Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon issues state of emergency ahead of Ferguson grand jury decision

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard Monday in advance of a grand jury decision about whether a white police officer will be charged in the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
Nixon said the National Guard would assist state and local police as needed, in case there is civil unrest when the grand jury's decision is announced.
There was no indication an announcement is imminent. There is no specific date for a decision to be revealed about whether Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson should face charges for shooting Michael Brown on Aug. 9. The St. Louis County prosecutor has said that he expects the grand jury to reach a decision in mid-to-late November.
Meanwhile, police officials in Ferguson and other cities across America were bracing Monday for possible violence in the wake of the decision, one day after hundreds of people took to the streets of St. Louis briefly to block a major intersection to protest the death of Brown.
Dozens of protesters could be seen lying down in the street outside of a movie theater hosting a film festival, pretending to be shot in an action intended to evoke the memory of Brown, according to Reuters.
"This is a mature movement. It is a different movement than it was in August. Then it just had anger, justifiable anger," DeRay McKesson, a 29-year-old protest leader, told Reuters.
Both protests Sunday, which marked the 100th day of demonstrations, were peaceful.
Residents and officials in the region fear another wave of rioting if the grand jury decides not to indict Wilson.
"We are bracing for that possibility. That is what many people are expecting. The entire community is going to be upset," said Jose Chavez, 46, a leader of the Latinos en Axion community group.
For some cities, a decision in the racially-charged case will, inevitably, re-ignite long-simmering debates over local police relations within minority communities.
"It's definitely on our radar," said Lt. Michael McCarthy, police spokesman in Boston, where police leaders met privately Wednesday to discuss preparations. "Common sense tells you the timeline is getting close. We're just trying to prepare in case something does step off, so we are ready to go with it."
In Los Angeles, rocked by riots in 1992 after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King, police officials say they've been in touch with their counterparts in Missouri.
"Naturally, we always pay attention," said Commander Andrew Smith, a police spokesman. "We saw what happened when there were protests over there and how oftentimes protests spill from one part of the country to another."
In Las Vegas, police joined pastors and other community leaders this week to call for restraint at a rally tentatively planned northwest of the casino strip when a decision comes.
In Boston, a group called Black Lives Matter, which has chapters in major cities, is organizing a rally in front of the police district office in the Roxbury neighborhood the day after the grand jury's decision.
In Albuquerque, N.M., police are expecting demonstrations after dealing with a string of angry protests following a March police shooting of a homeless camper and more than 40 police shootings since 2010.
Philadelphia police spokesman Lt. John Stanford said he anticipated his city will see demonstrations, regardless of what the grand jury returns.
But big-city police departments stressed they're well-equipped to handle crowds. Many saw large but mostly peaceful demonstrations following the 2013 not-guilty verdict in the case of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman. In New York, hundreds of protesters marched from Union Square north to Times Square, where a sit-in caused gridlock.
The New York Police Department, the largest in the nation, is "trained to move swiftly and handle events as they come up," spokesman Stephen Davis said.
In Boston, McCarthy said the city's 2,200 sworn police officers have dealt with the range of public actions, from sports fans spontaneously streaming into the streets following championship victories to protest movements like Occupy.
"The good thing is that our relationships here with the community are much better than they are around the world," he said. "People look to us as a model. Boston is not Ferguson."

GAO finds federal health websites not giving Medicare patients enough information

 A congressional investigation has found that federal websites meant to inform Medicare patients about healthcare costs and quality are failing in their mission. 
A report to be released this week by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) find that Medicare lacks clear procedures for getting useful information to consumers.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press before its public release, finds "critical weaknesses" in five consumer-information websites run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that seek to inform how well hospitals, nursing homes, physicians and other Medicare providers are doing.
The GAO said a confusing layout, data gaps and lack of customized information make it virtually impossible for consumers to get the information they need and won't be fixed anytime soon, even as the federal government plans new websites on the quality of hospice, inpatient rehabilitation and long-term care.
It is the latest report to detail problems in the government's health care websites. The Obama administration has already grappled with the technology meltdown experienced last year by HealthCare.gov as well as glitches in the Sept. 30 rollout of data on payments doctors receive from drug companies.
"The GAO report reveals that there is a need to empower patients with better information on health care price and quality," said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., home to the nation's fourth-largest share of residents 65 and older, at roughly 1 in 7. Only Florida, West Virginia and Maine have higher percentages of seniors.
"Armed with the facts, it will be possible for consumers to obtain high quality care and drive down costs," he said.
The GAO cautioned that due to a lack of clear policies or performance measures, CMS will likely continue to have "limited effectiveness in conveying relevant and understandable information on cost and quality to consumers."
It cited a growing need for the information due to rising health care costs.
Jim Esquea, an assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, concurred with the recommendations. He wrote that CMS, an agency of HHS, was planning to expand its star ratings, already in use on its "Nursing Home Compare" website.
He also said HHS was committed to providing detail on estimated out-of-pocket costs "to the extent feasible" and had developed many internal procedures, although GAO said it had found no evidence that was the case.
In the study, GAO compared data on CMS' websites with that of third-party vendors providing similar information on gallbladder surgery, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, of the lower back and maternity care. They also examined documents and interviewed company and government officials and experts on best practices.
In all, the audit found wide variation in charges for the same medical procedures in the same geographic area regardless of quality — information it said was not readily available on the CMS sites. Esquea said there were challenges in providing cost information.
In addition, the CMS sites often lacked critical data on quality of care, such as patient-reported outcomes on common procedures such as a colonoscopy, according to the report. In interviews with the GAO, CMS officials said they plan to add patient-reported outcomes on a number of medical procedures.
The investigators cited a likelihood of continuing problems despite the government's 2011 pledge under the Affordable Care Act to provide consumers complete and understandable information. While CMS has said it will make improvements, GAO pointed to limitations due in part to resistance from medical providers.
In recent months, the American Medical Association has opposed Medicare's release of billing records for 880,000 physicians, citing the danger of data being reported inaccurately or taken out of context; much of that information was eventually released.
"People deserve to know information on the cost and quality of the health care services they need," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of the lawmakers who requested the report. "The new GAO study makes important recommendations on how to better empower consumers, and I look forward to working with this bipartisan group of senators to establish more transparency."

Obama orders full review of US hostage policy

President Obama has ordered a complete review of the government's policy regarding U.S. hostages taken overseas, the White House confirmed to Fox News late Monday. 
National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Alistair Baskey said the review was ordered over the summer in response to what he called "of the increasing number of U.S. citizens taken hostage by terrorist groups overseas and the extraordinary nature of recent hostage cases."
The review, which was first reported by The Daily Beast, became public one day after the White House confirmed that American aid worker and former Army Ranger Peter Kassig had been beheaded by ISIS in Syria. The terror group had posted a video claiming that it had beheaded Kassig to various social media sites early Sunday. Kassig is the third American to be beheaded by ISIS since August. The group is also holding an American woman, a 26-year-old aid worker whose identity has not been revealed by U.S. officials out of concern for her safety. 
The Daily Beast quoted a letter written last week by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., as saying that the review will include "specific emphasis on examining family engagement, intelligence collection, and diplomatic engagement policies."
The beheadings have sparked a fresh debate over the U.S. government's policy of not paying ransom to terror groups. The parents and brother of journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS in August, told Fox News in September that government officials had told them that they could face prosecution if they attempted to negotiate a ransom. U.S. law prohibits American citizens from paying money to terror groups. 
However, an October article in Foreign Policy magazine reported that U.S. efforts to free hostages held in Syria had become bogged down amid general confusion as to the exact policies of the U.S. government on issues such as ransom payments. 
"No one's really in charge," one person involved in negotiations told the magazine. The article also reported that U.S. officials had acknowledged that family members of hostages, such as the Foleys, had not received frequent enough updates on what the government was doing to free their loved ones. In addition, a lack of actionable intelligence about ISIS activities in Syria has also been deemed responsible for undercutting U.S. efforts. 
According to Foreign Policy, the debate over ransom payments pits the White House, NSC, and State Department against the Justice Department and the FBI. The former entities believe that paying ransoms to terror groups would encourage more kidnappings of Americans abroad. By contrast, the latter offices believe that the issue of whether to pay ransom should be made on a case-by-case basis, and reportedly are willing to aid families if they believe that paying up represents the best method to ensure the hostages' freedom. 
A U.S. policy on hostage negotiations signed by President Bush in 2002 states that ransoms can be paid if officials believe doing so would help gain intelligence about terror groups, but can not be paid for the sole purpose of freeing an American.

'Cruel murder': Terror attack on Jerusalem synagogue kills four, injures six

Four worshippers at a Jerusalem synagogue were killed and six were wounded Tuesday when two Palestinians armed with meat cleavers and a gun stormed the building and began attacking people before they were killed in a shootout with police. 
The attack in the ultra-Orthodox Har Nof neighborhood in the western part of Jerusalem, was the deadliest in Israel's capital since 2008, when a Palestinian gunman shot eight people in a religious seminary school. 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel will "respond harshly" to the attack, which he denounced as a "cruel murder of Jews who came to pray and were killed by despicable murderers." U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he spoke to Netanyahu after the assault and denounced it as an "act of pure terror and senseless brutality and violence."
Kerry blamed the attack on Palestinian calls for "days of rage," and said Palestinian leaders must take serious steps to refrain from such incitement. He also urged Palestinian leaders to condemn the attack "in the most powerful terms."
Hours after Kerry spoke, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, the first time he has done so since a recent spike in deadly violence against Israelis began. He also called for an end to Israeli "provocations" surrounding the sacred site.
In a statement, Abbas' office said he "condemns the killing of the worshippers in a synagogue in west Jerusalem." The statement called for an end to the "invasion" of the mosque at a contested holy site in the city and a halt to "incitement" by Israeli ministers.
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the attackers were cousins from east Jerusalem, which has been the scene of relentless clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in recent months. She identified the assailants as Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal from the Jabal Mukaber neighborhood.
Soon after the attack, clashes broke out outside the Abu Jamals' home where dozens of police had gathered to carry out arrests in connection with the attack. Residents hurled stones at police who responded using riot dispersal weapons.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group, said the cousins were its members. A PFLP statement did not specify whether the group instructed the cousins to carry out the attack.
Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, praised the attack as retaliation for what it claimed was the murder of a Palestinian bus driver who was found hanged in his vehicle late Sunday. Israeli police, citing autopsy results, have classified the man's death as a suicide, but that has not been accepted by the man's family. 
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said two police officers were among the six wounded, four of whom were reported in serious condition. He said police were searching the area for other suspects.
Associated Press footage from the scene showed the synagogue surrounded by police and rescue workers following the attack.  Wounded worshippers were being assisted by paramedics and a bloodied meat cleaver lay near the scene of the attack. Initially, police had described the weapons used as knives and axes.
The Times of Israel cited witnesses who said the two men shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the attack and entered the synagogue without their faces covered. 
"I tried to escape. The man with the knife approached me. There was a chair and table between us ... my prayer shawl got caught. I left it there and escaped," a man who identified himself as Yossi, who was praying at the synagogue at the time of the attack, told Israeli Channel 2 TV. He declined to give his last name.
Another witness, identified only as Zohar described panic at the scene.
"I heard shooting and one of the worshipers came out covered in blood and shouted 'There’s a massacre,'" he told The Times of Israel. 
A photo in Israeli media from inside the synagogue showed what appeared to be a body on the floor draped in a prayer shawl, with blood spattered nearby.
Jerusalem has seen a spate of attacks by Palestinians against Israelis, most of which have involved cars being driven into pedestrians. At least six people had been killed in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Tel Aviv prior to Tuesday.
Jerusalem residents have already been fearful of what appeared to be lone wolf attacks, but Tuesday's early morning attack on a synagogue harkens back to the gruesome attacks during the Palestinian uprising of the last decade.
Israel's police chief said Tuesday's attack was likely not organized by militant groups, similar to other recent incidents, making it more difficult for security forces to prevent the violence.
"These are individuals that decide to do horrible acts. It's very hard to know ahead of time about every such incident," Yohanan Danino told reporters at the scene.
Tensions appeared to have been somewhat defused last week following a meeting between Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordan's King Abdullah II in Jordan. The meeting was an attempt to restore calm after months of violent confrontations, with Israel and the Palestinians saying they would take steps to reduce tensions that might lead to an escalation.
The Jerusalem holy site is referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount because of the Jewish temples that stood there in biblical times. It is the most sacred place in Judaism; Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The site is so holy that Jews have traditionally refrained from going there, instead praying at the adjacent Western Wall. Israel's chief rabbis have urged people not to ascend to the area, but in recent years, a small but growing number of Jews, including ultranationalist lawmakers, have begun regularly visiting the site.

Cotton hints at specific GOP spending bill tactic to counter Obama executive action

Arkansas Sen.-elect Tom Cotton hinted on Sunday at exactly what he and fellow Republicans might do in response to President Obama's vow to use executive action on immigration reform: selectively block the president's spending like the GOP did on the Guantanamo Bay prison issue.
Cotton, a House member recently elected to the Senate, told “Fox News Sunday” that the GOP-controlled lower chamber could pass a spending bill that limits the president’s ability to spend on Social Security cards for illegal immigrants, who may be granted some type of U.S. residency status through executive action.
Cotton compared the strategy to House Republicans passing a Defense spending bill in June that included a provision that barred funding for transferring detainees in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, established after the 9/11 terror attacks.
Republicans have opposed Obama’s plan to shutter the facility in part by sending detainees to federal prisons on American soil.
Congressional Republicans have been considering several strategies should Obama proceed before the new year with executive action, as he has vowed to do several times in the past couple of weeks.
Among the most drastic is to submit a spending bill that Obama would assuredly veto, which would temporarily shut down parts of the federal government after Dec. 11.
Cotton and Oklahoma Sen.-elect James Lankford, another GOP House member, each told Fox News on Sunday that they are not pushing for a shutdown, which is largely unpopular with Americans.
“I don’t think anybody wants to shut down government,” Cotton said.
Lankford said: “We’re not pursing some government shutdown.”
The president is expected, by as early as next week, to announce executive action on U.S. immigration law that would protect roughly 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation, change federal law-enforcement programs and expand business visas for non-citizens.
Among the other strategies Republicans are pushing are a temporary spending bill into next year when they control the Senate, suing the president to overturn his action, passing a stand-alone bill to try to stop him and House Republicans writing their own immigration bill to show they are serious about acting and pre-empt Obama.
The Democrat-controlled Senate last year passed bipartisan, comprehensive immigration-reform legislation.
The Defense spending bill also imposed a one-year moratorium on moving detainees to a foreign country, a sharp response to Obama’s decision to trade five Taliban leaders who had been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than a decade for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a captive for five years in Afghanistan.
Republicans said Obama broke the law by failing to notify Congress at least 30 days before the swap and increased the terrorism risk to the United States with the exchange.
“President Obama’s recent exchange of five high-level terrorists without notifying Congress illustrates his blatant disregard for its role as a co-equal branch of government,” Cotton said at the time.

Hagel says US speeding up training of Iraqi forces to fight ISIS

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday that the U.S. military is speeding up its training and advising of Iraqi forces who are fighting the Islamic State militants after a recommendation from the commander of U.S. Central Command.
Hagel's announcement came the same day the White House confirmed a third American, aid worker and former Army Ranger Peter Kassig, had been beheaded by members of the militant group.
The Pentagon chief spoke to reporters after observing Army training in California's Mojave Desert on Sunday. He said U.S. special operations troops in Iraq's western Anbar province are getting an early start on the train-and-advise effort.
Hagel said the effort began a few days ago but did not provide any other details.
According to plans laid out last week, the U.S. expects to train nine Iraqi security forces brigades and three Kurdish Peshmerga brigades. Hagel said the speed-up was recommended by Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commander of U.S. Central Command.
Hagel's spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, said later that Austin believes getting an early start on training Iraqi forces in Anbar may prompt other countries with a stake in the fight against Islamic State to commit trainers to Iraq.
Approaching the problem of ill-trained and poorly motivated Iraqi soldiers as a coalition rather than as a unilateral U.S. undertaking is a key pillar of U.S. strategy. Partnership is seen as a way of undermining the ideological appeal of Islamic State.
Kirby said a number of countries have made verbal commitments to provide trainers, but he said he could not identify them because they have yet to publicly announce their intended contributions.
On Thursday, Hagel told Congress that the U.S. and coalition forces are making progress in the fight against the militant group, also known as ISIS of ISIL, but the American people must prepare for a long and difficult struggle.
"ISIL's advance in parts of Iraq has stalled, and in some cases been reversed, by Iraqi, Kurdish, and tribal forces supported by U.S. and coalition airstrikes," Hagel said in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee. "But ISIL continues to represent a serious threat to American interests, our allies, and the Middle East ... and wields influence over a broad swath of territory in western and northern Iraq and eastern Syria."
The testimony of Hagel and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came just days after President Barack Obama asked Congress for a new $5.6 billion plan to expand the U.S. mission in Iraq and send up to 1,500 more American troops to the war-torn nation.
Kassig is the fifth Western hostage killed by ISIS in less than three months, and the third American. Previous Western beheading victims were American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Britons David Haines, a former Royal Air Force engineer, and Alan Henning, a taxi driver from northwest England. The group is also holding British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several other videos released by the group functioning as a de facto spokesman.
The group has declared a self-styled Islamic caliphate in areas under its control, which it governs according to its violent interpretation of Shariah law, including massacring rebellious tribes and selling women and children of religious minorities into slavery.
The group's militants have also beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives, mostly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, during its sweep across the two countries, and has celebrated its mass killings in extremely graphic videos.
The Islamic State group has its roots in Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate but was expelled from the global terror network over its brutal tactics and refusal to obey orders to confine its activities to Iraq. It became even more extreme amid the bloody civil war in neighboring Syria and grew strong enough to launch a lightning offensive across Iraq.
Syria's war began as an uprising against President Bashar Assad. Activists say that conflict has killed more than 200,000 people.

States hurry to fix healthcare exchange websites in new enrollment period

Several states whose health exchange websites failed their first test during last year's inaugural ObamaCare open enrollment period have adopted different approaches for the second round, which began Saturday.
Some, like Oregon and Nevada, folded and decided to go with the federal exchange. Others, like Maryland and Massachusetts, fired their technology contractors and are hoping for better results this time.
It hasn't been cheap.
The original cost of Massachusetts' website was estimated at $174 million. That has jumped to $254 million. When launched, the website, designed by the same contractor that worked on the troubled Healthcare.gov, was incompatible with some browsers and was riddled with error messages and navigational problems. The problems were so bad, federal officials gave the state three extra months to meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Gov. Deval Patrick issued a public apology and health care officials were forced to adopt a series of manual workarounds, creating a backlog of more than 50,000 paper applications.
Patrick told the Associated Press that there won't be a repeat of the disastrous roll-out this time around, saying the state has "been testing and retesting" the revamped website.
Minnesota's state-run exchange, MNsure, wasn't ready for prime time when it launched in 2013. Some of the technical glitches that frustrated consumers remained unresolved by the time the open enrollment period closed. MNsure officials are promising a better experience this time -- with more call center workers and a website that's 75 percent faster. But they also acknowledge the system won't be perfect.
California's exchange also was ill-prepared to handle the high volume of calls, triggering long wait times at help centers and forcing the state to extend open enrollment for two weeks beyond the original March 31 deadline.
"It swamped us," said Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee, promising increased website capacity and extra call center staff.
Maryland's website crashed on the day it opened last year. The state decided there were too many bugs to completely fix Maryland's original system for the new enrollment period, and the board overseeing the exchange fired its prime information technology contractor and is transitioning to a new system with technology used by Connecticut.
The problems at Washington state's health care exchange occurred after people signed up for insurance. At least 24,000 people who obtained private insurance couldn't use that coverage when they went to the doctor because of problems crediting payments and sending those dollars on to insurance companies.  It took about nine months to fix those problems.
In Vermont, officials announced in August they were scaling back their relationship with the prime contractor on the state's exchange, CGI, reducing the company's role from developing and hosting the Vermont Health Connect site to just hosting it.
Development of the site was switched to another contractor, Optum, the same health care technology firm retained by Massachusetts to revamp its website after it also cut ties with CGI.
Other states fared better.
Colorado's exchange experienced minimal disruptions and the state was able to sign up about 148,000 people.
Kentucky also had a successful rollout, signing up more than 421,000 people for health insurance during the first round of open enrollment. Obama even pointed to Kentucky as an example of the success of his health care law during his State of the Union address this year.
The states were so successful that when Massachusetts was casting around for solutions to its website troubles, it looked to Kentucky and Colorado for what it called "a proven, off-the-shelf solution."
Connecticut was also able to claim bragging rights: After the launch of its marketplace, Access Health CT, officials there predicted the state's uninsured rate would drop to from 7.9 percent to 6.5 percent. Instead it fell to 4 percent.
"We had an office pool going on about what this percentage was going to look like," said Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan. "No one expected we'd be down to 4 percent."
In Massachusetts, the experience of finding insurance through the website is beginning to turn around for some.
Christopher Doty lost his insurance when he lost his job in marketing last month. The 32-year-old Boston resident, who has asthma and needs medicine on a regular basis, said he was quickly able to sign up for insurance through MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program.
"Losing my job and knowing I needed some kind of health insurance at first was super-stressful," Doty said. "I basically had coverage within a couple of days."
On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell told NBC's "Meet the Press" that 100,000 people had submitted new applications this weekend via the federal website serving 37 states. That's a big difference from last year, when only a handful of customers managed to enroll on the first day.
Burwell also said that a half-million people who already have coverage through the program were able to log into their accounts this time.
There were reports Saturday that returning customers had problems, but some of that may have been confusion trying to remember user names and passwords.
Patrick said one way to avoid future problems is heightened vigilance.
"Outsourcing and privatizing -- this is not the solution." Patrick said. "The solution is to make sure that there's very close oversight even when we use an outside vendor."

Democrat-led Senate set to finally vote this week on Keystone, in odd turn of political events

The Democrat-controlled Senate is expected to take a long-awaited vote Tuesday on approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- in an unexpected and politically-charged turn of events for legislation that has languished in the upper chamber for roughly six years.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow the vote in part to give Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu an opportunity to vote “yea” and perhaps help her win her runoff election next month with Republican challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy.
However, Landrieu’s political future and the fate of the bill remain highly uncertain.
Most political analysts think Landrieu’s effort to win a fourth term by trying to show voters in oil-rich Louisiana how much she supports Keystone is a lost cause, with reports of Washington Democrats pulling out and polls showing Cassidy ahead by double digits.
South Dakota GOP Sen. John Thune said on “Fox News Sunday” the vote will be a “cynical attempt to save a Senate seat in Louisiana," considering Reid has blocked the vote for years.
President Obama appears to be giving every indication that he will veto the bill, repeatedly saying the only way the $8 billion pipeline can be approved is after the completion of a long-stalled State Department review. There is also the pending outcome of a legal challenge to the pipeline's route through Nebraska.
And during his recent trip to Australia for an economic summit Obama said: “I have to constantly push back against this idea that somehow the Keystone pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States or is somehow lowering gas prices.”
Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told “Fox News Sunday” that he hopes Obama will veto the bill, considering the oil is “the filthiest fuel on the planet.”
Whitehouse said he thinks the new Senate Republican majority “has long despised and denigrated this president and if they can roll him I think they would like to.”
He also argued that Senate Republicans twice passed on voting on a Democrat-sponsored Keystone bill.
The analysts think the 100-member Senate is now one vote shy of the 60 needed for passing Keystone. (They have the 59 votes as 14 Democrats and all 45 Republicans.)
The GOP-controlled House on Friday passed legislation, sponsored by Cassidy, to move forward with Keystone, which would carry crude oil from Canada and several U.S. states to Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries.
However, neither chamber appears to have the two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto.
Completion of the pipeline, supporters say, will create hundreds of new jobs and help the U.S. become less dependent on foreign oil.
Critics, like Whitehouse, say the oil from Canada is extremely dirty and unearthing it would result in the release of high amounts of greenhouse gases. They also say the jobs are temporary.
Environmentalists have framed the issue as a significant test of Obama's commitment to addressing climate change.
The State Department said in a Jan. 31 report that the 1,179-mile project would not significantly boost carbon emissions because the oil was likely to find its way to market by other means. It added that transporting it by rail or truck would cause greater environmental problems than if the pipeline were built.
The debate in Congress is centered on the pipeline's proposed northern leg, which would run from Alberta, Canada, through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
The Gulf Coast segment of the project began carrying oil earlier this year from the northern Oklahoma town of Cushing. A study commissioned by the Consumer Energy Alliance shows the Gulf Coast project, which began in 2012 and became operational in January, pumped $2.1 billion into Oklahoma's economy, including more than $1 billion in wages and $72 million in total taxes.
The bill passing the House marked the ninth time the lower chamber has voted in favor of speeding up the pipeline's construction.
Landrieu pushed the Senate to hold its upcoming vote on the measure.
In a recent call with reporters from Louisiana, where she was campaigning, Landrieu called herself the "sparkplug" to get the Keystone bill through Congress.
The House bill is identical to one introduced by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Landrieu in May.
Landrieu has said she doesn’t know Obama's plans but that he “most certainly understands my position" and that at least 15 other Senate Democrats “really want to build the Keystone pipeline."
If the bill fails to pass the Senate next week, Hoeven said he would reintroduce it next year when Republicans will control the chamber.
That would make it one of many showdowns expected with Obama over energy and environmental policy after Republicans take full control of Congress in January.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, recently said it was time for Obama to listen to the American people, especially after Republican gains in last week's midterm elections, and sign the bill.
"The president doesn't have any more elections to win, and he has no other excuse for standing in the way," Boehner said.

Washington state's health care exchange shut down hours after open enrollment begins

SEATTLE –  Washington's health care exchange shut down after the first few hours of open enrollment Saturday as state officials and software engineers tried to resolve a problem with tax credit calculations.
Officials at the exchange said Washington Healthplanfinder, which opened at 8 a.m., appeared to be working fine at first. When the exchange's quality control system reported the problem, they decided to shut the whole system down at about 10:30 a.m. to fix it.
The tax credits were off by just a few dollars in some cases, exchange CEO Richard Onizuka said. He said the system would remain down until it can give consumers who want to buy health insurance accurate information.
On Saturday afternoon, officials estimated the site wouldn't reopen until Sunday morning, but the actual timing will depend on how soon a software fix can be tested for potential side-effects.
Exchange officials could not say how many people had signed up for insurance before the problem was discovered, but spokesman Michael Marchand said about 2,000 people were using the exchange each hour during the two hours it was open on Saturday morning.
Officials decided to shut down the exchange -- which was working well otherwise -- instead of fixing the problem later because they learned after the previous open enrollment period that even small issues are difficult to fix after registrations are complete, Marchand said.
"It's really bittersweet," Marchand said. "The site worked so much better than last year."
It was also disappointing because the quality control group did such a good job catching the problem just by looking at numbers on a spreadsheet, he added.
"It's a feat that would make auditors jealous," Marchand said.
Katie O'Brien, 21, who stopped by a signup event for the Washington exchange on her way to work at Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, Washington, said she was happy to pick up some information since she has a health condition that requires medication and she recently lost her insurance when she quit working at Starbucks.
O'Brien said she didn't have time to sign up on Saturday, because she was almost late for work at Hot Topic, so she wasn't concerned that the exchange website was down.
O'Brien, who makes less than $400 a month, said she was happy to learn that she may be eligible for nearly free insurance.
"I'm actually pretty uneducated about it," she said of insurance available through the exchange.
Open enrollment for health care insurance continues through Feb. 15, and officials are hoping as many as 85,000 people sign up in Washington state this season. They also hope all of the about 145,000 people who bought insurance during the first open enrollment period, which began Oct. 1, 2013, will renew for another year.
Those who run the exchange had been hoping their computer system would handle traffic better than it did last year, when it shutting down and rejected applications for reasons like a hyphen in a last name. About a thousand people who bought insurance the first time around are still having problems getting their payments credited and that money transferred to their insurance companies.
Gregory Boxly, 62, who has been paying more than $500 a month for insurance since he retired, said the Healthplanfinder event at Southcenter Mall reminded him he needed to do more research to find out if he could get cheaper insurance through the exchange.
He said he was concerned that insurance through the exchange may not pay for dental or vision care, but he'll check out the choices when the website is working again. He wasn't concerned about waiting to log on.
"I worked in IT," he said with a smile, adding that computer problems are inevitable.
People who do not buy insurance will have to pay a fine when they file their income taxes. Those fines start at $95 or 1 percent of 2014 household income, but the minimum fine in 2015 will be $325 per uninsured person or 2 percent of household income.
Consumers will find more choices this time around, with more insurance plans and more companies on the state's exchange. Rates have gone up slightly overall but some people will find cheaper insurance.

What Obama has accomplished Cartoons

New ISIS video claims beheading of American hostage Peter Kassig

The Islamic State terror group has claimed to have beheaded American hostage Peter Kassig, an aid worker and former Army Ranger, in a graphic new video.
In the nearly 16-minute video uploaded to social networks on Sunday, a black-clad militant with his face concealed stands before a severed head that he claims is that of the U.S. aid worker.
The authenticity of the footage has not been verified. National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a statement that intelligence officials were "working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity.
"If confirmed, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American aid worker and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," Meehan said. The video was posted shortly after President Obama departed for Washington from the G-20 summit in Australia.  
Ed and Paula Kassig, Ed's parents, released a statement early Sunday saying they were aware of the reports of their son's death and were awaiting confirmation of their authenticity. They also asked that media outlets not post any images or video distributed by Islamic State, better known as ISIS. 
"We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family," the statement read, "not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause."
The video also showed what appeared to be the mass beheading of more than a dozen captured Syrian soldiers, but did not show the beheading of the person identified as Kassig. Showing the execution of the soldiers is a departure from previous videos, which did not depict the act of beheading. The soldiers' executioners are not wearing masks in the video and warn they will carry out similar actions outside the region.
The new video is longer than its predecessors and shows multiple hostages executions as opposed to concentrating on a single hostage's death. It also attempts to tie ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, from which Islamic State claims descent. 
Sky News reported that the man featured in the video spoke in English with a British accent. The Associated Press reported that his voice had been distorted to make him harder to identify. It was not immediately clear whether he was the same militant who has appeared in other beheading videos and has been referred to as "Jihadi John" in accounts given by former hostages of their captivity. 
The video identifies the militant's location as Dabiq, a small town in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. The urban setting is another departure from previous beheading videos, which were filmed in the remote desert of northeastern Syria. 
Kassig would be the fifth Western hostage killed by ISIS, in less than three months, and the third American. Previous Western beheading victims were American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Britons David Haines, a former Royal Air Force engineer, and Alan Henning, a taxi driver from northwest England. The group is also holding British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several other videos released by the group functioning as a de facto spokesman. 
It is not clear when the video was filmed. Last month, a Twitter account linked to ISIS posted a message warning that Kassig had only days to live. Sources in the intelligence community told Fox News that the message was being tracked. 
ISIS has beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives -- mainly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers -- during its sweep across the two countries, and has celebrated mass killings in a series of slickly produced but extremely graphic videos. The group has declared an Islamic caliphate in the areas under its control in Syria and Iraq, which it governs according to a harsh version of Shariah law. The U.S. began launching air strikes in Iraq and Syria earlier this year in a bid to halt the group's rapid advance and eventually degrade and destroy it.
A video released last month appeared to show Kassig, of Indianapolis, kneeling as a masked militant says he will be killed next, after Henning's purported beheading. Kassig had been held in Syria since October 2013. 
Kassig formed the aid organization Special Emergency Response and Assistance, or SERA, in Turkey to provide aid and assistance to Syrian refugees. He began delivering food and medical supplies to Syrian refugee camps in 2012 and is also a trained medical assistant who provided trauma care to injured Syrian civilians and helped train 150 civilians in providing medical aid.
After he appeared in the video, Kassig's parents released a public plea for their son's release, which included claims that Kassig had converted to Islam while in captivity and taken the name Abdul Rahman. 
The release of the video comes approximately a week after Syrian friends of Kassig called for his  release, also saying that he had converted to Islam and was trying to help those afflicted by the country's three-year-old civil war. 
One of the friends, Amjad al-Moghrabi, told reporters in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli: "We are demanding the Islamic State to release him, if they know Islam. He is a Muslim and has not participated in what his country is doing", a reference to the airstrikes
Dr. Ahmad Obeid, a friend of Kassig said "our demand is to release him and to return to his family because as a person he helped us and we should ask for mercy for him."
"He is unfortunately detained so we are calling for his freedom because he supported our cause and we cannot leave him and let them hurt him," Obeid said.

Rep. Issa to Homeland Security Sec. Johnson: Turn over Secret Service report by Monday

Rep. Darrell Issa wants Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to turn over by Monday evening a readable copy of a report detailing Secret Service missteps during a Sept. 19 White House security breach.
Among the problems revealed in the report is that a White House security tactical unit had never before entered the White House and were not trained to navigate the interior of the mansion.
The Ohio Republican congressman, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, set a Monday deadline for Johnson to turn over the report, which details how a mentally unstable man was able to scale a White House fence and enter far inside the mansion.
Lawmakers have been able to view the report, but parts have been blacked out and they were not allowed to keep a copy for further review.

Christie's fondness for engaging audiences attracts hecklers, others seeking headlines

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie has forged a reputation as an imposing lawmaker who can get the job done by sheer will and force. But his confrontational style also poses a liability should he make a 2016 White House bid -- attracting hecklers, political rivals and others intent on disrupting his message to spotlight their own.   
Though Christie’s brash style has long been a topic for conversation, it has resurfaced amid political talk moving from the midterms to the next presidential election and Christie telling New Jersey resident Jim Keady to “sit down and shut up.”
Keady, who challenged Christie at a recent public event about his Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts, is a well-known activist.
Keady got his start by raising concerns about working conditions in overseas Nike factories, which led to a 2008 ESPN story and an HBO documentary.
And he has now turned his attention to the lingering Sandy-recovery effort, particularly drawing attention to roughly $800 million of $1.1 billion earmarked to rebuild the Jersey Shore that remains in federal coffers.
Keady has acknowledged that his actions at the Oct. 30 event -- which began with him holding a sign that in part read “finish the job" -- were indeed acts of civil disobedience and that his heckling kept the cameras rolling.
He has done at least five radio or on-camera interviews since the event, held in his hometown of Belmar, N.J. However, Keady rejects the accusation that he tried to bate Christie into a shouting match.
“That was about roughly 6,000 households failed by the (federal recovery) program,” Keady, an independent and former Asbury Park city council member, told FoxNews.com.
Christie’s tough-talking persona and rise to national prominence started long before 2010 when he became the state’s first Republican governor after four consecutive Democratic administrations.
He started attracting attention during six previous years as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney general, as he tried to eradicate decades of political corruption.
And his efforts as governor to cut government waste and reel in public-employees pensions under a Democrat-controlled General Assembly have only furthered his reputation.
Christie has indeed rankled his share of reporters, teachers and others.
But opportunists along the way have come to realize that a sharp, public exchange with the governor can turn his speech into an outburst and give their message a national spotlight.
Marie Corfield, the New Jersey teacher in the much-talked, Sept. 2010 town hall exchange with Christie, has long been associated with progressive and Democratic politics, including the group Blue Jersey and making a failed 2013 bid, as a Democrat, for the state legislature.
The 52-year-old Christie seems acutely aware that people are using him and his events.
He suggested to Corfield -- who now bills herself as “that teacher in that Chris Christie YouTube video” -- that she was “putting on a show,” and he accused Keady of trying to get his “15 minutes of fame.”
Those exchanges and others, videotaped and posted on YouTube, have collectively attracted more than 1 million views and appear destine to become fodder for attack ads should Christie indeed run for president.
The Christie-Keady exchange was in fact videotaped by a staffer from American Bridge 21st Century, a self-described progressive group committed to “holding Republicans accountable for their words and actions” and that encourages people at town hall meetings to record them.
“Boring Republicans need not apply for the 2016 presidential race,” said David Payne, a GOP strategist and vice president for Washington, D.C.-based Vox Global. “We need a fighter, a campaigner, a winner. Sometimes it’s refreshing to see a politician tell a heckler in the crowd to ‘sit down and shut up.’ But if Christie looks mean, he won’t make it through the Republican primary, let alone the general.”
Michael Czin, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, anticipates that such video clips will appear in campaign ads and that Christie’s political rivals will have his public events recorded by so-called campaign trackers.
However, he thinks Christie has an image problem that goes beyond potential attack ads and that he lost the support of the news media last year after rouge aides extracted political revenge by closed some bridge-access lanes without notice, causing massive gridlock.
“It’s not just trackers,” he said. “Christie and his team promoted and elevated his outbursts. But it crossed the Rubicon with Bridgegate. It extended from teachers and veterans … to where it was dangerous.”
Ben Tulchin, a Democratic strategist and president of San Francisco-based Tulchin Research, argues that Christie’s declining poll numbers after Bridgegate could hurt his ability to raise 2016 campaign money and essentially settle the debate about whether his public image is a problem.
“In the TV era, the president is in your living room all of the time,” Tulchin said Wednesday. “If a voter feels uncomfortable with you, then it’s really, really hard to prevail.”
Some of Christie’s other public exchanges appear more damaging -- including two in July 2012.
Within days, Christie referred to a reporter as an “idiot” for asking a question unrelated to the press conference. And he testily responded to a male passerby’s comment while walking with his family on the Seaside Heights, N.J., boardwalk, calling the guy a “big shot” and telling him to “keep walking.”
“Christie’s natural spontaneity can be an asset, even if it comes with risks,” Payne said. “At the presidential campaign level, every trait gets more scrutiny. So Christie will need to look strong, perhaps even tough. But not mean.”

Michael Brown case: Ferguson teen's parents and double standards

On October 24th, Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Michael Brown's family, told MSNBC that "All Michael Brown's family has asked from day one is equal justice for their son. The concept of due process, this notion of all the laws in the legal proceedings being fair for them, just like it is for a police officer."
I have to wonder how they define fair.
A grand jury has been reviewing evidence in the case against Officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown since August 20.  

Ms. McSpadden is being investigated for felony robbery in an incident involving her mother-in-law and the sale of "Justice for Mike Brown" merchandise.  However, Ms McSpadden asked the police not to release the incident report.

This week, the grand jury heard from Dr Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired by the family's attorneys to perform an autopsy. This autopsy was done in addition to the one performed by the County Coroner, and another performed by a federal pathologist.  
Attorney Crump has complained that when leaks happen he cannot have confidence in the grand jury, but another attorney for the family didn't hesitate to tell the St. Louis Post Dispatch that Baden is testifying.
It is unusual for an expert hired by one of the parties to address a grand jury.  Typically the evidence presented is meant to be objective and the people who testify are meant to be not interested (or paid).  
There has been no leak to support the idea that the same opportunity to offer paid witnesses is being afforded for Officer Wilson. We have not heard that anyone retained by his attorney has presented to the grand jury, and in fact Wilson's own lawyer is not allowed to speak during the proceedings. Lawyers for Officer Wilson have also chosen not to speak to the media, in contrast to those hired by the Brown family.  But all they want is equal justice...
There are some who have questioned the timing of Dr Baden's testimony.  Lisa Bloom, an attorney who often provides commentary for various media outlets, tweeted this week that it is "amazing that the prosecution only called him before the grand jury this late"
Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom)
11/12/14, 6:08 PM
Dr. Michael Baden is a renowned pathologist retained by Mike Brown family. Amazingly prosecutors only called him before grand jury at this late date.
Maybe she has heard a leak that we haven't, because without other information this is not amazing at all.  
It could be that after almost two months the grand jury is only now hearing from all of the pathologists who reviewed the evidence.  
Ms.Bloom doesn't mention that Dr. Baden has been given access to all of the evidence reviewed by the state's pathologist, or that the family attorney wouldn't say whether he expected Baden to present an interpretation contrary to the state's pathologist. Without a full transcript of the grand jury proceedings, it is hard to agree that this is amazing.  
I find it far more amazing that Michael Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, does not seem to want the same fairness and transparency to apply when she is investigated for a crime.  
Ms. McSpadden is being investigated for felony robbery in an incident involving her mother-in-law and the sale of "Justice for Mike Brown" merchandise.  However, Ms McSpadden asked the police not to release the incident report and the report was only released after a judge said the law mandated it.
It seems that for Ms McSpadden and her attorneys, the idea of equal justice and the laws being the same for all depends on the circumstance and the persons accused. And now, as the grand jury continues to hear evidence, Brown's parents have flown to Geneva to present to the UN Committee Against Torture. They've submitted a statement requesting the UN to recommend immediate arrest of Officer Wilson.  Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, said "We need the world to know what is going on in Ferguson and we need justice."
It is hard to imagine how this quest for justice at the UN can be fruitful when there will be no evidence presented and no presentation by Officer Wilson or someone on his behalf.  The Committee does not have the evidence necessary to determine whether an arrest is appropriate or warranted, and yet they are asked to recommend arrest all the same.  It seems that Attorney Crump's call for due process doesn't extend to the United Nations either.
When calling for justice it is important to remember that while Lady Justice is blind,  hypocrisy is something one feels in the gut.

The Drifters - Stand By Me

Declarations of Independence of the United States and the State of Israel.

Nano-sized inscribed replicas of the Declarations of Independence of the United States and the State of Israel.

nano-sized inscribed replicas of the Declarations of Independence of the United States and the State of Israel. Created by scientists at the Technion's Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), at the request of PM Netanyahu, the Declarations appear side-by-side on a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead. The juxtaposition symbolizes the shared values of both countries.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-obama-nano-sized-declarations-independence.html#jCp

Despite Dem claims, trash-talking Gruber was well-paid adviser for ObamaCare and more

Face of the Democrat Party.

During the heyday of the ObamaCare push, Jonathan Gruber was whiz-kid-in-chief. His number-crunching on the benefits of the plan was frequently cited by Democrats trying to sell the proposal to the public.
Now, Washington Democrats have a new message: He’s not with us.
After a string of videos have emerged showing Gruber gloating about how the law’s authors exploited Americans’ “stupidity,” the White House has distanced itself. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi even claimed: “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.”
But while Jonathan Gruber might not have been a familiar name until this week for many, Pelosi and the rest of the lawmakers who pushed the law certainly knew who he was in 2009 and 2010.
A look at the record shows he was in fact paid to advise the Department of Health and Human Services. And he continues to play a role in health policy elsewhere, even as his unearthed videos cause headaches for the administration, just ahead of this weekend’s Round 2 enrollment launch.
Gruber, an MIT professor and economist, has lived amid the health care debate in Washington for at least 20 years.
Gruber was retained by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009 on a $297,600 contract to provide “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform.” Gruber also confirmed to The Washington Post that he was paid another $95,000 before that, for a total of nearly $400,000. 
Around this time, his analysis was not only featured on Pelosi’s House speaker website in 2009, but cited by the White House several times. Though he often was billed as an analyst in media interviews where he touted the merits of the plan, critics complained his financial ties to the administration weren’t disclosed.
Gruber also spent a good deal of time testifying on the Hill and in meetings at the White House – 19 visits from 2009 to June of this year, according to publicly available logs
Aside from his work in Washington, he went on to bag similar contracts for health care work at the state level after that, working six-figure deals with multiple states.
“He talks himself about being in the Oval Office, on loan to Congress, particularly the Senate Budget Committee,” Rich Weinstein, who helped dig up the Gruber tapes, told FoxNews.com.
Weinstein has made a hobby of sorts out of researching Gruber’s involvement. Weinstein said after losing his own health insurance plan due to ObamaCare, he decided to do some background research on the “architects” of the bill, who were making the rounds on the TV circuit promoting the benefits of the legislation.
He first unearthed some Gruber remarks in July, showing him at a January 2012 forum appearing to suggest that ObamaCare was designed to pressure states to set up health care exchanges or risk valuable tax subsidies. (The precise ACA language on subsidies and Congress’ intent is now the subject of a federal lawsuit, King v. Burwell, which the Supreme Court agreed to take up last week.)
That video attracted some attention, but he unleashed a bombshell this week – a video where Gruber is heard referring to the American public as stupid, forcing Gruber to respond. Conservative group American Commitment and others circulated the video, and it went viral. 
In the clip, Gruber suggested the law would not have passed if it was made explicit that healthy people would “pay in” and the sick would get money for coverage. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass,” he said.
Weinstein said while it’s a question how much of the law Gruber actually wrote – it’s a sausage with many makers – there’s no doubt his stamp is on it.
Gruber, an MIT economics professor who specializes in cost modeling for health care policy, also helped design the individual mandate system in Massachusetts, otherwise known as “RomneyCare” – which Obama aides said was the basis for their proposal.
In a 2012 interview with PBS, he made his involvement crystal-clear: “I helped [Governor] Romney develop the Massachusetts health care reform, or Romneycare. I then worked with the Obama administration and Congress to help develop the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare.”
The involvement didn’t end there. In 2011, he published a graphic novel, “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works,” promoting the ACA.
Gruber is still in demand to help other states overhaul their health care systems. According to reports in July, he was hired by Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin for $400,000 to study how to create a revenue stream for a single-payer health care system. Records show Minnesota paid him nearly $330,000 for health care work in 2011 and 2012. And around the same time, a 2012 contract from Michigan offered $481 million for health care analysis to a team of three firms, including Gruber and his “Gruber Microsimulation Model.”
Some ObamaCare critics already are calling for hearings in response to the videos.
“They’re going to have to answer to the American people on C-SPAN in a transparent way -- even though they didn’t do it when they passed the bill, they’re going to be held accountable in public view this time,” Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News. 
Defenders of ObamaCare say the tenets of the law have been transparent from the get-go. If anything, they are blaming Gruber for getting it wrong. Brian Beutler of The New Republic wrote, “His suggestion that the key cost-sharing tradeoffs weren’t widely discussed just isn’t true.” 
Jerold Duquette, political science professor at Central Connecticut State University, argued on his blog that "all legislation is framed for maximum political acceptability and minimum pushback" and "includes spin intended to short circuit opposition spin." He wrote: "The incredibly phony outrage of conservative pols and pundits is pitiful." 
Gruber, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, expressed regret for his comments on Tuesday on MSNBC. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret making those comments.”
Several more videos have emerged this week since the “stupidity” clip. They included speeches where he talked about how the so-called Cadillac tax on high-end health plans was envisioned to charge insurance companies rather than consumers, all the while knowing the enrollees would get hit with higher prices anyway as a result.
In one clip, he said of the Cadillac tax: “They proposed it and that passed because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest disagreed with Gruber, telling reporters on Thursday, “The fact of the matter is, the process associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.”
But ObamaCare opponents say this is more proof the administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill misled lawmakers and voters. “This guy keeps digging himself a deeper and deeper hole,” said Phil Kerpen, of American Commitment, a conservative nonprofit which has spent millions on issue ads favoring Republicans in the last two election cycles. “And all Democrats can do is pretend that this guy wasn’t the architect who was central to writing and passing the law when all the facts say he was.”

House votes to approve Keystone pipeline, showdown looms in Senate

The House voted Friday to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, sending the bill to the Senate for a showdown vote next week that could -- for the first time -- put the legislation on President Obama's desk. 
The measure passed Friday on a 252-161 vote, with 31 Democrats joining Republicans to approve it. An identical bill is expected to be voted on in the Senate on Tuesday. 
The legislation has re-emerged after Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu began championing it, in a bid to not only help the energy industry but also her struggling runoff Senate bid. In response, Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, who is running against Landrieu in the runoff, sponsored the House bill that was approved on Friday. 
Though the Louisiana election battle is a driving force behind the latest Keystone push, the legislation nevertheless could land on Obama's desk if the Senate passes it next week. Senate supporters said they were confident they'd have the 60 votes needed for passage. 
This would force Obama to either sign it -- defying his environmentalist supporters -- or veto it. 
The pipeline has been stalled by environmental reviews, objections to its route and politics for six years. The White House has threatened to veto similar attempts to move the pipeline forward. 
In response to the latest efforts, Obama, traveling in Burma on Friday, indicated he still wants to let a review process run its course. 
"I don't think we should short-circuit that process," he said. He said the administration thinks the project should be judged on the basis of whether it accelerates climate change, and pushed back on claims that it would be a "massive jobs bill." 
After Friday's vote, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said it was time for the president to listen to the American people, especially after the Republican gains in the midterm elections, and sign the bill. 
"Thousands more Americans would be working today if President Obama had put their priorities ahead of his political interests and approved the Keystone pipeline. Instead, he continues to block the project, and the new jobs, lower costs, and increased energy security it would provide," he said in a statement. "The president doesn't have any more elections to win, and he has no other excuse for standing in the way. It's time he start listening to the vast majority of Americans who support Keystone and help get more people back to work." 
The 1,179-mile project is proposed to go from Canada through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. 
Advocates say it will create thousands of jobs and aid energy security, but environmentalists warn of possible spills and say the pipeline will expedite development of some of the dirtiest oil available. 
The State Department said in a Jan. 31 report the project would not significantly boost carbon emissions because the oil was likely to find its way to market by other means. It added that transporting it by rail or truck would cause greater environmental problems than if the Keystone XL pipeline were built.

Darren Wilson's fatal encounter with Michael Brown was brief, report says

As a grand jury weighs the option of indicting a St. Louis officer on charges of shooting and killing 18-year-old Michael Brown, new video shows the encounter between the two individuals was very brief.
Video and records obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch show police officer Darren Wilson leaving for the hospital two hours after the shooting with his union lawyer and other officers.
Wilson returned to the station about two and one-half hours later.
Wilson was searching for a thief that matched Brown’s description, the paper reported. Brown allegedly attacked Wilson prompting the officer to fire upon Brown.
After calling for backup, Wilson reportedly continued his search on foot, but claimed Brown charged at him prompting more gun fire.
Witness accounts vary.
Dorian Johnson, Brown’s friend who was with him at the time, claims Wilson grabbed Brown by the throat and attempted to put him in the SUV Wilson was driving. He also has said the fatal shot came when Brown’s hands were up.
A grand jury could come up with a decision at any time.
Protesters in Missouri are reportedly planning to shut down Clayton, Mo. after the verdict.
 The protesters want to financially hurt Clayton, a city of roughly 15,000 residents that borders St. Louis, where organizers met late Thursday to hopefully attract hundreds if not thousands of people to show up on the first workday after the grand jury reaches a decision, KTVI reports.
The protesters will meet in public spaces and may spread out in small groups, possibly to take part in civil disobedience like shutting down roads.
“We want people to know these meeting are about non-violence direct action,” said Michael McPherson, co-chair of the Don’t Shoot Coalition. “Some of it will be people talking to people, expressing themselves. There’s nothing we’re doing to try to create violence. We don’t want to diminish tension without there being change.”
Attorney General Eric Holder said Justice Department officials have been working with local officials to make sure the law enforcement response to any protests is appropriate.
"Certainly we want to ensure that people who have First Amendment rights have the ability to protest as they deem appropriate while at the same time making sure that we protect people in law enforcement and that we minimize the chances that any legitimate protest devolves into violence," he said.