The Narrow Path to Victory: Dems fight to keep control of Senate in final week

Democratic control of this country has all but destroyed it. Another victory for them will probably be the last nail in the coffin for America as we knew it.

Amid all the predictions of a Republican-led stomping on Election Day, Democrats and the outside groups supporting them still see a path to victory and are planning a blitz in key states that could act as a firewall against a GOP Senate takeover.
As the campaign enters its final full week, Democrats also are trying to keep Republican attacks at bay by focusing on local issues – as opposed to President Obama – and are training resources on getting out the vote, including with early voting.
Republicans continue to voice confidence about their chances, and political prognosticators largely predict the GOP will control Congress next year.
But Democrats are staying focused.  
Justin Barasky, at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, pointed to key races where, despite what Republicans are saying about Obama being an albatross, the numbers appear to be improving for the Democrats.
That includes Democrat Michelle Nunn in her race against Republican David Perdue for the open Senate seat in Georgia. Recent polls have shown her up by a few points, though the race still is very close – and the winner needs over 50 percent to avoid a runoff.
Another open question is Kentucky, where Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes has endured a rough few weeks in her race against Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell. But the DSCC, after letting its previous ad buy expire, now is going back on air in the state in support of Grimes with a $650,000 purchase.
“The race is closing,” Barasky said. “I think Kentucky voters are sick of Mitch McConnell.” He added that “in every state the message will be different,” but it invariably will concentrate on Democrats fighting for the middle class while painting their opponents as subservient to outside interests.
McConnell’s campaign has pushed back hard on the contention that Grimes may be gaining, releasing its own numbers showing the incumbent well ahead. Grimes lately had been tripped up on the campaign trial after refusing to say if she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, reflecting the mine field that Democrats everywhere are facing over their ties to the president.
The Obama factor alone is one of the biggest challenges for many Democrats in battleground states.
Bill Scher, senior writer for the progressive Campaign for America’s Future, acknowledged they “are not asking him to stand with them on the stage together.”
However, he noted, “even though there is dissonance going on personally with Obama, it’s not like they are abandoning what they believe.”
This is nothing new: at the end of President George W. Bush's term, he was so much of a drag on GOP tickets that he was barely mentioned during the Republican National Convention in 2008. The Obama factor, though, is used as a bludgeon in almost every competitive Senate race this year by Republicans.
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, who is in a toss-up race with Republican Dan Sullivan, told the Washington Examiner the “president’s not relevant” to his race. “He’s gone in two years,” he said.
When asked in a recent television interview if he is a strong leader, endangered North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan couldn’t seem to think of any issues where the president has shined. “[He’s got] a lot on his plate,” she said, before stumbling through the rest of her response.
Barasky insists these races will be won on local issues and not on any national narrative driven by the GOP.
To advance their message in critical states, some candidates have brought in the big guns – not Obama, but figures like Bill and Hillary Clinton – who have been barnstorming across the country, stumping and fundraising on Democrats’ behalf. In just the last week, this included stops for Grimes, Sen. Al Franken in Minnesota, Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, and a number of gubernatorial candidates. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to make appearances this weekend for Hagan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire. Shaheen, though, is seeing Republican Scott Brown make significant gains in the polls.
Hillary Clinton recently raised $3.5 million in California for the campaign committees of House and Senate Democrats, including $2.1 million at a Hollywood event with Democratic mega-donors Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.
“In close races like Arkansas, Bill Clinton is as good a trump card as they can play to inoculate Mark Pryor from Obama there,” points out political strategist Dan Gerstein. “Clinton makes the race more about Arkansas.”
Most importantly, appearances by A-listers can help not so much draw undecided voters to the Democratic candidate but mobilize the troops, Gerstein said.
Getting out the vote in a typically sluggish midterm election is critical. Traditional constituencies like black and women voters are being targeted with television and radio ads to make sure they turn out. Particularly with women, Democrats are feeling the heat as recent polling shows Republicans closing the gender gap in Colorado, New Hampshire and Iowa, despite attempts to rally women on issues relating to contraception and abortion rights.
With black voters, The New York Times reported that Obama had also launched an “under-the-radar” campaign, including video ads and outreach to reporters, to ensure that millions of black voters go to the polls in states where they will make a big difference, specifically Georgia and North Carolina.
On “Fox News Sunday,” the heads of the two parties each voiced confidence about their chances.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the GOP “absolutely” will take the Senate.
“We feel really good about our chances of taking the Senate. And it's partly because number one, the president has taken the country in the wrong direction. These lieutenants out there across the country have followed the president off the plank,” he said.
His Democratic counterpart, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, claimed Democrats would hold their ground, and not give the GOP the six seats it needs to take control.
“The one question that voters are going to ask themselves … is who has my back? And on issue after issue, Democrats have stood up for jobs, for the economy, for investing in education and health care, those are the issues that voters are talking about,” she said.
She cited Georgia, and also South Dakota and Kansas – where independent candidates have caused problems for the GOP nominees – as battlegrounds in the final stretch.
But even Democrats acknowledge Republicans appear to have the enthusiasm edge – something that recent polling underscores.
“The side with the more energy is going to have an advantage and at this rate, in the states that are in play, the Republicans have the advantage because there is so much negative energy toward the president,” Gerstein said. “So the Democrats are doing whatever they can do to get their base out, plus whatever they can do to prevent Democratic-leaning voters and independents from voting Republican.”

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Dem. Sen Shaheen, GOP candidate Brown spar over Ebola, ISIS in NH debate

CONCORD, N.H. –  Picking up where they left off, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and her Republican challenger Scott Brown on Thursday used their latest debate to again emphasize their differences on immigration, the Islamic State group, Ebola and their efforts to help small businesses.
Shaheen, a Democrat and former governor, is seeking a second term in the U.S. Senate. Brown moved to New Hampshire last year after losing the seat he had won in 2010 to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. Polls show a tight contest, and the race is among those expected to determine control of the Senate.
In their third debate this month and second one this week, Brown criticized Shaheen on Thursday for not joining him in backing a ban on travel to and from the West African countries ravaged by the Ebola virus, calling it the latest example of her blind devotion to President Barack Obama.
"It's very typical that Senator Shaheen waits to get the OK from the president to do many different types of things," Brown said.
Shaheen said she'd support a ban if experts determine it would work, but that Brown is fear-mongering by trying to tie the issue to the need for greater U.S. border security.
"We don't need people who don't have medical expertise trying to get people concerned about what we've got to do to respond," she said.
Brown, who has made border security a key issue in his campaign, bristled when Shaheen later criticized him for not backing a comprehensive border security and immigration reform bill and for missing Homeland Security Committee hearings in the Senate. Noting his long career in the National Guard, he said he doesn't need anyone to tell him how porous the border is.
"There is a rational fear from citizens in New Hampshire and throughout this country that people are coming — criminal elements, terrorists, people with diseases coming through our border. So with respect, I don't need to attend those hearings," he said.
Brown in turn criticized Shaheen for missing Foreign Relations Committee hearings, including one about the rising threat of the Islamic State group. He argued that Obama's decision, backed by Shaheen, to not leave a transitional force in Iraq allowed the militant group to flourish, and repeated his claim that the group "wants to plant a flag at the White House." Shaheen said Brown was being irresponsible in "repeating ISIS talking points."
The two also tangled over their support for the state's small businesses, with Brown touting his endorsement by several national business groups, one of which gave Shaheen a "zero" rating. Shaheen listed several bills Brown voted against that she said helped New Hampshire companies, and said he voted to give tax incentives to companies that ship jobs overseas.
"We don't need to import a candidate who's going to outsource our jobs," she said, repeating one of her applause lines from a Democratic Party fundraiser last week.
Brown countered that small businesses are being hurt by the health care overhaul law Shaheen supports. He wants to repeal the law and argues that states could develop their own plans to make health care more affordable and accessible. Shaheen said Brown wants to force thousands of people to lose coverage and return to a time when insurance companies could deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

ISIS Inc.: US official reveals how terror network makes its millions

Islamic State militants are amassing a fortune through their web of criminal activity, including earning roughly $1 million a day from oil smuggling alone, according to a Treasury Department official who on Thursday provided unprecedented details about the illicit financial network.  
David Cohen, who leads the department's effort to undermine the Islamic State's finances, described the organization as one of the best-financed terror groups in the world.
"It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace,” Cohen said.
Cohen said the Islamic State, which the U.S. and its allies have been pounding with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, is earning millions from a combination of oil sales, ransoms and extortion schemes.
Cohen said kidnappings and ransom payments have brought in at least $20 million this year. He said the extortion and other criminal activity is bringing in several million per month.
Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, and later at the White House.
Cohen stressed the black market oil sales, which he said bring in about $1 million a day. He said the U.S. is trying to track down the middle men and other players to interrupt those sales. Cohen said these smuggling networks have been around for a long time and did not “pop up overnight,” but now it is clear that the oil is coming from the Islamic State.
The Treasury Department said the group is selling oil at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middlemen, including some from Turkey, who then transport it to be resold. "It also appears that some of the oil emanating from territory where ISIL operates has been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold into Turkey," he said.
Cohen said the Syrian government, too, has allegedly arranged to buy oil from the Islamic State – though the terror group ostensibly is fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Unlike the core Al Qaeda terrorist network, ISIS gets only a small share of funding from deep-pocketed donors and therefore does not depend primarily on moving money across international borders. Instead, the Islamic State group obtains the vast majority of its revenues through local criminal and terrorist activities, Cohen said, acknowledging that Treasury's tools are not particularly well-suited to combating extortion and local crime.
"They rob banks. They lay waste to thousands of years of civilization in Iraq and Syria by looting and selling antiquities," he said. "They steal livestock and crops from farmers. And despicably, they sell abducted girls and women as sex slaves."
In the Iraqi city of Mosul, Islamic State terrorists reportedly are going door-to-door, business-to-business, demanding cash at gunpoint, he said.
"A grocery store owner who refused to pay was warned with a bomb outside his shop. Others, who have not paid, have seen their relatives kidnapped.  ...  We've also seen reports that when customers make cash withdrawals from local banks where ISIL operates, ISIL has demanded as much as 10 percent of the value," Cohen said, using an acronym for the group.
Most of the group's money, however, comes from extracting oil and selling it to smugglers, who, in turn, transport the oil outside territory under Islamic State control.
Cohen noted that U.S.-led airstrikes on the group's oil refineries are threatening the militants' supply networks and that Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government -- the official ruling body of the predominantly Kurdish region of northern Iraq --are working to prevent the oil from crossing their borders.
Cohen acknowledged, however, that the group moves oil in illicit networks outside the formal economy, making it harder to track.
"But at some point, that oil is acquired by someone who operates in the legitimate economy and who makes use of the financial system. He has a bank account. His business may be financed, his trucks may be insured, his facilities may be licensed," he said.
"We not only can cut them off from the U.S. financial system and freeze their assets, but we can also make it very difficult for them to find a bank anywhere that will touch their money or process their transactions."

Michelle Obama apparently mixes up Colorado Senate candidates at campaign event

Aren't You Glad She's A Democrat?

Michelle Obama made yet another flub on the campaign trail Thursday when she apparently confused Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall with his Republican rival.
Obama spoke in Denver Thursday as part of a campaign event for Udall, who is engaged in a heated battle with his Republican opponent, Rep. Cory Gardner.
She touted Udall’s Senate record in her speech, and called him a “fifth-generation Coloradan.”
“Mark understands what makes this state special,” she said.
The only problem? Udall is not a fifth-generation Coloradan. In fact, he was born in Arizona and his father, former Rep. Mo Udall, served as a congressman from that state for decades.
It is Gardner who is a fifth-generation Colorado resident, a fact he touts frequently on the campaign trail. His website states he has “family roots dating back to 1886” in the state.
The incident followed another gaffe earlier this month by the first lady and the White House as they campaigned for Democratic Senate candidates.
While campaigning for Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley, who is in a tight Senate race against Republican Joni Ernst, the first lady repeatedly botched the candidate’s name, calling him “Bruce Bailey.”
At her second campaign stop for him, she got it right. But then the White House made another mistake in the transcript of the event. The transcript identified Braley as the Democratic candidate for governor instead of the candidate for Senate.
In wake of the incidents, one senior Senate Democratic aide was quoted telling the National Journal that “the ineptitude of the White House political operation has sunk from annoying to embarrassing.”
However, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Wednesday defended the administration’s support of fellow Democrats.
"I think the fact that the first lady was campaigning in Iowa yesterday in support of Congressmen Braley's campaign, and that the vice president is headed there next week says all you need to know about the White House's commitment to the success of Democrats like Mr. Braley," Earnest said.

Decorated soldier from 'Black Hawk Down' battle in Somalia dies at 52

 

A decorated soldier who participated in the Somalia battle immortalized by Hollywood blockbuster “Black Hawk Down” was reportedly found dead in his Georgia home earlier this month.
Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Gallagher, 52, died of natural causes as a result of a heart condition, the Army Times reports. He served as the command sergeant major for the Army’s Wounded Warrior Program, but had extensive experience in major combat operations, including Operation Just Cause in Panama and with Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia, which was later made famous by the 2001 film.
“You know, I don’t say this lightly, but Bob is probably one of, probably the best soldier I ever served with, retired Col. Greg Gadson told the newspaper. “That man really cared about soldiers.”
Born in Bayonne, N.J., Gallagher joined the Army in 1981 and later earned several awards and decorations, including a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars. He earned the Silver Star in 2002 during Operation Iraqi Freedom as troops advanced from Kuwait to Baghdad, when he suffered a leg wound but continued to direct his men.
“The best day and worst day of my life was when I served in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 3, 1993, as part of Task Force Ranger,” Gallagher said in 2010. “It was the worst day, because we lost 18 soldiers and 84 others, including myself, were wounded. It was the best day of my life because it showed the incredible performance of our warriors in long-protracted battle under extraordinary circumstances in an urban environment. Throughout it all, the warriors that fought that day performed in a manner that was consistent with the values of our nation, and I was very proud of that.”
A memorial ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 31 at Fort Benning in Georgia. Gallagher will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but a date has not yet been determined. He is survived by his wife, Denene, and sons Patrick and Sean.

Friend says Ottawa gunman knew homegrown jihadist, wanted to travel to Middle East

The convert to Islam who fatally shot a Canadian soldier guarding that country's national war memorial Wednesday morning before attacking Parliament and being fatally shot by its sergeant-at-arms was a bureaucrat's son who displayed possible signs of mental illness and had a connection to a homegrown jihadist who has traveled to Syria, according to a published report.
The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing a friend of 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, reported that the gunman knew Hasibullah Yusufzai, a British Columbia resident who was charged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in July with traveling to Syria with the intent of joining a deadly jihadist group. Yusufzai remains at large despite an international arrest warrant being issued for his capture.
Canadian authorities have not linked Zehaf-Bibeau to any known terrorists or terror groups, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper said investigators should learn in the coming days whether the gunman had any accomplices. It was not immediately clear whether Zehaf-Bibeau knew of Martin Couture-Rouleau, another Muslim convert from Quebec who killed one soldier and injured another in a hit-and-run attack Monday. 
The paper had previously reported that Zehaf-Bibeau had been designated by authorities as a "high-risk traveller" and was unable to secure documents necessary to go abroad. The friend, a fellow convert to Islam named David Bathurst, told the paper that Zehaf-Bibeau had told him six weeks ago that he wanted to travel to Libya, where he had previously spent time, to study Arabic and learn more about Islam. Bathurst told the paper he urged his friend to make certain that he would only travel to the Middle East to study and "nothing else."
Zehaf-Bibeau may also have had a family connection to Libya. Official documents list Zehaf-Bibeau's father as a man named Bulgasem Zehaf, a Quebec businessman. The Globe and Mail cited this 2011 Washington Times report that quoted a Montreal man named as "Belgasem Zahef" who had taken part in the revolt against Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. That man claimed that he had traveled from Canada to join the anti-Qaddafi rebels and had been detained for a month at an oil terminal, where he had witnessed scenes of torture. 
Zehaf-Bibeau's mother is Susan Bibeau, the deputy chairperson of a division of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board. Zehaf and Bibeau divorced in 1999, according to the Globe and Mail. 
Bathurst told the paper Zehaf-Bibeau had moved to British Columbia to find work as a miner and laborer before the two met in a suburban Vancouver mosque approximately three years ago. Bathurst said that his friend displayed signs of mental instability that attracted the attention of the mosque's elders. 
"We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don’t know how he worded it: He said the devil is after him," Bathurst said in a Globe and Mail interview. He said his friend frequently talked about the presence of "Shaytan" in the world – an Arabic term for devils and demons. "I think he must have been mentally ill." Bathurst added that elders at the mosque eventually asked Zehaf-Bibeau to stop attending prayers due to his "erratic" behavior, though he did not describe any specific incidents. 
Zehaf-Bibeau was also in trouble with the law in British Columbia, after racking up a long criminal record in Quebec since the early 2000s for crimes as varied as drug possession, credit card forgery, and robbery. He was also charged with robbery in Vancouver in 2011, but eventually was sentenced to one day in jail after pleading guilty to uttering a threat.  His lawyer at the time, Brian Anderson described the threat as "something fairly minor and fairly bizarre." Anderson added that Zehaf-Bibeau was given pretrial psychiatric assessment and found fit.

Man apprehended after scaling White House fence in latest security breach

A man was apprehended after he scaled a White House fence Wednesday night, the latest security breach at a time when the Secret Service faces increased scrutiny over its ability to protect the president and his residence.
The man, identified by authorities late Wednesday as Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Md.,  was caught on the North Lawn shortly after he made it over the fence around 7:15 p.m. He was subdued by armed officers and several guard dogs, and was then led through the northwest gate in handcuffs.
President Obama was present at the White House on Wednesday night, though the jumper didn't make it anywhere near the building.
Charges against Adesanya were pending Wednesday night. He was unarmed at the time of his arrest. Two Secret Service K-9 dogs were taken to a veterinarian for injuries sustained during the incident.
Wednesday's incident comes after a series of embarrassing incidents for the Secret Service, whose director, Julia Pierson, resigned earlier this month after a series of security lapses.
Earlier this week, the arraignment of Omar Gonzalez, who allegedly entered the White House after scaling a fence on the north lawn last month, was delayed by a federal judge because of questions about his mental competence to stand trial.
He was brought to court to enter a not-guilty plea to a six-count grand jury indictment accusing him of carrying a knife into the presidential mansion and assaulting two Secret Service officers.
After he was apprehended in the White House on Sept. 19, Gonzalez told a Secret Service agent that he was concerned that the atmosphere was collapsing and needed to get the information to the president so that he could get the word out.
Following his arrest, Gonzalez consented to a search of his car, which contained hundreds of rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete.
The grand jury indictment accuses Gonzalez of unlawful possession of nine different types of ammunition without a valid registration certificate for a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds.
Another man was arrested after allegedly scaling the White House fence on Sept. 11. The Secret Service has also been under scrutiny after nearly two dozen agents were disciplined or fired as part of a 2012 incident in which Secret Service personnel brought prostitutes into their hotel in Cartagena, Colombia ahead of President Obama's trip to the Summit of the Americas in April 2012.

Republicans lead Dems in early votes cast in Iowa for first time, GOP says

More registered Republicans than registered Democrats have cast a ballot during early voting in Iowa for the first time in a modern-day election, according to a GOP report.
The report stated that as of Wednesday, the cumulative number of registered Republican early and absentee voting returns surpassed those of the Democrats by 305 ballots. 
An Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman told FoxNews.com that the numbers of early ballots cast are in flux, saying the numbers will continue to change over the coming days. She added that the party believes they "have a significant advantage on the ground."
"Democrats are expanding the midterm electorate and are turning out non-midterm voters, while Republicans are simply encouraging their base to vote early," Christina Freundlich said in a statement. "In requests alone, Democrats hold a 18,000 vote advantage relative to the Republican ballots, and we expect those ballots to flood in over the final days."
The Wednesday numbers were the first time the GOP has led in Iowa in modern early voting history, according to Republicans. There are 13 remaining days of early voting in the state.
“The momentum has been building for a long time, but this development means Republicans have crossed a major Democrat firewall that had given them a boost going into Election Day in previous election cycles,” Republican Party of Iowa chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement. “Democrats are nowhere near where they need to be, and they are quickly running out of time.”
Absentee voting for this November’s midterm election began in Iowa in late September. The most competitive race in the state by far is the contentious battle between Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley and Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, which is currently held by Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. The two candidates are in a dead heat, though Ernst is slightly leading in a Real Clear Politics polling average.
According to the memo, at this point in 2010 the Democrats led in early and absentee voting returns by 16,426 ballots. In 2008, they led by 56,908.
The Associated Press reported last month that the number of Iowa voters who had requested an absentee ballot 43 days out from the election nearly doubled that of 2010. Requests for absentee ballots for registered Republican voters were also up by 145 percent.
The GOP said in the report that the party has been engaging in a concentrated effort to increase its number of early voters this year.

Companies try to escape ObamaCare penalties

With companies set to face fines next year for not complying with the new mandate to offer health insurance, some are pursuing strategies like enrolling employees in Medicaid to avoid penalties and hold down costs.
The health law’s penalties, which can amount to about $2,000 per employee, were supposed to start this year, but the Obama administration delayed them until 2015, when they take effect for firms that employ at least 100 people.
Now, as employers race to find ways to cover their full-time workers while holding a lid on costs, insurance brokers and benefits administrators are pitching a variety of options, sometimes exploiting wrinkles in the law.
The Medicaid option is drawing particular interest from companies with low-wage workers, brokers say. If an employee qualifies for Medicaid, which is jointly funded by the federal government and the states, the employer pays no penalty for that coverage.
“You’re taking advantage of the law as written,” said Adam Okun, a senior vice president at New York insurance broker Frenkel Benefits LLC.
Locals 8 Restaurant Group LLC, with about 1,000 workers, already offers health coverage, and next year plans to dial back some employees’ premium contributions. That is because an employer can owe penalties if its coverage doesn’t meet the law’s standard for affordability.
But the company, which is based in Hartford, Conn., hopes to reduce its costs by offering eligible employees a chance to enroll in Medicaid, using a contractor called BeneStream Inc. to help them sign up. The government program is more affordable for employees and saves money for Locals 8, said Chief Executive Al Gamble. “The burden gets shifted to Medicaid,” he said.
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Detroit officials bristle at UN visit, scolding over water shut-offs

Detroit officials are fuming after two visiting United Nations lawyers scolded the city for cutting off water to delinquent customers and described the shut-offs as a “human rights” violation. 
The response follows a three-day visit to Detroit -- which desperately is trying to bail itself out of bankruptcy -- from two representatives with the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“It is contrary to human rights to disconnect water from people who simply do not have the means to pay their bills,” Catarina de Albuquerque, one of the two representatives, said Monday at the conclusion of their visit. 
“I heard testimonies from poor, African American residents of Detroit who were forced to make impossible choices -- to pay the water bill or to pay their rent.”
But the mayor's office blasted the U.N. review as one-sided. Alexis Wiley, Mayor Mike Duggan’s top aide, said the city is "very disappointed" with them. 
"They weren't interested in the facts," she said. "They took a position and never once [before Monday] reached out to the city for data."
The policy change shuts off water to businesses and residents who either are 60 days past due or owe more than $150.
Detroit -- the country's largest municipality to file for bankruptcy -- reports making 27,000 shut-offs from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30.
Most shut-offs were halted for several weeks this summer to give residents an opportunity to enter a payment plan, but they have resumed with 5,100 shut-offs in September alone.
Detroit officials have defended the decision, arguing that customers collectively owed more than $115 million in delinquent water-and-sewer department payments before the city took action and that their efforts are improving the situation.
The department said it collected about $2.5 million in 2012 and 2013 and about $3.7 million in the first nine months of this year.
Ordinary residents aren't the only ones subject to the policy. Service was shut off to one city council member. And an investigation by a local news organization found city officials have collected on the more than $80,000 owed by the Joe Louis Arena, home of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, and roughly $55,000 past due from Ford Field, where the NFL’s Detroit Lions play home games.
Wiley also said Detroit is helping residents by improving customer service, getting 33,000 people in the payment plans and cutting residential calls for water assistance by more than 50 percent.
De Albuquerque and the other representative, Leilani Farha, visited Detroit after activists appealed to the U.N. for assistance. Among them was the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Michigan director Kary Moss said: "It's unfortunate that, in the Great Lakes State, we need a visit from an international body to remind us of our most fundamental obligation to our citizens. Water is life." 
The representatives met with residents and with Duggan and water department officials for about two hours Monday morning.
De Albuquerque and Farha, also known as U.N. special rapporteurs, cited such other problems as the city’s drastic population decline, rising unemployment and the utility passing on higher costs associated with an aging system.
De Albuquerque said she has seen shut-offs in other U.S. cities and developed nations, but nothing like Detroit. "Our conclusion is that you have here in Detroit a man-made perfect storm," she said. "The scale of the disconnections in the city is unprecedented."
De Albuquerque and Farha say the mayor’s plan to help delinquent customers fails to help the chronically poor and those who face shut-offs. Farha also said at least some residents said their past-due bills were the result of city billing or accounting errors.
However, they called their conversation with Detroit officials "constructive." They also said they can't enforce recommendations but want to help the city and residents resolve the situation.
Some advocates took the issue to federal court, but the judge overseeing Detroit's municipal bankruptcy trial ruled last month he lacked authority to force the utility to stop the shut-offs.

$10G to watch grass grow: Coburn report details worst examples of gov't waste

As American taxpayers worried about the terror threat from the Islamic State, the crisis at the border and the economy, the U.S. government spent their money to give rabbits massages, to teach sea monkeys to synchronize swim and to literally watch grass grow.
These and other examples of wasteful government spending were detailed by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn in his annual “Wastebook,” his final edition since he is retiring early next year.
“I have learned from these experiences that Washington will never change itself,” Coburn, R-Okla., said in a statement. “But even if the politicians won’t stop stupid spending, taxpayers always have the last word.”
The first example cited in the report is the millions spent on what one attorney called the government’s “dirty little secret”: paid administrative leave for troublesome employees. Workers who were placed on leave for disciplinary reasons, such as misconduct, security concerns or criminal issues, received $20 million while on leave this year.
These workers, according to Coburn, were essentially on a paid vacation that can last for months or years. The GAO also detailed this phenomenon in a report Monday. According to the GAO, during a three-year period more than 57,000 employees were placed on leave for 30 days or more, costing taxpayers $775 million in salary alone.
Another wasteful project with a big price tag is the Pentagon’s plan to destroy $16 billion in military-grade ammunition that it deems no longer useful. Sounds pricey, right? Well add in the fact that on top of that, the feds plan to spend $1 billion just to destroy the ammo.
“The amount of surplus ammunition is now so large that the cost of destroying it will equal the full years’ salary for over 54,000 Army privates,” the report notes.
Other examples vary from the serious, to the aggravating, to just plain bizarre. One that takes the cake is the $10,000 the government spent to watch grass grow --- seriously.
That project is the brainchild of the Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is paying for the growth of the smooth cordgrass to be observed on a Florida reserve. The money covers “the cost to monitor grasses, restore two acres as a demonstration and publish a guide on best practices for cultivating the cordgrass, known formally as Spartina alterniflora.”
Still more examples show that while some Americans are struggling to make ends meet in a rough economy, there is a group in the U.S. getting major perks: animals.
In one instance, the government shelled out $387,000 to provide rabbits with a relaxing daily massage. The critters were treated to a “mechanical device that simulates the long, flowing strokes used in Swedish massages” to study the effect of massages on exercise recovery, according to the report.
Another animal getting a fun extracurricular activity courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers are sea monkeys. The government dropped $50,000 on a project to study the swirl of sea monkeys’ collective movements. The researchers did so by choreographing a synchronized swimming routine for the tiny shrimp.
The government also spent $856,000 to throw mountain lions on a treadmill and $171,000 to watch monkeys gamble. They also spent $331,000 on a study that led to a mind-blowing discovery, that "hungry people get cranky and aggressive."
“With no one watching over the vast bureaucracy, the problem is not just what Washington isn’t doing, but what it is doing.” Coburn said in the statement. “Only someone with too much of someone else’s money and not enough accountability for how it was being spent could come up some of these projects.”
Other notable examples include $90 million spent to promote U.S. culture around the world, $414,000 spent on a U.S. Army video game that some in the intelligence community have worried could inadvertently train terrorists and $4.6 million spent on “lavish” homes to house Border Patrol agents in areas temporarily.
Coburn, known as “Dr. No” for his strong stance against excess spending in Washington, announced in January he is retiring from the Senate early due to ongoing health issues. The Republican had already announced he would not seek reelection but decided to leave his term two years early, in January 2014.
A Coburn spokesperson told FoxNews.com that the senator has said that answers about if and how the “Wastebook” will continue will have to wait until next year. The spokesperson said Coburn hopes every lawmaker will make monitoring government waste a priority, but that one does not have to be a current lawmaker to do so.'

US working closely with Kurds to save Kobani, report says

U.S. and Kurdish commanders are collaborating closely to ensure that the Syrian border town of Kobani does not fall to Islamic State militants, in a change of earlier policy, according to a published report. 
According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. and Syrian Kurdish military leaders are coordinating air and ground operations around Kobani, with one Kurdish general even helping to spot targets for U.S. airstrikes and delivering battlefield intelligence reports daily to American military planners. 
The extent of this new cooperation was demonstrated earlier this week, when American C-130s made 28 separate airdrops of weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to Kurdish forces fighting to hold the city. The Journal reports that the planned airdrops were presented this past Friday to President Obama, who gave the operation immediate approval. According to the paper, the airdrops were proposed after an assessment that Kobani's defenders could run out of ammunition in as little as three days without them. 
The weapons were Kurdish arms, shipped from Irbil in Iraq to Kuwait, where U.S. soldiers sorted them into drop-ready packages, the Journal reports. 
In addition to revealing the close cooperation between Washington and the Syrian Kurdish forces, the airdrops also reveal a change in U.S. goals for the airstrikes that have targeted Islamic State fighters in Syria for the past month. 
Initially, the Journal reports, the goal of striking positions near Kobani was purely to kill as many members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as possible. On Friday, the same day the supply drops reportedly were proposed at the White House, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of U.S. Central Command, cautioned reporters at a Pentagon news conference that "it's highly possible that Kobani may fall." Meanwhile, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the ISIS focus on Kobani had created "a rather target-rich environment ... for American and coalition air strikes."
However, that changed as ISIS came close to capturing the town, forcing the Kurdish fighters into a desperate battle as thousands of refugees made a run for the Turkish border just a few miles away.
"By stopping them, and by doing tremendous damage to them, you begin to blunt the sense of momentum, particularly in Syria," a senior defense official told the Journal. Another senior U.S. official put it more bluntly: "This is a war of flags. And Kobani was the next place Islamic State wanted to plant its flag ... Kobani became strategic."
Meanwhile, Turkey Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday that it would allow Syrian Kurdish refugees to cross through Turkish territory on their way to Kobani from Iraq to fight ISIS. However, The paper reports that no such forces had arrived as of Tuesday.

Ebola Czar Cartoon

City threatens to arrest ministers who refuse to perform same-sex weddings

Two Christian ministers who own an Idaho wedding chapel were told they had to either perform same-sex weddings or face jail time and up to a $1,000 fine, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court.
Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Donald and Evelyn Knapp, ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel in Coeur d’Alene.
“Right now they are at risk of being prosecuted,” their ADF attorney, Jeremy Tedesco, told me. “The threat of enforcement is more than just credible.”

“The Knapps are in fear that if they exercise their First Amendment rights they will be cited, prosecuted and sent to jail.”- Alliance Defending Freedom attorney, Jeremy Tedesco

According to the lawsuit, the wedding chapel is registered with the state as a “religious corporation” limited to performing “one-man-one-woman marriages as defined by the Holy Bible.”
But the chapel is also registered as a for-profit business – not as a church or place of worship – and city officials said that means the owners must comply with a local nondiscrimination ordinance.
That ordinance, passed last year, prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and it applies to housing, employment and public accommodation.
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City Attorney Warren Wilson told The Spokesman-Review in May that the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel likely would be required to follow the ordinance.
“I would think that the Hitching Post would probably be considered a place of public accommodation that would be subject to the ordinance,” he said.
He also told television station KXLY that any wedding chapel that turns away a gay couple would in theory be violating the law, “and you’re looking at a potential misdemeanor citation.” 
Wilson confirmed to Knapp my worst fear -- that even ordained ministers would be required to perform same-sex weddings.
“Wilson also responded that Mr. Knapp was not exempt from the ordinance because the Hitching Post was a business and not a church,” the lawsuit states.
And if he refused to perform the ceremonies, Wilson reportedly told the minister that he could be fined up to $1,000 and sentenced to up to 180 days in jail.
Now all of that was a moot point because, until last week, gay marriage was not legal in Idaho.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order on May 13 allowing same-sex marriages to commence in Idaho on Oct. 15. Two days later, the folks at the Hitching Post received a telephone call.
A man had called to inquire about a same-sex wedding ceremony. The Hitching Post declined, putting it in violation of the law.
City officials did not respond to my requests for an interview, nor did they respond to requests from local news outlets.
“The government should not force ordained ministers to act contrary to their faith under threat of jail time and criminal fines,” Tedesco said.
“The city is on seriously flawed legal ground, and our lawsuit intends to ensure that this couple’s freedom to adhere to their own faith as pastors is protected, just as the First Amendment intended.”
Alliance Defending Freedom also filed a temporary restraining order to stop the city from enforcing the ordinance.
“The Knapps are in fear that if they exercise their First Amendment rights they will be cited, prosecuted and sent to jail,” Tedesco told me.
It’s hard to believe this could happen in the United States. But as the lawsuit states, the Knapps are in a “constant state of fear that they may have to go to jail, pay substantial fines, or both, resulting in them losing the business that God has called them to operate and which they have faithfully operated for 25 years.”
The lawsuit came the same week that the city of Houston issued subpoenas demanding that five Christian pastors turn over sermons dealing with homosexuality and gender identity.
What in heaven’s name is happening to our country, folks? I was under the assumption that churches and pastors would not be impacted by same-sex marriage.
“The other side insisted this would never happen – that pastors would not have to perform same-sex marriages,” Tedesco told me. “The reality is – it’s already happening.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told me it’s “open season on Americans who refuse to bow to the government’s redefinition of marriage.”
“Americans are witnesses to the reality that redefining marriage is less about the marriage altar and more about fundamentally altering the freedoms of the other 98 percent of Americans,” Perkins said.
Why should evangelical Christian ministers be forced to perform and celebrate any marriage that conflicts with their beliefs?
“This is the brave new world of government-sanctioned same-sex unions – where Americans are forced to celebrate these unions regardless of their religious beliefs,” Perkins told me.
As I write in my new book, “God Less America,” we are living in a day when those who support traditional marriage are coming under fierce attack. 
The incidents in Houston and now in Coeur d’Alene are the just the latest examples of a disturbing trend in the culture war – direct attacks on clergy.
“Government officials are making clear they will use their government power to punish those who oppose the advances of homosexual activists,” Perkins said.
I’m afraid Mr. Perkins is absolutely right.
No one should be discriminated against but have you noticed that any time a city passes a “nondiscrimination” ordinance, it’s the Christians who wind up being discriminated against?

Dem candidate Nunn uses HW Bush image in campaign ad -- despite being warned

WASHINGTON –  Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn once again has used former President George H.W. Bush’s image to push her own Senate bid, despite repeatedly being asked by the 41st president not to do that. 
Bush already endorsed Nunn's Republican opponent, David Perdue, and his office is not happy about Nunn defying his wishes again. 
Nunn’s new ad is meant to respond to Perdue's narrative that she is a President Obama lackey. The ad, which began airing Saturday, tries to explain a photo the Perdue camp has used of her standing next to the sitting president. The picture was taken at an Oct. 16, 2009, event that Nunn and Obama attended.
Nunn’s new 30-second ad starts off with the same picture that Perdue uses in his ads. In the ad, Nunn asks, “Have you seen this picture? It’s the one David Perdue has used to try and attack me in this campaign. But what he doesn’t tell you is that it was taken at an event honoring President [H.W.] Bush, who I worked for as CEO of his Points of Life Foundation.” 
The ad then shows an image of Nunn next to the 41st president. (Nunn, as noted in the ad, previously ran the Points of Light Foundation alongside Neil Bush, the ex-president's son, for several years.) 
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath made clear that the former president did not approve that message. 
“Michelle and her team have been clearly, repeatedly and consistently told that President Bush did not want them to use his photo as part of this campaign,” McGrath said in an email to FoxNews.com. “Apparently, the Nunn team feels they can repeatedly disregard the former president’s wishes, which is very disappointing because it’s so disrespectful.”
This is not the first time Bush 41 has emerged as an issue in the Georgia Senate race. 
Earlier in the campaign season, Perdue aired ads claiming the foundation previously led by Nunn and founded by Bush gave money to organizations linked to terrorists.
The ad triggered a feud of sorts between the Perdue camp and the president’s son, Neil Bush, who is the current chairman of the Points of Light Foundation. The younger Bush called the allegations “ridiculous.” 
"Neither Points of Light nor Michelle Nunn have had anything to do with funneling money from our organization to terrorist organizations," Neil Bush said in an interview at the time with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 
The office of George H.W. Bush, though, did not speak out against the ad. 
McGrath has criticized Nunn before, saying that she did not have permission to use the president’s photos in any of her campaign ads and that Bush’s objections had been privately communicated to Nunn’s camp. 
The Georgia Senate race is one of the most competitive in the country. Nunn and Perdue have been trading the lead in the polls; an average of polling from Real Clear Politics shows the race virtually tied. 
Democratic groups have turned their attention to the Georgia Senate race and recently allocated another $1 million in television ads for Nunn.
Both candidates come from political families.
Nunn is the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn – a conservative Democrat who served as Georgia’s senator from 1972-1997. Perdue’s cousin, Sonny Perdue, served as a state senator for more than a decade and was governor of Georgia from 2003 until 2011.
Calls to Nunn’s campaign headquarters for comment were not immediately returned.

Ebola ‘czar’ to skip House hearing, aide says

America's newly appointed Ebola ‘czar’ is not yet in the House — at least not the ones on Pennsylvania Avenue or Capitol Hill.
Ron Klain, appointed last Friday by President Obama to direct the nation's response to the Ebola crisis, sent his regrets Monday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which had invited him to testify this Friday, a committee aide told Fox News.
Klain was invited to join Defense and Health and Human Services department officials also slated to testify at the hearing.
“The White House has informed us that he has not yet officially started and will not be able to attend Friday,” the committee aide told Fox News.
Klain, a former chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, has yet to formally start his new assignment — though he was spotted on the White House campus on Saturday. Fox News was told, however, that he did not meet with the president – and was not part of an all-hands-on-deck Ebola meeting that same day.
He is expected to start sometime this week.
Despite bipartisan calls for an Ebola czar, however, the selection of Klain angered some Republicans, who complained he has no health care experience. Klain, after leaving Biden's staff, went into the private sector, serving as president of Case Holdings and general counsel for venture-capital firm Revolution LLC. 
“That the president chose a political operative rather than a health care expert to head up his administration’s response to an outbreak of a deadly disease says a lot – and nothing positive – about the White House’s line of thinking,” Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said in a statement on Friday.
Health officials, though, have defended Klain as someone who brings needed managerial experience to a complex task.
“He's a highly experienced, highly talented manager. He's been chief of staff for Vice President Gore, for Vice President Biden, has had experience in the Congress,” Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday at a town hall-style meeting. “He will be coordinating the interactions among a multi-agency endeavor that are involved, each of which have their own responsibility.”
Fauci also stressed that Klain is not a “czar.”
“It's an Ebola response coordinator is the title for Ron Klain,” Fauci said.

Trump Cartoon

With a family like this: Nevada GOP candidate's relatives tell voters to pick rival

That’s going to make for an awkward Thanksgiving.
Adam Laxalt is running for attorney general in Nevada as a Republican, but is being opposed by an unusual group: his own flesh and blood. In fact, some of Laxalt's extended family members have written a public letter urging voters to pick Laxalt’s Democratic opponent, Ross Miller, instead of their relative.
Laxalt's campaign consultant Robert Uithoven dismissed the letter as a desperate move from Miller's campaign, and said Laxalt "doesn't have anything bad to say" about his relatives.
“The only reason our opponent would exploit this issue and circulate this kind of thing is he sees himself losing his political career," Uithoven told FoxNews.com.  
In the letter, which was published Thursday by the Las Vegas Sun, the seven family members said they felt they had to speak up in support of Miller “to maintain the integrity of our home state of Nevada.”
“Know that our message does not originate from a Republican, Democratic or even family affiliation,” the letter says. “It has to do with the most basic question all voters must ask themselves when they step into the voting booth, ‘Who really is the best qualified candidate for attorney general for the state of Nevada?’”
The message was signed by Adam Laxalt's aunts, Kevin and Neena Laxalt, as well as his cousins Kevan, Kristin, Michelle, Peter and Meggan.
A FoxNews.com request for comment from the Miller campaign was not immediately returned.
Uithoven said there are many family members that support Laxalt's campaign, and have been with the "candidate every step of the way." He said he believes the letter will have little impact because Nevada's voters are focused on real issues, not a family feud.
"Most voters, they are voting for a candidate they are not voting for a family," he said. 
Laxalt’s mother, who is also named Michelle Laxalt, also spoke out in support of her son.
"Nevada is full of large families, all of whom may not adore one another at all times. I doubt Nevadans are truly interested with family beefs that are not their own," she said in a statement to the Associated Press. "Many of us are so proud and supportive of Adam, his military service to our nation and his desire to serve in public office."
This isn’t the first time Laxalt’s family drama has made headlines.
The 34-year-old was revealed last year to be the secret child of longtime New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici and Michelle Laxalt, whose father former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, served alongside Domenici for years.
Domenici and Michelle Laxalt, who was 24 when she had her son, said at the time that they decided to go public with their decades-old secret because they believed someone was about to release the information in an attempt to smear Domenici, who had a reputation as a deeply devoted family man.
"I deeply regret this and am very sorry for my behavior," Domenici, 80, said in his statement. "I hope New Mexicans will view that my accomplishments for my beloved state outweigh my personal transgression."
Domenici was the longest-serving senator in New Mexico history when he retired in 2010 after six terms. Michelle Laxalt became a prominent lobbyist, Republican activist and television commentator after the affair.

Dozens of expelled Nazis reportedly paid millions in Social Security

Former Auschwitz guard Jakob Denzinger lived the American dream.
His plastics company in the Rust Belt town of Akron, Ohio, thrived. By the late 1980s, he had acquired the trappings of success: a Cadillac DeVille and a Lincoln Town Car, a lakefront home, investments in oil and real estate.
Then the Nazi hunters showed up.
In 1989, as the U.S. government prepared to strip him of his citizenship, Denzinger packed a pair of suitcases and fled to Germany. Denzinger later settled in this pleasant town on the Drava River, where he lives comfortably, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. He collects a Social Security payment of about $1,500 each month, nearly twice the take-home pay of an average Croatian worker.
Denzinger, 90, is among dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards who collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation found.
The payments flowed through a legal loophole that has given the U.S. Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal government records.
Like Denzinger, many lied about their Nazi pasts to get into the U.S. following World War II, and eventually became American citizens.
Among those who benefited:
--armed SS troops who guarded the Nazi network of camps where millions of Jews perished.
--an SS guard who took part in the brutal liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland that killed as many as 13,000 Jews.
--a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.
--a German rocket scientist accused of using slave labor to build the V-2 rocket that pummeled London. He later won NASA's highest honor for helping to put a man on the moon.
The AP's findings are the result of more than two years of interviews, research and analysis of records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources.
The Justice Department denied using Social Security payments as a tool for removing Nazi suspects. But records show the U.S. State Department and the Social Security Administration voiced grave concerns over the methods used by the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations.
State officials derogatorily called the practice "Nazi dumping" and claimed the OSI was bargaining with suspects so they would leave voluntarily.
Since 1979, the AP analysis found, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the United States kept their Social Security benefits.
Legislation that would have closed the Social Security loophole failed 15 years ago, partly due to opposition from the OSI. Since then, according to the AP's analysis, at least 10 Nazi suspects kept their benefits after leaving. The Social Security Administration confirmed payments to seven who are deceased. One living suspect was confirmed through an AP interview. Two others met the conditions to keep their benefits.
Of the 66 suspects, at least four are alive, living in Europe on U.S. Social Security.
In newly uncovered Social Security Administration records, the AP found that by March 1999, 28 suspected Nazi criminals had collected $1.5 million in Social Security payments after their removal from the U.S.
Since then, the AP estimates the amount paid out has reached into the millions. That estimate is based on the number of suspects who qualified and the three decades that have passed since the first former Nazis, Arthur Rudolph and John Avdzej, signed agreements that required them to leave the country but ensured their benefits would continue.
Long-living beneficiaries can collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments.
A single male who earned an average wage of $44,800 a year and turned 65 in 1990, the year after Denzinger did, would receive nearly $15,000 annually in Social Security benefits, according to the Urban Institute, a nonprofit public policy group in Washington. That's $375,000 over 25 years. The amounts are adjusted for inflation.
The Social Security Administration refused the AP's request for the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts of those payments.
Spokesman William "BJ" Jarrett said the agency does not track data specific to Nazi cases. A further barrier, Jarrett said, is that there is no exception in U.S. privacy law that "allows us to disclose information because the individual is a Nazi war criminal or an accused Nazi war criminal."
The agency also declined to make the acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, or another senior agency official available for an interview.
The Justice Department declined the AP's request for an official to speak on the record. Spokesman Peter Carr said in an emailed statement that Social Security payments never were used as an incentive or as a threat to persuade Nazi suspects to depart voluntarily.
"The matter of Social Security benefits eligibility was raised by defense counsel, not by the department, and the department neither used retirement benefits as an inducement to leave the country and renounce citizenship nor threatened that failure to depart and renounce would jeopardize continued receipt of benefits," Carr said.
The department opposed the legislation in 1999, Carr acknowledged, because it would have undermined the OSI's mandate to remove Nazi criminals as expeditiously as possible to countries that would prosecute them.
Speed was a key factor.
Survivors of the Holocaust who made the United States their home after the war had been forced to share it with their former Nazi tormenters. That had to change, and fast, the OSI's proponents said. If suspects were to stand trial, they needed to be found and ousted while they were alive. The OSI and its backers didn't want death to cheat justice.
Yet only 10 suspects were ever prosecuted after being expelled, according to the department's own figures.
At his home in Osijek, Denzinger would not discuss his situation. "I don't want to say anything," he told the AP in German as he rested on his walker in the hallway of his apartment.
But Denzinger's son, who lives in the U.S., confirmed his father receives Social Security payments and said he deserved them. "This isn't coming out of other people's pockets," Thomas Denzinger said. "He paid into the system." Plus his father is paying 30 percent in taxes. "They should be taking out nothing," he said.
Another former Nazi camp guard, longtime Montana resident Martin Hartmann, lives in Berlin and also is collecting Social Security, according to a person with knowledge of Hartmann's finances who requested anonymity because the person did not want to be associated with Hartmann's Nazi history. Hartmann, 95, left the U.S. in 2007, just before a federal judge issued an order to revoke his citizenship.
The loophole also means new suspects, including former SS unit commander Michael Karkoc, whom the AP located last year in Minnesota, could retain benefits even if removed to another country.
German prosecutors opened an investigation after the AP uncovered documentation showing Karkoc, 95, ordered his unit to raze a Polish village during the war. Dozens of women and children were killed in the attack.

US drops arms, ammunition to Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani

The U.S. military said late Sunday that it had dropped weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to Kurdish forces battling to hold the Syrian border town of Kobani against Islamic State militants.
The airdrops were the first of their kind and followed weeks of U.S. and coalition airstrikes in and near Kobani. Earlier Sunday, U.S. Central Command (CentCom) said that it had launched 11 airstrikes overnight in the area.
CentCom said U.S. C-130 cargo planes made multiple drops of arms and supplies provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq. It said they were intended to enable continued resistance to Islamic State efforts to take full control of Kobani.
In a conference call with reporters after CentCom announced the airdrops, senior administration officials said three C-130 planes dropped 27 bundles of small arms, ammunition and medical supplies. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
One official said that while the results of the mission are still being assessed, it appeared that "the vast majority" of the supplies reached the intended Kurdish fighters.
The official also said the C-130s encountered no resistance from the ground in Syria during their flights in and out of Syrian airspace.
The airdrops are almost certain to anger the Turkish government, which has said it would oppose any U.S. arms transfers to the Kurdish rebels in Syria. Turkey views the main Kurdish group in Syria as an extension of the Turkish Kurd group known as the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terror group by the U.S. and by NATO.
President Barack Obama called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday to discuss the situation in Syria and notify him of the plan to make airdrops Sunday, one administration official told reporters. He would not describe Erdogan's reaction but said U.S. officials are clear about Turkey's opposition to any moves that help Kurdish forces that Turkey views as an enemy.
One of the administration officials said the airdrops should be seen as a humanitarian move. He said U.S. officials believe that if Kobani were to fall, the Islamic State militants would massacre Kurds in the town.
Another administration official said "you might see more" U.S. resupply missions to benefit the Kurdish fighters in Kobani in the days ahead. Yet another administration official said a land route to resupply the Kurds had been under discussion but would require Turkish cooperation. He said talks on resupply needs and means would continue.
In a written statement, CentCom said its forces have conducted more than 135 airstrikes against Islamic State forces in Kobani.
Using an acronym for the Islamic State group, Central Command said, "Combined with continued resistance to ISIL on the ground, indications are that these strikes have slowed ISIL advances into the city, killed hundreds of their fighters and destroyed or damaged scores of pieces of ISIL combat equipment and fighting positions."
The airdrops came amid reports of some of the fiercest fighting yet in the month-long battle for Kobani, with Reuters reporting that Islamic state fighters had attacked Kurdish fighters with mortars and car bombs. The Britain-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights claimed that 70 Islamic State fighters had been killed over two days, though those reports could not be immediately confirmed.

Democratic National Committee chief predicts Dems 'are going to hold the Senate'

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, leader of the Democratic National Committee, said Sunday that her party will keep control of the Senate next month, suggesting that GOP efforts to drag President Obama into races is a failed strategy.
“We are going to hold the Senate,” the Florida lawmaker told “Fox News Sunday.” “The president is not on the ballot.”
Her remarks come weeks after Obama argued that he indeed was “not on the ballot this fall” but that “every single one” of his policies are.
Since the start of the 2014 election cycle, Republicans have tried to tie incumbent Democrats to some of the Obama administration’s policies and actions that have alienated many voters -- including ObamaCare and the IRS targeting of conservative political groups.
“Republicans are desperate to put him on the ballot because they’re trying to turn away from their own terrible record,” Wasserman-Schultz said.
She made her prediction amid a majority of polls that give Republicans at least a 60 percent chance of retaking the upper chamber, including a Washington Post forecast that gives the GOP a 93 percent chance.
Republicans need to win a net total of six seats to take the Senate.
Wasserman-Schultz also argued Democrats will keep control of the chamber because Republicans have let down Americas by taking away their health care and opposing minimum-wage increases.
“One question voters will ask is: Who has your back?” she said.
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Wasserman-Schultz that Obama is “taking the country in the wrong direction and (Democratic) candidates are following him off the plank.”
“I don’t know whose back he has, but it’s not the American people’s,” Priebus continued.

CDC Cartoon

GOP faces possible House loss in Michigan stronghold after incumbent loses primary, nominee branded 'foreclosure king'

House Democrats are not expected to make big gains in the midterms, but they are optimistic about winning a Republican-held seat in Michigan in the aftermath of a nasty GOP primary in which a “foreclosure king” defeated an incumbent portrayed as a “Santa Claus impersonator.”
Lawyer and businessman Dave Trott trounced incumbent Rep. Kerry Bentivolio in the party’s August primary, but not before a Tea Party group labeled him a “foreclosure king.”
Democratic nominee Bobby McKenzie, a former State Department counter-terrorism analyst, has seized on the attack line and is now essentially tied with Trott, according to an internal campaign poll by San Francisco-based Tulchin Research.
Leading pollsters are still giving the edge to Republicans in the race for Michigan's 11th District, which is outside Detroit.
But Bentivolio, who admits to dressing up as Santa, has started a write-in campaign as an independent candidate and will likely take votes from Trott.
Political observers say Bentivolio got into Congress in 2012 essentially by a fluke, so there was little surprise that he would lose this year’s primary.
When five-term GOP incumbent Rep. Thad McCotter was disqualified in a ballot-signatures scandal and resigned in July 2012, Bentivolio lost in September to a Democrat in a special election to fill the seat for a few months.  
However, a month later he won the race for the full term as the only qualified Republican on the ballot.
Within months of arriving on Capitol Hill, Bentivolio was already being targeted as one of the House incumbents most likely to lose in 2014.
Such predictions were in part based on Bentivolio’s meager war chest being no match for the deep-pocketed Trott, a Duke law school graduate who purportedly spend more than $2 million on his 2014 primary victory.
“Even I figured he’d win,” Bentivolio told FoxNews.com. “How do you compete against that?”
Still, the most significant expenditure in the entire race appears to be the primary ad paid for by the Tea Party-affiliated Freedom’s Defense Fund that hits Trott, whose family-run law firm processes foreclosures for lending institutions.
“Foreclosure King Dave Trott evicted 101-year-old Texan Hollis from her Detroit home of 65 years,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot. “Stranded and in a wheelchair, she was dumped on dangerous, rainy streets. … all to line the pockets of greedy Dave Trott.”
Trott announced after the primary that he was selling his stake in the practice, in an apparent attempt to soften the criticism.
But it’s unclear whether he remains part of other related businesses, which combined with the law firm are considered by critics to be the biggest “foreclosure mill” in Michigan.
The Trott campaign did not return calls seeking comment. 
Though Trott has the backing of such establishment Republicans as Mitt Romney, Bentivolio says he was undermined largely by the leading state Republicans.
“You’re supposed to help a freshman congressman,” said Bentivolio, an Iraq veteran, former reindeer farmer and auto designer. “But they did everything in their power to undermine my seat. … I guess I didn’t go to the right schools.”  
State party leaders reportedly didn’t even support his successful 2012 bid, instead backing a former state GOP senator’s write-in campaign.
The Michigan GOP party on Thursday made clear its role in 2012.
“We always support out incumbents, but we stay out of primaries,” party spokesman Darren Littell told FoxNews.com. “We thank the congressman for his service.”
The Tea Party-backed Bentivolio also argues he passed conservative-minded legislation while in Washington and even had the backing of House Speaker John Boehner, whom he said commended him for knowing when to vote with the caucus or for his district.
Bentivolio says he was okay with Trott’s attacks during the campaign, but felt he went too far by criticizing him on social media after the primary.
He said he appealed to Trott to knock off the attacks, then tried to quiet him with threats of entering the race before deciding on the write-in campaign.
“I warned people,” Bentivolio said. “I worked in Congress and on Ronald Reagan’s election. And they call me a ‘newcomer?’ I got news for them.”
He said the attacks included a whisper campaign that questioned his military awards.
“And now I want my reputation back,” said Bentivolio, still rankled that dressing up as Santa at charity events for children would be used against him.
Trott campaign manager Megan Piwowar said to The Associated Press about Bentivolio’s write-in effort: "If he wants to disrespect the overwhelming number of voters, that's his choice."
McKenzie campaign manager Tony Coppola thinks the race has tightened because of the combination of Trott’s questionable business practices and Democrats having a good candidate.
“Bobby tried to make the country safer at the State Department, and the Republican candidate put 100,000 families out of their homes, 80,000 by his own admission," he said. "That’s a stark contrast.”
Coppola points out the race also has another potential spoiler, Libertarian candidate John Tatar who got 2.7 percent of the vote in the 2012 race for the seat.
Still, Coppola says the campaign is sticking with the same strategy that got McKenzie this far, despite the late-stage changes.
“We’re going to talk to voters,” he said heading into the weekend. “We’re going to knock on 10,000 doors. We’re going to make 10,000 phone calls.”

Maryland to delay legal effort to recoup $55 million for state's failed ObamaCare site

Maryland officials reportedly have agreed to delay court action seeking $55 million from the primary contractor for the state’s problematic ObamaCare website.
Officials from Maryland’s health care exchange in April fired the contractor, Noridian Healthcare Solutions, and vowed to seek court actions to recoup the money.
Both sides have struck a temporary deal so state officials can focus on the second year of ObamaCare enrollment that starts Nov. 15, according to The Baltimore Sun.  
A spokeswoman for Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley told The Sun that officials are still "evaluating claims that we may pursue in litigation."
The first ObamaCare enrollment, on Oct. 1, 2013, got off to a disastrous start, marked by an overwhelming public response that crashed the federal site, HealthCare.gov, and several state-run sites.
President Obama, angry and “frustrated” by the start of arguably his biggest legislative accomplishment, made sure the software problems were essentially fixed after the first several weeks by hiring industry experts to work around the clock to write better computer code and fix software bugs.
But at least two state-run sites -- Maryland and Oregon’s -- had to scrap their failed, multi-million dollar, online projects.
Oregon has moved online customers to the federal site after software bugs and other technical problems kept the state from fully enrolling a single customer online.
The problems and transition is estimated to cost state and federal taxpayers at least an additional $85 million -- including $50 million to manually enroll thousands of customers and $35 million to Deloitte Consulting to salvage the faulty technology.
Maryland officials have decided to replace their technology, instead of fixing the system or like Oregon joining the federal exchange system.
They have hired Deloitte Consulting, which has successfully run the Connecticut exchange. The effort is expected to cost $43 million.
The decision also comes just weeks before Election Day for Democratic nominee for governor Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who was O’Malley’s point man for ObamaCare.
Maryland and contractor Noridian have blamed each other and subcontractors, including IBM, for the problems.
The decision to delay action also came amid an ongoing inspector general’s probe, which was requested in February by Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris.
"Millions of dollars were wasted because of a lack of oversight by Lieutenant Governor Brown, and now the state must try to recoup some of the money he allowed to be sent to companies who couldn't deliver," Harris told The Sun. "The federal investigation should provide critical information about how taxpayer dollars were wasted and whether fraud occurred."
Justin Schall, Brown's campaign manager, said: "It's disappointing that congressman Harris would mislead the people of Maryland and play political games with a federal investigation."
Thirty-six states are part of the federal exchange, and there are 14 state-run sites.
The president crafted the legislation to help an estimated 30 million uninsured Americans get coverage.
The administration reached its goal of enrolling 6 million people by its self-imposed March 31 deadline. And right now, 7.3 million people have enrolled in marketplace plans, paid their premiums and have access to insurance, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.