Barbara Walters had hinted that the show might “add a man.”
ABC
According to a source who witnessed recent tapings of The View, the following potential co-hosts were rotated into test segments hosted by Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O'Donnell in front of a live studio audience:
Via Twitter: @secupp
A witness says he believes the protester was allegedly beaten by security for the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “The whole thing lasted about 10 seconds before secret service intervened.”
WASHINGTON — A video shot by a passerby appears to show the security detail of the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in town this week for the Africa Leaders Summit, beating a peaceful protester.
The man who shot the video, Noah Landay, said he saw the incident just outside the Capella Hotel on Wednesday, and witnessed the brutal scene that went down before he had a chance to start filming.
Near the start of the video, a man is seen kicking another man laying on the sidewalk.
It remains unclear what exactly the protesters were speaking out against, what group they represented, or what started the incident.
In the video, Secret Service officers appear to be on the scene. A spokesman for the Secret Service, Edwin Donovan, said he had no further information on the incident at the time of BuzzFeed's request for comment. The following is based on what can be seen in the video and what BuzzFeed was told by Landay.
Landay said the incident started when "two or three" protesters were yelling at DRC President Joseph Kabila. Kabila continued into the hotel with a few guards but several others stayed outside to to yell back at the protesters, Landay said. They weren't speaking English, so Landay could not understand what was being said.
At one point, Landay said five to seven guards went across the street and began ripping the signs out of the protesters hands. While the others were able to run off, the man in camouflage was knocked to the ground where the guards "started to punch him in torso and head," Landay said.
"The whole thing lasted about 10 seconds before secret service intervened," he said.
Landay then said his friend, a medical student who can be seen in the video wearing tan shorts and a light blue shirt, offered to check on the man while ambulances arrived. Landay said his friend told him he was missing several teeth.
“Today, America is coming to help.”
President Obama meeting with national security advisers on Thursday
White House/Pete Souza / Via Flickr: whitehouse
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has authorized air strikes against the militant Islamic group ISIS if it moves on the Iraqi city of Erbil, he announced on Thursday.
He also directed the military to carry out a humanitarian mission to help members of the Yazidi religious minority who are trapped on a mountain outside the town of Sinjar, besieged by ISIS militants, a mission that is now complete.
Speaking from the White House on Thursday night, Obama said the air strikes were intended to protect U.S. personnel in Erbil, who could be threatened by ISIS' advance.
"In recent days these terrorists have continued to move across Iraq and have neared the city of Erbil" which is home to American diplomatic and military personnel, Obama said.
Obama said he had directed the military to go ahead with air strikes "should [ISIS] move toward the city."
The mission to bring food and water to the Yazidi people trapped on the mountain is already complete, a senior defense official said on Thursday.
"At the direction of the Commander in Chief, the U.S. military conducted a humanitarian assistance operation in Northern Iraq to air drop critical meals and water for thousands of Iraqi citizens threatened by ISIL near Sinjar," the official said. (The group, whose name translates as "The Islamic State in the Levant," is written in English alternately as ISIS and ISIL.) "The mission was conducted by a number of U.S. military aircraft under the direction of U.S. Central Command. The aircraft that dropped the humanitarian supplies have now safely exited the immediate airspace over the drop area."
Referring to the Yazidi situation, Obama said that if ISIS continued in its goal of exterminating the small religious minority, it would constitute a genocide.
In his announcement, Obama acknowledged the irony of his ordering any kind of military action in Iraq.
"I ran for office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home," Obama said. "Even as we carry out these two missions we will continue to pursue a broader strategy that allows Iraqis to confront this crisis."
"Today, America is coming to help," Obama said.
A senior administration official said on a call with reporters that the authorization for strikes extends beyond Erbil, for example if the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was threatened.
"If we see action anywhere in Iraq that threatens our personnel and facilities we stand prepared to take targeted action to protect them," the official said. The official also said that the U.S. had authorized military strikes to protect the Yazidis if necessary to break the siege that is trapping them on the mountain.
Officials said that the administration had consulted with Congress about the president's decision throughout the day.
A senior administration official said that the possibility of air strikes against ISIS in Iraq does not mean that there are plans to carry out the same kind of action against the group in Syria.
"This is not the authorization of a broad-based counterterrorism campaign against ISIL," the official said.
“While there are deep concerns about slippery slopes and being dragged into a sectarian war in Iraq, progressives will not oppose action responding to genocide.”
Jim Bourg / Reuters
WASHINGTON — When President Obama first signaled there could be new military action in Iraq back in June, members of his progressive base howled. Late Thursday night, as the broad outlines of a new American involvement in Iraq unfolded, the anti-war Democratic base said they're prepared to give the president room.
"There is general radio silence at the moment, while some earlier wanted to start the drums against action, folks, as we're learning more, aren't instantly coming out opposed," said one source close to progressive groups that protested back in June. "Speaking as someone from a group who previously came out against bombing and fearing getting pulled back into the mess in Iraq, if there's anything this country categorically stands against and is willing to stand up to, it's a religious minority getting slaughtered on a mountain top."
President Obama and senior administration officials said Thursday that no military action in Iraq has been taken yet, but they made it clear targeted airstrikes were possible to protect American personnel in Iraq and stop what Obama called a looming "genocide" by ISIS, which has seized broad swaths of Iraqi territory.
The president has been careful to emphasize that any new military action in Iraq would not include ground troops, and in his remarks Thursday night he re-emphasized the point.
"I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these. I understand that," the president said. "I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that's what we've done. As Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq."
For the moment, the anti-war base appears to be satisfied.
"While there are deep concerns about slippery slopes and being dragged into a sectarian war in Iraq, progressives will not oppose action responding to genocide," the source said. "If that's what's truly happening here, I doubt they'll be meaningful opposition to limited, targeted response."
Progressives did not speak with one voice back in June. Some on the left were outraged when the liberal and closely administration-aligned Center For American Progress called for military strikes Iraq. As the new Iraqi operation unfolds, new progressive protest could unfold with it.
In the minutes after Obama's speech progressives were already talking about pressuring the White House not to take up the new Iraqi engagement without help.
"Many have been saying that, if this is truly humanitarian, response should be multilateral and not just the U.S. responding unilaterally," the progressive said. "If it's genocide, it's a global responsibility to act, not just a U.S. one."
There was a visceral reaction by many on the left when Obama once again turned American attention back to Iraq in June. But the source was quick to say that fear of a new Iraqi entanglement shouldn't be seen as a rejection of all military action under any circumstances among the president's base.
"While there are pacifist elements of the progressive movement, the majority aren't against all wars, just, to paraphrase the President, stupid, unnecessary ones," the source said. "But again, all of us need to know more."
“The nation looks to this Court to answer the question presented here.”
WASHINGTON — Following on the heels of Utah officials and an Oklahoma clerk, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring on Friday asked the Supreme Court to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of his state's ban on same-sex couples' marriages.
What distinguishes Herring's filing, representing Virginia State Registrar of Vital Records Janet Rainey, is that his is the first request to the Supreme Court by a party that backs the position of same-sex couples that the ban is unconstitutional.
Of the reason for hearing the claim, Herring's filing, led by Virginia Solicitor General Stuart Raphael, argues that the Supreme Court should accept certiorari in the case because "[t]he question presented is vital to a large population of same-sex couples, to their children, and to their fellow Americans who believe that discriminating against gay people is both unfair and unconstitutional. They may fairly call this 'the defining civil rights issue of our time.'"
As to why the Supreme Court should hear the case challenging the Virginia ban, specifically, the brief states, "Virginia's same-sex-marriage ban is one of the most stringent in the country. It goes further than [California's] Proposition 8 by barring and refusing to recognize civil unions and by preventing same-sex couples from adopting children. It also goes further than Utah's ban, which at least preserves contractual rights exercised independently of the same-sex-marriage restriction. Virginia law voids 'any contractual rights created by' same- sex marriages entered into in another State."
Michèle McQuigg, the clerk of the circuit court in Prince William County, also has said that she will be filing a certiorari petition in the Virginia case. Like the clerk in Oklahoma, McQuigg is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group. Unlike Herring, McQuigg is defending the constitutionality of the ban.
The former CNN host has become a high-profile activist for charter schools and against teacher tenure.
Campbell Brown / Via Facebook: OfficialCampbellBrown
Progressive groups in New York are launching a targeted attack campaign Friday against education activist and former CNN host Campbell Brown in an effort to discredit her as she pursues a legal challenge to teacher tenure.
The campaign, dubbed "The Real Campbell Brown," attempts to bash Brown for her ties to charter school advocate and former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, her marriage to Republican political operative Dan Senor, and for dodging questions on Stephen Colbert's show about her donors.
Over the last year or so, Brown has become a high-profile activist for charter schools in New York, and against teacher tenure and other protections for unionized teachers, including those given to teachers accused of sexual abuse. Brown and her group Partnership for Educational Justice recently helped several parents file a lawsuit seeking to gut teacher tenure in New York, similar to the Supreme Court decision earlier this year that dismantled teacher tenure in California. The lawsuit has earned the ire of progressives nationwide over the past few weeks, but this campaign is the first focused attack from leading local groups with strong ties to teachers unions and the de Blasio administration.
"Teachers always used to say follow the money — I so totally get that right now," said Zakiyah Ansari, advocacy director for the Alliance for Quality Education, one of the chief groups leading the campaign. "The people that have the money are pushing this agenda. And we have to call that out."
Though Ansari served on Mayor Bill de Blasio's transition team, she says his administration isn't involved with their efforts against Brown.
"As a parent, I am appalled that union-funded groups are trying to use personal attacks on Campbell to distract from the fact that our kids are not getting the education they deserve," said Mona Pradia, one of the parents who filed the lawsuit, in an emailed statement.
"Meanwhile, the defenders of the status quo remain silent on the parents of public schools students who have actually filed the lawsuit in the desperate hopes of getting their kids receiving a decent education," added Stefan Friedman, spokesman for Partnership for Educational Justice, via email. "Michael Mulgrew and AQE should be ashamed"
Along with AQE the campaign is also run by New York Communities for Change, the advocacy group that replaced the now-defunct ACORN.
"It's about time the world sees the real Campbell Brown for who she is: a right-wing elitist with zero credibility on education," said Renata Pumarol, who is helping run the campaign and also runs communications at NYCC.
Along with the report, the campaign launched a website and parody Twitter account to mock her.
40 years ago today.
On Aug. 8, 1974, 40 years ago, Richard Nixon announced his resignation from his office as president of the United States on national television, effective at noon the next day.
The resignation, the first for a U.S. president, was the culmination of nonstop damaging revelations related to Watergate, an approval rating of 24%, and nearly-zero support in Congress.
In a newly released, unedited video series from the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Nixon discussed why he resigned with ex-White House aide Frank Gannon.
"I knew that we could not survive," Nixon says. "However, when I got back to Washington, in my usual methodical way—people think it's methodical and I guess it is—I decided I should put down the pros and cons of what options I had."
Google News Archive
Google News Archive
After months in an El Paso detention facility, federal officials have granted the 22-year-old refugee asylum in the United States.
AP Photo/Eric Gay, Pool
WASHINGTON — A Somali man who was tortured and subsequently hunted by the Al- Shabaab terrorist organization has been granted asylum in the United States, the second African in as many weeks to win a request by an immigration judge in El Paso, Texas.
"Abdi" — who has asked that his full name not be used to protect family still in Somali — is one of dozens of African asylum seekers who have come to the United States through the southern border, and is the third African known to have been granted asylum in El Paso, one of the toughest immigration courts in the country.
According to Nancy Oretskin, an attorney with the Southwest Asylum and Migration Institute who represents Abdi, the immigration court granted the 22-year-old's petition late Thursday afternoon, nearly a year after he boarded an Ethiopian Air flight in Kenya bound for Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Abdi first fled Somalia in 2012. His father, a prominent figure in Al-Shabaab-controlled southern Somalia, had been arrested and executed by the terrorist organization. Ten days later, Abdi was also arrested, charged with heresy for teaching English at a local school. Although he eventually escaped to Nairobi, he ultimately fled to Brazil to begin a months-long trek to the United States, much of it on foot.
Federal immigration judges have thus far treated Somali refugees who cross into the United States at the El Pas-Juarez checkpoint with skepticism: According to Abdi, several other Somalis fleeing Al-Shabaab have had their asylum requests denied.
Tens of thousands of unaccompanied children have crossed the border this year. Many of them have been released to sponsors while they await immigration case hearings.
Over the last nine months, 63,000 children have been detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, largely from Central American countries.
After being detained, many of the children are waiting for asylum hearings based on a 2008 law that grants immigration status hearings to unaccompanied children who enter the U.S. from countries outside of Mexico and Canada.
While the minors wait for their hearings, the government released and placed more than 30,000 to "sponsors," who are mostly relatives, between January and July 7, 2014.
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
LINK: Everything You Need To Know About The Surge Of Unaccompanied Minors At The Border
Four Florida judges have ruled against the state’s same-sex marriage ban in the last three weeks, but the state attorney general wants those cases stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides the issue in one of the federal cases.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a news conference in 2012.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images/AFP/File
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi asked a state appeals court to delay two cases where judges overturned the state's ban on marriage for same-sex couples until the United States Supreme Court decides on the issue.
In filings late Thursday in Florida's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Bondi said that resolving the issue of marriage for same-sex couples is "unquestionably an important issue," but that "... neither this Court nor the Florida Supreme Court can decide this federal issue with finality."
"The State of Florida will respect the United States Supreme Court's final word," Bondi said in the filing. "In the meantime, this Court should preserve taxpayer and judicial resources by staying briefing until the United States Supreme Court rules." In other words, Florida courts should wait until the high court issues a national ruling.
Bondi pointed to recent requests by state officials in Utah and Oklahoma asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review challenges to the states' respective bans.
Additionally, in one of the filings, Bondi agreed with the plaintiffs' motion to consolidate the two cases. Florida's 2008 voter-approved ban on marriage for same-sex marriage was ruled unconstitutional in two cases — State of Florida v. Pareto and State of Florida v. Huntsman — by judges in Monroe County and Miami-Dade County, respectively. Bondi did not respond to two other rulings against the state ban in Broward and Palm Beach counties, but a spokeswoman for the AG previously told BuzzFeed her office is reviewing the rulings.
Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights and part of the legal team in the Pareto case, told BuzzFeed in a statement there is "no legal basis" for the stay Bondi has requested and that the NCLR will be filing a brief asking the court to deny the motion.
"Florida's marriage ban is causing serious harms to the plaintiffs and other same-sex couples," Minter said in the statement. "They have filed a lawsuit asking the state courts to rule on the constitutionality of the ban, and the courts have a duty to fulfill their judicial role and decide the issues before them. The possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court may one day resolve this issue for the entire country in no way eliminates the urgency of this issue for the plaintiffs or the obligation of Florida's courts to rule on the constitutionality of Florida's own laws."
Statewide LGBT rights group Equality Florida, too, opposes Bondi's move, saying in a statement, "This is a clear attempt to delay resolution on an issue the majority of Floridians support."
"There is no certainty when or even if the Supreme Court will take a marriage case, and while AG Bondi delays, thousands of Florida families are denied the security and protections that come with the freedom to marry," the organization said. "We agree on one thing: Bondi should stop wasting taxpayer dollars by ignoring the fundamental rights of all Americans. She could speed up this process by ending her appeal or urging the Florida Supreme Court to take the matter up right away."
In total, four state judges have ruled against the state's laws prohibiting marriage for same-sex couples and its refusal to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states in just the last three weeks, but because the rulings were stayed pending appeal or narrowly applied to particular plaintiffs, same-sex couples have yet to marry there. And there are other cases challenging the ban still pending, such one before a U.S. federal district court in Florida led by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Daniel Tilley, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, told BuzzFeed he is anticipating a ruling in the case any day now. Tilley described the rapidly developing marriage equality landscape in the state as a "tidal wave of victories" in cases brought by advocacy organizations and people who he said face the harms of not being able to marry.
"These suits in Florida give a good cross section of the issues that arise when people are denied the freedom to marry," Tilley said. "You have the divorce case, the folks that are trying to get married, recognition for spousal benefits, and people who need marriage so that they can properly care for their children, and so the final wishes of their spouses are realized."
Florida's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to respond to Bondi's filings.
h/t: Miami Herald
The path of least resistance.
Larry Downing / Reuters
For a president who has been extremely unwilling to see the U.S. intervene again in the Middle East, a major reason for pulling the trigger on today's military strikes on Islamist extremists in northern Iraq seems to be this: It's the path of least resistance.
For more than two years, Syrian rebels have been begging the White House for major military support — against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and against the extremists who have eaten away at their rebellion from within, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the very group the U.S. is now bombing in Iraq. The Obama administration has resisted, arguing that U.S. involvement might only exacerbate the bloodshed — while also drawing America into the kind of conflict he promised, during his 2008 election campaign, to avoid.
Moderate Syrian rebels may be asking themselves, why northern Iraq? But they likely know the answer already.
The Obama administration can strike at ISIS outside the Kurdish city of Irbil while avoiding the major issues that would bedevil similar military action in Syria, or even elsewhere in Iraq.
For one, his international rivals aren't set against military action in Iraq — unlike in Syria, where both Iran and Russia steadfastly back the regime.
In Syria, the open secret is that the Obama administration doesn't want to see the regime lose the war, because it worries that would create even more of a power vacuum and empower the Islamist fighters who now dominate the rebellion. In this scenario, the path of least resistance has meant allowing the conflict to continue without a resolution, with the U.S. and its allies giving rebels just enough arms and ammunition to survive.
While the U.S. has been arming some moderate rebels through a covert CIA program — and may do so overtly next year via a $500 million Pentagon program Obama announced in June — such efforts are far from enough to change the tide of the war. They seem designed instead to keep the moderates alive and to counter the rising extremist tide among the rebel ranks.
Air strikes against ISIS in Syria would be of questionable utility without strong moderate allies inside the country. And they could be viewed as a move to aid Assad.
In Iraq, meanwhile, Obama has been reluctant to provide direct military assistance to the government of Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister, whose authoritarian and sectarian-tinged policies helped to spark the Sunni insurgency that let ISIS surge in Iraq in the first place. Maliki's forces have been reinforced by Iran-controlled Shiite militias, and they have also been condemned for deploying barrel bombs over civilian areas, making it difficult for the U.S. to support them. As ISIS and allied Sunni militants marched toward Baghdad in June, the U.S. responded by sending military advisors and pushing for Maliki to step down.
The Kurds, however, make for more palatable allies. They boast a militia — called the peshmerga — that are secular-minded and also well-organized. The Kurdish region is also home to major U.S. oil companies and has long had close ties with Washington. Many of the Iraqis who have fled other parts of the country amid recent ISIS advances have taken shelter in Irbil, which had been relatively stable and secure since the U.S. overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein.
With ISIS drawing ever closer to Irbil this week — following a surprise rout of the peshmerga in some outlying towns last weekend — calls for U.S. action became harder than ever to ignore. With ethnic and religious minorities like Christians and the Yazidis fleeing, Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged in a statement on Thursday that the ISIS advances "bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide."
U.S. warplanes can work to keep ISIS from advancing into Irbil while avoiding the type of intensive campaign that would be needed to drive them out of their new strongholds, such as the city of Mosul, the heart of the so-called caliphate that ISIS declared in June. In a sense, they are preserving the status quo.
While trying to uproot ISIS in a major city like Mosul would be extremely difficult — and also kill a lot of civilians — strikes like today's involve hitting the advancing militants in more open terrain.
To stick with Obama's preference of using sports analogies to explain his foreign policy, the U.S. looks to be playing defense against ISIS, not offense. A broader military effort to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria may not be in the cards right now.
Yet this containment policy is arguably what allowed ISIS to gain strength in the first place, initially inside Syria and later in Iraq. Syrian rebels have warned from the outset that allowing the conflict to continue would let extremists take root — an argument that Assad and his backers could make too. As the top Syrian rebel commander at the time warned this reporter in the summer of 2012, when the civil war was escalating: "Leaving Syria like this is very dangerous. It may become another Afghanistan or Iraq."
We may never know, but go ahead and speculate!
Also: weapons of mass destruction, air strikes, “boots on the ground,” genocide, and drones.
On Thursday, President Obama authorized targeted strikes on militants in Iraq.
BuzzFeed analyzed the language used in 5,276 White House press briefings since 1993, the year Bill Clinton took office. Through these transcripts, it's possible to glimpse key shifts in American foreign policy, as spoken by public officials.
"Iraq" first spikes in 1998, when the United Nations began withdrawing weapons inspectors from the country. The highest peak corresponds to the beginning of the Iraq War. The two smaller spikes in 2010 and 2011 reflect the first drawdown and the final announcement that all troops would be leaving Iraq.
John Templon / BuzzFeed
Mentions of “weapons of mass destruction” closely mirror mentions of Iraq — until the Bush administration couldn’t find them.
John Templon / BuzzFeed
President Obama has authorized air strikes against ISIS militanst. The last time “air strikes” were mentioned frequently? Bosnia. In 1999, NATO conducted air strikes as part of the Kosovo War. On the other hand, “boots on the ground,” echoing a different tactic, has become increasingly popular over the past decade.
John Templon / BuzzFeed
“Yeah I’d like to put his butt in the electric chair and give him half a bolt,” Charlie Brown said laughing.
Democrats in Tennessee have apparently nominated as their candidate for governor a Duck Dynasty and beef jerky loving dog-kennel owner, who once said he would like to electrocute the current governor.
Charles V. "Charlie" Brown, a 72-year-old man whose name was first on the ballot, won the Democratic nomination to take on incumbent Republican Bill Haslam Thursday night.
Brown told BuzzFeed he was "a little bit surprised," and said national Democrats hadn't reached out to him yet.
"Not yet, but they will."
Brown says the main platform of his campaign is putting the bible back in public schools.
"The main thing is to get the bible back in school in Tennessee. A class where kids can go to — it's free. Voluntary."
"I'm a redneck hillbilly and I just want to do what's right for Tennessee," Brown added. Haslam, he said, "took away the teacher tenure. They ain't got nothing to protect their jobs."
Brown said he's an avid supporter of the National Rifle Association.
"What about them guns that Obama is sending overseas? They take our guns. Every person could be able to conceal carry. Over there they can come over here and kill us."
Brown said BuzzFeed should call him back in a couple weeks for more about his platform.
Via blountdems.org
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon became the first president to resign from the office.
Danny Lyon/U.S. National Archives
• The Cold War was ongoing.
• The U.S. population was just more than two hundred million.
• The U.S. was still in the midst of the Space Race.
• The death penalty was still briefly suspended in the United States (from 1972-1976).
• The energy crisis of the 1970s was ongoing. Gas was sometimes limited in the United States.
• Pioneer 11 made its famous fly-by of Jupiter. Sending back some of the most famous images of the giant gas planet.
Pioneer 11 Photo From NASA
• The Sting won best picture.
• The F-16 made its first flight.
• Teruo Nakamura and Hiroo Onoda, two of the last known Japanese soldiers from World War II, who still believed the war to be ongoing, either surrendered or were captured.
• The Oakland Athletics won the World Series. The Miami Dolphins won the Super Bowl. The Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship. The Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup.
• Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record.
• Patty Hearst was kidnapped and then joined her kidnappers in the Symbionese Liberation Army in a famous case of Stockholm Syndrome.
“This race issue should be way behind us.”
Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama is still talking.
First the Republican congressman told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham that Democrats are waging a "war on whites."
"This is a part of the war on whites that's being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they're launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else," he said.
Brooks then repeated his comments to AL.com saying Democrats are dividing Americans based on race.
"In effect, what the Democrats are doing with their dividing America by race is they are waging a war on whites and I find that repugnant," he added Wednesday.
Now Brooks is claiming that racism is over, and it's Democrats that are keeping it alive. On Thursday, Brooks called into the Tea Party News Network Tim Constantine Capitol Hill Show to make the comments.
"What I want these Democrats to do is to stop dividing Americans based on race. It doesn't make any difference what your skin pigmentation is," Brooks said. "In America this is the land of opportunity. You can excel provided you're willing to study hard, work hard, take advantage of the opportunities that are presented in our country. And there are plenty of people who have been able to establish that this race issue should be way behind us. But unfortunately the Democrat campaign strategy is to keep it going."
"And I find that repugnant and I would hope that the American people would find that repugnant. The kind of racism that Democrats try to inject into their campaigns for political benefit is doing a great disservice to American and the principles that we all believe in."
Joe Miller supports impeaching Obama. Dan Sullivan says he’d take it seriously and “focus on it” if it came to the Senate.
Republican Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller challenged his fellow Republicans to support him in impeaching Obama in a debate Wednesday at the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce.
One of his opponents, former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan, said he would take impeachment "very very seriously" if it came to the Senate and "would focus on it" if it reached the Senate.
"I think we all agree that Obama's out of control," Miller said, adding that Obama "acts like almost a dictator in some sense."
Miller stated he publicly called on his opponents to join him in supporting impeaching Obama in recent weeks but received no response. So Miller asked Sullivan directly as part of the debate format what it would take to get him to support impeaching Obama.
"As a U.S. senator, what I would do is follow the Constitution and if there was an articles of impeachment that originated in the House that came to U.S. Senate. I certainly would be a part of the U.S. Senate that sits in the jury position to adjudicate that impeachment. So I would obviously take that very very seriously. I agree 110% that this administration is out of control..."
Miller followed up asking if President Obama's efforts to circumvent Congress should be considered impeachable.
Sullivan said that as a member of the Alaska governor's cabinet they have challenged the president on the law through the courts. Sullivan said the economy, not impeachment would be his focus. But if it came to the Senate he would focus on it.
"If articles of impeachment gone before a U.S. Senate you're darn right I'm going to focus on it," Sullivan added. "But I think the vast majority of where Alaskans and Americans are is to jumpstart this economy."
Video released Sunday evening by the U.S. military shows an airdrop into northern Iraq from the day before.
"This airdrop was conducted from multiple airbases within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility," the military said in a statement released along with the videos. "[It] included one C-17 and two C-130 cargo aircraft that together dropped a total of 72 bundles of supplies."
“Can you hear us?” The immigration court system is slammed, so the feds have turned to video conferencing — and it’s not very good.
A Texas detention facility
AP Photo/Eric Gay
ARLINGTON, Va. — Shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday, immigration Judge Roxanne Hladylowycz brought her court to order for a long day of removal hearings and asylum pleas.
The plaintiff, one of the hundreds of mothers with children being housed in an Artesia, New Mexico, facility, was ready. The attorney for the Department of Homeland Security was ready, as was the translator.
One critical thing was not ready, however: the teleconferencing system used by the Justice Department to connect Hladylowycz's Virginia courtroom with the New Mexico detention facility.
"Artesia … we are going to logoff and ask you to reconnect," a technician said, peering at a pixelated box in one corner of an otherwise blacked-out television. "Can you hear us?"
There was no response.
After a few minutes, the judge got up. "It looks like it's going to be a little bit of a wait, everybody. It is what it is," she said before exiting the courtroom.
Tuesday's technical hiccups aren't an isolated incident, according to immigration attorneys and civil liberties activists, but are a common place problem that has plagued the Obama administration's efforts to use technology to address the mounting backlog of asylum and deportation cases.
Long before the recent flood of undocumented children hit the border, the nation's immigration court — which is not part of the judiciary but is rather overseen by the Justice Department — was under significant stress. Detainees have faced months-long waits in government facilities as judges slogged through routine deportations, as well as more complicated asylum proceedings.
To help alleviate the pressure — while also cutting costs — the government has increasingly relied on video conferencing technology to allow judges thousands of miles away to oversee cases. The practice began during the Bush administration and has continued under the Obama administration.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which operates the courts, defended the video teleconferencing system, known as VTC.
Noting Congress specifically approved the use of VTC in immigration and asylum hearings, the spokesperson said in an email, "[The Executive Office of Immigration Review] routinely uses VTC equipment to improve the efficiency of the immigration court process and to more effectively manage its resources. VTC provides coverage to locations where [we do] not have a physical presence and, in areas where [we do] have a physical presence, creates greater flexibility in docket management by enabling non-local judges to assist with hearing cases."
But the impersonal nature of the technology can make determining an asylum applicant's credibility difficult. It also puts lawyers in a difficult position of choosing to be with their clients or in court to better spar with DHS attorneys.
"It's been an issue for a while … the technology is not where it should be," said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association who is now a private attorney.
On Tuesday, about 30 minutes after Hladylowycz recessed, the giant television in the corner of the courtroom flickered to life.
A young El Salvadoran woman sat in a room at the detention facility, her small son fidgeting in her lap, alternately sucking from a bottle and playing with a box of tissues on the table.
Her attorney's legal assistant was heard talking to a guard in the room, worrying that the television picture would not be sharp enough for the judge to see the woman's broken nose — a key part of a bond request she presented. "I don't know if they can see it or not," she said.
"You're going to have to let them know. Take a picture and send it to the judge," the guard suggested. "We can't take pictures here," the assistant noted.
Although the television was large, the picture quality made it difficult to discern details of the woman's features, or whether her nose was broken.
The difficulties of distance did not stop there: Due to a FedEx mix-up, neither the judge nor the Homeland Security lawyer had received a signed copy of the woman's asylum petition. The court then had to wait for a signed copy to be faxed. Other hearings have faced confusion over when they are supposed to start — a 1-800 number attorneys use only gives scheduled times in Eastern Standard Time.
And once the real part of the hearing began, there were still more problems. Judge Hladylowycz interrupted the attorney's presentation early on, asking why he appeared to be talking to someone else. "Who else is in the room? Who's talking to you?" she asked. "I'm not comfortable with that." After the attorney explained it was his legal assistant who had been handling parts of the case, the hearing resumed.
The woman said she fled El Salvador because her child's father had become increasingly abusive since her pregnancy. Her aunt, a naturalized citizen, lives in Woodbridge, Va., and had offered to pay for her to come from New Mexico and stay with her during the court process.
The Homeland Security attorney argued that the current "mass migrant" crisis is "recognized as a national security threat by the [Attorney General] … [and] it will encourage human smuggling."
Citing her lack of a permanent address in the United States, Hladylowycz denied the bail request. The actual hearing took less than 45 minutes.
Ruthie Epstein, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the technological issues at the hearing "not uncommon."
"It's a huge concern," Epstein explained, arguing of particular concern to immigration activists is the difficulties using teleconference technology can have in making a fair credibility assessment. "Small visual cues help anyone determine" credibility, but those can be lost on television.
Leopold agreed. "It's very difficult for a judge to make a credibility determination based on a video," he said, adding that attorneys "have to do color commentary like a sports announcer" in an effort to fill in the blanks left by the technology.
Epstein also noted the technology can make it much harder for immigrants to explain why they've entered the country in a convincing manner. "To do that in a sort of cold setting, talking to someone on a TV … is just not a conducive setting."
The Executive Office of Immigration Review spokesperson downplayed the concerns of attorneys and advocates. "We have confidence in immigration judges' ability to fairly hear cases via video conference," he said. "Additionally, Congress has authorized immigration judges to conduct removal hearings by VTC to the same extent as by in-person hearings."
Still, even after the Tuesday bond hearing was over, the limitations of the technology were evident: In a brief conversation with the attorney in Artesia following her decision, Hladylowycz attempted to direct him to a new email address attorneys at the facility can use to serve Homeland Security with asylum filings.
After the Department of Homeland Security attorney spelled out the email address several times, the attorney read it back, transposing the "d" and "s" in DHS.
"No, 'D-H-S' — it's the Department of Homeland Security," the judge corrected him.
No one, however, noticed that he also left off a letter in another part of the email address.
The moratorium, which was supposed to end this week, has been extended to Jan. 15.
Mike Simons / Getty Images
A federal judge has extended a months-long halt on executions in Ohio into 2015 as debate over the state's new two-drug protocol in lethal injections continued.
The two-and-a-half month moratorium issued by federal judge Gregory Frost in May was to end this week. But in an order issued Friday, Frost extended the temporary halt on executions to Jan. 15.
This will delay four executions in Ohio scheduled in September, October, November, and early January. The news was first reported Monday morning by the Associated Press.
The moratorium was issued to allow time for the state's and inmates' lawyers to address any questions about or challenges to the state's lethal injection protocol, which was revised after Dennis McGuire's prolonged execution in January.
According to witnesses, McGuire gasped, choked, and said his whole body was burning after being injected with an untested two-drug cocktail of midazolam and hyrdropmorphone. He died after 26 minutes.
After his family sued the state, the Department of Corrections announced April it would use the same two-drug protocol but increase the doses of the sedative and painkiller. This prompted Frost to issue the moratorium so attorneys of inmates could argue against the state's decision.
In Frost's order, dated Aug. 8, he wrote that he was extending the stay because "the continuing need for discovery and necessary preparations related to the adoption and implementation of the new execution protocol that became effective April 28."
In July, an Arizona inmate took nearly two hours to die after witnesses described him as repeatedly gasping and snorting. Arizona and Ohio use the same two-drug protocol of midazolam and hydropmorphone.
In this case, the inmate was injected with 15 separate doses of the drug combination resulting in what his attorneys called "the most prolonged execution in recent memory."
Legal editor Chris Geidner contributed to this report.
