Romney says he’s weighing 2016 White House bid

Mitt Romney told a group of supporters in New York on Friday that he is considering a third run for the White House, after denying interest for months in a 2016 bid, Fox News has confirmed.
The former Massachusetts Republican governor, who ran against President Obama in 2012 and lost, made the remarks during a meeting with 30 former large donors in Manhattan.
According to a Romney senior adviser who was in the meeting, he said, "Everybody in here can go tell your friends that I'm considering a run."
The development comes after repeated denials in the press.
Romney told “Fox News Sunday” in September, “I’m not running, and I’m not planning on running.”
Romney’s wife Ann told The Los Angeles Times in October: "Mitt and I are done. Completely. … Not only Mitt and I are done, but the kids are done. Done. Done. Done.”
But in recent days, big-name potential candidates have started moving closer to a Republican presidential bid.
In the last week, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush quit all his major corporate and nonprofit board memberships, and launched a new leadership political action committee (PAC). He announced he was exploring a run last month. Bush reportedly was in Romney’s old stomping ground in Boston on Friday for a fundraising luncheon.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee also announced last weekend he is leaving Fox News as the host of “Huckabee” as he weighs a presidential run. He ran and lost in the 2008 Republican primary – as did Romney.
Though he has long denied rumors of another White House run, Romney still polls well. He topped an early Iowa caucus-goers poll in October with 17 percent. In a December Fox News poll, Romney dominated the GOP field. He came in with 19 percent among self-identified Republicans, followed by Bush at 10 percent. No other candidates garnered double-digit backing.
Romney, a man of considerable family wealth, would nonetheless have to raise millions to jump-start a renewed campaign on the road to the Republican primaries.
He raised over $446 million for the 2012 race, with his top five contributors hailing from Wall Street – close to his donor meeting on Friday.

Report: FBI and Justice Department prosecutors recommend felony charges against Petraeus

FBI and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against former CIA director David Petraeus, the New York Times reported Friday night.
The paper, citing “officials,” said the charges related to Petraeus allegedly providing classified information to his former mistress.
If true, Attorney General Eric Holder would then have to decide whether to seek an indictment against Petraeus. Holder originally had been expected to decide about charges by the end of 2014.
The Times said the Justice Department investigation stemmed from an affair Petraeus had with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and whether he gave her access to his CIA email account and other classified information. Petraeus, a retired four-star general, has said he never provided her with classified information.
The Associated Press quoted a U.S. official as saying the Justice Department was "weighing" whether to bring criminal charges.
It also said a lawyer for Petraeus declined comment.

Authorities hunt most wanted woman in France; fears of new terror attack

French police forces continued Saturday the intense manhunt for the wife of one of the terrorists who was killed after taking hostages the day before at a kosher grocery store in Paris.
Hayat Boumeddiene, who is suspected of being involved in the killing of a policewoman in a Paris suburb on Thursday is also believed to have been an accomplice for her boyfriend, Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed in the police raid at the store Hyper Cacher. Four hostages were killed before authorities gained entry.
Early reports indicated that Boumeddiene was inside the store at the time of the hostage taking, but there is no evidence to support that information.
Boumeddiene married Coulibaly in an Islamic religious ceremony in July 2009 -- a union not recognized by French law. A circular distributed Friday by French police said Boumeddiene should be considered dangerous and potentially armed. The couple reportedly travelled several times to the French countryside to fire crossbows. 
It is unclear what, if any, links Boumeddiene has to the store attack, but prosecutors said she has ties to Cherif Kouachi, one of the brothers whose attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine Wednesday left a dozen dead. Cherif and his brother Said, who both died Friday in a separate raid at a printing facility about 25 miles outside Paris, were radicalized and are believed to have ties to Al Qaeda in Yemen.
The Paris prosecutor's office told The New York Times that Boumeddiene had been in "constant and sustained" contact with Cherif’s girlfriend. The report said Cherif and Couibaly were followers of a French-Algerian jihad supporter named Djamel Beghal. He served time in prison for involvement in a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris and was released.
VIDEO: British security chief makes sobering admission on terror
Le Parisien newspaper reported that she lost her job as a cashier because she insisted on wearing a niqab.
French authorities planned to meet Sunday with various security officials to discuss the ongoing terror threat and warned of the possibility of more violence.
"We can't lower our guard," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.
Sky News reported that Boumeddiene may offer authorities valuable information on a larger extremist cell. Indeed, it appears that the attack's planning may reach far into terror networks.
An Al Qaeda member on Friday provided a statement in English to The Associated Press saying "the leadership of AQAP directed the operations and they have chosen their target carefully."
There was no independent confirmation of the report, and U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say it is too early to conclude who is responsible for the massacre on Wednesday that left 12 dead.
However, Cherif told a French TV station before Friday's raid at an industrial park that he was sent by Al Qaeda in Yemen and had been financed by the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011.
If confirmed, the attack would be the first time Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen has successfully carried out an operation in the West after at least two earlier attempts.
Days of unrest in Paris culminated Friday after two tense, hours-long standoffs, one at a printing plant north of the city and the other at a kosher supermarket on Paris' east side, where four hostages were killed, as many as 15 were freed. 
A hostage held north of the city by the brothers was reportedly freed. The fast-moving developments, signaled by explosions and gunfire at a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, followed by similar sounds at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris. The police raids left both brothers and Coulibaly dead.

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NBC omits “God” from Pledge of Allegiance… again

It seems the folks over at Rockefeller Center have a problem with the Almighty.
An astute reader pointed out that NBC has once again omitted God from the Pledge of Allegiance. The omission happened during a commercial promoting the network’s upcoming spy thriller called “Allegiance.” How’s that for a coincidence?
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,” a chorus of voices intones in the spot.  “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

It’s not the first time the Peacock Network has dissed a deity.

Watch the video for yourself by clicking here.
“Allegiance” is about a young CIA agent who learns his parents are former covert Russian spies who may be plotting a terrorist attack inside the United States. I’m assuming the CIA agent is the good guy – but then again – we’re talking about NBC, folks.
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I reached out to NBC to find out why they have a problem with God but so far no one has returned my telephone call. I probably would’ve had a better chance of finding an NBC executive at a Wednesday night church supper.
It’s not the first time the Peacock Network has dissed a deity.
In 2011 NBC was forced, yes forced, to apologize after they omitted the phrase “one nation under God” from its coverage over the U.S. Open Championship. It happened not once, but twice.
The omission ignited a firestorm on Twitter, the New York Daily News reported at the time.
“Why does mainstream America not trust media? Simple, you can’t get Pledge of Allegiance right, why trust you to tell us anything else? #NBC,” Pastor Michael Catt tweeted at the time.
NBC released a statement to the trade publication Broadcasting & Cable and said the decision to eliminate God was “made by a small group of people.”
“This was a bad decision,” NBC stated.
You think?
And how can we forget about MSNBC?
In 2013 Rev. Al Sharpton, refused to utter “under God” during a “Lean Forward” commercial for the cable network.
In fairness to the “reverend” it may have been a simple oversight – seeing how he has a rather troubled past when reading off a TelePrompTer.
“Allegiance” will premiere Feb. 5 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.
Lord have mercy.

House approves ObamaCare bill despite veto threat

The House voted Thursday to curb a provision in ObamaCare that some lawmakers say is hurting the job market, as the new Republican-controlled Congress moved quickly to challenge the administration on several fronts. 
The House voted 252-172 for the ObamaCare bill, which tweaks the law's definition of full-time workers who must be offered employer-provided health care. Twelve Democrats sided with Republicans in approving the first Affordable Care Act-related legislation of the new Congress. 
The bill changes the full-time worker threshold from 30 hours weekly to a 40-hour minimum. Critics claim defining full-time employees as those working at least 30 hours is pressuring firms to save money by cutting workers' hours below that and, in turn, the number of full-time jobs. 
The White House, though, already has vowed to veto the bill, drawing jeers from GOP leaders. 
"You say you care about low-income workers, about working women and small businesses?" House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., taunted Obama. "Show it and sign this bill." 
The White House, just days into the 114th Congress, also has threatened to veto two other Republican-sponsored bills, including one forcing approval of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone pipeline. 
The House is planning to vote on that bill Friday, while a Senate panel on Thursday approved the legislation - teeing up debate on the Senate floor for next week. 
On both bills, GOP leaders would face uphill fights mustering the two-thirds House and Senate majority votes they would need to override Obama vetoes. But both measures had some support from Democrats, and Republicans could use them to portray themselves as championing bipartisan legislation, only to be thwarted by Obama and his Democratic congressional allies. 
"Given the chance to start with a burst of bipartisan productivity, the president turned his back on the American people's priorities," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Thursday, adding, "We were taking our oath of office when they were issuing veto threats. Come on." 
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats would sustain Obama's vetoes on both bills and said it was Republicans who have blocked progress. 
"The president has always extended the hand of friendship. Some say too much," she told reporters. 
She also said Democrats would uphold a promised Obama veto on a third measure rolling back some regulations on the financial industry enacted after the 2008 economic crash. That bill fell short in the House this week but is expected to pass on a revote next week. 
Obama's 2010 health care law, a perennial GOP target, is phasing in a requirement that companies with more than 50 full-time workers offer health care coverage or face penalty payments to the government. 
House Republicans say boosting the standard to 40 hours would protect those workers and named their bill the "Save American Workers Act." They cite a study by the conservative Hoover Institution saying that 2.6 million workers are at risk of having their hours reduced by the 30-hour minimum, including disproportionately high numbers of female, low-income, younger and less-educated workers. 
The White House and Democrats, with support from labor and liberal groups, mock the measure as the latest attempt by Republicans to scuttle Obama's health care law. The House has voted more than 50 times to repeal or roll back parts of that law since Republicans took control of the chamber in 2011. 
Democrats say changing the full-time threshold from 30 to 40 hours would make fewer workers eligible for employer-provided health coverage and put more of them at risk of losing that coverage from companies looking to cut costs. 
The measure's fate is less clear in the Senate, where majority Republicans will need at least six Democratic votes to get the 60 needed to overcome Democratic delaying tactics. Senate GOP leaders have not said when the bill will be debated.

California newspaper office vandalized over use of 'illegal' immigrant label

A California newspaper will continue to use the term "illegals" to describe people who enter the U.S. without permission, despite an attack on its building by vandals believed to object to the term.
The Santa Barbara News-Press's front entrance was sprayed with the message "The border is illegal, not the people who cross it" in red paint, sometime either Wednesday night or early Thursday, according to the newspaper's director of operations, Donald Katich. The attack came amid wider objections to a News-Press headline that used the word "illegals" alongside a story on California granting driver's licenses to people in the country illegally.

"It is an appropriate term in describing someone as “illegal” if they are in this country illegally."- Statement from Santa Barbara News-Press

"The vandalism and the damage speak for itself, as well as the motivation behind it," Santa Barbara Police Officer Mitch Jan said. "At this point in time, I don't really have any suspect information. Without cameras or an eyewitness, we really don't know who would be responsible."
In addition to the writing on the building, graffiti espousing a no-borders mentality was scribbled on the walkway through Storke Placita and the sidewalk near Santa Barbara City Hall. Police were braced for a protest in front of the paper later this week. Jan said hundreds could show up, and the Police Department is aware of the call for a protest.
"There is a plan underway," he said. "There is extra staffing on board for it."
In a statement, the newspaper said it has no plans to drop its style in describing illegal immigrants.
"It has been the practice for nearly 10 years at the Santa Barbara News-Press to describe people living in this country illegally as “illegals” regardless of their country of origin," the statement read. "This practice is under fire by some immigration groups who believe that this term is demeaning and does not accurately reflect the status of “undocumented immigrants,” one of several terms other media use to describe people in the Unites States illegally.
"It is an appropriate term in describing someone as “illegal” if they are in this country illegally," the statement added.
The debate over how to label people who are in the U.S. without permission has raged at news organizations across the nation in recent years. In 2013, both The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times banned the phrase after employing it for decades, saying it "lacked precision," according to Pew Research Center.
The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal all use the phrase, although only The Wall Street Journal uses “illegal immigrant” to refer to people who not only criminally enter the U.S. without the proper documentation, but also those who overstay their visas.
FoxNews.com's policy is to describe immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as "illegal immigrants."

Obama proposes free community college program, cost details unclear

WASHINGTON –  President Obama on Thursday proposed making community college free for all Americans who are "willing to work for it," though the administration has not revealed the price tag or how exactly it would be paid for. 
In a video posted on Facebook, the president previewed his plan, which will be formally announced during a trip to Tennessee Friday. The president said he wants to provide free community college for two years, by covering enough tuition to get students who keep their grades up an associate's degree or halfway to a bachelor's. 
"It's not for kids," Obama said. "We also have to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to constantly train themselves for better jobs, better wages, better benefits." 
On a conference call with reporters, however, administration officials were vague on the details. 
They said the funding details would come out later with the president's budget. They estimated 9 million students could participate and save an average of $3,800 in tuition per year. 
That suggests an annual cost in the tens of billions of dollars. The White House said the federal government would pick up 75 percent of the cost and the final quarter would come from states that opt into the program. 
The proposal drew an immediate critical response from House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, whose spokesman said, "with no details or information on the cost, this seems more like a talking point than a plan." 
The idea was reminiscent of Obama's 2013 State of the Union proposal to provide universal preschool, which Congress did not take up because of cost issues. Obama policy adviser Cecilia Munoz pointed out that even without federal action, many states are taking up the idea and expanding preschool. 
Last year, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law a scholarship program that provides free community and technical college tuition for two years to the state's high school graduates. About 58,000 of the state's roughly 62,000 seniors have applied to participate this fall. 
But Tennessee Republican Rep. Diane Black said her state's plan, called Tennessee Promise, is paid mostly with lottery funds, while the federal funding source for Obama's plan is unclear and states will have to help pick up the tab. "Ultimately, any efforts to reboot Tennessee Promise as a one-size-fits-all nationwide approach will be met with heavy skepticism from Congress," Black said. 
Under the president's new plan, students would be required to maintain a 2.5 GPA while in college, and must make steady progress toward completing their program in order to have their tuition eliminated, according to the press release. 
"Put simply, what I'd like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody who is willing to work for it," the president said.

2 reported dead in 2nd hostage situation as police pin massacre suspects north of Paris

French police were confronting two separate -- but apparently related -- hostage situations Friday, after a jihadist couple suspected of killing a cop a day earlier stormed a Paris deli, killing two and taking as many as five prisoners even as the suspects Wednesday's massacre at a Paris satirical magazine were holed up in a printing plant 25 miles north of the city, authorities said.
Authorities feared all four suspects, who may know one another, are bent on going out as martyrs, and potentially killing hostages and police officers in the process. The fast-moving developments came as nearly 90,000 police and military personnel were deployed to bring the terror crisis that has gripped the European nation since late Wednesday morning, when a pair of brothers conducted a bloody commando-style raid on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly satirical magazine that had angered Muslim radicals by repeatedly publishing images of Prophet Muhammed.
"Even though these guys are a bunch of savages, the negotiators are going to be trying to calm things down ... the less volatile things are, the safer it is for everybody," James Alvarez, who has worked as a consultant for Scotland Yard and the New York Police Department, told Sky News as the dueling situations unfolded.
The hostage takers in the second case, at a kosher grocery store in eastern Paris, were identified by police as Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddiene, a couple suspected in the murder Thursday of Paris Police Officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe as she attended to a routine traffic accident in the city. Authorities believe the case is related to Wednesday's attack, which 12 people, including two cops, dead at the publication Charlie Hebdo, which has angered Muslim radicals by publishing images of Prophet Muhammed.
The Islamist brothers suspected of killing 12 people in an attack on a French satirical magazine were holding at least one hostage inside a printing house surrounded by police northeast of Paris Friday morning, and at least two people were reportedly dead in a separate, but likely related hostage situation in Paris. 
Hundreds of French security forces backed by a convoy of ambulances streamed into Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town 25 miles outside the capital in a massive operation to seize the men suspected of carrying out France's deadliest terror attack in 54 years. The suspects reportedly told police negotiators they were ready to "die as martyrs."

"France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty -- and thus of resistance -- breathed freely."- French President Francois Hollande

Meanwhile, two people were reportedly dead in connection with a separate hostage situation in a kosher grocery on the east side of Paris, where a gunman armed with AK-47s was believed to be holding as many as five hostages, including women and children. The gunman in that case is believed to be the same person who shot a Paris policewoman on Thursday. Authorities believ the second hostage situation is related to Wednesday's massacre and the ongoing standoff involving the suspects in Wednesday's massacre at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
The two suspects in the massacre, identified as brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, were holed up Friday inside CTF Creation Tendance Decouverte. Xavier Castaing, the chief Paris police spokesman, and town hall spokeswoman Audrey Taupenas, said there appeared to be one hostage inside the printing house.

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Police identified Hayat Boumeddiene and Amedy Coulibaly as the suspects in a second hostage situation unfolding in Paris.

Christelle Alleume, who works across the street, said that a round of gunfire interrupted her coffee break Friday morning.
"We heard shots and we returned very fast because everyone was afraid," she told i-Tele. "We had orders to turn off the lights and not approach the windows.
Officials told Fox News that there were four people inside the business when the gunmen went inside, but three people were somehow able to leave the area. 
The Associated Press reported that at least three helicopters were seen hovering above the town. At nearby Charles de Gaulle airport, two runways were briefly closed to arrivals to avoid interfering in the standoff, but were later reopened. Schools went into lockdown.
Earlier Friday, a French security official told the AP that shots were fired as the suspects stole a car in the town of Montagny Sainte Felicite in the early morning hours. French officials told Fox News that the suspects threw the car's driver out at the side of the road. The driver, who recognized the suspects, then called police and alerted them to the suspects' whereabouts. 
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 88,000 security forces have mobilized to find the brothers after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices on Wednesday.
On Thursday, U.S. government sources confirmed that Said Kouachi had traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had direct contact with an Al Qaeda training camp. The other brother, Cherif, had been convicted in France of terrorism charges in 2008 for trying to join up with fighters battling in Iraq. The sources also confirmed that both brothers were on a U.S. no-fly list. 
Fox News was told the investigators have made it a priority to determine whether he had contact with Al Qaeda in Yemen's leadership, including a bomb maker and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.
French President Francois Hollande called for tolerance after the country's worst terrorist attack since 1961, in the middle of the conflict over Algerian independence from France.
"France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty -- and thus of resistance -- breathed freely," Hollande said.
Nine people, members of the brothers' entourage, have been detained for questioning in several regions. In all, 90 people, many of them witnesses to the grisly assault on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, were questioned for information on the attackers, Cazeneuve said in a statement.
The minister confirmed reports the men were identified by the elder brother's ID card, left in an abandoned getaway car, a slip that contrasted with the seeming professionalism of the attack.
A third suspect, 18-year-old Mourad Hamyd, surrendered at a police station Wednesday evening after hearing his name linked to the attacks. His relationship to the Kouachi brothers was unclear.
Charlie Hebdo had long drawn threats for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures. The weekly paper had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, and a sketch of Islamic State's leader was the last tweet sent out by the irreverent newspaper, minutes before the attack. Nothing has been tweeted since.
Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in the attack.

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Jan. 9, 2015: A Police helicopter circles over Dammartin-en-Goele, France, as part of an operation to seize two heavily armed suspects. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Charlie Hebdo planned a special edition next week, produced in the offices of another paper.
Editor Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, who was among those slain, "symbolized secularism ... the combat against fundamentalism," his companion, Jeannette Bougrab, said on BFM-TV.
"He was ready to die for his ideas," she said.
Authorities around Europe have warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis trained in warfare. France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria -- headed there, returned or dead. Both the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda have threatened France -- home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population.
The French suspect in a deadly 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in southern France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

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Saudi connection? Lawmakers up pressure on Obama to release secret 9/11 documents

Congressional lawmakers on Wednesday ramped up efforts to get President Obama to release 28 top-secret pages from a 9/11 report that allegedly detail Saudi Arabia's involvement in the terror attacks. 
Lawmakers and advocacy groups have pushed for the declassification for years. The effort already had bipartisan House support but now has the backing of retired Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman whom supporters hope will help garner enough congressional backing to pressure Obama into releasing the confidential information. 
“The American people have been denied enough,” North Carolina GOP Rep. Walter Jones said on Capitol Hill. “It’s time for the truth to come out.” 
Jones has led the effort with Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch, among the few members of Congress who have read the 28 redacted pages of the joint House and Senate “Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terror Attacks,” initially classified by President George W. Bush. They introduced a new resolution on Wednesday urging Obama to declassify the pages. 
Jones and other lawmakers have described the documents' contents as shocking. 
That 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian citizens is already known. But Graham and the congressmen suggested the documents point to Saudi government ties and repeatedly said Wednesday that the U.S. continues to deny the truth about who principally financed the attacks -- covering up for Saudi Arabia, a wealthy Middle East ally. 

'The Saudis know what they did'- Former Sen. Bob Graham

“The Saudis know what they did. We know what they did,” said Graham, who for more than a decade has pushed to get to the bottom of the attacks. He made clear he was referring to "the Kingdom," and not just Saudi operatives inside the country. 
He argued that failing to disclose the truth will spur Saudi Arabia’s continued or “accelerated … financial support for institutions carrying out extreme forces of Islam.” Graham argued Saudi Arabia has been a hotbed for such extremist groups as Al Qaeda, al-Shabaab and now the Islamic State. 
Lynch called Jones “relentless” in his efforts to publicize the pages and reveal the truth about Saudi Arabia’s connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including who financed the terrorists who hijacked and brought down four passenger jets, killing nearly 3,000 people on U.S. soil.  
“We're going to keep pushing,” Lynch said. “The release of this report will influence national security and foreign policy.” 
When pressed by reporters, the lawmakers said they couldn’t and wouldn’t reveal the exact contents of the pages, as it remains classified. But they said the release of the information has the potential to change foreign policy and national security while posing no risk to U.S. intelligence agents or methods -- and Obama should make the details public.
Saudi officials have said they have nothing to hide and also have called for the declassification of the pages.
The press conference took place just hours after masked gunmen killed at least 12 people in Paris, at a publication that had mocked the Prophet Mohammed. Prince Khaled bin Bandar, the Saudi intelligence chief, also was in Washington this week to talk about joint efforts to fight ISIS.
Jones and Lynch last year submitted a House resolution on the document issue and filed another on Tuesday. They acknowledge the difficulty in getting sponsors for the release of a document few have seen but vowed to keep trying, in large part because of the families who lost relatives in the attacks.
“They are the reason we are here,” Lynch said.
The effort has garnered support from an array of advocacy groups including 28pages.org and 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism.
“We all know Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11,” said Terry Strada, a group co-chairwoman whose husband, Tom, died in the attacks. “But that is only half of the truth. The other half lies in the 28 pages.”

Atlanta Fire Chief: I was fired because of my Christian faith

Kelvin Cochran was five-years-old when he realized that he wanted to be a firefighter.
“My family was very, very poor,” Cochran told me. “We were living in a shotgun house in an alley – three big brothers, two little sisters.”
One Sunday afternoon the Cochran children heard a fire truck stop across from their neighbor’s home. Miss Maddie’s house was one fire.

“It’s a frightening day in the United States when a person cannot express their faith without fears of persecution following,” White told me. “It’s persecution when a godly fire chief loses his job over expressing his Christian faith.”

“That’s the day that God convicted me in my heart that I wanted to be a firefighter when I grew up,” Cochran said. “All I thought about growing up in Shreveport was not being poor and being a firefighter.”
And God granted Kelvin Cochran the desires of his heart. The little boy in the shotgun shack grew up to become the fire chief of Shreveport. He was named the Atlanta fire chief in 2008 – a position he served until 2009 when was called to serve in the Obama Administration as a fire administrator. In 2010 he returned to Atlanta where he was unanimously confirmed to once again be the city’s fire chief.
But now Chief Cochran’s storied career is up in smoke – all because of a book he wrote for a men’s Bible study group at his Baptist church.
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Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced Tuesday that Cochran had been fired. The announcement came on the same day Cochran was supposed to return to work following a 30-day suspension. 
“The LGBT members of our community have a right to be able to express their views and convictions about sexuality and deserve to be respected for their position without hate or discrimination,” Cochran told me in an exclusive interview. “But Christians also have a right to express our belief regarding our faith and be respected for our position without hate and without discrimination. In the United States, no one should be vilified, hated or discriminated against for expressing their beliefs.”
Cochran had been suspended in November because of a passage he wrote about homosexuality in a book titled, “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” The book’s theme is about biblical morality.
“This is about judgment,” Mayor Reed said during a Tuesday press conference. “This is not about religious freedom. This is not about free speech. Judgment is the basis of the problem.”
Last November the mayor posted a public condemnation of the fire chief on his official Facebook page.
“I profoundly disagree with and am deeply disturbed by the sentiments expressed in the paperback regarding the LGBT community,” the mayor wrote. “I will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within my administration.”
The mayor went on to inform the public that Cochran had been suspended without pay and was ordered to complete a sensitivity training class. 
“I want to be clear that the material in Chief Cochran’s book is not representative of my personal beliefs, and is inconsistent with the Administration’s work to make Atlanta a more welcoming city for all of her citizens -- regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, race and religious beliefs,” Mayor Reed wrote.
So what in the world did Cochran write that was so offensive to the mayor and the LGBT community?
According to the GA Voice, a publication that covers the LGBT community, there were two items that caused concern: 
“Uncleanness – whatever is opposite of purity; including sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, bestiality, all other forms of sexual perversion.”
“Naked men refuse to give in, so they pursue sexual fulfillment through multiple partners, with the opposite sex, the same sex, and sex outside of marriage and many other vile, vulgar and inappropriate ways which defile their body – temple and dishonor God.”
Cochran said he referenced homosexuality on less than a half a page in the 160-page book.
“I did not single out homosexuality,” he said. ‘I simply spoke to sex being created by God for pro-creation and He intended it to be between a man and a woman in holy matrimony – and that any other sex outside of that is sin.”
Cochran told me that someone within the department obtained a copy of the book and took it to openly-gay city council member Alex Wan.  
Wan released a statement supporting Cochran’s termination and said it “sends a strong message to employees about how much we value diversity and how we adhere to a non-discriminatory environment.”
The book caused a firestorm within Atlanta’s LGBT community and there were many calls for him to be fired – a decision the mayor finally agreed to.
“I guess they got what they asked for,” Cochran said.
Georgia Equality Executive Director Jeff Graham told GA Voice Cochran’s “anti-gay” views could result in a hostile work environment.
“This is not about his religious views but his about his ability to lead a diverse work force,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that this had to happen. I feel the mayor has done the right thing to ensure all employees are treated fairly.” 
The allegations against Cochran amount to a he-said, he-said between the fire chief and the mayor.
Reed said that he had no knowledge that Cochran was writing a book. However, Cochran said the director of Atlanta’s ethics office had not only given him permission to write the book, but to also mention in his biography that he was the city’s fire chief.
Cochran said he gave a copy of the book to Mayor Reed in January, 2014 and the mayor told him he planned on reading it during an upcoming trip.
Cochran also admitted that he gave copies of the book to several members of the fire department – individuals with whom he had personal relationships.
The mayor also took issue with Cochran speaking publicly about his suspension. However, Cochran said he honored the mayor’s guidance and did not speak to the media. He did, however, share his testimony in several churches.
“I did not dishonor him in the process,” Cochran told me.
Cochran wants to make clear that he does not hate anyone.
“The essence of the Christian faith is a love without condition, sir,” he told me. “I have demonstrated that love in the fire service for 34 years. There’s not any person of any people group that has interacted with me for any measure of time that can say I have hate or disregard or discrimination in my heart for any people group.”
Cochran’s plight has drawn condemnation from a number of religious groups across Georgia including the influential Georgia Baptist Convention.
“This is appalling,” said Robert White, president of the Georgia Baptist Convention. “This has everything to do with his religious beliefs.”
White told me he believes the mayor succumbed to pressure from the city’s LGBT community.
“It’s a frightening day in the United States when a person cannot express their faith without fears of persecution following,” he told me. “It’s persecution when a godly fire chief loses his job over expressing his Christian faith.”
And the fire chief’s firing could spark public protests and demonstrations from the state’s Christian community.
“We’re past the point of taking a public stand,”  White told me. “Christians must stand up for their rights.”
Cochran told me he is considering his legal options – but one thing is certain. He has no desire to get his old job back.
“I believe God has greater things for me,” the father and grandfather said. “I love the fire services. It’s a childhood dream come true.”
And don’t go feeling sorry for Chief Cochran.
“I’m not discouraged and I’m not downtrodden,” he said. “This is a God thing and He’s going to do great things and He will vindicate me publicly.”

Off to a bad start? McConnell blasts Obama for early veto threat on Keystone

WASHINGTON –  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Obama on Wednesday for vowing to veto the first bill of the new, Republican-controlled Senate -- legislation to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. 

In his first major floor speech as majority leader, the Kentucky Republican pushed for bipartisan cooperation on major issues but said it could "only be achieved if, if, President Obama is interested in it." 
He added: "And I assure you, threatening to veto a jobs and infrastructure bill within minutes of a new Congress taking the oath of office -- a bill with strong bipartisan support -- is anything but productive." 
McConnell's top lieutenants echoed his concerns, with Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, calling the "premature" veto threats "deeply irresponsible and troubling." 
The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto two pieces of legislation being produced by the new Congress -- one related to ObamaCare and the economy, and the other on the Keystone pipeline. On Wednesday, the White House issued formal statements vowing to veto the bills. 
On the Keystone bill, the White House claimed the legislation would prevent "the thorough consideration of complex issues that could bear on U.S. national interests." 
The Obama administration wants to let a separate State Department review process play out, though pipeline supporters complain that process already has been underway for years. 
The veto threat over Keystone sets up a looming showdown between Obama and the GOP-controlled Congress, while underscoring the deep tensions likely to persist as majority Republicans challenge the president's agenda during his final two years in office. 
As the Senate moves ahead with its own legislation -- with sponsors claiming to have more than enough votes to pass it -- the House is set to vote on its version on Friday. 
One of the sponsors, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News he expected a veto threat but predicted: "We're going to win on the merits." 
If the legislation passes and Obama vetoes, supporters in Congress would need to muster a two-thirds majority to override -- or try and attach the measure to a separate piece of legislation. 
The $8 billion oil pipeline would run from Canada's oil sands to the Texas Gulf Coast. It has become a symbol of divisions over the country's energy and environmental policy. 
Republicans argue that the project would create jobs and reduce U.S. dependency on oil from the Middle East. 
Obama downplayed the potential benefits of pipeline in late December and claimed it would not lower gas prices for Americans -- but instead would help Canadian oil companies. 
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. 
Despite the disagreement over Keystone, McConnell seemed optimistic that both parties in the Senate could work together on other measures such as strengthening Medicare and Social Security, revamping tax laws and working "to balance the budget and put our growing national debt on a path to elimination." 
Meanwhile, the White House threatened to veto legislation that would increase his health care law's definition of a full-time worker from 30 to 40 hours per week. 
Republicans say the health law's 30-hour requirement is encouraging companies to cut workers' hours. The White House said in statement Wednesday there is no evidence the law has caused a broad shift to part-time work. The House plans to debate the measure this week as one of its first orders of business in the new Congress. 
The White House argues the bill would reduce the number of Americans with employer-based health insurance coverage and create incentives for employers to shift employees to part-time work. 
House Speaker John Boehner, like McConnell, lamented the early veto threats. 
"Unfortunately, by threatening two of these bipartisan jobs bills, the president essentially is telling the American people he really doesn't care what they think," he said. 
Amid the dispute over veto threats, Obama visited a Ford assembly plant in Michigan on Wednesday to tout the auto industry's recovery -- as part of the run-up to his State of the Union address. 
Obama declared the worst of the financial crisis "is behind us" and touted that auto companies have repaid taxpayers for the crisis-era bailout. 
"The auto industry has proved that any comeback is possible," Obama said.

French police make anti-terror sweep after 1 of 3 suspects in Paris attack surrenders

France's Prime Minister said Thursday that authorities had made "several detentions" while searching for two suspects in a deadly Islamist terror attack that left 12 dead at the offices of a satirical French magazine. 
Manuel Valls made the remarks in an interview with RTL radio as France prepared to observe a national day of mourning in memory of those killed at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a publication that had been threatened before for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed. Valls told the station that preventing another attack is "our main concern."
French authorities have asked for witnesses to help them gather information on the two prime suspects in the attack, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, after an overnight search in the city of Reims proved fruitless. Cherif Kouachi was already known to French intelligence services, due to his history of funneling jihadi fighters to Iraq and a terrorism conviction from 2008. A police bulletin said the brothers, both in their early 30s, should be considered armed and dangerous. 
Earlier Thursday, Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station in a small town in the eastern region after learning his name was linked to the attacks in the news and social media, said Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre. She did not specify his relationship to the Kouachi brothers.
France raised its terror alert system to the maximum level after the daylight attack and bolstered security with more than 800 extra soldiers to guard media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas. A nationwide minute of silence was planned for noon.
Fears had been running high in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home. The French suspect in a deadly attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in the south of France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.
One witness to Wednesday's attack said the gunmen were so methodical he at first mistook them for an elite anti-terrorism squad. Then they fired on a police officer.
The masked, black-clad men with assault rifles stormed the offices near Paris' Bastille monument in the Wednesday noontime attack on the publication, which had long drawn condemnation and threats -- it was firebombed in 2011 -- for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures.
The staff was in an editorial meeting and the gunmen headed straight for the paper's editor, Stephane Charbonnier, widely known by his pen name Charb, killing him and his police bodyguard first, said Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman.
Shouting "Allahu akbar!" as they fired, the men spoke in fluent, unaccented French as they called out the names of specific employees.
Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed, said prosecutor Francois Molins. He said 11 people were wounded, four of them seriously.
Two gunmen strolled out to a black car waiting below, one of them calmly shooting a wounded police officer in the head as he writhed on the ground, according to video and a man who watched in fear from his home across the street.
"They knew exactly what they had to do and exactly where to shoot. While one kept watch and checked that the traffic was good for them, the other one delivered the final coup de grace," said the witness, who refused to allow his name to be used because he feared for his safety.
"Hey! We avenged the Prophet Muhammad! We killed Charlie Hebdo," one of the men shouted in French, according to video shot from a nearby building.
One police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, said the suspects were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. Cedric Le Bechec, a witness who encountered the escaping gunmen, quoted the attackers as saying: "You can tell the media that it's Al Qaeda in Yemen."
After fleeing, the attackers collided with another vehicle, then hijacked another car before disappearing in broad daylight, Molins said.
The other dead were identified as cartoonists Georges Wolinski and Berbard Verlhac, better known as Tignous, and Jean Cabut, known as "Cabu." Also killed was Bernard Maris, an economist who was a contributor to the newspaper and was heard regularly on French radio.
One cartoon, released in this week's issue and titled "Still No Attacks in France," had a caricature of a jihadi fighter saying "Just wait -- we have until the end of January to present our New Year's wishes." Charb was the artist.
Le Bechec, the witness who encountered the gunmen in another part of Paris, described on his Facebook page seeing two men "get out of a bullet-ridden car with a rocket-launcher in hand, eject an old guy from his car and calmly say hi to the public, saying `you can tell the media that it's Al Qaeda in Yemen."'
In a somber address to the nation Wednesday night, French President Francois Hollande pledged to hunt down the killers, and pleaded with his compatriots to come together in a time of insecurity and suspicion.
"Let us unite, and we will win," he said. "Vive la France!"
Thousands of people later jammed Republique Square near the site of the shooting to honor the victims, waving pens and papers reading "Je suis Charlie" -- "I am Charlie." Similar rallies were held in London's Trafalgar Square as well as Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin and Brussels.
"This is the darkest day of the history of the French press," said Christophe DeLoire of Reporters Without Borders.
Both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group have repeatedly threatened to attack France, which is conducting airstrikes against extremists in Iraq and fighting Islamic militants in Africa. Charb was specifically threatened in a 2013 edition of the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire, which also included an article titled "France the Imbecile Invader."
Cherif Kouachi, now 32, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of terrorism charges in 2008 for helping funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency. He said he was outraged at the torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad and "really believed in the idea" of fighting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
A tweet from an Al Qaeda representative who communicated Wednesday with The Associated Press said the group was not claiming responsibility for the attack, but called it "inspiring."

Hybrid Car Cartoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

White House issues veto threat over Keystone pipeline bill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congress Cartoon

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

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

Real Classy?