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Team USA hockey coach says he'll bench any player who sits for national anthem

The always-colorful John Tortorella will be behind the bench as head coach of Team USA during the World Cup of Hockey later this month. He's already making it known that he's not going to tolerate any national anthem protests from his players during the tournament.
"If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game," Tortorella told ESPN's Linda Cohn on Tuesday.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has made headlines over the past few weeks thanks to his protests of the national anthem before his team's preseason games. Kaepernick has chosen to remain seated or kneeled for the anthems as a way to speak up against police brutality and racial injustice in America. Several other athletes -- including Seattle Seahawks cornerback Jeremy Lane and American soccer player Megan Rapinoe -- have followed in the quarterback's footsteps.

Van Susteren leaving Fox News, Hume tapped as replacement through election

Greta Van Susteren is leaving Fox News

Greta Van Susteren, who has hosted a top-rated evening program at Fox News for 14 years, is leaving the network.
The abrupt announcement today, in the middle of the presidential campaign, was coupled with word that Brit Hume, Fox’s senior political analyst and a former Washington managing editor, will take over as host of “On the Record” through the election.
Van Susteren, an attorney who hosted a legal show at CNN before joining Fox, has had a richly varied career, from interviewing presidential candidates to flying off to disaster zones such as Haiti, where she opened an orphanage and school named after her. The Wisconsin native has also been a forceful presence online, with her blog and with more than 1 million Twitter followers.
Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, recently named co-presidents of Fox News, said in a joint statement: “We are grateful for Greta’s many contributions over the years and wish her continued success.” They also praised Hume as “one of the best political analysts in the industry” and “the ideal choice to host a nightly political program while the most dynamic and captivating election in recent history unfolds.”
Hume said he is “happy to take on this assignment for the balance of this extraordinary election. My Fox News colleagues have set a high standard for political coverage which I’ll do my best to uphold. I’m honored to be asked.”
According to a source familiar with the process, Van Susteren asked to renegotiate her contract after Roger Ailes resigned under pressure as Fox News chairman following a sexual harassment lawsuit. Van Susteren is one of a number of key Fox personnel whose contract included a “key man” clause allowing her to leave if Ailes departed.
When those negotiations deadlocked, Van Susteren chose to invoke the departure option, the sources said. Her last show was Thursday, and the swiftness of events did not allow her to deliver an on-air farewell.
Hume, who spends part of the year in Florida, is not interested in taking over the Washington-based show permanently. The sudden vacancy could set off a competition to fill the 7 p.m. ET slot.
This would be among the first major programming decisions made by Rupert Murdoch since the network’s owner stepped in as acting CEO of Fox News after Ailes’ resignation.

US made $1.7 billion transfer to Iran in foreign cash, Treasury says

Senators push bill to stop US Iran payments

The Obama administration acknowledged Tuesday that a $1.7 billion transfer to Iran earlier this year was paid entirely in foreign hard currency.
An initial $400 million delivery was sent to Tehran Jan. 17, the same day Iran agreed to release four American prisoners. Congressional officials told the Wall Street Journal that the remaining $1.3 billion was paid in two more installments delivered on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5.
A Treasury spokeswoman told the Associated Press the cash payments were necessary because of the "effectiveness of U.S. and international sanctions," which isolated Iran from the international finance system. The payments were made in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies.
Officials from the Treasury, Justice and State Departments briefed congressional staffers on the payment details Tuesday at the Capitol.
The $1.7 billion was the settlement of a 37-year-old arbitration claim between the U.S. and Iran. The remaining $1.3 billion represented estimated interest on the Iranian cash the U.S. had held since the 1970s.
White House officials had said that they believed the U.S. would lose the arbitration case over the initial $400 million payment, made by the last Shah of Iran months before the Islamic Revolution. Such a decision would have made them liable for much more money.
The Obama administration had claimed the transfer and the prisoner release were unrelated events, but recently acknowledged the cash was used as leverage until the Americans were allowed to leave Iran. Congressional Republicans have accused the White House of paying ransom to Iran in exchange for the prisoners, a charge Obama has rejected.
On Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., introduced bills that would bar such payments in the future.
"The U.S. government should not be in the business of negotiating with terrorists and paying ransom money in exchange for the release of American hostages," Rubio said in a statement.

Hack Attack: Are Trump or Clinton 'choking' in this election?

Kurtz: Which candidate is coughing up the election?

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to (cough) focus on choking.
And by that, I don’t mean Hillary Clinton’s coughing spell the other day, which sparked some of the old conspiracy chatter about her health (and #HackingHillary quickly became a top Twitter trend).
And it led to these eight stacked headlines on the Drudge Report:
10 Doctors Question Hillary Health...
MSNBC Cuts Live Feed as She Sputters For Air...
FIT LASTED OVER 4 MINUTES...
She slams 'conspiracy theories'...
Media Blame Pollen...
Complete timeline of 2016 coughing fits...
PRUDEN: Voters have right to ask...
Thyroid problems linked to sudden cardiac death...
Oh, and Donald Trump tried as well, tweeting: “Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive 'hacking' or coughing attack, yet it is #1 trending. What’s up?”
(Trending topics are the new assignment editor!)

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Clinton, for her part, told reporters on her plane—actually taking a number of questions from her press corps for the first time this year—that she would not be distracted by rumors about her health.
No, I’m talking about choking as the term is used in sports: the 9th-inning strikeout, the dropped pass in the end zone, the clunker off the rim as time expires on the clock.
The trash talk started with Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, ripped Trump for saying he and Enrique Pena Nieto did not discuss his demand that Mexico pay for a border wall:
“It turns out Trump didn't just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it,” Podesta said. (The “lying” allegation relates to Pena Nieto saying he had told Trump his country would never pay, but Trump may have been referring to his decision not to negotiate.)
Trump fired back yesterday, using the same verb, on “Good Morning America”:
"So let me just tell you about choking. I don't choke. She chokes. Look at the deals she's made. She's responsible for so many bad things that have happened to our country, including the signing by her husband of NAFTA, which has drained our country of its jobs. I've been given A-plus, including by you people ... I have been given A-pluses for the job I did in Mexico.”
Now there’s a serious issue beneath the locker-room jibes: Who can withstand the pressures of the presidency? It’s reminiscent of the 3 a.m. phone call ad that Clinton ran against Barack Obama eight years ago.
The charges and countercharges have been flying fast and furious in the last 48 hours. Clinton, on her plane—and I’m glad she’s finally taking press questions—said Trump must have something to hide in not releasing his tax returns.
Trump said Monday that “I think people don’t care. I don’t think anybody cares, except some members of the press.” It’s worth noting that every presidential nominee since Richard Nixon has released tax records.
Clinton also said she must be creating jobs in the “conspiracy theory machine factory.”
Trump, meanwhile, has been hammering away at questions surrounding the Clinton Foundation. In an echo of that earlier Hillary ad, his communications chief Jason Miller said: “When that 3 a.m. phone call comes, we can’t have an ethically-challenged president on the line who took truckloads of cash from other countries.”
And discussing Russia yesterday, Trump said: “Putin looks at her and he laughs, OK? He laughs. Putin. Putin looks at Hillary Clinton and he smiles.”
The intensified pace comes as the media are gradually acknowledging that the polls are tightening. I wrote yesterday that the media narrative was lagging behind the surveys showing Trump closing the gap in national numbers. And yesterday, a new CNN poll gave Trump a 2-point lead over Clinton, or within the margin of error.
No wonder the candidates are accusing each other of coughing, choking and caving in.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Trump says latest FBI document dump 'disqualifying' for Clinton

Donald Trump makes strong push for the veteran vote

Donald Trump said Tuesday that recently released FBI documents proved that Hillary Clinton "fails to meet the minimum standard for running for public office," as both presidential candidates tried to appeal to military and retired voters in Southern swing states.
At a rally in Greenville, N.C., Trump said Clinton's use of a private email server for her correspondence while secretary of state was "disqualifying," a pointed escalation of his case against the Democratic nominee.
"It’s clear from the FBI report that Hillary Clinton lied about her handling of confidential information," said Trump, who added, "This is like Watergate, only it's worse."
Late last week, the FBI published scores of pages summarizing interviews with Clinton and her top aides from the recently closed criminal investigation into her use of a private email server in the basement of her New York home.
The summaries revealed that the FBI identified 13 mobile devices associated with Clinton's two phone numbers, but the Justice Department was unable to obtain any of them. On another occasion, an aide to former President Bill Clinton recalled "two instances where he destroyed Clinton's old mobile phones by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer."
"Who uses 13 different iPhones in four years?" Trump asked rhetorically Tuesday. "People who have nothing to hide don't destroy phones with hammers. They don't ... destroy evidence to keep it from being publicly archived as required under federal law."

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Earlier Tuesday, Clinton accused Trump of insulting America's veterans and pressing dangerous military plans around the globe.
Clinton, addressing supporters in Florida, warned that Trump would lead the nation back to war in the Middle East. And to military vets and their families, she pointed anew to his summertime dust-up with the Muslim parents of a slain American soldier.
“He called the military a disaster,” Clinton said. “He said, ‘I know more about ISIS than the generals do' ... His whole campaign has been one long insult to all those who have worn the uniform."
She also vowed to help the military by giving it the proper equipment to “dismantle terror networks” and providing members and ex-members with better mental-health care.
In response, Trump touted a letter from 88 retired generals and admirals citing an urgent need for a "course correction" in America's national security policy. At his evening rally, the real estate mogul suggested that he would rely on the generals to make up for his own lack of national security inexperience to take on ISIS. He vowed to give military leaders a "simple instruction" soon after taking office: "They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS."
Clinton pushed back, saying Trump has lagged in securing key military supporters compared to past Republican nominees including John McCain and Mitt Romney. She pointed to her endorsements from retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who blasted Trump at the Democratic National Committee, and former CIA deputy director Mike Morell.
Trump also also extolled a new CNN/ORC poll that shows him leading Clinton 45-43 percent in a four-way race with Libertarian Gary Johnson at 7 percent and Green Party’s Jill Stein at 2 percent.
The numbers are a stark reversal from mid-August, when Clinton led by roughly 8 percentage points.
“As for polls, I don’t pay much attention,” Clinton told reporters Tuesday on her new campaign jet en route to Tampa for her only event of the day.
The Democratic nominee said she is instead focusing on what she calls Trump’s un-American views on dictators, illegal immigrants and religious tolerance.
“So dark, so divisive, so dangerous,” Clinton said in Tampa. “I want to be a president who brings a country together. I’m glad that [running mate] Tim Kaine and I are running a campaign of issues, not insults.”
The conflicting messages came as the candidates prepared to appear at an MSNBC forum Wednesday night on national security. While they will appear separately and not be on stage at the same time, it could serve as a warm-up to their highly-anticipated first presidential debate on Sept. 26 at New York's Hofstra University.
Meanwhile, Clinton's campaign released a new television ad entitled, "Sacrifice," showing military veterans watching some of the New York businessman's more provocative statements.
The spot includes clips of Trump claiming to know more about ISIS than military generals, and his criticism of McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and a former prisoner of war. The ad, which features former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee who served in Vietnam, also keys on Trump's assertion that he has sacrificed a lot compared to families who have lost loved ones in conflict.
"Our veterans deserve better," reads a line at the end of the ad, which is airing in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Clinton spent much of late August fundraising in such wealthy enclaves as Hollywood and the Hamptons -- for the TV ads, state-level operations and other campaign expenses needed in the final 62 days of the White House race.
She raised a combined $143 million in August for her campaign, along with the Democratic National Committee and state parties -- her best month yet.
Clinton began September with more than $68 million in her campaign's bank account to use against Trump, who has not yet released initial fundraising totals for August.
Clinton on Monday used a campaign plane for the first time this election cycle, a Boeing 737 with about 100 seats for passengers and crew.
She has since taken serious questions at least twice from reporters flying with the campaign, in an apparent attempt to quell criticism that she has avoids the news media and has not held a full-fledged press conference in 276 days, arguments the Clinton camp disputes.
Trump flies in a private jet, while his press corps travels in a separate one. The wealthy businessman on Monday allowed reporters on his plane, which he said lacks such accommodations, but vowed to occasionally continue taking questions onboard.

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Congress returns for brief, election-year session with Zika funding, avoiding shutdown topping its list

Back to business: Lawmakers' big agenda after summer recess

Lawmakers return Tuesday to Capitol Hill for a short election-season session in which their main -- though politically daunting -- objective will be providing money to keep the government running, with outside hopes of providing funding to fight the growing, mosquito-borne Zika virus.
The House and Senate will have less than four weeks to passing a temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, to keep the entire federal government operating past October 1.
Democrats and Republicans, after a seven-week summer recess, are indeed eager to pass such a bill to avoid being blamed for a government shutdown like the one in 2013 -- with control of the White House and Senate at stake, as well as all 435 House seats on the ballot.
However, disagreement between the parties and within the GOP will, as in years past, likely result in political wrangling until the deadline.
Conservatives, and even Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, want a package that lasts until next March, which would prevent such negotiations in a so-called “lame duck” congressional session in November with a newly-elected president and Congress.
However, the consensus among leaders in both parties appears to be a temporary measure through December.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said last week that he and fellow Democrats in the chamber won’t support a spending plan that runs beyond Christmas.
"We are not doing anything into next year, and every Republican should be aware of that right now," the Nevada Democrat said.
Because the shutdown-prevention measure simply has to pass, it's a tempting target for lawmakers seeking to use it as a vehicle for their preferences. For instance, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is pressing for emergency grants to help communities in his flood-ravaged state to recover.
"I hope we can accomplish that in September," Cassidy said.
Lawmakers left Washington in July without resolving a dispute over money for Zika. The virus can cause severe birth defects and is linked to a host of other maladies.
The Senate is making the issue its first order of business -- holding a procedural vote on Tuesday.
Obama asked Congress in February for $1.9 billion in emergency money, but legislation to partially pay for his proposal collapsed in July amid various fights. Among them was a Republican provision to deny money to Puerto Rican affiliates of Planned Parenthood.
Voters in Florida, where the virus is spreading from Puerto Rico, meanwhile, are blaming Republicans for the lack of additional funding and for taking such a long break amid such a major health concern.
GOP leaders probably will try to keep the spending bill as free of unrelated additions as possible, especially now. If GOP leaders were to grant Cassidy's request, it would make it more difficult to say no to others, such as Democrats seeking money for fixing the lead-tainted water system of Flint, Michigan.
House conservatives also are looking to press ahead with impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over the destruction of agency emails and misleading testimony on whether the tax agency, before his arrival, improperly scrutinized conservative groups seeking nonprofit status.
The impeachment drive is a headache for Republicans who believe that Koskinen's conduct isn't serious enough to warrant impeachment, but who may be reluctant to support the Democratic appointee in such a politically charged environment.
In a recent memo, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said lawmakers will take up legislation regarding the Obama administration's $400 million payment to Iran in January, made immediately after four U.S. prisoners were released.
The payment, for undelivered arms to the shah of Iran, was made on the same day of the prisoner release, and Republicans call it "ransom."
The as-yet-unreleased legislation is designed to prevent a repeat, but seems like an election-season messaging effort.
In addition, House Republican leaders recently conducted a half-hour conference call with their rank-and-file member about a September game plan.
However, sources familiar with the call said the leaders offered few specifics on their strategy on such big issues as Zika, funding the government and the possible Koskinen impeachment effort.
“It was the least informative call I’ve ever been on,” groused one Republican lawmaker.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also wants to advance a popular water-projects measure.
But the priority is to simply adjourn the chamber to allow embattled incumbents such as Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Richard Burr, R-NC, to get back home and campaign for re-election against the political headwinds created by Trump.
The abbreviated session should give GOP-run committees a final pre-election chance to hold hearings on the Obama administration and other targets such as EpiPen manufacturer Mylan, N.V.
That company has come under withering criticism for steep price increases for its life-saving injector, which can stop potentially fatal allergic reactions to insect bites and stings, and foods such as peanuts and eggs.
House Republicans are promising hearings on Hillary Clinton's emails. FBI Director James Comey criticized Clinton's use of a homebrew email server to handle sensitive work-related emails as "extremely careless," but said his agency's yearlong investigation found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Republicans now are demanding that the Justice Department open a new investigation into whether Clinton lied during testimony last year before the House Benghazi committee.
They claim the FBI note may show Clinton provided inconsistent answers to questions about her handling of emails containing classified information.