Mom of Marine held in Mexico pleads with lawmakers, as attorney says release could come soon

The mother of the U.S. Marine imprisoned in Mexico after mistakenly crossing the border with three legally-registered guns told lawmakers Wednesday her son is rapidly deteriorating and pleaded with them to press for his return.

Jill Tahmooressi, whose 26-year-old son, Andrew, served two tours in Afghanistan, appeared before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee to push her case for the U.S. to pressure Mexico to release him. The condition of Tahmooressi, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from his service, has deteriorated since he was locked up March 31 on gun charges.

“My son is despondent, without treatment, and he needs to be home,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

The longtime nurse, who lives in Weston, Fla., recounted several emotional calls from her son, including one from Afghanistan, where he told her about blacking out after an IED exploded near him. Upon returning home, Andrew Tahmooressi abandoned his dream of becoming a commercial pilot because, he told his mother, “I can’t concentrate on the academic work.”

Then, on March 31, he called her from a Mexican border checkpoint to say he was in trouble.

“Mom, I got lost; I made a wrong turn,” Jill Tahmooressi recounted her son saying. “I’m at the Mexican border. You need to know this because I’m surrounded by Mexican military.”

Hours later, in another call, he told her, “Mom, I’ve been arrested, please secure me an attorney.”

Appearing with the distraught mother before the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee were television personality and former Navy Lt. Commander Montel Williams, who is also a former Marine, and Pete Hegseth, the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America and a Fox News contributor.

“We know for a fact that A’s time in this prison has been worse than his time in both tours of combat,” Williams said. “How dare we, how dare we as a nation, hesitate to get that young man back?”

The hearing took place just hours after Tahmooressi’s attorney, Fernando Benitez, told Fox News he plans to rest his case today, possibly opening the door for Tahmooressi's release within a matter of weeks.

"We have more than enough for an acquittal,” Benitez said. He said a crucial development in the case came within recent days, when the prosecution acknowledged that Tahmooressi's PTSD may have played a role in the immediate aftermath of his detention. That stipulation could pave the way to Tahmooressi’s release on humanitarian grounds, he said.

Lawmakers said it is outrageous for a U.S. ally to hold an ailing American on gun charges that clearly stem from an honest mistake. Tahmooressi was in the San Diego area to get PTSD treatment, and living out of his pickup truck when he mistakenly crossed the border at a poorly marked checkpoint. He immediately declared that the guns were among all of his possessions in the truck, according to Benitez.

“As a direct result of his honorable service in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi now suffers from combat-related PTSD,” said Rep. Matt Salmon, R- Ariz. "Tragically, instead of receiving the treatment he needs, he is being held in a Mexican prison.

“Our war hero needs to come home,” he added.

Hegseth, a former infantry officer in the Army National Guard who served tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, said the administration needs to do more to bring Tahmooressi home.

“Shame on anyone, at home or abroad, who does not move heaven and Earth to ensure that those who given so much, receive the care they deserve,” Hegseth said.

Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., noted that the Obama administration traded five Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo Bay for the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, accused of desertion by several men who served with him.

“Sgt. Tahmooressi is an American hero, whose wrong turn at the Mexican border has had the devastating effect of delaying his much-needed PTSD treatment for too long,” Royce said.

Royce said he and Salmon have been in contact with Mexico’s attorney general, who has the power to release Tahmooressi on humanitarian grounds. They said they impressed upon Jesus Karam that Tahmooressi had been diagnosed with PTSD by the VA San Diego Healthcare System just five days before his arrest.

“I am confident the humanitarian release of Andrew Tahmooressi will occur very soon,” Royce said.

More than 100,000 people have signed a petition asking the Obama administration to demand Tahmooressi’s release, prompting White House officials earlier this summer to ask Mexican authorities to quickly process the Marine’s case.

Gun Fight Cartoon

Oregon pols battle over when to pull plug on costly ObamaCare website

Cover Oregon was supposed to be a shining example of ObamaCare at its best. 
The state insurance exchange for the state of Oregon received $300 million in federal grants to launch a state-of-the-art website. But it never worked, and not a single Oregonian was able to sign up for health care from start to finish. 
So now, Oregon is in the process of pulling the plug on the site and switching over to the federal exchange and HealthCare.gov -- but the question is, how quickly they can do it. 
“We need to move forward and do the best thing for the people of Oregon,” Republican State Sen. Tim Knopp said, “and I think that’s ending Cover Oregon as soon as we practically can.” 
Knopp and other Oregon Republicans are calling for a special session of the Legislature -- since lawmakers created Cover Oregon, only the Legislature can end it. But Democrats control the Legislature and the governor’s office, and they’re pushing back against Republicans' demand, and would rather wait until the 2015 session convenes in February to complete the transition.
“There are functions that still have to be performed by someone in the next few weeks and months,” Democratic state Sen. Richard Devlin said. 
Inaction comes with a price tag. 
According to Republican leaders, it costs taxpayers $200,000 a day to keep Cover Oregon running. Waiting until February 2015 or beyond will cost $20 million.
A libertarian think tank is urging a Cover Oregon death sooner, not later. “The simplest thing to do, the cleanest thing to do would be to give Oregonians some certainty and say, you won’t be having to deal with Cover Oregon come November,” said Steve Buckstein of the Cascade Policy Institute.
Oregon officials decided earlier this year to hand off Cover Oregon functions to the Oregon Health Authority, which will work with the federal exchange and HealthCare.gov. But the transition is complicated by a lawsuit filed by the state of Oregon against its website contractor, Oracle. The state is seeking reimbursement alleging a breach of contract.
Also, there recently has been more bad news for Cover Oregon and hundreds of Oregonians. The agency recently discovered it made a serious miscalculation when determining the federal tax credit for 775 families that purchased health plans on the state exchange. It turns out they owe more taxes than they were told.
“This is Cover Oregon’s error,” said Cover Oregon’s Executive Director Aaron Patnode. “So what we’re evaluating at this time is the proper course of action to make sure these consumers have the least financial impact as possible.”
Some in the Oregon Legislature want the government to pay the back taxes.

Rise of ISIS takes center stage in NC Senate race, as Republican Tillis eyes game change

CHARLOTTE, N.C. –  Republican leaders had ticketed Thom Tillis as their best hope to unseat incumbent North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan -- but a month before voters go to the polls Tillis still is trailing, and his campaign is cranking up its attacks on Hagan's Senate record by questioning her national security credentials in light of the growing Islamic State threat. 
Tillis, the state House speaker, is turning up the heat in the final weeks. He's bringing in party luminaries for campaign cameos, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last week. And he's hitting his Democratic opponent hard on foreign policy -- specifically, how one of the world's fastest-growing terror groups went largely ignored by lawmakers in Washington. 
On Monday, Tillis’ camp released a new 30-second ad that hammers Hagan for missing several Senate Armed Service Committee hearings while the Islamic State threat mounted. It accuses Hagan of missing half the committee hearings this year, suggesting both she -- and President Obama -- were sitting back at a critical time. 
“While ISIS grew, Obama kept waiting and Kay Hagan kept quiet,” the narrator says ominously. “The price for their failure is danger.” 
Hagan’s camp, which had been relatively quiet on the topic, hit back Monday – saying that Tillis’ new ad “attempts to distract from his own record by distorting Kay’s instead.”
But Tillis' approach effectively seizes on a growing national anxiety about the rise in terror groups, which is becoming a factor in races that used to focus on health care and the economy. 
During a recent stop in Charlotte, Tillis and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., hammered home the message that Hagan and Obama are to blame for the growing emergency linked to extremist groups like ISIS and said a new approach in Washington is needed. 
"Anything short of a strategy that calls for and achieves the complete elimination of ISIS and any emerging threats is unacceptable," Tillis said in an interview with FoxNews.com. 
He added, "I think this president needs to recognize that he, more than anyone else, needs to get that right and the senator that I'm running against, Kay Hagan, needs to start playing a more active role and demanding that we have a comprehensive strategy to what's occurring the Middle East." 
Tillis accused Hagan of siding with Obama and helping give rise to ISIS by their “inaction and appeasement.” 
The GOP nominee, though, was unclear when asked what he would do in Hagan's position. He said only that his decision would be based on what military officials told him and that as a “private citizen” he could not comment on what he’d do or how he’d vote.
When asked about the prospect of arming Syrian rebels, Tillis said he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to arm them, saying he would “have to know that these arms would not get in the hands of people who would want to take over the Middle East.”
Sadie Weiner, Hagan’s communication director, ripped Tillis for not saying what he would do. “North Carolinians – especially our servicemembers and their families – deserve better than Speaker Tillis’ spineless fence-sitting on this pressing national security threat,” she said. 
Andrew Taylor, professor of political science at North Carolina State University, also said such responses by Tillis could backfire with voters. 
But he nevertheless said the Tillis tactic of painting Hagan as “an out-of-touch, ineffective” politician could generate the bump the GOP nominee needs on Election Day.
“Tillis has been doing this for awhile and really going after Hagan as someone who isn’t a principle player in Washington and isn’t at the table when important decisions are being made,” Taylor said. 
Recent Fox News and other polls show Hagan slightly ahead. The Fox News poll showed Tillis leading by 5 points; a separate CNN/Opinion Research poll put her ahead by 3 points. Both surveys had a margin of error of 4 percentage points. 
Republicans need to pick up a net six Senate seats to gain control of the chamber next year. With once-sleepy races like Kansas suddenly looking competitive for Republicans, it makes states like North Carolina all the more important for the GOP. In the closing weeks, both parties are pulling out the stops, sending heavy-hitters into the state to stump for their respective nominees. 
Last week, Tillis campaigned with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Bush. Former President Bill Clinton will be a special guest Tuesday during a Hagan luncheon in Chapel Hill. 
The Senate race in North Carolina also has seen a staggering amount of outside money pouring in, with some experts predicting it will be one of the most expensive Senate races in history. 
The candidates' most recent campaign finance filings showed Hagan ahead with $8.7 million in cash on hand and Tillis with $1.5 million. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, more than $22 million has been spent in outside money in North Carolina for the midterm races, with the majority going to the Senate race.

Obama Cartoon

India's new prime minister Modi attends White House dinner despite fast

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off a two-day visit with President Obama Monday with a private dinner but there was a slight issue: the new leader of the world's largest democracy couldn't eat.
Modi was fasting to honor the Hindu goddess Durga and was only permitted to consume water or lemon-flavored water. The White House previously said Modi's dietary needs would be accommodated, but offered no details as to what was served at the dinner.
Obama and Modi broke the ice amid widespread concerns that U.S.-Indian ties have frayed in recent years. Joining them in the Blue Room was Vice President Biden, who also attended a State Department lunch with Modi and Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday.
Obama's courtship of Modi, who is on his first official visit to the U.S. since being elected in May, will continue Tuesday. The leaders will have a meeting in the Oval Office, marking a rare second day of attention from Obama.
During their talks, Obama and Modi will focus on economic growth and cooperation on security, clean energy, climate change and other issues, the White House said. They will also address regional concerns, including Afghanistan, where the U.S. is wrapping up its 13-year military involvement, and Syria and Iraq, where the U.S. is ramping up its military engagement as Obama builds an international coalition to target Islamic State militants operating in the both countries.
Obama visited India in 2010 and held up the U.S.-India relationship as the "defining partnership" of the 21st century. But the relationship has been lukewarm at best.
While military cooperation and U.S. defense sales have grown, the economic relationship has been rockier, with Washington frustrated by India's failure to open its economy to more foreign investment and address complaints over intellectual property violations.
A landmark civil nuclear agreement exists between the two countries, but Indian liability legislation has kept U.S. companies from capitalizing on the deal. Further fraying relations was the arrest and strip search last year in New York of an Indian diplomat on visa fraud charges.
A major aspect of this week's visit is the chance for Obama and Modi to begin building rapport, administration officials said. Obama was among the first Western leaders to telephone Modi with congratulations after his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept into power after May's landslide vote.
The visit also is a victory lap of sorts for Modi, a former tea seller who was once shunned by the U.S.
When Modi requested a visa to visit the United States nearly a decade ago, Washington said no. That rejection came three years after religious riots killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat, where Modi was the top elected official.
"He's gone in just a matter of a few months from persona non grata to person of honor to be received warmly in the Oval Office," said Milan Vaishnav, who studies South Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.
Another potential wrinkle in Modi's visit: A human rights group is offering $10,000 to anyone who can serve Modi with a summons issued by a federal court in New York to respond to a lawsuit the group filed accusing him of serious abuses. The lawsuit is on behalf of two unnamed survivors of the violence.
Modi has denied involvement in the violence and India's Supreme Court has said there was no case to bring against him. As a head of state, Modi has immunity from lawsuits in U.S. courts. And White House officials said they doubted the issue would cloud the visit.
"Whether it's security and counterterrorism or strengthening the economy or a host of other regional issues, there is a broad framework where India and the U.S. work closely together to advance our shared interests," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Tax breaks worth billions set to expire unless Congress acts

Time is running out for Congress to extend more than 50 tax breaks worth nearly $85 billion, including popular ones for college expenses and energy-efficient appliances. 
Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to extend the tax breaks -- including some that expired in 2013. But the midterm elections largely have brought to a standstill votes on such major issues as taxes and immigration and even military action against the Islamic State. 
Among the expiring breaks is a benefit enjoyed in the seven states that do not have an income tax. Taxpayers in those states have been allowed by Congress for years to deduct state and local sales tax instead. According to the Dallas Morning News, more than 2 million filers in Texas -- one such state with no income tax -- used the deduction in 2012, for an average benefit of $1,906. 
But if Congress doesn't extend it, the deduction goes away. 
This spring, the Senate Finance Committee passed a bill to extend through 2015 nine tax credits, deductions or exemptions that expired in 2013 -- and 26 more that will expire at the end of year.
The legislation has widespread bipartisan support, but Republicans kept it from getting a final vote when denied the opportunity to have their amendments considered.
“I support the tax extenders legislation. I want to see it passed,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the finance committee, said afterward. “I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I suspect that the majority of Senate Republicans feel the same way.” 
It remains to be seen whether lawmakers would be more amenable to extending at least some of the breaks after the election, and before a new Congress is sworn in. A Senate staffer told FoxNews.com on Monday the fate of the bill during the lame-duck session rests on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. 
In the Republican-controlled House, the Ways and Means Committee has voted in favor of extending 14 of the 50-plus tax breaks, making 12 of them permanent.
But nothing appears headed for a full floor vote yet, in large part because the so-called “breaks” result in less revenue for the Treasury Department and an increase to the deficit -- like the projected $84.1 billion the Senate bill would add if passed in full. 
A House staffer said Monday a vote that in effect increases the deficit would be especially difficult in that chamber because every member is up for re-election, and especially hard for Republicans running as hardline fiscal conservatives.
The chamber’s Joint Committee on Taxation has identified 79 expired or expiring federal tax provisions from 2013 to 2023.  
Beyond the ones for college tuition and energy efficiency, the list includes the popular deductions for expenses for school teachers, mass transit, mortgage-insurance premiums and for the use of alternative fuels and the vehicles that run on them.
Congress has talked for years about comprehensive tax reform, essentially by implementing a major overhaul to simplify the U.S. tax code. But such a task is complicated and politically perilous. 
In March, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., produced a sweeping tax-reform plan that would create just two tax brackets and lower the corporate tax rate by 25 percent without increasing the deficit, a plan lawmakers call “revenue neutral.”
However, the plan went nowhere with Republican leaders in part because it covered the lost tax revenue by capping or eliminating tax credits and deductions.
House Speaker John Boehner, when asked about the details of the Camp plan at the time, responded in part by saying “blah, blah, blah.”
Still, supporters of tax reform hope the desire to make changes is being stoked by the recent debate over U.S. corporations establishing overseas headquarters to avoid taxes. The Treasury Department imposed new regulations earlier this month to make it harder for corporations to pull off the so-called “inversions.”

House committee to scrutinize Secret Service after White House breach details revealed

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will face questions about how an armed intruder jumped the White House fence and made it as far as the East Room when she testifies before a House committee Tuesday. 
Sources told Fox News Monday that 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez, overpowered a Secret Service officer in the Sept. 19 incident before a struggle and "wrestling" inside the executive mansion ensued. Gonzalez was eventually tackled by a counter-assault agent in the East Room after he reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn. 
The revelation came on the eve of a scheduled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing that will address the breach, as well as lawmakers' "concerns" about the Secret Service's security protocols. 
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs a House subcommittee on national security oversight, also confirmed to CNN that whistleblowers had informed his panel of the breach.
A series of what one source called "catastrophic" security failures apparently allowed the intruder to get deep into the White House. 
The Secret Service did not follow basic protocols during the incident to protect the White House, the president and the first family and the agency still does not know why, a source intimately familiar with details of the investigation told Fox News. 
For example, the Secret Service didn't lock down certain areas of the property and did not elevate the threat level at the White House so that other uniformed officers and agents would know what was happening, which is a standard response.
“This was a catastrophic failure when the President was NOT there. What if the president WAS there?” the source, a longtime Secret Service insider, added. "It turns out that basic functions in place to avoid this were never initiated."
Additionally, an alarm box near the front entrance of the White House that is designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher's office, an official told The Washington Post.
An officer posted inside the front door also appeared to be delayed in learning that Gonzalez was about to burst through, according to the Post. Officers are trained to immediately lock the front door once an intruder is spotted on the grounds.
A Secret Service Uniformed Division officer then “misreported” how far the intruder got into the White House to management in order to downplay the impact of the initial failure. 
The officer in question told management that the intruder “never got through the vestibule” of the North Portico, which turned out to be false, the source said.
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor told Fox News that the agency would not comment on the revelations, citing the ongoing investigation.
The Secret Service has been having high-level meetings to address the breach, the latest in a series of embarrassing scandals for the agency since a 2012 prostitution scandal erupted during a presidential visit to Colombia.
The Post reported over the weekend that the Secret Service did not immediately respond to shots fired at the White House in 2011, amid what the agency describes as uncertainty about where the shots originated. Four days later, it was discovered that at least one of the shots broke the glass of a window on the third level of the mansion, the Secret Service said.
At the time of the 2011 breach, the president and first lady Michelle Obama were away, but their daughters were in Washington — one home and the other due to return that night.
Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez of Idaho has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2011 incident.
"The president and the first lady, like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children, but the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service to do a very important job, which is to protect the first family, to protect the White House, but also protect the ability of tourists and members of the public to conduct their business or even tour the White House," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
After the most recent breach, Pierson ordered a review of the incident and possible changes to security measures at and around the White House. She briefed the president on Thursday.
"The president is interested in the review that they are conducting, and I would anticipate that he'll review whatever it is they — whatever reforms and recommendations they settle upon," Earnest said of the Secret Service's internal review.
Secret Service officers who spotted Gonzalez scaling the fence quickly assessed that he didn't have any weapons in his hands and wasn't wearing clothing that could conceal substantial quantities of explosives, a primary reason agents did not fire their weapons, according to a U.S. official briefed on the investigation.
Gonzalez was on the Secret Service radar as early as July when state troopers arrested him during a traffic stop in southwest Virginia. State troopers there said Gonzalez had an illegal sawed-off shotgun and a map of Washington tucked inside a Bible with a circle around the White House, other monuments and campgrounds. The troopers seized a stash of other weapons and ammunition found during a search of Gonzalez's car after his arrest.
The Secret Service interviewed Gonzalez in July, but had nothing with which to hold him. Gonzalez was released on bail. Then, on Aug. 25, Gonzalez was stopped and questioned again while he was walking along the south fence of the White House. He had a hatchet, but no firearms. His car was searched, but he was not arrested.
"There's a misperception out there that we have some broad detention powers," Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, said. The Secret Service, like other law enforcement agencies, must have evidence of criminal behavior in order to file charges against someone. "Just because we have a concern about someone doesn't mean we can interview or arrest them or put them in a mental health facility," Donovan said.