California governor proposes amnesty program for those who cannot pay traffic debt

SACRAMENTO, Calif. –  Calling California's traffic court system a "hellhole of desperation" for the poor, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing an amnesty program for residents who can't afford to pay off spiraling fines and penalties that have resulted in 4.8 million driver's license suspensions since 2006.
The push by the Democratic governor spotlights concern among lawmakers and court administrators that California's justice system is profiting off minorities and low-income residents. It's a civil rights issue that has prompted discussions between the Brown administration and the U.S. Department of Justice, according to the governor's spokesman, Evan Westrup.
It's not clear if the Justice Department has launched an inquiry into California's court system. The department did not return requests for comment. Westrup declined to provide details on the meetings with federal officials.
Under Brown's plan, drivers with lesser infractions would pay half of what they owe, and administrative fees would be slashed from $300 to $50.
Advocates for the poor have likened California's problem to the police and municipal court structure in Ferguson, Missouri, which was criticized by the Justice Department as a revenue-generating machine following last year's fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer.
"California has sadly become a pay-to-play court system," said Michael Herald, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty who helped write a scathing report released last month by civil rights groups on how Californians are getting caught in a cycle of debt and having their driver's licenses suspended as a result of costly traffic tickets and court penalties.
Traffic fines have been skyrocketing in California and courts have grown reliant on fees as a result of budget cuts during the recession.
Twenty years ago, the fine for running a red light was $103. Today, it costs as much as $490 as the state has established add-on fees to support everything from court construction to emergency medical air transportation. The cost can jump to over $800 once a person fails to pay or misses a traffic court appearance.
Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have found that some traffic courts routinely deny people a hearing unless they pay the amount owed up front. The debt also has to be paid off in order for their licenses to be reinstated.
"Everyone is entitled to their day in court and that includes the poor," said Christine Sun, associate director of ACLU of Northern California.
On Monday, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye directed the court system's policymaking body, the Judicial Council, to make clear that people do not have to pay off traffic court debts before they can get a hearing.
Since 2006, the state has suspended 4.8 million driver's licenses after motorists failed to pay or appear in court, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Of those, only about 83,000 licenses were reinstated.
Michael Armas, 31, of Oakland, said he has been unable to find a labor or construction job without his driver's license for the past year and a half because he hasn't paid minor citations such as driving while using a cellphone or an improperly displayed license plate. His tickets have spiraled into a $4,500 debt.
Armas, who is African-American and Portuguese, said he's caught in a no-win legal cycle that's hampering his efforts to win custody of his 11-year-old daughter.
"How do you expect to pay something when you have no job, and you can't get a job without your license?" Armas said.
Brown hopes to bring relief to the poor with the 18-month amnesty program that would start Oct. 1.
"It's a hellhole of desperation and I think this amnesty can be a very good thing to both bring in money, to give people a chance to kind of pay at a discount," Brown said last week.
Brown's proposal is similar to a bill by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, which would restore a license if the driver agrees to a debt payment program based on a sliding scale. The poorest would pay as little as 20 percent of the fine.
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, sent letters Tuesday to the Judicial Council and a nonpartisan analyst for ideas on changing the court fee structure.

Boston University prof at center of racist tweet flap was charged with felony ID theft in 2008

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Huckabee: NSA spying, Clinton's private emails making Americans 'more distrustful' of government

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee expressed his opposition Sunday to extending NSA phone-spying and suggested the program -- along with recent revelations like Hillary Clinton’s having used private email for official State Department communication -- has resulted in Americans’ unprecedented distrust of the Obama administration.
“The secrecy with which this government has operated and, specifically, Hillary Clinton using a private email server outside the bounds of normal State Department protocol is very troubling,” Huckabee told “Fox News Sunday.” “There’s never been a time in my lifetime where people are more distrustful of government.”
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, is now the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 White House race.
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, made his comments a day after the Senate failed to pass legislation to extend the section of post-9/11 Patriot Act that covers the National Security Agency’s bulk phone data collection program, which expires on June 1.
Huckabee said U.S. intelligence-gathers should “get a warrant” if they suspect an American of being involved in such activity as terrorism or spying, instead of the sweeping phone-data gathering, especially since it has been ineffective in thwarting a major terror plot.
“If this is so effective, why hasn’t it foiled potential terrorist plots?” he asked. “Not one [foiled plot] has been tied to the NSA’s collection of metadata. … It seems like we’re spending billions of dollars on the whiz-bang technology and not enough on human resources, which have proven to be the most effective way of stopping terrorism.”

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Huckabee also said the Constitution “already provides what we should do.”
“If you have probable cause … you go to a judge and get a warrant and then you can listen to his phone calls,” he said.
Huckabee also argued Americans are concerned about the Supreme Court now having too much authority because the high-court’s decisions become law without the checks and balances of the legislative and executive branches.
“One can’t overrule the other two,” he said. “We learned that in 9th grade civics. It’s a matter of balance of power.”

At least 3 dead, hundreds of homes destroyed as flash flooding sweeps through Texas, Oklahoma

A storm system dropped record amounts of rainfall across the southern Plains Sunday, causing flash floods in normally dry riverbeds, spawning tornadoes, destroying homes, and forcing at least 2,000 people to flee.
Two people were confirmed dead in Oklahoma. where a firefighter was swept to his death while trying to rescue people from high water and a woman in Tulsa died in a traffic-related crash. In Texas, a man's body was recovered from a flooded area along the Blanco River, which rose 26 feet in just one hour and left piles of wreckage 20 feet high, authorities said.
In Wimberley, Texas, southwest of Austin, eight people were reported missing, including three children, according to KXAN.
"It looks pretty bad out there," said Hays County emergency management coordinator Kharley Smith, describing the destruction in Wimberley, part of a fast-growing corridor between Austin and San Antonio. "We do have whole streets with maybe one or two houses left on them and the rest are just slabs," she said.
Between 350 and 400 homes were destroyed in Wimberley, many of them washed away, Smith said. In nearby San Marcos, flooding had damaged about 300 homes, she said. Kenneth Bell, the emergency management coordinator in San Marcos, said the damage in Hays County alone amounts to "millions of dollars."
Authorities also warned people to honor a night-time curfew and stay away from damaged areas, since more rain was on the way, threatening more floods with the ground saturated and waterways overflowing.
Rivers rose so fast that whole communities woke up Sunday morning surrounded by water. The Blanco crested above 40 feet, more than double its flood stage of 13 feet, swamping Interstate 35 and forcing parts of the busy north-south highway to close. Rescuers used pontoon boats and a helicopter to pull people out.
"I was thinking that we were all going to die," Josie Rodriguez told Fox San Antonio. "We were all crying, everyone was crying."
Dallas also faced severe flooding from the Trinity River, which was expected to crest near 40 feet Monday and lap at the foundations of an industrial park. The Red and Wichita rivers also rose far above flood stage.
Heather Ruiz returned from work early Sunday to ankle-deep water and a muddy couch inside her home in San Marcos. She wasn't sure what to do next. "Pick up the pieces and start all over I guess. Salvage what can be salvaged and replace what needs to be replaced," Ruiz said.
In northeast Oklahoma, Capt. Jason Farley was helping rescue people at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday when he was swept into a drainage ditch. The body of the 20-year veteran was recovered an hour and a half later, Claremore Fire Chief Sean Douglas said.
According to Fox 23, Farley was helping a rescue operation at a home during a girl's 5th birthday party. All of the attendees, which included children and one adult, were rescued through a window.
"He's our hero. That's for sure," the 5-year-old's grandfather Steven Darnell told Fox 23. "It could have been our grandkids or my daughter. I pray for his family and the other firefighters. They're like family to each other."
This May is already the wettest on record for several cities in the southern Plains states, with days still to go and more rain on the way. So far this year, Oklahoma City has recorded 27.37 inches of rain. Last year the state's capital got only 4.29 inches. It also set a new monthly rainfall total this weekend -- 18.2 inches through Saturday, beating the previous one of 14.5 in 2013.
Wichita Falls was so dry at one point that that it had to get Texas regulatory approval to recycle and treat its wastewater as drinking water dried up. By Sunday, the city reached a rainfall record, nearly 14 inches so far in May.
The reasons for the deluge include a prolonged warming of Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures, which generally results in cooler air, coupled with an active southern jet stream and plentiful moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, said Meteorologist Forrest Mitchell at National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma.
"It looks like the rainfall that we're getting now may actually officially end the drought," that has gripped the southern Plains states for years, Mitchell said, noting that moisture now reaches about two feet below the surface of the soil and many lakes and reservoirs are full.
About 1,000 people were evacuated in Central Texas, where rescuers pulled dozens of people from high water overnight.
Tami Mallow, 41, gathered her three cats at a shelter in San Marcos while her husband put furniture on cinderblocks, and retreated to the second floor with electronics and other valuables as the floodwaters entered.
"He told me there was 2 inches of mud," Mallow said. "I don't know what the cleanup process is going to be."
Five San Marcos police cars were washed away and a fire station is flooded, said Kristi Wyatt, a spokeswoman for San Marcos, which imposed a curfew starting at 9 p.m. Sunday.
A tornado briefly touched down in Houston, damaging rooftops, toppling trees, blowing out windows and sending at least two people to a hospital. The weather service said the tornado struck with winds of about 100 mph at around 6:30 a.m. Sunday. Fire officials said 10 apartments were heavily damaged and 40 others sustained lesser damage.
Some 50 miles north of the city, about 1,000 people were preparing to spend the night away from home. The Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management issued a mandatory evacuation order to more than 400 homes near an earthen dam at Lake Lewis that was at risk of failing due to the heavy rains.
Spokeswoman Miranda Hahs said the dam owned by Entergy Texas is holding, but that it was not clear when residents would be allowed to return home.
Colorado also was water-logged. A mandatory evacuation notice was issued Sunday for residents in the northeastern city of Sterling, and several counties planned to ask the governor for a disaster declaration.
The storm system pushed northeast into Iowa and Illinois on Sunday after it moved through parts of Colorado, central and North Texas and most of Oklahoma. New flash flood watches were issued Sunday for western Arkansas, Missouri and parts of Kansas, and tornado warnings were issued Sunday night for parts of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

Clinton Foundation Friend Cartoon

ABC spokeswoman in Stephanopoulos flap worked in Clinton White House

The ABC News spokeswoman who slow-walked The Washington Free Beacon’s request for comment on George Stephanopoulos’ undisclosed donations to the Clinton Foundation also worked in the Clinton administration.
Heather Riley -- spokeswoman for ABC News programs “Good Morning America” and “This Week” -- worked in the White House press office from 1997 to 2000, according to her LinkedIn profile, and is a member of the Facebook group “(Bill) Clinton Administration Alumni.”
The Free Beacon, a conservative-leaning publication, contacted ABC News on the afternoon of May 13 to request comment on George Stephanopoulos’s previously undisclosed donations to the Clinton Foundation.
“I was just forwarded your email about George. I’m going to send you something,” Riley emailed later that night, according to The Free Beacon. “Want to make sure you get it in time.”
Riley later told the Free Beacon that she would deliver a statement by 7 a.m. the next morning. However, the statement did not arrive until 9:40 a.m., about 15 minutes after POLITICO published its “scoop” about the donations.
White House records show that Riley’s duties included serving as a press contact for then-first lady Hillary Clinton.

Prior to joining ABC News, Riley worked as a senior director of brand communications for Rodale, Inc.
The company and its charitable foundation have donated $20,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation, records show. The Rodale family contributed at least $5,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns from 2005 to 2008.
Stephanopoulos was part of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and held several top posts in the Clinton administration including spokesman and senior adviser.

Final votes on Patriot Act, trade deal bill set dramatic stage for Congress’ return

The Senate’s failure to extend the USA Patriot Act will bring the legislation on NSA phone-record collection and other key surveillance activities perilously close to expiring on June 1, forcing senators to return early from recess for a rare Sunday session.
The Senate vote was just one of two this weekend that set the stage for dramatic showdowns on Capitol Hill in the coming weeks and months.
The GOP-led upper chamber passed bipartisan legislation Friday night to strengthen President Obama's hand in global trade talks. However, the legislation must now pass the Republican-led House, with help from Democrats because some conservative members oppose the legislation.
Speaker John Boehner supports the measure and says Republicans will do their part to pass it.
Dozens of House Republicans oppose the legislation either out of ideological reasons or because they are loath to enhance Obama's authority, especially at their own expense.
Senate and now House Democrats are showing little inclination to support legislation that much of organized labor opposes.

On the Patriot Act bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will bring the upper chamber back into session on Sunday, May 31 -- roughly 24 hours before the post-9/11 legislation expires.
Meanwhile, the National Security Agency is starting to winding down its bulk collection of domestic-calling records in preparation for the Senate voting again against the legislation, according to the Justice Department, which says the collection takes time to halt.
The Senate went into the early hours on Saturday morning to vote on the legislation before leaving Washington for Memorial Day recess.
By the time senators broke for the holiday, they had blocked a House-passed bill and several short-term extensions of the key provisions in the Patriot Act.
The main stumbling block was a House-passed provision to end the NSA collecting the phone-call metadata and instead have the records remain with telephone companies subject to a case-by-case review.
McConnell warned against allows the NSA and other key surveillance programs under the act to expire.
However, he and other key Republican senators oppose the House approach, backed by officials who argued it is the best way for the United States to keep valuable surveillance tools.
Fellow GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, also a 2016 presidential candidate, called the Senate's failure to allow the extension a victory for privacy rights.
"We should never give up our rights for a false sense of security," Paul said in a statement. "This is only the beginning -- the first step of many. I will continue to do all I can until this illegal government spying program is put to an end, once and for all."
The White House has pressured the Senate to back the House bill, which drew an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote last week and had the backing of GOP leaders, Democrats and the libertarian-leaning members.
But the Senate blocked the bill on a vote of 57-42, short of the 60-vote threshold to move ahead. That was immediately followed by rejection of a two-month extension to the existing programs. The vote was 54-45, again short of the 60-vote threshold.
McConnell repeatedly asked for an even shorter renewal of current law, ticking down days from June 8 to June 2. But Paul and other opponents of the post-Sept. 11 law objected each time.
At issue is a section of the Patriot Act, Section 215, used by the government to justify secretly collecting the "to and from" information about nearly every American landline telephone call. For technical and bureaucratic reasons, the program was not collecting a large chunk of mobile calling records, which made it less effective as fewer people continued to use landlines.
When former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the program in 2013, many Americans were outraged that NSA had their calling records. President Obama ultimately announced a plan similar to the USA Freedom Act and asked Congress to pass it. He said the plan would preserve the NSA's ability to hunt for domestic connections to international plots without having an intelligence agency hold millions of Americans' private records.
Since it gave the government extraordinary powers, Section 215 of the Patriot Act was designed to expire at midnight on May 31 unless Congress renews it.
Under the USA Freedom Act, the government would transition over six months to a system under which it queries the phone companies with known terrorists' numbers to get back a list of numbers that had been in touch with a terrorist number.
But if Section 215 expires without replacement, the government would lack the blanket authority to conduct those searches. There would be legal methods to hunt for connections in U.S. phone records to terrorists, said current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But those methods would not be applicable in every case.
Far less attention has been paid to two other surveillance authorities that expire as well. One makes it easier for the FBI to track "lone wolf" terrorism suspects who have no connection to a foreign power, and another allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects who continuously discard their cellphones in an effort to avoid surveillance.

Common enemy: Israel, Hamas face threat of ISIS in Gaza

HAIFA, Israel –  Sworn enemies Israel and Hamas may have found the one thing that can unite them: The threat of ISIS taking over Gaza.
Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization which controls the Islamic enclave in Israel and which fought a vicious 50-day war against Israel last summer, is desperately trying to stop ISIS from gaining a foothold within its territory. In recent weeks, jihadi groups loyal to ISIS have exchanged gun and rocket fire with Hamas authorities, planted bombs in public buildings and threatened an all-out war with the Gaza government. Hamas reportedly blew up a mosque believed to be a base for ISIS loyalists and has detained significant numbers of suspects.
“In light of Hamas’ latest action, we renew our allegiance to [ISIS leader] Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and call on him to strengthen his influence, to open up a war in Palestine in order to unite together in a war against the Jews and their accomplices,” a group calling itself Supporters of the Islamic State in Jerusalem said in a statement last month after the mosque in the central Gaza section of Deir Al-Balah was destroyed.

“Hamas is brutal enough and determined enough to meet that challenge.”
- Yoram Schweitzer, Institute for National Security Studies

The statement demanded that Hamas release all ISIS loyalists and was followed days later by a bombing near Hamas' security headquarters.
ISIS has now expanded beyond Iraq and Syria and into Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Somalia. Although Palestinian leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge an ISIS presence threat in Gaza, the group’s black flag is now often seen there.

The developments have Hamas and Israel, which sees an ISIS takeover of Gaza as a bigger threat than Hamas, reportedly talking through back channels about how to squeeze out ISIS, a collaboration that some commentators say could be the basis for possible détente between sworn enemies. Any potential agreement, informal or otherwise, does not appear imminent, but there is a growing belief that it remains a possibility.
“I know that people from Hamas have expressed more and more the concept of long-range ‘hudna’ [truce] with Israel,” regional terror expert Yoram Schweitzer of the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies told FoxNews.com. “Because of the dire straits in Gaza as a consequence of the last operation there, Hamas has to carry the burden of caring for the people and is considering pushing for a kind of hudna in return for Israeli concessions.”
Late last month senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef told Ma’an, the Palestinian news agency, that European officials were acting as intermediaries with Israel, but that things would only begin “moving ahead” once the new Israeli government was sworn in. That swearing in ceremony took place last Thursday evening.
“As you can imagine, we are following developments within the Gaza Strip and also in the Sinai Peninsula very, very closely, and not only us, also the Egyptian authorities,” Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Office, told FoxNews.com.
Hamas is under pressure from the densely populated strip's 1.8 million residents to rebuild following the damaging 2014 conflict. Billions in pledges from Arab nations have failed to materialize and a lack of jobs and basic services continues to plague Gaza. Many smuggling tunnels from the Sinai Peninsula, once a source of black market goods, have been blown up or flooded by Egyptian forces who say they have been used by ISIS and its affiliates to mount attacks from within Gaza.
While Israel could conceivably work with Hamas to stop ISIS, Egypt likely sees little difference between the two terrorist groups.
“Egypt sees Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood which they see as their venomous enemy,” says Schweitzer. “They see Hamas playing a significant role in the hardship Egypt is enduring from the Sinai and they know that Hamas enables people from these organizations to find refuge in Gaza. They see Hamas as somebody who needs to be removed from power.”
It is Israel which has thrown Hamas a lifeline by sending increasing amounts of food and goods through the border crossings to alleviate the chronic shortages in Gaza. Reports of Hamas mulling a five-year truce with Israel in return for an easing of the blockade on the enclave have been circulating and appeared in regional media. Indications that Turkey, a staunch supporter of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood has been acting as an intermediary, have not been denied by the Turks.
Some observers say, at least for now, Hamas is capable of putting down the threat from ISIS.
“I don’t think [ISIS or its affiliates] are a threat that Hamas cannot handle,” Schweitzer said. “Hamas is brutal enough and determined enough to meet that challenge.”