State Department responds to claims that Clinton faked illness

By Mike Krumboltz

The State Department has rebutted another claim that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faked herconcussion while suffering from a stomach virus to avoid testifying Tuesday about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, earlier this year.

The latest assertion came from former U.S. diplomat John Bolton, who, during the Dec. 17 edition of Fox News’ “On the Record,” insinuated that Clinton’s “diplomatic illness”—in diplomatic circles, this is the feigning of an  illness to avoid an engagement—kept her from testifying.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Bolton’s suggestion was “completely untrue.”

Nuland continued: “We put out such a full statement Saturday of exactly what was going on because people speculate wildly. I can assure you, [Bolton is] not privy to any inside information. … It’s really unfortunate that in times like this people make wild speculation based on no information.”

Bolton’s claims came on the heels of an article in The Daily Caller by Jim Treacher, who wrote, “If she has a concussion, let’s see the medical report. Let’s see some proof that she’s not just stonewalling. If it’s true, then we can all wish her a speedy recovery. But it’s ridiculous to expect us to take her word for it.”

Conservative blogger Lucianne Goldberg earlier had tweeted a message comparing Clinton to a kid playing hooky. “Hillary has given us a great new excuse. Don’t call in with a cold or a bad tooth. Just say you have a concussion. It can last for days.”

And an opinion piece from the New York Post calls Clinton’s illness “one of the most transparent dodges in the history of diplomacy.”

On Tuesday, an independent U.S. panel faulted the State Department for systemic failures and “criticized senior U.S. State Department management for failing to react to security concerns raised by U.S. diplomats in Libya.” Following the report, Clinton began sending more security forces to diplomatic missions around the world.

Richard Engel freed, but news blackout debate remains

In this image made from video, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel shakes hands with an unidentified person after crossing back into Turkey, after Engel and his team were freed unharmed following a firefight at a checkpoint after five days of captivity inside Syria, in Cilvegozu, Turkey, Tuesday, Dec. 18.

By Richard Best

Richard Engel, NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent, and at least two colleagues, were released from five days as captives in Syria yesterday in what appears to have been a rescue operation by a Syrian rebel unit. Their escape followed an extended news blackout participated in by most of the Western press.

Mr. Engel, cameraman John Kooistra, and producer Ghazi Balkiz were abducted after an ambush near the village of Ma’arrat Misreen, just north of Idlib, while traveling with a group of Syrian rebels.

“We were driving in Syria about five days ago in what we thought was a rebel controlled area, we were with some of the rebels and as we were moving down the road a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road,” Engel told NBC News this morning in an interview from Turkey. “There were probably about 15 gunmen wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed, they dragged us out of the car, they had a container truck positioned waiting by the side of the road. They put us into that container truck … with some gunmen, some rebels who were escorting us, they executed one of them on the spot.”

Engel said the group was moved from safe house to safe house during their captivity, and endured threats of murder, mock executions, and taunting from their captors that they should pick among themselves who would die first. At around 11 p.m. last night in Syria, as they were being moved again not far from the initial abduction, their captors ran into a rebel road block, and two of the captors were killed in the ensuing firefight. Others may have been freed in that gun battle, but NBC and other participants are being tight lipped for now.

Engel said the captors were shabiha, Syrian civilian militias loyal to the government of Bashar al-Assad, and his description of what he takes to be their loyalties and background is as good a capsule description of the complexities at play in the Syrian civil war as you’ll find.

“These are people who are loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, they are Shiite, they were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shia faith, they are trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard, they are allied with Hezbollah,” he said. “We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who were from the Amal Movement and these were other shabiha members who were captured by the rebels, they captured us in order to carry out this exchange, and that’s what they were hoping to do, they were going to bring us to a Hezbollah stronghold inside Syria.”

Amal, like Hezbollah, is a Lebanese Shiite political movement and militia. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are in many ways the shock troops of that country’s Islamic revolution. They are interested to see Mr. Assad, a member of the tiny Alawite sect, a long-ago offshoot of Shiite Islam, retain power in the face of his country’s majority Sunni Arab population, since a victory for Sunnis in Syria would deprive Iran of an ally, and provide the Sunnis of Lebanon a potentially powerful new friend.

News of the abduction was kept quiet by dozens of news outlets over the weekend, both at the urging of NBC and as part of evolving ethos among press outlets over how to handle the abduction of colleagues. A number of news operations in Turkey reported that Engel and a Turkish journalist were missing in Syria, and that story was picked up by the UK’s Daily Mail and websites like Gawker. But, for the most part, NBC and an informal group of reporters and aid workers jaw-boned most of their colleagues into not following the story, arguing that reporting could put them in danger.

Attempting to maintain a news blackout after an abduction has long been a common practice, both for journalists and other people working in war zones. The idea is generally that a frenzy of questions and attention can make a quick negotiation for release tougher, either by spooking captors, or by raising their perception of the financial or propaganda value of their captive.

In some cases too much silence can be dangerous. If kidnappers know they’ve got someone high profile, like Engel, and then there’s no news, they can get to wondering if their captive is actually a spy working under journalist cover. In others, obviously, publicity can be very dangerous. Every situation has its different particulars. In this instance it appears that people working with the situation on the ground were seeking to buy time for rebels to find the group before they were moved to a part of Syria under government control.

But as always is in these cases, expect a robust media ethics debate, and discussion of possible double standards from the press. Does the media do more to protect its own than other people? Consider how some US press carried pictures of a man they identified, wrongly, as the Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer on Dec. 14.

And while the safety of Engel and others today can be taken as evidence the blackout “worked,” that doesn’t prove they wouldn’t have been freed if more outlets had reported on events yesterday. When Jill Carroll, then a reporter for this paper, was kidnapped in Iraq in 2006, the Monitor tried to keep a lid on the news, though only managed to keep a hold on it for about 24 hours. With newspapers like The New York Times insisting that they couldn’t sit on a major international story for much longer, the Monitor was forced to go public more quickly than it would have liked.

But as that situation evolved, a high-profile strategy within the Iraqi press was adopted to present Ms. Carroll as a sympathetic, honest person who cared deeply about that country and its people. She was eventually released unharmed after three months of terrifying captivity in the hands of an Iraqi group close to that country’s offshoot of Al Qaeda. Did the media strategy help secure her eventual release? I’d like to think so. But it’s hard to prove. Likewise in the case of David Rohde, a New York Times reporter whose seven-month abduction in Afghanistan was kept mostly quiet by the world’s press because the Times was worried heavy attention would lead to higher ransom demands for Rohde. The Times said Rohde eventually escaped his captivity, and expressed satisfaction with the blackout.

In this case, some of the blackout efforts had the feeling of closing the barn doors after the horses had bolted.

For instance, The Atlantic website had a story up for hours yesterday afternoon titled “If Richard Engel is missing in Syria, nobody kept it a secret” but pulled it down upon request in the early evening. Reporting on war often brings up ethical conflicts between protecting lives and informing the public, but is vanishing a story down a memory hole after it has probably been viewed tens of thousands of times (it was on the top of The Atlantic’s most viewed list at the time it was deleted) the right thing? (For what it’s worth, the headline was wrong. Literally dozens of people had kept a lid on this story for days, astonishing in a community whose jobs and personal compulsions are to share information).

In online forums, reporters who cover conflict have been debating the ethics of all this for days, with the majority of opinion coming down on the side of suppressing information if there’s any hope it can save lives. But some, including me, have misgivings. Do such practices erode already low public trust in journalists? Are they sometimes potentially counterproductive, if captors are desperate for publicity and enraged when they don’t get it?

For now, this story has a happy ending for Kooistra, Balkiz, and Engel. But it’s a partial one. Austin Tice, an American freelancer, has been missing and presumed captive in Syria since August. There are others who are missing whose cases have been kept more quiet. And the bloody Syrian civil war, with tens of thousands of civilian Syrians dead already, has also been rough on journalists. In a report out today, the Committee to Protect Journalists says 23 journalists were killed in combat situations this year, the highest number since 1992. Syria, and the proliferation of citizen journalists there, were responsible for that number.

“NBC was fantastic in informing our families and keeping everyone up to date, keeping the story quiet. Obviously there are many people who are still not at liberty to do this kind of thing. There are still hostages, there are still people who don’t have their freedom inside Syria and we wish them well,” Engel said.

His colleague Balkiz summed up: “When we first got captured for me at least it was a moment of disbelief … there were fumes of despair, at least for me, thinking of my family, my brother, my parents, my wife and I was feeling bad about what I’ve been putting them through … and I must say that when we were freed yesterday by the rebels it was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

Mr. Engel, cameraman John Kooistra, and producer Ghazi Balkiz were abducted after an ambush near the village of Ma’arrat Misreen, just north of Idlib, while traveling with a group of Syrian rebels.

“We were driving in Syria about five days ago in what we thought was a rebel controlled area, we were with some of the rebels and as we were moving down the road a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road,” Engel told NBC News this morning in an interview from Turkey. “There were probably about 15 gunmen wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed, they dragged us out of the car, they had a container truck positioned waiting by the side of the road. They put us into that container truck … with some gunmen, some rebels who were escorting us, they executed one of them on the spot.”

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz.

Engel said the group was moved from safe house to safe house during their captivity, and endured threats of murder, mock executions, and taunting from their captors that they should pick among themselves who would die first. At around 11 p.m. last night in Syria, as they were being moved again not far from the initial abduction, their captors ran into a rebel road block, and two of the captors were killed in the ensuing firefight. Others may have been freed in that gun battle, but NBC and other participants are being tight lipped for now.

Engel: captors loyal to Assad

Engel said the captors were shabiha, Syrian civilian militias loyal to the government of Bashar al-Assad, and his description of what he takes to be their loyalties and background is as good a capsule description of the complexities at play in the Syrian civil war as you’ll find.

“These are people who are loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, they are Shiite, they were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shia faith, they are trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard, they are allied with Hezbollah,” he said. “We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who were from the Amal Movement and these were other shabiha members who were captured by the rebels, they captured us in order to carry out this exchange, and that’s what they were hoping to do, they were going to bring us to a Hezbollah stronghold inside Syria.”

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Amal, like Hezbollah, is a Lebanese Shiite political movement and militia. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are in many ways the shock troops of that country’s Islamic revolution. They are interested to see Mr. Assad, a member of the tiny Alawite sect, a long-ago offshoot of Shiite Islam, retain power in the face of his country’s majority Sunni Arab population, since a victory for Sunnis in Syria would deprive Iran of an ally, and provide the Sunnis of Lebanon a potentially powerful new friend.

News of the abduction was kept quiet by dozens of news outlets over the weekend, both at the urging of NBC and as part of evolving ethos among press outlets over how to handle the abduction of colleagues. A number of news operations in Turkey reported that Engel and a Turkish journalist were missing in Syria, and that story was picked up by the UK’s Daily Mail and websites like Gawker. But, for the most part, NBC and an informal group of reporters and aid workers jaw-boned most of their colleagues into not following the story, arguing that reporting could put them in danger.

Roots of blackouts

Attempting to maintain a news blackout after an abduction has long been a common practice, both for journalists and other people working in war zones. The idea is generally that a frenzy of questions and attention can make a quick negotiation for release tougher, either by spooking captors, or by raising their perception of the financial or propaganda value of their captive.

In some cases too much silence can be dangerous. If kidnappers know they’ve got someone high profile, like Engel, and then there’s no news, they can get to wondering if their captive is actually a spy working under journalist cover. In others, obviously, publicity can be very dangerous. Every situation has its different particulars. In this instance it appears that people working with the situation on the ground were seeking to buy time for rebels to find the group before they were moved to a part of Syria under government control.

Double standard?

But as always is in these cases, expect a robust media ethics debate, and discussion of possible double standards from the press. Does the media do more to protect its own than other people? Consider how some US press carried pictures of a man they identified, wrongly, as the Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer on Dec. 14.

And while the safety of Engel and others today can be taken as evidence the blackout “worked,” that doesn’t prove they wouldn’t have been freed if more outlets had reported on events yesterday. When Jill Carroll, then a reporter for this paper, was kidnapped in Iraq in 2006, the Monitor tried to keep a lid on the news, though only managed to keep a hold on it for about 24 hours. With newspapers like The New York Times insisting that they couldn’t sit on a major international story for much longer, the Monitor was forced to go public more quickly than it would have liked.

But as that situation evolved, a high-profile strategy within the Iraqi press was adopted to present Ms. Carroll as a sympathetic, honest person who cared deeply about that country and its people. She was eventually released unharmed after three months of terrifying captivity in the hands of an Iraqi group close to that country’s offshoot of Al Qaeda. Did the media strategy help secure her eventual release? I’d like to think so. But it’s hard to prove. Likewise in the case of David Rohde, a New York Times reporter whose seven-month abduction in Afghanistan was kept mostly quiet by the world’s press because the Times was worried heavy attention would lead to higher ransom demands for Rohde. The Times said Rohde eventually escaped his captivity, and expressed satisfaction with the blackout.

Not so blacked out

In this case, some of the blackout efforts had the feeling of closing the barn doors after the horses had bolted.

For instance, The Atlantic website had a story up for hours yesterday afternoon titled “If Richard Engel is missing in Syria, nobody kept it a secret” but pulled it down upon request in the early evening. Reporting on war often brings up ethical conflicts between protecting lives and informing the public, but is vanishing a story down a memory hole after it has probably been viewed tens of thousands of times (it was on the top of The Atlantic’s most viewed list at the time it was deleted) the right thing? (For what it’s worth, the headline was wrong. Literally dozens of people had kept a lid on this story for days, astonishing in a community whose jobs and personal compulsions are to share information).

In online forums, reporters who cover conflict have been debating the ethics of all this for days, with the majority of opinion coming down on the side of suppressing information if there’s any hope it can save lives. But some, including me, have misgivings. Do such practices erode already low public trust in journalists? Are they sometimes potentially counterproductive, if captors are desperate for publicity and enraged when they don’t get it?

Austin Tice remains missing

For now, this story has a happy ending for Kooistra, Balkiz, and Engel. But it’s a partial one. Austin Tice, an American freelancer, has been missing and presumed captive in Syria since August. There are others who are missing whose cases have been kept more quiet. And the bloody Syrian civil war, with tens of thousands of civilian Syrians dead already, has also been rough on journalists. In a report out today, the Committee to Protect Journalists says 23 journalists were killed in combat situations this year, the highest number since 1992. Syria, and the proliferation of citizen journalists there, were responsible for that number.

“NBC was fantastic in informing our families and keeping everyone up to date, keeping the story quiet. Obviously there are many people who are still not at liberty to do this kind of thing. There are still hostages, there are still people who don’t have their freedom inside Syria and we wish them well,” Engel said.

His colleague Balkiz summed up: “When we first got captured for me at least it was a moment of disbelief … there were fumes of despair, at least for me, thinking of my family, my brother, my parents, my wife and I was feeling bad about what I’ve been putting them through … and I must say that when we were freed yesterday by the rebels it was one of the happiest moments of my life.”

GOP Gov. Haley replaces Sen. DeMint with pro-impeach-Obama, anti-food-stamps-for-kids, anti-union tea partier Tim Scott

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Richard Best

As Jim DeMint takes off for his new Very Important Job at the Heritage Foundation, in swoops Tim Scott, the tea bagger who South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley hand-picked to replace him.

Think Progress supplied us with his resumé, and what a resumé it is! Can’t get much more right wingy than this:

• Floated impeaching Obama over the debt ceiling.

• Proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike. That includes children.
  

• Wanted to spend an unlimited amount of money to display Ten Commandments outside county building.

• Defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil.

• Helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget.

But see, it’s all good because, see, he’s (whispering) black, so that will confirm to the entire world how inclusive the GOP is, see. And by inclusive, I mean they’re union busters who believe children are moochers because they want to eat.

Actually, it is a positive to have first black senator from the South since the late 19th century. But unfortunately, his skin color doesn’t compensate for his record.

Scott the Conservative makes his grand entrance into the U.S. Senate as Dems bite their nails over an impending battle to replace departing Senator John Kerry who will likely be our next Secretary of State. Scott Brown is swooning at the very thought, and that would make the tea party even giddier.*

Good times, my friends. Good times.

Details of Scott’s record are at TP, these were just the bare bones.

*Per Taegan:

President Obama is likely to pick Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) as the next secretary of state but the New York Times reports that the announcement will be delayed, at least until later this week and maybe beyond, because of the Connecticut school shooting and what one official called ‘some discomfort’ with the idea of Mr. Obama’s announcing a national security team in which the top posts are almost exclusively held by white men.”

And per The Hill, Michael Dukakis (D) “may be headed back to the political spotlight as he’s considered a likely interim replacement for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).”

Republicans Float Plan to Make Electoral College More Unfair

By Jamelle Bouie

Since their across-the-board defeat in November, Republicans have talked a great game about reform and outreach, with presidential hopefuls Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Bobby Jindal leading the charge. But the actual actions of the GOP belie this stated commitment to change. According to National Journal, for example, Republicans are planning a big push to change how states distribute their electoral votes. Currently, most states have a winner-take-all arrangement—if you win the majority of votes, you take all of the electoral votes.

For all but voters in deep red or dark blue states, this is unfair—the 48 percent of North Carolina voters who supported Barack Obama in this year’s election are all but irrelevant, since their votes play no part in the Electoral College distribution. Some reformers want to solve this problem with a national popular vote, others with nationwide proportional distribution of electoral votes.

Republicans, by contrast, want to “reform” the system by adopting the worst of all worlds—winner-take-all for Republican states, proportional distribution for Democratic ones:

Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

How would this have affected the past election? National Journal offers Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin as examples:

Obama won all three states in 2008, handing him 46 electoral votes…Final election results show that Romney won nine of Michigan’s 14 districts, five of eight in Wisconsin, and at least 12 of 18 in Pennsylvania. Allocate the two statewide votes in each state to Obama and that means Romney would have emerged from those three Democratic states with 26 electoral votes, compared with just 19 for Obama (and one district where votes are still being counted).

This is a massive redistribution of electoral votes away from the top vote getter and toward the candidate whose support happens to center in rural areas. In essence, it’s taking the Electoral College—which is already malapportioned—and making it more so. Indeed, it amounts to little more than a scheme to rig presidential elections in favor of GOP candidates.

After all, if the current immigration and migration patterns hold, most population increases will happen in already dense regions. Democratic cities and suburbs will become bluer, as Republican exurbs and rural counties stay reliably red. Under the scheme described by National Journal, the large bulk of Pennsylvania’s population could vote reliably Democratic, but because they’re concentrated in a handful of counties, Republicans would consistently win the most electoral votes.

One Republican, quoted in the piece, acknowledges this fact: “If you did the calculation, you’d see a massive shift of electoral votes in states that are blue and fully [in] red control,” he adds, “There’s no kind of autopsy and outreach that can grab us those electoral votes that quickly.”

And therein lies the point of this call for “reform.” Barring an external shock to the system, the electorate in 2016 and 2020 will be more liberal than the one in 2012, a product of more Latino voters—who tend to hold more liberal views on government—and a rising cohort of young voters, who, likewise, are more liberal than their older counterparts. Which means that the odds for a sweeping rollback of the welfare state are low and dropping.

Republicans have two choices for what they can do. They can moderate their policies and craft a conservatism that accepts the reality of the welfare state, or they can find ways to stem the inevitable, and try to stack the game in their favor.

I’m not sure if this is a significant push, and if it is, I doubt it will be successful—if anything, it seems like a surefire way to mobilize Democratic involvement in state races, and push Republicans out of statehouses nationwide. But it does reveal the extent to which Republicans are thinking far less about reform than what they’ve said in public.

Sen. Patty Murray: Poor Getting ‘Lost In Shuffle’ During Fiscal Cliff Talks

With legislators focused on looming cuts to defense spending and entitlement programs, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told a gathering of progressives on Capitol Hill Tuesday that she is worried the most vulnerable groups depending on domestic programs may get “lost in the shuffle” during the deficit negotiations.

“It’s very concerning to me that so much of the focus in D.C. and across the country has been on the other half of sequestration — the defense cuts,” Murray said. “I feel very strongly that while we certainly need to cut spending responsibly and get our debt and deficit under control, we shouldn’t do that on the backs of the families and children who can afford it least.”

Democrats and Republicans need to hammer out a deficit-reduction deal before the New Year to avert the so-called fiscal cliff — the moment when the Bush tax cuts expire and drastic budget cuts hit defense and domestic spending. As Murray noted, those automatic cuts, known as sequestration, would include painful hits to programs that help needy families, such as child care funding, home heating assistance and job training for the unemployed.

Murray has said in recent months that Democrats may consider going “over” the fiscal cliff and letting the Bush tax cuts expire, thereby giving Republicans political cover not to renew the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Although she suggested it as a last resort, Murray, who was a co-chair of the supercommittee created by the Budget Control Act, reiterated the threat on Tuesday, saying Democrats should take the debate into 2013 rather than accept a deal that preserves tax breaks for the wealthy and doesn’t provide funding for domestic programs.

“I don’t want us to go over the fiscal cliff, slope, or mountain or whatever. That provides a lot of uncertainty for the country,” Murray said. “But taking an even worse deal simply for the sake of getting a deal would be deeply irresponsible, and it would hurt families far more than sequestration in the long run.”

As for actually going over the cliff, “it puts us in a place nobody wants to be,” Murray said. “But it puts the Republicans in a different place as well.”

Liberals have been vocal about their desire to keep Social Security and Medicare cuts out of the deficit talks, while conservatives have warned that significant defense cuts could hurt a fragile economy. Less attention has been paid to the kind of non-defense discretionary spending that Murray was talking about, such as Head Start educational funding for needy children, or how such programs might fare in a “grand bargain” struck between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

“These programs have been cut so much already,” Murray said. “They’re the one part of the budget that’s shrinking, not growing, and the families that depend on them have already sacrificed enough.”

Bradley Manning Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Bradley Manning, the US army private first class accused of linking information to WikiLeaks, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the group The Movement of the Icelandic Parliament.

Manning is faced with charges that include aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet, theft of public property or records, transmitting defense information and fraud and related activity in connection with computers, CNN reported. The former Army private could face life in prison if convicted of these charges.

Despite his long list of charges, the parliamentary group The Movement of the Icelandic Parliament submitted a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize committee for the 2012 prize for his “individual effort to have an impact for peace in our world,” the letter stated.

“The revelations – including video documentation of an incident in which American soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists in Iraq – have helped to fuel a worldwide discussion about America’s overseas engagements, civilian casualties of war, imperialistic manipulations, and rules of engagement,” the letter stated. “Citizens worldwide owe a great debt to the WikiLeaks whistleblower for shedding light on these issues, and so I urge the Committee to award this prestigious prize to accused whistleblower Bradley Manning.”

Manning, 24, served the US military in Baghdad in late 2009 to early 2010 and allegedly leaked more than 700,000 secret government documents from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and a combat video that shows an Army helicopter attack in 2007, the Associated Press reported. His defense has said Manning had access to the computers with others in the workplace and was emotionally distressed since he was a gay soldier and homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the US military at the time.

The letter nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize states the former soldier deserves it since he brought to light “a long history of corruption, war crimes, and imperialism by the United States government in international dealings,” which they believe fueled the Arab Spring uprising and contributed to the withdrawal of troops in Iraq in 2011.

Manning has been in prison for over a year and was court martialed on all charges last Friday, the military said in a statement, CNN reported. A military judge will be appointed to provide the date for the date for his arraignment, motion hearings and trial.

Cher Has a Smart Crush on MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

Cher has a crush on *gasp* MSNBC’s Chris Hayes!

CHER has fallen for a guy half her age – 33-year-old, married, MSNBC newscaster Chris Hayes. The “Believe” singer, 66, has been gushing to friends about her huge crush on the nerdy rising cable star, who hosts the weekend morning show “UP w/ Chris Hayes.”

Though Chris is clearly married, outspoken Cher says her passion for him has inspired her to give up bad boys. Now she’s looking for a political wonk just like the young commentator. “Cher adores Chris,” revealed an insider. “She says he’s the perfect man for her despite the age gap and is bummed out that he’s married. “She doesn’t want to mess around with tough guys and bikers anymore. She’d like to finally settle down with a man who can discuss things like world affairs and economic policies. She’s put the word out to all her friends that she’s ready and willing to be set up with a lawyer, financier or professor – no hell-raisers need apply.”

Cher went public with her feelings, tweeting that she has a “smart crush” on Chris. Cher’s been married twice, first to the late Sonny Bono and then to rocker Gregg Allman. She’s since dated a string of younger men including “Bagel Boy” Rob Camilletti, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora and former Hell’s Angel Tim Medvetz, whom she briefly reunited with over the summer.

But the new mellow Cher has gone intellectual, said the source, adding: “She’s even e-mailed Chris to try to arrange a meeting – just to chew the fat about politics and the economy.”

Presidential debate: Which questions might trip up Obama and Romney?

By Amanda Paulson

Why don’t you support the DREAM Act, Mr. Romney? What economic missteps have you made, President Obama? Both candidates could face tricky questions in Wednesday’s debate.

On Wednesday, expect both presidential candidates to be pushed on some uncomfortable issues. How willing they are to address tough questions head-on will vary, of course – there is still plenty of room in a debate format to dodge the issue – but one purpose of a debate is to push candidates beyond their stump speeches.

In a first, moderator Jim Lehrer has already given advance notice of the broad topics he plans to cover: three questions on the economy, one on health care, one on governing, and one on the role of government. But that could change, and his list is also so vague as to leave room for almost anything. So, what are some of the questions that could – or should – come up in Denver Wednesday night? Expect both candidates to be pushed hard on the economy.

For Mitt Romney, one of the toughest questions might revolve around his now infamous comment to private donors that 47 percent of the country “believe that they are victims” and pay no federal income taxes.

Any question that pushes Romney on those comments – and forces him to explain how his economic policies could benefit the middle class rather than just the wealthy – could put him in a difficult position, says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton University in New Jersey.

It could also provide Romney with an opportunity, Professor Zelizer notes – but only if he has the right demeanor.
“In answering, it’s not simply that he says the right things about the middle class, but that he appears genuine,” says Zelizer. “Romney has to display a kind of humanity that’s often missing.”

And economic questions could put President Obama in a tricky position too – particularly if Mr. Lehrer presses him on why, despite his policies and the stimulus, the economy is still in as bad shape as it is.

Mr. Obama’s transition team forecast that the stimulus would keep unemployment from going above 8 percent, and instead it hasn’t gone below 8 percent, notes Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in California.
“If they haven’t anticipated that question, then [the debate prep team] is pretty hopeless,” he adds.
In Romney’s case, says Professor Pitney, they should also be anticipating some question on the 47 percent issue that explores where those policies came from: “Ronald Reagan made a big point of taking lower-income Americans off the income-tax rolls,” for instance. “Why do you think Reagan was wrong?”

And both candidates might be pushed beyond where they’re comfortable going on economic specifics: what programs they’d cut to reduce the deficit and, in Romney’s case, what exactly he’d do differently from Obama to make the economy improve.

Health care is certainly going to come up, and is a somewhat difficult topic, complete with a lot of potential pitfalls, for both candidates.

“Obama will have to talk about health care, why this is a good bill, and why it was more important than focusing on the economy or focusing on continued stimulus,” says Zelizer.

Romney, on the other hand, still hasn’t explained to some voters’ satisfaction why his position on health care has changed.

The fact-checker team at The Washington Post has also come up with a list of tough questions based on candidates’ suspect claims. For Example: Romney has said he would reduce the size of government while boosting defense spending and reversing the slowdown in Medicare spending – a plan some experts have said doesn’t add up. He could be asked what he would cut to make the numbers work.

Or Obama could be asked when he’ll start taking responsibility for economic missteps on his watch – and whether there are any economic decisions he regrets. Multiple fact-checking organizations have questioned his claim that 90 percent of the deficit on his watch came from Bush-era policies.

Beyond the economy and health care, it’s unclear – and somewhat doubtful, given that this debate format favors fewer questions and longer discussion times – whether domestic issues like immigration, gun control, trade, education, or climate change will come up. But some of those have pitfalls as well.

Immigration is a particularly thorny issue for Romney, given the resistance in much of the Republican party to any policy smacking of amnesty. On Monday, Romney clarified his stance somewhat on Obama’s controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, sometimes referred to as the DREAM Act-lite.

Romney has been pressured recently to explain what he would do about undocumented immigrants granted temporary work status under the program. DACA essentially gives a two-year visa to some undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, have lived here at least five years, and are still age 30 or under, among other requirements.

Romney told The Denver Post Monday that he would not rescind work permits for those who have received them – but that still doesn’t answer what he’d do about the hundreds of thousands who may have pending applications, or whether he’d allow the program to continue. It’s a tricky question for him, given how popular the program is among the Hispanic voting groups he’d like to court, and how unpopular it is among many conservatives.

Gun control is another possibility as a sleeper question, especially given the debate’s proximity to both Aurora, Colo., and Littleton, Colo., where the Columbine shootings took place. And it’s likely not a question either candidate would welcome, given how evasive they’ve been about gun control in the past – and how unpopular the issue is among many key swing voters.

On Monday, the United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund unveiled an ad featuring Stephen Barton, one of the shooting victims in this past summer’s Aurora movie theater shooting, posing that question himself.
“When you watch the presidential debates, ask yourself: Who has a plan to stop gun violence?” Mr. Barton says in the ad. “Let’s demand a plan.”

It’s unclear whether the candidates will have to answer that question themselves Wednesday night, but their answers to that – and other tough questions – might be illuminating.

100Feed: Pet Ownership Down In U.S. Since Recession

By Bonnie Kavoussi

Since the beginning of the recession, many Americans have given up on having kids. It seems they also have given up on having pets.

Americans now own fewer pets than in 2006, according to a new study by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). As a result, the U.S. pet population has shrunk. (Hat tip: Time.)

Pets still are popular: 56 percent of all U.S. households owned a pet at the end of last year. But that share is down 2 percent from the end of 2006, according to the study. And pet ownership has fallen across all categories of animal: cats, dogs, birds, horses, specialty pets and exotic pets.

The U.S. population of dogs, cats, pet birds, and horses has plunged. There now are 3 percent fewer dogs, 9 percent fewer cats, 26 percent fewer pet birds and 33 percent fewer horses than before the recession.

Pets can be expensive. Cats and dogs cost more than $1,000 to take care of during the first year, and more than $500 per year after that, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). (Find more information about the cost of pets here.)

In a similar trend, the U.S. birth rate is projected to plunge to a 25-year low this year, after peaking before the recession, according to Demographic Intelligence. It costs between $12,290 to $14,320 per year to raise a child in a middle-income family, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, the median U.S. household’s annual income was $50,020 as of January, according to Sentier Research, 8 percent less than at the end of 2007.

The economy could be on the upswing. Americans recently have been indulging in more haircuts, dinners out and plastic surgeries. But the pace of consumer spending growth has slowed sharply over the past year, according to the Commerce Department.

100Feed: Ryan on Medicare “We want this debate”

By Alex Moe

Appearing at his alma mater Wednesday, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan weighed in on the Medicare debate for the first time before voters on the campaign trail.

“The president, I’m told, is talking about Medicare today,” Congressman Ryan told the couple-thousand-person crowd at Miami University. “We want this debate, we need this debate, and we will win this debate.”

The Medicare debate is quickly becoming a key issue going into the November election especially after Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney’s running mate. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, authored a controversial bill that would transform the health care system for seniors and has been taking heat for it from President Obama and Democrats.

While Ryan touched on the topic on a college campus Wednesday, he mostly attacked Obama and failed to offer specifics of what a Romney-Ryan plan would look like.

The day after the presumptive GOP presidential nominee himself stumped in the Buckeye State, Paul made his first appearance in the state since being announced as VP and even recalled several local spots he would frequent when he was a student here.

“Ohio is so important. You know this. You’re used to it. The Buckeye state could very well determine the future of our country for a long time,” Paul told the crowd outside about the third battleground state he has been in.

Ohio Senator Rob Portman – once considered the frontrunner for the VP pick – was on hand for Ryan’s visit to his state and praised Romney’s selection of the seven term Wisconsin congressman.

“Paul Ryan, as I said earlier, is a Redhawk, so Redhawks should be soaring today, but he is also a very good friend,” Portman said. “He is one of those guys in Congress that is there for the right reasons and you know what that reason is? It is about his family. It’s about your family. It’s about being sure that the American dream can be restored. That’s what Paul Ryan is about.”
The crowd was made well aware that Portman was nearly selected to join Romney’s ticket.

“I want to tell you, it was sort of funny because as you know [Portman] was seriously considered for this job,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich told the crowd before Portman’s remarks. Portman’s “wife told me … 17-year-old Sally is the vice president of her class and Rob’s wife said this family can only stand one vice president at a time.”

Congressman Ryan, meanwhile, had nothing but kind words to say about Portman. “Rob is a very close friend, we’ve been through a lot together,” Ryan said. “I just want to tell you what a special man this is. I thank you for your service Rob Portman you are one great United States senator.”