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Full slate of Democratic and GOP presidential hopefuls roar above the din Sunday

Nearly a dozen GOP and Democratic presidential candidates and hopefuls took to the national stage on Sunday, trying to distinguish themselves on such key issues as education, Wall Street, the future of NSA surveillance programs and stopping the Islamic State.
Nine candidates, in fact, spoke on five different Sunday morning political shows, including former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, who continues to argue that her lack of political experience doesn’t disqualify her from being president.
“Politics is different than business,” she told "Fox News Sunday.” “But it's not accurate to say that I don't know anything about politics. I have served as an adviser to many politicians. I run my own political campaign in California. … I chaired the advisory board at the CIA for (then-Director Michael Hayden). … I advised two secretaries of defense, a secretary of state, a secretary of homeland security.”
Fiorina, one of more than a dozen 2016 GOP hopefuls, also held fast on her criticism of Common Core, saying that the “Washington bureaucracy” has unfortunately turned the state-based, educational-standards program into “a nationally driven set of bureaucratic standards.”
Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC’s “This Week” that “ISIS is evil” and that the United States “needs to do everything we can to hunt down (radical Islamic terrorists) and kill them.”
Jindal, who is expected to announce next month whether he’ll seek the 2016 nomination, is polling near the bottom in the GOP field of roughly 14.

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• Martin O'Malley announces bid for president

He also took a swipe at 2016 GOP candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul for what he perceives as a soft foreign policy stance.
“We're not going to defeat evil through weakness,” Jindal said. “Unfortunately, Sen. Paul doesn't seem to understand that."
The No. 2 and No. 3 Democratic candidates on also weighed in Sunday on the talks shows.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who on Saturday declared his candidacy for the party nomination, continued to stake out his position as a Wall Street reform, while competing with Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders for the progressive wing of the party, which each hopes to take in the race against frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
“What we need is new leadership … to actually reign in excesses on Wall Street,” O’Malley told ABC. “I am not beholden to Wall Street interests. There are not Wall Street CEOs banging down my door and trying to participate or help my campaign.”
The 52-year-old O’Malley, who has about 1 percent of the primary vote according to most polls, also answered questions about his chances of a longshot victory.
“I've been there before,” he said.
The 73-year-old Sanders told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he voted against the original, post-9/11 Patriot Act legislation that the Senate will reconsider on Sunday afternoon and that has already voted against reauthorizing it.
“We have to be vigorous in fighting terrorism and protecting the American people but we have to do it in a way that protects the constitutional rights of the American people,” Sanders said. “And I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we are seeing, not only from the (National Security Agency) and the government, but from corporate America, as well. We are losing our privacy rights.  It's a huge issue.”

Obama's trade agenda faces tougher odds heading into House

WASHINGTON –  After several near death experiences in the Senate, the trade agenda that President Barack Obama is pushing as a second term capstone faces its biggest hurdle yet in the more polarized House.
Anti-trade forces have struggled to ignite public outrage over Obama's bid to enact new free-trade agreements, but Democratic opposition in Congress remains widespread.
The outcome may turn on Republicans' willingness to hand the president a major win in his final years in office. Underscoring the difficulties, House leaders are looking at the second or third week of June to schedule a vote, even though House members return from recess on Monday.
"The business of bill passing is a messy, sausage-making process. It was in the Senate, and it certainly will be in the House," White House communications director Jen Psaki said in an interview. "There will be many moments where there will be difficult issues. We have our eyes wide open with that."
At issue is legislation that would give Obama parameters for the trade deals he negotiates but also speed up congressional review of the final agreements by giving lawmakers the right to approve or reject deals, but not change them.
Obama is seeking this "fast track" authority to complete a 12-nation Trans-Pacific trade deal that spans the Pacific rim from Chile to Vietnam. He and trade backers say it will open huge markets to U.S. goods by lowering tariffs and other trade barriers. Critics, labor and environmental groups in particular, argue that new trade agreements will cost jobs and that past agreements have not lived up to labor and environmental standards.
Supporters and opponents of fast track count about 20 House Democrats in favor with fewer than a dozen still on the fence. Proponents of the bill say they need at least 25 Democrats and preferably closer to 30 to counter the 40 to 50 Republicans who are expected to vote against it in the GOP-controlled House.
The fast-track legislation squeezed through the Senate, coupled with a package of federal assistance for workers displaced by free trade agreements that helped secure Democratic votes. That aid measure, called Trade Adjustment Assistance, has emerged as a particularly tricky component because it's a priority for Democrats, but many Republicans oppose it and insist on publicly voting against it.
One House leadership option is to "divide the question" on the Senate-passed bill. That would allow separate votes on fast-track and TAA.
Presumably an overwhelming number of Republicans, and just enough Democrats, would vote for fast-track. And TAA would pass with heavy Democratic support and enough help from Republicans. That would ultimately leave the Senate bill intact and clear the way for Obama's signature.
Some Democrats, however, have raised the possibility of voting heavily against TAA to sabotage their main target, fast track. And many are unhappy that the assistance package would be partly funded by cuts in Medicare's growth.
"There's a lot of unease in the Democratic caucus -- and explicit opposition -- to Congress paying for trade adjustment assistance with Medicare savings," Bill Samuel, the legislative director for the AFL-CIO, said in an interview. "If Republicans are counting on Democrats to put it over the top, they may not be right about that."
If the trade assistance measure survives, the fast-track measure would still be in jeopardy.
"There's overwhelming opposition in the Democratic caucus," Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a leading opponent of Obama's trade bill, said in an interview. GOP leaders "are in a bind," she said. "If they had the votes, they'd be moving."
DeLauro said "dividing the question" is only one of several options House leaders are considering. "Every option leads to more problems," she said, "because this is a bad bill."
At the White House, officials say Obama might rely less on the public speeches and high-profile interviews that characterized the drive toward the Senate vote and focus more on targeted lobbying to retain Democratic supporters and win over any remaining fence sitters.
The White House has been especially impressed by the efforts of House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who has worked to persuade conservatives who are reluctant to give a Democratic president fast track authority. Ryan has written opinion pieces with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a darling of the conservative movement, in support of trade and has courted other conservative leaders to back fast track.
On the Democratic side, labor has made opposition to trade a priority, and the AFL-CIO has frozen its political action committee contributions to lawmakers until after the trade votes. During the Memorial Day congressional recess, a coalition of fast track opponents aired ads in 17 Democratic congressional districts criticizing the legislation and calling for its defeat.
But those efforts are running up against a more muddled public view of trade. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 58 percent of those surveyed, including a majority of Democrats, say free trade agreements have been good for the U.S. Moreover, when Pew asked Americans to list their top priorities for the president and Congress this year, global trade ranked 23rd.
"The people who don't normally pay attention to campaigns probably aren't going to be showing up to vote on this," Jason Stanford of the Coalition to Stop Fast Track conceded. "But what is important for these members to note is that the same people who were knocking on doors for them last time are opposing this now. They are turning that important base of support into a really dedicated opposition. And that's not how anyone wants to run for re-election."

Indicted ex-FIFA executive cites Onion article in rant slamming US

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad –  Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner renewed his criticism of the United States, where he faces corruption charges, on Sunday by releasing a pair of videotaped comments — one of them based on a story by satirical website The Onion.
"This past week has been a most trying one for me, a most difficult one," Warner said.
Even Sunday wasn't easy, when Warner needed two attempts to get his message across by telling followers that the latest accusations against him stem largely from the U.S. being upset that it did not win the rights to host the 2022 World Cup — which went to Qatar.
In an eight-minute Facebook video, which was quickly deleted after numerous news reports picked up on the gaffe, Warner held up a printout of a fictitious story from The Onion bearing the headline: "FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup In United States."
The fake story was published on Wednesday, hours after Warner was indicted in the U.S. and arrested and briefly jailed in Trinidad. Warner asked why the story was "two days before the FIFA election" when Sepp Blatter was re-elected as president.
Warner asked "if FIFA is so bad why is it the U.S. wants ... the World Cup?" Additionally, Warner said that FIFA is "the very same organization they (the U.S.) are accusing of being corrupt. That has to be double standards."
Later, in the second video, Warner thanked supporters. He said a number have reached out in recent days since the latest scandal broke.
"I could understand the U.S. embarrassment that a small country as Qatar ... could have been able to overcome them this way," Warner said. "I could understand but no one gives them the right to do what they are doing."
Warner has remained in the spotlight in Trinidad for the past several days, making several appearances and continuing in his role as a member of Parliament. He has more public appearances scheduled for this week in Trinidad.
"Do not be too worried about me because at the end of the day all the allegations against me shall be proven to be unfounded," Warner said in the second video. "I have no cause to worry. ... At the end of the day my strength is based on the collective effort and support of all of you."
Warner left FIFA in 2011 after being implicated in a bribery scandal.

NSA bulk phone data collection program expires after Senate fails to make deal

The National Security Agency's ability to collect the phone records of millions of Americans in bulk expired late Sunday after the Senate failed to strike a deal before the midnight deadline.
However, that program, as well as several other post-9/11 counterterrorism measures, were likely to be revived in some form in the coming days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. reluctantly embraced a House-passed bill that would extend the anti-terror provisions, while also remaking the bulk phone collections program.
Members of the GOP-controlled chamber had returned to Capitol Hill for a rare Sunday afternoon session in a last-ditch effort to extend the NSA’s authority to search for terror connections and to authorize two other programs under the Patriot Act, which took effect in the weeks after the 2001 attacks.
The Senate attempted to either pass the House bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, or simply extend the bulk collection program.
The 100-member chamber passed the first of two procedural hurdles, known as cloture, to proceed with the House bill, known as the USA Freedom Act. The vote was 77 to 17.
The Majority Leader had preferred to extend the current law. But with most senators opposed to extending the current law unchanged, even for a short time, McConnell said the House bill was the only option left other than letting the NSA program die off entirely.
"It's not ideal but, along with votes on some modest amendments that attempt to ensure the program can actually work as promised, it's now the only realistic way forward," McConnell said.
"We shouldn't be disarming unilaterally as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive, and we certainly should not be doing so based on a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation launched in the wake of the unlawful actions of Edward Snowden," McConnell said, referring to the former NSA contractor who revealed the agency's bulk data collection program in June 2013.
But no final action was taken before the deadline after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., served notice that he would assert his prerogatives under Senate rules to delay a final vote for several days.
“The people who argue that the world will come to an end and we will be overrun by jihadists (by not passing the bill) are using fear,” Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate, said on the Senate floor.
Paul's moves infuriated fellow Republicans and they exited the chamber en masse when he stood up to speak after the Senate's vote on the House bill.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. complained to reporters that Paul places "a higher priority on his fundraising and his ambitions than on the security of the nation."
Paul led a similar, filibuster-like effort before Congress left for Memorial Day recess to block votes on the House bill, USA Freedom Act, or extend the current laws. On Sunday, he asserted that ""People here in town think I'm making a huge mistake. Some of them I think secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me."
Paul had openly contemplated changing his mind on the issue before departing for the Memorial Day recess. But on Saturday he released a statement saying: "I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program. Sometimes, when the problem is big enough, you just have to start over."
In addition to the bulk phone collections, the two lesser-known Patriot Act provisions that also lapsed at midnight were one, so far unused, to help track "lone wolf" terrorism suspects unconnected to a foreign power. The second allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects who continually discard their cellphones.
The USA Freedom Act, backed by the White House, extends those two provisions unchanged, while remaking the bulk collection program over six months by giving phone companies the job of hanging onto records the government could search with a warrant.
Late Sunday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest issued a statement saying "The Senate took an important -- if late -- step forward tonight. We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible. On a matter as critical as our national security, individual senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly."
Even if the Senate had agreed on Sunday just to extend the current law, the House was not in session and could not approve it and send it in time to the president.
To ensure the NSA program has ceased by the time authority for it expires at midnight, the agency began shutting down the servers that carry it out at 3:59 p.m. ET Sunday.
That step would have been reversible for four hours. After that, completely rebooting the servers would take about a day.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also is critical of the program and joined Paul in his first filibuster-like efforts.
"The American people deserve better than this, especially when it comes to a program that is an integral part of protecting our national security," Lee, a Senate Armed Services Committee member, said on CNN's "State of the Union."
However, he still predicted the House plan would pass by Wednesday.
CIA Director John Brennan said earlier Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that terrorists "are looking for the seams to operate within" and that ending the programs is “something that we can't afford to do right now."
He also said “too much political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes … have skewed the debate on this issue," a likely reference to last weekend’s filibuster-like efforts by the Libertarian-minded Paul and other Senate Republicans.
Presidential candidate and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he didn’t vote for the original Patriot Act, nor its reauthorization and that he considers companies holding the records “the best of a bad situation.”
Civil libertarians have argued that the surveillance programs have never been shown to produce major results.
"The sky is not going to fall," the American Civil Liberties Union executive director, Anthony Romero, told reporters.
Paul's presidential campaign is aggressively raising money on the issue.
A super PAC supporting him produced a video casting the dispute as a professional wrestling-style "Brawl for Liberty" between Paul and Obama -- though Paul's main opponent on the issue is McConnell.

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'Covering Guns': Columbia University's 'workshop' for journalists far from objective

Columbia University

(Go Figure?)

Columbia University would never sponsor an event funded by the National Rifle Association. What’s more, the idea would seem especially outlandish if most of the speakers at the event were NRA supporters.
Yet, gun control advocate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his gun control group Everytown are now funding a two-day workshop in Phoenix on Friday and Saturday sponsored by Columbia University’s Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. The event will bring together journalists from around the country to learn about “covering guns and gun violence.”
Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center, claims that there is “no party line” and calls the workshop “very balanced.”
But gun control advocates make up 15 of the panel’s 17 experts.  Aren’t journalism schools supposed to teach journalists to present both sides of a story? Why doesn't Columbia feature other speakers who argue that people should be able to defend themselves with guns?

Columbia’s Dart Center treats Bloomberg and his various anti-gun groups as simply providing objective news.

Only two law enforcement officers will be making presentations: Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona, and Tucson police chief Roberto A. Villaseñor.  Both are proponents of stricter gun control.  Dupnik, a liberal Democrat, has long attacked Arizona’s concealed handgun laws for being too lax and let people carry in too many places. Villaseñor has been a strong outspoken supporter of President Obama’s gun control proposals.
These law enforcement officers represent a minority view.  A 2013 nationwide survey of PoliceOne’s 450,000 members found that 91% of law enforcement support concealed carry laws.  Eighty percent believe that a concealed carry permit holder could have reduced casualties from such recent tragedies as Newtown and Aurora.  Ninety-two percent think that Obama’s proposed assault weapon ban would either increase or have no effect on violent crime.
Columbia University could easily have found law enforcement officials with an alternative viewpoint.
All five academic researchers also happen to be proponents of more gun control.  Roseanna Ander argues that Obama’s proposals are “really important and promising.”  Philip Cook maintains that the previous assault weapons ban just didn’t go far enough.  Jim MacMillan claims the solution is simple: “Fewer guns would equal fewer deaths.”  Garen Wintemute considers Obama’s proposed assault weapons ban to be a “great idea” and states that “Gun policy in the US . . . reflects the priorities of a radical fringe of gun owners.”  And Jill Messing advocates stricter gun control as a means of reducing domestic violence.
But the academic research points in exactly the opposite direction.  Published academic research by criminologists and economists consistently finds that assault weapons bans have not reduced crime.
Last fall, the Crime Prevention Research Center, where I serve as president, conducted a survey of economists who have published refereed empirical journal articles on firearms, with 88% of those from North America saying that guns are used more often in self-defense than in crime and 91% saying that gun-free zones attract criminals.  But Columbia managed not to enlist a single researcher who is skeptical of gun control.
Just two speakers actually support gun ownership, but conservative commentator S.E. Cupp has no particular expertise on the issue.  And conservative lawyer David Kopel will speak only about the history of the Second Amendment.
Unfortunately, Columbia’s Dart center treats Bloomberg and his various anti-gun groups as simply providing objective news.  Their posts announcing the workshop uncritically repeat claims made by Bloomberg.  Among these falsehoods is a gross exaggeration of the number of people who are murdered with guns. “Nearly 12,000 murdered with guns each year,” parrots Columbia. In fact, the FBI reports that the number of murder victims has stayed below 9,000 since 2010.
Similarly, the claim that the U.S. has a firearm murder “rate 20 times higher than other developed countries” is absurd with several developed countries having much higher firearm murder rates that the U.S. (Brazil, Mexico, and Russia).
Columbia also relies on Bloomberg for the claim that “nearly 100 school shootings have occurred since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary only two years ago.”  Even liberal-leaning PolitiFact described this claim as “mostly false,” as Bloomberg’s number is five times larger than the actual number.  CNN and Fox have also disputed the Bloomberg claim.
Michael Bloomberg is spending over $50 million a year on his anti-gun message and it is overwhelming the gun debate.  On television ads alone in 2013, he outspent the NRA and all other self-defense groups combined by 6.3 times. And, he’s just announced a new news agency which will start up in June that will focus on anti-gun stories.
For a man worth $36 billion, Bloomberg can afford to cover all the bases to get his message out. But you would think that Columbia would have the gumption to at least use basic journalistic practices of fact checking and teaching journalists to see both sides of an issue when they offer a workshop.

As nuke deal deadline draws near, US and Iran hold 'intense' talks

As a deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran nears, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Saturday in what officials described as "at times intense" talks as part of the effort to flesh out a framework agreed in April.
The talks between the two countries focused on how to narrow differences over how to ease economic penalties on Iran and to what extent Tehran must open up military facilities to inspections.
The talks between Kerry and Zarif lasted six hours, in what officials described as the most substantive negotiating round since world powers and Iran clinched a framework pact in April. It was unclear what progress, if any, was made by Kerry and Zarif before the Iranian delegation began leaving for Iran.
People involved in the talks told The Wall Street Journal that political pressures could still delay or derail a deal as the two sides scramble to flesh out the agreement. While much of the focus has been on the Obama administration's struggles to prevent Congress from blocking a deal, diplomats told The Journal that growing political pressure in Iran now poses the more significant risk.
Last month's agreement left big questions unanswered, which weeks of subsequent technical discussions have done little to resolve.
Asked about completing the full accord by June 30, Zarif said, "We will try."
His deputy, Abbas Aragchi, said lower-level officials would meet again in Vienna next week.
U.S. officials provided hints of what must have been a difficult dialogue, but told The Associated Press that the encounter ultimately proved fruitful.
World powers believe they have secured Iran's acquiescence to a combination of nuclear restrictions that would fulfill their biggest goal: keeping Iran at least a year away from bomb-making capability for at least a decade. But they are less clear about how they will ensure Iran fully adheres to any agreement.
Various Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, have pledged to limit access to or even block monitors from sensitive military sites and nuclear scientists suspected of previous involvement in covert nuclear weapons efforts.
“This permission will not be granted in any way. Both our enemies and those who are waiting for the decision of the Islamic Republic should know this,” Khamenei said in a recent speech.
“I think there are a number of challenges right now,” Robert Einhorn, a senior member of the U.S. negotiating team until 2013, told The Wall Street Journal. “I think especially in the light of what the [supreme] leader has been saying, there will be a temptation by the Iranians to revisit things which they have already agreed.”
The U.S. says access to military sites must be guaranteed or there will be no final deal. A report Friday by the U.N. nuclear agency declared work essentially stalled on its multiyear probe of Iran's past activities.
The Iranians are not fully satisfied, either.
The unresolved issues include the pace at which the United States and other countries will provide Iran relief from international sanctions -- Tehran's biggest demand --  and how to "snap back" punitive measures into place if the Iranians are caught cheating.
President Barack Obama has used the "snapback" mechanism as a main defense of the proposed pact from sharp criticism from Congress and some American allies.
Exactly how rapidly the sanctions on Iran's financial, oil and commercial sectors would come off in the first place lingers as a sore point between Washington and Tehran.
Speaking ahead of Kerry's talks with Zarif, senior State Department officials described Iranian transparency and access, and questions about sanctions, as the toughest matters remaining, and cited "difficult weeks" since the April 2 framework reached in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Iran insists it is solely interested in peaceful energy, medical and research purposes, though many governments around the world suspect it of harboring nuclear weapons ambitions. The U.S. estimates the Iranians are currently less than three months away from assembling enough nuclear material for a bomb if they chose to covertly develop one.