Ryan gets more, key support ahead of big vote this week to become next GOP House speaker

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan got added support Sunday from a key part of the chamber’s Republican conference when the leader of the House Freedom Caucus said he was the “right guy” to be the next speaker.
“We think Paul has the kind of vision and is the kind of messenger our party needs to accomplish the things we told the voters we’re going to accomplish,” group Chairman Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said on "Fox News Sunday."
Ryan, House Ways and Means Committee chairman and 2012 vice presidential candidate, was recruited by Capitol Hill Republicans to become the next House speaker.
Ryan agreed to run for the post after talking last week with members of the Freedom Caucus -- part of the chamber’s most conservative wing, which largely forced House Speaker John Boehner to resign in late-September.
“He didn’t quite get the endorsement threshold we have in our group, but a super majority of our members said we think Paul Ryan is the right guy at the right time to lead our conference,” Jordan also said Sunday.
The small-but-powerful wing continuously disagreed with Boehner and members of the leadership team, accusing them of not digging in hard enough on spending cuts, repealing ObamaCare and other important conservative issues.
Ryan in talking with the caucus members reportedly agreed to address their concerns including committee leadership assignments and legislation from rank-and-file members not getting more consideration.
The speaker vote is expected later this week.
“We have a commitment from Paul to work on changing the rules and we may even get a change before the vote this coming Wednesday and Thursday,” Jordan said.
Ryan was recruited after a couple of wild weeks after Boehner’s resignation. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the second-in-command, dropped out of the race after suggesting the House Select Committee on Benghazi was responsible for damaging the campaign of Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. And South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Benghazi committee, was mentioned for the job, but he quickly and emphatically declined.
Ryan needs 218 votes from the chamber’s 434 members, including 246 Republicans.
He has made clear he doesn't want to squeak by in the vote. Last week, he got support from the Republican Study Committee and the Tuesday Group, two key groups that should help him get enough votes.

NYPD union calls for boycott of Quentin Tarantino films after director's anti-cop protest

The head of the New York Police Department's union has called for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino's films after the director took part in an anti-police protest Saturday, four days after one of New York's Finest was murdered by a suspect he was pursuing. 
Tarantino, whose oeuvre includes the notoriously violent films "Reservoir Dogs", "Pulp Fiction", and "Django Unchained", flew in from California to take part in the event with hundreds of other demonstrators.
"I'm a human being with a conscience," Tarantino said. "And if you believe there's murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I'm here to say I'm on the side of the murdered."
"It’s no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too," Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association, said Sunday in response to Tarantino. "The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls ‘murderers’ aren’t living in one of his depraved big-screen fantasies — they’re risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem."
Saturday's rally, which gathered in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood at Washington Square Park before marching about 2 miles along Sixth Avenue, came in the wake of the shooting death of 33-year-old Officer Randolph Holder. Holder was shot to death in the city's East Harlem neighborhood while pursuing a bicycle thief. A suspect has been charged with murder and robbery in the case.
"I think it’s very disrespectful,” Holder's cousin Shauntel Abrams told the Post. "Everyone forgets that behind the uniform is a person."
The New York Post reported that Tarantino acknowledged the timing of Saturday's rally was "unfortunate." But the director, whose latest film "The Hateful Eight," is due out early next year, said the rally had to go ahead because people had traveled long distances to attend.

Biden opted out on 2016 Dem race because he 'couldn't win'

WASHINGTON –  Vice President Joe Biden says he decided against running for president because he "couldn't win," not because he would have had too little time to get a campaign up and running.
"I'll be very blunt. If I thought we could've put together the campaign ... that our supporters deserve and our contributors deserved, ... I would have done it," he said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes."
In the wide-ranging interview, in which Biden took questions for a time joined by his wife, Jill, the vice president also said he would not have gotten into the race just to stop Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I've said from the beginning, 'Look, I like Hillary. Hillary and I get along together," he said. "The only reason to run is because ... I still think I could do a better job than anybody else could do."
He used the interview to play down suggestions his announcement not to run, made at the White House Wednesday with President Barack Obama standing at his side, included a jab at Clinton.
At the White House event, Biden lamented partisan bickering in Washington politics and said, "I don't think we should look at Republicans as our enemies." Clinton had made a statement to that effect during the Democratic presidential debate earlier this month.
"That wasn't directed at Hillary," Biden told "60 Minutes."
"That was a reference to Washington, all of Washington," he said.
The 72-year-old Biden also sought in the interview to dispel recurrent rumors that his late son Beau, who died earlier this year at age 46 of brain cancer, had made a last-minute plea to his father to run for president.
Biden said there was no such "Hollywood moment ... Nothing like that ever, ever happened," he said. "Beau all along thought that I should run and I could win."
"But there was not what was sort of made out as kind of this Hollywood-esque thing that, at the last minute, Beau grabbed my hand and said, 'Dad, you've got to run,' like win one for the Gipper," Biden said.
The vice president did say he wants to continue to have a voice in party affairs and will speak up whenever he wishes. He has not endorsed a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I will make no bones about that," he said. "I don't want the party walking away from what Barack and I did."
Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are still in the race.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice

Judge who signed off on treatment deal for suspected cop killer says she is ‘truly sorry’

Cop Killer

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Patricia Nuñez, accessory after the fact.

One of the New York judges who helped send a suspected cop killer to rehab instead of jail five months ago said Friday that the deadly shooting "breaks her heart" and that she is "truly sorry."
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Patricia Nuñez told The New York Post that she will address the issue further at a Nov. 12 court date for the suspect, Tyrone Howard. The paper reported that  Howard was freed despite a history of three felony sale convictions and the urging of prosecutors in the drug case.
Officer Randolph Holder's killing Tuesday has raised questions about the risks and potential shortcomings of drug courts, or drug diversion programs, which have been embraced nationwide as a way to ease jail overcrowding and reduce crime by attacking it at one of its sources: drug abuse.
New York's mayor and police commissioner have branded Howard a career criminal who had once been arrested in a 2009 gunfight on an East Harlem basketball court and should not have been out on the streets.
"He would have been the last person in New York City I would've wanted to see in the diversion program," Police Commissioner William Bratton said.
Yet another judge who handled the case said Howard — a longtime PCP user who despite his long rap sheet had no convictions for violent crimes — was a compelling candidate for drug court.

More on this...

• Mom of slain officer: Killing must stop, Blue lives matter

"I don't get a crystal ball when I get the robe," said state Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin. He defended his decision as "accurate and appropriate," saying that doing time hadn't helped Howard before.

"He would have been the last person in New York City I would've wanted to see in the diversion program"
- Police Commissioner William Bratton

He also said he was never made aware of the 2009 shooting case, which records show ultimately wasn't prosecuted against Howard. A law enforcement official who is familiar with the prosecution of the other defendant in that shooting, and who wasn't authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no eyewitness testimony placing Howard as the shooter.
Since their start in Miami in 1989, drug diversion programs have multiplied to 2,500 courts across the country, together handling about 120,000 cases a year, according to the federal National Office of Drug Control Policy.
The agency calls the programs "a proven tool for improving public health and public safety." President Obama mentioned them approvingly in a July speech, saying such programs can save taxpayer dollars.
Drug courts generally target nonviolent offenders who commit crimes to feed their addictions. The courts use treatment, drug testing, incentives and penalties to try to get defendants sober and straightened out.
"Drug courts are the most effective intervention in the justice system for individuals with substance abuse histories," Carson Fox, executive director of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, said Wednesday.
Studies have credited drug courts with reducing recidivism and drug-use relapses. Some research estimates those reductions save society more money than the treatment costs, though some studies have found the opposite, according to a 2011 congressional report.
But some research has also found drug-court dropout rates of 60 percent, said David Lilley, a criminal justice professor at the University of Toledo.
And some prosecutors and police fear diversion sometimes ends up giving breaks to drug dealers who claim they're addicts to avoid prison.
"It's critically important that you get the right people" into drug court, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police. "You're making life-changing decisions for the subject and potentially life-threatening decisions for the public."
At 30, Howard has been arrested more than two dozen times since he was 13 and sentenced to state prison twice since 2007 for drug possession and sale. One term came after he tried unsuccessfully for drug court in a 2011 case charging him with smoking PCP while carrying 22 bags of crack cocaine. Howard eventually pleaded guilty to drug possession.
In October 2014, he was charged with selling crack to an undercover officer. He was swept up as part of a larger drug case. Prosecutors sought six years behind bars.
But after reviewing Howard's record, troubled home life and longtime addiction, McLaughlin agreed to refer his case for evaluation for drug court, where another judge OK'd Howard for the program.
McLaughlin said he didn't learn about the 2009 gunbattle until this week. Howard was believed to have shot and wounded another man, Dan Evans, according to court papers. Evans was eventually convicted in the wounding of two bystanders, plus a 2006 murder.
The record doesn't explain why the case against Howard was dropped, and the district attorney's office hasn't commented. But the law enforcement official said no one identified Howard as a shooter except Evans, the defendant.
After being approved for drug court, Howard was released on $35,000 bail in February and pleaded guilty to the drug charge in May.
He started missing monthly status meetings and various court dates in August, then became a suspect in a Sept. 1 shooting. An arrest warrant was issued Sept. 17, and police tried 10 times to locate him, authorities said.
Then, on Tuesday, Holder and his partner caught up with him while chasing after a bicycle thief, police said. Holder, 33, was shot in the head; Howard was wounded in the leg as police returned fire.
Howard's lawyer, Brian Kennedy, has said there are "a lot of missing details" in the case.

Trailing in Iowa, Trump now battling like a true outsider

Jeb Bush

Ben Carson

New polls show Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is trailing in first-voting state Iowa but his strategy so far appears unchanged -- touting his outsider status and attacking rivals like a scrappy up-and-comer.
Trump on Friday attacked primary rival Ben Carson, whom he described as “super low energy” but who leads him in Iowa, according to the polls.
“The press was going crazy,” Trump said at an event in Miami. “We have a ‘breaking story,’ Donald Trump has fallen to second place to Ben Carson. We informed Ben, but he was sleeping.”
The remark repeats a familiar Trump complaint that the news media doesn’t like him and included his signature tagline for political opponents whom he bashes, “But I think he’s a nice guy.”
The New York real estate mogul and first-time candidate still leads in national polls.
However, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released Friday shows Trump now trailing Carson by 9 percentage points. And a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows him trailing Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon and social conservative, by 8 percentage points among Iowa Republican voters.

More on this...

• Are attack ads by Club for Growth causing a 'Trump slump?'

“I have a feeling we’re doing much better in Iowa than the polls are showing,” Trump said on the Hugh Hewitt Show after the release of the Quinnipiac poll.
Trump also argued that he was “very, very surprised” by the poll numbers, considering the large and enthusiastic crowds he’s drawing in Iowa.
After continuously rising in the polls despite a series of controversial remarks, Trump is now in the unusual position of dropping and having what political and campaign reporters deem “a bad week.”
Jeb Bush, the GOP establishment candidate and once-presumptive party frontrunner, is also having a tough week.
Amid sluggish poll and fundraising numbers, the Bush campaign on Friday announced several reductions including payroll cuts of roughly 40 percent.
The Iowa primary is now about just three months away. The Quinnipiac poll has Bush tied for sixth place in Iowa with 5 percent of the vote.
Trump’s so-called bad week began in part with a story Sunday in The Washington Post about a super PAC with ties to his campaign, a problem considering his opposition to such groups, criticizes for having too much money and influence in elections.
On Thursday, he issued a statement calling for pro-Trump super PACs to disband and reiterating that his self-funded campaign, unlike others, will not be controlled by lobbyists, special interest groups and others, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“We don’t want super PACs,” Trump also said in Miami. “Close them up ideally, hopefully to give money back.”

Obama calls for less standardized testing in schools, addressing nationwide concerns

President Obama on Saturday called for limiting the amount of standardized educational testing to two percent of classroom time, addressing the growing concern across the county about an over emphasis on test taking.  
The president called on a wide range of Americans -- from state officials to parents and teacher -- to help ensure that the country’s school systems haven’t become mired in standardized test taking.
"Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble," Obama said in a video released on Facebook. "So we're going to work with states, school districts, teachers and parents to make sure that we're not obsessing about testing."
Obama and outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan an Oval Office meeting Monday with teachers and school officials who are working to reduce testing time.
Mandatory testing as an effort to make teachers accountable and to help students improve and keep pace with their foreign counterparts dates back most recently to the Bush administration with “No Child Left Behind,” then the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top.”
Support or opposition to the recent major initiative known as Common Core has essentially become a conservative litmus-test question for Republicans in the 2016 presidential race.
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton embraced the principles laid out by Obama on Saturday.
"We should be ruthless in looking at tests and eliminating them if they do not actually help us move our kids forward," she said in a statement.
The vast majority of states agreed to the Common Core standards when they were released in 2010, with the backing of the National Governors Association. However, there has since been a growing criticism among Republicans and Democrats that the federal government is now too involved in what should be state- and local-level educational decisions.
Students spend about 20 to 25 hours a school year taking standardized tests, according to a study of the nation's 66 largest school districts that was released Saturday by the Council of Great City Schools.
In all, between pre-K and 12th grade, students take about 112 standardized exams, according to the council report. It said testing amounts to 2.3 percent of classroom time for the average 8th-grader.
Obama’s efforts should be welcome news for teachers and their powerful and largely pro-Democrat unions that say educators’ performance evaluations shouldn’t be tied to standardized test scores.
Among parents with children in public schools, 63 percent were opposed to linking teacher evaluations to their students' test scores in a recent Gallup Poll.
Still, the president’s effort is also being met with doubt and skepticism.
"How much constitutes too much (testing) time is really difficult to answer," said Michael Casserly, the council's executive director.
Obama cannot force states or districts to limit testing, which has drawn consternation from parents and teachers. But he directed the Education Department to make it easier for states to satisfy federal testing mandates and he urged states and districts to use factors beyond testing to assess student performance.
In addition, The New York Times reports Obama will ask Congress make his plan into legislation.
The administration said it still supports standardized tests as a necessary assessment tool, and there are no signs they are going away soon.
Both the House and Senate versions of an update to No Child Left Behind would preserve annual reading and math exams, although the House version would diminish their significance in determining whether schools are up to par. The legislation is in limbo while House and Senate negotiators figure out how to reconcile the competing versions.
Administration officials said that in many cases, testing is redundant, poorly aligned with curriculum or simply overkill. They said the administration supports legislative proposals to cap testing time on a federal level, but wanted to offer states a model for how to cut down on testing absent congressional action.
"There's just a lot of testing going on, and it's not always terribly useful," Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council, said in an interview. "In the worst case, it can sap the joy and fun out of the classroom for students and for teachers."
Casserly said his group found examples of testing redundancy that could be cut to create more instructional time. For example, some states and school districts were requiring both end-of-year tests and end-of-course tests in the same subjects in the same grade.
To ease the testing burden, the administration will provide states with guidance about how they can satisfy federal testing requirements in less time or in more creative ways, including federal waivers to No Child Left Behind that the Education Department readily has handed out.
For example, some 8th-grade students who take high school-level coursework currently take both 8th-grade and high school assessments, but the administration will allow them to opt out of the 8th-grade tests.
The value of standardized tests taps into the national debate about the federal government's role in local schools; both political parties generally support scaling back Washington's reach.
Central to that debate is Common Core. The federal government doesn't require Common Core, but the administration has backed it with financial incentives. About 12 million students last spring took tests based on the curriculum.

Missing Money? Report questions how states spent ObamaCare funds

 Obama Care

Oh Well, it's only taxpayer money.

The federal government awarded over $5 billion to help states set up ObamaCare exchanges, with the vast majority – $4.6 billion – going to 16 states and Washington, D.C. 
But, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, much of that money has not been accounted for – and yet not returned, either.
So where did those taxpayer dollars go?
That’s the billion-dollar question.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) required the establishment of health insurance exchanges – known as marketplaces – to help small employers and consumers compare and purchase insurance plans. States opted to either develop their own state-based exchanges or hand authority to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). And between 2010 and 2014, CMS awarded federal grants mostly to states setting up their own marketplaces, to help them get started.
About $4.6 billion was given to these 17 recipients, including California, New York, Washington state and Kentucky.
But the GAO report found that so far, just $1.4 billion of that has been spent on IT projects, and a total of $3 billion has been “spent or drawn down,” though not all the spending is detailed.
That, then, leaves at least $1.6 billion unaccounted for. Yet only three states returned any portion of the money – a total of just over $1 million was given back.
“[T]he specific amount spent on marketplace-related projects was uncertain, as only a selected number of states reported to GAO that they tracked or estimated this information,” the report said.
Even though states were supposed to set up their marketplaces by the end of last year, they are not yet legally required to return unused funds.
Chuck Young, with the GAO, explained that the grants also could have covered non-IT costs not addressed in the study, and the funding devoted to IT projects will generally remain available for states’ use until December – albeit with restrictions. “CMS said that, since March 2015, states may have spent additional grant funds for IT projects, re-purposed those funds for non-IT costs, or returned funds,” he said, adding that the office expects to conduct a follow-up to this report.
But in an article on the GAO report by the American Spectator, health care adviser and contributor to the publication David Catron highlighted the monetary discrepancy and raised the question of whether Democratic officials improperly diverted or spent more than $3 billion in taxpayer grant money.
“It’s hard to know with any degree of certainty where the money went,” he told FoxNews.com. “So all we know with any confidence is how much was awarded, how much went to IT and what the difference is.”
Catron pointed out that 85 percent of federal funds went to Democrat-controlled states, and that only three states returned any money to CMS while the remaining 13 states and D.C. have yet to return any funds.
The spending is different from state to state. Oregon has withdrawn just over $293 million of its $305 million and spent almost all of the $78.5 million authorized for its IT expenses – but based on the report, has not returned any leftover funds. California was given over $1 billion and spent $709 million. GAO found that less than a half-million dollars has been returned to the federal government.
Representatives for the Department of Health in Oregon told FoxNews.com that the IT funds listed on the report were only one part of setting up the exchange, implying that remaining funding was directed elsewhere. A spokesperson for the ObamaCare marketplace Covered California said that when they released the 2015-2016 budget in June, there was approximately $100 million in federal funds left and carried it over thanks to an extension by the federal government; they now have until the end of December to draw on the funds for the program.
A representative for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services insisted that if any funds are misallocated the CMS “will work to recover the funds using remedies available under law and regulation.”
“To safeguard taxpayer funds, HHS has also put in place additional program integrity regulations and has implemented, or is in the process of implementing, the GAO’s recommendations,” said HHS senior adviser Meaghan Smith.
In examining how states have used federal funds for IT projects and CMS’s role in overseeing them, the non-partisan GAO found that marketplaces reported spending nearly 89 percent of the funds on “IT contracts,” but that the CMS is still trying to track states’ IT spending in more detail.
The GAO urged CMS to improve its existing oversight roles and responsibilities and ensure that senior executives adequately review and approve funding decisions.
And despite all the money issued to states specifically for IT use, the GAO underscored an array of problems – from poor system performance to software and hardware problems – plaguing the state-based and federally run marketplaces.
According to Dennis Santiago, risk analyst and director of the Bank Monitor Division for Total Bank Solutions, the uncertainty doesn’t necessarily mean the money was misused.
“What is missing is the proof that diversions did or did not occur, and if so where,” he said. “IT costs are only part of the process. It could be legitimate, classic pocket lining at work – or some of both.”