Senate to start AG confirmation hearings on Lynch, with immigration, IRS questions expected

Senate hearings begin Wednesday on whether to confirm U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch as President Obama’s next attorney general, with Judiciary Committee members set to question her aggressively on such issues as immigration law and potential overreaches by the IRS and federal law enforcement.
The hearings in the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee are expected to begin with Republican members asking Lynch, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, about whether she thinks Obama has overstepped his executive authority by deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.
“It will be a long first day, because my approach … is to allow for as many questions as necessary to ensure that members have a chance to receive answers in person if they’d like,” said committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
Other first-up questions will likely be about whether the IRS broke the law when targeting Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations when they applied for tax-exempt status several years ago.
The Justice Department under outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, whom Lynch would replace, is apparently still investigating the incidents. The agency did not return a call Tuesday seeking confirmation.
The 55-year-old Lynch -- a black, Harvard-educated lawyer -- is also expected to address the issue of states legalizing the sale and possession of marijuana. The Justice Department’s position is that this violates federal law, but the agency has so far taken a hands-off approach to prosecution.
Obama nominated Lynch in November 2014 when Democrats controlled the Senate through the end of the year. However, Republicans were able to hold off the confirmation process until they took charge of the Senate in January, as a result of the elections, arguing committee members from both sides needed more time to prepare.
Grassley has attempted to assure the public that Republicans didn’t stall the process until they took control of the upper chamber.
“She’ll receive a fair but thorough hearing,” he said earlier this month. “And I expect that she’ll be forthright in return.”
Though Lynch is expected to face tough questions, she is generally expected to be confirmed. She is widely respected in the legal community, and her personal and professional records appear scandal free.
The full Senate also must approve Lynch’s appointment. She will need 51 votes to win confirmation, and a final vote is not expected until at least late February.
Her biggest challenge could be explaining her support and participation in civil forfeitures, a legal process in which law enforcement agencies can seize money and other assets without charging or convicting the owners and that Holder recently scaled back, amid widespread criticism.
Lynch last January said her office collected more than $904 million in criminal and civil actions in fiscal 2013.
The policy generates money for law-enforcement efforts and lessens the burden on taxpayers, but critics say it is “an abuse of due process.”
Just days before Lynch’s confirmation hearings, Holder announced significant changes to the policy, including that federal agencies will no longer be able to accept or "adopt" assets seized by local and state law enforcement agencies -- unless the property includes firearms, ammunitions, explosives, child pornography or other materials concerning public safety.
Holder described the changes as the "first step in a comprehensive review."
Earlier, he said the Justice Department collected roughly $8.1 billion in civil and criminal actions in fiscal 2013 -- roughly three times the appropriated $2.76 billion budget for the 94 U.S. attorney’s offices and the main litigating divisions, in the same period.
Despite Holder’s changes, Capitol Hill Republicans on Tuesday reintroduced legislation to tighten restrictions.
"The federal government has made it far too easy for government agencies to take and profit from the property of those who have not been convicted of a crime,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whose FAIR, or Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act, is also being reintroduced in the House by Rep.Tim Walberg, R-Mich.
Other concerns raised about Lynch include her decision to protect details of a federal case related to a stock-fraud scheme.
The defendant pleaded guilty in 1998, before Lynch started working at the Eastern District office.
But critics, including lawyers who fought to have more details of the case made public, say the defendant should have paid roughly $40 million in forfeitures and restitution, not the $25,000 fine he received.
And they suggested Lynch tried to block efforts to further expose the case, which could have helped plaintiffs recover some of their losses.
The defendant’s lawyers have said their client helped in a major national security probe.
If confirmed, Lynch, a North Carolina native, would become the first black woman to serve as U.S. attorney general, replacing Holder, the first black man to hold the position.
Last week, the Senate committee released a Justice Department review of Lynch in which she received mostly high ratings for her management skills.
But the review also identified areas for improvement, including the office’s responsiveness to public records requests made under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Supporters of Lynch praised her Tuesday.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh said Lynch works in the “most complicated criminal justice forum” in the country and that she has gotten “tremendous accolades and praise” from federal agents.
“That’s high praise,” he said. “She’s efficient and fair.”
New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said he worked with Lynch on two occasions -- in 1994 and again in 1996. Bratton said he found Lynch “collegial, very approachable and well prepared.”
Lynch has since 2010 been the top prosecutor for a district that includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, having also held that role from 1999 to 2001.
As a prosecutor, she was best known for her prosecution of the four New York police officers charged with violating the civil rights of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was beaten and sodomized while in custody.
A second confirmation hearing in the Judiciary Committee is scheduled for Thursday and will include testimony from former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration claiming it hacked into her computer. Lynch is not scheduled to testify.

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Obama calls for religious tolerance, gender equity in final speech of India visit

NEW DELHI –  President Barack Obama gently nudged India Tuesday to fulfill its constitution's pledge to uphold the "dignity of the individual," drawing on his own experience as a minority in the United States as he closed out a three-day visit to New Delhi.
Obama said that while he has had extraordinary opportunities, "there were moments in my life where I've been treated differently because of the color of my skin." As he touted the importance of religious tolerance, he noted the persistent false rumors that he is a Muslim, not a Christian.
"There have been times where my faith has at times been questioned by people who don't know me, or they've said that I adhere to a different religion, as if that were somehow a bad thing," Obama said.
Equality is enshrined in India's constitution, but religious minorities and women have experienced harassment and violence. A horrific gang rape on a moving bus in the heart of New Delhi in 2012 sparked public protests, which prompted more stringent laws. But critics say more progress is needed and Obama gave voice to their cause.
"Every woman should be able to go about her day -- to walk the street or ride the bus -- and be safe and be treated with the respect and dignity that she deserves," Obama said to applause from the audience of 1,500 at the Siri Fort Auditorium, a government-run event center.
Since taking office in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often talked about women's rights, urging Indians to treat sons and daughters equally. He recently launched an "educate the daughter, save the daughter," program to stem sex selective abortions that skews the gender ratio toward boys and to encourage parents to educate girls, who are often considered a burden.
Obama nodded to his wife as he noted that he's married to a strong woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. "Our nations are strongest when we uphold the equality of all our people and that includes our women," he said.
India is largely Hindu, with almost 80 percent following the faith. At over 12 percent Muslims are India's largest minority, with Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists making up the rest. While religious groups largely coexist peacefully, the country has seen several flare ups of violence, primarily between Hindus and Muslims.
Obama said no society is immune from man's darkest impulses, as he raised the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin that killed six people. "In that moment of shared grief, our two countries reaffirmed a basic truth, as we must again today, that every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination," Obama said.
Modi was denied was denied a visa to the U.S. in 2005, three years after religious riots killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the Indian state where he was the top elected official. He has denied any wrongdoing and India's top court says it found no evidence of Modi's involvement in the riots, but India's Muslims and Christians are wary of Modi's right wing Bharatiya Janata Party.
Obama's speech was the closing to a three-day visit to celebrate India's Republic Day, the anniversary of India's democratic constitution taking force in 1950. He cut out Tuesday's plans for a visit to the Taj Mahal, India's famed white marble monument of love, to add a stop in Saudi Arabia on the way home to pay respects to the royal family following King Abdullah's death.
Earlier, the Obamas met with Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-child labor activist Kailash Satyarthi and his wife. They were accompanied by three children -- a 12-year-old rescued from a button factory, an 8-year-old who lost a finger as a farm worker and a 12-year-old girl who has advocated for clean drinking water in school and against child marriages. Satyarthi said there are still more than 5 million child slaves worldwide and thanked Obama for helping fight the scourge.
In his speech, Obama also raised his pursuit of an agreement with India to cut greenhouse gas emissions. "I know the argument made by some -- that it's unfair for countries like the United States to ask developing nations and emerging economies like India to reduce your dependence on the same fossil fuels that helped power our growth for more than a century," Obama said. "But here's the truth -- even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly like India with soaring energy needs don't also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don't stand a chance against climate change."
Obama's remarks were well-received despite his criticisms of his host country. He drew laughter and applause when he referenced the hugely popular Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, or "the brave heart will win the bride." Obama quoted a line in Hindi from the movie as he joked that he wasn't able to dance during this visit as in his last.
The sentence translates to, "Senorita, these things happen sometimes in big countries."

Social media sites knocked offline, Lizard Squad hack group claims responsibility

The hacking group Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for what it said was an attack that briefly knocked several social networking sites, including Facebook and Instagram, offline early Tuesday. 
The Facebook glitch was reported in the United States, Asia, Australia, and the U.K. and affected access to the site from personal computers and from Facebook's mobile app. The social media giant's Instagram service was also inaccessible.
Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the outage in a Twitter posting that listed the sites it said it had affected, which included matchmaking app Tinder, AIM, and HipChat. The message concluded with the hashtagged statements "offline" and "LizardSquad."
On its website for developers, Facebook said the "major outage" lasted one hour. It said its engineers had identified the cause but did not elaborate. 
The LizardSquad group has previously claimed to have been responsible for a Christmas Day outage that affected Xbox and PlayStation Live services late last year. On Monday, the group said it had hacked the website of Malaysia Airlines, changing the site to display a message reading "404 - Plane Not Found" and that it was "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," with a photo of one of the airline's Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. The browser tab for the website said "ISIS will prevail", a reference to the Islamic State terror group. 
Lizard Squad occasionally makes tongue-in-cheek claims to support Islamic State, although there are no known links between the groups. The group also claimed that it was "going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon," and posted a link to a screenshot of what appeared to be a passenger flight booking from the airline's internal email system.
Facebook has about 1.35 billion active users and Instagram has some 300 million.
News of the Facebook outage set rival social network Twitter alight, propelling the hashtag "facebookdown" to top trend on the site. It comes ahead of Facebook reporting its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.
As access to Facebook returned, some users in Asia reported that the site was loading slowly or not offering full functionality.
The temporary loss of service may be Facebook's biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

Justice Department working on national car-tracking database

The Justice Department has acknowledged constructing a database to track the movements of millions of vehicles across the U.S. in real time. 
The program, whose existence was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is primarily overseen by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to combat drug trafficking near the U.S.-Mexico border. However, government emails indicate that the agency has been working to expand the database throughout the United States over the past several years. 
A Justice Department spokesman told Fox News that the tracking program is compliant with federal, claiming it "includes protocols that limit who can access the database and all of the license plate information is deleted after 90 days." In 2012, a DEA agent testified before a House subcommittee that the program was inaugurated in December 2008 and information gathered by it was available to federal, state, and local law enforcement organizations. 
It is not clear whether the tracking is overseen or approved by any court. 
According to the Journal, the DEA program uses high-tech cameras placed on major highways to collect information on vehicle movements, including location and direction. Many of the devices are able to record images of drivers and passengers, some of which are clear enough identify individuals. Documents seen by the Journal also show that the DEA uses information from federal, state, and local license plate readers to burnish their own program.

White House gets drone defense wake-up call

The quadcopter drone that crashed onto the White House grounds overnight has highlighted the growing security threat posed by small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), experts warn.
The White House incident comes less than two weeks after a drone flew over the French presidential palace in Paris.
“I do think it’s a wake-up call for the government to start thinking about how it will protect against this type of thing -- it’s important for the government and the military in general,” Missy Cummings, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University, told FoxNews.com. “This [White House drone] was harmless, but in the future it might not be.”
The Secret Service said Monday that the drone was a 2-foot-long commercially available "quadcopter." Brian Leary, a Secret Service spokesman, said an officer posted on the south grounds of the White House complex "heard and observed" the device "flying at a very low altitude" shortly after 3 a.m. ET. The commercially available device was said to pose no threat.
Caroline Baylon, a cybersecurity researcher at the The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London, told FoxNews.com that drones, thanks to their small size and ability to hover low over the ground, can pose a huge security headache.
“They have opened up this whole area that we haven’t defended against before,” she said. “Most radar can’t deal with drones that fly really low.”
Baylon, who has studied the spate of drone incidents in the French nuclear industry, explained that taking down a drone is no easy task. “You can shoot a drone down, but it requires a certain level of marksmanship,” she said. “It’s easier said than done.”
The researcher told FoxNews.com that technologies being considered to combat UAVs include a new breed of ‘interceptor’ drones.
One interceptor that has attracted plenty of attention is the Rapere drone. The developers behind the technology say Rapere will hover over a target drone and lower a “tangle-line” to disable its rotor blades. “Right now we are flying under the radar for commercial reasons, but all will be revealed in time,” explains the Rapere project website.
“All you have to do is get something in the rotors,” noted Cummings, a former fighter pilot, but warned that it can be hard for an interceptor drone to find the “enemy drone.”
The Rapere drone uses 12 cameras pointing in every direction. The device uses a range-imaging technique called ‘structure from motion’ to reach its target, according to the project website.
The U.S. military is also ramping up its anti-drone efforts. Last year, for example, the Office of Naval Research announced plans to build a laser weapon to shoot down drones.
However, Cummings believes that this type of technology, like the U.S. military’s “Black Dart” anti-drone program, will be more effective at taking down much larger drones. She also noted the risk of collateral damage that laser weapons pose in a densely-populated area. 
For secure locations such as the White House, quickly identifying small, low-flying drones will be key, according to Cummings. “They need to figure out how to detect these things,” she said. “Radar doesn’t detect them so you really need some new camera vision technology.”
Wireless technology could also be a crucial weapon in combating the drone threat, enabling authorities to locate UAVs and also identify IP addresses associated with the devices.
Scott Schober, CEO of Metuchen, N.J.-based wireless specialist Berkeley Varitronics Systems told FoxNews.com that his company sells a drone detection tool. “All these commercial drones are using standard open Wi-Fi for video telemetry and control and communication,” he said. “We can pick up an approaching drone that might be a threat, the model number, its altitude and approach speed.”
The company’s Yellowjacket tablet Wi-Fi analyzer also can find the precise location of a drone and its pilot, according to Schober.
A man has claimed responsibility for the drone that crashed onto the White House grounds early Monday, an incident that triggered an immediate lockdown and a Secret Service investigation. 
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole B. Mainor said the individual contacted the agency Monday morning to "self-report" the incident. According to Mainor, "initial indications are that this incident occurred as a result of recreational use of the device." 
A U.S. official told The Associated Press the man said he didn't mean to fly the drone over the White House; he is said to be cooperating with investigators. The New York Times reported he is a government employee, though he does not work for the White House. 
The FAA is referring inquiries about today’s incident to the White House.

Iranian Cartoon

Rand Paul clashes with Rubio, Cruz on defense, foreign policy at Koch forum

WASHINGTON –  Rand Paul is demonstrating how he could disrupt the Republican presidential field if he seeks the nomination, sparring with potential rivals over Iran, Cuba and the Pentagon's budget in a face-to-face forum that offered an early preview of the feisty policy debate to come.
The Kentucky Republican joined fellow first-term senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida on stage Sunday evening in California for a summit organized by Freedom Partners. That group is the central hub of the powerful network of organizations backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.
Each likely candidate has broad backing from tea party activists, who helped push them to victory over establishment-minded rivals in their most recent races. But a split is already starting to emerge even before they formally decide if they will run, and Paul seems to be an eager wedge.
"I'm a big fan of trying the diplomatic option as long as we can," Paul said of talks with Iran over its nuclear plan. "I do think diplomacy is better than war."
Lawmakers from both parties are pushing for a new round of sanctions against Iran. The White House and foreign leaders have urged Congress to not do that, for fear it would agitate Iran and prompt them to end negotiations over its nuclear abilities.
Cruz and Rubio were sharply critical of negotiations, backed by President Barack Obama.
"This is the worst negotiation in the history of mankind," Cruz said, predicting an Iranian nuclear strike in "Tel Aviv, New York or Los Angeles."
Added Rubio: "At this pace, in five years, we're going to build the bomb for them."
Paul urged his colleagues to have patience. "Are you ready to send ground troops into Iran?"
Cruz was having none of it. "The problem with Iran is Khomeini and the mullahs are radical Islamic nutcases," he said.
It was as intense a disagreement on Cuba. Obama late last year sent shockwaves across the hemisphere by restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba after more than a half-century of estrangement and embargoes. Politicians from corner of both parties were critical.
Cruz and Rubio, both Cuban-Americans fiercely opposed to the Castro regime's hold on power there, have been outspoken critics of Obama's move, while Paul notes the embargo has not ousted Fidel or Raul Castro.
"I'm kind of surrounded on this one," Paul said, sitting between Cruz to his right and Rubio to his left.
"The Castros are brutal dictators," Cruz said. He also said the potential for U.S. dollars flooding into Cuba would only keep the Castro regime in power longer.
"Maybe. Maybe not," Paul said.
Even on military spending, which is typically sacrosanct among Republicans, Paul needled his colleagues. Paul said national security is the most important spending in the budget, but "I'm not for a blank check."
Rubio said the United States' economic challenges did not stem from defense spending and smaller budgets would only threaten its future economic growth.
"Try economic growth while you're under attack," Rubio said.
The trio of lawmakers is laying the groundwork for presidential bids that are expected to launch in the coming months and will be competing for many of the same donors, including those the Kochs count as allies and who joined the weekend summit in Palm Springs, California.
The Koch network, which includes Americans for Prosperity, Generation Opportunity and the Libre Initiative, is unlikely to formally back one of the presidential hopefuls but its deep pockets can certainly focus the terms of the debate.
Sunday's event was closed to journalists but Freedom Partners broadcast the panel discussion with the three senators online for reporters, an unusual step toward transparency at the historically private gatherings. An earlier session with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, another likely contender, was not available online.
"There are a bunch of Democrats who have taken as their talking point that the Koch brothers are the nexus of all evil in the world," Cruz said, acknowledging the event's organizers.
"I admire Charles and David Koch," Cruz continued. "They are businessmen who have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and they have stood up for free market principles."
The evening session's online broadcast did not include images of the audience so it was impossible to know if either Charles or David Koch were in the audience.