Will GOP's control of the South play significant role in 2016 races?

The defeat Saturday of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu was essentially the final act in the Republican Party’s control this fall of the South -- a transition expected to have a significant impact on the 2016 White House races.  
The victory by Republican challenger and Louisiana Rep. Bill Cassidy means that Democrats in January will be left without a single U.S. senator or governor across nine states -- stretching from the Carolinas to Texas.
And GOP runoff victories Saturday in two Louisiana House districts ensure the party of at least 246 seats, the largest Republican advantage since the Truman administration after World War II.
Furthermore, Republicans in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas will control nearly every majority-white congressional district and both state legislative chambers.
But will the conservative-leaning voters who appeared this year to have written a closing chapter for the white Southern Democrat have the same impact on the 2016 presidential races?
"The Republican presidential nomination will run through the South," says Ferrell Guillory, a Southern politics expert based at the University of North Carolina. "As Mitt Romney found (in 2012), that...makes it harder to build a national coalition once you are the nominee."
Democrats on Sunday argued that the GOP’s control of the South is not an insurmountable problem for Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or any other liberal member of their party who makes a 2016 presidential run.
“Right now, there are really two electorates -- the midterm and the presidential. It’s a different math,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Czin told FoxNews.com, pointing out that voter-turnout within his party is expected to be significantly higher in 2016.
Democratic strategist and pollster Ben Tulchin said the 2008 and 2012 elections prove that “Democrats don’t need the Deep South to win.”
In 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became one of the last true Southern Democrats to win the White House. He won every Southern state except Oklahoma and Virginia. In 1992 and 1996, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, considered a more conservative Democrat, won only a handful of Southern states in winning the presidency.  
Tulchin also argued a moderate Republican will likely have more problems in 2016 in the Deep South than a liberal Democrat, considering the early South Carolina primary, followed by those in other states across the region, could hurt somebody like New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie.
“His best hope there is the conservative candidates split that vote,” said Tulchin, president of San Francisco-based Tulchin Research.
The region also is home to GOP Sens. Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Kentucky's Rand Paul, both Tea Party favorites and popular presidential hopefuls.
Other Democrats argue that an election without Obama and his widely unpopular agenda in that region also improves their chances.
“The No. 1 thing to be competitive in the South is to have Barack Obama not be president anymore,” North Carolina pollster Tom Jensen, who runs the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, told Politico. “It’s just a simple reality that Southern whites really, really despise him in a way they have not despised any other president.”
Democrats also argue that changing demographics, such as the growing minority populations in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, will help.
Louisiana Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere rejects the notion that Southerners could complicate Republican electoral fortunes in the long-term.
"Whether it was the old Southern Democrats or Republicans now, we've pushed the liberal wings of the parties for a long time," he said. "I think it's good for the party and for the country."

Violence erupts at Berkeley protest for second straight night

These people need to get off their asses and get jobs and go to work.

A protest against police-involved killings spun out of control for the second straight night in Berkeley, Calif. Sunday, as demonstrators threw rocks and explosives at officers, turned on each other, and shut down a highway. 
Sunday's protest began peacefully on the University of California, Berkeley campus. But as protesters marched through downtown Berkeley toward the neighboring city of Oakland, someone smashed the window of a Radio Shack. When a protester tried to stop the vandalism, he was hit with a hammer, Berkeley Police Officer Jennifer Coats said. Coats told KTVU that the man was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Sunday's demonstrations began with approximately 50 protesters, but soon swelled to at least 500 people, according to estimates by police and protesters alike. Demonstrator Alessandro Tiberio told KTVU that the crowd had "very positive energy" when the march started.
"I'm an ally," Tiberio said. "It's important to stay focused on the fact that black lives matter. It's not that all lives don't matter but I'm here to support especially the black people who are most often the ones victimized by the police."
Some of the protesters made their way to State Highway 24 in Oakland and blocked traffic. The California Highway Patrol said some tried to light a patrol vehicle on fire and threw rocks, bottles and an explosive at officers. Highway patrol officers responded with tear gas. KTVU cited additional reports of CHP and police patrol cars being vandalized with windows smashed.  
The highway patrol said it was making arrests but no figures were immediately available.
The demonstrations were the latest of several in the Bay Area in recent days to protest grand jury decisions in Missouri and New York not to indict while police officers in the deaths of two black men. The unrest in Berkeley follows violent disruptions of demonstrations in San Francisco and Oakland in recent days. Five San Francisco police officers sought medical treatment after sustaining injuries during a protest in downtown San Francisco on Black Friday.
On Saturday night, three officers and a technician were hurt and six people were arrested when a similar protest turned unruly. The most serious injury was a dislocated shoulder, Berkeley police said. Coats said no police officers were hurt Sunday evening.

Tax Cartoon

All starts with the government's hunger for more tax money.

Netanyahu: Israel to face threats in same way it did before elections were called

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his first “lame duck” weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, and said Israel will deal with the challenges and threats around it in the same way that it did before new elections were called.

The cabinet table was much less crowded on Sunday than it was for the last 18 months, as the seven Yesh Atid and Hatnua ministers who were either fired or quit in recent weeks were absent.

The cabinet heard a briefing from National Security Council head Yoram Cohen, and Netanyahu said that Israel was following developments in the Middle East with great interest, because “a great deal is happening.”

“We will remain constantly with our hand on the pulse, and we will deal with these threats and challenges because they do not take a time-out,” Netanyahu said. “We will deal with them with the same degree of responsibility that we have done up until now.”

Netanyahu also addressed the hospitalization over the weekend of Jonathan Pollard, saying that he spoke with US Secretary of State John Kerry and said that Pollard's bad health was an additional reason to set him free.”

“Jonathan lost consciousness, was hospitalized, and is not healthy,” Netanyahu said. “He is suffering simultaneously from a number of diseases. The time has come, for all the reasons, after 30 years that Jonathan Pollard is released and becomes a free man.”

Netanyahu said Pollard has paid his debt and should get at least the same treatment as others in his position. “We will not stop working until he is returned home, to the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Pentagon says six Guantanamo Bay detainees transferred to Uruguay

The U.S. government said early Sunday that it had transferred six detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for over 12 years to Uruguay for resettlement as refugees. 
All six men had been detained as suspected militants with ties to Al Qaeda, but had never been charged. A Pentagon statement on Sunday identified the men as four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian. They are the first Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be sent to South America. 
They had been cleared for release since at least 2010 but they could not be sent home and languished as the U.S. struggled to find countries willing to take them.
Among those transferred is 43-year-old Syrian Abu Wa'el Dhiab, who was on a long-term hunger strike at Guantanamo to protest his confinement. He was at the center of a legal battle in U.S. courts over the military's force-feeding of prisoners who refuse to eat.
The other Syrians sent to Uruguay on Saturday were identified by the Pentagon as Ali Husain Shaaban, 32; Ahmed Adnan Ajuri, 37; and Abdelahdi Faraj, 39. Also released were Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan, 35, and 49-year-old Adel bin Muhammad El Ouerghi of Tunisia.
The latest release brings the total number of prisoners at Guantanamo to 136 -- the lowest number since the first month the prison opened in January 2002. The U.S. has said that the men pose no threat, but cannot be allowed to return to their countries of origin. 
"We are very grateful to Uruguay for this important humanitarian action, and to President Mujica for his strong leadership in providing a home for individuals who cannot return to their own countries," U.S. State Department envoy Clifford Sloan said.
Mujica had agreed to take the men in January, but the Pentagon didn't notify Congress of its intent to transfer the detainees to Uruguay until July. The Associated Press reported that administration officials have been frustrated that the transfer took so long and blame outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for not approving the move sooner. 
The handoff was further delayed until after Uruguay's October presidential election and late-November runoff when the transfer became a campaign issue. On Friday, Mujica reiterated his willingness to accept the detainees in an open letter to President Barack Obama that appeared on the Uruguay leader's official website. 
Obama pledged to close the prison upon taking office but was blocked by Congress, which banned sending prisoners to the U.S. for any reason, including trial, and placed restrictions on sending them abroad.
The slow pace of releases has created a tense atmosphere inside the prison. A hunger strike that began in February 2013 totaled about 100 prisoners at its peak, including Dhiab and Faraj.
The restrictions on sending them overseas have been eased and the U.S. has released 19 prisoners so far this year. Officials say several more are expected by the end of the year.
Prisoners have been sent to countries around the world but this is this largest to the Western Hemisphere. Four were sent to Bermuda in 2009 and two to El Salvador in 2012.

More municipal bans on fracking pose setback to domestic energy boom

The surge in domestic-energy production that has created millions of new jobs and abundant natural gas and oil is now facing a potential setback, cities across the country imposing bans on the widely-used deep-drilling process known as fracking.
At least three U.S. cities and two counties in the November elections voted in favor of such a ban. And courts in Pennsylvania and New York have recently ruled in favor of letting cities have some control over the drilling.
There is little surprise that Texas is at the forefront of the fight between energy companies and other fracking supporters and critics who say the drilling process is noisy, pollutes water supplies and triggers earthquakes.
Most of the attention in Texas is now on Denton, a college town near Dallas that sits on the Barnett shale formation that is full of natural gas.
The city became the first in Texas to impose the ban and has emerged as a test case for municipalities across the state trying to halt the drilling -- particularly in the face of the powerful energy industry and the Texas General Land Office, which owns 13 million acres of land across Texas and uses revenue from the mineral rights to fund public education.
Denton residents approved the ban in a Nov. 4 referendum that promptly resulted in at least two lawsuits including one by the land office and the Texas Oil & Gas Association, an industry group.
The ban on fracking went into effect Tuesday, but the situation appears headed for a lengthy legal battle.
"Whatever happens next will take place in a courtroom," Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, a group aligned with producers, told Reuters.
Property rights are a part of Texas' cultural fabric. But the desire to develop hydrocarbons such as oil and gas is equally powerful.
Another factor is that property rights are separate under state law from mineral rights, making it possible to own one but not the other.
The process of fracking involves shooting a mix of pressurized water, sand and chemicals to split rock formations and release the gas and so-called tight oil.
Fracking supporters say the industry in 2012 supported 2.1 million jobs across the country and contributed nearly $284 billion to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, according to most recent figures.
In Ohio, which is home to the Utica shale gas field and is enjoying a manufacturing renaissance as a result of fracking, the cities of Youngstown, Gates Mills and Kent on election day rejected proposed bans. However, the city of Athens approved one. They join the Ohio cities of Broadview Heights, Mansfield, Oberlin and Yellow Springs in the banning of fracking within city limits.
California voters in San Benito and Mendocino counties passed bans, while those in Santa Barbara defeated one. Santa Cruz County had already enacted one, and Los Angeles was already in the process of imposing a temporary ban. At least on local referendum has passed in Colorado, but the courts have ruled against it.
In Texas, the fight against fracking also pits municipalities against the Texas Railroad Commission, which governs the oil and gas industry.
"Regulation doesn't work very well in the state of Texas because the Railroad Commission doesn't work on the public's behalf," said Dan Dowdey, who is asking Alpine city commissioners to ban fracking in the nearby Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale formations, though the closest drilling is more than 100 miles away.
And residents of Reno, which had its first recorded earthquake last year and hundreds since then, took their first step this past spring toward a ban. The ban limits fracking activities to operators who can prove the injections won't cause earthquakes.
Cities might never be able to prove definitively that fracking causes earthquakes.
Texas hired its first seismologist to investigate the potential link after Reno Mayor Lyndamyrth Stokes led an effort to get the Railroad Commission to halt the drilling in her area. Stokes say the seismologist told her that making such a definitive connection would be impossible.
On Monday, potential 2016 Democratic White House Candidate Hillary Clinton, who will need a domestic-energy platform, tried walking the narrow line between fracking supporters and critics.
“It is crucial we put in place smart regulations and enforce them including deciding not to drill when the risks to local communities, landscapes and ecosystems are just too high,” she told the League of Conservation Voters in New York. But “natural gas can play an important bridge role in the transition to a cleaner, greener economy.”

South African hostage killed during US raid was to have been released, aid group says

Pierre Korkie

A South African hostage killed during a U.S.-led raid to free him and an American captive from Al Qaeda militants in Yemen was to have been released Sunday, an aid group has claimed. 
The South Africa-based Gift of the Givers said Saturday that a deal had been reached late last month to free teacher Pierre Korkie, 56, that included a "facilitation fee" paid to his kidnappers. Korkie had been kidnapped along with his wife, Yolande, in the Yemeni city of Tazi 18 months earlier while doing relief work. She had been released in January of this year without ransom. 
"A team of Abyan (Yemeni) leaders met in Aden [Saturday] morning and were preparing the final security and logistical arrangements, related to hostage release mechanisms, to bring Pierre to safety and freedom," Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of Gift of the Givers. "It is even more tragic that the words we used in a conversation with Yolande at 5:59 [Saturday] morning was: 'The wait is almost over.'"
The Associated Press, citing sources close to the negotiations, reported that the militants had initially demanded a $3 million ransom for Korkie's release. Although that demand was dropped, the kidnappers did insist on the "facilitation fee," according to the aid group. The undisclosed amount was raised by Korkie's family and friends, according to the South African Press Agency.
U.S. officials said Korkie and American freelance photographer Luke Somers were apparently shot by an Al Qaeda militant early in a roughly 5-to-10 minute firefight after the team of roughly 40 U.S. commandos were discovered approaching the compound where the men were held. Officials said that based on the location where Somers and Korkie were being held, there was no possibility that they were struck by American gunfire.
U.S. forces pulled Somers and Korkie onto V-22 Ospreys, and medical teams began performing surgery in midair. One hostage died during the short flight; the second died after the Ospreys landed on the USS Makin Island, a Navy ship in the region.
No American forces were killed or sustained serious injuries in the raid. Yemen's government said four of its forces were wounded.
The predawn raid was the second rescue attempt in as many weeks to free Somers following a threat late Wednesday by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, backed by intelligence reports, that he would be killed on Saturday morning unless unspecified demands were met.
President Barack Obama said he ordered the raid because Somers was believed to be in "imminent danger." The president, in a statement, condemned Somers' killing as a "barbaric murder," but did not mention Korkie by name, offering condolences to the family of "a non-U.S. citizen hostage."
"It is my highest responsibility to do everything possible to protect American citizens," Obama said. "As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located."
On Nov. 25, American special operations forces and Yemeni soldiers raided a remote Al Qaeda safe haven in a desert region near the Saudi border. Eight captives, including Yemenis, a Saudi and an Ethiopian, were freed, but Somers was not there. He and five other hostages had been moved days earlier, officials later said.
Roughly a dozen people are believed held by Al Qaeda militants in Yemen.
U.S. officials said that threat prompted Obama to move quickly. Using information obtained during the first raid, U.S. officials believed Somers was being held Shabwa province, a stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist group's Yemeni branch. Officials believed a second hostage was there, too, but did not know it was Korkie.
By Thursday evening, the Pentagon had sent the White House a proposed plan, which Obama approved the following day. Officials alerted Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who gave his support.
Hadi has been a critical U.S. partner in seeking to undermine Yemen's dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate. With the permission of Yemen's government, the U.S. has for years launched drone strikes against militant targets in the country and provided Yemen with hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance. Civilian casualties from the drone strikes have stoked anger in the country, however.
When Obama announced U.S. airstrikes this year against militant targets in Syria and Iraq, he held up the Yemen effort as a comparable model.
Yemen's highest security body, the Supreme Security Committee, issued a rare statement Saturday acknowledging that the country's forces had carried out the raid with "American friends." The committee said all the militants holding the hostages were killed in the operation.
Korkie was a dedicated teacher, a family friend said. "Teaching was his life. His heart took him to Yemen. He loved teaching the poor," said Daan Nortier, who is acting as a family spokesman.
Lucy Somers, the photojournalist's sister, told The Associated Press that she and her father learned of her brother's death from FBI agents just after midnight Saturday.
"We ask that all of Luke's family members be allowed to mourn in peace," she said, speaking from Kent, England.
Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 as he left a supermarket in Sanaa, according to Fakhri al-Arashi, chief editor of the National Yemen, where Somers worked as a copy editor and a freelance photographer during the 2011 uprising in Yemen.
Before her brother's death, Lucy Somers released an online video describing him as a romantic who "always believes the best in people." She ended with the plea: "Please let him live."
In a statement, Somers' father, Michael, also called his son "a good friend of Yemen and the Yemeni people" and asked for his safe release.
Fuad Al Kadas, who called Somers one of his best friends, said Somers spent time in Egypt before finding work in Yemen. Somers started teaching English at a Yemen school but quickly established himself as a one of the few foreign photographers in the country, he said.
"He is a great man with a kind heart who really loves the Yemeni people and the country," Al Kadas wrote in an email from Yemen. He said he last saw Somers the day before he was kidnapped.
Al-Arashi, Somers' editor at the National Yemen, recalled a moment when Somers edited a story on other hostages held in the country.
"He looked at me and said, 'I don't want to be a hostage,'" al-Arashi said. "'I don't want to be kidnapped.'"

Landrieu loses reelection bid in Louisiana to Republican challenger Cassidy

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her reelection bid Saturday in a runoff race with Republican challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy, despite a relentless, against-long-odds effort.
Landrieu, who was seeking a fourth term, trailed by double digits and had lost most of her support going into the election. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting late Saturday, Cassidy had received 56 percent of the vote, to 44 percent for Landrieu.
Landrieu barnstormed the state this week, driving some 1,200 miles in a rented SUV, stopping in little towns and bigger cities, making one last appeal to voters to give her another term in Washington.
“There is no quit,” Landrieu said in her concession speech. “It’s been nothing but a joy to serve this state for over 34 years.”
Cassidy’s win extends the GOP's domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama's tenure.
Republicans will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now.
“Once again, voters have spoken clearly,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said. “They have rejected the Democrat agenda and the Obama-Clinton policies that have produced higher healthcare costs and job-killing regulations.”
The race mirrored contests in other states that Obama lost in 2012, with Landrieu joining Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan and Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor in defeat. Democrats ceded seats in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia after incumbents opted not to run again.
Like victorious Republicans in those races, Cassidy, 57, made his bid more about Obama than about his own vision for the job. An Illinois native and medical doctor, Cassidy made few public appearances during the runoff, seeking to avoid missteps that could change the race.
But in a state where 73 percent of white voters on Nov. 4 told pollsters they "strongly disapproved" of the president, that was enough to prevent Landrieu, 59, from finding her footing. Cassidy also enjoyed a prodigious advertising advantage in the runoff: Of every dollar spent by outside groups during the one-month runoff, 97 cents benefited the congressman.
Landrieu had narrowly led a Nov. 4 primary ballot that included eight candidates from all parties. But at 42 percent, she fell well below her marks in previous races and endured a one-month runoff campaign that Republicans dominated via the airwaves while national Democrats financially abandoned her effort.
In the South, Democrats will be left without a single governor or U.S. senator across nine states stretching from the Carolinas to Texas. The House delegations from the same region are divided almost entirely by race, with white Republicans representing majority-white districts, while majority non-white districts are represented by black or Hispanic Democrats.
Landrieu tried several messages over the course of her losing effort.
Most recently, she had hammered Cassidy as being unfit for the job and interested more in partisanship than helping Louisiana. She directed her most pointed criticism at Cassidy's medical teaching job with the Louisiana State University hospital system. Calling Cassidy "Dr. Double Dip," Landrieu suggested the congressman collected a $20,000, taxpayer-funded salary for little or no work, describing gaps and discrepancies in Cassidy's LSU time sheets. LSU said it's looking into the time sheet questions.
She argued that the race shouldn't be about Obama, but also targeted advertising on radio stations geared to the black community, where the president remains popular.
Her anchor argument was that her senatorial seniority was a boon for Louisiana, particularly her chairmanship of the Senate's energy committee, an important panel for this oil-rich state. But that argument was gutted on Nov. 4 when Republicans won the Senate majority, meaning Landrieu would have lost her post even had she won.
Landrieu, who said a campaign canvasser was fatally struck by a vehicle Saturday, managed last month to get the Democrat-controlled Senate to vote on her bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have helped with voters in oil-rich Louisiana. But the measure failed when she could not get one more Democrat to vote in favor of the plan.