Long-shot Republican candidates weigh spicing up 2016 race

The 2016 Republican presidential field could be bigger than any in recent memory – thanks to a growing second tier of potential contenders.
While several prominent politicians already have insinuated themselves into the mix, from Ted Cruz to Rand Paul to Chris Christie to Jeb Bush, a number of under-the-radar names are now flirting with a 2016 candidacy. 
They may be the long shots, but could shake things up -- by playing the spoiler in key primaries, positioning themselves as a potential running mate for the eventual nominee or even becoming a dark horse competitor in the final stage. 
"It is definitely a new phenomenon," Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley said of the increasingly crowded fields. (The 2008 and 2012 GOP contests were a political demolition derby.) "I don't think this has anything to do with the growth of the United States, you just have more people who are convinced they are qualified to run for president." 
Some potential candidates are hardly new to the game, including Rick Santorum and others. 
Longtime Republican pollster Glen Bolger said the lure is especially strong for pols who have inhabited that spotlight. "They figure, Barack Obama can come out of nowhere," he said, referring to the president's leap from one-term senator to president. "They think, 'I can be different, I can break the mold and get the nomination'." 
He added: "[But] it's like catching lightning in a bottle. I won't say it can't be done, but that's what a lot of these candidates are relying on." 
Here's a look at a few of them:

• 1. George Pataki

  

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  George Pataki, the three-term former New York governor, has said he's weighing a 2016 run, and he seems to be taking the idea seriously. He launched a super PAC called Americans for Real Change, which produced an ad this fall timed with appearances in New Hampshire. His message: fiscal responsibility, with a populist twist. 
  "Big government benefits the rich and powerful. They can afford to play the game -- you can't," he says in his televised ad. "It's time for a new America, with much smaller federal government. Washington can't run the economy, and shouldn't try to run our lives." 
  Asked about a possible bid, Pataki told Fox Business Network in November: "I'm thinking about it." 
  Some analysts consider him a long shot, however. Once a shining light of the Republican revolution in 1994 -- the first year he was elected governor of New York -- his support for gun control and gay rights could cause problems with the conservative base. 
  "It helps to be known, it helps to be supported by some key element of the base and it helps to raise money," Bolger said. "I'm not sure he fits in any of those categories, much less all three."

• 2. Rick Santorum

  

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  Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum remains popular among social conservatives, particularly evangelicals who support his position on abortion issues. And during the crowded 2012 race, he enjoyed a brief period as the "it" candidate.
  So would he run again?
  After The Washington Post in early December declared that he, indeed, would run, Santorum told Fox News the report might be "hyperbole."
  But he acknowledged he's thinking about it.
  "No announcements, but we're working at it right now and we are calling people in those [early primary] states ... and we'll make a decision sometime later next year," Santorum said.
  The former senator is a divisive figure in politics, but said a "blessing" of his career is that "we've always been underestimated."
  Meanwhile, Santorum continues to stay visible in the media as a voice on conservative issues, and has been making the rounds at conservative gatherings, including the Values Voter Summit, where he came in fourth in the straw poll (Cruz won with 25 percent).
  According to the Des Moines Register, which is tracking candidate visits to Iowa, Santorum has been there nine times for events since 2012.

• 3. Carly Fiorina

  

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  Ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has maintained a political profile since leaving HP. She worked on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and ran for Senate, unsuccessfully, in California in 2010.
  The Hoover Institution's Bill Whalen noted in a recent op-ed that Fiorina is so far the only woman showing an interest in the GOP nomination. He also called her the only potential candidate with "serious business experience."
  She hasn't said she is in, but Fiorina is actively exploring the possibility, according to The Washington Post, which reported she has been talking privately with potential donors and recruiting staffers and grassroots activists. 
  On Friday, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores also announced she was going to work for Fiorina's Unlocking Potential PAC. Flores previously did consulting work for Mitt Romney in 2012. 
  Fiorina made a stop in the New Hampshire on Dec. 5, delivering remarks at a breakfast hosted by the state's Independent Business Council. She touched on her role as a woman in Republican politics. "Parties need to look as diverse as the nation and speak to people about issues that matter to them," she said.
  She, too, hit an anti-big government message. "People who succeeded in bureaucracies want to preserve status quo because it benefits them," she said. "I could be talking about Washington or HP ... we need to think about reform in Washington, which is desperately needed in a systematic way." 

• 4. Bobby Jindal

  

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  The son of Indian immigrants, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was once considered a rising star in the party. After he gave the Republican rebuttal to President Obama's 2009 State of the Union address -- and got mixed reviews -- his star dimmed.
  But he's kept his hand in national politics, and though he has not said whether he will run, he's been making all the moves. He's taken four trips to Iowa since 2012, according to the Des Moines Register, and has been hitting the conservative gatherings hosting 2016 hopefuls over the last year.
  "He's an undervalued stock," top aide Timmy Teepell told the Washington Examiner in October. The paper noted that pundits were skeptical of Jindal's chances, especially since he only had a 33 percent approval rating among his own constituency in Louisiana as of November. "Fortunately D.C. pundits don't get to decide elections," Teepell quipped.
  Jindal came in third in September's Values Voter straw poll, indicating he still has a strong appeal to the social conservative base. Most recently, he gave a rare foreign policy speech at the conservative Foreign Policy Initiative. When asked on "Fox News Sunday" about his low ratings among presidential contenders, Jindal said he was substance over style. "This isn't about politicians [who are] popular by kissing babies and cutting ribbons."
  "I was at less than two percent when I ran for governor," he said, and since, "we have transformed our state."

• 5. Robert Ehrlich

  

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  Robert Ehrlich, a former Maryland governor, has been giving speeches and keeping his name out there -- even if he's rarely mentioned alongside the Jeb Bushes and Ted Cruzes of the world.
  "It all started pretty organically. I got invited to go to New Hampshire this summer and from that, been back a couple more times," Ehrlich told a Baltimore CBS affiliate. Ehrlich said he doesn't know how far he might go as a potential presidential candidate.
  While he served as a Republican governor of a very blue state from 2003 to 2007, Ehrlich's name recognition beyond Maryland is lacking, and doesn't even register in the preliminary polling, political experts say. 
  While he hasn't formalized any exploratory apparatus, he told The Baltimore Sun in early December "there's been some discussion in the last week or so with some people who count."

• 6. John Kasich and Mike Pence

  

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  John Kasich and Mike Pence, the current governors of Ohio and Indiana, respectively, also have been mentioned as possible GOP nominees but neither has said whether he will run. Kasich is a former congressman whom pundits say might have trouble with the party due to his support for a Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare.
  Pence, also a former congressman, is popular with Tea Party activists and Christian conservatives -- and has been giving speeches outside his home state.
  He also got an endorsement from Steve Forbes at his Reinventing America summit in Indianapolis in November.

Israel 'mulls war crimes suits against top Palestinians'

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel is considering filing war crimes suits overseas against Palestinian leaders in response to their application to join the International Criminal Court and press such charges against the Jewish state, an official source said Saturday.

Legal proceedings at courts in the United States and elsewhere are being weighed against Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, his Palestinian Authority and other senior officials, the source close to the government told AFP.

He said that the basis of the complaints would be that Abbas's partnership in a Palestinian consensus government with Hamas makes him complicit in the militant Islamist group's rocket attacks from Gaza against civilians inside Israel.

"In recent days officials in Israel stressed that those who should be wary of legal proceedings are the heads of the PA who cooperate within the unity government with Hamas, a declared terrorist organisation which like the Islamic State (jihadist group) carries out war crimes -- it fires at civilians from within population centres."
The source, who declined to be identified, did not detail precisely where or when such proceedings could be launched.
The Palestinians formally presented a request to the United Nations on Friday to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), a move firmly opposed by Israel and the United States.

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Palestinian Fatah movement fighters parade during a rally marking the 50th anniversary of the moveme …

The move is part of a shift in strategy for the Palestinians, who are seeking to internationalise their campaign for statehood and move away from the stalled US-led negotiation process.
The US has branded the move to seek ICC membership "counterproductive" and warned it would only push the sides further apart.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to review the so-called instruments of accession and notify state members on the request within 60 days.
The Palestinian national consensus government took office in June following a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah movement, ending seven years of rival administrations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas remains the de facto power in the Gaza Strip and fought a bitter summer war with Israel, which took the lives of 73 people on the Israeli side and of nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians.

According to Israeli government figures, Hamas fired 4,562 rockets during the fighting in July and August, reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Gitmo Cartoon

Israel police say Jewish settlers stone US consular officials during West Bank visit

Thank you King Obama.

JERUSALEM –  Jewish settlers attacked American consular officials Friday during a visit the officials made to the West Bank as part of an investigation into claims of damage to Palestinian agricultural property, Israeli police and Palestinian witnesses say.
The incident is likely to further chill relations between Israel and the United States, already tense over American criticisms of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and Israeli perceptions that President Barack Obama is only lukewarm in his support of Israeli diplomatic and security policies.
Settlers have often spoken against what they call foreign interference in their affairs, but this is the first known physical attack against diplomatic personnel.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that a small number of settlers threw rocks at officials who had come to an area near the Jewish settlement outpost of Adi Ad in two consular vehicles to look into Palestinian claims that settlers uprooted scores of Palestinian olive trees the day before.
He said that after the rock barrage began, the vehicles left the area, adding that police had opened an inquiry following the filing of an official complaint.
Another police official, spokeswoman Luba Samri, said that the American security personnel did not use their weapons during the attack.
Awad Abu Samra, who owns the land in the village of Tormousyya where the damage to the olive trees allegedly took place, said he accompanied the officials with two relatives. He described the officials as security personnel who had arrived in the village in advance of a larger party from the American consulate in Jerusalem, which was scheduled to arrive in the village later that afternoon.
"There were six security guards from the consulate riding in two cars," Abu Samra said. "When they got out of the cars they were attacked by young settlers from the outpost who were carrying clubs and axes. They struck the cars with clubs but the security guards did not respond with their weapons."
Abu Samra said that after the attack began the American security guards returned to their vehicles and drove away, explaining that they were under strict instructions not to engage the settlers in any way. He said that the planned visit of the additional officials from the consulate was called off after the incident.
Abu Samra said that last spring he and his family planted some 10,000 olive tree saplings on land the family owns in the village, but that since then, settlers have uprooted most of them.
Peter Galus, a spokesman at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, confirmed that American consular personnel were pelted by rocks thrown by settlers. He denied reports in some Israeli media outlets that the Americans had deployed and aimed their weapons at the stone throwers, adding that the United States was cooperating with Israel in investigating the incident.
U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke in Washington said his government was "deeply concerned" by the attack.
"The U.S. government follows economic and political issues in the West Bank very closely," Rathke said. "We are working with Israeli authorities in their investigation of the incident, including by offering to provide video footage taken during the incident. We take the safety and security of U.S. personnel very seriously. The Israeli authorities have also communicated to us that they acknowledge the seriousness of the incident and are looking to apprehend and take appropriate action against those responsible."
The United States is by far Israel's most important foreign ally, providing the country with some $3 billion in annual aid and supporting its positions in international forums, despite frequent criticism.
Washington has long opposed Israeli settlement construction and maintains teams at diplomatic facilities in Israel that regularly monitor the settlements and their growth.

Reid suffers broken ribs, facial bones in exercising accident

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid broke several ribs and facial bones when a piece of exercise equipment snapped at his Nevada home Thursday, causing the lawmaker to fall. 
In a statement issued Friday, Reid's office said the 75-year-old senator was hospitalized overnight at University Medical Center in Las Vegas as a precaution and was released on Friday. His security detail had initially taken Reid to St. Rose Dominican Hospital near his home in Henderson, Nevada. 
The accident happened when an elastic exercise band broke, striking Reid in the face and causing him to fall, said spokesman Adam Jentleson. Reid struck some equipment as he fell, breaking multiple bones near his right eye. 
As he hit the floor, he broke several ribs, Jentleson said. 
Tests found no internal bleeding, Jentleson said, and his vision should not be affected. 
"Senator Reid will return to Washington this weekend and be in the office Tuesday as the Senate prepares to reconvene," his office said. "His doctors expect a full recovery." 
Jentleson said Reid is likely to have severe facial bruises. 
Reid, majority leader since 2007, will hand over the top job in the Senate next week to Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky after Democrats lost their majority in November's midterm elections. Reid faces a potentially tough re-election campaign in 2016. 
In May 2011, Reid dislocated a shoulder and suffered a contusion above his left eye when he slipped after an early morning run in the rain. He fell when he leaned against a parked car. 
In October 2012, Reid suffered rib and hip contusions in a chain-reaction car crash. 
Reid has run marathons and was a boxer as a young man.

Iraq's Peshmerga desperate for US arms in fight against ISIS

MOSUL, Iraq –  Under a gloomy late November sky that dumped cold rain on their frontline fighting position overlooking Mosul Dam, some 16 Peshmerga fighters mustered around a small hut – the only visible means of protection from enemy fire – while others hovered around a small campfire for warmth.
Just hours earlier, the road leading into the Kurdish army's base was hit by artillery from Islamic State – or “Daesh” as it is known in the Middle East, forcing some closures. But the fighters were calm and collected – sharing jokes and cigarettes ahead of another long and cold night protecting their cherished land in the northern part of this embattled land.
“Now we know their key points and from where they try to attack us. It’s weather like now – the fog – over them that allows them not to be seen by the planes,” one high-ranking Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) official, who left an office job to fight on the frontlines with the Peshmerga, told FoxNews.com in reference to the war against the jihadist army. “When it is raining, it is a good time for them to start attacking. At the beginning, the villages in Iraq were communicating and helping them attack, they shot at us front and back. But the villagers soon realized that these people were not good. They were not human.”

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The back side of the Peshmerga fighting position, near Mosul Dam. (FoxNews.com)

The Peshmerga fighters don a mishmash of camouflage clothes, and wield whatever guns they can get their hands on. Their formal training is limited, and their best attributes are instinct and will.
“We have principles. We were brought up on those principles and an innate drive to serve. We treat Kurdistan like our second mother,” explains the official, who is a high-value target and thus asked to remain unnamed. “If you do something day after day you learn and we learn how to fight very fast.”
The Peshmerga – whose name literally translates to “those who face death” – began as something of a mountain militia in the 1920s when the push for Kurdish independence began. In recent decades, they faced unrelenting persecution from the Ba'ath loyalists of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. One Peshmerga fighter told FoxNews.com they don’t suffer from “psychological issues” pertaining to combat because they have grown up around fighting and have developed an early understanding that it is “just what we have to do.” While the issue of possible PTSD garners little – if any – mainstream attention, one daughter of a retired Peshmerger fighter said at least in her experience growing up, she witnessed the mental anguishes of battle.
The Peshmerga soldiers range from around 18 to over 70 years old, with many coming out of retirement in the quest to defeat the ISIS threat. During days of intense conflict, the Peshmerga are lucky to return to their base for two or three hours of sleep and a quick bite to eat, before returning to their fighting locus. As it stands, a majority of fighters are not soldiers but what they call “security advisors.” They don’t take a salary and have volunteered simply out of devotion.

“If ISIS is an existential threat as the Iraqis claim; and if it really threatens U.S. interests abroad and its security at home then more must be done to arm the Peshmerga.”- Kurdish military official

“There is a Special Forces that has been arranged for these people that have come in, they don’t register their names and don’t sign contracts. They just want to serve Kurdistan,” the official said.
Due to a limited supply of weapons, volunteers often have to bring their own firearms – usually a basic AK-47 – with the M4 and M16 rifles, BKC—an Iraqi clone of the Soviet PKM machine gun – and the DshK heavy machine gun, called the “doshka” in Iraq, being the staple weapons used in the battle against much better equipped opponents.
Despite their lack of advanced technology, the Peshmerga remain acutely aware of precisely how many Islamic State fighters they take out each night at battle, and exactly where in the close vicinity those dead bodies lay even days after the fact – subject to the elements and hungry wild dogs. Although they are outgunned, the Kurdish fighters keep their wits about them, a tactical advantage over the enemy. One Peshmerga soldier explained how Islamic State commanders often drug young fighters with “special tablets” that leave them disoriented and shooting wildly, sometimes taking several rounds before they go down.
“For those who survive, when they realize what they have done they sometime regret,” acknowledged the official.
The Peshmerga also rely on a growing intelligence-gathering network that supplies logistical support to those who battle in the field. 
“We have secret service inside ISIS-controlled villages in Mosul and other places passing information, some are even living with ISIS and they don’t know,” the official said.
U.S. airstrikes are said to have helped Kurdish and Iraqi government forces seize control of the critical Mosul Dam in late August after Islamic State seized the area weeks earlier. Before Islamic State, the Tigris River dam was operated and controlled by around 1,200 Iraqi families. Just more than half have since returned, amid fears the almost two-mile long dam could be deliberately blown up to flood Mosul, some 30 miles downstream, and even Baghdad.
Built exclusively for Hussein in the early 1980s, the dam, according to a 2006 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report is particularly dangerous and “constructed on a very poor foundation,” and U.S. authorities subsequently spent tens of millions on interim fixes.
Much of the Kurdish population now view the United States of America as their only dependable ally in the ongoing war against the terrorist organization – and their desperation to be supplied with American equipment and weapons remains the eclipsing message.
“The airstrikes are good, but we need weapons,” stressed the official, dismissing the notion that U.S. ground troops are the ultimate answer. “We already have military on the ground, but we’re fighting an enemy that has acquired all the sophisticated U.S. weapons that went to the Iraqis and now ISIS has them. This isn’t a balanced fight.”
Due to internal conflict over oil exports between the semi-autonomous KRG and the Iraqi Central Government, the Kurds have not received the billions of dollars in military supplies since the 2003 U.S. invasion. The Kurdish region is legally entitled to 17.5 percent of the Baghdad budget, but for almost a year, it has not received its portion. Kurds do not control their air space and not allowed to purchase their own weapons and supplies without approval from the Central Government.

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Two soldiers stand guard at the entry to the Peshmerga base near the Kurdistan/Iraq border. (FoxNews.com)

“We tried to buy weapons from the outside, from places like Russia and America but the Foreign Ministry wouldn’t allow it,” the official explained. “The Iraqi government hasn’t even given us one single bullet.”
Earlier this fall, an agreement between the two Iraq-based governments was announced, stating that the KRG should send 250,000 barrels of oil per day to the central government and in turn receive its budgetary share as part of the Iraqi defense system, but according to one official very close to KRG President Masoud Barzani, funds have not been disbursed.
Western powers view the Kurds as a crucial safeguard against further Islamic State advances, but in order to take the offensive, the Peshmerga say they need more help.
“The United States really needs to think about the message it is sending,” added the KRG official. “If ISIS is an existential threat as the Iraqis claim; and if it really threatens U.S. interests abroad and its security at home then more must be done to arm the Peshmerga.”

NYPD commissioner warns officers not to make political statements at wake

Mourners of a New York Police Department officer killed with his partner in an ambush shooting plan to gather at a funeral home on Saturday for his wake.
Officer Wenjian Liu will be remembered at the Aievoli Funeral Home in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. His funeral is scheduled for Sunday with a Chinese ceremony led by Buddhist monks to be followed by a traditional police ceremony with eulogies led by a chaplain. Burial will follow at Cypress Hills Cemetery.
Liu was killed Dec. 20 along with his partner, Officer Rafael Ramos, as they sat in their patrol car on a Brooklyn street. Their shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had made references online to the killings of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers and had vowed to put "wings on pigs."
Investigators say Brinsley was an emotionally disturbed loner who started off his rampage by shooting and wounding an ex-girlfriend in Baltimore. He later killed himself.
The police killings ramped up emotions in the already tense national debate over police conduct. Since Ramos and Liu were killed, police in New York have investigated at least 70 threats made against officers, and more than a dozen people have been arrested.
At Ramos' funeral, hundreds of officers turned their backs to TV monitors displaying Mayor Bill de Blasio's remarks to show their frustration for what police union officials have said is the mayor's role in creating an environment that allowed the killings.
In a message to be read to officers on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton said that act "stole the valor, honor, and attention that rightfully belonged to the memory of Detective Rafael Ramos's life and sacrifice."
"I issue no mandates, and I make no threats of discipline, but I remind you that when you don the uniform of this department, you are bound by the tradition, honor and decency that go with it," Bratton said.
Liu, 32, had been on the police force seven years and had gotten married two months before he died. His widow, Pei Xia Chen, gave a tearful statement days after the shooting.
Ramos was buried Dec. 27 amid tens of thousands of officers and mourners who went to pay their respects at a church in Queens. Liu's funeral arrangements were delayed so his relatives from China could get travel documents to the U.S. and fly to New York.
The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a charity created after Sept. 11, 2001, has said it will pay off the home mortgages of the two slain officers.

Libyan on trial for US embassy bombings dies

A member of Al Qaeda with ties to Usama Bin Laden died in New York Friday while awaiting trial to face charges of planning the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
The Department of Justice confirmed  Abu Anas al-Libi's death citing "long-standing medical problems."
Al-Libi, 50, was captured by the U.S. Army's Delta Force in Tripoli, Libya on Oct 5, 2013 and brought to New York where he was due to stand trial. He had been wanted for more than a decade and there was a $5 million reward for his arrest. 
U.S. forces raided Libya in 2013 and seized al-Libi on the streets of the capital, Tripoli. He was brought back to America to stand trial in New York. 
His wife, Um Abdullah told the Associated Press he died of complication from liver surgery.
"I accuse the American government of kidnapping, mistreating, and killing an innocent man. He did nothing," Abullah said.
Al-Libi was once on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list for his alleged involvement in the bombings. He pleaded not guilty to any involvement.
In December 2013, Bernard Kleinman, an attorney for al-Libi, said his client was only accused of participating in visual and photographic surveillance of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in late 1993 and researching potential sites for other attacks with members of Al Qaeda in 1994.
Abdullah told the Associated Press she spoke with her husband Thursday stating that he was in bad condition.