Clock controversy risks backfiring for Obama as critics cast doubt on narrative

President Obama’s public backing of a Texas high school freshman, who got national headlines last week when his homemade clock was mistaken for a bomb by teachers, could be causing a headache for the White House and other supporters as questions are being raised about the motives in the case. 
Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed’s father has said he now plans to withdraw the freshman from MacArthur High School, and said Monday that they intend to visit New York City where he says they will meet with dignitaries at the United Nations, before making a pilgrimage to Mecca and later visiting Obama at the White House, The Dallas Morning News reported.
It was not immediately clear which dignitaries had requested a meeting with Mohamed.
Mohamed had received praise and support from figures such as Obama and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the wake of the incident, in which Mohamed was arrested on bomb hoax charges after bringing the device to school.
However, amid huge support online for the family, there also has been growing criticism and doubts about the motive behind the incident.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins linked to a video posted to YouTube by electrical expert Thomas Talbot, which closely scrutinizes a photo of the controversial clock.
In the video, Talbot argues the clock is actually a commercial alarm clock, removed from its casing. Features of the clock such as the printed circuit boards and ribbon cables are indicative of a manufactured product, he explained.
Dawkins asked, “If this is true, what was [Mohamed’s] motive?”
Mohamed’s father has a colorful history of his own. Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed announced in February that he planned to run for president of Sudan, as he also did in 2010, the North Dallas Gazette reported. In 2011, he defended the Koran when controversial pastor Rev. Terry Jones put the book “on trial."
On HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban also expressed concerns about the family’s involvement. While calling Ahmed a “super smart kid,” he said that when he spoke to Ahmed, "his sister, over his shoulder, you could hear, listening to the question, giving him the answer.”
Maher, a left-wing comedian, also expressed skepticism, saying “the people at the school thought it might be a bomb, perhaps because it looks exactly like a [expletive] bomb.”
Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Napolitano said that if the whole thing was a fraud, and the family was involved, they could be open to legal charges.
“It now appears as though this was a purposeful hoax," Napolitano told Fox News' Megyn Kelly Monday. “If the parents were involved now you have a fraud going on as you have funds going on for him right now,” he said, adding that the two funds to raise money for the family now amount to over $20,000.
Napolitano added that this could turn out to be a politically difficult issue for Obama.
"If this was part of a purposeful stunt and if the parents were involved in this and if everybody from Mark Zuckerberg to President Obama fell for this, this is not good," Napolitano said.
If so, it wouldn’t be the first time Obama has stepped into hot water after jumping into a local debate. In 2009, Obama reacted to initial media reports that black professor Henry Louis Gates had been arrested by Sgt. James Crowley for trying to get back into his own house after being locked out. Obama said at a press conference “the police acted stupidly” and cited a “long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
It later turned out the arrest was much more complex than it initially appeared, with it being alleged that Gates made offensive comments about Crowley’s mother. Obama came under criticism and later held a “beer summit” with the two in the Rose Garden.
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin blasted Obama over his involvement in the clock controversy on Saturday, saying in a Facebook post his remarks were "about as presidential as a selfie stick."
"By the way, President Obama's practice of jumping in cases prematurely to interject himself as the cool savior, wanting so badly to attach himself to the issue-of-the-day, got old years ago," Palin wrote.

After the hype: Why Walker wilted in the media spotlight

Since Scott Walker called for a Stop Trump effort in bowing out of the presidential race, it’s easy to conclude that he was vanquished by The Donald.
And that’s not quite right. The Wisconsin governor vanquished himself.
In the harsh glare of the national spotlight, he just wasn’t a very good candidate.
Walker was prematurely hyped by the media, boosting expectations to a level he had no hope of meeting. He peaked too soon and could never find his footing.
Walker is a competent governor but a boring guy who found himself trying to compete in a Trumped-up atmosphere. By the final weeks, the man who shops at Kohl’s was shouting at a crowd that he was “unintimidated,” and just looked uncomfortable on the trail, as he did taking questions from the Fox and CNN moderators.
I’ve never seen a presidential candidate drop out and urge others to do so, but that was Walker’s plea—perhaps to give meaning to his move and lash out at the “personal attacks” by Trump. Don’t hold your breath waiting for others to follow.
Walker didn’t have to quit on Monday, even though he had dropped below 1 percent in national polls and his fundraising had dried up. He could have hobbled along and hoped for an upturn in his fortunes. But he has a day job—an actual state to run—and for him to turn into a punchline would have hurt him at home. So he chose a dignified exit.
I watched with amazement as the media utterly hyped Walker’s chances based on a single punchy speech he gave in Iowa last January. That led to rising poll numbers, which in turn produced more good press. It was the worst thing that could have happened to Walker.
He soon started ducking questions, such as his stance on evolution, and complaining about “gotcha” questions. Then he dialed way back on interviews, took two overseas trips and didn’t talk to reporters. That signaled to me a candidate who wasn’t confident.
When Walker reemerged, it was clear that he wasn’t ready for prime time, especially on foreign policy. It didn’t help that he compared fighting ISIS to battling public employee unions in Wisconsin. Asked on CNBC about Rudy Giuliani’s remark that he didn’t think Barack Obama loved America, Walker said: “I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not.”
I wrote this in July: “When I met Walker, he struck me as a meat-and-potatoes guy: Solid, disciplined, earnest, the son of a Baptist preacher was not at all flashy. That means he could wear well over a long campaign, but could also be overshadowed on a debate stage.”
Things soon reached the point where Walker had trouble giving straight answers to media questions. After Trump called for repealing birthright citizenship, Walker took three different positions in interviews over seven days. He was so eager to appear tough on illegal immigration that he allowed himself to muse about the possibility of building a fence along the Canadian border.
Of course, running on a governor’s record in a year of fierce anger at politicians and politics as usual didn’t help.
Liz Mair, the GOP strategist who briefly worked for Walker’s campaign before being dumped over past controversial tweets, ripped her former boss:
“Things he got wrong: Misunderstanding the GOP base, its priorities and stances. Pandering. Flip-flopping…
“Becoming so invested in winning, no matter what it took, that he lost sight of his real identity as a political leader.”
So what does Walker’s exit mean for other single-digit candidates, beyond the usual scramble for donors and organizers?
It leaves John Kasich as the only Midwestern governor; Chris Christie as the tough-talking governor; Jeb Bush as the ex-governor running on his record, albeit with far more money; Marco Rubio as the fresh young face, and Ted Cruz as the anti-establishment senator.
It means if one or two contenders follow the lead of Walker and Rick Perry, we’ll be done with the undercard debates.
It leaves Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, the non-politician brigade, at the head of the field, with Carson spending yesterday trying to explain away his comments about not advocating a Muslim for president.
Scott Walker was a strong candidate on paper. But elections, as we keep learning, aren’t won on paper.

FBI reportedly recovers deleted emails from Clinton server

Federal investigators reportedly have recovered work-related and personal emails from Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state that the Democratic presidential front-runner claimed had been deleted from her personal server.
The recovery of the emails was first reported by Bloomberg News late Tuesday. The initial report, which cited a source familiar with the FBI investigation into Clinton's private email server, was corroborated by The New York Times, which cited two government officials.
It was not immediately clear whether all 30,000 messages Clinton said she had deleted from the server had been recovered, but one official told the Times that it had not been difficult to recover the emails that had been found so far.
The FBI is investigating whether classified information that passed through Clinton's so-called "homebrew" server during her time as secretary of state was mishandled. Clinton turned over approximately 30,000 copies of messages she deemed work-related to the State Department this past December. Clinton said earlier this year that the emails she deleted from the private server she kept at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home mostly pertained to personal matters such as her daughter Chelsea’s wedding and the secretary’s yoga routines.
An intelligence source told Fox News earlier this month that investigators were "confident" they could recover the deleted records. The source said that whoever had been deputized to scrub the server must "not be a very good IT guy.  There are different standards to scrub when you do it for government versus commercial."
It is not known when exactly Mrs. Clinton “wiped” her server, nor who was directed to do so. However, it seems the move came after October 2014,  when the State Department requested personal emails be returned as part of her business records.   
The source also told Fox News an FBI "A-team" is leading the "extremely serious" investigation into Clinton's server and the focus includes a provision of the law pertaining to "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. The section of the Espionage Act in question is known as 18 US Code 793.
When asked about the report, Clinton’s presidential campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told Fox News that Clinton’s team “will always cooperate with the FBI,” and that Clinton and her staff “simply don’t know what the FBI has, and doesn’t have” in regard to the ongoing investigation.
Fox News’ Ed Henry said Tuesday that should the report of the newly-recovered emails prove true, some of the emails recovered would already be in investigators’ hands.
A separate source, who also was not authorized to speak on the record, said the FBI will further determine whether Clinton should have known, based on the quality and detail of the material, that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. The campaign's standard defense and that of Clinton is that she "never sent nor received any email that was marked classified" at the time.
It is not clear how the FBI team's findings will impact the probe itself. But the details offer a window into what investigators are looking for -- as the Clinton campaign itself downplays the controversy.

Walker Cartoon

Walker suspends 2016 campaign, urges party to find Trump alternative

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, once a leading candidate in the Republican presidential race, suspended his struggling 2016 campaign on Monday -- while issuing an appeal to his party to counter the rise of front-runner Donald Trump. 
At a hastily called press conference in Madison, Walker confirmed the news that by that point had leaked out: "I will suspend my campaign immediately."
But the governor also lamented that the contest has "drifted into personal attacks" and urged other contenders to consider following him out of the race, if only to help elevate those who can compete against the front-runner. Without naming Trump, Walker warned that he thinks the billionaire businessman could damage the party.
"I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field," Walker said. "... I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner."
The decision marks a swift reversal in fortunes for Walker, who over the summer was seen as the candidate to beat in the key state of Iowa. But the governor who forged a national reputation on his record battling union power in his home state saw his position slide in recent months.
Walker was plagued by a series of missteps, and was seen as performing poorly in the first two primary debates, generally struggling to stand out amid a crowded and boisterous 2016 field.

More on this...

• The rise and quick fall of Scott Walker

The 47-year-old had told Fox News before last Wednesday's debate at the Reagan Library that he planned to "be aggressive" and show the kind of "passion" that brought him to victory in the past. Walker did have a few notable moments -- including telling Trump "we don't need an apprentice in the White House ... we have one right now.” But he was arguably outshined not only by Trump but Carly Fiorina and others.
For Walker, much was riding on his performance in that debate. In the aftermath, a CNN/ORC poll released Sunday showed Walker polling nationally at less than 1 percent.
Throughout his campaign, Walker cast himself as an "aggressively normal" conservative, campaigning as a fighter who had a number of victories in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican president since 1984.
Walker was elected governor in 2010, before winning a tough recall election in 2012 against a labor-backed effort to remove him from office, becoming the first governor to survive a recall election. Walker was elected to a second term in 2014.
However, when campaigning for president, he appeared to struggle in stating his policy positions. He appeared to flip-flop on whether he supported ending birthright citizenship in August, and showed interest in building a wall between the U.S. and Canada, only to later laugh it off as ridiculous.
Immediately after the decision to suspend the campaign was reported, fellow 2016 candidate Ben Carson called Walker "an outstanding leader with a strong record of fighting for conservative principles."
"I wish him the very best," Carson said.
Trump also praised Walker on social media ahead of the formal announcement.
While Walker may be leaving the race, his well-known feud with major labor unions showed no sign of fading away. AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka released a scathing and brief statement: "Scott Walker is still a disgrace, just no longer national."
The move may have come to a surprise to supporters following Walker on Twitter, as he tweeted Monday he was "here to fight and win in Iowa."
A Walker donor told Fox News that even large donors were kept in the dark about the decision. A Monday afternoon conference call with donors gave no hint that this was coming, the donor said.
The announcement makes Walker the second GOP candidate to suspend his campaign, following former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Walker's exit leaves 15 major candidates remaining in the race for the Republican nomination.

Report: Obama administration seeking Vatican help on American prisoners in Iran

The Obama administration reportedly is seeking help from Pope Francis in negotiating the release of three American prisoners held in Iran. 
Politico reported Monday that Washington and the Vatican have had discussions in recent months about the prisoners. Pope Francis will visit Washington and other American cities this week, though it's unclear whether the Iranian matter will come up.
The purported discussions follow Pope Francis playing an integral role in the normalizing of relations between the United States and Cuba. The pope personally wrote letters to President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro urging them to repair the broken bond between their countries. The Vatican later hosted talks, and played a role in the eventual release of American prisoner Alan Gross from Cuba.
Whether the Vatican, though, can exert that kind of influence in Tehran is a very open question. Cuba is a mostly Catholic nation, giving the Vatican some natural sway in the country and with the Castros. Pope Francis would hold no such influence in Tehran, run by Muslim theocrats.
Still, Politico noted that the pope met in February with a delegation of influential Iranian women. One of them, Shahindokht Molaverdi, told a Catholic-issues publication she'd be open to the pope helping improve ties between the U.S. and Iran as he did with the U.S. and Cuba.
"Certainly this pope has an ability to bring people together, which can also influence governments," Molaverdi, Iran's vice president for women and family affairs, told the publication Crux.

More on this...

• Pope Francis criticized for not meeting Cuban dissidents

Politico cited an unnamed source familiar with the cases in saying the U.S. and Vatican have been in contact regarding the American prisoners in Iran, and at least one prisoner's family has appealed to the pope for assistance.
The status of the imprisoned Americans has loomed over the talks over the Iran nuclear deal. While some lawmakers urged the Obama administration to demand their release as a condition of any agreement, the State Department and White House resisted -- saying they needed to keep the issues separate.
With the nuclear deal now expected to be implemented, though, the prisoners' fate remains unresolved. Iran continues to hold Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian on what their supporters say are bogus charges.

Drug's price changed overnight to $750 a tablet ... from $13.50

"This isn't the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business. It really doesn't make sense to get any criticism for this." The "this" Martin Shkreli is referring to is the price hike his company instituted after it last month acquired Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug that the New York Times describes as "the standard of care" for treating those suffering from the potentially deadly parasitic infection toxoplasmosis.
The overnight change made by start-up Turing Pharmaceuticals: from $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet. USA Today points out that's a 5,000 percent increase. Shkreli justified the move by saying the overall impact will be a minor one as there are only 12,000 or so prescriptions for the specialized drug a year, and because the proceeds will go toward developing a newer treatment with fewer side effects.
A professor of infectious diseases at Emory University isn't so sure about that plan. She tells the Times that while the drug is accompanied by potentially serious side effects, they're manageable.
"I certainly don't think this is one of those diseases where we have been clamoring for better therapies," says Dr. Wendy Armstrong. The Times charts the drug's price history: Its 2010 acquisition by CorePharma saw its price hiked from $1 a tablet; that raised sales of the drug from $667,000 in 2010 to $6.3 million in 2011.
The most recent price increase could push those sales into the hundreds of millions. As for what Daraprim treats, the CDC describes toxoplasmosis as "a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness" in the US.
While some 60 million Americans are thought to carry the Toxoplasma parasite, it causes illness in those with weakened immune systems.

Carson: 'Absolutely I stand by the comments' about Muslim president

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Monday that he "absolutely" stood by his comments about not supporting a Muslim president, while also clarifying that he was referring to Muslims who had not rejected Islamic Sharia law.
"We don't put people at the head of our country whose faith might interfere with them carrying out the duties of the Constitution," the retired neurosurgeon told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "If you're a Christian and you're running for president and you want to make this [country] into a theocracy, I'm not going to support you. I'm not going to advocate you being the president."
"Now, if someone has a Muslim background, and they’re willing to reject those tenets and to accept the way of life that we have, and clearly will swear to place our Constitution above their religion, then of course they will be considered infidels and heretics, but at least I would then be quite willing to support them," Carson added.
Carson came under heavy criticism for his initial remarks, which were broadcast on NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday. Carson, a devout Christian, told moderator Chuck Todd a president's faith should matter to voters if it runs counter to the values and principles of America. In response to a follow-up question about whether he would support a Muslim candidate for president, Carson said, "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," Carson said. "I absolutely would not agree with that."
Carson also doubled down on his comments in a statement posted on Facebook late Monday, in which he fired back at his fellow Republican candidates who criticized him.
"Those Republicans that take issue with my position are amazing," the Facebook statement said. "Under Islamic Law, homosexuals – men and women alike – must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following other religions must be killed. I know that there are many peaceful Muslims who do not adhere to these beliefs. But until these tenants are fully renounced ... I cannot advocate any Muslim candidate for President."

More on this...

• Donald Trump defends his remarks about Muslims

Carson added, jokingly, "I also can’t advocate supporting Hillary Clinton either by the way."
The GOP candidates who criticized Carson's initial statement included Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who told Hannity, "I don’t believe anybody should be disqualified from the presidency because of their denomination or because of their faith." Earlier Monday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said the remarks were "not productive", and former New York Gov. George Pataki compared Carson's statement to anti-Catholic campaigning against John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Carson's comments were also attacked by Democrats, with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz saying Sunday, "It's hard to understand what's so difficult about supporting an American citizen's right to run for president.
"But unsurprisingly, this left Republicans scratching their heads. Of course a Muslim, or any other American citizen, can run for president, end of story."
Earlier Monday, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said “it’s not my job to defend the president,” in response to the controversy sparked when he chose not to correct a town hall questioner who called President Obama a non-American Muslim.
“Somebody was asking a question and actually making a statement, and it’s not my job to defend the president,” Trump told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. “The president is capable of defending himself.”
Trump was addressed by a man during a rally Thursday in New Hampshire who incorrectly said that President Obama is a Muslim.
"We have a problem in this country," the unidentified man said. "It's called Muslim. ... You know our current president is one."
Trump said he considered challenging the questioner at the time, but chose not to.
“President Obama will be able to defend himself if he wants to. I know one thing he’s not going to defend me. If somebody says something about me, Greta, he’s not defending me, that’s for sure,” Trump said.
Trump also commented on a similar controversy surrounding fellow 2016 hopeful Ben Carson, who said Sunday that a Muslim should not be president. However, Trump said while there “have been difficulties” with Islamic extremism, he would have no problem with a Muslim president.
“I would have no problem with it, no,” Trump said when asked if he could support a Muslim president if they agreed with him politically.