Americans stuck in Yemen file suit demanding State Department, military rescue them

WASHINGTON –  Claiming the Obama administration turned its back on them, 41 Americans stranded in war-torn Yemen filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the State Department and Defense Department for not evacuating them -- as fighting intensifies and U.S. allies launch airstrikes.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks to compel the government to use “all resources” possible to rescue the stranded Americans. The plaintiffs range in age from just a few weeks old to senior citizens.
“Despite the clear danger to Americans in Yemen – and the death of at least one American – the Obama administration has not yet taken any substantive steps to help citizens or permanent residents reach safety,” the lawsuit claims.
The suit was filed on the plaintiffs' behalf by The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Though the exact number of Americans stuck in Yemen is unknown, hundreds of people have expressed concern about loved ones in Yemen through a website set up to track and help them, Jenifer Wicks, a lawyer for CAIR, told reporters Thursday.
The political crisis in Yemen has escalated in recent months, with the country’s capital taken over by the Iran-backed Shiite rebel group known as the Houthis.
Yemen’s president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has fled the country. The U.S. embassy, meanwhile, closed its doors, leaving many Americans without a way to get home. At the same time, a Saudi-led Arab coalition is launching airstrikes against the rebels in the country, an effort supported by the U.S. government.
The suit filed Thursday is not the first warning from advocacy groups about Americans trapped in Yemen.
Last week, the groups behind the lawsuit launched the website www.stuckinyemen.com to provide assistance to Americans, or the friends and families of Americans, trying to escape Yemen.
“We honestly do not understand why the government would not help,” CAIR Director Nihad Awad said. Awad pointed to other countries, like India, China and Turkey, which have used their resources to rescue their citizens.

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April 9, 2015: CAIR Director Nihad Awad (left) listens as Abed Ayoub, policy director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (right), discusses the plight of U.S. citizens stuck in Yemen. (Barnini Chakraborty)

India, for example, is leading the rescue of trapped foreigners in Yemen, successfully evacuating more than 550 people from 32 countries, including a dozen Americans and three Pakistanis, through a combined air, sea and rail effort.
Reports indicate the U.S. embassy advised American nationals trapped in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa to seek out help from other countries. It’s a move Abed Ayoub, policy director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, doesn’t agree with. He says this should be the responsibility of the American government.
“It is our duty to get them out,” he said. “You can’t ship this responsibility.”
Ayoub summed up a recent conference call he had with the State Department: “We can’t do anything. Good luck.”
Asked Wednesday, in anticipation of the lawsuit, whether a federal court even had the ability to mandate an evacuation, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said she didn't know. She did not comment further on the case and, at the time, said she wasn't aware of it.
On Thursday, Jeff Rathke, another State Department spokesman, said the department is "aware of some American citizens who remain in Yemen" and that protecting them is a "top priority."
As stated in the lawsuit, at least one American has been killed in the fighting -- California resident Jamal al-Labani, killed in a mortar strike last month.
Ayoub said if the government doesn’t become more pro-active, the ADC is prepared to file more lawsuits, as it did against top Cabinet officials for failing to protect American citizens in Lebanon in 2006. The ADC pulled its case when a ceasefire was declared.
The suit urges the U.S. to use “all resources at their disposal” including “deploying military ships, vessels and airplanes and/or contracting with private commercial ship liners and airplanes” to evacuate U.S. citizens from Yemen and safely return them to America.
If that doesn’t work, it might be up to Americans to rescue themselves.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a 26-year-old Bay Area businessesman who got stuck in Yemen, escaped by motorboat before finding a flight home.
“Yemeni Americans have been effectively abandoned in Yemen,” Alkhanshali told the Chronicle, when safely back on American soil. “No one helped me come here. I’m happy to be back, but at the same time I feel saddened by the way I came back.”

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California lawmakers advance bill requiring vaccinations for most schoolkids

SACRAMENTO, Calif. –  California lawmakers on Wednesday advanced a bill that would require schoolchildren in the state to be vaccinated amid impassioned pleas from parents and doctors, even activist Robert Kennedy Jr.
Under the proposal, parents would no longer be able to send unvaccinated kids to school with waivers citing religious or personal beliefs. Exemptions would be available only for children with health problems.
Supporters say the measure would increase the number of vaccinated young people and improve public health.
Ariel Loop told lawmakers that such a plan could have prevented her child from contracting measles at Disneyland. "My infant shouldn't have had to suffer. He shouldn't, still months later, be having complications with his eyes," she said. "I shouldn't have had to fear for his life."
Opponents, however, say vaccines can be as dangerous as the diseases they aim to fight and that the bill would trample parental rights.
Karen Kain said her daughter died of injuries from a mercury-tainted vaccine. "I stand here today before you to share my story so you can all see and hear what happens when vaccines go wrong," she said. "Who gets to make the choice now of whose babies are more important? Because there is risk, there must be choice."
The measure, SB277 from Sen. Richard Pan, was in the earliest stages of the legislative process. But it drew large crowds, including parents who brought their children. During the emotionally charged hearing, one opponent threatened to put a curse on lawmakers who voted for the bill and another woman was removed after an outburst.
The bill passed out of the Senate Health Committee on a 6-2 vote Wednesday.
If the bill passes the Legislature and signed by the governor, California would join Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states with such strict vaccine rules.
Similar efforts to reduce exemptions were proposed elsewhere after a measles outbreak in December that started at Disneyland and sickened more than 100 people across the U.S. and in Mexico. In Oregon and Washington state, however, such proposals were rejected recently.
Opponents include Kennedy, the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Kennedy has been promoting the film "Trace Amounts" and is editor of a book called "Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak," linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the mercury-containing chemical has been removed from routine childhood vaccines since 2001.
The Sacramento Bee reported that when Kennedy asked the crowd at a screening of the film on Tuesday how many parents had a child injured by vaccines, numerous hands went up.
"They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone," Kennedy said. "This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country."
At a rally ahead of Wednesday's legislative hearing, Kennedy said he had all six of his children vaccinated, but he remains concerned the pharmaceutical industry profits immensely when governments make vaccines mandatory.
Dr. Dean Blumberg, a pediatrician who testified on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the California Medical Association, said childhood vaccination has been so successful that it's easy to overstate their risks and dismiss the diseases they prevent.
"Unfortunately, there's much misinformation about vaccine safety and effectiveness," Blumberg said. "Let me be clear: There is no scientific controversy about vaccine safety and vaccine effectiveness. ... This is not open to dispute among mainstream doctors and scientists."
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is among 20 states that allow for exemptions based on personal belief and 48 that allow for religious exemptions.
Public health officials believe an immunization rate of at least 90 percent is critical to minimizing the potential for a disease outbreak. California's kindergarteners met that threshold at the start of this school year, according to state statistics: 2 percent were exempted because of their parents' personal beliefs and another half a percent were exempted because of their parents' religion.

University of Michigan reverses decision, will show 'American Sniper' as scheduled

The University of Michigan said late Wednesday that it will show the film "American Sniper" as originally scheduled after a protest by students and staff caused the screening to be scrapped.
University Vice President for Student Life E. Royster Harper called the decision to cancel the Friday night showing a "mistake" in a statement.
"The initial decision to cancel the movie was not consistent with the high value the University of Michigan places on freedom of expression and our respect for the right of students to make their own choices in such matters," Harper said. "The movie will be shown at the originally scheduled time and location."
Harper added that the university will also screen the family-friendly film "Paddington" as an alternative.
"American Sniper", which stars Bradley Cooper as former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, was originally scheduled to be shown as part of a university-sponsored social event called UMix. However, the screening was canceled after a protest letter garnered more than 300 signatures.
"The movie 'American Sniper’ not only tolerates but promotes anti-Muslim and anti-MENA [Muslim, Middle Eastern and North African] rhetoric and sympathizes with a mass killer," the letter read in part. "Chris Kyle was a racist who took a disturbing stance on murdering Iraqi civilians."
"Watching this movie is provocative and unsafe to MENA and Muslim students who are too often reminded of how little the media and world value their lives," the letter continued.
The cancelation drew a strong reaction, and The Michigan Daily reported that a third-year Law School student named Rachel Jankowski circulated a petition calling on the university's Center for Campus Involvement to restore "American Sniper" to the UMix schedule. The university's football coach, Jim Harbaugh, weighed in on the controversy by tweeting that he would watch the movie with his team.

Before Harper's statement, the Center for Campus Involvement had announced plans to show "American Sniper" in a separate location from the UMix program, in what it said would be "a forum that provides an appropriate space for dialogue and reflection." It was not immediately clear whether the "forum" would be part of the revived Friday night screening.

ICE, Homeland Security arrest more than 1,200 in nationwide gang raids

EXCLUSIVE: Targeting gangs across the country, teams from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arrested more than 1,200 people, while seizing weapons and drugs directly used by international crime syndicates.
Members and associates from 239 different gangs were arrested in 282 cities across the U.S. during what’s been called Project Wildfire, a six-week operation that included 215 state, local and federal law enforcement agencies. Already at least 913 people have been charged with criminal offenses as a result of the operation, which began in mid -February. Those arrested include 650 with violent criminal histories, including 19 individuals wanted on active warrants for murder and 15 for rape or sexual assault. There were 200 foreign nationals arrested in the raids.
“This is where grassroots law enforcement starts. This is how we get a baseline read of what’s happening… it all builds on itself…this is what federal agencies, investigative agencies like HSI, are doing to target transnational criminality,” Homeland Security's Greg Mandoli said as he, and a team of officers that included local agencies, returned from raids in Placentia, Calif.

“We’re looking to prevent, deter and protect communities."- Greg Mandoli, of Homeland Security

The operation targeted transnational criminal gangs and others associated with transnational criminal activity.
“We’re looking to prevent, deter and protect communities. The public doesn't realize what’s happening in a federal investigative agency like HSI and the breath of the investigations that we’re doing. So, with Project Wildfire, we’re looking to take ground information and feed them back into the collective pool... working with our local partners to identify community threats as we look to prevent, deter and protect the homeland,” said Mandoli.
The majority of those taken into custody were affiliated with the Sureños, Norteños, Bloods, Crips, Puerto Rican-based gangs and several prison-based gangs, with the greatest activity taking place in the San Juan, Puerto Rico; Dallas, El Paso, Los Angeles and Detroit HSI areas. Those arrested during the Project Wildfire raids came from 18 countries in South and Central America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Agents also seized weapons, vehicles, currency and counterfeit merchandise totaling $1 million, as well as drugs, including methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin.
This operation was part of HSI’s overall plan dubbed Operation Community Shield, which globally targets crime and combats the growth and proliferation of transnational criminal street gangs, prison gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs in the United States and abroad. According to agents, since 2005, more than 36,000 have been arrested and linked to more than 2,600 different gangs.

Kerry says US won't 'stand by' in Middle East as Iran steps up Yemen involvement

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Iran over its increased involvement in Yemen's civil war Wednesday, vowing that the U.S. would not "stand by" as the Middle East became destabilized.
Meanwhile, Iran President Hassan Rouhani said Thursday that a Saudi-led campaign of airstrikes against Yemen's Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, was a "mistake." Rouhani did not single out any country in particular but said, "You learned that it was wrong. You will learn, not later but soon, that you are making mistake in Yemen, too."
Speaking on the "PBS Newshour" Wednesday, Kerry said that Tehran was "obviously" supplying the rebels, whose military advances forced Yemen's U.S-and Saudi-backed president to flee last month. In response, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have been carrying out airstrikes against Houthi targets since March 26.
"Iran needs to recognize that the United States is not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines — international boundaries — in other countries," Kerry said. "We have an ability to understand that an Iran with a nuclear weapon is a greater threat than an Iran without one. And at the same time we have an ability to be able to stand up to interference that is inappropriate or against international law, or contrary to the region’s stability and interest and those of our friends."
Kerry's interview was broadcast on the same day that Iran said it was sending a destroyer and another naval ship to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait. Iranian Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari was quoted as saying that the ships were part of an anti-piracy campaign to "safeguard naval routes for vessels in the region" by the English-language state broadcaster Press TV.
The comments by Kerry and Rouhani, as well as the Iranian naval maneuvers underscore the growing international tensions surrounding the chaotic fighting in Yemen, with the U.S. shoring up the Saudi-led forces on one side and Iran allegedly backing the Houthis on the other – though Iran and the rebels deny any direct military assistance.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Wednesday he could not say whether “Iranian money or equipment” has been delivered to the Houthis, but “we know the Iranians are partnered with the Houthis and they are working together.”
On PBS, Kerry said, "There are obviously supplies that have been coming from Iran. There are a number of flights every single week that have been flying in."
The fighting and international involvement threaten to hang over ongoing nuclear talks, which yielded a deal framework last week in Switzerland. The U.S., Iran and five other world powers are trying to strike a final deal by June – though critics have pointed to Iran’s involvement in Yemen and elsewhere as a serious cause for concern.
The unrest has also provided cover for Al Qaeda's Yemen branch, which the U.S. considers the world's most dangerous wing of the group, to make "great gains" on the ground. That in turn has caused Washington to rethink how it prevents it from launching attacks in the West.
On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met with Pakistan's prime minister in an effort to to push for peace talks to resolve the crisis.
"We need to work together in order to put an end to the crisis in Yemen," said Zarif, who also called for the imposition of a humanitarian cease-fire. "We need to find a political solution in Yemen, a comprehensive political solution leading an inclusive government through Yemeni dialogue."
Zarif's visit came as Pakistan's parliament is debating whether to contribute forces to the Saudi-led air campaign. The airstrikes against the Houthis and their allies, including loyalists of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, have so far failed to stop the rebels' advance on Aden, Yemen's second-largest city, which was declared a provisional capital by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi before he fled to Saudi Arabia.
Humanitarian groups in Yemen say they are running out of supplies and have called for a temporary halt to the fighting to allow aid into the country. The World Health Organization said Tuesday at least 560 people have been killed in the past weeks and 1,768 have been wounded, many of them civilians. It said another 100,000 have fled their homes.

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NLRB educating foreign workers on union rights, critics see shield for illegal immigrants

WASHINGTON –  Congressional investigators say they’ve uncovered another attempt by the Obama administration to aid illegal immigrants in the U.S. – this time, by teaching foreign workers lessons on union organizing.
The National Labor Relations Board has entered into agreements with Mexico, Ecuador and the Philippines to teach workers from those countries in the United States their rights when it comes to union activity.
The agreements reportedly don’t distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants. But lawmakers are worried it’s part of an effort to shield illegal immigrants specifically, by encouraging them to join a union and get protection.
NLRB spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek explained to Fox News that under the National Labor Relations Act, “employees, whether documented or undocumented, are protected from retaliation due to union or other protected concerted activity."
That means employers could be charged for dismissing an illegal immigrant worker – if the firing is determined to be tied to the worker’s union activity
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia, argued illegal immigrant workers could soon learn to exploit the system, creating a catch-22 for businesses.
“They could instead be charged with violating the National Labor Relations Act because someone will claim that they're doing it because the individual is engaged in unionization activities," Goodlatte said.
He also claimed the Obama administration was trying to keep the NLRB union education agreements, which were originally signed in 2013 and 2014, quiet.
"This is the first we've learned of this and it's the first that news organizations have learned of this -- and they didn't learn it because the administration came out and told them,” Goodlatte told Fox News.
“They learned about it because of leaked materials, and again, that is not the kind of transparency the American people expect of their government."
An NLRB official, though, disputed the notion that the agreement was a "new development or something that was intentionally being kept out of the news."
Yet it isn’t just the NLRB that could view union activity as a shield for illegal immigrants.
In June 2011, then-Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton issued a memo saying: “ICE officers, special agents and attorneys are reminded to exercise all appropriate discretion on a case-by-case basis when making detention and enforcement decisions in the cases . . . [of] individuals engaging in a protected activity related to civil or other rights (for example, union organizing).”
While this may serve as a way to boost union membership at a time when their numbers are trending downward, one activist said it will likely hurt U.S. citizen union members in the end.
"It seems that the union is almost selling out the interests of American workers and legal immigrant workers in order to boost its membership by appealing to illegal workers and getting the assistance of other countries in doing that,” Jessica Vaughan, of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News.

Colorado double standard: Bakers should not be forced to make anti-gay cakes

Bill Jack wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Bakers should not be forced to make a cake that would violate their conscience or freedom of expression.
Jack, of Castle Rock, Colo., is making national headlines over an experiment he conducted in the wake of attacks on Christian business owners who refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages.
Last year, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood unlawfully discriminated against a gay couple who wanted a wedding cake. Jack Phillips, the owner of the cake shop, is a devout Christian, and his attorneys argued that to force him to participate in the gay wedding would violate his religious beliefs.
The Civil Rights Commission saw it differently.
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So if Christian bakers who oppose gay marriage are compelled under law to violate their beliefs – what about bakers who support gay marriage? Would they be compelled to make an anti-gay marriage cake?
Jack, who is a devout Christian, asked three bakeries to produce two cakes – each shaped like an open Bible.
On one side of one cake he requested the words, “God hates sin – Psalm 45:7.” On the other side he wanted the words, “Homosexuality is a detestable sin – Leviticus 18:22.”
On the second cake he asked them to write another Bible verse: “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us – Romans 5:8” along with the words “God loves sinners.”
And finally, Jack wanted the bakers to create an image – two grooms holding hands, with a red “X” over them – the universal symbol for “not allowed.”
Now if you read the national news accounts of Jack’s experiment – you would’ve read that he wanted gay slurs written on the cakes. But that wasn’t true.
According to the commission’s own report, there’s no mention of Jack using any gay slurs – unless you consider Bible verses to be gay slurs.
Mark Silverstein, the legal director for Colorado’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, accused Jack of wanting obscenities written on the cakes.
“There’s no law that says that a cake-maker has to write obscenities in the cake just because the customer wants it,” he told the Associated Press.
Does the ACLU consider the Bible to be obscene?
As you probably guessed, the bakeries rejected Jack’s request for what some would call “anti-gay” cakes.
“If he wants to hate people, he can hate them not here in my bakery,” Azucar Bakery owner Marjorie Silva told 7NEWS. She called the writing and imagery “hateful and offensive.”
So Jack filed a discrimination complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission – just as the gay couple did in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
Using the commission’s logic – if a Christian baker is forced to violate his beliefs, shouldn’t all bakers be forced to violate theirs, too?
Absolutely not, says the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
It ruled that Azucar did not discriminate against Jack based on his creed. It argued that the bakery refused to make the cakes because of the “derogatory language and imagery,” The Denver Channel reported.
Jack told me it’s a double standard – pure and simple.
“I think it is hypocritical,” he said. “It’s unequal treatment before the law. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is being used to coerce businesses to participate in events that violate their consciences.”
Jack said he decided to conduct his experiment to prove the Colorado law was “only being applied to Christian business people.”
“Christians need to understand that this is the state of Christianity in the United States,” he said. “We are now second-class citizens. Our free speech is being censored.”
To be clear, Jack believes the bakeries had the right to deny him service. His point was to draw attention to the hypocrisy.
“I stand for liberty for all, not liberty for some,” he said. “If we don’t have liberty for all, then we have liberty for none.”
Alliance Defending Freedom is a religious liberty law firm that represents the Masterpiece Cakeshop.
It believes the Civil Rights Commission reached the right conclusion in Jack’s case, but it blasted the commission’s inconsistencies when it came to the case involving its client.
“The commission’s inconsistent rulings mean that the owners of these three cake shops may run them according to their beliefs, while Jack cannot,” ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco said.
“These cake artists should not be forced to violate their conscience, but clearly the commission should have done the same for Jack Phillips,” he said. “He risks losing his lifelong business altogether if he continues to run it consistent with his faith. Such blatant religious discrimination has no place in our society.”
That’s a great point. If the owner of Azucar Bakery can run her business according to her beliefs – why can’t the owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop?

Tea Party rivalry brewing between Cruz, Paul in 2016

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul both tapped into the powerful Tea Party movement, fueled by frustration with big government and overspending, to win their seats in Congress.
Now, the two freshman senators find themselves competing directly for that same constituency as they seek the party nomination in the 2016 presidential race. And the Tea Party wave -- which Paul rode in 2010, followed by Cruz two years later -- may only be big enough for one of them this time around.
Paul, on Tuesday, formally announced his presidential bid, vowing to "take America back" and wielding a "message of liberty." In a fiery speech tapping into the same kind of Beltway frustration that boosted Republicans in 2010, Paul blamed both parties for Washington's dysfunction.
He and Cruz are now the only two announced candidates on the field. Though neither has come out brawling, an evident Paul-Cruz rivalry has simmered in recent months and is sure to grow as primary season gets underway.
The two so far have politely sparred, with Paul, of Kentucky, recently questioning whether Cruz’s message is broad enough to win.
"I guess what makes us different is probably our approach as to how we would make the party bigger," Paul told Fox News after Cruz, of Texas, officially announced his bid in late March. “Ted Cruz is a conservative, but it also goes to win-ability. And people will have to make a decision, which is the Republican who can not only excite the base but also bring new people into the party without giving up their principles."
On Tuesday, Cruz was cordial, saying he respects Paul's "talent" and "passion."
Cruz and Paul unsurprisingly agree on most issues -- from overhauling the federal tax code to repealing ObamaCare.
But the point where they diverge appears to be at the water’s edge of American politics.
"I'm a big fan of Rand Paul,” Cruz, considered more hawkish than Paul, recently told ABC News. “He and I are good friends [but] I don't agree with him on foreign policy."
To be sure, they clearly disagree on President Obama’s decision last year to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.
At a recent summit in California sponsored by the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners, Paul argued that a half-century of economic embargoes have failed to remove leaders Fidel and Raul Castro.
But Cruz, a Cuban-American, said at the time: “The Castro brothers are brutal dictators.”
They have also disagreed on the tentative nuclear deal signed last week with Iran, though Paul now appears to align himself more with fellow Senate Republicans.
“This is the worst negotiation ever in the history of mankind,” Cruz said at the California summit (held before the deal was announced), warning of an Iranian nuclear strike in Tel Aviv, New York or Los Angeles.
Paul urged Cruz to have patience, asking, “Are you ready to send ground troops to Iran?”
However, Paul later joined Cruz and 44 other Republican senators in signing Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter to Iranian leaders saying a final deal must have congressional approval and suggesting one with Obama could end when he leaves office in January 2017.
And while Cruz and Paul differ on some foreign policy issues, they are surprisingly close on others including support of increased defense spending, which Paul formerly opposed, and arming Kurdish forces in the fight against the Islamic State, instead of sending U.S. ground troops to Iraq or Syria.
“The only people over there that can fight and have been showing some ability to fight are the Kurds,” Paul, who says he has been mischaracterized as an isolationist, recently told Yahoo News. “I would fund them directly.”
If Paul has an advantage within the party base, it is most obviously with the libertarian wing of the party, considering he continues to champion the ideals of individual liberty and less government put forth by his father, former presidential candidate and retired Texas GOP Rep. Ron Paul.
"Cruz and Paul must both appeal to the conservative wing of the GOP," David Payne, a Republican strategist and a senior vice president at Washington, D.C.-based Vox Global, said Monday. "But Paul also relies on a lot of excited primary voters who don’t call themselves 'conservative Republicans.' Consider all the libertarians or isolationists or younger political activists he can rally to his cause. This is his advantage over Cruz. .... Rand Paul is positioned to talk with the conservative GOP base while also expanding upon it more easily."
Paul supporters do not appear concerned that he could lose such backing in an effort to appeal to more primary voters.
“Rand Paul and his father each attract new people to the party in their own unique ways, yet they both share a deep passion for liberty,” Rand Paul Victory Committee spokesman Sergio Gor recently told The Washington Post. “Among the thousands of people Sen. Paul meets every month, the most enthused and energetic are usually those individuals who supported his father. The same individuals continue to stand with Rand.”
Cruz, a Southern Baptist and the son of preacher, has made faith a big part of his personal and political life and is clearly focused on winning the evangelical vote.
“God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn't done with America yet,” Cruz said on March 23 in announcing his candidacy for president, at the Christian college Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Va. “I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to re-ignite the promise of America.”
He also chose Easter weekend to run his first ad of the 2016 presidential election cycle.
“Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the household," Cruz says in the 30-second ad. “This is our fight, and that is why I’m running for president.”

Federal judge denies request to lift hold on Obama immigration action

A federal judge in Texas denied a Justice Department request Tuesday to lift his temporary hold on President Obama's executive action preventing the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen refused to stay his Feb. 16 decision that granted a preliminary injunction requested by 26 states. The U.S. government wants the injunction lifted -- allowing Obama's action to proceed -- while it appeals Hanen's ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court in New Orleans.
 In his order Tuesday denying the government's request, Hanen said the government hasn't "shown any credible reason for why this Directive necessitates immediate implementation."
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
The Justice Department has already asked the 5th Circuit to lift the injunction. The appeals court was scheduled to hear arguments on whether the injunction should be lifted on April 17.
The coalition of states has filed a lawsuit to overturn Obama's executive actions, which would prevent as many as 5 million people who are in the U.S. illegally from being deported. The states, led by Texas, argue that the action is unconstitutional and would force them to invest more in law enforcement, health care and education. The injunction is intended to stall Obama's actions while the lawsuit progresses through the courts.
"The Obama Administration’s blatant misrepresentations to the court about its implementation of expanded work permits for illegal immigrants under the President’s lawless amnesty plan reflects a pattern of disrespect for the rule of law in America," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. "As the judge has affirmed, once put into effect, President Obama’s executive amnesty program will be virtually impossible to reverse."
Justice Department attorneys argue that keeping the temporary hold harms "the interests of the public and of third parties who will be deprived of significant law enforcement and humanitarian benefits of prompt implementation" of the president's immigration action.
Obama announced the executive orders in November, saying a lack of action by Congress forced him to make sweeping changes to immigration rules on his own.
Before ruling on the injunction, Hanen said he first wanted to hear from federal prosecutors about allegations that the U.S. government had misled him about the implementation of part of the immigration plan.
The first of Obama's orders -- to expand a program that protects young immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children -- had been set to take effect Feb. 18. The other major part would extend deportation protections to parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for several years. That provision was slated to begin on May 19.
Hanen issued his initial injunction believing that neither of those orders had taken effect. About a month later, the Justice Department confirmed that more than 108,000 people had already received three-year reprieves from deportation and work permits, but DOJ attorneys insisted the moves were made under 2012 guidelines that weren't blocked by the injunction. The DOJ apologized for any confusion, but Hanen seemed unconvinced during a hearing last month and threatened to sanction the attorneys.
He wrote Tuesday that while the federal government had been "misleading" on the subject, he would not immediately apply sanctions against the government, saying to do so would not be "in the interests of justice or in the best interest of this country" because the issue was of national importance and the outcome will affect millions of people.
"The parties' arguments should be decided on their relative merits according to the law, not clouded by outside allegations that may or may not bear on the ultimate issues in this lawsuit," Hanen wrote.
In a separate order Hanen, told the government it has until April 21 to file to the court and plaintiffs detailed information about its March advisory about the 108,000 three-year reprieves.
The order asks the government to produce "any and all drafts" of the advisory, including information on when each draft was written, edited or revised. Hanen also asked for a list of each person who knew about the advisory.

Rolling Stone Cartoon

From eye doctor to 2016 prospect, ‘Dr. Paul’ readies for big announcement

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. –  Still glum over the previous night's Final Four loss by the heavily favored Kentucky Wildcats, Sen. Rand Paul and fellow parishioners were given some Biblical perspective Sunday morning.
"If it weren't for Jesus, we'd all be one and done," a churchgoer at the Broadway United Methodist Church explained to nods of agreement at the start of Easter service.
When the service ended, Paul left the sanctuary, posed for one picture and shook a few hands while the other congregants quickly passed by without so much as a double take of the man in the nicely pressed suit. They were seemingly unaware that Paul, who had just worshipped with them, would in 48 hours announce his presidential ambitions in a nationally televised speech.
The Tuesday speech -- perhaps the most important of his political career -- didn't seem foremost on Paul's mind, either. Instead, it was getting behind the wheel of his American-made SUV and waiting for his wife Kelley and youngest son to emerge from the church tucked away inside an unassuming neighborhood.
The low-key family church outing (involving no aides, security or other hangers-on) is fully in line with the man Paul's Bowling Green friends describe.
"He's not the guy who makes a point of standing out in a crowd," Brian Strow explained.

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March 20, 2105: Sen., Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks in Manchester, N.H. (AP)

In interviews with Fox News, Strow, an economics professor at Western Kentucky University, and other Paul friends talked about the man they've known for the past couple decades as simply "Rand" or "Dr. Paul" -- before he became the firebrand lawmaker known for his libertarian streak and, more recently, lofty ambitions.
"He was a good guy before he became senator," Rob Porter noted.
The Republican senator's arrival to Bowling Green, a place where people still wave to out-of-towners who pass by, has been fairly well documented. Growing up, Paul followed his parents from Pennsylvania to Texas before getting his medical degree in North Carolina with some time in Georgia, too. It was there that Paul met Kelley, but it's here in south-central Kentucky they've raised their three children.
"When I moved to Bowling Green -- [I was told if] you have a problem with your eye, you go see Dr. Paul," Travis Creed explained about his ophthalmologist friend and neighbor.
Another friend figures that Paul's early focus on his medical practice and parental responsibilities kept him from fully engaging in politics. But Paul still had his eye on shaping public policy.

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 (FNC)

In 2004, Strow was running for a spot on the city commission when he says Paul, whom he had never met, cold-called him offering assistance. Paul explained that he liked some of the positions Strow was taking -- especially on taxes -- and offered to host a fundraiser.
Strow won the race but says the measure of Paul's character shined through when the city was considering a proposal to publicly bankroll a $25 million stadium for a minor league baseball team. Paul opposed the idea. Strow voted for it anyway.
"That annoyed Rand to no end," Strow recalled with a slight chuckle. Strow then added that Paul didn't hold a personal grudge or needlessly needle his new friend about that vote. "It speaks well of him."
Similarly, Paul opposed a property tax hike Warren County Executive Mike Buchanon felt was necessary.
"I always found him direct and honest even when he disagreed with me," Buchanon said. "He's a very serious guy about the things you're supposed to be serious about."
While some were surprised about Paul's decision to run for Senate five years ago, Porter, a banker in Bowling Green, said he saw signs that Paul's political ambitions were calling.
First, Paul was regularly writing letters to newspaper editors -- usually about taxes since he founded an advocacy group dedicated to fighting increased taxation. Then in 2008, Paul's father, former Rep. Ron Paul, made a run for the White House.
"People saw in Rand, maybe, a place for him on the U.S. stage while speaking for his dad" during that campaign, Porter said.
The rap on Paul by some of his detractors is that he's out of the mainstream and in some ways an isolationist, though it's a label he denies. If he enters, as expected, on Tuesday, he'll automatically be in a race against the hawkish Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has announced his presidential bid and is sure to challenge Paul on his national security credentials.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another security-focused Republican weighing a bid, took a few swipes at Paul during a local Chamber of Commerce event in South Carolina on Monday, accusing his fellow senator of having a foreign policy "to the left of President Obama." It's a narrative Paul would have to confront early on in the primaries.
But if Paul were to run and win the White House, there's at least one thing about him that's in the mainstream of modern presidents: He's a golfer.
Paul has a reputation as a good player, often shooting in the 80's. He likes to walk and is chatty on the course. Before his Senate election, he frequently played at the Bowling Green Country Club -- which is more country than club -- on the outskirts of town.

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The Graves-Gilbert Clinic in Bowling Green, where Sen. Rand Paul worked for many years before starting his own practice. (FNC)

Fox News is told Paul can be competitive on the course where he'll work on a swing tip he's picked up or engage in some good-natured trash talking with a member of his foursome. This is especially true if there's something at stake on the outcome of the match -- often a Diet Coke.
When the round's done, Paul isn't likely to linger too long at the course. As one friend described, "daddy duty" encourages a swift departure to take his boys to sporting events, practices or other school-related activities.
The Paul family lives in a gated community 10 minutes from downtown. Friends describe it as a tight-knit neighborhood where summer cookouts are popular.
"Kelley is very engaging and social," Porter said. "She makes you feel at home in their house."
The kitchen and a back deck, which overlooks a community pond, tend to be the gravity points for everyone to gather. It's in this setting that Porter says "[Rand]'s really become a Kentuckian," sipping bourbon with his guests.
It shouldn't be a surprise that the friends Fox News spoke with support Paul's expected presidential bid.
"I want Rand to succeed in politics," Strow said. "But if he doesn't, I'll be happy to have my eye doctor back."

Unions battle for survival in key strongholds as court cases challenge forced dues

The future of public and private unions in two big labor-friendly states may be at stake as foes mount aggressive legal challenges over the long-controversial practice of mandatory dues.
The court cases in Illinois and California revolve around so-called "fair share" payments, or the dues unions extract from workers whose jobs stand to benefit from collective bargaining -- whether or not the workers are technically union members. Unions argue workers should have to pay their "fair share" of the costs of negotiating and administering a union contract, so they’re not getting a free ride from the union’s efforts.
But workers are often surprised to see money taken from their paychecks, without their consent.
“I really found out about it when I got my first paycheck and there was the fair share that was pulled out,” said Mark Janus, who works as a child support specialist with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.  
The fees taken out of Janus’ check amounted to about $46 a month, every month, for the eight years he’s been on the job. “I figured I’d paid over $4,000 so far,” he said. The money Janus unintentionally paid went to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also known as AFSCME, which represents employees in his office.
Janus is now one of three plaintiffs who have joined with Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner in a lawsuit to overturn the state's so-called fair share law.
“I don't feel that the union represents me 100 percent in what I believe and what I like to do,” Janus explained. “And nobody asked me if I wanted to join the union, they just said 'here's a job, you're in the union.'"
The intention of the lawsuit is to get a federal judge in Chicago, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, to declare the fee for non-member dues unconstitutional.
In addition, Rauner issued an executive order with the same purpose.
“This is a fundamental issue protecting employees’ rights, their freedom of speech, and their rights as employees,” Rauner said.
But Tim Drea, the Illinois AFL-CIO secretary treasurer, said “all state employees benefit from what the unions do on wages and bargaining ... health care and pension benefits.”
While the fair share law requires that no money raised from the fees be used by the unions for political purposes, Rauner said that’s not possible when it comes to a state employees union.
“By their very nature government political activities are political. They’re inside the government and advocating with politicians, so by definition it’s all political,” Rauner told Fox News.
On the West Coast, a similar battle is taking place that some claim could put an end to the teachers' union.
In Friedrich v. California Teachers’ Association, 10 teachers filed suit over a state law requiring dues to the union they don’t support. The teachers said the law violates their constitutional rights.
The fair-share labor law was formed as a result of a 1977 court case called Abood v. The Detroit Board of Education. In that case, public school teachers in Detroit sought to overturn a requirement that they pay dues to the teachers' union on the grounds they didn’t support the union activities or collective bargaining.  
The court sided with the unions and determined that non-members can be charged fees, though the money from fees could not be used for political purposes.  
Since that decision came down, about half the states in the U.S. -- the ones that are not right-to-work states -- require workers in union-backed jobs who don’t want to join a union to pay their “fair share.”  
In the Midwest, where auto workers, Teamsters and other unions have had a stronghold for years, the right-to-work plan has been met with massive protests and multiple court battles -- yet right-to-work laws have passed in Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana.
Now that battle lines are being draw in Illinois, the Land of Lincoln state may become the last stand in America’s heartland for the unions. Without a policy of mandatory dues, unions anywhere stand to lose revenue and members.
“In half the other states in the U.S., government workers have a right to choose whether they will give money to a union. In Illinois, government workers don't have the right to make that choice,” said Jacob Huebert, an attorney for the Liberty Justice Center, which is representing plaintiffs in the Illinois lawsuit.
Huebert said he’s encouraged to test the issue because of the court’s response to another challenge to the union dues requirement by an Illinois woman named Pam Harris.
Harris didn’t want to have to pay dues to a state workers union just because she’d taken on a job as home health care worker for her mentally and physically disabled son. The Supreme Court ruled that Harris was not a state employee and therefore didn’t have to pay dues.
As part of its opinion in the Harris case, the court stated that the Abood decision may not withstand a challenge. The Liberty Justice Center was inspired to mount that challenge.
Labor leaders, who plan to “mount a vigorous defense” to the lawsuits, claim opponents are just trying to weaken and choke off unions in general, especially in Illinois where negotiations for a new contract are taking place.
Drea said he feels confident the court will rule in favor of the fair-share decision, but he worries the continuous battle resulting in right-to-work states “is just a further continuation of the race to the bottom” for Americans.
Drea also warned that a blow to the unions would be a blow to middle-class America. “We believe the unions built the middle class and we're going to do everything we can to make sure the middle class survives,” he said.
The Supreme Court may decide before summer whether to take on the California case.  
As for the Illinois case, a federal judge in Chicago will decide on it first, though the plaintiffs hope it eventually makes it to the high court as well.   

Obama administration claims Iran deal a ‘forever agreement,’ despite expiration dates

The Obama administration mounted a new argument Monday for why skeptical lawmakers and U.S. allies should back the preliminary nuclear agreement with Iran, calling it a “forever agreement” that would block all pathways to a nuclear weapon and set up tough international inspections with no end date.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, in a rare appearance at the White House press briefing, used that term in defending the deal he helped strike in Switzerland.
“I want to say this is not an agreement for 10 years or 15 years or 20 years. It is a long-term agreement with a whole set of phases,” he said. “And if Iran earns over this time period trust and confidence in their peaceful objectives, well then over time the constraints will, in phases, ease up, but never get lower than the additional protocol and all of the access that it provides.
“So that's the way we’re thinking about it. It's not a fixed-year agreement. It's a forever agreement in a certain sense, with different stages.”
Yet, as Moniz acknowledged, the fact-sheet circulated by the White House last week includes a series of expiration dates for key components of the deal.
This includes:

• A commitment by Iran to reduce its centrifuges by two-thirds and enrich uranium with only 5,060 of them for 10 years. 
• A commitment by Iran not to enrich uranium at the Fordo facility for at least 15 years. 
• A commitment by Iran not to build any new facilities to enrich uranium for 15 years. 

Asked Monday how this could be considered “forever,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said they were referring to how Iran would have to submit to a new set of intrusive nuclear inspections, as part of provisions that have “no end date.”
Moniz likewise pointed to these comprehensive inspections – part of what he called “unprecedented” access and transparency -- in calling this a “forever agreement.” (Some of those inspection requirements still have end-dates on them, though much further out than 10 or 15 years.)
Moniz, a nuclear physicist, spoke at the White House as the Obama administration ramped up its campaign for a framework deal with Iran that has drawn criticism from congressional Republicans, the Israeli government and skeptical Arab allies of the U.S.
Under the agreement, Moniz said, all plutonium created as a byproduct of Iran's nuclear power production would be sent out of the country so it couldn't be used to make weapons. And international inspectors would watch over all stages to ensure Tehran sticks to the agreement. "This is not built upon trust, this is built upon hard-nosed requirements," Moniz said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been among the most vocal critics in airing concerns about how certain terms of the deal last for just 10 years.
For the near term, though, the Obama administration is perhaps most concerned about selling this deal to Congress, where lawmakers are set to soon consider bipartisan legislation giving Congress a say on any Iran deal.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday reiterated some of his concerns with the deal, citing the timeline spelled out in the framework unveiled last week.
“The parameters of the interim deal, in essence, establish an internationally recognized, 10-year nuclear research and development program. Until we know more about Iran's previous research, no nation can be sure of what Iran may have developed covertly already,” he said in a statement. McConnell vowed that the Senate would “respond legislatively” with the congressional review bill, which is set for a committee vote next week.
House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, linked from his Twitter page to a first-hand account of his call last week with Obama on the agreement.
“It would be naïve to suggest the Iranian regime will not continue to use its nuclear program, and any economic relief, to further destabilize the region,” Boehner said. “In the weeks ahead, Republicans and Democrats in Congress will continue to press this administration on the details of these parameters and the tough questions that remain unanswered. We will stand strong on behalf of the American people and everyone in the Middle East who values freedom, security, and peace.”
Obama continues to staunchly defend the framework agreement worked out with other world powers as a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to prevent an Iranian bomb and bring longer-term stability to the Middle East. He insists the U.S. would stand by Israel if it were to come under attack, but acknowledged that his pursuit of diplomacy with Tehran has caused strain with the close ally.
"It's been a hard period," Obama said in an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He added that it is "personally difficult" for him to hear his administration accused of not looking out for Israel's interests.
The framework reached with Iran last week clears the way for negotiators to hammer out technical details ahead of a June 30 deadline for a final deal.
He reiterated his opposition to the legislation that would give the U.S. Congress final say in approving or rejecting a deal, but said he hoped to find a path to allow Congress to "express itself."
Earnest on Monday urged Congress to at least wait until June to pass judgment on the plan, while still opposing any up-or-down vote in Congress.

State GOP lawmakers working to roll back gun restrictions after midterm wins

Conservatives emboldened by election victories are working to roll back gun restrictions in several states, while those on the other side of the debate are claiming success elsewhere in passing initiatives related to gun background checks.
On the pro-gun spectrum, for example, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback last week signed a bill to allow Kansans to carry concealed weapons in the state without training or a permit.
Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told Fox News, "I think the voters spoke pretty loud and clear in November and elected a pretty pro-gun rights Congress as well as many statehouses across the country and we're seeing now lots of bills being sponsored...".
On the other side, Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said her group is focused on initiatives it can win with voters, rather than legislators.
"In 2013, we helped close the background check loophole in six states," Watts  said. "In 2014, we helped pass laws in red and blue states to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers."
Watts also pointed to the overwhelming passage of Initiative 594 by voters in Washington state last fall. That law expands the federal background check requirement for gun sales to private dealers, such as those now found at gun shows.
"The gun lobby has been so insidious in this country in taking away the responsibilities that go along with gun rights," Watts said. She added in an interview with Fox News that the National Rifle Association (NRA) has an annual budget of $350 million.
The NRA said that while its operating budget is close to that figure, a "small fraction" -- approximately $20 million -- goes toward what it calls 'political activity,' with the bulk spent on safety and training programs.
Moms Demand Action works with Everytown for Gun Safety, which is bankrolled by former New York City mayor and billionaire, Michael Bloomberg.
Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), told Fox News, "Billionaire Michael Bloomberg's tactics may be new, but the fight is the same. The NRA and our five million members stand ready to defend the Second Amendment wherever the battlefield. The majority of Americans do not want more gun control and we will fight tooth and nail to expose Bloomberg's lies and defeat his extreme gun control agenda. "
Prior to those comments, Watts explained her group's mission is about education." We're not anti-gun, we're not against the Second Amendment. We're about responsibilities that come along with gun rights and that includes things like background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people," she said.
Gottleib, who lives in Washington state where the Second Amendment Foundation is based, acknowledged he is aware of Everytown's tactics for voter initiatives, adding "...our big concern is buying ballot measures."
Part of the reason so much action is currently being seen at the state level is the sheer immobility on Capitol Hill. Currently, four national reciprocity bills, three in the House, one in the Senate, are before Congress. Passage of any of them would treat conceal carry permits much like driver's licenses - no matter the state in which it was issued, it would be valid nationwide.
But the NRA says right now it is looking more toward 2016 than this year's congressional session. These pieces of legislation need to garner a veto-proof majority because, "We have a president that hates the Second Amendment", said Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the NRA.
Watts compared the battle over gun rights to a marathon, not a sprint. "We're not going to find a law to fix every single problem in this country, right. Not every law stops every crime. But what we can do is put more laws in place to ensure things like background checks are happening," she said.
And as the NRA holds its annual meeting later this week in Nashville, where several presidential contenders are expected to speak, the opposition has its sights set on the future as well. "We're feeling a huge amount of momentum," Watts said. "Momentum around gun safety in this country and we believe that will continue into 2016 and beyond.”

Indiana Cartoon

Schiff says Al Qaeda having 'resurgence' amid Yemen chaos

California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday that Al Qaeda is having a “resurgence.”
"In Yemen the news is really all bad," Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told ABC's "This Week." "Just as we feared in the chaos ... Al Qaeda has had a resurgence."
The Al Qaeda offshoot group in the Arab Peninsula has taken advantage of the turmoil in Yemen since it started several weeks ago, using the chaos and deteriorating government to expand its foothold in southwest Asia.
“It’s absolutely a safe haven,” Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told ABC.
He also said the administration's policy is correct, compared to the alternative of a massive American occupation.

"That doesn't mean that the administration's strategy is flawless, however," he said. "And I think had we put greater emphasis and resources in trying to deal with the governance issues in Yemen, this might have been prevented."

At least 500 people have been killed in the fighting as Shiite rebels known as Houthis continue to try to overthrow the Yemen government and as neighboring Saudi Arabia leads an airstrike campaign to stop the rebels.
Last week, AQAP took advantage of the fall of Mukalla -- the capital of Yemen's largest province, Hadramawt -- by freeing about 300 inmates from the city's main prison, including scores of militants, according to security officials.
Among those freed was Saudi-born Khaled Batrafi, a senior Al Qaeda operative believed to have masterminded past attacks, officials said. Also freed were 90 death row inmates convicted for a host of criminal offences, according to activists in the city.
The administration has referred to its efforts in Yemen as a “success story” and just several days ago continued to defend its strategy.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told MSNBC that U.S. policy "should not be graded against the success or the stability of the Yemeni government."
He also said the strategy has been to try to bolster the government in Yemen, which has for years been in a chaotic state and the administration’s objective “has never been to try to build a Jeffersonian democracy.”
“The goal is to make sure Yemen cannot be a safe haven that extremists can use to attack the West and to attack the United States," he said.
Late last month, the administration removed U.S. personnel from the Arab country, as the situation deteriorated.
President Obama has said several times in recent years that Al Qaeda has been “decimated” or is “on the run.”
He also has submitted to Congress his Authorization of Military Force against ISIL Terrorists plan. However, neither chamber has acted on the proposal.
Schiff has drafted his own plan and says Congress has to authorize such military action and that he doesn’t want U.S. ground troops getting involved like they did for years in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Muslim groups attack Egyptian Copts over church honoring Christians killed by ISIS

Relatives of the Coptic Christians beheaded last month by jihadists in Libya – their deaths immortalized in a gory video set against the backdrop of a Mediterranean beach – are facing new extremist-Muslim violence as they seek to build a church to honor their murdered loved ones.
An angry mob in the Upper Egyptian village of Al Our – the proposed site of the church because it was home to 13 of the 21 Christians murdered in the mass “beachfront” decapitation – descended on the community’s current church after the midday Islamic prayer Friday and chanted that they’d never allow construction of the new place of worship to begin, witnesses told Egyptian activists in the U.S.

“There were already cars on fire. People had been bloodied. Stones and bricks had been thrown.”- Mina Abdelmalak, Coptic Christian

Things turned far uglier after nightfall, the witnesses said, as a smaller number of individuals threw Molotov cocktails and stones at the church, injuring several people, and setting cars ablaze, including one that belonged to a relative of one of the victims of the Libyan massacre.
“The police came, but after the attack,” said Mina Abdelmalak, a Coptic Christian living in Washington who is in close contact with the witnesses to the events in Al Our. “There were already cars on fire. People had been bloodied. Stones and bricks had been thrown.”
Some protesters also appeared at the family home of massacre victim Samuel Alham Wilson, but, in a gesture that provided some hope, were chased off by Muslim neighbors when the protesters started throwing stones.
Copts are the native Christians of Egypt, accounting for about 10 percent of the country’s 88 million people.
While they have traditionally faced varying levels of persecution in the mainly Muslim country, the Copts of Al Our -- a village on the Nile about 125 miles south of Cairo -- have additionally been in deep mourning since the Islamic State released its video Feb. 15 showing the beheading of the Christians -- 20 of them Copts, the other from Ghana.

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Feb. 15, 2015: Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the Islamic State (IS) are marched by armed men along a beach.

The 13 from Al Our – like their fellow Christians with whom they died – had gone to Libya to seek work because their poverty-stricken home communities offered none or little that was viable.
Abdelmalak told FoxNews.com that the Al Our Copts had sought permission from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to build a church to honor the loss of their loved ones and the others who died with them.
Until recently, such high-level permission was necessary to carry out even minor repairs on churches in Egypt, while similar permissions are not necessary for the building of mosques.
But the Friday attacks on the Copts have driven a further wedge between the village’s Christian and Muslim communities -- and are seen as particularly insensitive in light of the losses suffered because of the massacre in Libya.
“This is a classic issue in Egypt,” said Abdelmalak. “Even after you struggle to get permission from the president to build a church, you still have to face the mob, which rejects the idea of having a church built in their neighborhood.”
A Coptic news Facebook page displays pictures of men with facial injuries it says they suffered during the attack on the church.
“I fear that the security [services] will as usual issue a report saying that the situation in the village [is so bad] that [they] will not [now] allow us to build a new church,” says the author of the entry, according to a translation from Arabic.
After receiving presidential permission for construction, the Coptic community bought some land, but local Muslims objected to its positioning at the entrance to the village, according to Daily News Egypt, which publishes in English.
A new location outside the village is now eyed following a meeting between Muslim and Coptic residents that the regional governor brokered.
“This has been effectively imposed on the Coptic residents,” Abdelmalak said. “Dictates to the Christian community are always presented as agreements.”
A report in Arabic in the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper said “tens of residents” protested against the building of the new church, despite presidential approval for the project.
“Witnesses from the village said protesters repeated chants saying, ‘Whatever you do, there won’t be a church on the ground.’”
Abdelmalak said the words in original Arabic rhymed and would have instilled fear by sounding like the aggressive chants heard in European soccer stadiums.
He added that police arrested several members of the mob, but released them a few hours later.

2016 GOP hopefuls define themselves as they weigh in on ISIS, economy, array of key issues

Potential 2016 presidential candidates have for months test driven their foreign and domestic policy positions in interviews and speeches across the country. But the real test for many voters, as is often the situation, is how the hopefuls response to world-shaping events.
Most of the debate has been limited to the wide field of potential Republican candidates with ObamaCare and how to handle the growing threat of the Islamic State largely dominating the early part of this year.
And the Obama administration’s tentative nuclear deal last week with Iran has been no exception.
“Obama’s dangerous deal with Iran rewards an enemy, undermines our allies and threatens our safety,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an early 2016 favorite.
Like all of the potential GOP candidates, Walker has used the agreement to strike a sharp contrast with Democrats.
He also has vowed, if elected, to pull the U.S. from the international deal on “day one” of his presidency.
Jeb Bush, another top potential candidate and a former Florida governor, said the reported details of the Iran deal include significant concessions to “a nation whose leaders call for death to America and the destruction of Israel.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the only major GOP candidate who has officially declared a 2016 bid, is taking a more reserved approach, saying after the framework deal was reached Thursday that he was still examining the exact details.
However, he has been far more outspoken on the issue of ObamaCare and the threat from the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
OBAMACARE
To be sure, Cruz has been among the most forceful in his opposition to ObamaCare, considering his efforts in September 2013 to “defund” President Obama’s signature health-care law forced a partial government shutdown.
Nevertheless, the effort, which angered Republicans as well as Democrats, was just one of the first-term senator’s breakout moves that put him on the national political map.
The commitment to repeal the 2010 law, which even remained strong enough last year to help Republicans win the Senate, was largely muted when the Supreme Court decided several months ago to take up the issue of federal subsidies for some ObamaCare insurance buyers.
Still, lawmakers and potential 2016 candidates such as Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio have moved to fill the void with a plan if the high court declares subsides in some states unconstitutional.
Rubio, set to officially announce next week whether he will run in 2016, recently outlined his plan in a FoxNew.com op-ed that offers refundable tax credits to help Americans who lose their subsidies to buy health insurance.
“After the downfall of ObamaCare  -- which I believe has been inevitable from the beginning, but may be precipitated by the Supreme Court decision later this year -- a plan such as this will restore our people’s access to quality care,” Rubio wrote.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told an enthusiastic crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February that he still wants to repeal “every single word” of ObamaCare.
ECONOMY
Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina is trying to establish herself within the crowded potential GOP field as the candidate who best understands executive decision making, beyond the being party’s only female candidate so far.
Fiorina also recently told “Fox News Sunday” that she can appeal to voters with her “deep understanding of how the economy actually works, having started as a secretary and become the chief executive of the largest technology company in the world.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has focused in part on what he considers an under-performing economy under Obama and recently in Iowa discussed a plan to fix the federal tax code, which he thinks would improve the situation for Americans.
He said the country’s 2 percent annual growth in gross domestic product shows the recovery from the recession is "the worst in modern history."
"The fact is that we tax too much in this country already, and we tax in a way that's much too complicated," he reportedly said. "We tax that money at every step along the way.”
ISIS
The rise and growth of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq continues to be a global concern, though the re-emergence of Al Qaeda in Yemen has recently dominated headlines.
Dr. Ben Carson, another potential GOP candidate, recently told NBC: “We have to eradicate (ISIS) now. We have to use every means possible to do that."
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of Capitol Hill’s most hawkish members, has suggested that coalition airstrikes alone will not stop ISIS and told CBS that 10,000 American "boots on the ground" would be needed to stop the Islamic extremist group in Iraq and Syria.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he has been mis-characterized as an isolationist and that his plan to defeat ISIS would largely be based on arming the Kurds, the disenfranchised ethnic groups in Iraq that has been successfully fighting ISIS for months.
“The only people over there that can fight and have been showing some ability to fight are the Kurds,” Paul told Yahoo News. “The president has been sending weapons to Baghdad. They’re not adequately getting to Kurdistan. I would fund them directly. I would take some of the weaponry that we have left over in Afghanistan and I would send that directly to the Kurds.”
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The religious freedom law that recently passed in Indiana is being supported by social conservatives and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates Bush, Carson, Jindal, Rubio and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.
The law prohibits the state and local governments from infringing on a person's religious beliefs without a "compelling" interest. Critics say it opens the possibility that businesses could discriminate against gays, lesbians and others.
“It's never been used for that purpose,” Santorum said Wednesday on Fox News' “Fox & Friends.” “This law is not a new law. … I voted for it, and so did almost everybody else in the Congress. We believe that the First Amendment should be in practice in America, that people should have religious liberty. ... It doesn't mean that automatically anybody who claims a religious exemption of cause wins the debate. It says it has to be considered.
A similar federal law was sign in 1993 and Arkansas lawmakers passed their version last week.

Netanyahu urges US to seek 'better deal' with Iran over its nuclear program

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the U.S. and other world powers to seek a firmer deal with Iran Sunday over that country's nuclear program and said that he’s "not trying to kill any deal,” just a “bad deal.”
"I think the alternatives are not either this bad deal or war. I think there's a third alternative. And that is standing firm, ratcheting up the pressure, until you get a better deal," the Israeli Prime Minister told CNN's "State of the Union". "A better deal would roll back Iran's vast nuclear infrastructure and require Iran to stop its aggression in the region, its terror worldwide, and its calls and actions to annihilate the state of Israel."
On Thursday, the United States and five other world powers reached agreement with Iranian officials on the framework of a deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program. The deadline for a final agreement is June 30.
The deal aims to cut significantly into Iran's bomb-making technology while giving Tehran relief from international sanctions. The commitments, if implemented, would substantially pare down Iranian nuclear assets for a decade and restrict others for an additional five years.
On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that it had obtained a document drawn up by experts in Netanyahu's office that gives a glimpse of the arguments the Israeli leader plans to raise, targeting vague language in the system of inspections and its failure to address issues beyond the nuclear program.
Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Netanyahu said the agreement outline "could be a historic bad deal because it leaves the preeminent terrorist state of our time a vast nuclear infrastructure ...  Thousands of centrifuges will be left, not a singular facility, including underground facilities will be shut down."
Netanyahu added that the framework leaves Iran with “the capacity to produce material for many nuclear bombs.”
On ABC's "This Week", Netanyahu also warned that a deal could “spark a nuclear arms race among the Sunni countries in the Middle East.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Netanyahu said “restrictions placed on Iran are temporary, after a few years, Iran will have unlimited access.”
According to a U.S. document summarizing last week's agreement, Tehran is ready to reduce its number of centrifuges, the machines that can spin uranium gas to levels used in nuclear warheads, and submit to aggressive monitoring and inspections of its nuclear facilities.
But the Israeli analysis claims the system of inspections is not as thorough as proclaimed because it does not explicitly force the Iranians to open their sites "anywhere, anytime."
It also claims the agreement is vague about what happens to Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium, a key ingredient in producing nuclear bombs, or how sanctions might be re-imposed if Iran violates the deal.
While Iran is not supposed to enrich uranium with its advanced centrifuges for 10 years, the deal permits limited "research and development" of the advanced centrifuges, according to the U.S. document. Israeli officials say this means that Iran could immediately put these centrifuges into action after the deal expires or breaks down.
Netanyahu said Sunday that Iran has “cheated in the past on this, in this case, with this deal, what’s been illegitimate is being legitimized not only the ability to maintain but in a few years to increase it, that’s very dangerous.”
However, President Obama staunchly defended the framework of the nuclear agreement with Iran as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to prevent a bomb and bring longer-term stability to the Middle East.
"It's been a hard period," Obama said in an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published Sunday. He added that it is "personally difficult" for him to hear his administration accused of not looking out for Israel's interests.
He insisted the U.S. would stand by Israel if it were to come under attack, but acknowledged that his pursuit of diplomacy with Tehran has caused strain with the close ally.
Obama argued that successful negotiations presented the most effective way to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but insisted he would keep all options on the table if Tehran were to violate the terms.
"I've been very clear that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on my watch, and I think they should understand that we mean it," Obama said. "But I say that hoping that we can conclude this diplomatic arrangement — and that it ushers a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations — and, just as importantly, over time, a new era in Iranian relations with its neighbors."
Obama said there are many details that still need to be worked out with the Iranians and cautioned that there would be "real political difficulties" in implementing an agreement in both countries. He reiterated his opposition to a legislation that would give the U.S. Congress final say in approving or rejecting a deal, but said he hoped to find a path to allow Congress to "express itself."
The White House plans an aggressive campaign to sell the deal to Congress, as well as to Israel and skeptical Arab allies who worry about Iran's destabilizing activity in the region. The president has invited leaders of six Gulf nations to Washington this spring and said he wanted to "formalize" U.S. assistance.

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