WASHINGTON -- Companies in the Fix the Debt coalition, which advocates for federal austerity policies, qualified for $1 billion or more in tax breaks tied to executive pay packages from 2009 to 2011, according to a new report by the liberal think tanks Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America's Future. The four highest-paid executives at the firms received a total of $6.3 billion in pay over the period, according to the report. Federal tax law allows companies to deduct executive pay based on performance from the firm's tax bill as a business expense. This performance-based compensation includes stock options, stock awards and other types of incentive pay. These 90 companies qualified for tax perks totaling between $1 billion and $1.5 billion over the course of three years, depending on how many types of pay firms actually deducted. Companies can choose to be more or less aggressive about their tax deductions, and some types of incentive pay exist in a gray area where certain companies choose to claim deductions and others do not. Firms do not make their tax filings public, although they release estimates of overall taxes paid in SEC filings. The IPS-CAF study was based on actual payments to executives that were taxable in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 that would have qualified for deductions, but whether firms chose to take them is not a matter of public record. Fix the Debt is one of several austerity advocacy groups tied to Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson, who started a think tank devoted to deficit reduction in 2008 and has bankrolled multiple public relations campaigns on the issue. A total of 125 CEOs are officially members of the coalition, including CEOs of 90 public companies. The IPS-CAF report only examined tax perks for public companies in the coalition. The same CEO pay loophole is available to private companies, but private firms do not have to disclose executive pay to the SEC. The coalition urges a host of spending cuts and tax reforms, including benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as a means to reduce the federal budget deficit. A spokesman for the group told HuffPost that while the group doesn't advocate for specific policies, it does insist that comprehensive tax reform be part of any debt deal. "It's a lot easier for groups like this to sit on the sidelines and throw stones than to talk about the 4 million meals that are going to be eliminated for seniors because Congress wouldn't pass a debt deal," Fix the Debt spokesman Jon Romano said. "All of our supporters understand that there is going to be pain associated with a comprehensive debt deal and that people are going to have to give something up to get a debt deal in place. But everything has to be on the table. We're a campaign about fixing the debt. This is not about protecting special interests, this about what's in the best interest of the American people." The group is currently airing an online video pushing to cut Social Security benefits by using a more conservative measure of inflation to calculate annual cost-of-living increases. The CEO pay loophole being used by Fix the Debt companies is extremely popular in corporate America. According to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice, Fortune 500 companies skipped out on $11.2 billion in taxes in 2011 alone thanks to this loophole. "The stock option loophole is a major reason why corporations are paying record-low federal income tax rates," said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. "The worst of it is that there is no 'cost' to a corporation that uses stock options to pay its executives, so there's no justification for allowing them to deduct it as an expense. It's not an expense." Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has introduced legislation that would eliminate the loophole, but the plan is rarely included in deficit reduction talks on Capitol Hill. The highest-paid executive in the Fix the Debt coalition is UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley, who received $198.9 million from 2009 to 2011, which would have qualified his company for $67.7 million in tax breaks. UnitedHealth declined to comment for this article. Some of the companies eligible for the biggest tax breaks from CEO pay are run by politically influential executives. According to the IPS-CAF report, Honeywell could have lowered its tax burden by as much as $21.5 million based on CEO David Cote's $70.1 million in pay from 2009-2011 -- the fifth-highest break among the firms analyzed. Cote serves on Fix the Debt's steering committee, and is also close with President Barack Obama, who named him to the Simpson-Bowles Commission, where he served as the second-ranking Republican. (Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles also co-chair Fix the Debt.) Honeywell is very aggressive about minimizng its tax payments, paying nothing at all in federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010, and receiving $34 million in tax rebates from the federal government during that period. "Mr. Cote's compensation is aligned with the company's strong growth and reflects our variable, at-risk and long-term compensation plan that’s based on sustainable, profitable growth and stock price appreciation," said Honeywell spokesman Rob Ferris. "Honeywell is in compliance with U.S. tax law for treatment of corporate tax deductions for CEO pay." President Obama named former Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg to his Export Council in 2010. From 2009 and 2011, Verizon qualified for $29.9 million in tax breaks from Seidenberg's $94.2 million in pay, third-highest among the Fix the Debt CEOs. Seidenberg stepped down from Verizon in 2011 but remains a member of Fix the Debt. Verizon declined to comment for this article. Verizon disputed IPS' methodology and told HuffPost it only had $32.9 million in deductible CEO pay for Seidenberg during those years, which would have reduced the firm's tax bill by $11.5 million. Verizon said its deductions were the sum of $3 million in salary, $10.4 million in short-term incentive pay and $19.5 million in long-term incentive payments recognized during the years. Verizon did not provide documentation to verify the claims. "We strongly dispute the IPS findings -- which are simply inaccurate with respect to Verizon," company spokesman Robert Varettoni told HuffPost. "We fully comply with tax law, which makes performance-based compensation deductible provided we obtain the requisite shareholder approval." The IPS-CAF report based its Verizon calculations on a 2012 SEC filing which stated that Seidenberg exercised $20 million in stock options from 2009 - 2011 in 2012 which were tax deductible. Seidenberg cashed in another $30 million in stock options from the period in 2011, and $25 million in 2010. In addition, Seidenberg received $10,434 in non-equity performance compensation, including $3.5 million in 2011, $3.0 million in 2010 and $3.9 million in 2009. Although the scope of the federal budget deficit has been a major political issue over the past four years, it has faded in recent months as Congress has considered gun legislation and immigration reform. The deficit itself is also shrinking rapidly. With no policy changes, Goldman Sachs economists expect it to fall from $775 billion in 2013 to $475 billion by the end of 2015 due to economic growth.

Alexandra Jaffe, The HillThe Republican establishment breathed a sigh of relief when Boston businessman Gabriel Gomez won Tuesday's GOP primary in the Massachusetts special Senate race, believing he represents the party's best chance at an unlikely pick-up in liberal Massachusetts.Gomez, a Hispanic, former Navy SEAL investment firm executive, has the type of outsider credibility and centrist leanings the GOP hopes will play well against 18-term Rep. Ed Markey, the Democratic nominee.  

Nora Caplan-Bricker, The New RepubicIn the debate over reproductive rights in America, there is almost no such thing as a new idea. But new stories and images can refresh shopworn arguments. Hence the pro-life movement’s interest in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion provider whose name is coming up in legislative battles across the country.

Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hosted a major forum on immigration policy Tuesday in Los Angeles featuring some major national and international figures. But will the latest attempt to change the nation's faulty immigration policy fare any better than it did in 2006 and 2007, before top Republicans realized how definitively they were losing the Latino vote? And how will the big new wild card, the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings seemingly carried out by immigrants, factor into this always emotional issue? In its first big forum since its founding event last September, the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy hosted the gathering with U.S. Senators John McCain and Michael Bennett, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and several academic experts. Republican McCain of Arizona and Democrat Bennett of Colorado are key members of a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators putting forward a comprehensive immigration reform plan. The U.S. immigration system would undergo dramatic changes under their bill, which seeks to end, or at least bring under greater control, illegal immigration by creating legal avenues for workers and by more effectively securing borders. The bill would put the 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally on a 13-year path to U.S. citizenship that would cost each $2,000 in fines. It would also create new immigration opportunities for tens of thousands of workers, a "merit visa" to bring people with special skills to the U.S., and a guest worker program for lower-skilled jobs carefully negotiated by the coalition of major business organizations and labor unions uniting behind the bill. Schwarzenegger, who was a critical backer of McCain while his candidacy hung in the balance in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, before going on to work closely with the Obama Administration on a host of issues, wasted no time in endorsing the efforts of the "Gang of Eight." "Many members of Congress," he declared, "have had a major chutzpah deficit," in a turn of phrase that attendees found amusing. "The economic benefit of reform could reduce our deficit over the next 10 years by 2.5 trillion dollars," Schwarzenegger told them. "That's what I call action. What are we waiting for?" Longtime ABC News correspondent Ann Compton moderated a discussion between Senators McCain and Bennet and members of the audience. While they extolled the benefits of bringing the situation under greater control and establishing new and more workable rules, they were fairly frank about the politics involved. "We (Republicans) will not be able to compete for the Hispanic voter until this is done," said McCain. "This will not gain one single Hispanic vote, by passing this bill. But what it will do, is put us on a playing field where we can compete. And I happen to believe that Republicans -- pro-small business, lower taxes, less regulation, pro-military, pro-life -- I think we can compete." Bennet, the Colorado Democrat, said that he expects the bill to be voted on in the Senate sometime in June. With support seeming to come together in the upper house, he noted that the margin of victory in the Senate needs to be big to make an impression on the more conservative House of Representatives. "I really worry that if we don't get this done now," he said, it's going to be a very long time before we get this done, and it'll be one more self-inflicted wound holding American workers back." Other participants in the program pulled together by the Schwarzenegger Institute's director, former California Education Secretary Bonnie Reiss, and its academic director, USC Professor Nancy Staudt, made some telling points. On their panel, the academics suggested that the future problem won't be too much immigration, but not enough. Indeed, illegal immigration seems to have slipped substantially with the sharp economic downturn in the U.S. and the subsequent pattern of very slow growth. Echoing that assessment, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, proudly declaring that Mexico has become a more advanced industrial power than Brazil, said that in the future, low-paying jobs in the U.S. won't be nearly so attractive for Mexicans as they were in the past. Yet there is a tremendous overhang in the U.S., with millions in a twilight status. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa noted that one in 10 residents of his city "are undocumented." A program to legalize those residents, he said, will help the economy because many small businesses are started by immigrants. California is home to roughly one-fourth of the 11 million illegal immigrants in America. "It's because it goes to the heart of the economic future of our city, the social cohesion of our city," said the outgoing Democratic mayor. "That's why now is the time for real immigration reform." For his part, Villaraigosa's friend Schwarzenegger, who published an op-ed in Politico to kick off the morning festivities, is enthusiastic about immigration to America. "The life I've lived, the careers that I've had, and the successes I've had were possible only because I immigrated to the one place nothing is impossible," Schwarzenegger told the attendees. He was just back from his inaugural Arnold Classic Brasil sports festival in Rio de Janeiro. Schwarzenegger has successfully taken his long-running annual multi-sport event in Columbus, Ohio to Europe and now Latin America. This is anything but a new issue for him. Back in 2002, when he was barnstorming the state promoting his initiative for after-school programs -- a test run for his then likely first gubernatorial campaign in 2006, well before the dramatic 2003 recall election was a glimmer in anyone's eye -- I was there at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco when Schwarzenegger was asked if he would ever support a re-run of the draconian Proposition 187. That's the anti-illegal immigrant initiative that jet-propelled the 1994 re-election of Republican Governor Pete Wilson, but also, after Democratic candidate Kathleen Brown led a charge against the measure, sealed the two parties' respective fortunes with the growing Latino community. Brown, the sister of Governor Jerry Brown, went down in the election but planted the Democratic flag very firmly on the side of the Latino community. Contrary to the tenets of Prop 187, Schwarzenegger declared that he would never stand in the way of any child going to school. So he was on board with McCain during the last big push for comprehensive immigration legislation. And where all this may run aground yet again is where it all ran aground the last time we saw this movie, back in 2006 and 2007, the internal dynamics of the Republican Party. Then President George W. Bush, a relative moderate by today's GOP standards, backed McCain and Senator Ted Kennedy in their strong legislative push on immigration. Today President Barack Obama is very much on board with the overall effort, though he is, probably wisely, letting senators take the lead in crafting their legislation. The question is how much the Republican Party has changed. With the added wild card element of potentially greater fear of immigrants in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, though of course Latino immigrants, the great bulk of the equation, have nothing to do with any terrorism. As we saw in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, and in the 2010 California Republican gubernatorial primary before that, it's not all that hard to incite a Republican race to the hard right on immigration. Once undertaken, that race ends up in the same place, a place of fences, exclusion, and super-heated rhetoric that deeply satisfies a great many older conservative whites but utterly turns off most people of color and younger voters. The policy dynamics around this issue are multi-faceted and fascinating. And the political dynamics may be even more fascinating. Most of the commentary -- political commentary, that is -- is around what is best for the Republican Party. But what about the Democrats? Most opponents of the immigration measure appear to believe that devising a pathway to legalization will simply create millions of new Democratic voters. While there is something to that, that is a scenario that would play out over a long period of time. My own view, subject to revision based on developments, of course, is different. If, after passage in the Senate, immigration reform goes down again, this time in the Republican-controlled House -- amidst a post-Boston climate of fear having literally no relevance to most folks here illegally -- that would constitute a very big present and ongoing advantage for Democrats. You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com. William Bradley Huffington Post Archive

SEOUL, South Korea — An American detained for nearly six months in North Korea has been sentenced to 15 years of labor for crimes against the state, the North's state media said Thursday, a development that further complicates already strained ties between Pyongyang and Washington. The sentencing of Kenneth Bae, described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, comes amid signs of tentative diplomacy following weeks of rising tensions in the region. North Korea had been warning of nuclear war and missile strikes, an angry response to U.N. sanctions for conducting a long-range rocket launch in December and a nuclear test in February, as well as U.S.-South Korean military drills in South Korea. Analysts say Pyongyang could use Bae as a bargaining chip as it seeks dialogue with Washington. In Washington, the U.S. State Department had no immediate comment. It's not the first time an American has been arrested and sentenced to labor during a nuclear standoff. In 2009, after Pyongyang's launch of an earlier long-range rocket and its second underground nuclear test, two American journalists were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after sneaking across the border from China. They later were pardoned on humanitarian grounds and released to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who flew to Pyongyang on a rescue mission. He also met with then-leader Kim Jong Il, which paved the way for talks. Bae's trial on charges of "committing hostile acts" against North Korea place in Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. He was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, state media said. The exact nature of Bae's alleged crimes has not been revealed. Friends and colleagues say Bae, a Korean American who was living in Washington state, was based in the Chinese border city of Dalian and traveled frequently to North Korea to feed orphans. State media refers to Bae as Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling of his Korean name. Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released. Three other Americans detained in recent years were also devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the government. North Korea may be fishing for another visit by a high-profile American envoy, said Ahn Chan-il, head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies think tank in South Korea. "North Korea is using Bae as bait to make such a visit happen. An American bigwig visiting Pyongyang would also burnish Kim Jong Un's leadership profile," Ahn said.

The people, whether they're citizens or members of the pundit media, who have constantly asked why most black Americans have overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, only show how most Americans have notoriously short memories. Many have forgotten that from the beginning, most black Americans supported Hillary Clinton. Most Americans of all colors predicted from the beginning that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee in 2008. It was only after then-Senator Barack Obama's stunning victory on January 3, 2008 in the Iowa caucus that he captured not only the attention and a second look from most blacks in America, but also from everyone else, even Republicans. But not from me, for I had a head start. Barack Obama captured my attention the very moment he declared his run for the President of the United States of America on February 10, 2007. It all began with an intuition, which then prompted me to volunteer for the Obama campaign for one solid year from November 2007 until Election Day in November 2008. Whether one is a voter, a volunteer, a staff member, a donor or a fundraiser within the vast apparatus of a major political campaign, one cannot nonchalantly dismiss the characteristic of likability in a candidate. Likability alone may not be enough, but it has to be among a candidate's arsenal of weaponry. People help people they like, and that mattered to me. While volunteering for the Obama campaign all began with my intuition and this candidate's likability, there was undeniably a third motive driving me to help out again in 2012: resolve. After hearing all the hate mongering and birther talk during the past four years, I knew I had to go flat-out, full-throttle, full-afterburners on this one. For the Obama 2012 campaign I not only did phone banking, but also voter registration, data entry (despite being a not so fast typist), and canvassing a total of 15 times, much more than in 2008. All of this reminds me of the commencement speech Senator Barack Obama delivered in 2006 at the University of Massachusetts, where he voiced the words of Robert F. Kennedy, "The world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease." When I read those words, I clipped them out of a newspaper, because it is something I have always long believed that America had been missing. When Barack Obama decided to run for the presidency, I still had the excerpt from his 2006 commencement speech, and in addition to my intuition and his likeability, it told me everything I needed to know about the man. A quality of the imagination, and that was it: imagination. And from that I believe right now, in the current sequester, America currently suffers from a poverty of imagination, which is also a chapter in The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. Along with a poverty of imagination, America suffers from a fear of uncertainty. As Warren Buffett recently said, "Of course, the immediate future is uncertain: America has faced the unknown since 1776." This same man, the fourth wealthiest person in the world, who still lives in a five bedroom house he bought in 1957, with no wall or fence, and not one security guard and no surveillance cameras anywhere on the property. And it is this same man who appears comfortable with uncertainty, who also supports President Barack Obama. I still remember what remarkably happened in this country after September 11, 2001. I left for Australia from L.A. for a 10-day vacation the day before on a Qantas 747 flight at 11:30 p.m. We missed it all. After I got back, it then suddenly didn't matter to people what side of the tracks you came from. It lasted only a month and people wished that things would get back to normal, while I wanted the continued abnormal of people being nice and more accommodating all of a sudden. And that's what we need now as a nation, to be galvanized and to be known for a nation taking giant leaps, as we have done before. We need to get out of our malaise. We've done it before, and we need to do it now before the middle class is reduced to only a whisper. We need to do it soon, and not in the future. We need to be galvanized, and backed by, the qualities of youth and of the imagination. The interfaith services that were held on December 16, 2012 at Newtown, Connecticut and recently in Boston, proves Americans can unite for remembrance of the fallen and the sharing of sorrow. And tragedy, is no respecter of color, age and social status of any individual. Yet can't we also unite to galvanize America without a national tragedy and despite any grievance towards our president? Chris Matthews of MSNBC had said it best when talking to former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs after the president spoke at the Interfaith Boston Marathon Memorial when he said, "With the president one can always argue about his policies, but as head of state he comes through." On that day of January 20, 2009 I was lucky enough to attend the Inauguration and as we waited for the Inaugural parade, it was cold, like a little over 20 degrees cold. Luckily, I wore thermals beneath my blue jeans, had gloves on and layered clothing beneath my jacket. Finally after we all waited for well over three hours, I heard a thunderous roar. That meant the first black American president and the first black American first lady were coming. We did it. We did it in 2008, and we did it again in 2012 -- people like Field Organizer Mark Jimenez from Sacramento, California; and volunteers like Kala Rehm of Las Vegas, Nevada; David Howell, Lisa Hayes and her son Caleb Haye, all three from Seattle; Bruce Chen from L.A., who I had canvassed with during the last week of the November 2012 campaign; and myself. We pounded the pavement and pounded the pavement and pounded the pavement until finally the pavement had to protest and give. We all did it. And together we can do it again.

CBS DCWASHINGTON (CBS DC) – Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III took to Twitter on Tuesday to complain about the “tyranny of political correctness” he believes is holding American culture “hostage.”“In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness,” the NFL player wrote on his official Twitter account. He followed up the post with a definition of the word, writing: “Tyranny- ‘a condition imposed by some outside agency or force<living under the tyranny of...

Rep. Rick Larsen, CNN(CNN) -- Air travelers across the country are breathing a sigh of relief that they might get to their destinations on time after Congress took action to roll back a part of the automatic spending cuts that forced furloughs on air traffic controllers.As someone with a 2,300-mile commute, I understand the frustration that travelers felt as delays tripled to nearly 9,000 by Thursday evening -- I am pleased air traffic controllers are back on the job full-time.

Michael Rubin, CommentaryIt’s hard to believe that anyone—outside the White House—takes President Obama seriously anymore. It’s crystal clear that foreign leaders think that the U.S. president is a paper tiger. Enemies calculate that the former senator leading a team of former senators is heavy on rhetoric but light on action. And friends, too, understand that at best Obama is a nice prop around which to take a photo, but when push comes to shove they need not listen to him. Put aside Obama’s willful abandonment of his Syria chemical weapons red line, an...

The most powerful surveillance network in Boston helped to apprehend the Boston Marathon bombers. This unblinking and omniscient eye was not operated by the state, however; instead, private security cameras, in conjunction with a citizen army equipped with iPhones and Androids, were able to record the mayhem wrought in Copley Square. These shared recordings, which could be obtained without any concerns for the judicial process or the Fourth Amendment, aided the police in identifying, cornering, and catching the brothers Tsarnaev. Within seconds of the explosion at the finish line, eyewitnesses used social media to share photographs of the scene, and even videos of the blast. Minutes later, a cyber-militia crowdsourced images. Even so, while the police welcomed the help of these cyber sleuths and the wisdom of the crowds in gathering evidence -- facial-recognition technology "came up empty" -- they opposed real-time reporting of the manhunt on Twitter. During the bloody confrontation in Watertown, bloggers listening to police scanners began to tweet, in real-time, the play-by-play of the shootout. In response, the Boston Police Department tweeted, "#MediaAlert: WARNING: Do Not Compromise Officer Safety by Broadcasting Tactical Positions of Homes Being Searched." These "requests" echoed those by police in another recent standoff; during the final confrontation with fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner, the Sheriff's Department tweeted, "The sheriff has asked all members of the press to stop tweeting immediately. It is hindering officer safety. #Dorner." The police in both situations were reacting to a new world reality; the fact that manhunts are now virtual, and that citizens can play at that game, forced the police to change time-honored tactics of secret surveillance and communication. And, at least in Boston, they had to change their game quickly. Citizen participation would seem to be a good thing; after all, it is ultimately for the public that law enforcement officers try to maintain safety and security. The public wants to be involved in the confrontation, and the media has a journalistic duty to publicize all aspects of the conflict in the interests of informing the public. In the case of the Boston Marathon, real-time social media reports kept the public informed and potentially out of harm's way, but they put the police at risk. Here the requests to stop tweeting were voluntary. It is not hard to imagine a situation, however, where the government could order the press -- old and new -- to stop reporting. The risk to the rule of law? Orders of prior restraint -- telling the press not to report on matters of public concern -- are unconstitutional limitations on speech. In 1971, the Supreme Court held that the United States could not stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, which contained classified information about war strategy in Vietnam. To do so would violate the First Amendment. In part, the Court held that there was no imminent harm from publishing the article. Yet, tools like Twitter that enable the real-time updates of information from anyone with an internet connection democratize the press unlike anything in the past. In the past, the only media that could offer live-broadcasts of breaking news were television and radio stations, which could be quietly asked by the police to stop reporting. Today, with every tweeter and redditor following police scanners, the diffusion of breaking news -- even news that could harm the police -- has never been easier. Arguably here, the imminence of harm to the police was a compelling interest that could give the state the power to stifle the tweets. However, the police should not be so glib in requesting that social media channels shut down. Look no further than the use of Twitter during the Arab Spring. Indeed, efforts by Egypt and other nations to stifle this mode of virtual assembly should serve as a lesson to the value of this technology -- and the risk of shutting it down. With the democratization and twitterization of the Boston Marathon investigation, the future of the national security state is here -- for better, and worse. Josh Blackman is an Assistant Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law. Lisa McElroy is an Associate Professor of Law at the Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly True | Barack Obama says U.S. has no airports ranked in the top 25 worldwide During a press conference on April 30, 2013, President Barack Obama addressed a number of high-profile issues, including the fighting in Syria, the Boston Marathon attack, immigration legislation and the across-the-board cuts to federal spending known as the sequester. On the sequester, Obama expressed his ambivalence about signing a bill that passed Congress a few days earlier. The bill, which would ease the sequester’s hit on the Federal Aviation Administration, moved quickly through the House and Senate amid public frustration. The flight delays stemmed from cuts to air traffic control staffing; the bill shifted $253 million from ... >> More

George Neumayr, Am. SpectatorAs homosexuals come out of the closet, Christians go into it. “Authenticity” is highly prized in society today, provided that what one feels falls safely within the dictates of political correctness. Sports analyst Chris Broussard stepped briefly outside of the Christian closet on Monday and paid the price for it.“Personally I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex [lifestyle] between heterosexuals. If you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, the Bible says you know them by their fruits,...

David Person, USA TodayAt a moment when baseball Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson is being celebrated in the popular biopic 42, another professional athlete has taken a step that will break down social barriers.Jason Collins, a free-agent center in the NBA, announced that he is gay in an essay that was published on the Sports Illustrated website on Monday.As the first openly gay active male U.S. athlete in a major sport, Collins, 34, a 12-year veteran, is entering uncharted territory just as Robinson did 66 years ago. And though a lot has changed since the hostile Jim Crow-era in which Robinson entered the Major...

By DAVID KLEPPER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island appears poised to become the nation's 10th state to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry after a legislative panel voted Tuesday to forward same-sex marriage legislation to the full House for a final – and largely procedural – vote. The outcome of Thursday's House vote is not in doubt, as the House overwhelmingly passed an earlier version of the bill in January. The Senate passed the bill by a comfortable margin last week, but it had to return to the House because of small changes made in the Senate. "We're one step closer," said Sen. Donna Nesselbush, D-Pawtucket and the bill's sponsor in the Senate. "Every step is important and every step is exciting." Gov. Lincoln Chafee is expected to sign the bill into law quickly after it passes the House. Nine states and the District of Columbia now allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. Heavily Catholic Rhode Island is currently the only New England state that doesn't allow gay marriage, although bills legalizing it have been introduced every year since 1997. There was little testimony at Tuesday's brief hearing on the legislation_ a big departure from the hours-long hearings earlier this year and in previous years that attracted hundreds of people on both sides of the debate. With the bill all but passed, most opponents stayed away. Testimony focused on the changes made to the bill by the Senate. The bill that passed the House stated that religious institutions may set their own rules regarding who is eligible to marry within the faith and specifies that no religious leader is obligated to officiate at any marriage ceremony. The Senate added language to ensure that groups like the Knights of Columbus aren't legally obligated to provide facilities for same-sex weddings. Supporters said they could live with the changes. "I ask you now for what I hope will be the final time: please pass these bills," said Kate Montiero, a member of Rhode Islanders United for Marriage and a longtime leader of the state's gay and lesbian rights movement. "Please finally bring marriage equality to Rhode Island. It is in the end what it has always been, just plain fair." Only three people spoke out against the bill at the hearing, saying gay marriage should be illegal and would lead to a moral decline in the state. The first gay marriages in Rhode Island could take place Aug. 1, when the legislation would take effect. Civil unions would no longer be available to same-sex couples as of that date, though the state would continue to recognize existing civil unions. Lawmakers approved civil unions two years ago, though few couples have sought them.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Relatives of the dead suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said as officials in both Washington and Russia deepened their investigations into him and his ties. The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, has been at the medical examiner's office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago. Amato DeLuca, the Rhode Island attorney for his widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned that the medical examiner was ready to release Tsarnaev's body and that she wants it released to his side of the family. Police said Tsarnaev ran out of ammunition before his brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing the scene. His cause of death has been determined but will not be made public until his remains are claimed. "Of course, family members will take possession of the body," uncle Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. "We'll do it. We will do it. A family is a family." He would not elaborate. Tsarnaev's parents are still in Russia, but he has other relatives on his side of the family in the U.S., including Tsarni. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lies in a prison hospital after being wounded in the shootout with police as he and his brother made their getaway attempt. He is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, a crime that carries a potential death sentence. Russian agents placed the older suspect under surveillance during a six-month visit to southern Russia last year, then scrambled to find him when he suddenly disappeared after police killed a Canadian jihadist, a security official told the AP. U.S. law enforcement officials have been trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency. The security official with the Anti-Extremism Center, a federal agency under Russia's Interior Ministry, confirmed the Russians shared their concerns. He said that Russian agents were watching Tsarnaev, and that they searched for him when he disappeared two days after the July 2012 death of the Canadian man, who had joined the Islamic insurgency in the region. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Security officials suspected ties between Tsarnaev and the Canadian – an ethnic Russian named William Plotnikov – according to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which is known for its independence and investigative reporting and cited an unnamed official with the Anti-Extremism Center, which tracks militants. The newspaper said the men had social networking ties that brought Tsarnaev to the attention of Russian security services for the first time in late 2010. President Barack Obama said Tuesday at a news conference that the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy "did what it was supposed to be doing" before the Boston Marathon bombing as his top intelligence official began a review into whether sensitive information was adequately shared and whether the U.S. government could have disrupted the attack. "We want to go back and we want to review every step that was taken," Obama said. "We want to leave no stone unturned. We want to see, is there in fact additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack." In Rhode Island, DeLuca said Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow met with law enforcement "for many hours over the past week" and will continue cooperating. FBI agents on Monday visited her parents' North Kingstown, R.I., home, where she has been staying, and carried away several bags. "Katherine and her family continue to be deeply saddened by the harm that has been caused," DeLuca said Tuesday. Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday evening that the state had not yet received Russell's request to release her husband's body. He said arrangements must be made to release the body and once that happens a death certificate will be filed and the cause of death made public. He said it is too soon to speculate on when that might happen. ___ Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow; Arsen Mollyaev in Makhachkala, Russia; and Alicia A. Caldwell, Eileen Sullivan and AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier in Washington.

North Carolina NAACP President and Rev. William Barber appeared on Tuesday's edition of "All In with Chris Hayes," reinforcing the causes that prompted him to lead a Monday protest against Republican legislators. The Raleigh News & Observer reported that of 50 Barber-led individuals marching outside the state Senate, 17 members were arrested, including Barber. The protests were in response to the aftereffects of a rare scene in North Carolina political history. As Fox News detailed in January, the state is in uncharted territory, with its first GOP governor since 1993 and first instance of Republican control since 1870 in both the executive and legislative branches. When asked by Hayes whether that is a consequence of democracy, Barber gave an emphatic no. "The reality is that's not how government is supposed to work, because even when you have a majority, you cannot violate the Constitution," he said. Barber referenced the line of policies that drove his cohort to take action. Back in February, Gov. Pat McCrory (R-N.C.) signed a measure that cuts benefits for jobless workers by a third. Days prior to that decision, a National Employment Law Project report found the proposal to be the harshest in the country. By early March, the News-Observer detailed how McCrory signed legislation blocking Medicaid expansion, to a point where 500,000 low-income residents will be without coverage come the start of 2014. A week ago, the tension shifted to the polls when the North Carolina House passed a voter ID bill. The GOP-controlled Senate and McCrory are the remaining hurdles for the legislation to become law. That progression of events prompted Barber to liken the current legislature to "the George Wallaces of the 21st century." Wallace served four terms as Alabama governor, and as the Washington Post's Sept. 14, 1998 obituary explains, he was remembered for his "embodiment of resistance to the civil rights movement." "A majority does not give you the authority to violate the Constitution," Barber said. For the full segment from Tuesday's episode of "All In with Chris Hayes," click here.

Perhaps the genes run in the family. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a household name in Washington, but his son, Eugene Scalia is not too far behind, thanks to his work in fighting Dodd-Frank. In Gary Rivlin's piece for The Nation, which went live online on Tuesday, the younger Scalia is described as everything from "an absolute bulldog," to Wall Street's "secret weapon." In direct comparison to his father, the praise moves up a notch. From The Nation: A partner at the powerhouse DC law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and the top lawyer in the Labor Department under George W. Bush, Scalia is a thin-faced version of his old man: he has the same dark eyes and heavy brows, the same perpetual five o’clock shadow. Is he as smart as his dad? I ask a congressional staffer whose boss was a key architect of Dodd-Frank. “Probably smarter,” the staffer responds. Eugene's battle against Dodd-Frank began in early 2010, when big banks pegged him as the face to fight regulations in the face of profit concerns. He has developed a successful reputation on that front, to a point where Bloomberg Businessweek went so far as titling its Jan. 2012 piece "Suing the Government? Call Scalia!" For the full piece from The Nation on "How Wall Street Defanged Dodd-Frank," click here.

BOSTON -- President Barack Obama will nominate Mel Watt, a longtime Democratic congressman from North Carolina, to oversee government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a move that may give the White House greater control over housing policy. Obama will announce his nomination of Watt to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said. The nomination, subject to Senate approval, would thrust the Yale-educated lawyer into the center of U.S. economic policy as the government weighs how best to maintain the housing recovery while reducing the government’s role in propping up home prices and providing loans. FHFA regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bailed-out mortgage financiers that together own or guarantee about half of all outstanding U.S. home loans. The federal government backstops more than nine of every 10 new mortgages. Watt was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992, where he has served on the chamber’s financial services committee. On the banking panel, he perhaps is best known for trying to stamp out predatory lending. He’s also championed access to home loans for low-income borrowers and those with spotty credit. If confirmed by the Senate, Watt would replace Edward DeMarco, a career civil servant who has supervised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on an acting basis since 2009. Top White House officials had promised consumer advocates before November’s presidential election that they would oust DeMarco early this year. A low-key and unassuming economist, DeMarco has been vilified by some members of Congress, liberal groups and state attorneys general for a variety of alleged sins, most notably his continued refusal to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive distressed borrowers’ housing debts. Watt would be the second person Obama has nominated to replace DeMarco. A previous nominee, Joseph Smith, at the time North Carolina’s banking regulator, failed to win Senate confirmation after Republicans questioned his independence from the White House. One called him a “lapdog". A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Over the past three years, DeMarco has worked to return Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to profitability while also reducing their balance sheets and influence over the property sector and setting the stage for an overhaul of how the U.S. economy funds home mortgages. Since their government rescue during the height of the financial crisis in September 2008, the companies have cost taxpayers about $122 billion. The U.S. Treasury has provided them nearly $188 billion to keep them afloat, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have returned about $65 billion in dividends. In 2012, the twin housing giants reported record profits as rising home prices and fewer delinquencies spurred about $28 billion in combined earnings. Virtually all of the companies’ profits flow to the Treasury. The White House recently projected that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will over the next 10 years help to reduce the federal government’s debt as they pay off taxpayers and return excess profits to government coffers. While some advocates attempt to lobby policymakers to keep the companies in conservatorship so they can help pay down the debt and be used to spur greater access to credit, DeMarco has been shrinking their portfolio of loans and securities and trying to bring private capital back into housing finance. Private investors, funds and lenders fled the housing market in the wake of the financial crisis. Securitization of non-government guaranteed mortgages ground to a halt. Only the federal government enabled borrowers to continue purchasing or refinancing their home loans at historically-low rates. An abrupt end to the government’s backstop of the housing market would send interest rates soaring. A continuation of the current situation may take taxpayer resources away from other, more economically productive sectors. DeMarco has instituted a variety of schemes to get investors and lenders comfortable with owning non-taxpayer backed mortgages. He’s also tried to lay the groundwork for a future without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose dominance over the housing market extends from their balance sheets to the basic plumbing of how loans are made, securitized and sold to investors. DeMarco at times has butted heads with the Obama administration, which has tried to convince him to adopt policies aimed at aiding borrowers and reducing foreclosures. DeMarco has argued that he is mandated by law to “preserve and converse” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s assets, rather than look out for the entire housing market. Some officials in the Obama administration have expressed displeasure at the DeMarco-approved lawsuits targeting more than a dozen of the world’s largest financial institutions for selling hundreds of billions of dollars of allegedly dodgy mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The lawsuits and demands have helped chill lending, officials have said. Many Democrats have argued that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be used to advance policies that would aid the broader housing market, and by extension the economy. Republicans are opposed to using the mortgage financiers as tools for economic or social policy. Industry executives and Washington lobbyists view Watt as a potential FHFA chief who would go along with Obama administration requests. For that reason alone, Watt may face an uphill climb to confirmation due to potential Republican opposition. Since its creation in 2008 the FHFA has never had a Senate-confirmed director.

By David Schwartz PHOENIX, April 30 (Reuters) - The Arizona Senate on Tuesday approved a measure to make gold and silver legal currency in the state, in a response to what backers said was a lack of confidence in the international monetary system. The legislation cleared the Republican-controlled Senate by an 18-10 vote after being approved by the state House earlier this month. It now goes to Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who has not indicated if she will sign it into law or veto it. The bill calls for Arizona to make gold and silver coins and bullion legal tender beginning in mid-2014, joining existing U.S. currency issued by the federal government. If signed into law, Arizona would become the second state in the nation to establish these precious metals as legal tender. Utah approved such legislation in 2011. More than a dozen states have considered similar legislation in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The use of gold and silver as currency would be strictly voluntary, with businesses left free to accept the precious metals as payment for goods and services as they choose. State Senator Chester Crandell, a Republican and sponsor of the bill, said the ability to use gold and silver in everyday life in the state is still a "work in progress" and that more legislation was needed before it could be viable. "This is the first step in getting it into the statute so we can build on it," Crandell said at an earlier hearing on the bill. But Democratic state Senator Steve Farley said the bill could create massive problems for businesses in the state and government officials trying to administer what would in effect be a dual monetary system. "There's no reason for us to do this," Farley told lawmakers during the final vote on Tuesday. "This is another one of those things that gets national press for us - and not in a good way." He also pointed to the recent decline in the value of gold - which sank to $1,321.35 per ounce on April 16, its lowest price in more than two years - noting that "anybody who thinks gold or silver is a really safe place to put your money had better think again." The push to establish gold and silver as currency has become increasingly popular in the United States in recent years among some hardline fiscal conservatives, with the backing of groups including the Tea Party movement, American Principles Project and the Gold Standard Institute. Keith Weiner, president of the Gold Standard Institute advocacy group and a supporter of the bill, said the legislation was needed to counter what he sees as insolvency in the global monetary system. "The dollar system and all of the other derivative currencies, including the euro, are a recipe for worldwide bankruptcy," Weiner told lawmakers at an earlier hearing, adding that a "sound and honest money system such as gold and silver" was needed to bring stability. (Editing by Tim Gaynor, Edith Honan and Eric Beech)