Colin Powell, Wasserman Schultz support Iran nuclear deal

Another Idiot.

President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal on Sunday got some largely unexpected support -- from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The deal, which is expected to receive a vote this week in the Republican-led Congress, has essentially no other GOP support.
Still, Obama late last week secured enough support from Senate Democrats to ultimately complete the deal, despite the Republican opposition.
Powell, who served in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the international agreement is "a pretty good deal" that would reduce the threat of Iran gaining a nuclear weapon.
Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, joins about half of the roughly two-dozen congressional Jewish lawmakers in supporting the deal, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly opposes.
New York Sen. Charles Schumer, expected to be the next Senate Democratic leader, is among a handful in that group who opposes the deal. And his decision in early August was among the first.
Powell said Sunday that Iran's nuclear program "has been thrown into a detour," decreasing the likelihood that it can produce a nuclear weapon to be used against Israel or other countries.
"So that's pretty good," he said.
The international deal would lift billions of dollars in crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for the rogue nation curtailing its nuclear development program.
Wasserman Schultz made her announcement in The Miami Herald, saying the decision to endorse the agreement was the most difficult one she has made in nearly 23 years in elected office.
She expressed concerns about the agreement, but argued it "provides the best chance to ensure" security for the U.S., Israel and other allies.
"Under the agreement Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear bomb for at least 10-15 years," she said, while the U.S. and its allies "will be able to more closely concentrate on stopping Iran's terrorist activity."
The White House already has enough Senate votes to ensure that Congress will uphold the deal even if Obama has to veto a disapproval resolution set for a vote in the week ahead.
But with that support in hand and more piling up, the White House and congressional backers of the deal have begun aiming for a more ambitious goal: enough commitments to bottle up the disapproval resolution in the Senate with a filibuster, preventing it from even coming to a final vote.
That effort suffered a setback on Friday as Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, who is Jewish and top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he opposed the deal.

Kentucky clerk appeals order putting her in jail

LEXINGTON, Ky. –  A Kentucky county clerk has appealed a judge's decision to put her in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Attorneys for Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis officially appealed the ruling to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sunday. The three page motion does not include arguments as to why Davis should be released but amends Davis' earlier appeal of the judge's order.
Davis objects to same-sex marriage for religious reasons and stopped issuing all marriage licenses in June after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide. Two gay couples and two straight couples sued her. U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Davis to issue the licenses and the Supreme Court upheld his ruling.
But Davis still refused to do it, saying she could not betray her conscience.
Thursday, Bunning ruled Davis was in contempt of court for disobeying his order and sent her to jail. Her deputy clerks then issued marriage licenses to gay couples Friday with Davis behind bars.
"Civil rights are civil rights and they are not subject to belief," said James Yates, who got a marriage license on Friday after having been denied five times previously.
Mat Staver, one of Davis' attorneys, said the marriage licenses issued Friday are "not worth the paper they are written on" because Davis refused to authorize them. But Rowan County Attorney Cecil Watkins says the licenses are valid. Bunning said he did not know if the licenses were valid but ordered them issued anyway.
Bunning indicated Davis will be in jail at least a week. She could stay longer if she continues to not obey the judge's order. Bunning had offered to release Davis from jail if she promised not to interfere with her deputy clerks as they issued the licenses. But Davis refused.
Staver called the contempt hearing "a charade" saying that Bunning had his mind made up before the hearing began.
Kentucky law requires marriage licenses be issued under the authority of the elected county clerk. Davis views issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as a stamp of approval of something she believes is a sin. She has said she will not issue marriage licenses until the state legislature changes the law so the licenses can be issued under someone else's authority.
The state legislature is not scheduled to meet again until January and Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has refused to call a special session. Davis has refused to resign her $80,000-a-year job. As an elected official the only way she could lose her job is to lose an election or have the state legislature impeach her, which is unlikely given the conservative nature of the state General Assembly.
"She's not going to resign, she's not going to sacrifice her conscience, so she's doing what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which is to pay the consequences for her decision," Staver said.
Davis' plight has reignited the gay marriage debate and the limits of religious freedom. Her imprisonment has inspired spirited protests from both sides in this small eastern Kentucky community known mostly as the home to Morehead State University.
Saturday, about 300 people rallied in support of Davis at the Carter County Detention Center where she is being held. Another rally is scheduled for Tuesday with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

Closing doors: Austria to phase out emergency measures after thousands of refugees reach Germany

Austria's leader said late Sunday that the country would begin phasing out emergency measures that helped thousands of refugees make their way to Germany over the weekend.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told reporters he had made the decision following what he called " intensive talks" with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
"We have always said this is an emergency situation in which we must act quickly and humanely," said Faymann. "We have helped more than 12,000 people in an acute situation. Now we have to move step-by-step away from emergency measures towards normality, in conformity with the law and dignity."
Austria's national railway company told the Associated Press it plans to end special service to the Hungarian border town of Hegyeshalom on Monday. Direct service between Vienna and Budapest will take its place will take their place, spokeswoman Sonya Horner said.
Refugees from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia who often have spent weeks traveling through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans to reach Hungary, a popular back door into the European Union, found to their surprise they were permitted Sunday to buy tickets to take them all the way into Austria and Germany. Hungary had insisted last week they would no longer be allowed to do this.
Fourteen trains from Hungary's capital of Budapest arrived at the Hegyeshalom station Sunday, disgorging refugees onto the platform. Police didn't check travel documents as passengers walked a few yards to waiting Austria-bound trains, which typically left less than 3 minutes later. Austrian police said more than 13,000 refugees had passed through their country to Germany over the past two days, far more than expected.

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"No check, no problem," said Reza Wafai, a 19-year-old from Bamiyan, Afghanistan, who hopes to join relatives in Dortmund, Germany. He displayed his just-purchased ticket to Vienna costing 9,135 forints ($32.50). He was traveling without a passport, carrying only a black-and-white Hungarian asylum seeker ID.
EU rules stipulate asylum seekers should seek refuge in their initial EU entry point. But virtually none of the refugees want to claim asylum in Hungary, where the government is building border defenses and trying to make it increasingly hard for asylum seekers to enter.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told The Associated Press that Hungary had decided to drop visa checks on train ticket customers, a measure introduced only Tuesday, because of the sudden drop in refugee numbers made possible by Germany and Austria's breakthrough decision to take thousands of asylum seekers stuck in Hungary. The country used 104 buses to clear Budapest's central Keleti train station and Hungary's major motorway of more than 4,000 refugees and deliver them to the border.
Sunday's free movement for refugees on trains represented an effort "to return to normality, whatever that is," Kovacs said.
The refugee crisis, Europe's most severe since the end of World War II, has exposed deep divisions in the 28-member bloc over how to handle the situation. Germany, which was expected to receive an estimated 800,000 refugees this year, said it was putting no limit on the number displaced people it would accept. Other countries, like the United Kingdom, have said they would take in thousands more refugees than they had previously said they would.
But E.U. foreign ministers failed to agree practical steps to solve the crisis during a meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday, and despite allowing thousands to travel to Austria and Germany, Hungary has provided an otherwise lukewarm welcome, with thousands of refugees being sent to camps.
"While Europe rejoiced in happy images from Austria and Germany on Saturday, refugees crossing into Hungary right now see a very different picture: riot police and a cold hard ground to sleep on," Amnesty International researcher Barbora Cernusakova told Sky News.
Hungary is also constructing a fence along its southern frontier with Serbia in order to keep out, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that a fence would be constructed along his country's border with Jordan to prevent Syrian refugees arriving.
Amnesty International figures show the influx of refugees into Europe pales in comparison to the numbers taken by Lebanon (1.2 million), Jordan (650,000) and Turkey (1.9 million).
Division also remains on how to tackle the root cause of the mass migration from Syria, with reports that the British government is seeking to persuade opposition Members of Parliament to back airstrikes in Syria. France is also set to make a decision on airstrikes this week.

Mount McKinley to Denali Cartoon

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign boosted by private air fleet

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has a big advantage hidden in plain sight: Trump Air.
Mr. Trump’s fleet of private aircraft, which includes a Boeing 757, a Cessna Citation X and three Sikorsky helicopters, whisks the billionaire executive to Republican primary events in far-flung locales, some of them difficult to reach by commercial planes.
The fleet also allows Mr. Trump to promote his brand. He garnered valuable publicity at the recent Iowa State Fair, for example, by giving children free rides in one of his helicopters with a huge Trump logo on the side.
“It’s a massive, unbelievable competitive advantage,” said Dave Carney, a GOP campaign consultant who was chief strategist for Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential primary campaign. “Having access to a private jet is the single most important asset to any national political campaign. It’s hugely expensive, but it gives you the ability to set your own schedule.”
The two Trump jets logged at least 71 campaign-related flights between April 1 and Aug. 31, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Aviation Administration flight records on Flightwise.com and FlightAware.com. The flights included at least 26 stops in airports serving Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, all of them early primary or caucus states. As of Sept. 1, Mr. Trump’s jets have been blocked from being tracked by commercial aviation sites, which is permissible.
In an interview, Mr. Trump said other campaigns might charter planes, but his 757 has amenities such as two bedrooms and a shower. It also features a 57-inch TV, pillows emblazoned with the Trump family crest and gold-plated seat belt buckles and bathroom faucets, according to a 2011 promotional video of the jet provided by his campaign.
“It’s like living in a beautiful home,” Mr. Trump said. “The advantage is that I’m able to fly nicely, quickly and on time.” He said he owns the aircraft outright and has no mortgages on them.
Flyovers with his Trump-branded planes, such as a recent one when his 757 circled over a campaign rally at an Alabama stadium, maximize his impact, Mr. Trump said. “We flew over the center of the stadium and the place went wild. It gave impact to the stadium and it gave impact the following day when everybody carried it” on television, he said.
Many of his GOP rivals, meanwhile, are flying commercial flights for all or much of their travel. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio typically flies commercial; he and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sat next to each other on an American Airlines flight from Miami to Nashville, Tenn., for a National Rifle Association event in April.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has flown commercial of late, although he racked up a hefty private-jet tab last year when flying as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. While former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum reported $10,000 in commercial airline expenditures for the second quarter, his campaign emails have asked supporters to “fill up the tank,” seeking per-mile donations to fund his visits to all 99 counties in Iowa by car.

Police recover 'significant' new evidence in hunt for killers of a northern Illinois police officer

Investigators revealed Friday they found “significant” new evidence in a wooded, marshy area where a northern Illinois police officer was gunned down during a pursuit of three suspicious men.
The discovery came after investigators used weed trimmers and machetes to clear the spot where Fox Lake Lt. Joe Gliniewicz, 52, was found shot to death Tuesday and then searched the ground on their hands and knees, MyFoxChicago reported.
“We did recover a significant piece of evidence,” George Filenko, Commander of the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, told reporters, according to the station. “I know your next question is going to be what is it? I'm not at liberty to tell you.”
The recovered evidence could be very crucial to the case if and when it gets to the point of prosecution, the station reported, adding that investigators seemed encouraged, if not excited, about what was found.
The station said the search of the crime scene was being conducted in a painstaking manner.
“They've basically gotten it down to almost bare earth. They're on their hands and knees literally today doing grid to grid searches,” Filenko said.
Earlier in the week investigators sent to the crime lab DNA evidence that they hope could lead to the killers.
MyFoxChicago also reported Friday that police obtained videos from homes and businesses that show the three suspects, described only as two white men and one black man, before and after Gliniewicz was murdered.
On Thursday police said a homeowner gave them video of the three men. The new videos could provide more clues, the station said.
The videos were turned over to the FBI which is compiling a timeline of the suspects movements, Filenko said.
The investigators believe the three suspects are probably still in the Fox Lake area, 45 miles north of Chicago.
“We are expecting a high volume of people out on the chain of lakes with it being a holiday weekend and there is no cause for concern for the people coming into town. There's no cause for concern for the residents within the town,” said Detecive Chris Covelli with the Lake County Sheriff’s Department.
A local company Motorola Solutions has announced a $50,000 reward for help in finding the killers.
Gliniewicz, a 30-year police veteran who was planning to retire at the end of the month, contacted dispatchers about the three suspicious men run and requested a second unit. Dispatchers soon lost contact with him, and backup officers found him about 50 yards from his squad car with a gunshot wound. He died soon after.

Clinton acknowledges paying State Department staffer to maintain private email server

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Saturday confirmed that she and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private email server that Clinton used when she led the agency.
“We obviously paid for those services and did so because during a period of time we continued to need his technical assistance,” the former secretary of state told reporters after a campaign stop in Portsmouth, N.H.
She also said the payments to former agency IT specialist Bryan Pagliano are “in the public record.” And she commented on Pagliano’s reported decision to plead the Fifth Amendment if called to give closed-door testimony before the GOP-led House’s Select Committee on Benghazi.
"We encouraged everyone to cooperate,” Clinton said. “Facts are facts. I would very much urge those who are asked to cooperate to do so."
A congressional source told Fox News on Friday that committee investigators hope to question Pagliano over possible destruction of evidence. Clinton turned over emails from the private server that she deemed official and deleted those she considered personal.
The Washington Post first reported the payments to Pagliano, citing an unnamed campaign official.

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The official also told the newspaper that the arrangement also ensured that taxpayers weren’t paying for the upkeep of the server that was shared by Clinton, her husband, the former president, and their daughter as well as former aides.
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, is under scrutiny for using the private server and personal email accounts to conduct official business.
The Justice Department is investigating the matter and has a server. Among the questions are whether Clinton knowingly sent or received classified information and whether the setup resulted in any security breaches. Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 White House race, has said she never knowingly sent or receive classified information.
Pagliano served as the IT director of Clinton's 2008 campaign committee, then on her political action committee, according to The Post. He installed and managed her server and left his IT job at the State Department in February 2013, the same month Clinton stepped down as secretary.
The Post reports the Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for “computer services” prior to him joining the State Department, according to a 2009 financial disclosure form he filed. After he arrived on the State Department’s staff in 2009, he continued to be paid by the Clintons to maintain the server, a campaign official and another person familiar with the arrangement told The Post.
When asked about whether the former IT specialist had been paid privately to maintain the server, a State Department official said the agency “found no evidence that he ever informed the department that he had outside income,” The Post reported. This week, a different State Department official, couldn’t clarify to the newspaper Pagliano’s pay situation.
Pagliano reportedly didn’t list any outside income in the required personal financial disclosures he filed each year. The Post reports he remains a State Department contractor doing work on “mobile and remote computing functions,’ according to the State Department.
It’s not known exactly when or who “wiped” Clinton’s personal email server. However, it seems clear the move came after October 2014, when the State Department requested personal emails be returned as part of her business records.
Committee Republicans have long argued they don’t have all the documents that should be available to the investigation, after Clinton, using her personal discretion, purged some 30,000 emails.
Fox News put additional questions to Pagliano’s attorney, Mark J. MacDougall, Friday about whether his client played a direct role or had knowledge of the server scrub, but MacDougall said there was nothing further to add beyond the letter.
An intelligence source who confirmed to Fox that the FBI’s “A-team” was handling the Clinton email case, described the investigation as “moving along well,” adding investigators remain “confident” deleted records can be recovered because whoever did the scrub may “not be a very good IT guy. There are different standards to scrub when you do it for government vs. commercial.”

Republican disappointment with renaming of Mt. McKinley sparks petition drive to rename Reagan airport

President Obama returning the name of the United States’ tallest mountain from Mount McKinley to Denali has sparked a name-game feud, most recently Republicans under attack by an influential liberal PAC that is setting its sights on Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The group, CREDO Action, the political arm of San Francisco-based cellphone company Credo Mobile, is behind the effort with a petition drive.
“Tell John Boehner: Rename Ronald Reagan Airport,” the group writes on its webpage seeking petition signatures. “President Obama just took a small but important step for recognizing the history, culture, and human rights of America’s Native Americans when he decided to rename …. Mount McKinley in Alaska. But right-wing extremists in the Republican party, including House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, don’t see it that way.”
Within hours of the Obama administration announcing late Sunday that the president was removing the name of William McKinley, American’s 25th president and an Ohio Republican, Boehner and other Ohio Republicans were expressing their disapproval.
Boehner said he was “deeply disappointed” in this decision.
And Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman tweeted that he also was “disappointed” with Obama’s decision, announced ahead of the president's trip this week to Alaska where he tried to garner support for his climate change agenda.
The PAC raised $4 million during the 2014 election cycle. Of the $400,062 spent in connection with congressional races, $355,000 was against Republican candidates, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Credo Action states on its homepage that its mission is in part to fund progressive nonprofits.
The groups also states that during its 4-year history it has raised more than $79 million for hundreds of nonprofits including Democracy Now! and Planned Parenthood -- “efforts made possible by the revenues from our mobile phone company.”
The group had more than 52,400 signatures as of Saturday afternoon, toward its goal of 75,000.
News of the petition was reported first by the Washington, D.C.-based blog PrinceofPetworth.com.
This is not the first time the airport’s name, or renaming, has sparked partisan disagreement.
Just this spring, The Washington Post conducted a survey of area residents on the issue. It found 72 percent of Republicans said they refer to the airport as “Reagan” or “Reagan National,” while only 35 percent of Democrats acknowledged the airport by that name.
“Given Speaker Boehner’s current outrage and disappointment at President Obama’s decision to rename Mount McKinley, it’s time to give him the opportunity to make up for his own past mistakes,” the petition drive also states. “Sign the petition and tell John Boehner he needs to be consistent when it comes to naming America’s landmarks.”
The group also says its “history-making Pledge of Resistance … was a major factor in delaying the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”