White House, NYT leave Bushes out of lead photos from Selma march

The decision by The New York Times to run a front-page image on Sunday of President Obama -- and family -- leading a march to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights clashes, while leaving out of the image former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura apparently was mirrored in the "official White House photo" of the event. 
The official White House blog's Sunday entry on the Alabama march led with a similar image, focusing on Obama and his family, as well as civil rights figures, but leaving out the Bushes.
Both images show Obama walking alongside Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, and even Al Sharpton, as they led thousands across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The White House blog does acknowledge in the caption that the Bushes were there, and the photo at the bottom of the page includes them off to the side.
Part of the problem may have been the staging of the event itself.
Basil Smikle Jr., a Democratic strategist and former advance team member for the Clinton White House, noted that the Bushes were not standing directly next to the Obamas. He told Fox News he would have liked to see both presidents together, at least in the New York Times photo.
"Both presidents should have been close together," he said.  
Regardless, the Bushes were standing but a few feet away from the first family and were included in other photos.
It's unclear whether the Times, which ran its own photo, cropped out the former president in that picture, or simply chose to run an image that didn't include him.
Still, the decision drew criticism on Monday.
"This is a stunning example of media bias," said Deneen Borelli, a Fox News contributor and outreach director for the conservative FreedomWorks.
The Associated Press also ran a variety of photos after they crossed the bridge, some of which show the Bushes and some of which do not. However, it appears the AP did not run photos showing Bush, before they marched across the bridge.
The Times' article on the event did mention the Bushes' attendance, after the jump. The article notes that in 2006, he signed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
FoxNews.com has reached out to The New York Times and the White House for comment.

Jihadi Cartoon

McConnell vows no debt default as deadline nears

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that the Republican-controlled Congress won’t allow the government to default as the Treasury Department quickly approaches its so-called “debt ceiling.”
“I made it clear after November that we won’t shut down the government or default on debt,” the Kentucky Republican told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
McConnell’s promise came two days after Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Capitol Hill that the government loses its authority after March 15 to borrow money to cover approved congressional spending and that his agency would have to resort to “extraordinary measures” as a short-term solution.
To be sure, McConnell acknowledged after winning a tough midterm election bid that voters were tired of an ineffective Congress that too often teetered on shutting down the government over bipartisan issues.
“I hear your concerns,” McConnell said in his victory speech.
Still, Congress came perilously close in recent weeks to at least partially closing the Department of Homeland Security when Republicans tried to tie funding for the agency to efforts to roll back President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Lew told Congress on Friday that he will start using the package of emergency measures he has used in the past to keep the federal government from going over the debt limit next week.
The debt limit has been suspended for the past year, meaning that Treasury could borrow as much as it needed to keep the government running. But the limit will go back into effect on March 15 at whatever level of debt exists at that point.
The nation's debt currently stands at $18.1 trillion.
Treasury can employ certain accounting measures to buy time to keep the government operating without facing a costly default on the nation's debt.
In his letter to congressional leaders on Friday, Lew said he would use the first of those measures on March 13, two days before the debt limit will be re-imposed.
Lew said he would stop issuing on March 13 special-purpose Treasury debt that can be purchased by state and local governments to assist them in financing such activities as construction projects.
The Congressional Budget Office, in a report last week, estimated that the various measures Lew can employ could put off the date the debt ceiling will have to be raised until October or November.
McConnell also told CBS on Sunday that Congress will handle the issue “over a period of months” and that he has a responsibility to work with President Obama, despite their political differences.
He also said he is “very optimistic” about potential compromises with Obama on some issues.
“The American public wants us to look at what we can agree on,” McConnell said.
It was a standoff over the debt limit in August 2011 that prompted the first-ever downgrade of the nation's credit rating by Standard & Poor's, and in October 2013 there was a 16-day partial government shutdown.
"Only Congress is empowered to increase the nation's borrowing authority and I hope that Congress will address this matter without controversy or brinksmanship," Lew said in his letter. "I respectfully ask Congress to raise the debt limit as soon as possible."
While GOP lawmakers have given no indication when they will take up legislation to increase the debt ceiling, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday urged them to move quickly, warning that an unprecedented default by the government on its debt obligations would severely harm the economy by causing consumer and business interest rates to soar.
"There is no reason that the Republican Congress should not act immediately to take the prospect of a catastrophic default off of the table," she said in a statement. "Failure to act would have savage impacts on American families."

Dempsey: Some Iraqi troops show up for training ill-prepared

ABOARD THE CHARLES DE GAULLE –  Some Iraqi army units in line for U.S.-led training to fight the Islamic State group are showing up ill-prepared, the top American general said Sunday.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, speaking to reporters aboard this French aircraft carrier in the northern Persian Gulf not far from Iran's coast, said he sees no reason to send more U.S. military trainers or advisers at this time. More, broadly, he defended the pace of the overall military campaign in Iraq.
"Right now we don't need more advisers on the ground," Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said with his French counterpart, Gen. Pierre de Villiers, at his side on the hangar deck of the de Gaulle.
"We've got trainers and advisers that are waiting for some of the Iraqi units to show up, and when they've shown up -- a handful of them -- they've shown up understrength and sometimes without the proper equipment. The Iraqi government can actually fix that themselves."
The crux of the U.S.-led coalition's strategy for dislodging IS from Iraq is  this: degrade the militants' fighting power and resources through limited airstrikes against positions in northern and western Iraq, as well as in Syria; train and advise underperforming Iraqi security forces; and press the Iraqi government to take firmer steps to reconcile with the disaffected Sunnis.
"This is going to require some strategic patience," Dempsey said.
He said the military part of the conflict could be concluded "in the foreseeable future." The underlying problems -- failures in Iraqi governance and a disaffected Sunni population -- probably will take longer to resolve.
Dempsey spent the day aboard the de Gaulle to highlight U.S.-French military cooperation and to discuss strategies for combating IS in Iraq. He planned to visit Iraq next to discuss the campaign with government leaders and U.S. military commanders.
France is flying a variety of missions into Iraq from aboard the de Gaulle, which began operating in the northern Gulf on Feb. 23 and is scheduled to remain for eight weeks.
Dempsey watched as four French Rafale attack aircraft roared off the carrier's deck en route to Iraq, and later he observed four Super Etendard fighters land after returning from a mission.
French officials said they are flying 12 to 15 missions a day, including intelligence and surveillance flights, airstrikes and close air support missions in coordination with Iraq ground troops. Dempsey said that makes the French a valued partner in a conflict that has about 20 countries flying various air missions but only three conducting maritime operations.
Dempsey arrived aboard the de Gaulle on a U.S. Navy C-2 Greyhound twin-engine aircraft. After meetings with de Villier and other French and American officers, he was catapulted off the carrier in the C-2 for a return flight to a U.S. Navy station in Bahrain. Earlier Sunday he met with Bahrain government officials.
While they met aboard the de Gaulle, an American aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, pulled to within about 1,000 yards. The two carriers have been coordinating their air operations in what Dempsey called a sign of increased U.S.-French military cooperation around the world. In an unusual arrangement, the French carrier is under the operational control of the Americans as part of the IS campaign.
Dempsey was asked by reporters to respond to criticism by some that the U.S. is not using air power aggressively enough in Iraq and Syria. Dempsey said there are valid reasons for limiting the pace of the bombing while other aspects of the conflict are addressed.
"Carpet bombing through Iraq is not the answer," he said, adding that IS fighters have adapted since the U.S.-led bombing began in Iraqi in August.
"This is not an enemy that is sitting around in the open desert waiting for me to come find it and either use U.S. or French aircraft to attack it," Dempsey said. "They did some of that in the beginning and paid the price. So the enemy has adapted and they have developed tactics and techniques that make them a little more difficult to find."
Dempsey said the intensity and scale of the bombing campaign is necessarily limited by a need to avoid civilian casualties and to ensure the best possible intelligence is collected before striking targets.
"We are very precise because the very last thing we want to do is create a condition of civilian casualties on the ground, which would add to these competing narratives about taking sides and it being a religious issue, and Christianity and Islam. And so we have a responsibility to be very precise in the use of air power, and that means it takes time" to build the proper intelligence picture before striking.
"If I had more targets and I could be precise, we could produce more effects on the ground," he added.

GOP Senate battles for Congress to have vote in Iran nuclear deal as talks resume, deadlines near

This is going to turn out Bad.

Democrats and Republicans sparred Sunday over congressional involvement in the Iran nuclear agreement, as President Obama attempted to assure critics that the U.S. won’t accept a bad deal.
The debate intensified as the United States and five other world powers are set to resume negotiations next week with Iran to stop the country from pursuing and achieving a nuclear weapon. The goal of Secretary of State John Kerry and the other negotiators is to agree on the framework of a deal before April toward a final agreement by June 30.
Obama told CBS' "Sunday Morning" that the U.S. would "walk away" from nuclear talks with Iran if there's no acceptable deal and that any agreement must allow Western powers to verify that Tehran isn't going to obtain an atomic weapon.
"If we don't have that kind of deal, then we're not going to take it," he said.
Obama also said the U.S. and others still would have "enough time to take action," if Iran “cheated.”
Iran says their program is peaceful and exists only to produce energy for civilian use.
The GOP-led Congress wants to be able to vote on a final deal before it’s accepted, with Senate leaders trying to figure out whether they can pass legislation on the issue with enough votes to override a presidential veto.
“The Iranian parliament will get to say yes or no on this deal,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think the United States Congress should have that exact same input into the process.”
Johnson said a bill cosponsored by Illinois GOP Sen. Mark Kirk and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez addresses that issue and that the Senate is scheduled to begin working on the legislation in the coming days.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democratic on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he will reserve action until the administration announces on March 24 whether the negotiations were successful. And he argued that the Kirk-Menendez bill deals only with congressional sanctions that have already been imposed on Iran.
The general outline of a proposed deal purportedly includes intrusive inspections, a freeze on sensitive nuclear activity for at least 10 years and a cap on centrifuges and enriched uranium.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists that Congress has a chance to review and vote on any deal. But he acknowledged Sunday that he doesn't have the support yet to override a threatened veto by Obama.
"I'm hoping we can get 67 senators to assert the historic role of the Senate and the Congress in looking at matters of this magnitude,” the Kentucky Republican told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Obviously, the president doesn't want us involved in this. But he's going to need us if he's going to lift any of the existing sanctions. And so I think he cannot work around Congress forever.”
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, before a joint meeting of Congress, argued against the proposed deal, suggesting Iran could easily resume its pursuit of a nuclear weapon after such a relatively short wait and that other Arab nations will follow in Tehran’s footsteps.
Roughly 50 Capitol Hill Democrats boycotted the address, arguing it undermined the efforts of the administration, which was not advised about Netanyahu’s invitation by House Speaker John Boehner.
Among the most outspoken was California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
She told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Netanyahu’s speech was “arrogant” and said he shouldn’t “trash” a potential deal before it’s completed.

Top Senate Democrat urges Clinton to address private email controversy

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to give a full explanation of why she used a private e-mail account for all her official correspondence during her four years as America's top diplomat.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that Clinton "needs to step up and come out and say exactly what the situation was," adding that from "this point on, the silence is going to hurt her."
Feinstein is the first major Democrat to urge Clinton to share details of the account's contents, some of which have been subpoenaed by a special House committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Clinton, thought to be the near-unanimous frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has kept mostly silent on the private e-mail story, which was first reported by the New York Times last Monday. Her use of the account may violate federal rules requiring officials to keep all their communications for record-keeping purposes. The controversy grew later in the week when the Associated Press reported that the account's server had been traced to an Internet service registered to her Chappaqua, N.Y. home.
This past week, Clinton said in a Twitter message that she had asked the State Department to make public all emails she had previously turned over to them, a total of approximately 55,000 pages. However, The Times reported that those messages previously had been selected by members of her staff and were not a complete record of her four years at Foggy Bottom.
She did not address the issue in her most recent public appearance Saturday night during an event in Coral Gables, Florida, for the Clinton Global Initiative University.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the Benghazi committee, told CBS' "Face The Nation" "there are gaps of months and months and months" in the emails the committee had previously received. "It's not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what's a public record and what's not," Gowdy said.
"We're not entitled to everything," Gowdy continued. "I don't want everything. I just want everything related to Libya and Benghazi."
For his part, President Obama said Sunday that he first learned of Clinton's private account through news reports. He went on to praise Clinton for requesting the release of the 55,000 pages of e-mail by the State Department, called her "an outstanding public servant" and defended his administration's record on transparency.

Black Hole Cartoon

Does House Minority Leader Pelosi really hold all of the cards?

In late 2006, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had a decision to make. Democrats had just captured control of the House in the midterm elections and she would soon become the first female speaker of the House.
One question weighing on Pelosi was whether she would maintain her smaller, hodge-podge office suite overlooking the Library of Congress on the east side of the Capitol -- or move into the more commodious digs featuring a vast panorama of the National Mall and Washington Monument on the west side of the building.
Then-House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., would soon be out the door.
And though Democrats held the House majority for more than 40 years, for the latter half of the 20th century, Democratic speakers -- including the late Sam Rayburn, Texas; Tip O’Neill, Mass.; and Tom Foley, Wash. -- mostly opted for the diminutive offices.
Out of tradition, Democrats ceded the capacious suites to Republicans despite their minority status. The better offices became the Speaker’s Office when the GOP captured the House in the historic 1994 midterms.
Should Pelosi remain in the smaller offices as homage to fellow Democratic speakers? Or should she upgrade to the new suite?
She consulted with O’Neill’s granddaughter, Catlin O’Neill, who at the time was an aide.
“It was sentimental and Catlin said ‘It’s OK. Move the office. The family wants you in the Speaker’s Office,’” Pelosi recounted to the Washington Post in 2007. And so Pelosi abandoned the Democratic rabbit warren on the west side of the building, matriculating to the anchor property on the Capitol’s East Front.
As strange as it may seem, Pelosi may feel a bit like her Democratic predecessors Rayburn, O’Neill and Foley these days. She now inhabits the cramped quarters now reserved for the minority as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, enjoys the roomier acreage.
But after recent congressional exercises just to pass a bill to avoid a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, one wonders who really commands the most votes in the House now.
The case-in-point came a week ago Friday, hours before the DHS funding would expire. House Republicans insisted on latching a provision onto the spending plan to block President Obama’s immigration executive action. The gambit couldn’t get through the Senate. After multiple failed procedural votes, senators zapped an amended DHS measure back to the House. The new bill funded DHS through September 30 but dropped the immigration provisions.
House Republicans balked and refused the altered bill. Instead, they voted to form a conference committee to work out differences between the bodies. Meanwhile, DHS funding swung in the balance. The Senate mailed the House a three-week DHS spending bill to avoid a shutdown. Some House conservatives protested because the bill lacked the immigration executive order provisos. And Democrats voted no too, preferring a full-year of funding.
With DHS funding set to expire in just seven hours, House Republicans generated 191 yeas for that bill. But 217 yeas are needed these days for passage. With their majority, Republicans can only lose 28 of their own before turning to Democrats. Only 12 Democrats voted aye.
The bill failed.
Democrats were happy to vote yes on a “clean” DHS bill bereft of the immigration policy riders for the rest of the government’s fiscal year, but not for one that limped along for just a few weeks. Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., implored their members to vote nay.
“House Republicans have painted themselves into a corner,” said Pelosi at the time. “I’m just saying to the speaker, get a grip. Get a grip on the responsibility we have.”
The vote infuriated Republicans who voted yes. A senior House GOP leadership source said they knew the vote was “going sideways” ahead of time. The source said rank-and-file members were “super-mad” at those who didn’t take one for the team and vote yea, feeling hung out to dry.
Without Democratic assistance, Republicans were cooked. And DHS was defunded in a matter of hours. With Obama’s blessing, Pelosi offered Democratic votes to Boehner to overcome the impasse.
The minority leader then crafted a “Dear Colleague” letter addressed to House Democrats. Pelosi thanked them for their “cooperation” on the failed DHS vote. But this time asked for yeas on a “seven-day patch.” She told Democrats a yes vote would “assure that we will vote for full funding next week.
An hour later, the House voted on the interim spending bill, approving it 357 to 60. A coalition of 183 Republicans and 174 Democrats voted yes. But Democrats were the key. The Department of Homeland Security was funded for a week.
But that wasn’t much time. And Monday night, it became clear that the Senate couldn’t handle the House’s wish to form a conference committee. The Senate prepped to send the “clean” DHS bill back to the House. And that’s when Boehner moved -- knowing Democrats could bail out recalcitrant Republicans and not shutter DHS.
“Imagine if, God forbid, another terrorist attack hits the United States,” said Boehner to House Republicans at a Tuesday morning conclave, according to a source.
Boehner told Republicans he continued to be “outraged and frustrated” at the president’s immigration maneuvers. But he said the decision to forge ahead and fund DHS was “the right one for this team and the right one for the country.”
Maybe so. Not many of Boehner’s members would buy it. And that’s where Pelosi would swoop in. The GOP wouldn’t secure 191 yeas like they did on the three-week spending bill last week. They’d need Democratic assistance. A source suggested the GOP would cobble together a group of Republicans who were either in the leadership, held committees chairmanships, served on the Appropriations Committee or were moderates. Democrats would take up the slack. In early 2013, the House approved a $50 billion aid bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy 241-180. But only 49 GOPers voted yes. Last February, the House voted to raise the debt limit 221-201. A scant 28 yeas came from Republicans with minority Democrats hauling most of the freight.
The House voted 257-167 to fund DHS, but only 75 Republicans voted yes. Again, it was Democrats who largely advanced the measure despite their minority status.
“Our members had the courage to say, ‘I don’t want the government to be shut down. But I’m not falling for this three-week plan,’” trumpeted Pelosi.
Pelosi persuaded her members to hold out for full-year fiscal funding. After several acrimonious days, the House voted for what Pelosi demanded.
So who is really in charge here? Boehner or Pelosi? Especially since big fights await on the debt limit, funding highway construction programs and avoiding a government shutdown in the fall. Democratic votes will be crucial to assist Republicans. Was Pelosi a “de facto speaker?"
“If there’s ever an oxymoron it is ‘de facto speaker.’ You’re either speaker or you’re not,” insisted Pelosi.
But on DHS funding, it was Pelosi who controlled the game. And because of the disarray on the GOP side of the aisle, the bill only passed when Pelosi offered her members to vote for the plan Democrats wanted.
The debate time allocation on the bill reflected internal House fissures. For the standard hour of debate, Republicans received 20 minutes of time, Democrats 20 minutes and opponents 20 minutes. This mirrors the “coalition” approach which appears to be essential to operate the House these days.
“The problem is, I don’t see a path to victory with what (opponents) are looking at,” chirped Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican and Boehner ally who managed the spending plan for the GOP. “It will lead to a close-down of the Department of Homeland Security and that is not a victory. That is very dangerous.”
Conservatives weren’t quite done with their machinations even as the final bill came to the floor. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., launched a final dilatory maneuver, objecting to the House setting aside an oral reading of the 96-page Senate amendment which struck the immigration provisions. House procedure dictates that all bills and such amendments are read aloud. It’s a vestige from the days before Xerox when there was often only a sole copy of legislation. The only way lawmakers could learn about a bill was to hear its content read from the dais.
Massie required House Reading Clerk Susan Cole to read the amendment for 20 minutes (she stopped once to sip water) before abandoning his protest and allowing the House to consider the Senate changes.
“It’s time to move forward and stop playing these silly games,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. “It is time for the House to move past the corrosive pattern of self-imposed cliffs and shutdowns and get to the work that the American people expect us to address.”
But Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, railed against the GOP’s gambit.
“Since December, the outcome has been baked into the cake,” said Cruz. “Capitulation was the endpoint.”
Soon Congress must wrestle with the onerous issue of reimbursing physicians who treat Medicare patients. A failure to act could slash doctors’ payments by 25 percent. Lawmakers must adopt a budget. The Highway Trust Fund is bankrupt. They must keep the entire government open come October and also raise the debt limit. Each fight increases in level of difficulty. Perhaps the only way Republicans can move major agenda items is to rely on Democrats. This isn’t new. Boehner has had to rely on Democrats to pass almost every major bill since he assumed the speakership -- ranging from the debt ceiling to avoiding a government shutdown.
Pelosi flexed her muscles on the DHS bill and got her way. There could be a repeat of that phenomenon on big votes this year.
On Friday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wrote to Congress, saying the government will technically hit the debt ceiling next week. But the general consensus is that lawmakers might not have to move until autumn. Regardless, Lew beseeched “Congress to raise the debt limit as soon as possible.”
Pelosi quickly dashed off a follow-up statement:
“The treasury secretary’s letter is another reminder of the consequences of Republicans’ culture of crisis. There is no reason that the Republican Congress should not act immediately to take the prospect of a catastrophic default off of the table,” said the California Democrat.
If history is our guide, it’s hard to consider a scenario where Democrats aren’t again asked to carry the water on this issue and other issues, in lieu of the GOP majority.
Pelosi’s is certainly no longer the House speaker or a “de facto” speaker. She operates out of the smaller office suite and doesn’t have the power to bring bills to the floor yet the numbers to pass measures with only Democratic votes. Still, there was a time when Tip O’Neill and Tom Foley toiled in that very office while making sure the House trains ran on time. And it’s a circumstance not unlike the one in which Pelosi finds herself now.