks, the data sometimes don’t match the sources that he cites, and he changes the data to make the charts look better without accurately documenting it.”- Kevin Hassett, American Enterprise Institute

“[The errors] serve to paint ostensibly market-friendly Republican presidents as ogres, while liberal Democrats are the heroes of the working class,” they write.
They also conclude that, in building some of his charts, Piketty switched between data sets in a way that was biased in favor of his argument. In his graph on wealth in the U.S., for instance, Piketty relied on data from one study going up until 1950, then for 1960 he switched to another study, and then for 1970 he went back to relying on the first study again.
The authors conclude that Piketty used “cherry-picked data points to construct a trend line that mirrors his predictions.”
The authors also found that, in one Piketty graph about US historical tax revenue, he only had data going back until 1900; yet he made the graph go back to 1870 by assuming those years were the same as 1900 and by adding or subtracting a seemingly arbitrary number to make the data appear plausible.
Asked about the above issues, Piketty told FoxNews.com that there may be some typos in the book but said he did not think they affected his central conclusion.
“I am really sorry if I attributed one specific tax decision to FDR instead of Hoover, etc.; many readers do mention typos of this sort, and of course they will be corrected in future editions; but I really do not see anything here that's affecting any conclusion,” Piketty told FoxNews.com.
But a new study claims to find errors that affect Piketty’s fundamental premise. It was done by University of California Berkeley economics professor Alan Auerbach and American Enterprise Institute economist Kevin Hassett, and was presented Saturday at a session of the American Economics Association.
Piketty, in his book, makes the case that the rich constantly get richer using a graph that illustrates that it has increased steadily in the United States over the last half-century.
But the study finds that the graph is largely wrong. For instance, when Piketty’s graph refers to the year “1980”, the number actually comes from data from the year 1989. The authors also found that Piketty simply left several data points off of his chart without explanation.
After revising the chart, the economists found that the proportion of wealth owned by the rich “no longer rises without interruption” and that in fact, “inequality appears to be declining at the end [of the graph].”
Piketty told FoxNews.com that, even using the American authors’ graph, his ultimate conclusion remains intact.
“The increase in inequality would look less steady, but it would still be there,” he said. A comparison of the two graphs is on page 6 of the American authors’ study.
Hassett reponds that the new chart makes the case for measures like an 80% tax rate to stop increasing wealth inequality a lot less clear.
“The trend towards higher inequality would look weaker… [inequality] would have fallen from its 1995 peak,” Hassett said.
But Piketty counters that a recent study found that wealth inequality actually rose even faster than he had reported in his book.
“Everybody recognizes that the Saez-Zucman series are indeed the best series on US wealth inequality we have so far, and that they show an even bigger increase than what I report in my book,” he told FoxNews.com.
Yet many economists do not recognize that.
“There are other recent papers, one… by Kopczuk (a co-author of Piketty’s in the past), plus another based on Fed survey data, by Bricker et al., which argue that other methods of analysis are more accurate and do not show such a trend,” Auerbach of UC Berkeley said.
Piketty said he has been up front that more data collection is needed.
“I made perfectly clear in my book and in my presentation on Saturday that we still know too little about income and wealth distribution… and that we need more democratic and financial transparency about income and wealth dynamics,” he said.
The recent criticisms come on top of issues discovered last year by the Financial Times. Hassett says that, in the end, so many things are off in the book that it affects the conclusion.
“He cherry-picks, the data sometimes don’t match the sources that he cites, and he changes the data to make the charts look better without accurately documenting it,” Hassett said.

White House issues veto threat over Keystone pipeline bill

The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto fresh legislation approving the controversial Keystone pipeline, setting up a likely showdown between President Obama and the new GOP-controlled Congress over one of Republicans' top agenda items. 
"If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn't sign it," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday, stressing that the president wants to wait for a State Department review process to finish. 
Republicans, with several Democratic supporters, were introducing the Keystone legislation on Tuesday as their first order of business for the new Congress. 
The White House, which until now had stayed mum about whether President Obama would sign the bill, issued the veto threat within minutes of the 114th Congress convening. 
On the Senate side, sponsors Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said the bill has 60 co-sponsors, and uses Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce to green-light the Canada-to-Texas pipeline. They predicted at least 63 senators, and possibly more, ultimately will vote for the bill -- more than enough to pass. 
The House is expected to vote and pass a bill approving the $5.4 billion project, which was first proposed in 2008, on Friday. 
Should the bill pass and face a presidential veto, the big question is whether congressional leaders, then, could muster the two-thirds majority needed to override. Manchin also suggested Congress could respond to a veto by attaching the Keystone measure to another bill. 
Hoeven and Manchin blasted the White House for the veto threat Tuesday afternoon. 
"Instead of a veto threat, the president should be joining with Congress on a bipartisan basis to approve the project for the American people, rather than blocking it on behalf of special interest groups," Hoeven said in a statement. 
Manchin, who is often at odds with the administration, said he was "disappointed that the president will not allow this Congress to turn over a new leaf and engage in the legislative process to improve an important piece of legislation." 
The head of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said Tuesday after his annual speech on the state of U.S. energy that the president had failed to make a simple decision that would put people to work, but he predicted the pipeline would eventually be approved. 
"It doesn't bode well for relationships between the White House and Capitol Hill," Gerard said of the veto threat. 
The bill is identical to one that failed to pass the Senate by a single vote in November, when Democrats were in control and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana pushed for a vote to save her Senate seat. She lost to Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, who sponsored the successful House bill approving the pipeline. 
But now the odds of passage are much improved with the Republican takeover of the Senate. The bill will also test Republicans' commitment to more open debate. Hoeven and Manchin said they welcomed additions to the bill, which they hoped would increase support. 
In recent months, Obama has been increasingly critical of the project, and has resisted prior efforts to fast-track the process. At his year-end news conference, Obama said the pipeline would benefit Canadian oil companies but would not be a huge benefit to American consumers, who are already seeing low prices at the pump thanks to oil prices, which on Monday dipped to a nearly six-year low and were sharply down again Tuesday. 
In addition, the outcome of a Nebraska lawsuit over the pipeline's route through that state is still pending. Another challenge to the pipeline is being waged by a South Dakota tribe over renewal of an application for a permit. 
The project by Calgary-based TransCanada would move tar sands oil from Canada 1,179 miles south to Gulf Coast refineries. Supporters say it would create jobs and ease American dependence on Middle East oil. A government environmental impact statement also predicted that a pipeline would result in less damage to the climate than moving the same oil by rail. 
Critics argue that the drilling itself is environmentally harmful, and said much of the Canadian crude would be exported with little or no impact on America's drive to reduce oil imports.

EEOC: School wrong to fire teacher who gave Bible to student

A New Jersey school district violated the law when it fired a teacher who handed a Bible to a student, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled on December 15, 2014. The ruling was made public Tuesday.
The EEOC determined there was reasonable cause to believe the Phillipsburg School District discriminated against Walt Tutka, a substitute teacher. The EEOC also said religion and retaliation played a factor in Tutka’s firing.

The Phillipsburg School District owes Walt his job, back pay and an apology. They waged a disgusting public war against this fine, upstanding man simply because he gave a child a Bible.

“This is a great indication the EEOC is taking religious liberty seriously and they are going to enforce the law — and in this case make sure Walt’s rights are protected,” Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser told me.
Liberty Institute is a law firm that specializes in religious liberty cases.
“This sends a message to school districts that their natural allergic reaction to religion is misplaced, and not only is it wrong — but it’s also an egregious violation of the law,” Sasser said.
As I first reported, Tutka was working as a substitute teacher on Oct. 12, 2013, when he ran afoul of school policies. He told a straggling student at the end of a line, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
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The student asked on a number of occasions where the line was from, and Tutka told him it was from the Bible. When he discovered the child did not have a Bible, Tutka gave him his personal copy. It was not all that unusual because Tutka is a member of Gideons International, a ministry known for providing Bibles to school children across the world.
On Oct. 18, Tutka was summoned to the principal’s office, where he was accused of violating a school policy that bans the distribution of religious materials and another that directs teachers to be neutral when discussion religious material.
He was fired on Jan. 14.
Sasser said he hopes the school district will reinstate Tutka.
“If they don’t do the right thing, they will face some serious consequences,” he told me. “They are going to be liable for damages.”
I reached out to George Chando, the superintendent of the Phillipsburg School District. He declined to return my call.
My advice to him is to do the right thing, or Liberty Institute will go after him like a pit bull going after a pork chop.
Sasser said the EEOC ruling should serve as a warning to other school districts around the nation.
“You can’t just fire people because they happen to hand a Bible to somebody while they are at work,” he said.
Sasser said he believes the school district was out to get Walt because he is a Gideon. I obtained a copy of an email from Phillipsburg Middle School Assistant Principal John Stillo that suggest the school district had an issue with the well-known religious group.
“It has been brought to the administration’s attention that Gideons may be near our campus to distribute literature to our students,” Stillo wrote in a memo to the school’s staff. “Please make sure they DO NOT step foot onto our campus at any time. There will be added police and security presence at dismissal.”
Gideon International has a long history of providing Bibles to public school students, but many districts have banned the religious society in recent years. Ironically, the Gideons are welcome to distribute Bibles and deliver speeches in Russian schools.
The Phillipsburg School District should rehire Walt. And it owes him a big apology. They waged a disgusting public war against this fine, upstanding man simply because he gave a child a Bible. Shame on you, Phillipsburg School District. Shame on you.

Tail of AirAsia plane located in Java Sea, Indonesian official says

An Indonesian official confirmed Wednesday that divers and an unmanned underwater vehicle had spotted the tail of missing AirAsia Flight 8501 in the Java Sea.
The find is particularly important because the cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or black boxes, are located in the aircraft's tail. It is the first confirmed sighting of any wreckage 10 days after the plane disappeared en route to Singapore from Surabaya, Indonesia with 162 passengers on board. Small pieces of the plane, such as seats, have previously been spotted.
Strong currents had forced search and rescue operations to expand the search area for debris, bodies, and suspected chunks of the plane's fuselage on the ocean floor. National Search and Rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo told reporters that the tail was identified from a photograph of the debris taken by searchers. One released image appears to show an upside down "A" painted on a piece of metal, while another grainy shot depicted some sort of mechanical parts.
The debris is located about 6 miles from where Flight 8501 lost contact with air traffic controllers Dec. 28 and was originally detected by an Indonesian survey ship. 
Soelistyo said the top priority remains recovering more bodies along with the black boxes. So far, 40 corpses have been found, including an additional one announced Wednesday, but time is running out.
At two weeks, most corpses will sink, said Anton Castilani, head of the country's disaster identification victim unit, and there are already signs of serious decomposition.
The Airbus A320 went down Dec. 28, halfway through a two-hour flight, killing everyone on board. It is not clear what caused the crash, but bad weather is believed to be a contributing factor.
Just before losing contact, the pilot told air traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude because of heavy air traffic. No distress signal was issued.
Finding the black boxes will be key to the investigation. They provide essential information including the plane's vertical and horizontal speeds along with engine temperature and final conversations between the captain and co-pilot. The ping-emitting beacons still have about 20 days before their batteries go dead, but high surf had prevented the deployment of ships that drag "ping" locators.
Ships equipped with sonar devices have also identified what they believe to be the fuselage of the plane. Several other big chunks have been found, the largest measuring 46 by 13 feet, though they have not yet received visual confirmation.
In addition to heavy rain and wind, the monsoon weather has turned the Java Sea into a slush bowl.
But in some ways, it is one of the best places to look for a missing plane, especially when compared to the extreme depths of the Indian Ocean where searchers continue to hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared last March with 239 people aboard.
The water at the Indonesia site is shallow, but this is the worst time of the year for a recovery operation to take place due to seasonal rains that have created choppy seas and blinding mud and silt from river runoff.
"Because the Java Sea is such an enclosed basin, and there's not really big currents passing through it, everything just stays there for quite a while and the waves make it so that the sediment doesn't slowly just sink to the bottom," said Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "It continuously keeps churning it up."
He said the conditions also make it particularly dangerous for divers because the water is dark and murky, making it easy for them to cut themselves on jagged wreckage or even become snared and trapped. During the dry season, he added, it would likely be easy to see the plane underwater from the sky.

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!'"

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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.

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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.

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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.