Hill Republicans move to 'pause' Syrian refugee effort, with states having limited say

Most U.S. governors have made clear they don’t want Syrian refugees in their states after the deadly Paris terror attacks, but only Congress appears to have the authority to stop President Obama’s plan. 
And Capitol Hill lawmakers are moving swiftly. 
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday both called for a “pause” in the administration’s refugee plan, which includes resettling 10,000 Syrian civil war refugees through 2016.
“Right in front of us is a refugee situation that requires a pause,” Ryan, R-Wis., said on Capitol Hill. “Our nation has always been welcoming, but we cannot let terrorists take advantage. ... This is about national security.”
He gave no specific details but said a task force is working on legislation, adding: "It's better to be safe than to be sorry."
A total of 30 governors, including one Democrat, so far have expressed opposition to the plan in the wake of Friday's attacks, executed by at least one suspected Syrian refugee with ties to the Islamic State terror group and who perhaps slipped through Europe’s vetting process.
However, scholars and legal experts acknowledge that governors have little if any power to stop refugees from entering their states, citing the Refugee Act of 1980 which gives the federal government the authority.
“Immigration is a federal responsibility,” James Carafano, a national security and foreign policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday. “States cannot say, ‘You cannot come into this country.’ But they can say that they’re not going to part with state resources. They can do that.”
The White House said late Tuesday that Chief of Staff Denis McDonough hosted a call with 34 governors that included an "extensive" question and answer session among administration officials. Of the 34 governors on the call, 13 asked questions, according to the White House.
Administration officials also reiterated that President Obama's top priority is "the safety of the American people."
"Even as the United States accepts more refugees-including Syrians-we do so only after they undergo the most rigorous screening and security vetting of any category of traveler to the United States," the White House said.
Ryan’s announcement followed a flurry of similar proposals from Republican senators, including at least two presidential candidates, following the Paris attacks in which 129 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured.
On Monday, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions called on Senate appropriators to cancel the "blank check" for overall U.S. refugee-resettlement efforts that would be included in a bill to fund the federal government after Dec. 11.
Sessions argues the overall plan calls for resettling at least 85,000 more refugees worldwide and “an unlimited amount of money to be spent on lifetime welfare and benefits … without a penny of offsets.”
He cited a Heritage Foundation study that forecast the total cost of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees at roughly $6.5 billion. Sessions was joined Tuesday by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., in calling for a provision in the "omnibus" spending bill to block the funding unless and until Congress votes separately to authorize it and offset its costs.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a presidential candidate, in September expressed his concern about the Syrian refugee program. In a letter to top administration officials, he questioned whether the refugees were being properly vetted for ties to the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups.
On Monday, Cruz promised legislation to keep Muslim Syrian refugees out of the United States.
He told CNN that President Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s plan bring them into this country after what happened in Paris “is nothing short of lunacy.”
More than 2,000 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S. already since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, another of the Senate’s GOP White House candidates, on Monday also announced legislation that would suspend issuing visas in countries “with a high risk of terrorism” and impose a waiting period for background checks on visas being issued in other countries until Americans can be assured terrorists cannot enter the country through the U.S. immigration and visa system.
“The time has come to stop terrorists from walking in our front door,” said Paul, who first drafted the legislation in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, committed by two refugees.
Ryan’s announcement also came just hours after former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich told WMAL Radio that Congress should try to block the Obama refugee plan by withholding federal funding in the so-called “continuing resolution” next month.
Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, already has been trying to include a rider in the spending resolution that would keep Obama from using taxpayer money to resettle Syrian refugees until the U.S. intelligence community approves the program.

Lesbian mother asks Supreme Court to reverse Ala. custody ruling

A lesbian mother in Alabama filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, asking it to review her case after state judges ruled she has no legal parental rights over the children she says she helped raise.
The woman, known in court filings by her initials V.L, petitioned the high court to step in after the Alabama Supreme Court held that she was not the legal parent to the three children she shares with her ex-partner (who gave birth to them by artificial insemination).
The court also held that she had no visitation rights now that the two adults, who never legally married, had split after a 16-year-relationship. The pair had temporarily moved to Georgia where they believed the state would be more open to granting parental rights to both of them.
The Alabama justices said, "Georgia law makes no provision for a non-spouse to adopt a child without first terminating the parental rights of the current parents."
While the Georgia court did recognize those rights, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Georgia essentially broke its own laws by recognizing them and that subsequently the suing partner has no legal parental rights.
Cathy Sakimura, of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the Alabama decision "terrifying" and said it illustrates the continued legal challenges facing gay and lesbian parents. She said the Alabama court had no legal authority to second-guess the decision of the Georgia court that had granted the adoption.
"As a result of that serious constitutional violation, the children in this case have been wrongly separated from one of their parents, and the stability of adoption judgments across the country has been called into question," Sakimura said.
Sakimura said her client helped raise the children, now ages 10 to 12, since their births, but isn't allowed to see the children because of the court decision.
Her ex-partner fought her visitation saying the couple lived in Alabama, but only rented a home in Georgia because they believed the court there to be friendlier to adoption petitions by gay couples.
The case will go to Justice Thomas, who can decide alone or refer to the full Court for a decision.  It was considered likely he’ll ask the other side to provide a response before a ruling.
The Alabama Supreme Court earlier this year directed probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to gay couples even though a federal judge ruled the state's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. The directive brought a stop to the weddings until the U.S. Supreme Court said gay and lesbian people have a fundamental right to marry.

Five terror suspects arrested, 2 dead in raid targeting Paris attack mastermind

Five terror suspects were arrested Wednesday morning and two others were killed, including a woman wearing a suicide vest who blew herself up after police launched a raid targeting the alleged mastermind of last Friday's massacre in Paris.
The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement that three of the five were arrested by SWAT teams in an apartment in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, while two others were detained nearby. The statement did not identify the arrested suspects or the two who died. As of 9:30 a.m. local time, at least one other person was still holed up in the apartment, more than five hours after the raid began.
Earlier Wednesday, a senior police official told the Associated Press he believed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian ISIS militant, was inside the apartment with five other heavily armed people. The official, who was informed routinely about the operation, said scores of police stormed the building and were met with unexpectedly violent resistance.
Another police official told AP that four police officers were injured in the confrontation. The severity of their injuries was not known.
Police vans and fire trucks rushed to the scene north of Paris, just over a mile from the Stade de France stadium, which was targeted by three suicide bombers during Friday's attacks. Riot police cleared people from the streets, pointing guns at curious residents to move them off the roads.
Residents said an initial explosion shook the neighborhood at about 4 a.m. (10 p.m. EST).
"Then there was second big explosion. Then two more explosions. There was an hour of gunfire," said Baptiste Marie, a 26-year-old independent journalist who lives in the neighborhood.
Another witness, Amine Guizani, said he heard the sound of grenades and automatic gunfire.
"They were shooting for an hour. Nonstop. There were grenades. It was going, stopping. Kalashnikovs. Starting again," Guizani said.
Sporadic bangs and explosions continued, and at 7:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. EST) at least seven explosions shook the center of Saint-Denis. Associated Press reporters at the scene could hear what sounded like grenade blasts from the direction of the standoff.
One local resident posted a 10-second video of the scene on her street near the siege. A series of bangs sounding like automatic weapons fire could be heard. The message accompanying the tweet translates to "It's an intervention by police ... street closed, officers, etc."
Investigators have identified 27-year-old Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as the chief architect of the attacks that killed 129 and wounded at least 350 others.
 Seven attackers died in Friday's gun-and-bomb rampage through Paris. Police had said before the raids that they were hunting for two fugitives suspected of taking part as well as any accomplices. That would bring the number of attackers to at least nine.
French authorities had previously said that at least eight people were directly involved in the bloodshed: seven who died in the attacks and one who got away and slipped across the border to Belgium.
However, there have been gaps in officials' public statements, which have never fully disclosed how many attackers took part in the deadly rampage.
On Tuesday, officials said they now believe at least one other attacker was involved and they were working to identify and track down that suspect. Three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details about the ongoing investigation.
Surveillance video obtained by the AP also indicated that a team of three attackers carried out the shootings at one of the cafes. The video was among evidence authorities used in concluding that at least one other attacker was at large, the French officials indicated.
The brief clip shows two black-clad gunmen with automatic weapons calmly firing on the bar then returning toward a waiting car, whose driver was maneuvering behind them. Authorities believe the car is the same black SEAT-make vehicle that was found Saturday with three Kalashnikovs inside.
Police have identified one subject of their manhunt as Salah Abdeslam, whom French police accidentally permitted to cross into Belgium on Saturday. One of his brothers, Brahim, blew himself up in Paris.

bernie sanders cartoon

HILLARY CAN’T ESCAPE OBAMA ON ISIS
In a debate held one day after the worst terror attack in the West since 2004, the most noteworthy remarks presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton made about Islamist terrorism were to excuse ties to Wall St.

No, seriously.

Clinton said her close relationship with the financial sector grew out of her work to help them rebuild after 9/11. “It was good for the economy,” she said. “And it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”

So, by that logic, her huge personal and political buckraking was kind of a rebuke to the terrorists, itself. Her status as a Wall St. favorite certainly predates 9/11, but she suggested that the relationship she forged in those dark days spurred an even greater outpouring of support and gratitude in the form of checks.

Now, this says a great deal about Clinton’s meagre gifts as a politician. But it also tells you something about where her party’s priorities are.

Invoking 9/11 is something that ought to be done only when relevant, which Clinton’s was not, and only when facing oblivion. In that case, Clinton was right. Her exposure on the issue of banker nuzzling is much higher in the Democratic primary than the issue of Islamist terrorism.

Republicans today can talk of little else than national security, Paris, refugees and ISIS. But Democrats, even a day after the attacks, were seemingly eager to get off the subjects. The campaign of also-ran Sen. Bernie Sanders was proud to have fought to have limited the amount of the discussion that would involve national security.

Woof.

But Sanders is probably right. There’s not a lot of sense in debating the issue among Democrats since they are in substantial agreement with President Obama. While both Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley tried to look for ways to draw decorous differences with Obama, they are in tune with his larger strategy of containing ISIS and waiting for the aspiring caliphate to die of asphyxiation or, perhaps, boredom.

Clinton has some differences of opinion with Obama, but she isn’t free to discuss them. Not only would she risk backlash from liberals and raise Obama’s ire, but, as moderator John Dickerson ably pointed out, the last foreign intervention Clinton encouraged, the regime change plan for Libya, is a thoroughgoing disaster.

So even as Clinton should be moving beyond Obama’s reach and into a no-contest Democratic nomination, he holds this power over her: If she gets too squirmy on his foreign policy, he will leave her to the foreign policy wolves on the right and left.

And on the issue that will dominate the coming week or more of the campaign – how many, if any Syrian refugees the U.S. should accept – Clinton will not be able to pioneer a position that might be attractive to voters. She will have to stand by Obama and say that she also thinks accepting tens of thousands of refugees from Syria is the right thing to do.

And you know the refugee issue is key to Obama. The only emotion beyond annoyance that he displayed in his first press conference after Paris was anger at Sen. Ted Cruz, who has suggested a religious test for the refugees in order to screen out Muslims, and Sen. Marco Rubio, who simply wants to stop the flow altogether.

Israel bans Islamist party, claiming it is inciting violence

JERUSALEM –  Israel announced Tuesday it has outlawed an Islamist party accused of inciting violence among the country's Arab citizens, as part of measures to stamp out a two month-long deadly escalation.
The government declared the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement of Israel illegal, saying its activists could be subject to arrest if they violate the ban.
The party, which provides religious and educational services for Israeli Arabs, routinely accuses Israel of trying to take over a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, a charge Israel denies. The site is at the heart of the latest surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence.
After the decision, Israeli forces searched more than a dozen of the group's offices around the country, seizing computers, files and funds, police said. Authorities also froze its bank accounts and said that 17 organizations affiliated with the party were served with orders to close down.
Israel's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan linked the decision to the attacks in Paris, saying in a statement that "Israel must act as an example and spearhead the struggle against radical Islam whose emissaries we saw massacring innocent people in Paris" and elsewhere.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "the goal is to stop the dangerous incitement at home and prevent harm to innocent life."
Radical cleric Raed Salah, the group's leader, was defiant, saying his party would fight the measure and continue its mission.
"All these measures done by the Israeli establishment are oppressive and condemned," Salah said in a statement, adding that he and two other party leaders were summoned to police questioning.
Separately, Salah is set to start an 11-month jail term later this month in connection with incitement charges from a 2007 sermon.
The ban sparked outrage among Arab leaders and lawmakers who condemned the move.
Mohammed Barakeh, the head of an umbrella group of Arab Israeli political parties and community leaders, called the decision "an unjustified draconian step." The umbrella organization was set to hold an emergency meeting about the ban.
The Jerusalem hilltop compound, holy to both Jews and Muslims, houses the Al-Aqsa mosque and is the third holiest site in Islam. It is the holiest site in Judaism and was home to the biblical Jewish Temples.
The current round of violence erupted in mid-September over rumors that Israel was trying to expand Jewish presence at the Jerusalem shrine and spread to the West Bank, Israeli cities and the Gaza border. Palestinian attacks, mainly stabbings, have killed 14 Israelis, and at least 83 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including 51 Israel says were involved in assaults. The rest were killed in clashes with security forces.
Salah has alleged in speeches and annual rallies under the heading "Al-Aqsa is in Danger" that Israel plans to expand its control there.
Since 2001, the Islamic Movement has bused tens of thousands of supporters to the mosque compound every year to strengthen the Muslim presence.
Several years ago, the movement helped form groups of male and female activists, known as "Morabitoun" -- loosely translated as defenders of Islamic lands -- who spend hours each weekday at the shrine trying to disrupt visits by Jews.
During periods of tension, police at times block busloads of Islamic Movement supporters from Jerusalem. Earlier this year, Israel outlawed three associations suspected of funding the Morabitoun and later declared the groups illegal.
Israel says the violence is the result of incitement from Palestinian leaders and has blamed the Islamic Movement for fanning the flames among the country's Arabs. The Palestinians say the violence stems from frustration over nearly half a century of Israeli occupation.
In its struggle to contain the violence, Israel has beefed up security across the country, sending hundreds of soldiers to back up police, and setting up checkpoints and concrete barriers in Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, where many of the attackers have come from.

Trump’s attacks on Carson’s 'crap': Why he’s not backing down

When a politician engages in inflammatory rhetoric, his aides often try to walk it back, tone it down, claim things were taken out of context, followed by a terse regret-if-anyone-was-offended statement.
Not with Donald Trump.
When Trump delivered a 95-minute rant in Iowa last week, kicking the “crap” (to use one of his favorite words) out of Ben Carson, his camp was thrilled.
A senior Trump adviser told me the candidate wouldn’t take back a single word. Carson’s life story is riddled with fallacies, as the Trump camp sees it, and the burden is on the doctor to prove that any questionable incidents happened.
Trump is the guy who’s not afraid to touch the third rail, the adviser says, even if it flies in the face of political correctness.
In my view, the burden is on Carson’s critics to disprove his account of events from his past. Politico, CNN and the Wall Street Journal all fell short with stories that were underreported or overhyped.
There was no urgent need for Trump to pile on, giving the media’s role in driving these stories. But he has an unerring instinct for an opponent’s weakness.
So using a word from Carson’s autobiography to describe his temper as a teenager, Trump told the crowd: “He said he's pathological and got a pathological disease. I don't want a person who's got pathological disease. If you're pathological, there's no cure for that, folks. I did one of the shows today, I said that if you're a child molester, a sick puppy, there's no cure for that.”
Child molester? That’s quite a pivot.
Then he mocked the stabbing story, grabbing his belt, his voice dripping with sarcasm: “He took a knife and went after a friend and lunged but low and behold it hit the belt and the knife broke. Give me a break.”
And he questioned whether the people of Iowa, and the country, were “stupid” to “believe this crap.”
The media’s tone in reporting on this has ranged from disapproval to disbelief—this time he’s gone too far, he was desperate, he was way over the top. And it was over the top. Take this New York Times headline: “Some See Attacks by Donald Trump As Start of His Downfall.” Some see—I wonder who.
How many times have we been through these media predictions of Trump’s imminent demise? What Trump’s fans love about him is that he does go too far, that he entertains by being outrageous, because they see that as thumbing his nose at a discredited political establishment.
Carson, who has had very tough words for the media and their "lies," always deflects questions about Trump’s assaults. When I interviewed him last week, he dialed things down by calmly explaining the meaning of the word pathological.
At a news conference on Friday, he talked about a “gratuitous attack” without using Trump’s name. He also invoked a signature Bill Clinton phrase from the 1992 campaign, “the politics of personal destruction.”
It would tarnish Carson’s brand to get into a street fight with Trump, who, in rhetorical terms, always carries a knife. And while Carson’s reticence often frustrates reporters, that calm, measured approach is at the heart of his appeal to voters.
Why would a candidate volunteer that he tried to knife someone and almost hit his mother in the head with a hammer? Because his is a story of redemption. He found religion a half century ago, turned his life around and became a leading neurosurgeon.
When I asked him about his account of his teenage years, Carson said: “Well, I believe in full disclosure, and if I hadn't revealed that, then that would have been a story. Because then you say”—here he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“do you know what this guy did, oh my God.”
From Trump’s perspective, the swipes against Carson both raise doubt about his temperament and reinforce the billionaire’s reputation for toughness. His camp sees the same dynamic in his immigration message—which now comes with talk of a “deportation force”—in that Trump is the guy who knocks heads and speaks uncomfortable truths. And the appalling terror attacks in Paris will only reinforce that message.
Whether Trump goes too far—or whether voters see him as an insult comic taking on worthy targets—won’t truly be known until the Iowa caucuses.

France carries out fresh ISIS airstrikes as report claims allies targeted Paris attack mastermind

Belgian believed to be behind Paris attacks

French warplanes carried out airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria for a second consecutive night early Tuesday, as a new report claimed the U.S. and its allies had in recent weeks targeted the Belgian jihadist suspected of masterminding Friday's terror attacks in Paris.
The AFP news agency, citing France's Defense Ministry, reported that a total of 16 bombs were dropped from ten fighter jets that targeted a command center and training center in Raqqa, the capital of the ISIS "caliphate." The ministry's statement said the airstrikes were "conducted in coordination with US forces" and "aimed at sites identified during reconnaissance missions previously carried out by France."
Late Sunday, the first round of French airstrikes since the attacks that killed 129 people hit a dozen ISIS targets, including a command and recruitment center, a munitions depot, and a terrorist training camp.
The airstrikes came as The Wall Street Journal, citing two Western security officials, reported that 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud had been sought as a target for an airstrike, but could not be located. A Western intelligence official told the paper that efforts to monitor communications between Abaaoud in Syria and jihadists in Europe were complicated by an inability to tell whether Abaaoud or his teenage brother was speaking.
Abaaoud was named by French officials Monday as the key figure suspected of planning and organizing the Paris attacks, which included a series of suicide bombings outside the country's national stadium and a massacre at a concert hall during a rock-and-roll show by an American band.

More on this...

• Did US intelligence miss Paris terror warning signs?

• Manhunt under way for escaped Paris attack suspect

• Confronting ISIS following the Paris terror attacks

French officials who identified Abaaoud as a prime suspect to the Associated Press cited chatter from ISIS figures that Abaaoud had recommended a concert as an ideal target for inflicting maximum casualties, as well as electronic communications between Abaaoud and one of the Paris attackers who blew himself up.
Western officials told the Journal they had no knowledge of the planned attacks on the French capital as they sought Abaaoud, and admitted they did not know whether his death would have been enough to stop the attacks, which were carried out by seven suicide attackers, including a set of three brothers.
A Belgian official told the Journal "it is certain" that Abaaoud knew Salah Abdeslam, who was being hunted by authorities across Europe early Tuesday on suspicion of his having been involved in the Paris terror. The two jihadists grew up not far from each other in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek and spent time in the same prison for petty crimes.
Abaaoud came to public notice in Belgium last year for taking his then 13-year-old brother with him to Syria and appearing in an ISIS propaganda video in which he boasted about his pride in piling the dead bodies of "infidel" enemies into a trailer. At some point, Abaaoud returned to Belgium, only to escape the authorities in January of this year after police foiled a plot to attack officers he had masterminded on behalf of a cell based in the Belgian town of Verviers. In the ensuing gun battle, two of Abaaoud's alleged accomplices were killed, but Abaaoud somehow escaped.
A Western intelligence official also told the Journal, citing interrogations of former French members of ISIS, that  at some point after the Verviers shooting, a core group of French-speaking Belgian radicals began organizing to plan attacks on public places in Europe. The countries targeted including France, Spain, Holland, and the United Kingdom.