Ind., Ark. pass revised religious objection laws

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. –  Lawmakers in Arkansas and Indiana passed legislation Thursday that they hoped would quiet the national uproar over new religious objections laws that opponents say are designed to offer a legal defense for anti-gay discrimination.
The Arkansas House voted 76-17 to pass a revised bill after Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson asked for changes in the wake of mounting criticism. Hutchinson signed it only moments after the vote, saying the new version recognizes that "we have a diverse workforce and a diverse culture."
A parallel process played out at the Indiana Capitol as the House and Senate passed changes to a law signed last week by GOP Gov. Mike Pence, who quickly approved the revisions.
"Over the past week, this law has become a subject of great misunderstanding and controversy across our state and nation," Pence said in a statement. "However we got here, we are where we are, and it is important that our state take action to address the concerns that have been raised and move forward."
The new legislation marks the first time sexual orientation and gender identity have been mentioned in Indiana law.
The Arkansas measure is similar to a bill sent to the governor earlier this week, but Hutchinson said he wanted it revised to more closely mirror a 1993 federal law. Supporters of the compromise bill said it addresses concerns that the original proposal was discriminatory.
The Indiana amendment prohibits service providers from using the law as a legal defense for refusing to provide goods, services, facilities or accommodations. It also bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or U.S. military service.
The measure exempts churches and affiliated schools, along with nonprofit religious organizations.
House Speaker Brian Bosma said the law sends a "very strong statement" that the state will not tolerate discrimination.
Business leaders, many of whom had opposed the law or canceled travel to the state because of it, called the amendment a good first step but said more work needs to be done. Gay-rights groups noted that Indiana's civil-rights law still does not include LGBT people as a protected class.
Former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, now a senior vice president at drugmaker Eli Lilly, praised the changes but noted that work needs to be done to repair damage to the state's image.
"The healing needs to begin right now," he said.
Democratic leaders said the amendment did not go far enough and repeated their calls to repeal the law.
"I want to hear somebody say we made a grave mistake, and we caused the state tremendous embarrassment that will take months, if not years, to repair," House Minority Leader Scott Pelath said. "I want to hear one of the proponents `fess up."
The lawmaker behind the original Arkansas proposal backed the changes, saying he believed it would still accomplish his goal of protecting religious beliefs.
"We're going to allow a person to believe what they want to believe without the state coming in and burdening that unless they've got a good reason to do so," Republican Rep. Bob Ballinger told the House Judiciary Committee.
Like Pence, Hutchinson has faced pressure from the state's largest employers, including retail giant Wal-Mart. Businesses called the bill discriminatory and said it would hurt Arkansas' image. Hutchinson noted that his own son, Seth, had signed a petition urging him to veto the bill.
After Hutchinson signed the compromise bill, the House voted to recall the original proposal from his desk. Conservative groups said they would have preferred Hutchinson sign the original bill, but they grudgingly backed the compromise measure.
"The bill that's on the governor's desk is the Rolls Royce of religious freedom bills. It is a very good bill," said Jerry Cox, head of the Arkansas Family Council. "The bill that just passed ... is a Cadillac."
The revised Arkansas measure only addresses actions by the government, not by businesses or individuals. Supporters said that would prevent businesses from using it to deny services to individuals. Opponents said they believed the measure still needs explicit anti-discrimination language.
The original bill "gave us a black eye. This bill ices it," said Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas. "We still need some Tylenol."
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights group, called the new law an improvement but said it could still be used be used to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
The revised bill also faced opposition from Republicans frustrated over the governor's request for changes to a proposal he had initially planned to sign.
"I, for one, do not appreciate someone hiding behind this body when they're unwilling to take a stand one way or the other," Republican Rep. Josh Miller of Heber Springs said.
Similar proposals have been introduced this year in more than a dozen states, patterned after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, with some differences. Twenty-one states now have comparable laws on the books.

Shredder Cartoon

Iraq claims victory over ISIS in Tikrit, but US military official says 'block-to-block' fighting ongoing

Iraq's defense minister said security forces have achieved a "magnificent victory" over Islamic State fighters in Tikrit Wednesday, but a senior defense official told Fox News that the fighting is “block to block, especially in the northern part of Tikrit where ISIS still has fighters.”
Khalid al-Obeidi said Wednesday that security forces have "accomplished their mission" in the monthlong offensive to rid Saddam Hussein's hometown of the militant group.
"We have the pleasure, with all our pride, to announce the good news of a magnificent victory," Obeidi said in a video statement. "Here we come to you, Anbar! Here we come to you, Nineveh, and we say it with full resolution, confidence, and persistence," naming other provinces under the sway of the extremists.
Despite the claim, “Iraqi security forces are still fighting block to block in some cases, particularly in the northern part of Tikrit,” a Pentagon official told Fox News. “This operation is still in the clearing stage.”
A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in the region told Fox News that the statement from Obeidi was “probably a little misleading,” but added, “we are confident that Tikrit has been seized from ISIS.”
Both officials said the coalition could not estimate how many militants are left in Tikrit, but described ISIS as “scattered.”
“The fire is out, but some embers remain,” said the spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force.
Militant mortar fire, which had been intense over previous days, fell silent Wednesday, with commanders saying only a few militant snipers remained in the city. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.
The U.S. launched airstrikes last week in support of Iraqi ground forces. The battle for Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, is seen as a key step toward eventually driving the militants out of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city.
The road to Mosul extends another 150 miles to the north, and the Islamic State group still controls much of the vast Anbar province to the west.
Iraqi forces, including soldiers, police officers, Shiite militias and Sunni tribes, launched a large-scale operation to recapture Tikrit on March 2. Last week, the United States launched airstrikes on the embattled city at the request of the Iraqi government.
Tikrit is the hometown of Saddam Hussein, whose Sunni-dominated dictatorship ruled Iraq for more than two decades before it was toppled by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Since then the Sunni minority has felt increasingly marginalized by the Shiite majority and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. In 2006, long-running tensions boiled over into sectarian violence that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The Islamic State was able to rally Sunni support by portraying its advance as a "revolution" against the Shiite-led government, and Tikrit fell in a matter of days last June as the security forces crumbled. Restoring security in the city will be a major test of the government's ability to stitch the country back together.
The objective now, Interior Minister Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban said Wednesday, is to restore normalcy as quickly as possible.
"After clearing the area from roadside bombs and car bombs, we will reopen police stations to restore normalcy in the city, and we will form committees to supervise the return of people displaced from their homes," al-Ghabban said. He said the government will help displaced residents return and that a civil defense unit will be combing the city for roadside bombs and car bombs.
"Daesh is completely defeated," he added, using an Arabic name for the group.
During a visit to Tikrit, Iraqi Prime Minsiter Haider al-Abadi said that military engineering units still need more time to clear the city from booby traps. He also waved an Iraqi flag in photos posted on his social media accounts.
"God's willing, there will be a fund to rebuild areas destroyed by Daesh and the war. Tikrit and Salahuddin areas will be covered by this fund," al-Abadi said.
A satellite image of Tikrit, released in February by the United Nations, showed at least 536 buildings in the city have been affected by the fighting. Of those, at least 137 were completely destroyed and 241 were severely damaged. The current offensive also exacerbated previous damage, particularly in the south, where clashes have been the most intense in recent days.
Iraq's parliament speaker, Salim al-Jabouri, called on the government to find the means to resettle residents from damaged Tikrit buildings. He said this "requires effort and support by the central government in order to financially support the people in rebuilding their houses."

Top State Department aide listed as Clinton Foundation director

Hillary Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department was listed as a director at the Clinton Foundation in its corporate records for more than three years after joining the administration, highlighting concerns that Clinton's aides were too close to the foundation during her tenure.
The "William J. Clinton Foundation Corporation" named Cheryl Mills as one its three directors when it applied for nonprofit corporate status in Florida in June 2009-five months after Mills began serving as Clinton's chief of staff and counsel at the State Department.
The organization continued to list Mills as a director in its annual state filings in 2010, 2011, and 2012. During this time, the foundation updated its office address and registered agent on the same documents. Chelsea Clinton replaced Mills in the March 2013 report.
The Florida filings highlight the cozy relationship between Clinton's inner circle at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation, which has come under scrutiny from watchdog groups for accepting money from foreign governments and donors.
Huma Abedin, another close Clinton aide, received a waiver in 2012 that allowed her to do part-time consulting for the foundation while working for the government. She did not publicly acknowledge the work until it was revealed by the New York Times.

More on this...

• Senate GOP asking new questions about emails for Clinton and Abedin, who had special employment status

Earlier this month, the conservative group Citizens United sued the State Department to release emails between Mills and Clinton Foundation officials.

Feds won't pursue contempt charges against Lerner for not testifying before House

The Justice Department has declined to pursue contempt of Congress charges against Lois Lerner for refusing to testify about her role at the IRS in the targeting of conservative groups.
The department announced the decision in a letter Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner, whose Republican-controlled chamber made the request to prosecute, after holding Lerner in contempt for refusing to testify at committee hearings.
"Once again, the Obama administration has tried to sweep IRS targeting of taxpayers for their political beliefs under the rug,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told FoxNews.com.
Lerner asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege, which allows people to not testify against themselves, during a May 2013 hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and then again at a March 2014 hearing.
However, House Republicans argued Lerner waived the privilege with an opening statement she made before the committee in the May 2013 appearance. All the chamber’s Republican members and six Democrats officially voted in May 2014 to hold Lerner in contempt.
Ron Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in the seven-page letter that federal prosecutors concluded Lerner did not waive her privilege because she made “only general claims of innocence” during the opening statement.
“Thus, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution would provide Ms. Lerner with an absolute defense should be prosecuted … for her refusal to testify,” wrote Machen, who was appointed to the U.S. attorney post by President Obama and left for private practice Wednesday, one day after sending the letter.
He also said he will not refer the case to a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute.
Lerner ran the IRS’s exempt organizations unit when Tea Party and other nonprofit groups with conservative names applying for tax-exempt status were targeted for additional auditing from April 2010 to April 2012.
She was placed on administrative leave in May 2013 and retired four months later.
“I have not done anything wrong,” Lerner said in her 2013 opening statement. “I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations. And I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”
The IRS scandal broke in May 2013 when Lerner said at an American Bar Association gathering and during a follow-up conference call with reporters there was a “very big uptick” in nonprofit applications and that the vetting process was limited to the agency’s Cincinnati office.
However, the extent to which the Obama administration knew about the targeting, beyond Lerner’s unit in Washington, remains unclear in part because, she says, her computer crashed and emails were lost.
Lerner attorney William Taylor said he and is client are “gratified but not surprised” by the decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Anyone who takes a serious and impartial look at this issue would conclude that Ms. Lerner did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights.” he said. “It is unfortunate that the majority party in the House put politics before a citizen’s constitutional rights.”
Steel also said the White House still has the opportunity to “do the right thing and appoint a special counsel to examine the IRS’ actions."
Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan said federal prosecutors made the “wrong” decision.
“As one of his final acts as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Ronald Machen used his power as a political weapon to undermine the rule of law,” Jordan said. “Machen was legally bound to convene a grand jury, but instead he ignored his obligation and unilaterally decided to ignore the will of the House. … This is wrong, and a great example of why so many Americans distrust their government.”

One foot out the door? Iran talks enter double overtime, White House repeats ‘walk away’ threat

Secretary of State John Kerry is sticking around for at least another day of tense talks over Iran's nuclear program, pushing negotiations into double overtime -- even as other foreign ministers were sitting it out and the White House repeated a threat that all sides are "prepared to walk away."
"We continue to make progress but have not reached a political understanding," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a brief statement, revealing that Kerry would once again postpone his departure from the Switzerland talks and "remain in Lausanne until at least Thursday morning to continue the negotiations."
Negotiators already had blown past a Tuesday at midnight deadline to push talks into Wednesday. It remained unclear whether talks continuing into Thursday could yield a deal framework.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said negotiators were still facing a "tough struggle," indicating the talks were not likely to end anytime soon. "Tonight there will be new proposals, new recommendations. I can't predict whether that will sufficient to enable an agreement to be reached," he said.
At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif accused his country's negotiating partners, particularly the U.S., of having "defective" political will in the talks.
"I've always said that an agreement and pressure do not go together, they are mutually exclusive," he told reporters. "So our friends need to decide whether they want to be with Iran based on respect or whether they want to continue based on pressure."
The foreign ministers of China, France and Russia previously had departed Lausanne Tuesday night. With talks bleeding into Thursday, France's foreign minister reportedly was on his way back.
But patience may be wearing thin.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that talks were "making some progress" but that "we have not yet received the specific, tangible commitments we and the international community require."
And he restated a threat that the U.S. and others are prepared to leave the table.
"We're going to drive a hard bargain and we're going to expect Iran to make serious commitments," he said. "And we're going to give them the opportunity to do so.  But if they don't, the international community, alongside the United States, is prepared to walk away and consider some alternatives."
The Obama administration has faced recent calls to do just that.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told Fox News he's concerned the framework of a deal could allow Iran keep its uranium stockpiles and continue to enrich uranium in an underground bunker.
"You have to be willing to walk away from the table and to reapply leverage to Iran," Cotton said. "And the fact that they're not willing to do that, that we're still sitting in Switzerland negotiating when three of our negotiating partners have already left just demonstrates to Iran that they can continue to demand dangerous concessions from the West."
Speaking on MSNBC, former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean seemed to agree. He said that while President Obama is "right" to seek a deal, it might be time to "step away" from the table and make clear that the U.S. is not backing off key positions -- including on Iran's uranium stockpile and the pace of sanctions relief.
The negotiators' intention is to produce a joint statement outlining general political commitments to resolving concerns about the Iranians' nuclear program in exchange for relief of economic sanctions against Iran. In addition, they are trying to fashion other documents that would lay out in more detail the steps they must take by June 30 to meet those goals.
But Iran has pushed back not only on the substance of the commitments the sides must make but to the form in which they will make them, demanding that it be a general statement with few specifics.  That is politically unpalatable for the Obama administration which must convince a hostile Congress that it has made progress in the talks so lawmakers do not enact new sanctions that could destroy the negotiations.
Zarif said the result of this round of talks "will not be more than a statement."
A senior Western official pushed back on that, saying that nothing about a statement had been decided and that Iran's negotiating partners would not accept a document that contained no details. The official was not authorized to speak to the negotiations by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi named differences on sanctions relief as one dispute -- but also suggested some softening of Tehran's long-term insistence that all sanctions on his country be lifted immediately once a final deal takes effect.
He told Iranian TV that economic, financial, oil and bank sanctions imposed by the U.S., the European Union and others should be done away with as "the first step of the deal."
Alluding to separate U.N. sanctions he said a separate "framework" was needed for them.
Negotiations have already been twice extended since an interim agreement between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany was concluded in 2013. President Obama and other leaders, including Iran's, have said they are not interested in a third extension.
But if the parties agree only to a broad framework that leaves key details unresolved, Obama can expect stiff opposition at home from members of Congress who want to move forward with new, stiffer Iran sanctions. Lawmakers had agreed to hold off on such a measure through March while the parties negotiated. The White House says new sanctions would scuttle further diplomatic efforts to contain Iran's nuclear work and possibly lead Israel to act on threats to use military force to accomplish that goal.

Nuclear Cartoon

Obama vetoes measure against swifter union elections

President Obama on Tuesday vetoed a measure passed by the Republican-run Congress blocking the National Labor Relations Board from streamlining the process for union elections, saying government should not make it harder for workers to be heard in the workplace.
Obama also announced a fall White House summit on worker rights.
The NLRB rule, set to take effect on April 14, would shorten the amount of time between when an election is called and when it is held by eliminating a 25-day waiting period.
Republicans and business groups opposed the rule, arguing that it would limit the ability of businesses to prepare for what some critics have dubbed "ambush elections." Opponents also said workers wouldn't have enough time to make informed decisions about whether to join a union.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Obama called the labor board's changes "common sense" and "modest" before he vetoed a resolution the Congress passed to nullify the rule.
"Unions historically have been at the forefront of establishing things like the 40-hour work week, the weekend, elimination of child labor laws, establishing fair benefits and decent wages," Obama said. "And one of the freedoms of folks here in the United States is, is that if they choose to join a union, they should be able to do so. And we shouldn't be making it impossible for that to happen."
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized Obama's decision.
"The NLRB's ambush election rule is an assault on the rights and privacy protections of American workers," Boehner said. "With his veto, the president has once again put the interests of his political allies ahead of the small-business owners and hardworking Americans who create jobs and build a stronger economy."
The rule was a victory for unions, which have long complained that the process is too long.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, using language similar to Obama, has said that the board's "modest but important reforms" will help reduce delays and make it easier for workers to vote on forming a union. Using language similar to Boehner, Trumka has called lawmakers' attempt to overturn the rule "a direct attack on workers and their right to be heard in the workplace."
The NLRB rule also permits some documents to be filed electronically instead of by mail, and generally delays legal challenges by employers until after workers have voted on whether to unionize. The rule will also require employers to supply union organizers with workers' email addresses and telephone numbers.