GOP-led Senate fails to override Obama's Keystone veto, lawmakers say fight not over

The GOP-controlled Senate failed Wednesday to override President Obama’s veto of Keystone XL pipeline legislation but vowed to continue to fight to complete the project.
The vote was 62-37, five votes short of the 67-vote super-majority needed to override a presidential veto. The bill turned back by the president would have approved the controversial pipeline.
“The Senate’s failure to override President Obama’s veto is a defeat for our economy and American workers," Indiana GOP Sen. Dan Coats said after the vote. "Obama and a majority of Senate Democrats have said no to creating new jobs and increasing our energy security. Despite support from the majority of Americans, this important pro-growth project remains in political paralysis.”
But some lawmakers are looking at other ways to muscle the legislation through.
“If we don’t win this battle today, we’ll attach [the legislation] to another bill and win the war,” North Dakota GOP Sen. John Hoeven, a major sponsor of the bill, said before the vote.
Hoeven is considering attaching the Keystone measure to a highway infrastructure bill.
The completion of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline has been a contentious Washington issue for the past six years.
Republicans and other supporters argue the project would create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and help the United States become less dependent on foreign oil.
Democrats and other opponents say that drilling for the oil in Canada’s tar sands will emit too much greenhouse gas and contribute to global warming.
The Senate passed the legislation Jan. 29 -- just weeks after Republicans officially took control of the chamber from Democrats, who for years had held up the effort.
Obama later vetoed the legislation, making good on his vow that no final decision could be made until the State Department completed its impact studies.
“By vetoing the bipartisan Keystone jobs bill, President Obama sided with [the] moneyed special interests over the middle class,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., earlier this week told The Hill newspaper that the effort to override the veto was a “ludicrous idea” and rejected the idea of attaching Keystone to the highway legislation.
"First, they hold the homeland security funding bill hostage to immigration,” Boxer said. “Now they want to hold the highway bill hostage to big polluting Canadian special interests.”

US ambassador to South Korea injured in knife attack

The U.S. ambassador to South Korea was slashed by a man screaming demands for Korean unification Thursday morning in Seoul, and was hospitalized with wounds to his face and wrist.
Media images showed a stunned-looking Mark W. Lippert examining his blood-covered left hand and holding his right hand over a cut on the right side of his face, his pink tie splattered with blood. The attack occurred at a performing arts center in downtown Seoul where Lippert was about to give a lecture on the prospects for peace on the divided Korean peninsula.
The U.S. Embassy said Lippert was in stable condition after surgery at a Seoul hospital.
In a televised briefing, Chung Nam-sik of the Severance Hospital said 80 stitches were needed to close the facial wound, which was just over 4 inches long and just over 1 inch deep. He added the cut did not affect Lippert's nerves or salivary gland.
Chung said the knife also penetrated through Lippert's left arm and damaged the nerves connected to his pinkie and tendons connected to his thumb. Lippert will need to be treated at the hospital for the next three or four days and may experience sensory problems in his left hand for several months, Chung said.
YTN TV reported that the suspect — identified by police as 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong — screamed during the attack, "South and North Korea should be reunified." The comments touch on a deep political divide in South Korea over the still-fresh legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which is still technically ongoing because it ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. Some South Koreans blame the presence of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the South as a deterrent to the North for the continuing split of the Korean Peninsula along the world's most heavily armed border -- a view North Korea's propaganda machine regularly pushes in state media.
Witnesses said the attack happened suddenly. A knife-wielding man ran screaming up to Lippert as soup was being served for the breakfast meeting and began slashing, said Kim Young-man, spokesman for the group hosting the breakfast, the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation. A separate, unidentified witness told local media that as Lippert stood up for a handshake, the suspect wrestled the ambassador to the ground and slashed him with a knife.
Yonhap TV showed men in suits and ties piled on top of the attacker, who was dressed in a modern version of the traditional Korean hanbok, and Lippert later being rushed to a police car with a handkerchief pressed to his cheek. The suspect also shouted anti-war slogans after he was detained, police said, later adding that the knife was around 10 inches long.

Hillary Clinton says she's asked State Department to make emails public

Hillary Clinton said late Wednesday that she had asked the State Department to make thousands of her emails available to the public, her first public response to a furor that followed the revelation that she used a private e-mail account for her correspondence while Secretary of State.
State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf released a statement early Thursday saying, "The State Department will review for public release the emails provided by Secretary Clinton to the Department, using a normal process that guides such releases. We will undertake this review as quickly as possible; given the sheer volume of the document set, this review will take some time to complete
Clinton's message came hours after the House select committee investigating the 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya subpoenaed her personal emails. The committee also also sent letters to Internet companies informing them of "their legal obligation to protect all relevant documents."
The controversy began Monday after The New York Times reported that Clinton had never had an official government e-mail account for conducting official business. The practice is a potential violation of federal law, and has also raised questions of why Clinton went to such lengths to keep her messages off government servers.
The Times reported that members of the Benghazi committee initially discovered that Clinton had used a private e-mail account during her tenure at Foggy Bottom. The paper also said that Clinton had turned over 55,000 messages that had been selected by her advisers to the State Department in response to a records request. Clinton's Twitter post appeared to refer to those messages, about 300 of which are related to the Benghazi attack.
On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that the server Clinton used to store her emails had been traced to an Internet service registered to the Clintons' home address in Chappaqua, N.Y. That maneuver would have given additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails.
Meanwhile, the AP said it was considering legal action under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act against the State Department for failing to turn over some emails covering Clinton's tenure as the nation's top diplomat after waiting more than one year. The department has never suggested that it doesn't possess all Clinton's emails.
The controversy has also raised new questions about Clinton's credibility as a presidential candidate. Though she has not formally declared her intention to run, Clinton is widely considered to be the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton still has not described her motivation for using a private email account -- hdr22(at)clintonemail.com, which traced back to her own private email server registered under an apparent pseudonym -- for official State Department business. However, a Clinton aide told Fox News she was not bucking the system, and in fact was keeping with what former secretaries of state had done, including Colin Powell. The aide stressed that Clinton quickly responded to the request from the department for her emails, following updated guidance from the government's central records office.
The White House has deferred the question of whether any laws were broken to the State Department. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday it was "clear that Secretary Clinton's team has gone to great lengths" to collect and turn over emails and said Clinton's actions seemed consistent with the Federal Records Act.
But he also reiterated that the administration gave "very specific guidance" that employees should use official accounts when conducting government business, which Clinton did not do. Earnest later clarified that "when there are situations where personal email accounts are used, it is important for those records to be preserved, consistent with the Federal Records Act."

Quds force leader, commanding Iraqi forces against ISIS, alarms Washington

The enemy of your enemy is your enemy.

Twice designated a terrorist by the United States government, considered responsible for up to 20 percent of American casualties in the Iraq war, Major General Qasem Suleimani, the legendary Iranian spymaster and leader of the Quds Force – the elite special operations wing of the hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – is now stirring alarm in Washington for doing something the Obama administration would ordinarily cheer: taking the fight to ISIS in Iraq.
Photographs circulating on social media show Suleimani operating alongside senior Iraqi officials in the theater in and around Tikrit, the Sunni ancestral home of Saddam Hussein that is located almost equidistant between Mosul, the ISIS-controlled city 120 miles to the north, and Baghdad, the capital of the Iraqi government 100 miles to the south.
The presence of Suleimani at the forefront of Iraqi forces’efforts to reclaim Tikrit from ISIS control underscores both the expanding influence of Iran on the central Iraqi government and the increasingly critical role that Shi’ite militiamen, thought to be operating under Quds command, are playing in the Iraqi fight against ISIS. Neither development brings pleasure to senior U.S. officials or lawmakers in Congress.
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., raised the issue of the Iranians with President Obama’s new defense secretary during a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. “I know we're keeping our distance physically from them in Baghdad,” Frelinghuysen said. “Have we ceded most of the governance of Iraq to Iranians?...And will the military operations that are undergoing, which we are watching, divide the country and require us in some ways to spend more of our resources?”
“I absolutely share your concern about the role of Iran in Iraq and the wider region,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told the panel.
Among those concerns is a fear about what may happen if and when ISIS fighters surrender or flee Tikrit, which is presently said to be encircled and witnessing combat. Of the advancing forces, two-thirds are believed to be Shi’ite militiamen loyal to Iran, with the remainder belonging to Iraqi security forces, and officials worry that the Shi’ite troops may seek to avenge ISIS’ massacre of 1,700 Iraqi troops, almost all Shi’ites from nearby Camp Speicher, last June.
“The killings that were perpetrated in the time after we left Iraq would never be forgotten,” Frelinghuysen said.
“I completely agree with you,” Carter replied. “And sectarianism is one of the things that concerns me very much. And of course, it's the root of the Iranian presence in Iraq.”
“We're watching carefully,” added U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who appeared alongside Carter at the hearing. “If this becomes an excuse to ethnic cleanse, then our campaign has a problem and we're going to have to make a campaign adjustment.”
An additional reason the battle for Tikrit bears close watching at the Pentagon is because it may serve as an indicator of how well the Iraqi forces and their Shi’ite comrades can perform when the larger contest for Mosul is engaged. Analysts who have examined recent Iranian casualty reports said the data show the Islamic regime deploying more rank-and-file troops to Syria, but higher-level commanders to Iraq, to oversee the Shi’ite militia groups.
Ali Alfoneh, an Iranian-born scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, cast the involvement of the Quds Force in the ISIS conflict as reflecting a larger trend in Iranian society: its slow transformation from a radical Islamic theocracy to a military dictatorship, with the IRGC assuming ever greater powers.
“This is an organization which has engaged in spreading sectarian terror in Iraq. And now, this is the force that the Iraqi government has turned to for help in order to liberate Tikrit from Islamic State terrorists,” Alfoneh told Fox News. “In other words, we have one terrorist organization which is helping the Iraqi government get rid of another terrorist organization.”
Such tangled lines of authority and influence are exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had in mind on Tuesday, when he told a joint meeting of Congress: “When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.”

Keep Your Doctor Cartoon

Searing DOJ report says Ferguson PD routinely violated rights of African-Americans

The Ferguson Police Department routinely violated the constitutional rights of the local African-American population in the Missouri city for years, the Department of Justice has found in a searing report.
The investigation, launched after the August shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, found that the department violated the Fourth Amendment in instances such as making traffic stops without reasonable suspicion and making arrests without probable cause.
The report provides direct evidence of racial bias among police officers and court workers, and details a criminal justice system that through the issuance of petty citations for infractions such as walking in the middle of the street, prioritizes generating revenue from fines over public safety.
The practice hits poor people especially hard, sometimes leading to jail time when they can't pay, the report says, and has contributed to a cynicism about the police on the part of citizens.
The official release of the report could come as early as Wednesday. The details were provided to Fox News on Tuesday by law enforcement officials familiar with the department's findings.
The Justice Department alleges that the discrimination was triggered at least partly by racial bias and stereotypes about African-Americans, a violation of the 14th Amendment. The report details a November 2008 email on an official Ferguson municipal account which joked that President Obama would not be president for long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years?”
From 2012 to 2014, the report found, African-Americans comprised 85 percent of people pulled over for a traffic stop; 90 percent of those given citations; and 93 percent of arrests.
Also, African-American drivers were more than twice as likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white drivers, but that those black drivers were 26 percent less likely to be found to be holding contraband.
The report also accuses the Ferguson police of using unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that 88 percent of those cases involved African-Americans.
Overall, blacks make up 67 percent of Ferguson's population.
The Justice Department began the civil rights investigation following the August killing of Brown, which set off weeks of protests. A separate report to be issued soon is expected to clear the officer, Darren Wilson, of federal civil rights charges.
The department has conducted roughly 20 broad civil rights investigations of police departments during the six-year tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder, including Cleveland, Newark, New Jersey and Albuquerque. Most such investigations end with police departments agreeing to change their practices.
Justice Department officials were in St. Louis on Tuesday to brief Ferguson leaders about the findings, a city official said.
Several messages seeking comment from Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson and Mayor James Knowles III were not returned. A secretary for Jackson said he is not doing media interviews.
Scott Holste, a spokesman for Gov. Jay Nixon, declined comment, saying he has not seen the report.
Ben Crump, the attorney for the Brown family, said that if the reports about the findings are true, they "confirm what Michael Brown's family has believed all along, and that is that the tragic killing of an unarmed 18-year-old black teenager was part of a systemic pattern of inappropriate policing of African-American citizens in the Ferguson community."

Clinton teases possible 2016 campaign at abortion group's gala

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton on Tuesday credited women with making a difference at all levels of government, asking an audience of female Democrats, "Don't you someday want to see a woman president?"
On the cusp of a second presidential campaign, the former secretary of state previewed some of the economic themes that could animate an upcoming race, pointing to an economy that too often fails to address the challenges faced by families and working mothers.
"We have to get our economy to reflect the realities of 21st century America, and we're not doing that," Clinton said at the 30th anniversary gala of EMILY's List, an organization that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. "We're not doing that when the hard work of men and women across our country is not rewarded with rising wages, but CEO pay goes up and up no matter what."
Clinton's 30-minute address was punctuated by references to her future. She noted that during one's life, "you get a chance to make millions of decisions. Some of them are big, like 'Do you run for office?'"
Looking out at the ballroom of female Democrats, Clinton asked if they were hopeful of seeing more women running for local offices like school board member, governor, mayor and member of Congress. "I suppose it's only fair to say, 'Don't you someday want to see a woman president?'" she asked, generating loud applause.
Clinton steered clear of questions that emerged Tuesday about her use of a personal email account instead of a government-issued email address during her time as secretary of state. Republicans seized on the disclosures, accusing her of violating a law intended to archive official government documents. GOP officials have also amplified reports that the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from foreign governments ahead of an expected Clinton campaign.
"It speaks volumes that Hillary Clinton will gladly attend fancy galas yet continue to hide from the American people," said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore. She said voters deserved to know "why she only used private email while serving as secretary of state at the same time the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from foreign governments who were lobbying her State Department."
In her speech, Clinton accused Republicans of fostering policies promoting "trickle-down economics" but noted that both parties have spoken of ways to boost wages for middle-class workers. "We welcome them to come with their ideas and we will match them," Clinton said of the Republicans. "That's what elections should be about. Elections should be a contest of ideas."
The prospect of a Clinton campaign was invoked repeatedly by political leaders who have worked with the fundraising powerhouse, whose name is an acronym for "Early money is like yeast." The organization has a strong track record in Democratic politics, electing more than 100 women to the U.S. House, 19 to the Senate, 10 governors and more than 500 state and local officials.
"She's more than an idol," said Stephanie Schriock, EMILY's List's president, describing Clinton. "She's an inspiration — and a leader whose talents we desperately need."
The event brought to the stage Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the group's first endorsed candidate who recently announced her retirement, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California and former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded in a deadly 2011 shooting during a political event at a Tucson, Arizona, shopping mall.
Giffords said female leaders deliver results, in places like city hall, state houses, governor's mansions and Congress, "and maybe soon, in the White House."
The organization has helped lay the groundwork for a potential Clinton campaign, holding events to promote the possibility of electing the nation's first female president and commissioning polling.
Ellen Malcolm, the founder of EMILY's List, pointed to Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign as the first step, bringing the audience to their feet when she identified 2016 as the "time to shatter that glass ceiling and put a woman in the White House." Clinton, seated in the audience, laughed and clapped along with the crowd.
"Hillary, you heard us," Malcolm said. "Just give us the word and we'll be right at your side."

As Supreme Court takes up ObamaCare, GOP offers alternatives, Dems warn of 'massive damage’

Congressional Republicans are proposing long and short-term alternatives to ObamaCare as the Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments Wednesday in a case that has the potential to unravel the health care law.
The plaintiffs, four Virginia residents, argue that Americans who bought insurance through the federal ObamaCare exchange are not entitled to subsidies because the law says only those who bought policies in state exchanges are eligible.
At least 5.5 million Americans last year bought insurance on the federal exchange and received the subsidies.
Both sides in the case -- known as King v. Burwell -- generally agree that if the high court decides that millions of recipients are no longer eligible, they likely will no longer be able to afford insurance under ObamaCare and exit the system.
However, whether their departure would topple the entire health care law remains a matter of debate ahead of the expected high court ruling by June.
Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said nullifying the subsidies would cause "massive damage to our health care system" and that the administration would have no way to fix it.
The administration and Democrats who enacted the 2010 law over unanimous GOP opposition also largely back studies showing the number of people who would loses the subsidies, in the form of tax credits, is as high as 7.5 million.
And a recent analysis by the health care firm Avalere found that those who would lose their subsidies as a result of the court ruling would have their premiums increase an average 225 percent.
Ed Haislmaier, a health care policy expert with the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, on Tuesday predicated some fallout, or “dislocation’ but not to such an extent.
“Is the sky going to fall?” he asked. “No, but it’s probably going to rain in some places.”
Several top Capitol Hill Republicans have in the past few days announced pending, short-term alternatives if the court invalidates the subsidies for residents of the 34 states that use the federal ObamaCare exchange, not their own.
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week that his plan will set the stage for a “more permanent fix” but did not provide specifics.
On Sunday, Hatch was joined by fellow GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Barrasso of Wyoming in a Washington Post opinion piece saying they have a plan.
“We would provide financial assistance to help Americans keep the coverage they picked,” the senators wrote. "It would be unfair to allow families to lose their coverage, particularly in the middle of the year."
However, they also provided no specifics on how to pay for the lost subsidies -- estimated at $36.1 billion.
Most of the 34 states in question are GOP-run and represented in Congress by Republicans.
On Tuesday, an opinion offering by Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Fred Upton, R-Mich., appeared in The Wall Street Journal also presenting alternatives - but in more detail.
“No family should pay for this administration’s overreach,” the congressmen, chairmen, respectively, of the House committees on Education and Workforce, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce wrote.
“That is why House Republicans have formed a working group to propose a way out for the affected states if the court rules against the administration.”
The congressmen said their ObamaCare “off-ramp” will in part allow states to opt out of coverage requirements that are driving up costs, let Americans buy the policies they want and make insurers compete for customers, rather than force Americans to buy a government-approved health plan “under the threat of IRS fines.”