Ryan vows 'bottom up' effort to unite GOP but signals no to helping Democrats on immigration, family leave

New House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan on Sunday renewed his vow to unify congressional Republicans but suggested no compromises with congressional Democrats on their push for immigration reform or passage of a family leave act.
The Wisconsin Republican told “Fox News Sunday” that he would change how House Republicans “do business” by ending the top-down leadership system and said the party needs a more “long-term” vision.
However, Ryan, who was elected Thursday to the speakership post, also called Democrat-backed paid family leave another federal entitlement.
“I don’t think people asked me to be speaker so I can take more money from hard-working taxpayers, so I can create some new federal entitlement,” he said.
Ryan also disagreed with all-out attempts by Washington Democrats in recent weeks to portray him as hypocritical for not supporting family leave legislation but insisting that he’d take the speakership post only if he was able to return to Wisconsin on weekends to be with his young family.
The passage of such legislation -- which would include paid maturity leave for female workers -- has been a priority for 2016 Democratic presidential candidates.

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• Paul Ryan 'turns the page' for 'broken' House

And for the past couple of weeks, party leaders have tried to show Ryan and 2016 GOP presidential candidates’ opposition to the idea through rallies in Ryan’s home state, on social media and in key voting states.
“You deserve quality time with your family,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida, said at a women’s forum two weeks ago in Washington. “But every mother and father in America deserves that time too. And we Democrats will be loud and clear in calling on you to make paid family leave a priority at the outset of your speakership.”
Ryan said Sunday: “So if you’re asking me, because I want to … continue being the best dad and husband and speaker … means I should sign up for some new, unfunded entitlement, that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Ryan’s sharpest message for Democrats was perhaps on the issue of comprehensive reform for the U.S. immigration system, led by President Obama.
Ryan, who appeared on the five major Sunday political talk shows, said no such legislation will get passed during the president’s remaining 14 months in office.
“We can’t trust this president on immigration reform,” Ryan told Fox News. “He has already proven untrustworthy because he’s tried to circumvent the legislative process with is executive orders.”
However, Ryan allowed that Democrats and Republicans could achieve consensus on the issues of border security and enforcing fines for violating federal immigration laws. He also said that no immigration-reform bills would reach the House floor unless they have support from the majority of chamber Republicans.
On the issue of uniting the House Republican conference, Ryan told Fox News:  “We have to show people where we’re going and what horizon we’re shooting for. I think we’ve been bold on tactics but not on policy.”
Ryan was voted in as new speaker after a tumultuous several weeks in which dissent among the House Republican conference’s most conservative members led to Ohio GOP Rep. John Boehner resigning from the speakership.
Ryan and Republican leaders insist Ryan was recruited for the job and accepted only after forming some consensus with the conservative caucus.
“I cannot pick up where John Boehner left off,” Ryan said Sunday, in the pre-taped Fox News interview. “I can’t do things the same way. We have to do things differently.
Among the concerns raised by the conservative caucus and other rank-and-file members are: their legislation not getting a full floor vote and who gets appointed to lead the committees.
A GOP House member told FoxNews.com on Friday that Ryan agrees that more legislation should come from the committees.
And on Sunday, Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said, “We need to get Congress working like it was intended to by our founders, a bottom-up, consensus driven process.”
Ryan repeated that he didn’t agree with the process that last week led to the two-year budget deal, which was driven by GOP House leaders, passed with full Democrat support but few Republican votes.
He said the process “stunk” but argued that members had to agree to the proposal, which included spending and borrowing increases, because of critical Nov. 3 and Dec. 11 deadlines.
“We fight over tactics because we don’t have a vision,” Ryan said. “Leadership presented us with a bill a few days beforehand.”
He also dismissed talk that he might have to attack Republicans in the GOP-run Senate for failing, as some argue, to pass legislation coming from the House.
“I don’t think we throw any Republicans under the bus,” Ryan said. “I was not asked to dis-unify the Republican Party in the Congress. … I wasn’t made dictator of the House. I was made speaker of the House.”

Breaking away? GOP campaigns push for debate changes, may hold unsanctioned events

Republican presidential campaigns agreed Sunday to side-step party leaders and try to negotiate directly with television networks over the ground rules for the remaining debates following controversy over last week's CNBC event.
At least one campaign refused to rule out holding debates that are unsanctioned by the Republican National Committee, with Ben Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett saying that he didn't think it would be hard to buy television airtime for such an event.
Representatives from more than a dozen campaigns met behind closed doors for nearly two hours Sunday night in suburban Washington, a meeting that was not expected to yield many results given the competing interests of several candidates. Yet they emerged having agreed to several changes to be outlined in a letter to debate hosts in the coming days.
Bennett said the demanded changes include largely bypassing the RNC in coordinating with network hosts, mandatory opening and closing statements, an equal number of questions for the candidates, and pre-approval of on-screen graphics.
"The amazing part for me was how friendly the meeting was," Bennett said, noting the private gathering was held in a private room marked "family meeting." "Everybody was cordial. We all agreed we need to have these meetings more regularly."
The GOP's most recent debate in Boulder, Colo., on Wednesday night, drew harsh criticism from the campaigns and GOP officials alike. Afterward, some candidates complained that the questions were not substantive enough; others wanted more air time or the chance to deliver opening and closing statements.

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• Fiorina talks CNBC debate, Clinton, attack from 'The View'

GOP chairman Reince Priebus decided to suspend a partnership with NBC News and its properties on a debate set for February, but that wasn't enough to satisfy the frustrated campaigns.
"We need to mature in the way that we do these debates if they're going to be useful to the American people," Carson told ABC's "This Week."
While the campaigns agreed to the changes in principle Sunday night, the media companies that host the debates are under no obligation to adopt them. Bennett suggested that campaigns could boycott debates to get their way.
"The only leverage we have is to not come," he said.
The pushback comes despite a high-profile effort by the Republican National Committee to improve the debate process going into the 2016 election season. The party said the 2012 debate schedule promoted too much fighting among candidates, so for 2016, the RNC dramatically reduced the number of debates for this election and played a leading role in coordinating network hosts and even moderators, in some cases.
Three debates remain before the first nomination contest, the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1; the next one is scheduled for Nov. 10 in Milwaukee. The RNC has sanctioned five debates after the caucuses.
"What it really comes down to is the candidates want to have more control of the ability to negotiate with the networks," Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said after the meeting.
While organizers of the meeting were not including the RNC, the party has been in regular communication with campaigns about their concerns.
Shortly before the meeting, the RNC appointed Sean Cairncross, the committee's chief operating officer, to take the lead in negotiating with the networks. It's unclear, however, what role he'll play should the campaigns get their way.
"This is the first step in the process of understanding what the candidates want, and then we need to have a more specific conversation about NBC," RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer said Sunday ahead of the meeting. "We need to start a process. Tonight's the first step."
Some candidates are trying to use the debate discord to their advantage -- none more than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Campaigning in Iowa this weekend, he slammed the CNBC debate moderators for asking questions in a way that he said "illustrate why the American people don't trust the media." He was cheered after calling for future debates to be moderated by conservatives such as radio host Rush Limbaugh.

'Colossal waste': Watchdog slams $43M, US-funded gas station in Afghanistan

It might be the world's most expensive gas station — not to mention a gross misuse of taxpayer money, according to a top government watchdog.
The lead oversight team monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan has found the Department of Defense spent $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan that should have cost roughly $500,000. The discovery came as part of a broader investigation into allegations of criminal activity within the DOD's premiere program to kick-start the Afghan economy.
"It's fright-night at the Pentagon," John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), told FoxNews.com, calling the spending "outrageous to the taxpayer."
At issue is spending by the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations, known as TFBSO or the Task Force, which ended in March 2015. But most alarming, according to Sopko, is the DOD's failure to answer questions about the $800 million program and its claim the Task Force's employees no longer work for the DOD.
"I have never in my lifetime seen the Department of Defense or any government agency clam up and claim they don't know anything about a program," said Sopko, a former federal prosecutor appointed by President Obama in 2012 to watch over spending in Afghanistan.
"Who's in charge? Why won't they talk?" he said. "We have received more allegations about this program than we have received about any other program in Afghanistan."
In a report released Monday, SIGAR detailed how TFBSO's Downstream Gas Utilization Project set out to build a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station in the Afghan city of Sheberghan in 2011. The U.S. Geological Survey found in 2006 that northern Afghanistan is rich in natural gas reserves, and the Task Force sought to make the compressed natural gas commercially viable by constructing the facility -- and more broadly, helping to reduce the war-torn country's dependence on costly imported gas.
The Task Force struck a contract with Central Asian Engineering, which received just under $3 million from the U.S. government to construct the Sheberghan gas station. Sopko noted the cost of building a similar gas station in neighboring Pakistan is no more than $500,000.
But the final tab in Sheberghan would turn out to be astronomically higher.
The Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to "fund the construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station," the U.S. military told SIGAR -- with "approximately $12.3 million in direct costs and $30 million in overhead costs."
Who approved all that funding and why are questions the DOD will not answer, according to Sopko.
In an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Sopko asked why no one at the DOD could speak about the nearly-billion dollar TFBSO program, which had reported directly to Carter.
"Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago," Sopko wrote. "Nevertheless, I intend to continue our inquiry."
Sopko was responding in part to a June 17 letter from Brian McKeon, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy. McKeon had told Sopko in response to earlier questions that "the closure of TFBSO in March 2015 and departure of all its employees have resulted in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) no longer possessing the personnel expertise to address these questions or to assess properly the TFBSO information and documentation retained by WHS in the OSD Executive Archive."
"It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the Department of Defense," Sopko told FoxNews.com. "It’s almost like it's pixie dust."
SIGAR said it is unable to determine whether the CNG station in Sheberghan is currently operational. But government documents obtained by the oversight team show that Qashqari Oil and Gas Services -- the business that took over the station in 2014 -- did not renew its business license six months later, in November 2014.
The TFBSO was originally created by the DOD to revitalize Iraq's economy after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The program was redirected to Afghanistan in 2009 to lead projects supporting economic development.
Sopko said his office has received "numerous allegations" of criminal activity by the Task Force from former employees as well as "current and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and contractors." He declined to elaborate on the specifics of the accusations.
A review by FoxNews.com shows at least one employee -- Joseph Catalino, the former head of the Task Force -- is still employed by the Defense Department in a senior role.
According to a congressional source, Catalino was in charge of TFBSO in Afghanistan before beginning work in June as a senior adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. The DOD's personnel office confirmed Catalino's employment and current job title.

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March 10, 2014: Former TFBSO Director Joseph Catalino is seen speaking at an event at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington, D.C. (The Embassy of Afghanistan)

A senior defense official, speaking on background, said Sopko and his team have access to extensive records archived with Washington Headquarters Services (WHS), and he disputed any suggestion of a deliberate effort by the DOD to conceal information.
The official, however, told FoxNews.com he could not name any current DOD employees with detailed knowledge of the gas station project and said decisions made on its construction predated Catalino’s time as head of the Task Force. The official said he did not know whether the gas station was currently functional.
Sopko said billions of U.S. dollars have been wasted to date in Afghanistan. In its quarterly report to Congress, released Friday, SIGAR said the U.S. has provided $8.4 billion for counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2002, yet the country remains the world's leading producer of opium.
SIGAR's report on the $43 million gas station spurred outrage among U.S. lawmakers in both parties who called for a thorough investigation into the program's finances.
"There's few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this genuinely shocked me."
"It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs more than 8,000 percent more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational," said McCaskill, who penned a letter to Carter on Monday demanding information. "Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that’s been wasted — an unacceptable lack of transparency that I’ll be thoroughly investigating."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, echoed McCaskill's call for transparency and said, "Under the law, government employees are not authorized to spend tax dollars without proper documentation like contracts, invoices, receiving reports and payment vouchers."
"If those documents don't exist, that's a huge problem," Grassley said. "The Defense Department needs to come clean, drop the obfuscation, and hold people responsible for a colossal waste of tax dollars."

San Francisco Cartoon

Sheriff is up from re-election, no joke.

Ted Cruz Brings in Huge Fundraising Numbers After Amazing Performance in CNBC Debate

There’s little doubt in my mind Sen. Ted Cruz totally OWNED the GOP debate on CNBC Wednesday night, completely dismantling the media and the moderators in an inspiring moment that will no doubt be talked about for years to come.
While Cruz’s comments will likely cause him to surge a bit in the polls — we’ll know for sure in a few days — the Texas senator saw another kind of spike due to his performance last night.
Cruz’s fundraising efforts drew in a whopping $772,000 after the debate.
Here are the details.

Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign says it is raking in some major cash after Wednesday’s Republican debate in Colorado.
Cruz brought in $772,000 as of midnight Wednesday, a campaign aide told NBC News.
The Texas senator had one of the most memorable moments of the third GOP debate when he lambasted the CNBC moderators for their questions.
“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said to raucous applause. “This is not a cage match.”

Fundraising is definitely one of the strong points of Cruz’s campaign as is evidenced by the $1 million he brought in just 100 hours after the first debate in August.
While Cruz has sort of chugged along in the polls, I think Wednesday night was his break out moment, as he seized an opportunity to smack the liberal media, proving he’s a man who will stand on principle, regardless of the consequences.
The fact people — grassroots kind of folk — are willing to shell out so much money to the guy, is proof he resonates with a great deal of Americans, he just hasn’t gotten the chance to really express what’s he about in the debates.
Until now.
With impressive fundraising numbers like these, it’ll be interesting to see what his poll numbers look like after that epic debate line.
Trump and Carson are in for some competition!      http://www.youngcons.com/

Donald Trump vows to take on ‘corrupt’ Veterans Affairs

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a new pitch Saturday to veterans,  promising them that he’ll take on the “corrupt” and incompetent” Department of Veterans Affairs.
Trump told a crowd of supporters in front of the U.S.S. Wisconsin in Norfolk, Va., that the department is mismanaged and "not efficient.”
“We're going to replace them with more effective ones to get our veterans working, which is what they want to do,” Trump said. “We're going to transform the VA to meet the needs of the current veterans. Exposing and addressing the VA's inefficiencies and shortcomings will be rewarded, not punished. We're going to find out why its' going bad and we're going to fix it."
The Trump campaign released a more detailed policy plan after the rally.
"Over 300,000 veterans died waiting for care,” the statement in part read. “Corruption and incompetence were excused. Politicians in Washington have done too little too slowly to fix it."
The Department of Veterans Affairs didn't immediately return a FoxNews.com request for comment.
A 2012 Government Accountability Office report found that the Veterans Health Administration, a component of the VA had labeled their outpatient medical-appointment wait times as "unreliable."
In the wake of a congressional investigation into the agency's mishaps, Congress last year approved a $16.3 billion reform package to overhaul the department's actions.
Though mismanagement has seemed to continue at the VA. This July, officials announced they couldn't count how many veterans died while waiting to sign up for health care benefits.
Since announcing his White House run, Trump has touted his support for helping veterans. As a businessman, he says his experience can help improve the ability for those leaving the battlefield to find work.
"We're going to increase funding for job training and services for companies hiring veterans, and they're getting a great deal because they get incentive and they hire the best people," he told supporters. "We're going to give educational support ... service members have learned valuable skills in the military. But many need help understanding how to apply those skills in civilian life ... others know how to apply those skills, but need help connecting with good jobs to support their families.”
The current job market for veterans appears to be stronger than for the wider public.
While the national unemployment rate sits at 5.1 percent, the rate for all veterans is lower than the national average at 4.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Though, specifically for veterans who enlisted after the September 11th terror attacks, the figure is slightly higher at 4.7 percent.
“The VA is lacking two things -- accountability and managers who understand how to manage an enterprise," retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who served more than 30 years in the military, said Saturday. "Should Trump bring in 'best practices' of what has worked in his Trump business empire, there is no doubt that he could not make the current situation in the VA any worse -- and chances are he could actually move the agency toward accountability and efficiency."
Highlights of the policy plan also include all veterans eligible for VA health care being allowed to bring their veteran’s ID card to any doctor or care facility that accepts Medicare to get the care they need immediately. Another is to increase funding for job training and placement services (including incentives for companies hiring veterans), educational support and business loans.

Trump wants to reform the VA by firing “the corrupt and incompetent VA executives that let our veterans down,” according to his plan.
“Under a Trump Administration, there will be no job security for VA executives that enabled or overlooked corruption and incompetence,” the policy statements says.

Email shows Clinton's State Department cautioned about blaming Benghazi attack on video

Look at all the Cattle in the background.

Hillary Clinton and other State Department officials were apparently warned by overseas U.S. diplomats about blaming the 2012 Benghazi terror strikes on an “inflammatory” Internet video, according to an email released Saturday by House Republicans probing the fatal attacks.
The email was sent three days after the fatal Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and two days before then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice went on TV to say the attacks were inspired by the anti-Islamic video.
The email -- released by the GOP-led House Select Committee on Benghazi -- was sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, to the State Department, which Clinton led from 2009 to 2013. But the names of the exact sender and receiver have been redacted.
“The film’s not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in the region,” the unknown sender wrote. “And it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest, which escalated into violence.
“It is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, not conflate, the events in other countries with this well planned attack by militant extremists.”
The official writes the suggestion to Washington was based on monitoring the Libyan media, comments on such social media sites as Facebook and Twitter and talking to residents, who expressed “sorrow” about the attacks and “anger” toward the attackers.
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attacks.
Clinton, now the front-running 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, has testified at least twice before Congress on the Benghazi matter, including earlier this month before the select committee.
When asked during a 2013 Senate hearing about what sparked the attacks, Clinton responded: “The fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?"
“It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.”
On Saturday, select committee spokesman Matt Wolking told FoxNews.com that the email was not part of the batch released Friday by the State Department.
“This email shows that State Department staff privately raised serious concerns about conflating the terrorist attacks in Benghazi with a video,” he also said in a statement, “even as the secretary of state and other Obama administration officials continued to do so publicly.”
Wolking also argued that a former CIA chief said intelligence analysts never said the video was a factor.
“So while Secretary Clinton may use the ‘fog of war’ as a convenient excuse for why she said one thing in private and something else in public, the reality is that’s just another smokescreen,” Wolking said.

San Francisco sheriff at center of sanctuary city debate faces reelection

SAN FRANCISCO –  Only two incumbent San Francisco sheriffs have lost re-election in the last 60 years -- but Ross Mirkarimi is facing a tough battle Tuesday to avoid being the third.
The San Francisco sheriff's office has been in the spotlight since a Mexican national in the country illegally was accused in the fatal shooting of a San Francisco woman this summer. The man had been released from Mirkarimi's jail even though federal immigration officials had requested that he be detained.
Also, Mirkarimi has endured a series of personal and official embarrassments, including having his driver's license briefly suspended and flunking a marksmanship test that prevents him from carrying a service weapon.
"I'm in the redemption industry," said Mirkarimi, 54, who launched the Green Party in California before changing his voter registration to Democrat.  "I believe in second chances."
His opponent, retired sheriff's official Vicki Hennessy, 62, is running a low-key campaign -- her first -- hoping to capitalize on Mirkarimi's negative image.
"The department needs leadership," Hennessy said. "It needs its credibility restored."
The latest campaign contribution disclosures show that she has raised $286,000 to his $109,000 and won the endorsements of the unions representing the county jail's sworn officers. Hennessy is also supported by the mayor.
Mirkarimi, who served for eight years on the city's Board of Supervisors, has won the endorsement of the previous sheriff, who served for 32 years before retiring in 2011.  Former Mayor Art Agnos also has endorsed Mirkarimi, who points to the success of the jail's high school and the dramatic reduction of the inmate population as major accomplishments.
Hennessy said she was encouraged to enter the race by Mayor Ed Lee and others because of Mirkarimi's stumbles, which began when he bruised his wife's arm during a New Year's Eve argument in 2011.
"I never expected to run," said Hennessy, who joined the sheriff's department in 1975 and rose to chief deputy, the third-highest ranking position in the office. The San Francisco native retired five years ago after directing the city's emergency services agency. She is married to a retired San Francisco police officer and mother to an adult son and daughter.
Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor false imprisonment charge on March 13, 2012, and was placed on three years of probation. Lee suspended him a week later, saying he intended to remove him permanently. Lee appointed Hennessy as interim sheriff until the San Francisco Board of Supervisors narrowly rejected Lee's attempt to remove Mirkarimi from office in October 2012.
Today, Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, campaign together at commuter train stops, coffee shops and marijuana dispensaries.
Lopez opposed the prosecution of her husband, saying the criminal case was politically motivated.
"I am not a victim," said Lopez, a Venezuelan-born actress who turned the incident into a one-woman play. The couple has a 6-year-old son.
The pivotal issue in the race is the city's policy of shielding people in the country illegally from the reach of federal immigration officials. Mirkarimi's interpretation of the policy came under scrutiny following the March jail release of an inmate despite a federal immigration request to detain him for possible deportation.  A few months later on July 2, the Mexican national is alleged to have shot to death Kate Steinle, 32, as she walked with her father along San Francisco's waterfront.
Mirkarimi said city law prohibits the department from cooperating with federal immigration officials unless they have a warrant, a position criticized by presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton along with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and the mayor.
Hennessy said the sheriff's order barring the San Francisco jail from cooperating with immigration officials is misguided. There are cases, she said, when federal immigration officials should be notified that the jail is about to release an inmate who is in the country illegally.
But Hennessy said there are other problems with the department.
Since the shooting of Steinle, Mirkarimi has had his driver's license briefly suspended for failing to properly report a minor accident while driving a department-issued car, and he flunked a marksmanship test.
Before those two incidents, a drug gang leader escaped from jail, and guards were accused of staging and gambling on inmate fights.
In November 2014, Mirkarimi apologized for the bungled search for a San Francisco General Hospital patient whose body was found in a stairwell weeks after she wandered from her room. The sheriff is in charge of the hospital's security, but deputies didn't search the building until nine days after her disappearance. The city paid the patient's family $3 million to settle a lawsuit.
Political consultant Dan Newman and other analysts say the election is Hennessy's to lose because of Mirkarimi's problems.
"He imploded before he started," Newman said. "Then he continued with a string of screw ups."