Subject: News Clips 5.8.15
From: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
To: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 May 2015 07:40:04 -0400
List-Id: <hrcrapid.googlegroups.com>

*H4A Press Clips*

*May 8, 2015*

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS

Yesterday a federal appeals court ruled the NSA phone data collection
illegal and Hillary Clinton along with the White House endorsed a bill that
would scale back NSA mass surveillance.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve legislation allowing
Congress to review a nuclear deal with Iran in a 98-1 vote. Senator Tom
Cotton  (R-AR) was the only Senator in attendee to oppose.

The State Department says it has no plans to review previously undisclosed
donations to a branch of the Clinton Foundation.

Yesterday a poll was released from Quinnipiac University found that with 60
percent of the vote among Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants,
Hillary Clinton has an early lock on the first-in-the-nation presidential
test, apparently undamaged by a nationwide flood of negative publicity.

LAST NIGHTS EVENING NEWS

Last night there was no 2016 election coverage. The three major news
outlets instead covered ISIS followers in the US, Wednesday evening’s
severe weather in Oklahoma and Patriots Super bowl quasi-scandal:
Deflategate.

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S
NEWS................................................................. 1

LAST NIGHTS EVENING
NEWS................................................................. 1

TODAY’S KEY
STORIES............................................................................
4

*Hillary Clinton endorses NSA reform bill* // MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald -
May 7, 2015......... 4

*Senate overwhelmingly approves Iran review bill in 98-1 vote* // The Hill
// Jordain Carney – May 7, 2015    5

*State Department Plans No Review of Clinton Foundation Donations* // AP //
Matthew Lee - May 7, 2015         7

*What Trouble? Clinton Has Early Lock On Iowa Caucus, Quinnipiac University
Poll Finds; Sanders, Biden Are Only Dems Over 3%* // Quinnipiac University
- May 7,
2015..........................................................................................................
8

*Hillary Clinton says 'not one' GOP presidential contender backs path to
citizenship* // Politifact // Louis Jacobson - May 7, 2015      9

SOCIAL
MEDIA........................................................................................
13

*Maggie Haberman (5/7/15 7:54AM)@maggieNYT**‪**.*: @ByronYork on the trap
Clinton set for Rs on immigration
m.washingtonexaminer.com/how-will-top-2….............................................................................................................................
13

*Amy Chozick (5/7/15 10:45AM) @amychozick**‪* : Iowa Democrats unfazed by
criticism of Clinton. Nice look at her standing in the caucus state, by
@arappeport nytimes.com/politics/first…............................................................................
13

*Ken Thomas (5/7/15) @KThomasDC**‪**:* State Dept plans no review of
Clinton Foundation donations, via @APDiploWriter bit.ly/1ET7rgy        13

*Teddy Schleifer (5/7/15, 7:48 PM) @teddyschleifer:* Contrary to previous
report, @SaraMurray scoops that Jeb cited George W. as foreign policy, not
Israel, adviser. |
cnn.com/2015/05/07/pol….........................................................................
13

*Maggie Haberman (5/7/15 6:41) @maggieNYT*‪: Interesting - Priorities USA
brings on Rafi Jafri, Dem fundraiser who'd worked for Clinton '08 and Ready
for Hillary, per two
sources.........................................................................................
14

HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE...................................................................
14

*Hillary Clinton Shows New Willingness to Tackle Risky Issues* // New York
Times // Patrick Healy - May 7, 2015    14

*The Clintons’ Canadian Mining Pal Has Been Accused Of Double-Dealing
Before* // Daily Caller // Chuck Ross  - May 6, 2015               16

*Why Clinton’s immigration speech left many Republican rivals speechless*
// Washington Post // David Nakamura and Robert Costa - May 7,
2015................................................................................................................................................
22

*Poll: Hillary Clinton strong in Iowa despite email, foreign cash flaps* //
Politico // Nick Gass - May 7, 2015  25

*WMUR Poll: Clinton trails or tied with five top Republicans* // WMUR //
John DiStaso - May 7, 2015                   26

*Hillary Clinton pushes the limits of campaign finance law* // LA Times //
Evan Halper - May 7, 2015               27

*Why Hillary Clinton Embraced Big Money in Politics* // NBC News // Perry
Bacon, Jr. - May 7, 2015                   28

*Hillary Clinton's Not the First Democrat to Woo Super-PAC's Donors* //
Bloomberg Politics // Ali Elkin - May 7, 2015               30

*First on CNN: Clinton invites donors to New York, but only if they've hit
their goals* // CNN Politics // Jeff Zeleny - May 7, 2015      31

*Democratic primary debates will still matter for Hillary Clinton* //
Chicago Tribune // Jonathan Bernstein - May 7, 2015  32

*Hillary Clinton Hints Of Going Beyond Obama By Floating The Idea Of Debt
Free College* // Politicus USA // Jason Easley - May 7, 2015       33

*The Billionaire Whose Clinton Foundation Ties Could Be Trouble for Hillary
Clinton* // Bloomberg // Joshua Green - May 7, 2015    34

*Hillary Clinton's Hill Whisperer* // National Journal // Sarah Mimms - May
7, 2015........ 37

*Ja Rule just endorsed Hillary Clinton* // Business Insider // Hunter
Walker - May 7, 2015 40

*Behind High Walls: Clinton Charity Moves Moroccan Party Out of View* //
ABC News // Matthew Mosk and Brian Epstein – May 7, 2015     40

*Clinton 'fact-check' under fire* // Washington Examiner // Sarah Westwood
- May 7, 2015 41

*How will top 2016 Republicans respond to Hillary Clinton immigration move?*
// Washington Examiner // Byron York - May 6, 2015          44

*Pennsylvania's Fight Over Paid Sick Days Could Be The Presidential
Campaign's* // Huffington Post  Politics // Jonathan Cohn – May 7,
2015       46

*Bill Clinton: We had the lowest net worth of any president entering office
since Harry Truman* // Politifact // Katie Sanders - May 7th,
2015           47

*Hillary and the Burden of Clintonism* // The Atlantic // Molly Ball – May
7, 2015............. 50

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE....................................... 52

*Trade Debate Gives Bernie Sanders a Chance to Put Hillary Clinton on the
Hot Seat* // Bloomberg // Heidi Przybyla - May 7, 2015    52

*Martin O'Malley Hires Political Director Before Likely Run* // New York
Times // Maggie Haberman - May 7, 2015  54

*Martin O'Malley Keeps On Baiting Hillary Clinton* // Bloomberg Politics //
Sahil Kapur - May 7, 2015              55

*Can Elizabeth Warren Kill President Obama’s Trade Deal?* // TIME // Haley
Sweetland Edwards - May 7, 2015             57

GOP.........................................................................................................
59

*Rubio Headlines Fundraiser For Policy Group That Supports Conversion
Therapy* // Buzzfeed // Chris Geldner – May 7, 2015            59

*Marco Rubio Campaigns on His Immigrant Story, Cautiously* // New York
Times // Jonathan Martin and Ashley Parker - May 7, 2015       60

*'Underdog' Rick Santorum says he'll announce intentions May 27* //
Politico // Nick Gass – May 7, 2015        63

*Why Carly Fiorina is on a media blitz* // CNN Politics // Chris Moody –
May 7, 2015.......... 64

*Jeb Bush is Failing to Impress Iowa Republicans, Poll Shows* // New York
Times // Alan Rappeport - May 7, 2015    66

*Jeb Bush Plans to Spend More Time in Iowa* // New York Times // Alan
Rappeport - May 7, 2015           66

*One of Jeb Bush’s top advisers on Israel: George W. Bush* // Washington
Post // Robert Costa and Matea Gold - May 7, 2015   67

*T. Boone Pickens, With Cash, Backs Jeb Bush* // New York Times //
Alexandra Stevenson - May 7, 2015            69

*Lindsey Graham Slams Hillary Clinton's New Immigration Proposal* //
Bloomberg Politics // Sahil Kapur - May 7, 2015    70

*Lindsey Graham: '98.6% sure' to run, and on a different path on
immigration* // USA Today // Susan Page - May 7, 2015      71

*Lindsey Graham looking at June 1 to announce White House run, sources say*
// Politico // Katie Glueck - May 7, 2015            72

*Rand Paul praises ‘monumental’ NSA ruling* // The Hill // Ben Kamisar -
May 7, 2015.... 73

*Paul, McConnell part ways on Patriot Act* // The Hill // Julian Hattem -
May 7, 2015......... 74

*Chris Christie: Hillary Clinton 'pandering' on immigration* // CNN
Politics // Chris Moody - May 7, 2015      76

*Christie Brings His Drug Treatment Message to New Hampshire* // WSJ //
Heather Haddon - May 7, 2015      77

*Fiorina Comes Out Against TPP: ‘I Am Very Uncomfortable With This Deal’*
// Daily Caller // Alex Griswold - May 7, 2015   78

*Republican National Committee to share data with 2016 campaigns* //
Washington Examiner // David Drucker - May 7, 2015         79

*AP-GfK Poll: Republicans open to softer immigration policy* // The Big
Story // Thomas Beaumont and Emily Swanson - May 7, 2015          80

TOP
NEWS...............................................................................................
82

DOMESTIC............................................................................................
82

*N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Is Illegal, Appeals Court Rules* // New York
Times // Charlie Savage and Jonathan Weisman - May 7, 2015  82

*FBI knew shooter might go to Muhammad drawing contest* // Washington Post
// Adam Goldman - May 7, 2015        85

*Justice Department to launch federal investigation of Baltimore police* //
WaPo // Sara Horwitz – May 7, 2015           87

*Tornadoes Hit Plains States, Battering Oklahoma* // New York Times // The
Associated Press - May 7, 2015 89

INTERNATIONAL.................................................................................
90

*Senate Passes Bill Giving Congress Right to Weigh in on Iran Nuclear Deal*
// WSJ // Kristina Peterson - May 7, 2015            90

*Exit poll: Conservatives running strong in Britain election* // USA Today
// Kim Hjelmgaard, Jane Onyanga-Omara, and John Bacon - May 7,
2015................................................................................................................................................
93

*Yemen Al Quaeda Leader Who Claimed Credit for Charlie Hebdo Attack Killed
in U.S. Drone Strike* // NBC News // Daniella Silva - May 7, 2015     95

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS.............................................................
96

*Hillary Clinton's eight questions* // Politico // Hadas Gold - May 7,
2015............................. 96

*Hillary Clinton’s liberal lean on immigration — and what it means for 2016*
// Washington Post // Philip Bump - May 7, 2015        96

*The media's real role in 2016* // Politico // Dylan Byers - May 7,
2015.................................. 97

*Meeting Hillary Clinton was like talking to a mentor* // Iowa City
Press-Citizen // Carter Bell Guest Opinion - May 6, 2015  99

*‘I Gotta Pay Our Bills’* // WSJ // Daniel Henninger - May 6,
2015........................................ 100

*The odd history of why the Clintons keep all their money in cash* // WaPo
Blog // Max Ehrenfreund - May 7, 2015     102

*Debunking Hillary Clinton’s liberal ‘problem’* // WaPo Blog // Chris
Cillizza – May 7, 2015 104

*Clinton’s claim that no GOP candidate has consistently supported a path to
citizenship* // WaPo Blog // May 7, 2015                105

TODAY’S KEY STORIES

Hillary Clinton endorses NSA reform bill
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-endorses-nsa-reform-bill> //
MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald - May 7, 2015

On the same day a federal court ruled against the National Security
Agency’s bulk collection of telephone data, Hillary Clinton joined the
White House in endorsing a bill to roll back mass surveillance.

“Congress should move ahead now with the USA Freedom Act — a good step
forward in ongoing efforts to protect our security & civil liberties,”
Clinton wrote on Twitter Thursday.

The USA Freedom Act would end the NSA’s bulk collection of data under the
Patriot Act’s controversial Section 215. The section is set to expire June
1 unless Congress takes action, and momentum is building around the
rollback measure.

The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee with a lopsided 25-2 vote,
while a Senate version was recently introduced by a bipartisan group of
lawmakers, led by libertarian Republican Mike Lee and senior Democrat
Patrick Leahy.

However, a similar bill failed in Congress last year and opposition from
hawkish Republicans in the Senate will likely force supporters to secure at
least 60 votes as a means of overcoming a filibuster.

The White House also threw its support behind the bill this week. White
House press secretary Josh Earnest has called bill “commonsense” reform and
wrote on Twitter Thursday that President Obama thinks “Congress shld pass
USA Freedom Act.”

Some civil libertarians say the bill doesn’t go nearly far enough, however,
claiming that it only scratches the surface.

Earlier Thursday, a federal court in New York ruled that the NSA’s bulk
data collection under Section 215 is illegal. It was the first such ruling
and could set an important precedent.

Clinton left the State Department before NSA leaker Edward Snowden made the
agency’s snooping a major political issue. But she has been asked about
bulk collection since and tried to find a balance between defending the
agency’s work and acknowledging the concerns of many Americans, especially
in the Democratic base.

In April of last year, Clinton said Snowden’s leaks likely helped —
“intentionally or unintentionally” — terror groups. “I have a hard time
thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and liberty has taken
refuge in Russia, under Putin’s authority,” she added, referring to Snowden.

When asked about the NSA during an appearance in Silicon Valley this year,
Clinton called for reform. “Well, I think the NSA needs to be more
transparent about what it is doing, sharing with the American people, which
it wasn’t. And I think a lot of the reaction about the NSA, people felt
betrayed,” she told Re/Code’s Kara Swisher at a tech conference.

Senate overwhelmingly approves Iran review bill in 98-1 vote
<http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/241355-senate-votes-to-approve-Iran-review-bill>
// The Hill // Jordain Carney – May 7, 2015

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve legislation allowing
Congress to review a nuclear deal with Iran in a 98-1 vote.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was the only senator to oppose the bill. He said
in a statement that he objected that the deal was not to be presented to
the Congress as a treaty.

"A nuclear-arms agreement with any adversary—especially the
terror-sponsoring, Islamist Iranian regime—should be submitted as a treaty
and obtain a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate as required by the
Constitution," he said.

The Senate bill would require a competed deal to be submitted to Congress,
which could then vote to approve or disapprove the nuclear deal within 30
days. Sanctions on Iran could not be lifted during this consideration.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), after the
vote, suggested that passage of the bill allows Congress to take "power
back" from President Obama. He also said it ensures the Congress will play
"an appropriate role" in the nuclear talks.

Passage of the legislation clears the way for U.S. negotiators to continue
to work on a nuclear deal with Iran ahead of a June 30 deadline with little
fear of interference from Congress. Negotiators reached a framework
agreement in April.

A vote to disapprove a nuclear deal with Iran would not kill it. President
Obama could veto such a measure, and the House and Senate would then need
two-thirds majorities to override his veto.

The administration initially opposed the legislation, arguing it could
interfere with negotiations with Iran. The White House changed course after
it became clear that the bill had strong support from Democrats.

The legislation will now move to the House. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)
suggested that passing the legislation would allow House lawmakers to "hold
President Obama's administration accountable."

"This important, bipartisan legislation will ensure that Congress has a
role in reviewing any potential agreement regarding Iran's nuclear weapons
program," he said. "I applaud the Senate for passing this bill, and thank
Sen. Bob Corker and others for their hard work. I look forward to House
passage of this bill to hold President Obama's administration accountable."

The White House indicated it would sign the bill, as long as it is not
changed with amendments opposed by the administration in the House.

"The president said he would sign it in its current form. The president
also made clear if amendments were added to that bill that would endanger a
deal coming together that prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon
that we would oppose it," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters
traveling on Air Force One.

Ahead of the vote, several Republicans ripped the legislation negotiated by
Corker and Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), the ranking member on his panel.

Republicans also expressed frustrations that they could not offer more
amendments to the bill.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed a motion to end debate
after Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Cotton tried to force a vote on an
amendment requiring Iran to recognize Israel's right to exist as part of a
final deal.

The move was a reversal of the open amendment process Republican leadership
pledged to bring to the Senate.

McConnell said Thursday that he would have preferred that amendments be
added to the bill, but that it might have invited a presidential veto.

“If we didn’t face the threats of filibusters, or the blocking of
amendments, or the specter of presidential vetoes, this bill would be a
heck of a lot stronger. I assure you,: he said. “But the truth is, we do.
That’s the frustrating reality.”

Rubio slammed the decision not to allow his amendment requiring Iran to
support Israel as part of a deal to come up for a vote, saying that some
senators are "terrified" of voting against it.

"Apparently there are senators terrified of voting against that amendment,
so they'd rather not have a vote at all. So I am deeply disappointed by the
direction this has taken," he said.

But, he added that he would support the final bill, suggesting that it was
better than nothing.

"At a minimum at least it creates a process whereby the American people
through their representatives can debate an issue of extraordinary
importance," he said. "So I hope this bill passes here today so at least
we'll have a chance to weigh in."

Rubio's remarks separate him from his presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz
(R-Texas) who said on Wednesday that the legislation is a "bad bill."

But Cruz voted in favor of the bill after voting against ending debate on
it.

“I voted no on cloture because we should have insisted on amendments to put
real teeth in this bill," the Texas Republican said. "Ultimately, I voted
yes on final passage because it may delay, slightly, President Obama's
ability to lift the Iran sanctions and it ensures we will have a
Congressional debate on the merits of the Iran deal."

Cruz was joined in voting against ending debate by fellow GOP Sens. Charles
Grassley (Iowa), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Jerry Moran (Kansas), Mike Lee (Utah)
and Dan Sullivan (Alaska).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was absent for the vote.

The legislation has been a source of tension between congressional
Democrats and the White House. Cardin, acknowledging that the hurdles he
and Corker have had to overcome with the legislation, told reporters that
"very few of you thought we would get a 98-1 vote on the floor of United
States Senate, but we did."

This story was updated at 4:37 p.m.

State Department Plans No Review of Clinton Foundation Donations
<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CLINTON_FOUNDATION_STATE_DEPARTMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-05-07-14-58-38>
// AP // Matthew Lee - May 7, 2015

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department says it has no plans to review
previously undisclosed donations to a branch of the Clinton Foundation.

Some say the unreported private donations to the Clinton Health Access
Initiative raise questions about potential conflicts of interest during
former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's time in office.

But State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said Thursday that private
contributions would not have been reviewed even if they had all been
disclosed under the terms of ethics agreements Clinton signed before she
took office. Only donations from foreign governments were subject to
vetting.

Rathke said the department is aware of no evidence to support allegations
of wrongdoing and would not "make a retroactive judgment about items that
were not submitted" during Clinton's tenure.

What Trouble? Clinton Has Early Lock On Iowa Caucus, Quinnipiac University
Poll Finds; Sanders, Biden Are Only Dems Over 3% <http://bit.ly/1EgHxjw> //
Quinnipiac University - May 7, 2015

With 60 percent of the vote among Iowa likely Democratic Caucus
participants, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has an early lock
on the first-in-the-nation presidential test, apparently undamaged by a
nationwide flood of negative publicity, according to a Quinnipiac
University poll released today.

This compares to a 61 percent Clinton showing in Iowa in a February 26
survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has 15 percent among Democrats, with 11
percent for Vice President Joseph Biden and 3 percent each for former U.S.
Sen. James Webb of Virginia and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
Another 7 percent are undecided.

Clinton and Biden each get 7 percent on the "no way" list when likely
Democratic Caucus participants name a candidate they would "definitely not
support." Sanders gets 6 percent.

Iowa Democrats say 76 - 17 percent that Clinton is honest and trustworthy,
with Biden at 84 - 10 percent.

"One thing is obvious about Iowa Democratic Caucus participants: They are
loyal as the day is long, at least when it comes to Hillary Clinton," said
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "The
former secretary of state has taken a major pounding in the news media and
from her political opponents over her e-mail and family foundation. So far
these criticisms have had absolutely no effect on her standing among Iowa
Democrats.

"One other thing is slightly less obvious but interesting: By more than
four-to-one, 76 - 17 percent, Iowa caucus-goers say Clinton is honest and
trustworthy."

"When Quinnipiac University surveyed all Iowa voters last month, it found
49 - 43 percent they saw her as not honest and trustworthy. When it comes
to analyzing Clinton's 2016 standing, it is important to keep straight who
is talking," Brown added.

Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants have an 83 - 11 percent
favorable opinion of Clinton. Her positions on the issues are "about
right," 70 percent of Democrats say. Likely caucus participants also say 93
- 6 percent that she has strong leadership qualities and 83 - 13 percent
that she cares about their needs and problems.

Biden gets a 79 - 15 percent favorability rating from Iowa Democrats. His
positions on the issues are "about right," 75 percent say. Democrats say 76
- 19 percent that he has strong leadership qualities and 85 - 10 percent
that he cares about their needs and problems.

"Four in 10 Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants aren't convinced
about Clinton, but there is no candidate who appears to have the political
and financial resources at this time to successfully take her on," Brown
said. "Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont finished second in the caucus-goer
poll, but that may reflect the news he was going to make the race, much of
which occurred while this poll was being taken.

"Vice President Joseph Biden also makes it into double-digits, barely.
Absent a change of events, numbers like those from Democratic core voters
in Iowa make a strong statement: There may be a lot of talk about what Bill
and Hillary Clinton have done since he left the presidency, but nothing has
penetrated her base of support."

In fact, former President Bill Clinton scores an 87 - 10 percent
favorability rating from Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants,
compared to President Barack Obama's 86 - 11 percent favorability.

From April 25 - May 4, Quinnipiac University surveyed 692 likely Iowa
Democratic Caucus participants with a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percentage
points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D.,
conducts public opinion surveys in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and the nation as a
public service and for research.

Hillary Clinton says 'not one' GOP presidential contender backs path to
citizenship
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/may/07/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-not-one-gop-presidential-cont/>
// Politifact // Louis Jacobson - May 7, 2015

During a visit to a school in Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton positioned herself as an uncompromising advocate for
immigration -- and in the process, she took a shot at the Republican
presidential field for not joining her.

"This is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side," Clinton
said during the May 5, 2015, event. "Make no mistake: Not a single
Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently
supporting a path to citizenship. Not one. When they talk about legal
status, that is code for second-class status."

We wondered whether Clinton was correct. So we took a look closer look at
where the GOP field stands on the issue.

We’ll start by noting that Clinton made some careful word choices here.

First, she explicitly distinguishes between eventual "citizenship" and a
grant of "legal status." While those concepts are similar, they are not
identical. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two is that citizens
would be able to vote, while people with legalized status would not.

Second, Clinton emphasized that she’s referring to Republican candidates
who have "clearly and consistently" articulated support for a path to
citizenship. That means she is discounting those who may have said they
support citizenship on one or two occasions but have since stopped saying
it or have said other things that would seem to undermine their commitment
to that position.

We found that the other Republican candidates and potential candidates
generally fell into one of three categories.

1. Those who unambiguously support a path to citizenship

We quickly found one exception to Clinton’s formulation: Sen. Lindsey
Graham, R-S.C., who isn’t officially in the race but has said he's likely
to run.

Graham -- who had been a leading Republican supporter of the "Gang of
Eight" immigration legislation that passed the Senate but died in the House
-- "has been clear about … his support for a path to citizenship for
illegal immigrants that includes registering with the government, paying
fines, learning English and undergoing background checks," Brittany
Bramell, spokesperson for Security Through Strength, a pro-Graham group.

2. Those who have never supported a path to citizenship

Some GOP candidates or potential candidates do not appear to have ever
explicitly articulated support for a path for citizenship. This list
includes Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, former CEO
Carly Fiorina, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and former Sen. Rick Santorum
of Pennsylvania.

3. Those who have expressed support for a path to citizenship but have
since reversed themselves or expressed ambiguous views.

·      Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. In 2013, Walker was asked by the Wausau
Daily Herald, "Can you envision a world where, with the right penalties and
waiting periods and meet the requirements, where those people could get
citizenship?" He answered, "Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it makes sense."

But in February 2015, Walker backed away from that stance, first on ABC’s
This Week and then, on March 1, 2015, in an interview with Fox News Sunday,
when he said, "My view has changed. I'm flat out saying it. … Candidates
can say that. Sometimes they don't." When Fox’s Chris Wallace asked, "So,
you've changed from 2013?" Walker said, "Absolutely."

·      Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee seemed to support
citizenship during a book tour in January 2015. "I don’t believe that it is
a just thing to punish someone who had nothing to do with the breaking of
the law. What I want to do is see what can we do to put that person in a
position where they do abide by the law and become a citizen," Huckabee
said. "I would like that person to become a very generous tax-paying
citizen rather than somebody who is going to take taxes away from the rest
of us."

However, this does not go as far as Clinton’s position, and on other
occasions, Huckabee has framed himself more of a critic of immigration. "A
country that does not have secure borders is really not a country anymore,"
he said at the Iowa Agricultural Summit in March 2015.

·      New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. In 2010, Christie said on ABC’s This
Week that "the president and the Congress have to step up to the plate.
They have to secure our borders, and they have to put forward a commonsense
path to citizenship for people." But appearing on This Week in 2013,
Christie sidestepped repeated questions about whether he still held the
same view, saying, "I don’t get to make those determinations."

·      Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Jindal wrote in 2013 that "for folks
who came here illegally but are willing to gain proficiency in English, pay
a fine, and demonstrate a willingness to assimilate, we should require them
to work here and pay taxes for a substantial period of time after obtaining
legal status before they have the opportunity to begin the process of
applying for U.S. citizenship." However, Jindal opposed the Senate bill
that would have created a path to citizenship.

·      Physician Ben Carson. Carson has been widely quoted in the
conservative media saying he would "of course allow (illegal immigrants) to
have a pathway to citizenship. That’s the only humane and reasonable thing
to do." However, the time and place of that comment is not clear. It does
get some support from this passage in Carson’s 2012 book, America the
Beautiful: "Is it moral for us, for example, to take advantage of cheap
labor from illegal immigrants while denying them citizenship? I'm sure you
can tell from the way I phrased the question that I believe we have taken
the moral low road on this issue."

However, since he’s become a presidential candidate, Carson has articulated
his position on immigration without referring to a path for citizenship,
notably in a column for the National Review.

The candidates in this category who are hardest to characterize are the two
from Florida, a state whose large population of immigrants makes
immigration a somewhat touchier issue: former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco
Rubio.

·      Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. As PolitiFact Florida has noted, Bush
has flip-flopped extensively on the question of a path for citizenship
during his long political career.

In the 2013 book Immigration Wars, Bush and his co-author Clint Bolick
wrote that permanent residency "should not lead to citizenship. It is
absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions
have consequences — in this case, that those who violated the laws can
remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship."

But in the wake of the book’s release, Bush backtracked. He supported the
Senate bill that included a path to citizenship, and he told ABC’s George
Stephanopoulos that "the basic premise needs to be that coming to the
country legally should be easier with less cost than coming to the country
illegally. And if you can create a system like that — as is being discussed
in the Senate and in the House — through a path to citizenship, that’s
fine."

As recently as March 2015, Bush told reporters during a visit to New
Hampshire that he could support a path to citizenship. "If you could get a
consensus done, where you could have a bill done, and it was 15 years (to
achieve citizenship) as the Senate Gang of Eight did, I’d be supportive of
that," he said.

However, he’s also said some things contrary to that stance.

At a Politics and Eggs breakfast in New Hampshire in April 2015, Bush
urged, "Deal with the folks who are here illegally in a rational,
thoughtful way. My suggestion is earned legal status. Not earned
citizenship, but earned legal status. You don’t create a system where
people cut in line in front of those who have been patiently waiting. But
you get a provisional work permit, you work, you pay taxes, you pay a fine,
you learn English, you don’t commit crimes, and you earn — over an extended
period of time — legal status."

A Bush campaign representative did not respond to inquiries for this
article.

Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio was one of the leading Republicans supporting the
Senate immigration bill, which included a path to citizenship.

Asked for his reaction to Clinton’s claim, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant
referred us to several pieces of evidence.

One was a January 2015 interview with the New York Times Magazine in which
Rubio was asked, "Are you dropping the idea of citizenship for those who
came here illegally?" He responded, "Once you have permanent residency,
which is a green card, existing law allows you to apply for citizenship."

He echoed that stance in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on April
19, 2015. "After a substantial period of time in that (work permit) status,
assuming they haven’t violated any of the conditions of that status, they
would be allowed to apply for legal residency, just like anybody else
would, not a special process," Rubio said. "And after you’re a legal
resident, after a number of years, by law, you’re allowed to apply for
citizenship."

However, at a National Review Institute event in May 2015, Rubio didn’t use
the term "citizenship." He said that after "securing the border" and
"modernizing" the legal immigration system, "what you would get is the
equivalent of a non-immigrant, non-permanent work visa to be in the U.S.
and you would have to be in that status for a significant period of time.
And at some point, if you choose, you could apply for permanent residency,
but you'd have to do it through that modernized legal immigration system
and you'd have to do it just like everybody else, not a special process or
anything of that nature."

And some have raised questions about whether Rubio’s proposal would be
practical, given the long backlog in applications for legal residency --
4.4 million people are awaiting green cards, according to the State
Department.

Conant declined to respond specifically to whether Rubio fits into the
category Clinton outlined.

As for the Clinton camp, spokesman Josh Schwerin indicated that all of the
candidates in the third category aren’t clearly supporting a path to
citizenship, as Clinton put it. "Any candidate who is intentionally vague
on the issue is, by definition, not clear and consistent in their support,"
he said.

Our ruling

Clinton said that "not a single Republican candidate, announced or
potential, is clearly supporting a path to citizenship. Not one."

She's telling voters who want a path to citizenship that there's no one on
the Republican side who supports that issue. That is not accurate. There is
one -- Graham. She does have a point that the other dozen or so candidates
either have never backed a path to citizenship or have sent mixed signals.

On balance, we rate Clinton's claim Mostly False.

SOCIAL MEDIA

<https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/596266838117453824>

Maggie Haberman (5/7/15 7:54AM)@maggieNYT‪.
<https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/596266838117453824>: @ByronYork on
the trap Clinton set for Rs on immigration
m.washingtonexaminer.com/how-will-top-2…

Amy Chozick (5/7/15 10:45AM) @amychozick‪
<https://twitter.com/amychozick/status/596325018054828033> : Iowa Democrats
unfazed by criticism of Clinton. Nice look at her standing in the caucus
state, by @arappeport nytimes.com/politics/first…

Ken Thomas (5/7/15) @KThomasDC‪:
<https://twitter.com/KThomasDC/status/596394265166618624> State Dept plans
no review of Clinton Foundation donations, via @APDiploWriter bit.ly/1ET7rgy

Teddy Schleifer (5/7/15, 7:48 PM) @teddyschleifer:
<https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/596461539567239168> Contrary to
previous report, @SaraMurray scoops that Jeb cited George W. as foreign
policy, not Israel, adviser. | cnn.com/2015/05/07/pol…

Maggie Haberman (5/7/15 6:41) @maggieNYT
<https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/596444892223516673>‪: Interesting -
Priorities USA brings on Rafi Jafri, Dem fundraiser who'd worked for
Clinton '08 and Ready for Hillary, per two sources

HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE

Hillary Clinton Shows New Willingness to Tackle Risky Issues
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/politics/hillary-clinton-campaign.html?_r=0>
// New York Times // Patrick Healy - May 7, 2015

It has been only three weeks since Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her
candidacy for the White House, but she already looks more confident than
she did during the almost 17 months of her last campaign.

Sure, no serious rival has yet emerged to get under her skin the way Barack
Obama did in 2008. But Mrs. Clinton and her team have also shown a
determination not to be thrown off course: not by the blowback on her use
of personal email while at the State Department, not by reports critical of
the Clinton Foundation, nor by congressional investigations of the 2012
attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Such flare-ups used to make Mrs. Clinton go cold and cautious. Now, she is
projecting a scandals-be-damned attitude and barreling ahead with her
agenda. In Las Vegas on Tuesday, she was unafraid to court controversy on
an issue dear to her — families and children — by saying that she would go
beyond President Obama’s executive action on immigration and try to protect
tens of thousands of parents who are still facing deportation.

It was a vivid contrast to a low point in 2007, at a Democratic primary
debate, when she avoided taking a clear stand on an issue that was
similarly divisive among voters: driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

Mrs. Clinton’s embrace of citizenship for many illegal immigrants, bold
executive action and even those driver’s licenses, which she endorsed
recently, will allow her to play offense against Republican candidates who
are divided on immigration.

What she does not say is that she used to side with many Republicans on
some cultural and social issues. She now sees a constitutional right to
same-sex marriage, for instance, after years of saying that marriage was
only between a man and a woman.

It is not every day that a lawyer like Mrs. Clinton discovers a new
constitutional protection, but Democratic primary voters increasingly favor
same-sex marriage — and she is determined to catch up with them.

It may be early to jump to any “Hillary unbound” conclusions, and she has
yet to engage in any freewheeling back and forth with reporters. But from
her full-throated speech last week about ending mass incarceration to her
bullish decision on Wednesday to court donors for a “super PAC,” Mrs.
Clinton has shown a new willingness to take stands that turn off some
voters or interest groups.

This is a meaningful development. Mrs. Clinton twisted herself into knots
during her last campaign when trying to mollify Democrats over her Iraq war
vote without admitting any fault. After spending 2007 and 2008 refusing to
apologize for events in Iraq, she now seems increasingly capable of saying
what liberals want to hear.

“We are seeing a bolder and more confident candidate this time out,” said
Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic strategist who worked on Mrs. Clinton’s first
presidential bid. “As a result, I think voters are getting a much better
look at the real Hillary Clinton.”

He continued, “At a similar point eight years ago, the mind-set of the
Clinton campaign was to be cautious and avoid rocking the boat.”

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, who were sometimes accused of overkill in
defending her in the 2008 contest, are fighting back against opponents with
a new tone and style intended to appear eminently reasonable.

Her lawyers are trying to strike a compromise with Representative Trey
Gowdy, the Republican leading an investigation of the Benghazi attacks, to
have her testify in public. A Clinton spokesman, Brian Fallon, appeared
this week in a campaign video adopting a genial, Wally Cleaver manner as he
attempted to eviscerate the new book “Clinton Cash” and the credibility of
its author, Peter Schweizer.

The steadier hand is particularly noticeable to old Obama aides, who recall
Mrs. Clinton as a more tactical than strategic-minded opponent in 2008.

“Her presidential campaign seems a lot less distracted by the day-to-day
news stories than it was in 2008,” said Bill Burton, who was the press
secretary for Obama’s first presidential campaign. “That means her ability
to project a cleareyed focus on the American people is a lot more
effective.”

Her near-term strategy, in the view of some Republicans and political
analysts, is to catch up with the steady migration of many Democratic
primary voters to the left wing of their party.

“Secretary Clinton has always run the campaign that she has politically
calculated is the most advantageous for her at the time,” said Tim Miller,
a spokesman for Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and a likely
Republican candidate. “She’s making a tactical choice that her best chance
at winning is to protect her left flank from a challenge and run a divisive
general election campaign.”

New opinion polls this week suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s approach is
working, especially among Democrats. Americans now view her more favorably
than they did earlier this year, despite weeks of critical reports about
her use of personal email and about donations to the Clinton Foundation,
according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Four out of five Democrats say
she is honest and trustworthy, and that she shares the values most
Americans try to live by.

One important challenge will be following up on her rhetoric with policy
details. After Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on immigration in Las Vegas, the
White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that President Obama had
used “as much authority as he could” to help parents and others facing
deportation, and appeared at a loss about what more Mrs. Clinton might do.

Clinton advisers said on Wednesday that she wanted to try an additional
approach of providing a new application process for some parents who are
illegal immigrants to pursue a path toward citizenship.

It remains to be seen how this would work in practice, and what positions
Mrs. Clinton will take on complex economic issues that she has barely begun
to tackle. But her allies in the Democratic Party seem grateful to have so
much now on which to agree with her.

“My sense is that she rightfully perceives a much better political
landscape for her today than eight years ago,” said Carter Eskew, a
Democratic political consultant who is not involved with her campaign.

“Then, voters were looking for a clean break from President Bush, and she
carried the burden of voting for the Iraq war,” he continued. “In this
cycle, voters seem to be much more focused on candidates with confidence,
experience and perceived ability to get things done — which have always
been her greatest strengths. Unless Republicans crack those, they may find
running against her very frustrating.”

The Clintons’ Canadian Mining Pal Has Been Accused Of Double-Dealing Before
<http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/06/the-clintons-canadian-mining-pal-has-been-accused-of-double-dealing-before/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter>
// Daily Caller // Chuck Ross  - May 6, 2015

Frank Giustra, the Canadian mining magnate and Clinton Foundation board
member, has gone to great lengths recently to shoot down claims that his
work with the former president presents a conflict of interest.

But a review of Canadian court documents and other records raises questions
over whether Giustra is truly an above-the-board businessman.

The 57-year-old Giustra, who bears the haircut of Caesar, the stature of
Napoleon, and was described to The Daily Caller as a “puppet-master,” has
interests in a wide variety of industries — including the film industry and
the olive oil business.

But his main interest is in mining, and he has made millions investing in
shell companies in the industry and turning them for massive profit.
Technically, Giustra is the CEO of Fiore Financial, but he is heavily
involved and invested in numerous companies, including Endeavour Financial,
and its offshoot, the Cayman Islands-based Endeavour Mining.

In Dec. 2008, Endeavour Financial and Rusoro Mining, a company controlled
by Russian businessman Andre Agapov, attempted a hostile takeover of Gold
Reserve Inc. (GRI), a mining company based in Spokane, Wash.

The rub was this: in 2004, GRI entered a contract with Endeavour in which
it paid the company $1.2 million for consultation services while Endeavour
had both equity and debt investments in the company. GRI alleged that it
was not aware of Endeavour’s investment in Rusoro, and that the
Giustra-controlled company breached its confidentiality and engaged in an
obscene case of a conflict of interest.

Two Canadian judges sided with GRI in separate rulings in February and
April 2009. Giustra and his right-hand man, Gordon Keep, were named by GRI
in a lawsuit in 2010, and Endeavour and Rusoro eventually agreed to a
multi-million dollar settlement with GRI in 2012.

Stanley Beck, an arbitrator and the former chair of the Ontario Securities
Commission, offered scathing testimony during the case.

“I am not aware of any case in which the financial adviser of a company,
who is subject to a confidentiality agreement, has subsequently appeared as
the financial adviser to a hostile bidder for that same company,” Beck
stated, according to court documents.

Another mining industry insider familiar with the companies and the lawsuit
told The Daily Caller that Endeavour’s double-dealing was “unprecedented”
and that Endeavour’s “financial advisory business suffered…because people
were literally appalled.”

Endeavour Financial morphed into a mining company after the ruling, said
the insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Partnership

Clinton’s first documented meeting with Giustra occurred in Jan. 2005 when
the former president spoke via satellite for an event arranged by Giustra
to discuss tsunami relief. By June, Clinton’s team reached out to Giustra
to seek use of the tycoon’s luxurious MD-87 private jet.

“The plane is a business tool,” Giustra told The Globe and Mail in 2008.
“No more, no less.”

Clinton has used that so-called business tool 26 times since meeting
Giustra, according to The Washington Post. Giustra has accompanied Clinton
on 13 of those trips.

Clinton and Giustra developed a closer partnership when, in Sept. 2005,
they flew to Kazakhstan on Giustra Air. There Giustra negotiated a deal for
a contract that gave one of his companies, UrAsia Energy, access to three
uranium mines. Clinton and Giustra also met with Kazakh president Nursultan
Nazarbayev, with whom Clinton claimed he wanted to discuss his
philanthropic work on HIV/AIDS.

As author Peter Schweizer lays out in “Clinton Cash,” his book about the
Clinton Foundation and its many wealthy donors, HIV/AIDS was a strange
project for Clinton to undertake in Kazakhstan. As of 2005, only between
0.1 and 0.3 percent of the country’s population suffered from the disease.

After their meetings, Clinton issued a public statement in support of
Nazarbayev. That backing was out of line with U.S. policy towards the
dictator, who had just won an election with a 90-plus percent showing at
the polls.

Weeks after the trip, Giustra donated $31 million to the Clinton Foundation.

But that was just a taste of what was to come. In 2007, Giustra pledged
$100 million to form the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative
(CGSGI), which is now known as the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise (CGE)
Partnership. The CGE Partnership also has a Canadian arm, which has been
the recipient of millions of dollars in donations from “Friends of Frank,”
as they are known.

The Clinton-Giustra Kazakhstan trip was reported by The New York Times in
2008 and is revisited in detail in Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash.”

The book, and another Times article, furthered the story by tying together
Giustra’s UrAsia to Uranium One, which was eventually absorbed by Russia’s
energy agency, Rosatom. Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and other
agencies, approved a series of stock transactions that allowed Rosatom to
acquire a majority stake in Uranium One. The deal enriched a number of
Giustra associates (and Clinton donors) and helped put 20 percent of U.S.
uranium deposits under Russian control.

Giustra and the Clintons were also together in Bogota in June 2010 when
Hillary made a major concession to Colombian president Álvaro Uribe.

Giustra, who had business interests in Colombia’s oil, mining and timber
industries, first met Uribe in 2005 at a Clinton Global Initiative function.

In 2007, Giustra formed a Colombian oil company, Pacific Rubiales, which
proceeded to grow at a phenomenal rate. The company was able to purchase an
oil company with close ties to the Colombian government that had just been
made private. The Colombian government also granted Pacific the rights to
build a pipeline.

In July 2007, Pacific Rubiales announced that it was donating $2.2 million
to the new CGSGI. Matching funds would be provided by other longtime
Giustra associates — companies like Canaccord and GMP Securities, which
have underwritten numerous Giustra deals.

According to a press release in which Giustra is quoted, the $4.4 million
total pledge amounted to one percent of the $440 million raised by Pacific
Rubiales to continue its Colombian crude oil operations.

While Giustra stated that the Pacific Rubiales deal and the one percent
donation “shows other companies how they can help make a real difference in
developing countries,” the company has been accused of using heavy-handed
tactics to thwart labor strikes.

Whether because of the Pacific Rubiales consortium’s donations to the
Clinton Foundation or because of the dictates of U.S. policy, Hillary
Clinton helped Pacific Rubiales’ interests.

In June 2010, Giustra, Bill and Hillary Clinton traveled to Colombia and
held separate meetings with Uribe. After a morning meeting with Bill, Uribe
met with Hillary several hours later. In that meeting, she expressed
support for a U.S.-Colombia trade agreement, a reversal of her position
from the 2008 presidential campaign trail.

In doing so, the U.S. relieved pressure on Colombia to improve its human
rights records, especially in the realm of labor relations.

The gist of “Clinton Cash,” which has led to a massive, coordinated
rebuttal from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, is that without
the access that only Clinton could provide, Giustra would not have met
leaders like Uribe or Nazarbayev who may have helped his business dealings.
And without Giustra, Clinton would not have the convenience of a private
luxury jet or to millions of dollars of donations from wealthy Canadian
miners.

“My money is more effective backing Clinton than any other person I can
think of on this planet,” Giustra told The Globe and Mail in 2008.

Non-disclosure

The Clintons have denied that the appearance of quid pro quo is not as it
appears. Giustra has done the same.

“I sold all of my stakes in the uranium company – Uranium One – in the fall
of 2007, after it merged with another company,” Giustra said after The
Times published its report on the Kazakh deal last month.

While it may be true that Giustra does not directly hold Uranium One stock,
he is still tied to the company through his investments in other mining
companies and mining financiers. Many of his close associates were still
closely involved in Uranium One well into Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the
State Department.

Ian Telfer, who was the chairman of Uranium One when it was acquired by
Rosatom, donated $2.35 million to the Canadian arm of the Clinton
Foundation through his charity, the Fernwood Foundation.

Frank Holmes, the CEO of U.S. Global Investors, held $4.7 million in shares
with Uranium One as of 2011. He donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to
the Clinton Foundation. Neil Woodyer, who was an adviser to Uranium One and
founded Endeavour Mining with Giustra, donated between $50,000 and $100,000
to the foundation.

Many of the companies and their executives are likely among the 1,100
donors that the Clinton Foundation has admitted were not disclosed. That
despite a promise the Clintons made in 2008 to disclose all of its donors.

A July 2013 archived page from the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth
Initiative website sheds some light on what companies have donated to and
sponsored the Canadian wing.

The list includes names like Endeavour Mining, Gold Fields, Gran Colombia
Gold, Pacific Rubiales, Rusoro, and, curiously, Uranium One.

GMP Securities and Holmes’ U.S. Global Investors are also listed as
sponsors. Both companies, described to TheDC as being part of a
“triumvirate” along with Endeavour, have helped arrange financing deals for
Giustra’s numerous mining industry deals and were involved in the Uranium
One deal.

A request for comment sent to Giustra’s Fiore Financial email account was
not returned. The Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership also did not
respond to a request for comment.

The Canadian arm of the foundation has claimed that Canadian law prohibits
the disclosure of donors without their permission, though the claim has
been widely disputed.

In denying the appearance of quid pro quo, both Clinton and Giustra say
they have respect for each others’ commitment to humanitarian causes.
Though as The Globe and Mail noted in its 2008 Giustra profile: “until a
few years ago, [Giustra] had only dabbled in philanthropy, funneling to
local charities and organizing the occasional fundraiser.”

Rusoro-Gold Reserve dispute

If Giustra’s interests vis a vis Clinton are not conflicted, the same
cannot be said about his dealings with Gold Reserve Inc. and Rusoro.

Giustra was the chairman of Endeavour Financial from 2001 to 2007 and is
currently a major shareholder and a board member of Endeavour Mining, which
is closely related to Endeavour Financial. The two entities share many of
the same personnel, and Giustra’s Fiore Financial reportedly shares office
space with Endeavour. A recent financial disclosure shows that Giustra
holds 6.8 million shares of Endeavour Mining.

Giustra also made the initial pitch to GRI seeking its consulting business,
a source familiar with the dealings told TheDC.

“Nobody would do a thing if Frank didn’t approve,” the source said.

At the time, GRI was one of only two companies with gold mining stakes in
Venezuela. The company had invested $230 million since 1993 developing what
is known as the Brisas Project.

In Oct. 2004, the company entered a confidential consulting arrangement
with Endeavour. The arrangement allowed Endeavour to have access to
confidential data related to GRI’s finances, operations, and technical
specifications for the Brisas prospect.

And the prospect had huge potential. According to GRI’s website, the mine
contained as much as 10 million ounces of gold and 1.4 billion pounds of
copper.

Giustra first approached GRI about a merger with Rusoro in the fall of
2006, though, according to GRI, he did so “without disclosing that both he
and Endeavour had a financial interest in Rusoro.”

Endeavour owned 7.5 million shares of Rusoro, 7 million stock warrants, and
had loaned the company $10 million. Endeavour would also reap 5.5 million
shares if the deal went through, according to court documents.

According to the source familiar with the attempted deal, Rusoro’s Agapov,
who had been implicated in a 2002 Thai banking scandal, believed that he
held an advantage because of his Russian nationality. He believed that
would give Rusoro an advantage in dealing with Venezuela’s communist
dictator Hugo Chavez, who was on friendlier terms with Russia than with the
West.

According to court documents, Doug Belander, GRI’s president, also later
testified that in 2007 he was told by representatives from New York
investment banks that Giustra and Agapov had “expressed an interest” in
combining Gold Reserve and Endeavour.

But GRI wasn’t interested.

The first takeover attempt came on Aug. 21, 2008, when Endeavour —
curiously — placed a friendly takeover offer on behalf of Rusoro. But to
the surprise of Rusoro and Endeavour, GRI balked, saying it had no interest
in joining up with Rusoro, which GRI executives believed to be in poor
financial health.

In Dec. 2008, Rusoro took a different approach by announcing that it was
launching a hostile takeover. GRI shareholders weren’t interested either.

That month, GRI filed a lawsuit in Canadian court accusing Endeavour of
breaching its confidentiality and of using information it had through the
consulting contract to help Rusoro in its takeover attempt.

In a Feb. 2009 ruling, one judge with the Ontario Circuit Court ruled that
the case raised “a serious issue that Endeavour improperly preferred the
interests of its client Rusoro to those of its client Gold Reserve.”

That ruling included the testimony from Stanley Beck, who was then the
chairman of GMP Securities, which had done business with Endeavour. Beck
stated that during his three-plus decades in the securities industry he had
not seen another case of double-dealing like the one undertaken by
Endeavour and Rusoro.

Neil Woodyer, the CEO of Endeavour Mining, a longtime business associate of
Giustra’s and a Clinton Foundation donor, denied any wrongdoing on
Endeavour’s part.

“Endeavour Financial did not breach its confidentially with Gold Reserve,”
he told TheDC through email.

Woodyer did not address questions about Giustra’s level of involvement in
Endeavour or the bid for GRI.

Despite Woodyer’s denial, Endeavour and Rusoro settled with GRI in Sept.
2012.

In the settlement, Endeavour agreed to pay $1.5 million (Canadian) — more
than the money it received through the consulting contact with GRI — while
Rusoro agreed to pay $250,000 in cash, 2.5 million shares of common stock,
and a conditional promissory note worth $1 million.

In the end, GRI did not get to mine for gold and copper in Venezuela. The
Brisas project sits idle, while small-time prospectors rake through
minerals easily found on the surface.

In May 2008, Chavez’s regime nationalized the mining industry. But the
country is stuck because GRI secured all technical data related to the mine
when it was kicked off of the plot. It would take up to 10 years for
another entity to collect that data so that mining could begin.

Meanwhile, GRI has been awarded a $750 million default judgement against
Venezuela and awaits payment.

Why Clinton’s immigration speech left many Republican rivals speechless
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/why-clintons-immigration-speech-left-many-republican-rivals-speechless/2015/05/06/846bc592-f423-11e4-b2f3-af5479e6bbdd_story.html?hpid=z3>
// Washington Post // David Nakamura and Robert Costa - May 7, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fighting words on immigration this week, designed
in part to provoke Republicans into a reactionary counterattack, instead
drew an unusual early response from several top-tier GOP presidential
candidates: silence.

Two days after Clinton vowed to expand on President Obama’s executive
actions to shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation,
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was one of the only leading Republican 2016
contenders to strike back, calling it a “full embrace of amnesty” that is
“unfair to hard-working Americans.”

By contrast, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.),
Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did not weigh in
publicly on the remarks Clinton made Tuesday at a campaign stop in Las
Vegas. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), one of Obama’s most vocal critics on
immigration, waited to make a late evening post on Facebook, writing that
Clinton “wants to expand and continue” Obama’s programs and “lawlessness.”

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told MSNBC that Clinton was wrong,
saying the country needs to focus on border security first.

The relatively subdued GOP reaction illustrated a dilemma for a Republican
Party still wrestling with the hot-button issue of immigration three years
after Obama routed Mitt Romney behind overwhelming support from Latinos and
Asian Americans.

Although virtually all of the Republican hopefuls have denounced Obama’s
executive actions, which are wildly unpopular with the GOP’s conservative
base, they recognize that staking out a hard-line immigration position
probably would harm their status with two of the fastest-growing subsets of
the electorate. In 2012, Romney advocated “self-deportation” for illegal
immigrants, earning him scorn from Latino groups.

“The waters are treacherous, which explains the muted response,” said
William J. Bennett, education secretary under President Ronald Reagan and
now a talk-radio host. “Not one of the campaigns, with the exception of Jeb
Bush, have full clarity on where they want to go, and people are doing a
lot of moving.”

Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the Republican Party in New Hampshire,
home to the first-in-the-nation primary, was even blunter, blaming his
compatriots with not putting the issue of immigration reform behind them.
House Republicans last summer refused to vote on a bipartisan border
control bill, approved by the Senate, that included a 13-year path to
citizenship for illegal immigrants.

“Republicans’ intransigence has created an obvious opportunity for Hillary
to rip off our arms and beat us with the bloody ends,” Cullen said. “She’s
expertly exploiting our party’s internal problems.”

Last year, Obama delayed his executive actions until after the midterm
elections at the behest of jittery Senate Democrats, only to see the party
lose control of the chamber anyway. Now, Clinton’s enthusiastic embrace of
Obama’s immigration actions so early in the election cycle has been an
unequivocal sign that Democrats, once wary of an issue former Obama chief
of staff Rahm Emanuel has called the “third rail of American politics,” may
believe that immigration is a golden ticket to electoral-college success.

During her appearance in Las Vegas — where a growing Latino population
helped power Obama to a 2012 victory in Nevada — Clinton again backed a
path to citizenship, and said she would potentially go further than the
president to protect immigrants from deportation until Congress reforms
border control laws. She goaded Republicans, saying they are supporting
“second-class status” for illegal immigrants.

Her pitch to the left was so emphatic that White House aides, who had said
Obama’s executive actions in November represented the limit of his legal
authority, were compelled to defend him Wednesday for not going further.

“The president’s views have not changed,” White House press secretary Josh
Earnest said during his daily briefing when asked whether Obama believed he
could do more in light of Clinton’s announcement. Asked whether her pledge
to expand the deportation relief would hold up legally, Earnest added,
“That’s something for a future president and future courts to decide.”

Public polling has shown split views on Obama’s immigration actions. In a
Washington Post-ABC News poll in January, 41 percent said the actions
should go forward and 56 percent said they should be blocked. But support
among Hispanics for the president’s initiatives was 80 percent, compared
with 28 percent among whites.

Other surveys have showed higher levels of overall support for allowing
illegal immigrants to remain in the country and work and to eventually
apply for citizenship.

That has presented difficulties for Republican contenders who have
struggled to articulate a clear vision on immigration reform.

“One of the biggest challenges we’ve had with Hispanic voters is that we’re
defined by what we’re against rather than what we’re for,” said Kevin
Madden, a former Romney adviser. “We created a lot of problems for
ourselves in 2012 when we had an immigration platform that was defined by
‘self-deportation’ and expected to win their support.”

Bush, who is the former governor of a state with a large Hispanic
population and whose wife is Mexican American, has endorsed a path to legal
status for the undocumented, but he has pledged to overturn Obama’s
executive actions.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, helped negotiate the Senate’s
immigration bill last year but backed away after House conservatives killed
it. And Walker has said his views on immigration have changed since he
previously voiced support for a citizenship plan.

In a statement, Walker said Wednesday that Clinton’s position “is unfair to
hardworking Americans and all immigrants who followed the law to achieve
the rights and privileges afforded to U.S. citizens. And by supporting the
president’s lawless executive action, Hillary Clinton once again believes
she’s above the law.”

Immigration advocates have delighted in Clinton’s proactive move, noting
that it was perhaps most vexing for Bush, who has sought to position
himself as slightly more moderate among the GOP field on immigration.

“He has been going on two years of going back and forth on the question of
citizenship: What’s doable? What’s viable in his party?” said Marshall
Fitz, vice president of immigration policy at the left-leaning Center for
American Progress. “But he hasn’t formally stuck to his guns on what is the
right thing to do, and she called him out on it.”

Republican political strategists, trying to look for an upside, suggested
that as Clinton shifts to the left, her candidacy risks seeming emblematic
of a third Obama term.

“She’s boxing them in a little, but she’s also linking herself more
significantly to Obama,” said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican consultant.
“If his approval ratings are above 50 percent next year, it’s smart. If
they’re below 50 percent, she won’t do well.”

Peyton M. Craighill, Anne Gearan, Jenna Johnson, Sean Sullivan and Katie
Zezima contributed to this report.

Clarification: This article originally stated that Sen. Ted Cruz’s response
was made through an aide. He issued his own statement late Wednesday.

Poll: Hillary Clinton strong in Iowa despite email, foreign cash flaps
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/poll-hillary-clinton-iowa-117721.html>
// Politico // Nick Gass - May 7, 2015

Hillary Clinton remains the overwhelming favorite among likely Iowa
Democratic caucus-goers, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll
released Thursday, despite ongoing scrutiny of foreign donations to her
family’s foundation and lingering criticism over the former secretary of
state’s use of a personal cellphone and email server for official business.

Among likely participants in the Democratic caucus, 60 percent said they
would back Clinton, compared with 61 percent who said they would support
her in a Feb. 26 Quinnipiac survey that came out before reports of her use
of a private email address.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders comes in second with 15 percent,
followed by Vice President Joe Biden with 11 percent. Former Maryland Gov.
Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb trail with 3 percent
each. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has said repeatedly that she
is not running, was not included.

By more than 4 to 1, Iowa voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy — 76
percent to 17 percent. By comparison, 84 percent say Biden is honest and
trustworthy, versus 10 percent who say he is not.

“One thing is obvious about Iowa Democratic Caucus participants: They are
loyal as the day is long, at least when it comes to Hillary Clinton,” said
Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. In a
Quinnipiac poll last month, however, 49 percent of all Iowa voters said
they did not think she was honest or trustworthy.

The poll was conducted April 25-May 4, surveying 692 likely Iowa Democratic
caucus participants via land lines and cellphones with a margin of error of
plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

WMUR Poll: Clinton trails or tied with five top Republicans
<http://www.wmur.com/politics/wmur-poll-clinton-trails-or-tied-with-five-top-republicans/32873880>
// WMUR // John DiStaso - May 7, 2015

DURHAM, N.H. —In five of the last six presidential general elections,
including the last three, the Democratic nominee has won New Hampshire’s
four electoral votes. That’s not a sure thing for 2016, according to the
results of a new WMUR Granite State Poll.

Hillary Clinton trails or is in virtual ties with Republicans Jeb Bush,
Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the poll of 706 randomly
selected adults shows. That’s a sharp change from just three months ago,
when the former secretary of state held comfortable leads over all five of
those announced or likely candidates.

The decline in Clinton’s showing in head-to-head matchups since February
mirrors a drop in her favorability rating even among likely Democratic
primary voters from a plus-74 percent in February to a plus-58 percent in
the new poll, taken April 24 to May 3.

The new poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center,
also shows that Granite Staters are aware of the controversy surrounding
Clinton’s exclusive use of a personal email account to conduct official
business, although most said it would make little difference in their votes.

The poll shows that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco
Rubio fare the best against Clinton among the top five candidates in this
week’s GOP primary poll.

Bush leads Clinton 47 to 41 percent, while Rubio leads her, 47 to 42
percent. Bush holds a strong lead over Clinton among independents, 39 to 22
percent, while independents are split between Clinton and Rubio, with
Clinton leading 33 to 31 percent.

The margin of error in the poll is 3.7 percent.

Granite Staters also favor Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over Clinton, 47 to 43
percent, with independents favoring Paul, 43 to 36 percent. Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker and Clinton are in a dead heat, at 44 percent each, with
independents favoring Clinton, 36 to 28 percent.

Voters are also split between Clinton and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, with Clinton
leading, .

46 to 45 percent. Independents are split among the two, with 37 percent
favoring Clinton and 35 percent favoring Cruz.

The poll further showed that 45 percent of likely general election voters
said they have heard a great deal about the Clinton email use issue, while
32 percent have heard a fair amount, 14 percent have heard a little and 8
percent have heard nothing.

But 59 percent of those likely voters said the issue makes little
difference in their vote, 34 percent said they are less likely to vote for
her because of it, 2 percent they are actually more likely to vote for her
and 4 percent were unsure.

The results show a wide gender gap, with women heavily backing Clinton over
all five Republicans and men strongly supporting the Republicans.

Among the likely general election voters, 10 percent said they have
definitely decided who to support, 18 percent are leaning toward someone
and 73 percent are still trying to decide.

Hillary Clinton pushes the limits of campaign finance law
<http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-83477034/> // LA Times //
Evan Halper - May 7, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team had hoped to frame her trip
hopscotching through the mansions of some of California’s deepest-pocketed
donors this week as an exercise in modesty, highlighting the relatively low
price of a ticket to the events as a reflection of her commitment to
cultivating the grass roots.

But that narrative quickly unraveled Wednesday when word got out that the
candidate was also using the California trip as an occasion to begin
courting an entirely different group.

Clinton, who has emphasized campaign finance reform in the early stage of
her latest White House bid, has apparently already decided the modest
approach alone won't be enough. She is going after much bigger checks, much
sooner, and in a much more aggressive way than her campaign had revealed.

The candidate will be pushing the boundaries of campaign finance law
further than any Democratic presidential contender ever has by directly
asking donors to give to a friendly "super PAC" that can raise unlimited
amounts of campaign cash from donors, according to a person familiar with
her plans. That effort started in California on Wednesday, when Clinton met
in San Francisco with potential donors of the organization Priorities USA.
She has another meeting planned in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Clinton’s plans to raise money for Priorities USA was first reported by the
New York Times. Campaign officials are declining to comment.

Clinton would not be the first contender in this year's race to go after
such cash. Republicans are already testing the limits of campaign finance
law. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has yet to announce he's running,
has been soliciting checks for as much as $1 million for his super PAC.
Candidates avoided such activity in the 2012 race, adhering to a law that
says they can not coordinate directly with the groups.

But the increasingly permissive nature of the Federal Election Commission,
whose members are deadlocked over the question of how candidates can and
cannot engage with super PACs, is leading the candidates to take ever
bolder approaches. Clinton supporters say she is caught up in a campaign
arms race and she has no choice but to use the tools her opponents have at
their disposal.

Still, the quick shift on fundraising puts Clinton in an awkward position.

“Just three weeks ago, Hillary Clinton decried unaccountable money in
politics and even called for amending the Constitution to ban it,” said
Jeff Bechdel, communications director for America Rising, a conservative
research group. “Today, she announced she’s going to personally court
donors and raise money for her own super PAC. … Clinton’s hypocrisy knows
no bounds."

The California trip was supposed to be a chance for Clinton to showcase a
more modest approach to fundraising, one that squared with what she
promised would be a campaign that is humble, lean and focused on the values
of everyday Americans. Even though the events were to be held in the homes
of billionaires and mega-millionaires, including hedge fund titan Tom
Steyer and media mogul Haim Saban, donors were not to give more than $2,700.

Those who want to give more than $2,700 can encourage others to give
checks, becoming what's known as a campaign bundler. Clinton's campaign
calls its bundlers “Hillstarters," and those designated as such get perks
that include invites to receptions with the candidate. Clinton is making it
much easier to get in this circle of fundraisers than she did eight years
ago, when supporters had to raise $100,000. Now, they need only generate
$27,000 for the campaign.

“It’s a far smaller bundling program than other presidential campaigns and
is designed to involve more people and build the donor base,” said a
campaign aide.

But that effort to engage a larger group of donors early on and set a tone
of relative modesty got overshadowed quickly, as donors pushed the
candidate to seize the momentum from her announcement and start collecting
big checks from big donors eager to write them.

Why Hillary Clinton Embraced Big Money in Politics
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/why-hillary-flip-flopped-big-money-politics-n355276>
// NBC News // Perry Bacon, Jr. - May 7, 2015

Hillary Clinton surprised the political world when on her first campaign
stop as an official candidate in Iowa last month she said reforming
America's campaign finance system would be one of her top priorities. The
next week, in New Hampshire, Clinton said it wasn't enough simply to have
the names of big donors disclosed, but that there needed to be real limits
on how much they can spend on campaigns.

"What good does it do to disclose if somebody's about to spend $100 million
to promote their own interest and to defeat candidates who would stand up
against them? What good does that do?" Clinton told Democratic activists in
Concord, New Hampshire.

She added, "We need to get this corporate and unchecked money out of
politics."

But as the New York Times reported on Wednesday, Clinton is not going to
practice what she seemed to be preaching. The former secretary of state is
meeting with potential donors to Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC,
on a trip to California this week, the first sign of her sanctioning of the
group to aid her campaign. Priorities, like the super PAC's that are aiding
Republican 2016 candidates, is expected to bring in donations from
individuals that will be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Steven Spielberg gave the group $1 million in 2012.

Clinton is embracing Priorities USA more than President Obama did during
his 2012 campaign. In that race, the president, another rhetorical opponent
of unlimited donations in politics, allowed some of his top aides to attend
the Priorities' events, but did not go to them himself. Obama did appear at
an event for Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC designed to aid Democratic
U.S. Senate candidates, on the eve of the 2014 elections.

Republicans have already slammed Clinton as a hypocrite, and one of her
Democratic primary opponents, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has pledged not
to have a super PAC supporting his candidacy.

But Clinton really had no other choice. The Republican presidential
nominee, the Republican National Committee and groups associated with
electing a Republican president are expected to spend at least $1 billion
and probably closer to $2 billion to elect a GOP president. Democrats will
attempt to match this fundraising, if not raise more.

Under the traditional campaign finance spending rules, individual donations
to campaigns are limited to $5400. But contributions to super PAC's are
unlimited.

The Republican candidates, particularly Jeb Bush, are expected to operate
much of their campaign operations through their super PAC's. So if Clinton
had opted only to raise money through the legal limits, she would be
running a campaign raising $5400 per person, while Bush is currently
accepting individual donations to his super PAC of $100,000. Clinton in
effect would have needed 18 donors for every one Bush donor.

This would not create just a financial disadvantage for Clinton, but
perhaps one of time as well, since she would need to spend more hours
attending fundraisers and soliciting money over the phone if she needed to
build up a larger bloc of donors.

It's not clear how far Clinton will go in embracing super PAC's. Republican
candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have some of their top aides
operating their super PAC's instead of working on their official campaigns,
making the super PAC's hugely influential.

So far, the vast majority of Clinton's top strategists are working in her
Brooklyn headquarters, so it's not clear if Priorities USA will employ her
closest confidants. And Clinton's super PAC has not said if will raise tens
of millions from one major donor, the way casino magnate Sheldon Adelson
gave more than $20 million to bankroll Newt Gingrich's 2012 campaign.

However she uses the Super PAC, Clinton made the choice to play by the
existing rules of politics, instead of taking a more principled stand that
likely would have complicated her path to victory. In 2008, Obama made a
similar decision in opting out of campaign finance rules that would have
placed limits on his overall spending, even though he had praised that
system before.

Clinton, like Obama, is participating in what she has bemoaned: a radical
shift of the campaign finance system created in the post-Watergate era that
was designed to limit the influence of wealthy donors and encourage
campaigns funded by a wider bloc of Americans. The 2016 campaign marks in
effect the death of that system and a shift towards a new model in which a
very small group of wealthy donors finance many campaigns and will likely
have a huge amount of influence over the candidates.

Clinton has said she does not like this new system and would consider
backing even a constitutional amendment to change it.

But her embrace of the liberal super PAC suggests, Clinton, in a phrase she
used during her last campaign, is in to win.

Hillary Clinton's Not the First Democrat to Woo Super-PAC's Donors
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-07/hillary-clinton-s-not-the-first-democrat-to-woo-super-pac-s-donors>
// Bloomberg Politics // Ali Elkin - May 7, 2015

Hillary Clinton is preparing to cozy up to super-PAC donors, according to a
new report, but it's not exactly a first for a Democratic presidential
candidate.

As the New York Times wrote on Thursday, “Clinton will begin personally
courting donors for a 'super PAC' supporting her candidacy, the first time
a Democratic presidential candidate has fully embraced these independent
groups that can accept unlimited checks from big donors and are already
playing a major role in the 2016 race.”

“Running for re-election in 2012, President Obama reluctantly endorsed
fund-raising by [Priorities USA Action] because of fears that he would be
outspent by Republicans who were more aggressive in using what was then a
new vehicle for raising large amounts of money that could be used in
support of a campaign but not go directly to it,” the Times continued. “But
he never appeared at any of its fund-raisers.”

But Obama did rub shoulders with donors at a Priorities function during his
reelection bid, according to Double Down: Game Change 2012, the campaign
book by Bloomberg Politics managing editors Mark Halperin and John
Heilemann. They write that in October of that year, Obama went to an event
at film executive and Democratic bundler Jeffrey Katzenberg's house in Los
Angeles. The White House billed the event as a “thank you” to big donors,
but in reality, it was a Priorities USA event—“the sort of shindig that
Obama had sworn never to attend.”

Katzenberg billed it as “unobtainium” and recommended that attendees shell
out $1 million to attend. Three of them did a few days before the lunch.
The final guest list included Reid Hoffman, Irwin and Joan Jacobs, Vinod
Khosla, Seth McFarlane, Sean Parker, Eric Schmidt, and Steven Spielberg. At
the event, Obama assured the donors that his sorry debate performance in
Denver was a one-time thing.

First on CNN: Clinton invites donors to New York, but only if they've hit
their goals
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/hillary-clinton-election-2016-donors-new-york/index.html>
// CNN Politics // Jeff Zeleny - May 7, 2015

Washington (CNN) Hillary Clinton is inviting her most loyal fundraisers to
New York next week for the campaign's first Finance Leadership Summit, but
there's a catch: The welcome mat is extended only to donors who have
already met their goal of finding 10 people to write $2,700 checks.

The invitation, which was obtained by CNN from a recipient, illustrates how
the campaign is trying to step up the urgency for fundraising. If
contributors hope to be part of the inaugural group of so-called
"Hillstarters," the invitation says, their first fundraising goal must be
met now.

The initial fundraising goal of $27,000 -- a pittance in a campaign
expected to raise more than $1 billion -- is intentionally set low by
today's big-money standards to try a build a broader nationwide network of
donors.

The afternoon summit on May 14 in New York, which includes an optional tour
of campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, features Clinton and her senior team
of advisers. It's the most robust gathering of donors since Clinton
formally entered the race one month ago.

Without a highly competitive Democratic primary race, the campaign has
struggled to capture the early attention of some donors. Clinton's presence
at the summit underscores the point that donors will be remembered for
getting in on the ground floor.

"On behalf of Hillary and the entire campaign," the invitation says, "we
thank you for your early support and leadership and we hope to see you in
New York on May 14!"

Clinton has already devoted more days raising money than meeting Democrats
in early-voting states. She held three fundraising events in Los Angeles
alone on Thursday, part of a three-day visit to California this week. She's
already done early fundraising stops in New York and Washington.

"There's a lot of enthusiasm," Andy Spahn, a longtime Democratic fundraiser
in Los Angeles, told CNN. "There is a tremendous desire to be a part of it."

Spahn, a political adviser to entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and
others who ultimately sided with Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign, said
Democratic donors were largely unified behind Clinton.

In the first month of her candidacy, Clinton has campaigned in Iowa, New
Hampshire and Nevada, three of the four early-voting states. She is set to
visit South Carolina, the fourth, soon. Before the end of May, aides said,
she will also deliver the first major campaign speech.

Her calendar also includes something outside her control: An appearance
before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is also expected in
the coming weeks.

Democratic primary debates will still matter for Hillary Clinton
<http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-83483420/> // Chicago
Tribune // Jonathan Bernstein - May 7, 2015

The Democrats have announced they will sponsor six presidential nomination
debates, and Hillary Clinton rapidly signaled her intention to participate.

Nomination debates (unlike those during the general election) can affect
the outcomes of primaries — just ask Rick Perry. We aren't only talking
about collapses. A good performance can cause a polling surge, and
lesser-known contenders need a shot of good publicity at some point, even
if they have won support in the invisible primary. For any of that to make
a difference, however, it has to be a competitive race.

From what we know so far, it would take something far more substantial than
a few debates to reopen the battle for the Democratic nomination in 2016.
Yet Clinton's performance in the debates will count in a different and
important way.

Set aside the primaries. Think about the debates as part of the process of
representation in a democracy.

People who run for office make promises: They signal who they will be and
how they will act if elected. Not only do politicians want to keep the
pledges they have made on specific policies. They try to be generally in
sync with who they were on the campaign trail too, as political scientist
Richard Fenno found in his research on Congress. So a candidate who runs as
a partisan will try to govern as a partisan. A candidate who runs as a
conservative will govern as a conservative. A candidate who runs as a
member of an ethnic group will, if elected, emphasize group identity.

Even if new issues arise out of the blue (and they always will), the
president will in effect ask herself: What would the version of me from the
campaign do about this? How will I be able to explain what I do now in
terms of who I was back then?

Moreover, the promises that count the most are likely the ones made in the
candidates' high-profile appearances. For presidential nominees, the
biggest such events are convention acceptance speeches and the
general-election debates in the fall. But before that, nomination debates
are as high profile as it gets.

Thinking of democracy in terms of representation is different from the
focus on accountability. Representation involves the politician: what she
vows to do, how she governs with those promises in mind, how she explains
her actions to constituents in light of those original pledges. It's part
of a continuing relationship with voters, a bond that can develop over time
as the politician earns her constituents' trust.

Accountability, on the other hand, refers to voters' decisions on how well
a politician has done in office and what they do to hold him or her
responsible for results. It's what people think democracy is, but it
doesn't capture how democracy really works.

Individual elected officials can only rarely deliver specific results that
voters identify as the politician's responsibility. Even presidents can't
just decide, in a system of separated institutions sharing power, to carry
out some policy voters will like, let alone decide to have an economic boom
or a foreign-policy success.

And voters don't pay enough attention to politics to know which officials
are responsible for what policy. They are prone to do irrational things
such as punishing incumbents for bad weather, shark attacks and losses by
local sports teams.

So expecting voters to reward or punish politicians for what they've done
will rarely work. Yes, there are baseline incentives: Presidents don't want
to lose wars or start recessions. But that's about all.

Representation, by contrast, gives politicians the realistic goal of
building a strong relationship with their constituents. It provides the
democracy that accountability can't — as long as politicians try to be good
representatives. And we have plenty of evidence that they do.

Bloomberg View

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics.

Hillary Clinton Hints Of Going Beyond Obama By Floating The Idea Of Debt
Free College
<http://www.politicususa.com/2015/05/07/hillary-clinton-hints-obama-floating-idea-debt-free-college.html>
// Politicus USA // Jason Easley - May 7, 2015

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is hinting that they may go beyond
President Obama’s free community college proposal, by suggesting a plan
that will make getting a college education debt free.

Politico reported:

When Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager said the words “debt-free college”
in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday morning, liberal ears perked up.

Robby Mook’s declaration — “what voters are looking for in this election is
someone who’s going to be a champion for everyday people, for young people
that’s debt-free college, that’s finding that job after you graduate” —
stopped short of an endorsement of the policy goal embraced by liberals and
by Clinton’s likely primary rival Martin O’Malley, but it sent a message to
progressive activists that the Clinton camp is paying close attention to
their concerns.

Although Clinton has spoken in general terms about making college more
affordable and has embraced President Barack Obama’s proposal to make
community college free, she has yet to publicly support a plan to let
students graduate from college without debt. It is one of a handful of
areas on which progressive groups and activists are pressuring Clinton, who
has yet to release her full policy agenda, from the left.

If Clinton’s plan does go beyond the Obama plan of free community college,
it will represent a major shift leftward in higher education policy. Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been a tireless advocate for Americans who are
buried beneath mountains of student loan debt. A debt free college plan
from Clinton would represent a strong acknowledgment of Warren’s efforts.

With each passing day, the worries of some Democrats that Hillary Clinton
would be too centrist to lead a Democratic Party that has moved more to the
left are vanishing.

Hillary Clinton is her own person. She should be judged on her own policy
proposals, not her husband’s presidency. Hillary Clinton has her own
distinguished career and many former Sec. of State Clinton’s ideas for the
future represent today’s Democratic Party, not her husband’s presidency.

The Billionaire Whose Clinton Foundation Ties Could Be Trouble for Hillary
Clinton
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-07/the-billionaire-whose-clinton-foundation-ties-could-be-trouble-for-hillary-clinton>
// Bloomberg // Joshua Green - May 7, 2015

Like countless people before him, Frank Giustra's first meeting with Bill
Clinton was a life-altering event indelibly etched in his memory. "We hit
it off right away," Giustra recalls. "We hit it off for a whole number of
reasons. We had a very similar upbringing. We had similar interests in
books. Pretty soon, we were having a great conversation. I think he liked
me."

Giustra was experiencing the famous Clinton connection, the tractor beam of
personal magnetism that Clinton has deployed to pull people into his orbit
since his earliest days in Arkansas. Back then, they were people like Mack
McLarty, the well-to-do kindergarten classmate who became Clinton's first
White House chief of staff, and Jim McDougal, the local banker and real
estate investor who was the Clintons' partner in the Whitewater land deal
and eventually wound up in jail. In Arkansas the stakes were comparatively
small. Clinton had little money, and his admirers didn't have a whole lot
more. Today, in his post-presidency, Clinton has built up a
multibillion-dollar family foundation with a global reach. He may soon be
back in the White House. The people he solicits are the sort who gravitate
to Davos, not Little Rock—people like Frank Giustra.

Giustra is a billionaire mining magnate from Vancouver who met Clinton in
2005 aboard his private jet, which he had lent the former president for a
trip to South America. (Clinton really must like Giustra—or his jet—an
awful lot, because he borrowed it 25 more times, according to the
Washington Post.) Somewhere in the air between Little Rock and Bogotá,
Giustra realized, as so many had before him, life would be more glamorous,
important, and fun with more Bill Clinton in it: "I said to him, ‘Hey, tell
me more about what the Clinton Foundation does.' "

Before long, Giustra had pledged $100 million, established a Canadian arm
(the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership), and joined the Clinton
Foundation's board. By his own telling, his life has been utterly
transformed. "I'd been doing charitable work my whole adult life but on a
very small scale," he says. "Then I met Bill Clinton. Just hanging out with
him and seeing how he had dedicated his life to this—I know this sounds
cheesy, but it's true—he inspired me."

Giustra now sees himself as Canada's answer to Andrew Carnegie and intends,
as Carnegie did, to give away his fortune apart from what he requires to
live on. The vehicle for his giving shouldn't come as a surprise. "In the
philanthropic sense," he says, "all my chips are on Bill Clinton."

Although few people outside the mining industry had heard of Giustra until
recently, he's emblematic of the class of plutocrats with whom Clinton has
surrounded himself since leaving office. He also represents a new kind of
political problem sure to dog Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. As the
author Peter Schweizer documents in his book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story
of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and
Hillary Rich, Giustra's globe-trotting adventures with Bill Clinton have
coincided with lucrative business deals.

In Colombia, where his investments include oil, timber, and coal mines,
Giustra dined one evening in 2010 with Bill and Hillary Clinton, who both
met with Colombia's president the next day. Soon after, one company in
which Giustra holds a stake "acquired the right to cut timber in a
biologically diverse forest on the pristine Colombian shoreline," Schweizer
writes, and another was granted valuable oil drilling rights.

A similar situation had unfolded in Kazakhstan in 2005. Giustra and Clinton
jetted in to dine with the country's authoritarian president, Nursultan
Nazarbayev. Days later, Giustra's mining company signed an agreement giving
it stakes in three state-run uranium mines in addition to those it
controlled in the U.S. After a $3.5 billion merger, the company was
eventually acquired by the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom. Because
uranium is a strategic asset, the sale required (and received) approval
from multiple U.S. agencies, including the Department of State, then run by
Hillary Clinton.

Giustra insists these deals were on the up-and-up and Bill Clinton played
no role. "He's shown up in two places where I've done business," he says,
"but I've traveled to countless countries around the world with him and put
money into [charitable] programs in places I have zero business interests
in." While Giustra hasn't done charity work in Kazakhstan, he says a deal
of that scale is hashed out over many months and didn't require
Nazarbayev's permission. He adds that he sold his stake in the uranium
mining company two years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state,
and he agreed to share documents with Bloomberg Businessweek that would
prove this, although a week later he hadn't produced them.

Previous Friends of Bill have sometimes fallen out of favor when deemed a
liability. Ron Burkle, the billionaire supermarket magnate, is the most
famous example. Before Giustra, Burkle was the one flying Clinton around in
a private jet and enjoying his attention and companionship. That
relationship began to sour in 2007 with Hillary's bid for the White House.
According to press reports, Burkle's business ties to foreign governments
were part of the reason for the split.

Giustra professes to have no concern that politics might prompt Clinton to
jilt him, too. "I don't think it's going to happen," he says, "but if for
whatever reason Clinton walked away from this, I would just change the name
of the damn thing, and I would carry on. I'm dead serious."

Burkle, too, once seemed to regard himself as impervious to political
attacks. But he changed his mind. As he complained to Businessweek in March
2010, "If someone wanted to embarrass [Clinton], I got thrown in it, too."

What looms as a greater threat to Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions
than the details of the Russian uranium transaction is that Giustra is the
first of what may be a procession of similar figures who will be in the
spotlight between now and Election Day. That's because anyone with the
means to give millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation likely also has
global financial interests affected by U.S. policy or, at the very least,
would benefit from a favorable relationship with the Clintons. As Giustra
himself notes, "He's one of the best brand names in the world."

The potential conflicts of interest are nearly limitless—and so is the
potential for political damage. According to a study by Vox, a news and
policy analysis website, 181 contributors to the Clinton Foundation also
lobbied the State Department while Hillary Clinton ran it. That's enough to
furnish several more volumes of Clinton Cash, should Schweizer have the
fortitude to produce them.

On May 5, the Clinton campaign rolled out a website, the Briefing, to
attack Schweizer and rebut the book's insinuations of corruption. But the
damage Hillary Clinton has sustained is largely self-inflicted. Although
the Clinton Foundation signed an agreement with the White House to disclose
its donors as a condition of her becoming secretary of state, it hasn't
fulfilled the pledge. A New York Times investigation of Giustra's uranium
mining deal turned up donors whom the Clinton Foundation failed to
disclose. Bloomberg found an additional 1,100 undisclosed foreign donors.
The Boston Globe turned up even more.

This may help explain why a majority of independents in a May 5 New York
Times/CBS News poll said that although Hillary Clinton is a "strong leader"
who "shares their values," she is "not honest and trustworthy."

Improving her image will be a challenge in light of the scrutiny yet to
come. The Clinton Foundation has announced it will continue accepting money
from select foreign governments and won't disclose the identities of all
its foreign donors. Bill Clinton told NBC News he would keep giving paid
speeches because "I gotta pay the bills."

Voters will have to take it on faith that these arrangements are as
innocent as the participants claim. Giustra, for one, sounds doubtful they
will. "If I didn't know me, and I wasn't there," he says, "I would think,
Oh my God, there is some connection between all the good stuff that's
happening with Giustra and his donations to the Clinton trips." If Hillary
Clinton is going to make it to the White House, she'll need to convince the
country otherwise.

Hillary Clinton's Hill Whisperer
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/hillary-clinton-s-hill-whisperer-20150507>
// National Journal // Sarah Mimms - May 7, 2015

Eager to line up support from top members of the national Democratic Party,
Hillary Clinton sent three of her senior aides to Capitol Hill last month.
For the Clinton campaign, it was an opportunity to brief members of
Congress on her plans, avoid any surprises, and shore up support among the
party's electeds.

For Clinton's political director Amanda Renteria, it was a homecoming.

After running a failed congressional campaign in California last year, the
40-year-old former staffer for Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Debbie Stabenow
returned to Capitol Hill in April as a top liaison between Team Hillary and
some of the members she knows well from nearly a decade on the Hill.

Given her knowledge of working in (and running for) Congress and her
sterling reputation among Democratic senators, Renteria could be a secret
weapon for Clinton in keeping the campaign and the minority party in
Congress on the same page.

"Oh, I was so proud of her," Stabenow said beamingly, reflecting on
Renteria's performance in a closed-session luncheon with the Democratic
senators. "I feel like it's one of the family, for me. … I think she's very
well-respected in the caucus. People were very excited to see that she is
in this position. I think people have a lot of confidence in her."

In the three weeks since, Stabenow said several members have approached her
to praise Renteria and her team of regional political directors for their
quick responses to their queries about the campaign's views on policy,
surrogacy needs, fundraising, and more. "She understands both the
importance and the benefits of having members totally engaged and also the
importance of being able to respond quickly with information," Stabenow
said.

"I've worked on a lot of campaigns for a really long time and I'm shocked
by how good this campaign is at keeping people in the loop. Usually this is
the one thing that campaigns do badly. And in the past weeks, I've just
been astounded," said Bill Sweeney, Stabenow's current chief of staff who
served as Renteria's deputy. "I think that a lot of it really does stem
from Amanda's leadership … understanding that folks out here are trying our
best to be helpful."

It's been a long and unusual road for Renteria, the daughter of a
Mexican-immigrant father and Mexican-American mother, who was raised in
California's Central Valley. After graduating from Stanford University,
where she played both softball and basketball for the school, Renteria
briefly worked at Goldman Sachs. Then she took a job teaching high school,
left to get her MBA at Harvard, and then took a job as a budget analyst and
consultant to the City of San Jose, before finally landing on Capitol Hill
in 2005.

At age 30, Renteria took a job as a legislative aide to Feinstein, her
home-state senator. Just two years later, she became the first Latina chief
of staff in Senate history, working for Stabenow.

That quick rise was fueled not only Renteria's ambition and work ethic but
her warmth and ability to quickly earn the trust of those she's working
with, current and former Democratic staffers said.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the fight to pass a farm bill through
both chambers of Congress last year. Renteria was instrumental in bridging
the gap between not only the two parties, but the regional factions of
members that grew up around the bill. That kind of coalition-building could
be instrumental to the Clinton campaign, as the presumptive nominee faces
criticism from the party's liberal wing.

And her relentless optimism helped to keep a team of warring staffers
together. "That farm bill almost died about 20 different times I think,"
one former Senate Democratic staffer said. "But she ... was never sort of,
dour. Even at sort of the darkest times she remained positive and
determined. That's part of the reason why she's such an effective
leader—because then everybody else said, if Amanda still thinks it's
possible [then maybe it is]."

Renteria declined to be interviewed for this story, but Sweeney said he
sees clearly how she'll translate her skills honed in the Senate to a
presidential campaign. "Really, the job of the chief of staff is really
just to keep everything running. She was really good at that, good at
keeping the trains running on time, keeping everybody in the loop. And
that's the key thing she's going to be doing at the Hillary campaign," he
said.

After wrapping up the farm bill and seeing Stabenow reelected in a tough
2012 contest, Renteria left the Hill on a high note, preparing to return
two years with a very different title: Congresswoman.

It didn't work out that way. Although California's 21st District was
redrawn in 2012 to be much more favorable to Democrats and now is 72
percent Hispanic, Renteria lost to incumbent Republican David Valadao by
almost 16 points.

The loss was difficult for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,
which helped to recruit Renteria for the seat. She was one of their most
promising candidates for a seat that the party finally had a shot at after
years of Republican control, executive director Kelly Ward said in an
interview. But it was one of many in the 2014 cycle to swing toward
Republicans, and the DCCC had to switch its focus to protecting its own
incumbents rather than trying to make inroads in new territory.

In preparing for the 2016 election cycle, Renteria was the first candidate
that the DCCC reached out to, Ward said. Ward had been impressed during the
previous cycle by Renteria, a mother of two who she described as "warm, but
tough." She was rumored to be considering a second run for Congress, but
had told local reporters she was leaning towards running for an open
California State Assembly seat.

"Her number one focus was going home and doing right by her community,"
Ward said.

As a candidate in 2014, Renteria did everything "110 percent," Ward said,
and although it's often difficult for "doers" like Renteria, she handled
the transition from staffer to candidate, who had to pass a lot of the work
she typically did to a staff of her own, better than almost any other
candidate Ward had seen.

The 2014 loss "was no fault of hers," Ward said.

And the California Democratic Party is hoping that the energy she brought
to Democrats in the Central Valley will pay dividends in 2016, even without
Renteria as a candidate. "She brought new people into the party because she
… just drew them in because she is so dynamic," Shawnda Westly, the party's
executive director said in an interview. Renteria built an incredibly loyal
volunteer base in the district that impressed Westly and other members, a
skill she could use in building a team for Clinton as well.

The personal experience of campaigning for Congress clearly informs
Renteria's work as political director for the Clinton campaign. But it also
gives her another connection to members on Capitol Hill. The DCCC, too, has
kept in touch with Renteria—not as a candidate, but as a liaison to help
keep the campaign committee in the loop with Team Hillary.

"I'd love to have her as a candidate in a presidential election cycle,"
Ward said, but she understands why Renteria is moving on to the Hillary
campaign rather than running another of her own. "I think she is going to
do a great job."

Sweeney echoed that sentiment. "Frankly the best thing is if she was in
Congress right now, the second best thing is her working to get Hillary
elected," he said.

Ja Rule just endorsed Hillary Clinton
<http://www.businessinsider.com/ja-rule-just-endorsed-hillary-clinton-2015-5>
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker - May 7, 2015

Ja Rule will always be there when Hillary Clinton calls and he will always
be on time.

The rapper and former federal prison inmate appeared on Fox Business on
Thursday to discuss Magnises, a credit card company he's working with.
While there, Ja Rule was asked who he's backing in the 2016 presidential
election.

Though he expressed admiration for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), Ja
Rule said Clinton, who announced her campaign last month, will get his vote.

"I like Hillary. I like Hillary. But, you know, it's crazy because ... I
also think Jeb is a good candidate as well," Ja Rule said. "But, you know,
I don't — I'm a Democrat, so yeah, so I would vote Hillary."

Clinton's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on
Ja Rule's endorsement.

Behind High Walls: Clinton Charity Moves Moroccan Party Out of View
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/high-walls-clinton-charity-moves-moroccan-party-view/story?id=30860875>
// ABC News // Matthew Mosk and Brian Epstein – May 7, 2015

With its private collection of Arabian horses and a restaurant touting
biolight cuisine, the Selman palace hotel in Marrakesh presented an opulent
backdrop for Wednesday evening’s reception forClinton Foundation members
and guests.

Busloads of the Clinton Foundation’s members and sponsors were shuttled
here -- 30 minutes away from the conference hotel -- across the exotic,
palm-lined city’s ancient walled old city. Torches lined the hotel’s gated
entrance and a team of security comprised of retired U.S. Secret Service
agents triple checked guests lists as they arrived.

What happened at the event, however, remained hidden behind the sprawling
resort’s 12-foot-high walls, off limits to the press. When ABC News
producers attempted to take pictures of guests arriving at the front
entrance, Moroccan police threatened their arrest. The foundation’s
spokesman initially professed not to know where the reception was being
held, and the location was among the only not included on schedules handed
out to the media and published online.

“Due to the structure of this event, this session is closed to press,” it
stated.

The secrecy surrounding the reception was a departure from a comparatively
free-wheelingClinton Global Initiative conference -- a three-day event
where members of the foundation hear about the results of ongoing
charitable projects, and plot the course for new ones. The majority of this
conference was open, and unlike some past ones, members of the press were
permitted to roam from panel discussion to cocktail party without much
hassle. (At a CGI event last year, a New York Times reporter wrote about
being watched so closely that a 20-something staffer followed her into the
bathroom.)

The Morocco conference is underway at an unusual time for the Clinton
Foundation. With Hillary Clinton launching a new presidential bid, and a
new book questioning the motivations of some foreign donors to the charity,
especially during the period when she was serving as Secretary of State,
the foundation has taken pains to push back against perceptions that it is
anything but transparent.

During the first panel discussion of the conference, telecom billionaire Mo
Ibrahim became the first to address the foreign donation issue that had
been weighing on a number of the foundation members and supporters in
attendance.

"What is wrong if Saudi Arabia gives money for a farm in Africa? What’s the
big deal?" Ibrahim asked. "I just could not understand. I didn’t see
anybody from the foundation standing up."

“You should have stood up and really took issue -- what is this money
for?... What have you done with it?" he said.

Clinton shrugged off the topic with a light touch. "I just work here, I
don’t know," he joked.

"There is one set of rules for politics in America and another set for real
life. And you just have to learn to deal with it,” Clinton said, quickly
turning to the discussion back to the charity’s efforts.

Foundation officials said the evening reception was behind closed doors to
encourage members to openly exchange ideas as they socialized. They noted
that few other charities -– if any –- are asked or expected to open the
doors of their private functions.

But at least one reporter covering the conference appeared to believe the
openness extended to the evening festivities, and lined up to board the
idling tour busses as they prepared to take guests to the Selman. Staff
members dutifully checked her ID badge when she stepped to the door, and
then promptly turned her away.

Clinton 'fact-check' under fire
<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2564125?utm_content=buffere6b7d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer>
// Washington Examiner // Sarah Westwood  - May 7, 2015

A Kazakh official involved in brokering a controversial mining deal for a
major Clinton Foundation donor is behind bars for his role in the
transaction, undercutting a Clinton campaign "fact-check" thatattempted to
dismiss ethical questions about the former president's ties to the
lucrative contract.

Hillary for America and the Clinton-aligned group Media Matterspushed back
on allegations that the Clintons had used their political clout to drum up
millions in foundation donations and speaking fees by furthering the
financial interests of friends in the wake of Tuesday's publication of
Peter Schweizer's Clinton Cash.

Schweizer dedicated an entire chapter to a 2005 deal in which Bill Clinton
allegedly helped his friend Frank Giustra break into a fiercely competitive
uranium market, setting the stage for the high-profile takeover of mining
conglomerate Uranium One by Russia.

In response to a spate of stories questioning whether Giustra's hefty
donations to the Clinton Foundation influenced Hillary Clinton's position
on the Uranium One deal, Giustra released a statement denying his
involvement with the company.

He also claimed Bill Clinton "had nothing to do with the purchase of
private mining stakes by a Canadian company," as Schweizer and others have
suggested.

"That's just dead wrong," said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Hillary
Clinton's presidential campaign, in a video released Wednesday. "The main
donor he's talking about sold his stake in the company two years before
Hillary Clinton even became secretary of state."

Giustra had to step down from UrAsia's board when Uranium One acquired it
in 2007 so his company could "pursue this transaction without any
perception of conflict" because he was serving simultaneously as its
financial advisor thanks to his position as chairman of Endeavour Financial.

Giustra noted in his statement that he sold his shares "at least 18 months
before Hillary Clinton became the secretary of state. No one was
speculating at that time that she would become the secretary of state."

"Schweizer spins a tale that in 2010, then-Secretary Clinton pushed the
State Department to approve the sale of Uranium One to the Russian
government in order to benefit a stakeholder who had donated to the Clinton
Foundation," Hillary for America said in its pushback.

The campaign "fact-check" highlighted the fact that Giustra sold his stake
"three years prior to the sale" of Uranium One to Russia.

But Giustra's firm, Endeavour Financial, remained Uranium One's financial
advisor well after its acquisition of UrAsia, casting doubt on assertions
that he severed his ties to the company before Hillary Clinton became
secretary of state.

Giustra's claim that Bill Clinton played no role in helping UrAsia win
mining rights in Kazakhstan in 2005 contradicts what at least one Kazakh
official has said about the nature of both Clintons' involvement.

Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the Kazakh official in charge of the country's uranium
and nuclear industry, claimed then-Sen. Hillary Clinton had "pressured
Kazakh officials to secure a deal for the Canadians" by refusing to meet
with the prime minister when he was in the U.S., according to Schweizer.

In 2008, Dzhakishev also said Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra and Kazakh
President Nazarbayev discussed the mining deal at a banquet just days
before UrAsia acquired significant stakes in three mines, although both
Giustra and Bill Clinton deny those conversations.

Dzhakishev was among the key officials whose approval UrAsia would have
needed to complete the transaction.

Giustra's company managed to secure a deal that industry insiders deemed a
"mystery" less than 48 hours after he and Bill Clinton wrapped up their
trip to Kazakhstan.

Mining analysts questioned the arrangement that allowed UrAsia to become "a
major uranium producer when it didn't even exist before."

Giustra later gave $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The deal faced renewed scrutiny in May 2009 when Dzhakishev was arrested
for arranging corrupt uranium transactions with foreign companies.

"Authorities singled out the sale of a 30-per-cent stake in Kyzylkum that
was allegedly sold for little more than $100,000 in 2005," the Globe and
Mail reported the week after Dzhakishev was arrested.

That 30 percent stake was among the assets UrAsia acquired with Bill
Clinton's alleged assistance, and belonged to Uranium One at the time
Hillary Clinton's State Department allowed it to be bought by the Russian
government.

Representatives of Uranium One assured media outlets in 2009 that UrAsia
had paid $75 million for the mining stake in question.

"This is just a big misunderstanding, that's all it is," Jean Nortier,
Uranium One's CEO, told theToronto Star.

However, Giustra was unable to identify who had sold him the mining stakes
after Dzhakishev came under fire.

Canadian securities documents showed a company called the Jeffcott Group,
registered in the British Virgin Islands, had owned the disputed stake
before UrAsia bought it in 2005.

Giustra told the Globe and Mail he had only been in contact with a
representative from Jeffcott during the transaction and said he was "never
privy to the Jeffcott purchase price."

According to the World Bank's Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, Dzhakishev
and a friend, Mukhtar Ablyazov, teamed up to form Jeffcott in a scheme to
profit off mining deals like the one with UrAsia.

Ablyazov, who was then head of a state-controlled bank and was reportedly
Dzhakishev's college roommate, allegedly created Jeffcott and other
offshore companies in order to put together joint ventures into which
Dzhakishev shifted government-owned mining stakes.

Giustra later purchased the mining stakes in those joint ventures.

By March of last year, the scandal surrounding Dzhakishev threatened
Uranium One's rights to the mines Giustra had purchased.

Two of the three mining properties involved in the 2005 UrAsia deal came
from Ablyazov, the former Kazakh energy minister who spent about a year
behind bars for corruption before Nazarbayev pardoned him in 2003,
according to Bloomberg.

In 2010, Dzhakishev was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the scandal.

Just three years before he ended up behind bars, however, Dzhakishev was
sitting down with Bill Clinton and Giustra at the former president's
Chappaqua, New York home.

Dzhakishev traveled for the meeting to discuss Kazakhstan's interest in a
U.S. company the same month Uranium One took over UrAsia, the New York
Times reported in 2008.

"Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra at first denied that any such meeting
occurred. Mr. Giustra also denied ever arranging for Kazakh officials to
meet with Mr. Clinton. Wednesday, after The Times told them that others
said a meeting, in Mr. Clinton's home, had in fact taken place, both men
acknowledged it," the Times wrote in January of that year.

The report also notes Giustra's company sent an engineering consultant to
Kazakhstan to scope out the mines in 2005, just four weeks before he and
Bill Clinton headed to the country for the former president's first trip
there since leaving the White House.

That Kazakhstan trip was arranged "hastily" on "last-minute notice," the
Times reported.

How will top 2016 Republicans respond to Hillary Clinton immigration move?
<http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/how-will-top-2016-republicans-respond-to-hillary-clinton-immigration-move/article/2564122>
// Washington Examiner // Byron York - May 6, 2015

Hillary Clinton shook up the presidential race in both parties with her
declaration that she would not only protect President Obama's unilateral
executive actions on immigration but that she would go further to offer new
status to currently illegal immigrants, and in the end grant "full and
equal citizenship" to those who came to the U.S. illegally. It was a move
so swift, so consequential — and so far to the left — that Democratic
immigration activist groups were stunned.

Some on the right saw an opportunity for Republicans to go on the offensive
against Clinton. "Now the GOP campaigns are all filing away footage of
[Clinton's] event, in hopes of being able to use it against Hillary next
year," wrote conservative blogger John Hinderaker Wednesday.

Maybe not. Rather than quickly condemn Clinton's new position, the two
leading Republican presidential candidates most associated with immigration
reform — Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio — said nothing at all about it on
Thursday.

Bush aides said the candidate himself might address the matter in coming
days, while Rubio aides pointed to his previous statements on the issue of
immigration reform. For its part, the Republican National Committee
criticized the fact that Clinton changed her position but did not criticize
her new position itself. The bottom line was that some leading GOP voices
were basically silent about Clinton's big move.

The other top Republican in the polls, Scott Walker, has also become
identified with the immigration issue, albeit in an entirely different way
than Bush and Rubio. Walker rocked the immigration debate inside the GOP
recently by suggesting the U.S. should set immigration policy with an eye
to the needs of American workers. "The next president and the next Congress
need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based on,
first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages,"
Walker said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Walker was eager to respond to Clinton's
immigration gambit. "Hillary Clinton's full embrace of amnesty is unfair to
hardworking Americans and all immigrants who followed the law to achieve
the rights and privileges afforded to U.S. citizens," Walker said in a
statement Wednesday. "And by supporting the president's lawless executive
action, Hillary Clinton once again believes she's above the law. Working
families want to secure the border, enforce the law, and fix the broken
legal immigration system."

How will Republicans ultimately respond to Clinton? They're in a difficult
situation. Both Bush and Rubio have, at different times, declared
themselves open to a path to citizenship for the millions of immigrants in
the U.S. illegally. Now, both men speak in terms of granting some sort of
"legal status" to those immigrants. Clinton noted that in her Nevada
remarks when she said that "not a single Republican candidate, announced or
potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship.
Not one. When they talk about legal status, that is code for second-class
status."

Clinton's move has made a big problem even bigger for Bush, Rubio, and the
entire Republican Party.

After the GOP's decisive defeat in the 2012 presidential elections, in
which Barack Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, a number of
Republicans expressed their strong belief that the party had to pass
comprehensive immigration reform to ever have a chance of winning a
significant number of Hispanic voters.

The idea was that reform was a threshold issue — that is, Republicans would
have to pass it before Hispanic voters would consider supporting the GOP's
stand on other issues. Hence the Gang of Eight effort, led by Rubio. But
reform, passed by the Democratic Senate with Rubio's efforts, died in the
Republican-controlled House.

So Clinton has made her move. Her new position effectively trumps all other
immigration reform offers on the table. Her message to Hispanic voters is:
No Republican — not Jeb, not Marco, not anybody — will offer you as much as
I will.

The Republican response is unclear. Can Bush and Rubio say they share
Clinton's goal of citizenship for millions of currently illegal immigrants
but disagree with her way of getting there? That's not terribly strong. Do
they stick with the "legal status" that Clinton characterizes as
"second-class status"?

The fact is, if the heart of immigration reform is an effort to win the
support of Hispanic voters, Clinton's offer has trumped all other
immigration reform proposals on the table. There's not much pro-reform
Republicans can say: "We'll give you a little less than Hillary — but
please look at our issues, like taxes and entitlement reform."

Republicans will have to come up with something, because Clinton plans to
press the issue in the coming campaign. "This will be a defining issue in
the election," her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said Wednesday on CNBC.
And it's a defining issue Clinton clearly believes she can win.

Pennsylvania's Fight Over Paid Sick Days Could Be The Presidential
Campaign's <http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7215274> // Huffington Post
Politics // Jonathan Cohn – May 7, 2015

You’ve got a nasty head cold, or maybe your kid is home with the flu. If
you’re a waitress and you call in sick, should the law forbid your employer
from withholding your day's wages?

A big debate over that question is taking place in Pennsylvania, pitting
conservative state lawmakers in Harrisburg against liberal city officials
in Philadelphia. It's the latest in a series of such clashes that have
taken place across the country. Underscoring the high stakes of the
outcome, the battle is also drawing attention from high-profile Democrats,
including Hillary Clinton, in what could be the early stages of an argument
that will play out during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Earlier this year, Philadelphia enacted an ordinance that will allow
employees to earn up to five full days of paid sick time per year. Under
its terms, employees can claim the days for their own illnesses or for
those of direct family members, or they can use the days to deal with
domestic violence incidents. The law goes into effect next week. Once it
does, workers begin accruing paid sick time -- one hour for every 40 that
they work -- as soon as they’ve been on the job for at least three months.

The law doesn’t apply to seasonal employees or interns, or to companies
where workers have unions. Companies with fewer than 10 employees must
provide the time off, but not salary. Even so, as many as 200,000
Philadelphians who didn’t have paid sick days before will now get them,
according to the law’s supporters. When Mayor Michael Nutter signed the
measure in February, after vetoing two previous ones, these advocates were
ecstatic.

“It’s a great day for all of our workers and all of our businesses,” said
Marianne Bellesorte, an official with Pathways PA, a nonprofit service and
advocacy group that works on issues for women, children and families.

But city officials may not have the last word on the matter. As far back as
2013, when Nutter was still blocking the ordinance, conservative lawmakers
in the state were talking about passing a law that would invalidate local
sick day laws altogether. The clear target of that effort was Philadelphia,
since it was the only city considering such a measure and, because of a
quirk in the state’s constitution, it may be the only city that has the
legal authority to do so.

“I think we have an inherent problem with government trying to tell private
business what they should do with their employees,” John Eichelberger, a
Republican state senator, told The Huffington Post in an interview last
year. Eichelberger co-sponsored a preemption bill that the Senate passed
last month; a similar measure is now before the state’s House of
Representatives. Tom Wolf, the newly elected Democratic governor, has
promised to veto such legislation -- and that's where things stand now.
It’s not clear whether Republican leaders in the legislature could muster
the votes to override him.

A Familiar Fight With Familiar Faces

This isn’t the first time conservatives have tried to leverage their
superior numbers in state government to block or undermine paid sick days
legislation in big cities, where liberals typically hold large majorities.
Using a legislative template supplied by the conservative American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and working closely with employers who
oppose paid sick days mandates, conservatives have tried to enact
preemption laws in more than a dozen other states. In Arizona, Georgia and
nine other states, they have prevailed.

Bill Clinton: We had the lowest net worth of any president entering office
since Harry Truman
<http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/may/07/bill-clinton/bill-clinton-we-had-lowest-net-worth-any-president/>
// Politifact // Katie Sanders - May 7th, 2015

Former President Bill Clinton is back to making claims about his family’s
humble financial roots.

A year ago, he was defending Hillary Clinton for claiming that they left
left the White House "not only dead broke, but in debt" (which rates Mostly
False).

"I had the lowest net worth of any American president in the 20th century
when I took office," Clinton said then (Half True).

This time, it’s amid scrutiny of all those lucrative speeches and foreign
government donations to his family foundation.

"I'm grateful for our success," Clinton told NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden in
an interview that aired May 4. "But let me remind you. When we moved into
the White House, we had the lowest net worth of any family since Harry
Truman."

So, did Bill do better by isolating on presidents since Harry Truman?

The answer is yes.

A humble haberdasher, Harry S. Truman

Detailed financial disclosures were not required for presidents through the
1970s, so we’re left to rely on other resources to get a picture of a
commander-in-chief’s financial assets, said Paul Brace, a professor of
political science at Rice University.

Still, we do know a lot about their lives. Let’s start with Truman since
he’s critical.

Truman and his wife Bess were not homeowners when he became president. They
rented a Washington apartment, and Bess’ mother, who owned the
Independence, Mo., home associated with Harry Truman, shared a room with
their daughter Margaret, said Alonzo Hamby, a Truman biographer and Ohio
University emeritus professor of history.

Truman’s journey to public office followed bankruptcy-dodging and a failed
haberdashery business in the 1920s. He worked his way up from county judge
to a U.S. senator, vice president and president upon Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Even when he was earning $10,000 as a senator in
1935 ($171,000 in 2015 dollars), he could not save the family farm his
mother owned.

It was Truman’s post-White House flirtation with bankruptcy that inspired
Congress to pass presidential pensions, said Aaron Crawford, a
post-doctoral student at Southern Methodist University.

Experts can’t pinpoint his net worth to a specific dollar figure, but all
the evidence points to the number being quite low. Joseph J. Thorndike,
director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, explored Truman’s
financial highs and lows using tax returns released by his presidential
library.

The man from Hope, and his pre-White House wallet

The Clintons are certainly unique compared to other first families in
modern history for a couple big reasons: They did not inherit sizable
family estates, and Hillary Clinton was the family breadwinner as Bill
worked as a career politician.

Before running for the White House in 1992, Clinton brought in $35,000 a
year as Arkansas governor, plus some speaking fees, honorariums and in-kind
income, such as living in the governor’s residence. Hillary was a senior
partner in the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock at the time, earned $92,000
salary and listed her share of her law firm’s profit-sharing and retirement
plan between $100,001 and $250,000, according to a New York Times
examination of the couple’s finances in 1992.

The Clintons listed their net worth as nearly $700,000 in a 1992 statement,
a substantial hike from the $418,692 net worth reported at the end of the
1989, according to the Washington Post.

Lest you worry about the financial wealth of the Clintons, the family was
still well off by most any standard. The median household net worth for
Americans in 2013 was$81,200 (see page 12), according to the Federal
Reserve.

Other presidents since Truman

The experts we contacted didn’t rattle off hard numbers as they dissected
various presidents’ pre-office net worth. Instead, they ruled out the
obviously wealthy presidents based on their jobs and family situations.
(Truman biographer Hamby used the phrases, "JFK of course was quite rich,"
"Reagan was at least quite affluent," and "George H.W. Bush was at least
wealthy if not filthy rich.")

Eliminating the obvious, experts focused on who might present Clinton with
a realistic challenge.

Richard Nixon? He had a pretty lucrative law practice in New York. Lyndon
B. Johnson? Journalists and historians disagree on exactly how he built his
wealth, experts said, but he at least married a wealthy woman whose father
owned Texas radio stations.

Dwight D. Eisenhower? Nah, they said, as he was doing well for himself
after World War II, landing on corporate boards and enjoying a good
military pension and sales of his memoir, Crusade in Europe. "You save the
world, you get good royalties," said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center
for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.

Most encouraged us to give presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford a closer
look.

Carter had earned a good living as the owner of a peanut warehouse business
in Georgia before running for the state Senate in 1962, said Scott Kaufman,
a scholar of Ford and Carter at Francis Marion University.

In 1979’s Jimmy Carter: A Character Portrait, authors Bruce Mazlish and
Edwin Diamond wrote that Carter’s fortune was $814,000 when he became
president, Kaufman said. That bests Clinton, without even having to break
out the inflation calculator.

A separate source — a 1976 Washington Post article sent over by the Hillary
Clinton campaign — showed Carter had a net worth (when valuing assets at
their original cost) of $512,000, which translates to $1.3 million in 1992
dollars, according to 1975 tax returns he released during his campaign
against Ford.

A document from the Gerald R. Ford presidential library suggests Ford had a
more modest net worth compared to other presidents. The document, dated
Oct. 29, 1973, (the year before Ford became president), showed a net worth
of $256,378, which had the same buying power as about $810,000 in 1992.
That’s more than the Clintons, though not by much.

Ford’s finances and dealings were part of the most intense background
checks for anyone ever screened for the vice presidency, Kaufman said,
coming off the resignation of Nixon vice president Spiro Agnew earlier that
month and amid looming worries about legal implications for Nixon in the
Watergate scandal.

"They didn’t want to appoint someone who might also have problems," Kaufman
said.

Our ruling

Bill Clinton urged Americans to remember the Clintons’ more modest
beginnings with his family’s fattened finances in the limelight, saying,
"When we moved into the White House, we had the lowest net worth of any
family since Harry Truman."

You can decide whether his point is relevant, but Clinton has improved the
accuracy of his factoid since making a similar claim last year.

We could not find evidence of a president after Truman whose
inflation-adjusted net worth was smaller than the Clintons’.

We rate his claim True.

Hillary and the Burden of Clintonism
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/hillary-and-the-burden-of-clintonism/392609/>
// The Atlantic // Molly Ball – May 7, 2015

The Democratic presidential candidate's proposals are increasingly at odds
with the policies of her husband's administration.

Last week, in the first policy speech of her presidential campaign, Hillary
Clinton staked out a position on criminal-justice reform that was a direct
repudiation of Bill Clinton's tough-on-crime policies.

It wasn't the first time Hillary Clinton has found herself up against Bill
Clinton's record, and it likely won't be the last. As the former first lady
stakes out aforthrightly liberal platform for her second presidential
campaign, she is increasingly at odds with the legacy of her husband. If
the promises she's making now bear fruit, a second Clinton administration
could well end up reversing many of the policies of the first one.

Though the criminal-justice contrast was the most widely noticed, Hillary
Clinton has already staked out multiple stances that contrast starkly with
Bill Clinton's policies. This week, in Las Vegas, she laid out a set of
immigration policies including "full and equal citizenship" for
undocumented immigrants, protecting the parents of young "Dreamer"
undocumented immigrants from deportation, and softening deportation
policies. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, signed several restrictive
immigration measures during his tenure, speeding deportations, increasing
penalties, and making it harder for the undocumented to gain legal status.
The measures were passed by the Republican Congress at the time.

Hillary Clinton recently expressed hope that the Supreme Court would
makesame-sex marriage a constitutional right; her announcement video even
featured a gay couple talking about their upcoming wedding. Bill Clinton,
in 1996, signed the Defense of Marriage Act to deny federal marriage
protections to same sex couples—a law that the Supreme Court ruled largely
unconstitutional in 2013.

As the campaign continues, progressives can be expected to push Hillary
Clinton to take more stances that contravene Bill Clinton's record. Trade
and financial regulation are two notable areas of liberal angst: Many
critics blame Bill Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act for the 2008
financial crisis, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he
championed, is frequently cited in the current debate over trade authority
as an example of a bad free-trade deal. Welfare reform is another Bill
Clinton compromise that many modern-day progressives reject. The Hillary
Clinton of 2016 has yet to take a position on these issues, though she
issued a statement expressing concern about the proposed Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade deal. Obama strongly supports the deal, and Hillary
Clinton previously supported it as secretary of state.

Tighter financial regulation, including reimposing Glass-Steagall-style
regulations, is the top priority of supporters of Massachusetts Senator
Elizabeth Warren, whose fans are still hoping she will reverse herself and
decide to run for president. The pining for Warren is a symptom of some
progressives' continuing suspicion of Hillary Clinton, who, like her
husband, has a reputation for pro-business dealmaking rather than bold
liberalism. "A growing number of supporters are urging Elizabeth Warren to
run because her actions speak even louder than her words," said Erica
Sagrans, campaign manager of the Ready for Warren draft effort. "By leading
the charge to create our nation's first consumer protection agency,
Elizabeth Warren has shown that she can take on the tough fights and win."

What's the significance of Hillary Clinton's departures from her husband's
policies? They may serve to remind liberals how frequently Bill Clinton,
when he was president, was willing to compromise liberal stances in the
service of getting things done—stoking Democrats' fears that, however
progressive Hillary Clinton sounds now, she might not govern that way in
practice. Hillary Clinton's record in the Senate was likewise that of a
dealmaker, and since leaving the state Department and reentering politics,
she's talked about trying to break out of the gridlock of the current era.
That's going to mean working with Republicans, and potentially agreeing to
deals that fall far short of the policies liberals would like to see.

Hillary Clinton's team says her differences with her husband are simply a
mark of changing times.  It would be silly, after all, to expect the
policies of 2016 to be exactly the same as those offered in 1993. Cracking
down on crime, for example, was appropriate in the 1990s, when it was an
epidemic problem; nowadays, with crime down and growing concern around mass
incarceration, different solutions are called for. (Supporters also note
that Bill Clinton has now taken a similar stance against his old
tough-on-crime policies.)

“Hillary Clinton is running on her own agenda and her proven record as a
fighter for everyday Americans," Clinton campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson
told me. "Her policy ideas fit the challenges we face and the times we’re
in.”

Much has already been written about the challenge Hillary Clinton faces in
positioning herself against the Obama legacy. How can she convince voters
looking for a change that that is what she represents when she was an
integral part of the Obama administration? And how much of a departure can
she call for without alienating Obama's still-loyal base of support?

Yet as Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign takes shape, the Democratic
administration with which she's offering the clearest contrast isn't
Obama's—it's Bill Clinton's.

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE

Trade Debate Gives Bernie Sanders a Chance to Put Hillary Clinton on the
Hot Seat
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-07/trade-debate-gives-bernie-sanders-a-chance-to-put-hillary-clinton-on-the-hot-seat>
// Bloomberg // Heidi Przybyla - May 7, 2015

Senator Bernie Sanders is setting the first in a number of political traps
for Hillary Clinton with next week's start of a congressional debate over
trade legislation.

The Vermont independent challenging Clinton for the 2016 Democratic
presidential nomination is dialing up pressure for her to take a stand on a
12-nation Pacific trade deal she's supported in the past.

Sanders has virtually no chance of winning the Democratic nomination unless
Clinton alienates grassroots activists like labor union members, and he's
pushing her to do just that. He has been needling her in media appearances
and, last month, he marched with labor officials in Washington to protest
the upcoming trade vote.

"I have voted against every disastrous trade agreement coming down the
pike,'' Sanders said on Wednesday, arguing that such deals have exported
"good-paying jobs to low-wage countries.''

"People have got to look at Secretary Clinton's record,'' he added.

The Senate plans to begin debate next week on legislation granting
President Barack Obama the ability to expedite trade agreements like the
Pacific deal, which is unpopular among many Democratic voters. The AFL-CIO,
environmental groups and other progressive organizations are making its
defeat their top legislative priority. Fast-track authority requires
Congress to hold an up-or-down vote on international agreements negotiated
by the president, meaning there's no opportunity for amendments or
filibusters.

Sanders's rhetoric on trade demonstrates how he poses a threat to Clinton
even if he doesn't endanger her grip on the nomination. While labor groups
fighting the trade legislation are likely to support Clinton as the
eventual nominee, she could suffer from an enthusiasm gap if the labor and
progressive communities aren't motivated to show up at the polls and turn
out their followers.

On April 17, Sanders issued a statement calling on Clinton to oppose the
deal. The same day, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said she believes any
new trade measures must "put us in a position to protect American workers,
raise wages and create more good jobs at home,'' but stopped short of
indicating whether she supports or opposes the trade deal.

Clinton has in the past expressed support for a Pacific trade deal, which
pits key elements of the Democratic coalition against key Democratic
leaders—among them Obama, and Clinton's husband, former President Bill
Clinton.

It's an opportunity for Sanders, who announced his long-shot 2016 candidacy
last week, to show he can shape his party's primary debate, even if he's
unlikely to become the nominee.

More contrasts to come

Other areas where Sanders is in a position to draw stark contrasts with
Clinton include: Her support for the Patriot Act; her vote in 2002 to
authorize the war in Iraq, and her stance on the Keystone XL pipeline. As
secretary of state, Clinton said she was “inclined” to approve the
pipeline. Since then, much like on the trade measure, Clinton has been
silent on Keystone.

On trade, Clinton has to contend not only with her own record, but that of
her husband. One of the hallmark legislative successes of former President
Bill Clinton's administration was the 1994 North American Free Trade
Agreement that unions blame for thousands of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Unions typically provide the campaign foot soldiers who knock on doors,
make phone calls and help get Democratic voters to the polls. Right now,
they're launching an all-out war against the trade legislation. An AFL-CIO
fact sheet said its members have held 450 nationwide events, including
rallies in Washington, made 100,000 phone calls and gathered 40,000
petition signatures.

The labor federation is freezing all political action committee
contributions to candidates to put those funds toward a campaign to stop
fast-track legislation. That includes digital ads pressuring 16 senators to
oppose the deal and attacks on Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Michael
Bennet of Colorado, who voted for the legislation in committee. Last week,
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka delivered a speech putting elected
officials on notice, without mentioning Clinton by name.

'No middle ground'

"We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose
fast-track,'' Trumka said. "There is no middle ground, and the time for
deliberations is drawing to a close.''

To Matt Bennett, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton who
supports trade legislation, "The ferocity with which segments of the labor
community are fighting this has been surprising.'' He acknowledged it puts
Hillary Clinton in a bind.

"She's torn between what she knows to be important for America's economy
and our leadership in the global economy and the necessity of uniting the
party behind her,'' said Bennett, now senior vice president at Third Way, a
Democratic policy group.

House Speaker John Boehner is also leaning on Clinton to declare her
position.

Last week, the Ohio Republican said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press
that Obama needs Clinton's help to corral hesitant Democratic senators to
support the trade measure. "She can't sit on the sidelines and let the
president swing in the wind here,'' he said.

Martin O'Malley Hires Political Director Before Likely Run
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/07/martin-omalley-hires-political-director-before-likely-run/>
// New York Times // Maggie Haberman - May 7, 2015

Martin O’Malley, the former Democratic governor of Maryland, is moving to
solidify his team for his all-but-certain 2016 presidential campaign,
bringing on a former aide to President Obama as his national political
director.

Karine Jean-Pierre will be taking on that role, according to Mr. O’Malley’s
aides. Mr. O’Malley is expected to announce his presidential candidacy in
the coming weeks.

Ms. Jean-Pierre was the deputy battleground states director for Mr. Obama’s
re-election campaign in 2012. Before that she worked as regional political
director in the White House Office of Political Affairs.

Ms. Jean-Pierre has spent time immersed in a crucible of liberal primary
politics — she was the campaign manager for Letitia James, the New York
City public advocate, in her primary campaign runoff in 2013. She also was
a senior adviser to Bill Thompson when he ran for mayor of New York that
same year.

Mr. O’Malley has been making repeated trips to early voting states in
recent months, and is scheduled to return to New Hampshire next week. He
has also been trying to sharpen the distinctions between himself and
Hillary Rodham Clinton on key issues.

Martin O'Malley Keeps On Baiting Hillary Clinton
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-07/martin-o-malley-keeps-on-baiting-hillary-clinton>
// Bloomberg Politics // Sahil Kapur - May 7, 2015

According to the latest polls, it may not be working, but Martin O'Malley
remains a mission to paint Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary
Clinton as an inauthentic opportunist, as evident in his messaging so far
and signals from people familiar with his political strategy.

The former Maryland governor hasn't yet formally declared his intentions to
challenge Clinton for the White House but he has begun portraying her as a
politician who shapes her positions according to public opinion. In marked
contrast to Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist who had an
outwardly friendly Twitter exchange with Clinton on the day he announced he
was challenging her, O'Malley has gone after the former secretary of state,
albeit sometimes without mentioning her name.

"I believe that we are best as a party when we lead with our principles and
not according to the polls," he told reporters when he spoke at Harvard on
April 16, summing up the theory of his would-be candidacy. "And every
election is about the future. And leadership is about making the right
decision, and the best decision before sometimes it becomes entirely
popular." One day later he took a similar veiled swipe at Clinton on CBS'
Face The Nation. "You can't forge public opinion by following public
opinion," he said.

So far, as Clinton has worked to align herself with progressives on a host
of issues—sometimes altering her past positions. She has also maintained
intimidatingly high popularity levels with Democrats.

O'Malley, by contrast has scant name recognition and barely registers in
early primary polls. The lead singer of an Irish rock band named
"O'Malley's March," he strikes up the same tune on issue after issue: I was
fighting on the progressive side from the start; Clinton wasn't—and in some
cases still isn't. (Her campaign declined to comment for this article.)

Here are five notable examples.

Child Refugees at the Southern Border

As Clinton was shoring up her progressive credentials on May 5 at a Las
Vegas roundtable by championing relief for undocumented people brought to
the U.S. as children, O'Malley spokeswoman Lis Smith released a statement
touting his support for letting a flood of children who arrived at the
Southern border last year stay in the U.S. after they had fled gang
violence in Central America.

"Governor O'Malley stood up when it mattered. When most leaders in the
Democratic and Republican Parties were saying that we should close our
border to children fleeing violence in Central America, he defied them and
said that we could not send children 'back to certain death.' He was
criticized for that position, but leadership is about forging public
opinion, not following it."

The context: The timing of Team O'Malley's statement made clear that it was
a thinly veiled reference to Clinton saying in 2014 that the unaccompanied
minors "should be sent back." At the time, the issue received national
attention and the Obama White House and Republicans broadly agreed that the
children should be processed by the system and deported.

Same-Sex Marriage

Under O'Malley's watch in November 2012, Maryland became one of the first
states to approve same-sex marriage, and the former governor loves to brag
about his role in the battle. "I believe marriage is a human right, not a
state right. I'm glad she's come around to that position," he told
reporters in mid-April, referring to Clinton.

The context: Clinton had just completed her 180-degree flip on gay
marriage; her campaign said the Supreme Court should declare it a
constitutional right for same-sex couples in a landmark case expected to be
decided next month. Her evolution was gradual: in 2013, after stepping down
as secretary of state, she came out for same-sex marriage. But as recently
as June 2014 she told NPR she wants to let states prohibit it if they
choose to, a position that gay rights advocates (and, increasingly,
Americans) oppose.

Drivers' Licenses for the Undocumented

As governor, O'Malley signed a law permitting undocumented immigrants to
obtain drivers' licenses. "I believe that we do our country a disservice
when we make it harder for new American immigrants to abide by the rules of
the road and obtain drivers' licenses," he told a group of reporters at
Harvard University in April. "And I’m glad she [Clinton] has come around to
that position."

The context: During the 2008 primary, Clinton opposed drivers' licenses for
people in the U.S. illegally (after initially hesitating during a debate).
At the time the Democratic Party was divided on the issue of immigration.
Not so anymore. In mid-April, days after launching her 2016 campaign, she
came around. "Hillary supports state policies to provide drivers' licenses
to undocumented immigrants," her campaign told the Huffington Post.

Social Security Expansion

In early March, O'Malley said he'd push for more generous Social Security
benefits as president. He reiterated that position in his April speech at
Harvard, saying: "Rather than reducing Social Security benefits or
privatizing Social Security, we need to expand Social Security benefits."
He wants to pay for it by lifting the cap on payroll taxes for incomes
above a certain level. Currently, income above $118,500 is not taxed to
support Social Security.

The context: O'Malley was drawing a contrast with Clinton, who in 2008
called for a bipartisan commission to propose changes to Social Security.
He was well aware that she hadn't taken a position on the issue of
expansion, which has been growing in popularity with progressives. Last
month her campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson said "dealing with challenges
facing older Americans is a top priority for her" and touted her "record of
fighting against privatizing Social Security and opposing cuts to seniors
benefits."

Trade

"Hard Choice? Nope. To me, opposing bad trade deals like TPP is just common
sense," O'Malley wrote in an April 22 fundraising email, making a snarky
reference to Clinton's 2014 memoir Hard Choices. "American workers whose
jobs could be on the line right now are owed more than lip service. They
deserve to know where leaders stand."

The context: So far, Clinton has not taken a position on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership agreement that the U.S. is negotiating with some dozen
countries. Congress could begin debating it as early as next week. The
White House supports it; the AFL-CIO and many groups on the left oppose it.
"She will be watching closely," Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a
statement on April 17, "to see what is being done to crack down on currency
manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health,
promote transparency, and open new opportunities for our small businesses
to export overseas."

Can Elizabeth Warren Kill President Obama’s Trade Deal?
<http://time.com/3851113/elizabeth-warren-tpp/> // TIME // Haley Sweetland
Edwards - May 7, 2015

Elizabeth Warren, the famously fiery populist senator from Massachusetts,
has a reputation for having a bit of a reverse-Midas touch, when she wants
to: if she decides she is against something, it often turns to smoke.

The latest subject of her withering glare? In a letter to supporters
Thursday afternoon, Warren decried a sub-chapter in the Obama
administration’s proposed trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that
would allow companies to sue foreign countries through an extra-judicial
tribunal made up of three for-profit arbitrators.

If that sounds a little hard-to-follow, that’s because it is. But Warren’s
street cred with liberals is strong enough that they tend to take her lead
even when the argument can’t be summed up in a simple bumper sticker slogan.

Provisions for these tribunals — known as an investor-state dispute system,
or ISDS — have appeared in more than 3,000 trade deals, including the North
American Free Trade Agreement, since the 1950s, according to Jeff Zients,
the director of the National Economic Council.

But Warren argues that it’s different this time around. For one, the
Trans-Pacific Partnership is enormous. It includes the U.S. and 11 other
countries, including Japan, Australia and Chile, oversees a whopping 40% of
the world’s total annual GDP, and it’s irreversible: once we’re in it,
there’s no getting out.

And for another, she claims that ISDS isn’t what it used to be. Two decades
ago, when NAFTA was ratified, multi-national corporations were smaller and
less powerful than they are today. Her case is that as those interests have
gotten bigger and bigger, they’ve gotten more litigious: in the four
decades from 1959 to 2002, there were fewer than 100 ISDS cases world wide.
Between 2010 and 2013 alone, there were more than 200.

“Recent cases include a French company that sued Egypt because Egypt raised
its minimum wage, a Swedish company that sued Germany because Germany
decided to phase out nuclear power after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and a
Dutch company that sued the Czech Republic because the Czechs didn’t bail
out a bank that the company partially owned,” she wrote in a Washington
Post op-ed this winter.

In February, John Oliver, the Comedy Central comedian and host of Last Week
Tonight who also holds sway with liberals, mocked an effort by the tobacco
company, Philip Morris, to use ISDS to reverse public health regulations in
Uruguay’s designed to reduce the smoking rate.

President Obama, backed by most Republicans, a majority of Democrats, and
the powerful corporate interest groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and the Business Roundtable, says Warren is just plain wrong. (He’ll be at
Nike’s headquarters in Oregon on Friday explaining why the TPP is great.)
ISDS is necessary, the deal’s backers argue, to ensure the corporations
feel comfortable making direct foreign investments in other countries —
particularly those with less well developed court systems.

But policy arguments aside for a moment, will the famous Warren touch work
this time around?

In the past, Warren has been successful in taking down very narrow targets.
Last fall, she set her sights on Antonio Weiss, the White House’s nominee
for Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance, and by January, he’d
bowed out. Before that, Warren helped doom Obama’s plan to nominate former
Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve.

But Warren’s also had some off-days. She failed, for example, in her effort
last December to quash Congress’s unwieldy continuing resolution and
omnibus bill — nicknamed the “Cromnibus” — which included provisions that
unwound financial regulations.

And the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for better or worse, may have more in
common with the latter than the former. Like the Cromnibus, the TPP is
huge, unwieldy, and also includes provisions that many Democrats will like.

Plus, there are technical difficulties. If Congress passes what’s known as
the “fast-track” bill next week — it’s unclear if they currently have the
votes they need — there won’t be any room for debate about which parts to
keep, rewrite, amend or scrap. The fast-track bill binds Congress into an
up or down vote on the final version of the trade deal.

And if it comes down to a simple “yes” or “no,” Warren’s famous touch,
however powerful, might not be enough.

GOP

Rubio Headlines Fundraiser For Policy Group That Supports Conversion Therapy
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/rubio-addresses-social-conservatives-at-policy-group-that-su#.hp0KKZgkM>
// Buzzfeed // Chris Geldner – May 7, 2015

Rubio Headlines Fundraiser For Policy Group That Supports Conversion Therapy

Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio headlined a fundraiser
Wednesday night for the conservative Arizona group behind much of the
state’s socially conservative legislation.

Although there was no media inside the room at the Center for Arizona
Policy fundraiser, held at Arizona Christian University, and a spokesperson
from Rubio’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests Wednesday for
comment about the event or what Rubio planned to say, at least two
attendees did post on social media from within the event with remarks from
Rubio.

“Even as I’m speaking to you now, a human life is being terminated in
America,” a congressional staffer attending Wednesday’s event quoted Rubio
as saying. The staffer works for Rep. Trent Franks, who also was in
attendance.

“Without faith at the core of our society, you fall into an era of moral
relativism,” the staffer quoted Rubio as saying.

When Rubio was discussing marriage, the Franks staffer did not quote Rubio
directly, but he tweeted, “Dangerous era in America, says @marcorubio,
where if you believe in the traditional definition of marriage, you’re a
bigot.”

Rubio did not apparently reference or discuss the center’s stated support
for conversion therapy — a practiced banned when used on minors in New
Jersey, California, and DC — and his spokesperson did not respond to a
question asking whether Rubio agrees with the group’s view that
“homosexuals [can] modify[] their behavior and becoming heterosexual
through Christian ministries and counseling.”

Just last month, Rubio expressed a different view, saying, “[T]he bottom
line is, I believe that sexual preference is something people are born
with.”

Arizona state Sen. Katie Hobbs, the Democratic minority leader in the state
Senate, spoke with BuzzFeed News about the event, noting that an abortion
bill was one of the two key pieces of legislation the center pushed in the
legislature this term. The other related to vouchers, she said. In the past
legislative term, the group had pushed the religious liberty bill that
eventually was vetoed by former Gov. Jan Brewer.

Hobbs criticized Rubio’s appearance before the Center for Arizona Policy.
“I know that’s there’s folks in their base for whom these social issues
matter,” she said of the Republican Party, “but average Americans should be
worried that these are the issues a presidential candidate is focusing on.”
She described the group as having power within the state capitol — but also
out of the mainstream.

Marco Rubio Campaigns on His Immigrant Story, Cautiously
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/politics/marco-rubio-campaigns-on-his-immigrant-story-cautiously.html?smid=nytpolitics>
// New York Times // Jonathan Martin and Ashley Parker - May 7, 2015

ANKENY, Iowa — At a recent ice cream social here, Jim Hallihan liked what
he heard from Senator Marco Rubio.

He praised the Florida senator’s youthful optimism and his eloquent
testimony to the opportunities America offered.

But there was something larger that drew Mr. Hallihan, a former Iowa State
basketball coach, to Mr. Rubio, 43, the son of poor Cuban immigrants.

“The day of the older white guy is kind of out,” said Mr. Hallihan, a
70-year-old white guy.

As Mr. Rubio has introduced himself to curious, and overwhelmingly
Caucasian, Republican audiences from Iowa to New Hampshire, he has vaulted
to the front ranks of the early pack of likely presidential candidates,
partly because of his natural political talent. But it may owe just as much
to the combination of his personal story and the balm it offers to a party
that has been repeatedly scalded by accusations of prejudice.

He says he is highlighting his background only to share his own twist on
the American dream — not out of any desire to make history on behalf of
Hispanics. But Mr. Rubio and those around him are also acutely aware of the
sometimes raw tensions in his party, between those unsettled by an
increasingly diverse society and those who say Republicans must embrace the
multihued America of 2015.

To the party operatives and donors who have placed long bets on him, and to
the rank-and-file primary voters he has impressed, Mr. Rubio’s candidacy
seems to affirm the idea that, in a free market, anyone can rise without
the benefit of connections or wealth. That he did so as the child of Latin
American parents who fled an autocratic government and toiled in the
humblest of jobs — maid and bartender — has sent some Republicans swooning.

“The identity politics people in the party want a champion who looks like
him to mitigate accusations of racism,” said Ben Domenech, a conservative
writer. “And the classical conservatives look at him and say, ‘This is
somebody who can sell our ideas to the public.’”

Conservatives have long had a philosophical contempt for politics driven by
gender, racial or class designations. But those sentiments are giving way
as the party tries to compete with Democrats, who galvanized support among
targeted demographics to decisively win consecutive presidential elections.

Republican voters are overwhelmingly white: The composition of the
electorate in almost every contested state during the 2012 party primary
was about 90 percent or more non-Hispanic white, according to exit polls.

A New York Times/CBS Poll this week found that 68 percent of Republicans
think America is ready to elect a Hispanic president. And after nearly
eight years in which Republicans have angrily disputed charges that their
opposition to President Obama was rooted in racial animus, Mr. Rubio could
serve as an unspoken, but forceful, rebuttal.

“The same things that ignited Democrats about Obama are what will ignite
Republicans for Rubio,” said Ed Failor Jr., an Iowa Republican strategist.

Or, as Mr. Domenech put it, “If we look to politicians to make us feel good
about ourselves, do you want to go with just another Republican caricature,
or somebody who has this unique appeal?”

Andrea Szewczyk, 51, a Republican and a schoolteacher in Romeo, Mich., who
was surveyed in the Times poll, said she believed that Mr. Rubio’s
ethnicity could excite the electorate, much as she said Mr. Obama’s
identity did. “We’d get some Democrats voting Republican because of it,”
she said.

Indeed, much as many white liberals treasured the opportunity to support
Mr. Obama, white conservatives may welcome a Bible-quoting, handsome
Hispanic capable of evangelizing the gospel of American exceptionalism in
two languages.

Mr. Rubio disputes suggestions that he is capitalizing on the
history-making potential of becoming his party’s first nonwhite nominee.

“The presidency is too important to say we’re going to share it among
ethnicities,” he said in an interview.

Much as Mr. Obama avoided running expressly as a black candidate, Mr. Rubio
is uneasy about explicitly invoking his ethnicity in the primary of a party
that can seem split between tapping into and trying to overcome
white-resentment politics.

Instead, just as Mr. Obama’s talk of “hope and change” in 2008 allowed
voters to project their own vision onto the candidate, Mr. Rubio’s campaign
is its own Rorschach test.

His advisers assert that Mr. Rubio’s background is compelling to voters
across racial lines, many of whom are themselves only a few generations
removed from Ellis Island narratives. But they have also studied the voter
rolls to see how Mr. Rubio might spur Hispanic turnout in some heavily
white states — say, by delivering him as few as 5,000 Hispanic votes in
Iowa.

Still, if some Republicans love the idea of what Mr. Rubio’s race
represents, others are wary. “Eight years of one demographically symbolic
president is enough,” said Wayne R. LaPierre, chief executive of the
National Rifle Association, at its annual conference last month.

Mr. LaPierre was referring to Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, if
elected, would be the first female president. (The Republican field
includes another Latino, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, whose father emigrated
from Cuba.)

But Mr. Rubio seems mindful of the risks of confronting the most
conservative elements of his party over delicate racial issues.

At a candidate forum in New Hampshire last month, he passed up the chance
to offer even a gentle reproach to a woman who, citing bilingual store
signs and automated phone lines, complained that immigrants were not
“coming here and learning English.”

“Well, here’s the bottom line,” Mr. Rubio told her. “If you don’t speak
English, you’re not going to prosper economically in America.”

At a similar gathering recently in Iowa, Mr. Rubio recounted vowing to his
dying grandfather, in Spanish, that he would study hard and not squander
opportunities. But Mr. Rubio told the story in English.

Asked if he was comfortable speaking Spanish on the campaign trail, Mr.
Rubio seemed to grow momentarily defensive. “Sure,” he said, adding, “I
don’t want to make Spanish illegal.”

“I’m ultimately saying that you have to have a unifying language where your
schools are taught, what your laws are written in and how others
communicate with each other,” he continued. “Every nation needs a unifying
language; our unifying language is English.”

As for those with dial-1-for-English gripes, Mr. Rubio said, “I know
Hispanics that complain about that, especially people in the second or
third generation.”

Mr. Rubio has met with some pushback in his party from people who see the
country changing and want to stop placating those who are unhappy about it.

“You can’t allow yourself to be pushed back into ‘English only, English
only,’ ” said former Representative Henry Bonilla of Texas, a Republican
and Mexican-American. “This is the U.S.; our language is English. But we’re
in a global economy now, so why wouldn’t you want to know more than one
language?”

Mr. Rubio does not entirely avoid speaking Spanish: He frequently gives
interviews to Spanish-language journalists, especially in Florida. And in
his announcement speech in Miami last month, he shared a benedictionlike
saying of his late father’s: “En este país, ustedes van a poder lograr
todas las cosas que nosotros no pudimos,” Mr. Rubio said. Then he
translated it: “In this country, you will achieve all the things we never
could.”

But he is careful about how he presents his dual identity. In a video his
campaign released shortly after he entered the race, Mr. Rubio was shown
answering the questions about him posed in frequent Google searches. “What
nationality is Marco Rubio?” he said, reading one. “I’m an American — of
Hispanic descent.”

By contrast, Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican and often refers to their
“bicultural” children, is not so torn: He delights in opportunities to
demonstrate his fluent Spanish, and last week he courted voters in Puerto
Rico. “I know the power of the immigrant experience because I live it each
and every day,” he said there.

The legislative embodiment of the conflicting forces tugging at Mr. Rubio
was the effort to overhaul American immigration laws. He helped write a
comprehensive bill including a path to citizenship for 11 million
undocumented immigrants already in the country. But it died in the
Republican-controlled House, and provoked outrage from the party’s most
reliable primary voters.

Last month, when Mr. Rubio made his first trip to Iowa after announcing his
campaign, he was confronted at a closed-door meeting by Mariannette
Miller-Meeks, a former congressional candidate, who pointedly urged him not
to retreat from an immigration overhaul.

“My advice to Senator Rubio was to be honest with people, be yourself,” Ms.
Miller-Meeks said afterward, “because that will carry a lot of weight.”

'Underdog' Rick Santorum says he'll announce intentions May 27
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/rick-santorum-possible-2016-presidential-bid-announcement-may-27-117722.html%20%20%20http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/rick-santorum-possible-2016-presidential-bid-announcement-may-27-117722.html>
// Politico // Nick Gass – May 7, 2015

Rick Santorum will announce whether he will make a run for president later
this month at an event in his hometown of Butler, Pennsylvania, on May 27.

“Look, it was a great campaign last time,” he told Fox News’ Greta Van
Susteren on Wednesday night, referencing his 34-vote victory in the 2012
Iowa Republican caucus. “We were clearly the underdog and we are starting
out as looking at this race and we would be in the same position. And so we
are very comfortable there.”

Santorum said he is looking at a venue in the town approximately 35 miles
north of Pittsburgh “to sort of talk about what it was like growing up
there and where America needs to go in the future.”

The former Pennsylvania senator made his 2012 announcement in Somerset,
Pennsylvania — an hour and a half east of Pittsburgh and near where his
grandfather worked as a coal miner.

Santorum also touched upon the social issues he might tackle if he
announces a presidential run.

“Talking about what we can do to help strengthen that family structure is
going to be certainly a part of the campaign,” he said.

Why Carly Fiorina is on a media blitz
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/carly-fiorina-2016-media-blitz/index.html>
// CNN Politics // Chris Moody – May 7, 2015

A central theme of Carly Fiorina's nascent campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination is that she is uniquely positioned to neutralize
the historic potential of Hillary Clinton's 2016 bid.

But first, she has to introduce herself to voters, who in large part don't
know who she is.

On the day she announced her candidacy, Fiorina sat for two interviews with
ABC's "Good Morning America" in New York. Then she hopped on a phone for a
mid-morning press call with 65 journalists. After lunch, she was off to
Yahoo News' studio for a live sit-down with anchor Katie Couric, followed
by a question-and-answer session using the live-streaming app Periscope.
That evening, she joined Megyn Kelly on Fox News.

The next day was no different: Fiorina navigated eight interviews,
including Glenn Beck's radio show, CNN and "The Late Show with Seth
Meyers." Seven more interviews were scheduled Wednesday, followed by five
press availabilities over the weekend in Iowa, New Hampshire and South
Carolina.

Fiorina's exhaustive schedule is emblematic of candidates who enter the
race without a lick of national name ID. For a candidate whose name barely
registers in CNN/ORC polls conducted regularly since November, Fiorina —
and upstart candidates like her -- must rely on the media's megaphone to
get her name heard. Even better-known contenders like Sens. Ted Cruz of
Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, did a media blitz
after announcing their presidential bids.

"Candidates with lower name identification must jump at virtually every
opportunity to garner media coverage," said Republican political consultant
Ellen Carmichael, who managed press outreach for Herman Cain's presidential
campaign in 2011, a candidate who started out virtually unknown. "For some,
this means creating their own news by saying things the media deems
controversial. For others, it means answering every media inquiry and
agreeing to every interview that comes your way. More established
candidates, however, have the luxury of passing on requests."

That's one luxury that Clinton is enjoying.

Since her presidential campaign announcement on April 12, Clinton has not
held a formal press conference. While on the campaign trail, she has
responded — reluctantly at times -- to roughly eight questions from
journalists.

Even that count is a charitable one, given that some responses have been
little more than short exclamations, such as, "I'm having a great time,
can't look forward any more than I am," which she said in response to a
question about her strategy in Iowa. When a reporter in New Hampshire asked
about her next stop on the campaign trail, she merely said, "Oh, onward."

Clinton has been so reclusive in the first weeks of her candidacy that the
New York Times started publishing questions their reporters would have
asked her that day on the campaign trail if they had had the chance.

At this early stage in the race, Clinton doesn't need to rely on the media
to reach her core supporters. She has a Twitter feed with 3.47 million
followers and a new Facebook page that has grown to 800,000 online
supporters since her announcement in April. This week her campaign launched
a web series called, "The Briefing," which it intends to use to combat what
they consider unfriendly media coverage.

It would be hard to see how any other candidate could take such a brazen
go-it-alone approach.

Of course, Clinton's absence from media interviews does not come without
consequence.

Her lone official challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced his candidacy
last week and quickly booked a round of interviews, which led the liberal
magazine Mother Jones to post the jabbing headline, "Bernie Sanders Has
Already Taken More Press Questions Than Hillary Clinton."

This is one of the few instances in which die-hard liberal Sanders and
conservative Fiorina are in the same boat: The CNN/ORC poll in April found
that just 5% of Democratic voters would consider supporting Sanders,
compared to 69% for Clinton.

As the campaign progresses, Clinton will become more available for press
questions, Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson told CNN. But as the
frontrunner 19 months until the general election, her campaign strategists
know that journalists will still continue to cover her regardless of
whether she answers questions.

Her lesser-known opponents—on both sides of the aisle—don't have that
benefit.

Jeb Bush is Failing to Impress Iowa Republicans, Poll Shows
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/06/jeb-bush-is-failing-to-impress-iowa-republicans-poll-shows/>
// New York Times // Alan Rappeport - May 7, 2015

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida has been on a fund-raising tear as he
prepares before a probable announcement that he is running for president,
but he might want to spend some more time in Iowa.

The crucial caucus state that kicks off nominating season is not
particularly impressed with Mr. Bush so far, according to a new poll
released on Wednesday by Quinnipiac University.

In a survey of 667 Republicans who are most likely to participate in the
Iowa caucuses, Mr. Bush comes in seventh with just 5 percent saying they
would probably support him. A quarter of Iowa Republicans who might caucus
said they would definitely not support him.

The poll shows that 45 percent of the Iowans surveyed had an unfavorable
opinion of Mr. Bush, with the same number saying he is not sufficiently
conservative.

The figures show the challenge that Mr. Bush could face charting a path to
securing the Republican nomination and consolidating conservative voters.
The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage
points.

Quinnipiac’s poll shows Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin as the early
favorite in Iowa, with 21 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers most
likely to back him. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida
and Ted Cruz of Texas are all vying for second place.

“For national unknowns like Walker and Rubio, a fast start in Iowa may be
critical to their chances of overall success, while supporters of national
names like Bush note that fewer than half of Iowa winners wind up
inhabiting the Oval Office,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of
Quinnipiac’s poll.

Jeb Bush Plans to Spend More Time in Iowa
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/07/jeb-bush-plans-to-spend-more-time-in-iowa/?ref=us&_r=0>
// New York Times // Alan Rappeport - May 7, 2015

Former Gov. Jeb Bush will have the chance to correct his polling problems
in Iowa with a trip to the state next week.

Mr. Bush will join several others considering White House bids at the
Republican Party of Iowa’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines on May 16. He will
also participate in a town hall meeting at Loras College in Dubuque and
attend a fund-raiser with Senator Charles E. Grassley in Iowa City.

Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of Iowa’s Republican Party, said that while the
state does not necessarily feel neglected by Mr. Bush just yet, he’ll need
to put some serious time in if he wants to connect with voters.

“The amount of time he’s going to spend here is going to have to change to
move those particular numbers,” Mr. Kaufmann said.

The visit will be Mr. Bush’s second trip this election cycle. He traveled
to Iowa in March to be a guest of honor at a fund-raiser for Representative
David Young, a House freshman.

The Republican from Florida heads to the Hawkeye State as his support there
has been flagging among likely caucusgoers. A Quinnipiac University poll on
Wednesday showed his support at 5 percent, placing him in seventh place
behind potential rivals for the nomination.

Supporters of Mr. Bush have noted that past candidates such as Michele
Bachmann and Herman Cain performed well in early Iowa polls before flaming
out as others began more serious efforts in the state.

While Mr. Bush continues to show strength in polls in New Hampshire, where
he was atop WMUR’s latest Granite State Poll, a strong showing in Iowa will
be important for his momentum as next year’s nomination contest gathers
pace.

“He’s going to have the opportunity to address a whole lot of Republican
activists in a week,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “I look for him to be very active
in the state.”

One of Jeb Bush’s top advisers on Israel: George W. Bush
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/one-of-jeb-bushs-top-advisers-on-israel-george-w-bush/2015/05/07/920fec8e-f4da-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html>
// Washington Post // Robert Costa and Matea Gold - May 7, 2015

When asked this week at an exclusive Manhattan gathering about who advises
him on U.S.-Israel policy, Jeb Bush surprised many of the 50-plus attendees
by naming his brother, former president George W. Bush, as his most
influential counselor.

“If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” Bush said
Tuesday, speaking to a crowd of high-powered financiers at the Metropolitan
Club, according to four people present.

The remark came as part of an answer to a question about Bush’s political
advisers and their policy views. Bush was pressed for details about who he
surrounds himself with and consults as he thinks through his positions,
guests said.

The Republicans in the room who spoke with The Washington Post were granted
anonymity to divulge information about the proceedings, where
confidentially was insisted upon by the event’s host, GOP mega-donor Paul
Singer.

Embracing his brother as a foreign policy confidant is a risky and
unexpected move for the former Florida governor as he readies for a likely
presidential run. While George W. Bush’s approval ratings have improved
since he left office in 2009, his foreign policy legacy — particularly the
long war in Iraq — remains deeply unpopular. He has also become anathema to
some conservative activists for presiding over an increase in the federal
debt, among other policies.

As he has explored a 2016 campaign for the White House, Jeb Bush has sought
to create distance from the family political brand. While Bush has not
criticized his brother, he rarely cites him as his guide on policies. And
George W. Bush said last month that he planned to stay away from the
campaign trail because voters do not like political dynasties.

Jeb Bush’s revelation that he regularly speaks with his brother about
Israel also indicates that the siblings may be closer than often portrayed.
The relationship is is often described as cordial and warm, but distant on
policy matters.

Tim Miller, a Bush spokesman, played down the significance of Bush’s
comment.

“Governor Bush has said before that his brother is the greatest ally to
Israel in presidential history, he admires his stalwart support for our
ally, and that is in line with his commitment to standing with Israel in
the face of great threats to their security and our own,” Miller said in a
statement Thursday.

Singer, a hedge-fund billionaire, hosted the session — which was not a
fundraiser — for his friends and associates to hear from Bush. Similar
meetings have been held with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio
of Florida and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, three
of Bush’s potential rivals in the 2016 race.

The question that led to Bush’s response was about how much he relied on
former secretary of state James Baker, a respected party figure but one who
angered conservative Republican hawks in March when he addressed the
left-leaning pro-Israel advocacy group J Street. During his keynote speech,
Baker criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not
embracing a two-state solution.

Bush said at the Manhattan gathering that he respected Baker, but insisted
that he is not part of his foreign policy team. He then said that one
person he routinely looks to for guidance on Israel is his brother.

“It was a very positive response, just based on faces around the room,” one
attendee said. “There didn’t seem to be any sort of negative reaction.”

But others said that many in the room were surprised by Bush’s answer. A
majority of registered voters still have unfavorable views of how George W.
Bush handled his job as president, according to a Washington Post-ABC News
poll in March. Still, there remains deep affection in the GOP for George W.
Bush, with 87 percent approving of his White House tenure.

Last month, the former president drew warm reviews for his appearance
before a gathering Republican Jewish Coalition, where he answered questions
about his time in the White House and his post-presidency.

T. Boone Pickens, With Cash, Backs Jeb Bush
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/07/t-boone-pickens-with-cash-backs-jeb-bush/>
// New York Times // Alexandra Stevenson - May 7, 2015

LAS VEGAS — The oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is backing former Gov. Jeb Bush
of Florida for president, saying Thursday that he had donated $100,000 to
help give Mr. Bush a leg up in the 2016 election.

“I’ve already backed him,” Mr. Pickens said, speaking on the sidelines of a
hedge fund conference in Las Vegas, where some of the industry’s best-known
and wealthiest investors are speaking this week. But, Mr. Pickens quipped,
it will take $100 million to get Mr. Bush elected.

Once called a corporate raider by Time magazine, Mr. Pickens has emerged as
the latest billionaire to play the political game just as the landscape has
started to get colorful. Over the next few weeks and months, some of the
country’s wealthiest people — many of them from Wall Street — will throw
fund-raisers to help candidates supercharge their efforts through donations
to their campaigns and to “super PACs.”

Called the Super Bowl of the hedge fund industry, the SkyBridge
Alternatives Conference has drawn public figures like Ben S. Bernanke, the
former Federal Reserve chairman; George Papandreou, the former prime
minister of Greece; and the political operative Karl Rove to the Bellagio
hotel for three days of debate and discussion.

Much of the focus this year has been on politics and the 2016 election. As
V.I.P. guests sipped on champagne and networked in the Bellagio’s
high-roller Villa Privé on Tuesday night, rumors swirled that some
prominent attendees were absent and dining with Hillary Rodham Clinton at
the house of a local head of a business in Las Vegas.

On stage Thursday, Mr. Pickens elicited cheers from an audience of hedge
fund managers and financial advisers when he called Mrs. Clinton a “loser.”

He gave a wide-ranging, 30-minute interview during which he complained
about gridlock in Washington and expressed frustration that President Obama
had vetoed a bill that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL
oil pipeline, a cross-border project with Canada. Environmentalists and
several leading climate change scientists have urged Mr. Obama to reject
the pipeline, contending that its construction makes it easier to move
heavily polluting petroleum from the Canadian oil sands.

Mr. Pickens said he thought that Mr. Bush, if elected, would help usher in
the project.

“You’ve already passed the House and the Senate,” Mr. Pickens said, adding,
“so a new president would fix it.”

While on stage, Mr. Pickens said he was about to “give up on Washington”
and complained that the government was spending too many resources in the
Middle East to protect its oil interests there. He argued that the
government was doing more to protect the oil interests of countries like
China and regions like Europe than those of the United States.

“The oil sands in Canada is being offered to the U.S., no special cost, no
military protection,” Mr. Pickens added.

Lindsey Graham Slams Hillary Clinton's New Immigration Proposal
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-07/lindsey-graham-slams-hillary-clinton-s-new-immigration-relief-proposal>
// Bloomberg Politics // Sahil Kapur - May 7, 2015

The 2016 battle lines are quickly forming on immigration.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who is exploring a run for the
Republican nomination, ripped into Democratic front-runner Hillary
Clinton's proposal to expand President Barack Obama's executive actions to
additionally offer deportation relief to undocumented parents of young
people brought to the U.S. illegally, who have been granted "deferred
action" protections.

"She's shown no leadership on this issue. She's been a follower. I think
it's just political pandering," Graham said. "No American should want the
executive branch to do something this monumental by themselves."

"Clear to me," he said, "this is a sign of her weakness."

Graham argued that he would have the most credibility of any presidential
candidate to push through a permanent legislative solution on immigration.
"I think I could sit down with Democrats, who've known I've taken a beating
to try to get a fair compromise," he said, referring to his co-authorship
of a sweeping immigration reform bill that passed the Senate with
bipartisan support in 2013 and died in the House. "And I think I could
convince my party that now's the time to get this behind us."

He brushed off a question about whether Clinton's endorsement of the
idea—which Hispanics and immigrant-rights groups strongly support—poses a
problem for Republicans in the 2016 election. "I think what Hispanics want
is a fix to the problem," he said. "What she's doing is ensuring a third
wave of illegal immigration. I think there'll be a backlash in this
country."

While some Republican hopefuls such as Jeb Bush and Florida Senator Marco
Rubio have not commented silent on Clinton's new proposal, Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker criticized it as a "full embrace of amnesty" that is
"unfair to hardworking Americans and all immigrants who followed the law."

The Clinton campaign has suggested it will make immigration a major issue
in the upcoming election.

Arizona Senator John McCain—the party's 2008 nominee, who according to exit
polls lost badly among Hispanics—pointed out that a federal judge has
halted the "unconstitutional" executive actions that Clinton is offering to
expand.

"I think it's very obvious that she's trying to reach out to the Hispanic
vote, and get the kind of support that Obama got in the last election. It's
clearly a political ploy," he said. "A naked political ploy."

Will it work?

"We Republicans have to give Hispanics reasons to vote for us," McCain said.

Lindsey Graham: '98.6% sure' to run, and on a different path on immigration
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/05/07/capital-download-lindsey-graham-2016/70948784/>
// USA Today // Susan Page - May 7, 2015

WASHINGTON — South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who says he's "98.6% sure"
he'll run for the Republican presidential nomination, vows to chart a
course on immigration at odds with every other contender in a large and
growing GOP field.

Graham's formal announcement, expected within the next few weeks, would add
the voice of a leading national-security hawk and an architect of the 2012
Senate immigration bill that for a time raised hopes of a bipartisan
agreement on a comprehensive overhaul.

"If I were president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did
not have a pathway to citizenship," Graham, 59, told Capital Download, USA
TODAY's weekly newsmaker series. "You would have a long, hard path to
citizenship ... but I want to create that path because I don't like the
idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives
being the hired help. That's not who we are."

The third-term senator from a solidly red state insists that his position
doesn't doom his long-shot bid for the Republican nomination — and he says
the GOP risks electoral disaster in 2016 with its current hard line on
immigration.

"We'll lose," he says flatly. "I mean, we've got a big hole we've dug with
Hispanics. We've gone from 44% of the Hispanic vote (in the 2004
presidential election) to 27% (in 2012). You'll never convince me ... it's
not because of the immigration debate."

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton spotlighted the GOP's tough stance
on Tuesday, announcing in Las Vegas that if elected she would expand
President Obama's executive order allowing young people brought to the U.S.
illegally as children to avoid deportation. She defended providing a path
to citizenship. "Make no mistake: Not a single Republican candidate,
announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to
citizenship — not one," she said.

With Graham's likely announcement, that is no longer true. While he opposes
Obama's use of executive orders to protect the "DREAMers," Graham's
position on citizenship puts him closer to Clinton than to any of his GOP
rivals on immigration.

Most of the other Republican contenders say border security must be
tightened before the legal status of an estimated 11 million undocumented
residents can be discussed. None of the other hopefuls now endorse
simultaneously providing a path to citizenship.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who also helped negotiate the bipartisan Senate
bill, now says securing the borders must come first. Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker once said he supported a path to citizenship but now opposes it.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush endorses a path to legal status short of
citizenship.

"One of the candidates here helped write the bill; he now says we've got to
secure the border first," Graham says, referring to Rubio. "That's not
practical. No Democratic Congress is going to give the Republican Party
everything we want on border security until you tell them what happens to
the 11 million."

Graham took some shots at another fellow senator and presidential rival,
Rand Paul of Kentucky, for his approaches on national security issues
involving Iraq, Iran, Syria and Israel. "He's a nice man; I like him a lot
(but) he's a libertarian. He is one step behind leading-from-behind,"
Graham said. "At the end of the day, his world view has not stood the test
of time and I think he'd be the worst possible person to send into the ring
when it came to foreign policy."

Worse than Hillary Clinton?

"She could get to his right very easily," he said.

Graham also blasted Clinton, who by one count has answered just seven
questions from reporters since she formally announced her presidential
campaign.

"I don't know how people in your business put up with this," he says. "She
wants to be president of the United States. She's doing a listening tour
from North Korea. Kim Jong Un — whatever the new guy's name is, Kim Jong
Un? There's more access to him than I think there is to her."

Lindsey Graham looking at June 1 to announce White House run, sources say
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/lindsey-graham-2016-announcement-117735.html>
// Politico // Katie Glueck - May 7, 2015

Lindsey Graham is telling donors that June 1 is the likely date for his
presidential announcement, according to several sources familiar with the
conversations.

The announcement would likely take place in South Carolina, possibly near
his home base of Seneca, according to the sources, which would enable the
GOP senator to highlight a compelling personal story not widely known
outside his home state.

Graham grew up in nearby Central, S.C., in the back of a pool hall run by
his parents, who died young. He helped raise his sister while going to
college and serving in the Air Force. It’s a hardscrabble story that could
help him stand out in a field of candidates with wealthy backgrounds,
including Jeb Bush.

A spokeswoman for Graham said Thursday that she couldn’t confirm any
information about a potential announcement. The senator’s team has
suggested they were looking at a mid-May time frame.

Graham’s hawkish views would almost certainly be a central feature of an
announcement speech as he weighs a bid premised on his experience on
defense and foreign policy. While the three-term senator is a long shot to
win the GOP nomination, he could play an important role in driving foreign
policy and national security issues to the forefront of the primary debate.

Graham will be entering a crowded field of Republican presidential
contenders that includes three fellow senators who have already formally
kicked off their campaigns — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.

So far, the candidates with whom Graham contrasts — and clashes — with most
are Paul and Cruz, the former over foreign policy and the latter over his
often-uncompromising conservative positions.

Graham has said he is “98.6 percent” sure he will run, and during
appearances in the Palmetto State over the weekend, he all but announced
that he’s in.

“To our enemies: Get ready, because there’s a new way of doing business
coming,” Graham said last Friday at a state GOP Silver Elephant dinner. “To
our friends: Get ready for the America that you used to know. To Iowa and
New Hampshire: Hello. To South Carolina, you have my heart.”

Rand Paul praises ‘monumental’ NSA ruling
<http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241344-rand-paul-praises-monumental-nsa-decision>
// The Hill // Ben Kamisar - May 7, 2015

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday praised a court ruling that found the
NSA's bulk metadata collection program illegal a “monumental decision for
all lovers of liberty.”

“I commend the federal courts for upholding our Constitution and protecting
our Fourth Amendment rights,” he said in a statement released by his
presidential campaign.

“While this is a step in the right direction, it is now up to the Supreme
Court to strike down the NSA’s illegal spying program.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the NSA’s program,
which culled data from Americans' phone calls, was outside of the
authorization set forth by the Patriot Act, the law passed on the heels of
the 9/11 attacks that gave broad authority to the intelligence community.

Paul, who is lauded by the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, has
pressed for the repeal of the Patriot Act and has offered bills that limit
the spying powers of the intelligence community.

Substantial aspects of that law are set to expire by the end of the month,
unless Congress acts. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants
to extend the entire bill, while others have offered a variety of ways to
tamp down the authority it gives to the federal government.

 Paul, McConnell part ways on Patriot Act
<http://thehill.com/policy/finance/241294-paul-mcconnell-part-ways-on-patriot-act>
// The Hill // Julian Hattem - May 7, 2015

Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul are on opposite sides in the battle
over government surveillance, putting the alliance between the two Kentucky
Republicans to the test.

While McConnell made clear this week that he wants to move forward with his
own “clean” legislation to reauthorize three expiring portions of the
Patriot Act, Paul, who is running for president, has been one of the law’s
most vocal critics.

With a handful of legislative days left until the surveillance measures
expire, Paul has been surprisingly mum on whether he opposes McConnell’s
plan, though few expect him to stay silent for long.

“I think both McConnell and Paul realized all along in this deal that there
were going to be issues where they just had to agree to disagree,” said
Josh Withrow, legislative affairs manager at FreedomWorks, which opposes
McConnell’s Patriot Act bill. “This will probably be one of those.”

Their relationship got off to a rocky start, when McConnell endorsed Trey
Grayson, then Kentucky’s secretary of State, in the 2010 Republican primary
against Paul, who shortly after refused to say whether he would back
McConnell for Republican leader.

Since then, the two men have struck up a friendship, with Paul providing
critical support to McConnell on the campaign trail during his reelection
race last year.

Returning the favor, McConnell has said he is “almost certainly” supporting
Paul in his White House bid, adding that his colleague is “the most
credible candidate for president of the United States since Henry Clay.”

“I’m a big fan of his,” McConnell said on CNN last year. “I mean, we
started off on opposite paths, but we’ve become great allies. ... I think
he’s a very, very smart, capable guy.”

But their relationship will be put to the test in the coming weeks, when
the Senate is expected to take up three expiring provisions of the Patriot
Act, including the controversial section that the National Security Agency
has relied on to collect the phone records of millions of Americans.

The legal powers are set to expire at the end of May, and the Senate’s last
scheduled legislative session for the month is May 22.

McConnell has made clear that he supports a speedy extension of the law, so
as not to tie “our hands behind our back” when it comes to terrorism.
Legislation he recently introduced with Senate Intelligence Committee
Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would renew the Patriot Act provisions
unchanged through the end of 2020 and is likely to become the main vehicle
moving through the Senate.

“I think, most likely, the outcome is some kind of an extension,” McConnell
said this week.

So far, Paul has yet to take a public stand on the legislation.

“We currently are not commenting on future votes,” Paul spokeswoman Jillian
Lane said on Wednesday.

Announcing his candidacy for president last month, Paul vowed he would end
the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records
on his first day in the White House.

“The president created this vast dragnet by executive order. And as
president, on Day One, I would immediately end this unconstitutional
surveillance,” he said.

Last year, Paul voted to filibuster an NSA reform bill that would have
extended the Patriot Act provisions to 2017 while also imposing sweeping
new limits on the spy agency’s collection of Americans’ communications.
Unlike the other lawmakers who opposed the bill, Paul said he cast his vote
because the reforms didn’t go far enough.

In a statement at the time, Paul said he “stood on principle by opposing a
bill that included a provision reauthorizing elements of the Patriot Act
that violate the Bill of Rights.”

“I have always been steadfast against the Patriot Act and I will continue
to do all I can to prevent its extension,” he said in the November
statement.

That caused a certain amount of grief among his fellow civil libertarians,
who questioned whether his strategy wouldn’t end up empowering hawks in
Congress who are skeptical of limiting the NSA.

This time around, Paul seems to be aiming his fire at other Senate hawks,
such as  likely fellow White House hopeful Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“One unapologetic senator who I’ve had a few rounds with said, ‘If you’re
not talking to terrorists, why are you worried?’ ” he said in April, in an
oblique reference to Graham. “Our Founding Fathers would be mortified.”

“I think it is a political calculation that he is making by not criticizing
McConnell directly,” said one person close to the Senate negotiations, who
asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss the matter frankly.

That’s not to say that Paul will continue to be quiet.

But as the Senate nears the deadline for action, Paul might try to avoid
making it a personal fight with McConnell, observers say.

“I would probably expect him to kick and scream without mentioning
McConnell’s name,” the person close to the situation added. “I do not
expect Rand Paul to do anything other than theatrics, because he does not
want to endanger his relationship with McConnell, and it is clear where
McConnell stands.”

Chris Christie: Hillary Clinton 'pandering' on immigration
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/chris-christie-hillary-clinton-pandering-on-immigration/index.html>
// CNN Politics // Chris Moody - May 7, 2015

Sunapee, New Hampshire (CNN)New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie on
Thursday slammed Hillary Clinton's call for a "full and equal" path to
citizenship for immigrants living in the United States illegally, calling
her comments extreme.

"I think the path to citizenship is a problem for folks who have been
waiting the appropriate way to get in, so I think we have to have a much
broader conversation than just pandering. We should not just be pandering.
We should be talking about this, honestly," said Christie, who is exploring
a possible bid for the presidency, while meeting with supporters at a
restaurant here.

Earlier this week, Clinton surprised supporters by adopting an aggressively
liberal stance on immigration -- one she did not embrace during her White
House bid in 2008 -- vowing full support for citizenship for undocumented
immigrants.

"We have to finally, once and for all, fix our immigration system," Clinton
said during a roundtable discussion with undocumented children in Las Vegas
on Tuesday. "Make no mistake, today not a single Republican candidate,
announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to
citizenship. Not one. When they talk about legal status, that is code for
second-class status."

Immigration has been a difficult issue for both parties in recent years,
one that has befuddled the presidential administrations of both President
Barack Obama and President George W. Bush, neither of whom could usher a
comprehensive bill through Congress. The issue is fraught with political
pitfalls, as leaders in both parties see the issue as a gateway toward
securing votes from the rapidly growing Hispanic-American population.

Christie, who said he plans to outline his own position on immigration in
"a detailed speech" soon, suggested that Clinton's most recent position was
unrealistic.

"Her position now is not really addressing what the country wants to hear
about this," he said. "That's not a thoughtful position."

"I haven't met a person yet whose undocumented who came here and said, 'The
reason I came here was because I wanted to vote,'" Christie said. "They say
they come here because they wanted to work. I think that's where the focus
has to be."

Christie Brings His Drug Treatment Message to New Hampshire
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/christie-brings-his-drug-treatment-message-to-new-hampshire-1431051082>
// WSJ // Heather Haddon - May 7, 2015

MANCHESTER, N.H.—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brought his campaign to
reduce the stigma surrounding drug treatment to a receptive audience
Thursday in New Hampshire, a state that has grappled with a wave of
overdoses attributed to illegal narcotics.

Mr. Christie spoke about New Jersey’s expansion of drug intervention courts
at a substance abuse-treatment facility here and met with those who have
overcome addiction to now advocate for others to seek help.

The Republican governor called the “war on drugs” that started decades ago
“a failure and ineffective.”

“I’ve always felt like this is an illness,” Mr. Christie said about drug
addiction. “Everybody in life makes mistakes and we need to give people a
second chance.”

Mr. Christie said that visiting drug-treatment facilities would be a
regular occurrence for him as the potential 2016 presidential candidate
travels nationally with his political-action committee, Leadership Matters
for America. There were 321 drug-related deaths last year in New Hampshire,
city officials said.

The governor returned to the Granite State on the first of a two-day swing
in the first-in-the-nation primary state. He received a standing ovation at
a bar in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region and took questions from voters about
immigration, tuition costs, health care and national security.

Few voters mentioned the George Washington Bridge scandal, nor did they
seem to care about it.

“That was a distraction but now that Bridgegate thing is in the past,” said
Ellen Mehan, a retiree with a lake house in Sunapee, N.H., who came to the
One Mile West bar to hear Mr. Christie speak.

Federal prosecutors say three former Christie allies deliberately closed
lanes to the bridge for five days in 2013, causing traffic backups in Fort
Lee, N.J., to punish Fort Lee’s mayor for not endorsing Mr. Christie for
re-election.

A past Christie appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
has pleaded guilty to charges in the case. Two other former Christie allies
have pleaded not guilty. Authorities haven’t accused Mr. Christie of
wrongdoing.

Mr. Christie has been dogged by press questions about the bridge during
political travel earlier this week in Louisiana and Mississippi, and in New
Hampshire Thursday.

The governor said he has taken steps to address the scandal and it wouldn’t
reflect on the kind of administration he would administer if he was elected
to the White House.

“I don’t think you can find one administration, whether it’s at the
governor’s level or the presidential level, that hasn’t had mistakes or had
problems. What matters is how you respond to them,” he said. “We responded
swiftly.”

Mr. Christie will return to New Hampshire next Tuesday to deliver a second
policy speech addressing tax policy, regulation and economic growth, his
PAC announced Thursday.

Mr. Christie’s advisers are banking on a strong showing in New Hampshire’s
GOP primary if he chooses to run for president. Mr. Christie has said he
would announce a decision on whether he will run by June.

On Friday, he continues his New Hampshire trip with a breakfast visit to an
Amherst diner, a private business roundtable hosted by former state Sen.
Gary Lambert and a town-hall meeting at Fury’s Publick House bar in Dover.

Fiorina Comes Out Against TPP: ‘I Am Very Uncomfortable With This Deal’
<http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/07/fiorina-comes-out-against-tpp-i-am-very-uncomfortable-with-this-deal-video/>
// Daily Caller // Alex Griswold - May 7, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said she opposes giving
President Obama fast track trade authority and is “very uncomfortable” with
Obama negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership on “The Laura Ingraham
Show” Thursday.

INGRAHAM: I gotta ask you about fast track trade, because you know for me,
I believe a populist approach is the way to win and build the Republican
Party both among minorities and grassroot supporters. And for me, this fast
track deal, the way its being negotiated, the way congressional authority
is being eroded, is a terrible idea, especially with Obama doing the
negotiations.

What’s your take on giving President Obama trade promotion authority?

FIORINA: Well, I believe that free and fair trade advantages the U.S.. But
I am very uncomfortable with this deal, and I’m uncomfortable with this
deal and giving him trade authority.

Because first of all, I know from personal experience that the Chinese have
not lived up to their agreements when they entered the WTO. In other words,
partners can cheat on these deals, and we have evidence of partners
cheating on these deals.

Secondly to your point, this is an extremely complicated deal, a
multilateral deal with a lot of details that we don’t know about. And Obama
and his administration has demonstrated their inability to negotiate a good
deal. And so look, I think the devil’s in the details, and we better
understand what these details are before we just assume it’s a good deal. I
don’t assume it’s a good deal and I do think we need the details.

Republican presidential contenders are split on “fast track” trade
authority, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee joining Fiorina in
opposition, but Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in support.

Republican National Committee to share data with 2016 campaigns
<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/republican-national-committee-to-share-data-with-2016-campaigns/article/2564149>
// Washington Examiner // David Drucker - May 7, 2015

The Republican National Committee has signed data-sharing agreements with
the leading GOP presidential campaigns, providing these entities access to
the party's voter file and digital analytics clearinghouse.

The accord, to be announced by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus on Thursday,
provides the Republican White House contenders access to the party's $100
million-plus data and voter turnout program, built from scratch following
President Obama's 2012 re-election victory. Agreements were reached with
the campaigns of the announced candidates as well as and political action
committees of the presumed but not yet official candidates.

"The 2016 election will be a data-driven campaign cycle, and I am
enthusiastic about the possibilities these agreements provide," Priebus
said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner. "These list
exchanges will allow the RNC to benefit from enhancements made by these
PACs and campaigns so that the RNC, the eventual presidential nominee, and
Republican candidates up and down the ticket will have an even more robust
data for use in the general election."

The agreements are a two-way street, as the campaigns and political action
committees will share with the RNC updates to any of the data they use in
their political activities. Deals have been reached with:

American Future Project (Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal); Carly for President
(business woman Carly Fiorina); Cruz for President (Sen. Ted Cruz of
Texas); Leadership Matters for America (New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie);
Our American Revival (Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker); Patriot Voices (former
Sen. Rick Santorum); Reclaim America (Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida); RickPAC
(former Texas Gov. Rick Perry); and Right to Rise (former Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush).

"By committing to this plan for enhanced data, we can ensure that the party
will be prepared to target and turn out voters in the general election with
the most complete and up-to-date voter file. We know that voters do not
want another four years of Obama-Clinton policies, and this unprecedented
data exchange will allow us to win the White House in 2016," Priebus said.

AP-GfK Poll: Republicans open to softer immigration policy
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b49b2491eda14664956cca6d783aba48/ap-gfk-poll-republicans-open-softer-immigration-policy>
// The Big Story // Thomas Beaumont and Emily Swanson - May 7, 2015

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans appear open to a softer immigration policy than
Republican presidential candidates have preached in the past. Even a
majority of Republicans in the country can see themselves voting for
someone who would protect millions of immigrants from deportation,
according to a new poll.

The Associated Press-GfK poll finds that Republicans overwhelmingly want a
candidate to reverse President Barack Obama's unilateral action to postpone
deportations. But most could see themselves voting for someone who would
keep that policy in place.

The poll was conducted before Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's effort this
week to magnify the difference between letting people who are in the
country illegally have legal status, which some Republicans support, and
letting them gain citizenship, which she supports. The poll suggests that
people don't see much difference.

"This country has always had open doors," said Dean Talmadge, a Republican
from suburban Seattle. "I don't just have a problem with immigration, as
long as they are here, working and following the rules."

That's a sentiment shared by most Americans, who according to the poll,
favor a path to citizenship by 53 to 44 percent. It did not make a
significant difference if respondents were asked instead whether they
supported a path to legal status short of citizenship: 50 percent said they
favored it and 48 percent opposed.

Clinton's remarks Tuesday were aimed at Hispanic voters, who heavily
supported Obama in 2012, especially in battleground states such as Florida,
Colorado and Nevada, where Latinos form an influential bloc.

She also said she would expand Obama's executive action, which shielded
many young immigrants brought to the country as children, along with
parents of citizens and permanent residents, from deportation.

In the poll, about 6 in 10 Americans and 4 in 10 Republicans support those
key measures of the Obama policy. Americans overall were split about evenly
on whether they would prefer to vote for a candidate who would keep or undo
the executive action.

"I don't have a problem if they want to earn their citizenship while they
are here," said Darlene Harmison, a Republican from Colfax, Iowa, a rural
town east of Des Moines. "I'm not saying send them all back. But I do agree
they need to speak English."

Most GOP presidential prospects support allowing people who are in the
country illegally to stay while pursuing legal status. But they stop short
of offering citizenship, although a few have not ruled that out as an
eventual prospect.

Their positions, which are sometimes in flux and not always fleshed out,
seem to reflect what the poll finds to be fragile acceptance among
Republican voters of policies that had spelled trouble for past candidates.

Three-quarters of Republicans in the poll say they would prefer to vote for
a 2016 candidate who would undo Obama's immigration action — even more than
the two-thirds of Republicans who say they oppose a path to citizenship or
legal status.

Even so, 55 percent of Republicans either prefer a candidate who would
support Obama's policy or say that they could vote for someone who does if
they agreed on other issues. Even among conservative Republicans, nearly
half — 47 percent — could at least imagine voting for a candidate who would
keep it in place.

In 2006, Republican Sen. John McCain, who supported a bipartisan bill that
included a path to citizenship, was surprised at the backlash he received
from Republicans in early voting states as he began taking steps toward
running for president.

"There's no question it was not well received by certain segments of our
electorate," said David Roederer, McCain's 2008 Iowa campaign director.

More recently, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a GOP presidential candidate,
faced pushback from tea party supporters when he co-authored legislation
that would have set out a path to citizenship for those who met certain
conditions, over time. The bill passed the Senate, failed in the House and
convinced Rubio that immigration policy would have to be changed only
piecemeal.

He still supports a path to citizenship, but wants to start with securing
the border and end with letting people who are in the U.S. illegally stay.

Even those viewed as hardliners are not calling for mass deportation of the
millions in the country illegally, signaling a possible shift in the GOP
political landscape as the nation — judging by the poll and other measures
— also evolves.

___

The AP-GfK Poll of 1,077 adults was conducted online April 23-27, using a
sample drawn from GfK's probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed
to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error
for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Some questions
were asked of a half sample and have higher margins of error.

Respondents were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods
and later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't
otherwise have access to the Internet were provided access at no cost to
them.

TOP NEWS

DOMESTIC

N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Is Illegal, Appeals Court Rules
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/nsa-phone-records-collection-ruled-illegal-by-appeals-court.html>
// New York Times // Charlie Savage and Jonathan Weisman - May 7, 2015

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in New York on Thursday ruled that the
once-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically
collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is illegal. The decision comes
as a fight in Congress is intensifying over whether to end and replace the
program, or to extend it without changes.

In a 97-page ruling, a three-judge panel for the United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a provision of the U.S.A. Patriot
Act, known as Section 215, cannot be legitimately interpreted to allow the
bulk collection of domestic calling records.

The ruling was certain to increase the tension that has been building in
Congress as the provision of the act that has been cited to justify the
bulk data collection program nears a June 1 expiration. It also comes amid
a global uptick in controversy over electronic surveillance, including a
push in France to increase domestic spying and a decision by Germany to
reduce cooperation on surveillance with the United States.

The ruling ratchets up pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of
Kentucky, the majority leader. Mr. McConnell has resolutely pressed to
maintain the N.S.A.’s existing program against bipartisan pressure to scale
it back, and has proposed simply extending the statute. But the court’s
ruling calls into question whether that statute can still be used to issue
fresh orders to phone companies requiring them to turn over their
customers’ records.

Thursday’s ruling is the first time a higher-level court in the regular
judicial system has reviewed the N.S.A. phone records program. It did not
come with any injunction ordering the program to cease, and it is not clear
that anything else will happen in the judicial system before Congress has
to make a decision about the expiring law.

The data collection had repeatedly been approved in secret by judges
serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA
court, which oversees national security surveillance. Those judges, who
hear arguments only from the government, were willing to accept an
interpretation of Section 215 that the appeals court rejected on Thursday.

The court, in a unanimous ruling written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch, held
that Section 215 “cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign
to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program.” It
declared the program illegal, saying, “We do so comfortably in the full
understanding that if Congress chooses to authorize such a far-reaching and
unprecedented program, it has every opportunity to do so, and to do so
unambiguously.”

The House appears ready to pass a bill next week that would end the
government’s bulk collection of phone records. That bill, known as the
U.S.A. Freedom Act, would replace it with a new program that would preserve
the N.S.A.’s ability to analyze links between callers to hunt for
terrorists, but keep the bulk records in the hands of phone companies,
which would be free to dispose of them after 18 months. The N.S.A. keeps
them for five years.

But the appeals court ruling raises the question of whether Section 215,
extended or not, has ever legitimately authorized the program. The statute
on its face permits only the collection of records deemed “relevant” to a
national security case. The government secretly decided, with the FISA
court’s secret approval, that this could be interpreted to mean collection
of all records, so long as only those that later turn out to be relevant
are scrutinized by analysts.

However, Judge Lynch wrote: “Such expansive development of government
repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented
contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans. Perhaps such a
contraction is required by national security needs in the face of the
dangers of contemporary domestic and international terrorism. But we would
expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and
expressed in unmistakable language.”

Judge Lynch was appointed by President Obama. He was joined in the decision
by Judge Robert D. Sack, a Clinton appointee, and Judge Vernon S.
Broderick, another Obama appointee. Judge Broderick usually hears Federal
District Court cases but was sitting on the appeals court for this case as
a visiting judge.

The appeals court sent the matter back to a Federal District Court judge to
decide what to do next. The government could also appeal the ruling to the
full appeals court, or to the Supreme Court. Parallel cases are pending
before two other appeals courts that have not yet ruled.

Alexander Abdo, who argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union,
praised the ruling as a “victory for the rule of law that should spur
Congress into action.” Several lawmakers who helped draft the U.S.A.
Freedom Act seized on it as justification for enacting their bill. Among
them, Senators Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Mike Lee,
Republican of Utah, said in a joint statement: “Congress should not
reauthorize a bulk collection program that the court has found to violate
the law. We will not consent to any extension of this program.”

Mr. McConnell and another supporter of the existing program, Senator
Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, took to the Senate floor on Thursday and gave no ground.

Mr. McConnell blasted the House bill as “an untested, untried and more
cumbersome system” that would neither “keep us safe or protect our privacy.”

“Section 215 helps us find a needle in the haystack,” he said. “But under
the U.S.A. Freedom Act, there might not be a haystack at all.”

But Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, said both sides now have to come to the table because it was not
clear that either option — the U.S.A. Freedom Act or extending the existing
program — has the 60-vote support necessary to overcome a filibuster.

Mr. McConnell has the power to decide which bills get brought up for a
vote. To create more time for debate, Democrats might permit an extension
of the existing statute for a month, said a person familiar with the
negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their
progress. The Democrats would do that in exchange for a promise by Mr.
McConnell to allow a vote on the House bill in June.

Still, even if there were votes in Congress for a short-term extension of
the existing statute , Thursday’s ruling would create potential political
and legal difficulties for keeping the program going in the interim.

To bridge any gap between the existing program and a new one, the Obama
administration would have to ask the FISA court to reauthorize the program
and a FISA judge would have to agree to do so, notwithstanding the Second
Circuit’s ruling that Section 215 cannot authorize such an order.

(The FISA court is not directly subject to the Second Circuit’s authority
because it has its own appeals court.)

In a statement, Edward Price, a spokesman for the National Security
Council, said the administration was still evaluating the ruling but
reiterated that President Obama’s support for legislation that would
transform the program is in line with the U.S.A. Freedom Act.

The bulk phone records program traces back to October 2001. After the Sept.
11 attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the N.S.A. to
begin a group of surveillance and data-collection programs, without obeying
statutory limits on government spying, for the purpose of hunting for
hidden terrorist cells.

Over time, the legal basis for each component of that program, known as
Stellarwind, evolved. In 2006, the administration persuaded a FISA court
judge to issue an order approving the bulk phone records component, based
on the idea that Section 215 could be interpreted as authorizing bulk
collection.

Many other judges serving on the FISA court have subsequently renewed the
program at roughly 90-day intervals. It came to light in June 2013 as part
of the leaks by the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden.

The revelation led to a series of lawsuits challenging the program.
Different district court judges reached opposing conclusions about its
legality. Thursday’s ruling did not address the A.C.L.U.’s separate
argument that bulk collection of records about Americans — regardless of
the claimed statutory basis — is unconstitutional.

FBI knew shooter might go to Muhammad drawing contest
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-knew-shooter-might-go-to-muhammad-drawing-contest/2015/05/07/2471deca-f4ea-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html>
// Washington Post // Adam Goldman - May 7, 2015

FBI Director James B. Comey said Thursday his agents learned hours before
the start of a cartoon contest and exhibit depicting the prophet Muhammad
that one of the gunmen had expressed interest in going to the controversial
event in Texas, but there was no indication he was planning an attack.

Comey said the FBI sent an intelligence bulletin to local authorities
through its Dallas field office that included a picture of Elton Simpson,
30, and other details such as his associates and possible license plate
numbers.

“But we didn’t know more than that,” Comey said in an interview with
reporters at FBI headquarters.

Simpson and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, 34, who lived in Phoenix, were
killed by a local traffic officer as they opened fire at a conference
center in Garland, Tex., where the competition was taking place.

The two men were heavily armed, U.S. law enforcement officials said. They
had six weapons — four handguns and two semiautomatic assault rifles. Soofi
is thought to have purchased one of the rifles on Craigslist, officials
said.

All of the weapons were purchased legally, according to officials who spoke
on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Comey also provided details about the FBI’s long-standing interest in
Simpson. He said FBI agents in Phoenix began investigating Simpson in about
2006, based on information that he was looking to travel to Somalia to join
al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate and a U.S.- designated terrorist
organization.

Simpson was arrested in 2010 after he bought a plane ticket to South
Africa. He was charged with lying to FBI agents in connection with
terrorism. He was convicted, however, of a lesser charge the following year
and sentenced to three years’ probation.

Comey said the FBI continued to investigate Simpson until 2014. Agents in
Phoenix reopened the case in March, Comey said, after “we developed
information that he was making statements on social media that might
indicate a renewed interest in jihad, but this time with” the Islamic State.

He added that the “investigation was open, but far from complete.”

Comey declined to discuss whether the FBI was also looking at Soofi, but
other officials said agents in Phoenix were preparing to investigate him
when the shooting took place.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Soofi’s mother, Sharon Soofi,
said her son had discussed Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American preacher
who took on a prominent role in al-Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate before he was
killed in a 2011 drone strike.

Soofi’s mother said her other son, Ali Soofi, lived with his brother and
Simpson. She said Ali Soofi was concerned about Simpson’s influence on his
brother and recently moved out.

Comey said the FBI will review whether the bureau made any missteps and
could have stopped Simpson and Soofi before the attack. But, he said, he
hasn’t seen any indications that his agents missed a major warning sign.

The roommates apparently fell under the sway of the Islamic State, which
has been using social media, including Twitter, to encourage attacks in the
United States.

Comey said the Islamic State’s effort to recruit and motivate people in the
United States to try to do harm was paying dividends.

“If you can’t travel, kill where you are,” Comey said, echoing the Islamic
State’s message to followers. He described the Islamic State’s message as a
siren’s song, one easily accessed on phones or computers.

“It’s almost if there is a devil sitting on the shoulder saying, ‘Kill,’
‘Kill,’ ‘Kill,’ ‘Kill,’ all day long,” he said.

Comey also discussed whether the attack was actually directed by the
Islamic State. He said al-Qaeda previously would train its operatives so
they could be vetted before getting an assignment.

“But what we see [the Islamic State] doing is trying in a way to test
people’s bona fides by urging them to kill,” he said. “Sometimes supplying
with them hit lists, sometimes suggesting particular targets, but other
times just ‘kill in our name.’ In a way, the old paradigm between inspired
or directed breaks down here.

“The distinction is irrelevant. I find it not to be a useful framework any
longer.”

Justice Department to launch federal investigation of Baltimore police
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-to-launch-federal-investigation-of-baltimore-police/2015/05/07/b3a422da-f4d4-11e4-b2f3-af5479e6bbdd_story.html>
// WaPo // Sara Horwitz – May 7, 2015

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has decided to launch a federal
investigation into whether the Baltimore Police Department has engaged in a
“pattern or practice” of excessive force.

Lynch’s announcement about the Justice Department’s probe — the latest in a
string of municipalities that are being investigated by the federal
government for civil rights violations — could come as early as Friday,
according to two law enforcement officials.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday night.

Lynch hinted Thursday that a decision could come soon, when she testified
during her first hearing on Capitol Hill as attorney general. She said that
she would decide “in the coming days” whether to have the department’s
civil rights division open an investigation into the Baltimore police force.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Wednesday called on the Justice
Department to open a federal investigation. Rawlings-Blake made the request
after Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby filed criminal charges
against six Baltimore officers who were involved in the arrest of Freddie
Gray, who died of injuries sustained while he was in police custody.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts welcomed any federal review.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Batts told WBAL-TV on Thursday after a
conference of police chiefs. “We could use the extra weight. Lawsuits are
down. Citizen complaints are down. Officer-involved shootings are down. But
the community doesn’t feel it.”

Mosby said Gray was arrested illegally, was treated callously by the
officers and suffered a severe spinal injury April 12 in the back of a
police van while his pleas for medical help were ignored.

Gray’s death April 19 ignited protests and rioting in Baltimore and is the
latest case to spark anger about law enforcement tactics in low-income
neighborhoods across the country.

“We all know that Baltimore continues to have a fractured relationship
between the police and the community,” Rawlings-Blake (D) said when she
asked the Justice Department for federal help. “I needed to look for any
and all resources I could bring to my city to get this right for my
community.”

In her first official trip as attorney general, Lynch visited Baltimore on
Tuesday and met with the mayor, law enforcement officials and community
leaders. She also met with Gray’s family and spoke with an officer who was
injured in the violence. Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general
for the civil rights division, has also been meeting with Baltimore
officials since the outbreak of violence after Gray’s funeral April 27.

“The situation in Baltimore involves a core responsibility of the
Department of Justice — not only to combat illegal conduct when it occurs
but to help prevent the circumstances that give rise to it in the first
place,” Lynch told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on commerce,
justice, science and related agencies. “When there are allegations of
wrongdoing made against individual officers and police departments, the
Department of Justice has a responsibility to examine the evidence and, if
necessary, implement changes.”

Since 1994, the Justice Department has been able to investigate local
police departments under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
The departments in Ferguson, Mo., and Cleveland are undergoing federal
civil rights investigations. A white police officer in Ferguson fatally
shot unarmed teen Michael Brown in August, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice was
shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer in November.

Baltimore resident Kevin Moore captured video of Freddie Gray being loaded
into a police paddy wagon on April 12. In this video, Moore reflects on
what he witnessed and talks about the charges brought against six officers
in the death of Gray. (DeNeen Brown and Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

Over the past two decades, some city officials have asked the Justice
Department to investigate and help reform their departments, as
Rawlings-Blake did this week.

Former D.C. police chief Charles H. Ramsey called in the Justice Department
after a 1998 Washington Post series found that D.C. police had shot and
killed more people per resident in the 1990s than any other large American
city police force.

Federal “pattern or practice” probes focus on the entire police department,
rather than investigating the conduct of certain officers.

In that way, they are different from civil rights investigations of certain
individuals, such as the two-year-long probe into the death of Trayvon
Martin, the 17-year-old African American from Florida who was unarmed when
he was fatally shot by a former neighborhood watchman; the civil rights
investigation into the death of Brown; and the ongoing probe into the death
of Eric Garner, an African American man who died after being placed in a
chokehold by a white officer on Staten Island.

Ramsey, now Philadelphia’s police commissioner, said at a law enforcement
gathering two years ago that he asked the federal government for help
because the D.C. community “did not have confidence that we could fix the
problems on our own.”

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) made the same point during the
congressional hearing with Lynch on Thursday morning when she said she
supported the mayor’s request to open an investigation. She sent a formal
letter to the attorney general Thursday afternoon.

“Last year, 120,000 police stops occurred in Baltimore,” Mikulski said.
“We’re a population of 610,000. That’s a lot. I don’t know what the
appropriateness of that is, but I think we need to look at it.

“But I want to say this,” Mikulski added. “In many cities throughout the
country, and including my own town of Baltimore, and in communities
primarily that have significant populations of color, there has been now a
tattered, worn and even broken trust between the community and the police
department. We’ve got to restore that trust.”

Tornadoes Hit Plains States, Battering Oklahoma
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/tornadoes-batter-kansas-nebraska-and-texas.html?ref=us>
// New York Times // The Associated Press - May 7, 2015

OKLAHOMA CITY — The authorities on Thursday began surveying the damage left
behind by spring storms carrying tornadoes that swept across the Plains and
brought floods, forced the evacuation of an international airport and
destroyed homes near Oklahoma City.

At least 12 people were injured, but no deaths were reported from tornadoes
that hit rural parts of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as Texas.

The Oklahoma City area seemed to be the hardest hit. A tornado destroyed
homes in Grady County, southwest of the city, and it appeared another
tornado touched down in the area later Wednesday evening when a second
storm came through.

”We do strongly think there was a tornado on the south side of Oklahoma
City,” a meteorologist, Michael Scotten, said after the second storm hit.

The storm flipped vehicles on Interstate 35 and left power lines strewn
across the roadway, Mr. Scotten said. Officials twice evacuated the Will
Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, sending passengers and staff members
into a tunnel outside the security zone.

Before sunrise Thursday in northeast Oklahoma City, fire department divers
worked for hours to rescue a driver who was trapped in a car by the high
waters left in the wake of the storms. Capt. Dee Patty of the Oklahoma City
Policy said the driver had used her cellphone to call for help.

Five to eight of rain had fallen in the area, said Forrest Mitchell, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla. A
measurement of 7.1 inches at the Oklahoma City airport set a daily rainfall
record, he said, topping the previous record of 2.61 inches.

A spokeswoman for Oklahoma City, Kristy Yager, said the rainfall prompted
the city to issue a flash flood emergency for the first time in its history.

Lara O’Leary, a spokeswoman for Emergency Medical Services Authority, said
ambulances had responded to water rescue calls from “all over” the Oklahoma
City metropolitan area. Two ambulance crews required help after getting
stuck in high water, she said.

Ms. O’Leary said ambulances had taken 12 residents from a trailer park in
south Oklahoma City to hospitals. She had no details about their injuries.

The emergency management director for Grady County, Dale Thompson, said
about 10 homes had been destroyed in Amber and 25 in Bridge Creek. As the
storm moved to the east, forecasters declared a tornado emergency for
Moore, where seven schoolchildren were among 24 people killed in a storm
two years ago. When the first of the storms moved through Wednesday, school
districts held their pupils in safe places.

Also in Grady County, all animals were accounted for after a zoo in Tuttle
was hit by a tornado, Alisa Voegeli, a dispatcher at the sheriff’s office,
said. The damage had initially prompted fears that wild animals had escaped.

A flash flood warning was in effect for parts of six counties in central
Oklahoma and two counties in north-central Texas. That area also
experienced possible tornadoes late Wednesday, but there were no immediate
reports of damage or injuries, Mr. Mitchell said.

In Nebraska, 10 to 15 homes were damaged near Grand Island, and between
Hardy and Ruskin, near the Kansas line.

At least nine tornadoes were reported in Kansas, the strongest of them in
the sparsely populated north-central part of the state. That included a
large tornado near the tiny town of Republic just south of the Nebraska
state line, where some homes were damaged. In Harvey County, a tornado
destroyed a hog barn and damaged trees, according to the National Weather
Service.

The Storm Prediction Center had warned that bad weather would come to the
region known as Tornado Alley and said more storms were possible later in
the week.

INTERNATIONAL

Senate Passes Bill Giving Congress Right to Weigh in on Iran Nuclear Deal
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-passes-bill-giving-congress-review-of-iran-nuclear-deal-1431024539>
// WSJ // Kristina Peterson - May 7, 2015

WASHINGTON—The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday establishing
Congress’s right to weigh in on international negotiations to curb Iran’s
nuclear program.

The 98-1 vote capped weeks of bipartisan efforts to strike a delicate deal
on the legislation and then protect it from unraveling on the Senate floor
under the weight of GOP attempts to push the Obama administration to take a
harder line with Iran.

The underlying agreement, reached last month by Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and the panel’s top Democrat, Ben
Cardin of Maryland, withstood two weeks of procedural machinations before
passing easily Thursday, with only Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) opposed.

Senators said the vote marked a rare reclaiming of congressional authority
over foreign policy, after years of taking a back seat to recent presidents.

“It’s the first time in the eight years and four or five months that I’ve
served in the Senate that I can remember Congress asserting itself and
taking power back” from the executive branch, Mr. Corker said after the
vote.

Thursday’s action, however, is likely to be the high-water mark for
congressional consensus on the nuclear negotiations, as the lawmakers have
signaled they will likely diverge along partisan lines on the substance of
the deal itself.

Democrats who were willing to buck an initially resistant White House for
the right to scrutinize the deal are less likely to challenge it over the
nuts and bolts of the agreement due by the end of June.

On Thursday, 151 House Democrats signed a letter to President Barack Obama
backing the administration’s negotiations with Iran and urging him to
remain committed to diplomatic efforts. The U.S. and five other
international powers are trying to reach a comprehensive pact on Iran’s
nuclear program by a self-imposed deadline at the end of June after
agreeing on the framework of a deal in March.

Meanwhile, Republicans who worked with Democrats to stave off GOP
amendments on the Senate floor that could have derailed the bill are likely
to take a more critical eye than Democrats toward the nuclear talks’
outcome.

“From what we’ve seen so far, we’re very skeptical—I certainly am,” said
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.).

In particular, while the crop of 2016 GOP presidential candidates fell in
line with Mr. Corker’s bill, many already are stressing their opposition to
the deal’s outlines as they seek to establish foreign-policy credentials in
the crowded Republican primary field. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) who is
running to be the Democratic presidential nominee, also backed the bill.

The bill would prevent Mr. Obama from waiving sanctions on Iran for 30 days
while Congress reviews any final agreement to diminish Iran’s nuclear
capabilities. Lawmakers would then be able to vote to disapprove the deal,
or take no action.

But skeptics noted that even if lawmakers voted to disapprove an Iran deal,
Mr. Obama could veto that action—and that critics of any deal aren’t
expected to have enough votes to override a veto.

“This bill as drafted will provide some political cover to Senate Democrats
to say they have voted to provide strict scrutiny and congressional
approval of an Iran deal,” presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas)
said this week. “And yet as currently drafted, it is a virtual certainty
that no matter how terrible this deal is, it will go into effect and this
legislation is unlikely to stop it.”

Republicans had pushed to vote on dozens of amendments that Democrats
warned could sink the deal. The Senate defeated two contentious GOP
measures before Mr. Cotton made an unorthodox procedural move last week
that scuttled bipartisan talks to bring up more amendments for quick votes.

Mr. Cotton’s move, like objections from Sen. David Vitter (R., La.),
thwarted the ambitions of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.),
who has sought to make allowing more amendment votes a trademark of his
control of the Senate.

“I do regret we weren’t able to follow through on the amendment process,”
said Mr. Corker, who noted it had been “hard to get the genie back in the
bottle” after Mr. Cotton’s effort to bring up votes on amendments from
himself and Mr. Rubio.

Mr. Cotton said he opposed the bill because it didn’t require a final deal
with Iran to come to the Senate as a treaty, which would require the
approval of two-thirds of the chamber.

“Congress should not accept this usurpation, nor allow the president any
grounds to claim that Congress blessed his nuclear deal,” the freshman
senator said.

The White House had initially urged Democrats to reject the bill, but
dropped its objections after Mr. Cardin brokered a compromise with Mr.
Corker. The lawmakers’ deal shortened the initial review period and boosted
support for the bill to a veto-proof majority.

As part of the deal, the administration will also have to provide detailed
reports to Congress on Iran’s terrorist activities and certify to lawmakers
every 90 days that Iran is complying with the nuclear agreement.

“What we’re seeing is a determined bipartisan corps of members of the
Foreign Relations Committee who want to see the Senate be relevant again in
foreign relations and be more than just a speed bump on the way towards
agreements internationally,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.).

Scrutiny of the deal is expected to escalate as negotiators near the June
deadline. Mr. Corker said he would be focusing on the quality of
inspections meant to ensure Iran is meeting its obligations.

The Obama administration has been trying to sell the idea of an agreement
with Iran to Arab allies, who have asked for military equipment and
security assurances. Mr. Obama is meeting with top officials from six Arab
countries at the White House and at the presidential retreat at Camp David
next week.

Exit poll: Conservatives running strong in Britain election
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/05/07/british-general-election/70932588/>
// USA Today // Kim Hjelmgaard, Jane Onyanga-Omara, and John Bacon - May 7,
2015

LONDON — An exit poll showed an unexpectedly strong vote for returning
Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party to power in
Britain's election Thursday, though the party appeared to fall short of an
outright majority.

The poll by Britain's broadcasters showed the Conservatives would win 316
seats in Parliament – 10 short of a majority. A renewed coalition with the
central Liberal Democrats could make up the difference to allow Cameron to
form a new government.

The exit poll showed the Labour Party lagged with a projected 239 seats.

Pre-election polls showed a near toss-up between the Conservatives and
Labour, led by Ed Miliband.

The Scottish National Party was in third place with 58 seats, followed by
several other parties.

The poll suggested that Labour will come up short when the votes are
counted because it lost most of its Parliament seats representing Scotland
to a resurgent Scottish National Party, which favors independence from
Britain.

The centrist Liberal Democrats appeared to perform poorly, garnering only
10 seats, according to the exit poll. But that would be enough to renew
their current coalition with the Conservatives to form a government.

If the exit poll is accurate, it would appear to give Cameron a decisive
lead going ahead with any potential coalition talks.

"I'd treat the exit poll with HUGE caution. I'm hoping for a good night but
I think 58 seats is unlikely!" Scottish National Party leader Nicola
Sturegon tweeted immediately after the results.

Paddy Ashdown, chairman of the 2015 general election campaign for the
Liberal Democrats, who formed the previous coalition government with the
Conservative Party, told the BBC he believed the exit poll was wrong, and
that another survey by market research firm YouGov had predicted the party
would get 31 seats.

"Opinion polls are all over the place," he said.

Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman told the broadcaster: "If that
poll is right about this election, the Tories (Conservatives) have more or
less lost the majority for the coalition. If it's right, the question is
whether they would be able to form a majority in the new parliament."

A majority of 326 seats is needed to govern without a coalition partner.

Polls closed at 10 p.m. local time (5 p.m. ET).

Around 50 million people voted in the election in some 50,000 polling
stations up and down the country that included schools, community centers,
churches and even pubs.

Heading into the voting, polls showed Cameron's Conservative Party was in a
statistical dead heat with would-be leader Miliband of the Labour Party.

The candidates showed up early to vote, then slipped out of public view
while awaiting the nation's decision. But their Twitter feeds didn't go
silent.

"Let's not just reject the Conservatives today, let's reject the Tories'
plan that always puts the rich and powerful first. #VoteLabour" Miliband
tweeted several hours after voting began.

Cameron's Twitter counter: "Remember, Britain has the chance of a strong,
stable Government - but only if you #VoteConservative today"

Supporters of both parties also could be heard on social media. But many
Brits just wanted to be sure their countrymen voted.

"I've #voted exercise your democratic right and make sure this parliament
really is the people's. #generationvote" tweeted Abitha Pallett, who
described herself as a model, student and freelance journalist in London.

The final election tally detailing which 650 candidates have won seats in
the House of Commons could come as early as Friday afternoon.

The expectations of a tight race meant that for the first time in
generations minor parties with more niche interests could have a major
impact on the composition of that government.

The Scottish National Party, for example, wants to see Scotland leave the
union with England. The U.K. Independence Party thinks Britain should
abandon its membership of the European Union.

For many voters, the choice was difficult.

"When I went to vote this morning, I wasn't sure who I was going to vote
for. It's hard to know who's best," said Ralph Prime, 51 of London, who
ended up going with the Conservatives. "I spent a lot of time in the
military and they're the only people I feel gave us appreciation," he said.

"Labour and Conservative — they just seem so alike nowadays," Prime added.

Outside a Westminister polling station, Diana Karter, 60, wouldn't say who
she voted for, only that "it's a party I've not voted for since my early
years."

Ezerol Petrie, 39, from Brixton in south London, is supporting the Labour
Party and said he hopes for a prime minister who can stabilize the economy
and provide more opportunities for young people, and for immigrants.

"Many (immigrants) have been working for many years, paying taxes and
nothing's been done for them," he said.

Isatu Hamzie, 46, said she voted for Labour because she thought the party
was best suited to help families and single parents like her.

"It's been tense for the past few years," she said outside a Westminster
polling station about the tight political race. "I've never seen anything
like it."

British academics and political experts say that while the results Friday
may show which party won the most parliamentary seats, if no party gets the
326 seats needed to win an overall majority, it may be several days or even
weeks before it becomes clear which party will be able to form the next
government.

Yemen Al Quaeda Leader Who Claimed Credit for Charlie Hebdo Attack Killed
in U.S. Drone Strike
<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/al-qaeda-arabian-peninsula-leader-nasr-al-ansi-killed-u-n355631>
// NBC News // Daniella Silva - May 7, 2015

A senior al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader who claimed the group's
responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the murder of an American
hostage during a botched raid in December has been killed in a U.S. drone
strike in Yemen, it was announced Thursday.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) announced the death of leader Nasr
bin Ali al-Ansi and other operatives by a U.S. drone strike in a video,
which was verified by security consulting firm and NBC News partner
Flashpoint Intelligence.

Al-Ansi had appeared in several militant videos for the group, including
one claiming responsibility for the Paris attack on the satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7, which left 12 people dead.

In the 11-minute video titled "Message regarding the blessed raid in
Paris," al-Ansi said AQAP "chose the target, laid the plan and financed the
operation," according to a translated transcript of the video put out by
the group's official media wing.

Al-Ansi had also previously claimed the group was responsible for killing
American hostage Luke Somers following a botched U.S. raid in December,
according to Flashpoint.

Somers, 33, had been held by the group for a year before U.S. military
forces set out to rescue him in an initial, failed first attempt. AQAP then
released a video threatening to kill Somers within three days if their
demands were not met.

In a second commando raid, the U.S. military failed to rescue Somers after
his captors were alerted to their presence — possibly by a barking dog. The
group shot and killed Somers along with a South African hostage. Six
militants were also killed during the operation.

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS

 Hillary Clinton's eight questions
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/hillary-clintons-eight-questions-206763.html>
// Politico // Hadas Gold - May 7, 2015

Since announcing her bid for the presidency last month, Hillary Clinton has
answered a grand total of eight questions from the media. Reporters have
grown so frustrated by the limited media availability that they're
beginning to publish the hypothetical questions they would ask Clinton --
if only they could. Of course, Clinton has no obligation to the press.

More confounding, however, is the way her campaign is spinning the issue:
On Wednesday, Clinton spokesperson Jesse Ferguson posted this
"philosophical" question on Twitter: "If a candidate answers hours of
questions from real people on camera but they didn't come from press, did
they happen?"

Ferguson is referring to the hours of round tables and events Clinton has
had with voters in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire where she is
asked and answered questions from voters. What Ferguson fails to mention is
that many of the people asking the questions at these events were
preselected by the campaign or the group hosting the campaign such as the
recent immigration event in Las Vegas. This is far from a unique approach.
Most campaigns do the same in order to ensure a positive reception.

So, to answer Ferguson's question, No: While questions from "real people"
are incredibly valuable and should be paid attention to, questions from
these often preselected voters are not a substitute for questions from the
media.

Ferguson's tweet gives us an insight into how the Clinton campaign hopes to
handle the media -- by going around them. Clinton does not need the media;
she's got nearly 100 percent name recognition and very little competition
from fellow Democrats. And, again, she has no obligation to the
increasingly frustrated press.

Hillary Clinton’s liberal lean on immigration — and what it means for 2016
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/07/hillary-clintons-immigration-plan-wont-hurt-with-hispanic-voters-which-is-no-accident/>
// Washington Post // Philip Bump - May 7, 2015

Hillary Clinton's announced Monday that she supported a full path to
citizenship for people in the country illegally and possibly an expansion
of President Obama's executive action on immigration. The move was hailed
by progressives as surprisingly ... progressive. The only Republican whose
stated position on the subject is anywhere close to Clinton's is Jeb Bush.
And that, many feel, is one reason why it's now Clinton's professed
position.

Last week, we looked at LIBRE, an organization heavily funded by the Koch
brothers and which has been providing support services to Hispanics as part
of an effort to introduce conservative political arguments and to collect
contact information. As we noted then, Hispanics identify heavily as
Democratic, but less so in recent years than Asian or black voters (based
on annual surveys from Pew Research).

That's party identification -- not voting. To see voting, we can look at
past exit polling. Looking at House races every two years, Hispanics have
consistently voted more heavily Democratic than the voting population on
the whole -- but the margin has been declining for the past two elections.

It's hard to say how Hispanics feel about the 2016 matchups so far, because
many public polls don't offer breakdowns by race and many others focus on
Iowa and New Hampshire, where Hispanic voters are not a large part of the
electorate. Two polls, one from SurveyUSA in North Carolina and one from
Mason-Dixon in Florida, do have breakdowns that compare Clinton to possible
Republican primary opponents.

The match-ups against Bush and Marco Rubio (whose position on immigration
has moved right in recent years) are closer among Hispanics than those
against other candidates -- though Clinton still has a lead with Hispanics
against both in both states.

Notice on the bottom graphs above that Hispanics are also more likely to
say that they're undecided. There's a broader margin of error with the
group in both polls, since the sample size is smaller. But compared to
black voters, for example, the margins are much more modest. In the
Mason-Dixon Florida poll, black voters prefer Clinton over Bush by 87
points and over Rubio by 77. Among Hispanics, it's 7 points and one point,
respectively. The caveats, of course: Two polls, it's very early, etc.

When Obama announced his expanded immigration actions last fall, his
support among Hispanics surged. Clinton doesn't need that surge right this
moment. But next fall, she clearly hopes that her position on immigration
will start letting a little more sunshine between her and whoever her
opponent turns out to be.

The media's real role in 2016
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/the-medias-real-role-in-206766.html#.VUu3yC0YpUc.twitter>
// Politico // Dylan Byers - May 7, 2015

Let's be honest with ourselves for a second: This is Hillary Clinton's
election to lose.

On Nov. 8, 2016, Clinton will start — start — with a minimum 247 of the 270
electoral votes she needs to win. If you give her Colorado and Virginia —
which many political strategists would, given the Hispanic population in
one and the rising influence of the northern-centered population in the
other — she'll start with 269. That means Clinton doesn't need Ohio or
Florida. She just needs one small state like Iowa, Nevada or New Hampshire
to put her over the edge. And because she's got a boatload of money and no
viable primary challenger, she'll have plenty of time and resources to lock
at least one of those states up.

In order to shift the map ahead of Election Day, the Republican nominee
would have to find a way to win Colorado and/or Virginia. That means
winning over Hispanics, which will be a difficult task for a nominee who
has spent a months-long primary trying to win over the conservative
grassroots. It also means winning over enough members of Virginia's white
working class to counter the more populated liberal-urban centers in the
north. Not impossible, of course, but hard.

Unless ... unless one of two things happens: 1. The Republicans build an
Obama 2008-level narrative around their nominee, significantly broadening
their candidate's appeal to independents and Democrats. 2. Some legitimate
controversy, historic stumble, unconscionable error or jaw-dropping gaffe
completely reorients the way voters view Hillary Clinton.

As of now, the first option seems unlikely. Republicans have not produced a
candidate who looks poised to pull off a 'hope and change' style campaign,
despite Marco Rubio's attempt to brand himself as the candidate for a "new
American century." The second option would require a controversy or error
so major — and legitimate — that it didn't go away. Such a controversy
would have to be far bigger than a secret email account or questionable
Clinton Foundation donations. The inconsequence of those stories can be
seen in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which found that
"Americans now view Mrs. Clinton more favorably and more see her as a
strong leader than they did earlier in the year, despite weeks of scrutiny
about her ethics."

The conventional wisdom among Clinton's supporters is that Clinton is
invincible, because she has already weathered all the storms of media
scrutiny. She has been in the public eye for 25 years and endured countless
controversies, from Whitewater to Lewinsky to Benghazi. The book has been
thrown at her, and the book lost.

This argument overlooks two important factors: First, the national media
has never been more primed to take down Hillary Clinton (and, by the same
token, elevate a Republican candidate). Even before she announced her
presidential bid, The New York Times alone had published more than 40
articles related to her private email account, spurring other stories
across the national print, digital and television media. Since announcing
her bid, the national media has spent the bulk of its time investigating
potential lines of influence between Clinton Foundation donations/speaking
fees and Clinton's actions as secretary of state. The Times, The Washington
Post and others even struck deals for early access to anti-Clinton research.

Second, the media environment is radically different from the 1990s or even
the 2000s. The power and volume of social media means that controversies
can be both disseminated and elevated to unprecedented levels. In today's
media environment, nothing with even a whiff of gunpowder comes across the
transom without blowing up, because blowing stuff up is what the media
does. Or, as Danniel Henniger notes in today's Wall Street Journal, the
"electronic elements have reached critical mass... [and] the new political
media that will drive the 2016 presidential contest are like the surface of
the oceans — huge, always moving, unpredictable and potentially
destructive."

The rest, as they say, is noise. The media can cover every minor process
development and chase Hillary to every Chipotle, but without a
transformational Republican candidate and/or an unforeseen controversy of
truly epic proportions, Hillary Clinton will waltz to the nomination and
enter Election Day with a significant advantage over her Republican
challenger.

Meeting Hillary Clinton was like talking to a mentor
<http://www.press-citizen.com/story/opinion/contributors/guest-editorials/2015/05/06/meeting-hillary-clinton-like-talking-mentor/70905090/>
// Iowa City Press-Citizen // Carter Bell Guest Opinion - May 6, 2015

Walking in the door alone, without any staffers in front or behind her,
Hillary Clinton entered the Jones Street Java House.

“What’s are people talking about on campus? What would you say are
students’ number one priority?” she asked me a few minutes later after
ordering coffee from the owner’s son and greeting the other patrons in the
coffee shop.

It was a bright, clear Iowa morning on Tuesday, April 14. A bit taken aback
by her straightforward and candid questions, a bit nervous meeting for the
first time a woman I admired so much, my brain scrambled to orient itself.
“Uh, jobs! Now and after graduation. The jobs we have now are minimum wage
(or less if we wait tables), and while our parents talk about how they
could work a summer and pay for a year of college, our jobs now don’t even
pay our rent, let alone our tuition, fees, textbooks, food, phone bill, and
other expenses. So then we’re also concerned about jobs after graduation:
will we find a job at all? Will it pay enough to help pay back our student
loans and still pay the current bills?”

Clinton listened intently, sympathizing and commenting how she worked
during school as well.

Clinton was shocked when I told her that my friends and I have not taken or
have put off taking certain classes because the textbooks cost hundreds of
dollars. When talking about the cost of tuition itself, Clinton commented
how the average student debt for a student graduate in the state of Iowa is
more than $29,000. Later, we talked about my grandmother, and Clinton said
she hopes to have a similar type of close relationship with her
granddaughter, Charlotte.

Clinton talked a lot with one of my fellow coffee-goers, Austin, who works
at a hospital and takes night classes at St. Ambrose University. I was
shocked by how much Clinton knew about all that he talking about. Inpatient
versus outpatient services, the midnight rule, and the nursing shortage,
Secretary Clinton knew exactly what he was talking about and never missed a
beat.

Sara, another woman at coffee shop, talked with Clinton about how blessed
but rare her situation with childcare is: a very affordable in-home daycare
provider and grandparents close to also watch her baby. Secretary Clinton
agreed that we must do something so affordable, high quality day care is
not longer an exceptional circumstance.

People ask me about how my coffee with Hillary Clinton was, and the truth
is, it still hasn’t really sunk in. I still have a hard time believing it
happened because it felt like I got coffee with a mentor or favorite
professor, not a presidential candidate. The conversation didn’t feel
staged or forced; it flowed naturally between the four of us on college
affordability, women’s health, job shortages, childcare, our families, and
our hopes, dreams and fears for the future.

Carter Bell is a junior Political Science major at the University of Iowa
originally from Waukee, Iowa. She is involved with University Lecture
Committee, University Democrats, and the President's Committee on Sexual
Misconduct.

‘I Gotta Pay Our Bills’
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/i-gotta-pay-our-bills-1430953025> // WSJ //
Daniel Henninger - May 6, 2015

Staring at identical Rorschach blots of the Clintons’ now-famous
foundation, their 24-karat speeches, the missing emails and nonstop
nonanswers about all of it, Republicans and Democrats come to separate
conclusions.

Republicans keep asking: Will she get away with it? Democrats alter one
word in this question: Will she get by with it? Conservatives think the
liberal media will cover for Hillary. Liberals expect the Clinton machine
will beat the rap, again.

Some bipartisan advice for aging elephants and donkeys: You’re not in 1993
anymore.

The media environment in which this new edition of Whitewaterish stories is
appearing didn’t exist when Bill and Hillary lived in the White House. Back
then, the Clinton sagas about all those things gone missing or unremembered
would get published in this newspaper, the Washington Post, New York Times,
Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and the wire services, with a late-day
kicker from evening newscasts. In terms of message-carry, the Clinton years
might as well have been the age of the telegraph.

The World Wide Web, the oxygen of life now, was just coming to life when
Bill Clinton was president. Google appeared in 1998. The
opinion-transmission monster called “social media” didn’t arrive until
2004, with Facebook.Twitter hit in 2006. And it wasn’t until the Obama
presidency that every single person with a political ax to grind owned the
modern version of the frontier equalizer—a smartphone.

Today, these electronic elements have reached critical mass: The people
paying really close attention to political news at such an early stage of a
presidential campaign are vastly more numerous than ever.

So when Bill Clinton tells an NBC reporter somewhere in Africa, “I gotta
pay our bills,” it flows instantly into a complex political ecosystem that
reinterprets what he said, and not in a good way. James Carville and the
rest of the Clinton surrogate crew don’t have enough spin time in their
lives to offset this torrent. Type “I gotta pay our bills” into Twitter’s
search window, and the screen will fill with tiny blue birds cackling about
the Clintons’ family wage slave.

Stories describing Hillary Clinton’s missing State Department emails
started to appear in early March. The Clinton response was classic 1994:
stonewall. Today, stonewalling is catnip to social media. The Clinton
phalanx can erase her servers to stonewall Trey Gowdy’s House committee,
but it can’t erase the zillions of opinions sent, received and read about
the erasures and excuses.

Which raises the question: Why don’t the Clintons reduce the volume of
negative opinion flow by coming clean, or at least cleaner, some of the
time about what they do? Instead, they let stories like the missing emails
or grants to the Clinton Foundation from a Kazakhstan-connected donor
continue to feed on themselves and self-multiply via the electronic galaxy
that is Twitter, Facebook, blogs, newspaper websites, Politico,
Instapundit, RealClearPolitics, TV and radio talk shows.

Skeptics will say most of this activity is just being recycled through the
already convinced right and left. And that many of these people are
political trolls with no life beyond outputting snide remarks. Could be,
but no one knows that for sure.

What we do know is that along with the snark, they have also been posting
the URL links to all the major Clinton newspaper stories the past two
months.

Those stories have been forwarded to and read by people who normally would
never see them. And the takeaway from the experience isn’t terrific for
Hillary or the Democrats.

In Wednesday’s print version of the New York Times/CBS poll, a chart
announced that a wondrous 82% of Democrats think Hillary is “honest and
trustworthy.” Excavate your way through the Times’ online tabs, though, and
you discover that among independent voters, 41% think she’s honest. That
number is close to the red zone for candidates.

The Clintons didn’t know what hit them in 2008, when Barack Obama’s
progressive techies used barely understood social media to run over them.
Not much seems to have changed. Bill, we learned during the email mess,
doesn’t use email, and Hillary’s explanations of how she used cellphones as
secretary of state sounded like something your grandma would come up with.

It’s not clear that anyone fully understands how social media shape
opinions or how long they last. But in their power and volume, the new
political media that will drive the 2016 presidential contest are like the
surface of the oceans—huge, always moving, unpredictable and potentially
destructive. The Republicans are out there bobbing, too. Their time will
come.

The irony, on the evidence of the campaign so far, is that the social media
that defeated the Clinton machine in 2008 could do it again. But this time
there won’t be an organized intelligence at the controls, not even the vast
right-wing conspiracy. That, too, was so 1990s.

The odd history of why the Clintons keep all their money in cash
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/07/the-odd-history-of-why-the-clintons-keep-all-their-money-in-cash/>
// WaPo Blog // Max Ehrenfreund - May 7, 2015

Bill Clinton received some criticism this week for his defense of the paid
speeches he gave after leaving the White House. "I got to pay our bills,"
the former president told NBC's Cynthia McFadden, adding that he had taken
"almost no capital gains" in the past 15 years.

That statement was not entirely accurate. Clinton and his wife, Hillary
Rodham Clinton, did enjoy returns on their investments at first, according
to tax returns she released during her first campaign for the office her
husband held.

Since 2007, however, their wealth has earned them almost nothing, and they
probably have not taken significant capital gains, according to a review of
Hillary Clinton's financial disclosures from her time as secretary of
state.

The Clintons' portfolio has performed poorly because it is almost entirely
in cash. As of 2012, when Hillary Clinton left the State Department, the
couple's wealth was in an account at JPMorgan likely worth between $10
million and $25 million.

Just like everyday Americans, the Clintons keep their money in a regular
old savings account. The former president pays the bills with money he
earns by working, not from dividends and interest.

 It's just that for most American dads nearing retirement, their jobs
haven't paid quite as well as Bill Clinton's most recent speechmaking gig.

In a global economy with an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth,
the Clintons' massive savings account is unusual. People as rich as they
are typically put their money to work in hedge funds, bonds, real estate or
just about anything else that's profitable, rather than keeping it in cash.

Not all the wealthy are politicians, though. The Clintons' financial
strategy is a response to the intense scrutiny placed on them throughout
their career in American public life and a reminder, in dollars, of how
much they've been willing to give up to achieve their ambitions.

When Bill Clinton became president, the couple assigned their money to a
blind trust, managed by an independent adviser who made decisions without
their knowledge or instructions to avoid conflicts of interest. They didn't
have much at the time, and eight years later, they left the White House in
debt. The former president did have bills he had to pay  legals bills
resulting from his tumultuous tenure in the Oval Office.

Bill Clinton began giving speeches around the world, collecting a cool six
figures with most of his appearances. Soon the adviser of the trust had
some real money to invest.

The Clintons continued to hold their wealth in trust until Hillary
Clinton's first presidential campaign. Federal officials told them that
their trust was out of date, and to comply with the rules on ethics, they
would have to liquidate it.

The Clintons sold all of their assets and did not reinvest the proceeds.
The income they would pass up by keeping the money in cash and U.S.
Treasury bonds was a price they were willing to pay to shield Hillary
Clinton from any questions about conflicts of interest.

Others of similar stature have also changed their investment strategies.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hold less than $5 million in
Treasury bonds and several hundred thousand dollars in index funds,
according to their most recent financial disclosure.

The Clintons' finances are unusual even among politicians in that as of
2012, almost all their money was in cash, and they had a lot of it.

In 2008, they kept the money at Citibank, mostly in Treasuries. They moved
the money into Treasuries and cash at JPMorgan in 2009, when it was worth
at least $10 million. (On the federal disclosure forms, the values of
assets are reported in ranges.)

By 2011, all the money  less than $25 million  was in cash.

The 2012 disclosure states that the Clintons earned between $50,000 and
$100,000 in interest on the account, a rate of between 0.2 percent and 1
percent.

Bill Clinton earned more in royalties on his books. His book about the
economy, "Back to Work," brought him between $100,000 and $1 million that
year. "My Life," the autobiography he published in 2004, added another
$50,000 to $100,000. His speeches, by far, were his largest source of
income. His wife's memoir, "Hard Choices," was published after she left the
State Department, and it is not known how much the book is generating in
royalties.

There are still other questions about the Clintons' money. If the former
senator and first lady had simply wanted to avoid questions about her
finances on the campaign trail, it isn't obvious why she and her husband
didn't simply invest in index funds, as the Obamas have done.

After deciding to keep the money in cash, though, the Clintons then
apparently ignored the federal limit on deposit insurance. The government
insures a joint account owned by two people for up to $500,000. They might
have deposited the money at several banks, in case JPMorgan were to fail.
President George W. Bush, for example, kept some of his money in
certificates of deposit at a number of banks.

Whatever their reasons, the irony is that Bill Clinton's speeches have
generated as much controversy as any investments the couple might have
made.

A number of those who have paid him to speak have also donated money to the
couple's charity, the Clinton Foundation. News media and a new book by the
conservative author Peter Schweizer have scrutinized whether contributions
to the charity created conflicts of interest while Hillary Clinton was in
office.

Debunking Hillary Clinton’s liberal ‘problem’
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/07/no-hillary-clintons-does-not-have-a-liberal-problem/>
// WaPo Blog // Chris Cillizza – May 7, 2015

 Hillary Rodham Clinton takes part in a roundtable discussion with young
Nevadans on immigration at Rancho High School in Las Vegas on May 5. (Mike
Blake/Reuters)

One of the most persistent tropes of the 2016 election is that some large
number of liberals are deeply dissatisfied with the centrist approach to
politics long championed by Hillary Rodham Clinton and, as a result, are
actively engaged in a search for a more progressive alternative.

Persistent -- and wrong.  The truth is that scant evidence exists in any
poll to suggest that Clinton is anything short of beloved (or, at the very
least, be-liked) by the party's liberal base.

Take a new Iowa poll conducted by Quinnipiac University.  In it, Clinton
stands at 60 percent in a hypothetical caucus vote, with Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) running second at 15 percent. Clinton's standing among the
base of the party? She gets 61 percent among those who consider themselves
"very" liberal and 66 percent among the "somewhat" liberal. Her poorest
performing ideological group is "moderate/conservative" Democrats, where
she wins only 58 percent.

Take it a step further. It's not just that liberals in Iowa are going to
vote for Clinton. They also have an extremely positive view of her.
Overall, 83 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers told Quinnipiac
that they view Clinton favorably. That number jumps to 88 percent among
"very" liberal Democrats. So, 9 in 10 of the most liberal voters in Iowa
like Clinton. Not exactly a liberal problem, right?

And it's not just Iowa. The last national poll conducted by the Washington
Post-ABC News, in late March, showed similar popularity numbers for
Clinton. Eighty four percent of Democrats rated her favorably. Seventy
seven percent of self-identified "liberals" had a favorable opinion of
Clinton, including 50 percent who felt "strongly" favorable toward her.

Poll after poll -- in key states and nationally -- shows the same thing.
Are their voices within the party -- Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Bill de
Blasio -- who wonder aloud whether Clinton is sufficiently committed to
liberal ideals to carry the party's banner basically unchallenged in 2016?
Yes. But, remember two things: 1) It is in the interests of people like the
trio I mentioned above to elevate themselves as leaders of the left, a
calculation to which Clinton is really a sidebar and 2) There is NO
evidence that these few prominent voices represent any substantial bloc of,
you know, actual voters.  Pockets of discontent toward Clinton exist, but
they are pockets, not a whole pair of pants. (Ugh.)

And, to the extent that there remains any doubt about Clinton among
liberals, she is moving forcefully to address it. She surprised almost
everyone on the left with her aggressive endorsement of a path to
citizenship for undocumented workers and also recently spoke about prison
reform, a cause near and dear to liberals.  And, don't forget that Clinton
-- from her announcement video on -- has put income inequality front and
center in the campaign.

Look, Clinton has plenty of potential problems in the race.  The baggage
she carries from her years in the public spotlight. Her husband and his
role in the campaign. The Clinton Foundation. The e-mail server. You get
the idea.

But it is a fallacy to talk about her "liberal" problem. She doesn't have
one.

Clinton’s claim that no GOP candidate has consistently supported a path to
citizenship
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/05/07/clintons-claim-that-no-gop-candidate-has-consistently-supported-a-path-to-citizenship/>
// WaPo Blog // May 7, 2015

 “We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship. Now,
this is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side. Make no
mistake: Today not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential,
is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship. Not one.”

–Hillary Clinton, roundtable in North Las Vegas, Nev., May 5, 2015

This was an interesting statement by former secretary of state Hillary
Clinton, made as she laid out her policy goals for tackling illegal
immigration. She tried to draw a stark distinction between her stance and
the growing field of Republican candidates.

But one of those candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), was a key member of
the bipartisan coalition that passed a comprehensive immigration overhaul
in the Senate in 2013. That bill died in the House, and Rubio has since
said it is better to tackle the problem piecemeal, starting with better
border security.

But what’s his position on citizenship? Note that Clinton made a point of
saying “clearly and consistently”—modifiers that leave the actual meaning
of her statement open to some interpretation.

The Facts

In 2014, as the Senate bill was debated in the House, Rubio at one point
mused that he would be “open” to a bill that did not include a path to
citizenship, on the grounds that it was better than the status quo, but he
added: “Do I think it is in the best interest of this country to have
millions of people here who can never become Americans? I don’t.”

Similarly, in a 2014 interview with Simon Conway, he said:

“The part that’s difficult is, is what do you do with millions of people in
this country who are here illegally? What do you do about it? And I think
that the couple of things we’re not going to do — we’re not going to award
citizenship to people or give them a benefit they wouldn’t otherwise have.
And we’re also not going to round up and deport 12 million people. So the
problem with finding a solution between those two different positions is
people are not willing to even talk about it until they believe the laws
are going to be enforced.”

Rubio has continued with that theme in 2015. His book, “American Dreams”
was published in January and described his current thinking. He outlined a
three-step plan under which undocumented immigrants must come forward and
register, and then, if qualified, apply for a temporary non-immigrant visa.
This would give them a work permit. Rubio then writes:

“Third and finally, those who qualify for a nonimmigrant visa will have to
remain in this status for at least a decade. After that, they would be
allowed to apply for permanent residency if they so choose. Many who
qualify for this status will choose to remain in it indefinitely. But those
who choose to seek permanent residency would have to do it the way anyone
else would, not through any special pathway.”

Rubio’s reference to not having a “special pathway” led some reporters to
conclude he had backed away from an explicit path to citizenship. But in
numerous interviews, Rubio denied that was the case.

In a New York Times interview, published Dec. 31, 2014:

Q: “In your book, you propose a piecemeal approach starting with more
border security and ending with permanent residency. Are you dropping the
idea of citizenship for those who came here illegally?”

A: “Once you have permanent residency, which is a green card, existing law
allows you to apply for citizenship.”

On CNN, Jan. 23, 2015, Rubio said he still believed there should be a path
to citizenship at the end:

“Once you have a green card, under existing law, in three to five years,
depending on whether you got it through marriage or work, you would be able
to apply for citizenship. Now, I don’t think it’s wise to have 12 million
people who are forever in this country who feel American but are
permanently barred from becoming citizens. Other people think that should
be the price of having violated our laws in the first place. We can debate
that. But we have to deal with that issue realistically, and we can’t until
illegal immigration is under control first.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” April 19, 2015, Rubio said:

“And then the third step would be to pass the bill that goes to the 10
million people that are here, or 12 million that are here illegally. …And
after a substantial period of time in that [work permit] status, assuming
they haven’t violated any of the conditions of that status, they would be
allowed to apply for legal residency, just like anybody else would, not a
special process. And after you’re a legal resident, after a number of
years, by law, you’re allowed to apply for citizenship.”

As always with these issues, there are complexities in the weeds. Rubio, in
his comments, makes it sound relatively easy to obtain legal residency — a
green card— after the 10-year wait is completed. But there is a cap on the
number of green cards that are issued — 625,000 a year — and there also are
country and category caps. As a result, there is a waiting list of 4.4
million people outside the United States seeking green cards.

So how would 11 million people suddenly qualify for green cards?

The Senate bill supported by Rubio actually addressed this problem, in an
obscure provision (section 2302) that was informally known by Senate aides
as the “ShamWow visa.” (The ShamWow towel supposedly soaks up an enormous
amount of liquid.)  But it’s unclear if Rubio would support such a
provision now, especially because in the CBS interview he reiterated that
there would not be “a special process” for applying for legal residency.

“He’s always talked about fixing the legal immigration system before
letting illegal immigrants apply for green cards,” Rubio spokesman Alex
Conant said. “Part of fixing the legal immigration system means dealing
with the big backlog.” Conant noted that Rubio voted for the Senate bill,
but he did not specifically answer a question on whether Rubio still
supports section 2302.

Conant added: “As recently as the National Review Summit on Friday, Marco
was arguing that we should want people who are going to be here for the
rest of their lives to become Americans.  He has said it would not be wise
to have millions of people permanently in this country who could never
become citizens.”

Depending on one’s perspective in the debate, Rubio is either trying to
have it both ways or is simply being a bit obtuse. Lynn Tramonte, deputy
director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, said that
Rubio has been “deliberately vague” on what he supports, and that it would
be difficult for undocumented immigrants to get green cards unless special
provisions were enacted.  She added: “I don’t see him as an advocate for a
path to citizenship.”

But Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute said: “Senator Rubio
has consistently, if not clearly, supported a path to citizenship for most
unauthorized immigrants.” In his view, “Rubio’s strategic and policy
changes do not mean he opposes a path to citizenship.  Rubio has merely
reordered his reform priorities.” He agreed, however, that Rubio has not
been especially clear about his position.

Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin defended Clinton’s language: “Any candidate
who is intentionally vague on the issue is, by definition, not clear and
consistent in their support.”

The Pinocchio Test

This is a difficult situation to evaluate. Clinton certainly wanted to
paint all of the Republican candidates with an anti-immigration brush, but
gave herself some wiggle room on Rubio by adding in the modifier of
“clearly and consistently.”

But that’s an all-purpose modifier that could be applied to every
politician on just about every issue, including Clinton herself.

In straining to suggest Rubio’s stance is the same as other Republicans,
Clinton goes too far. Rubio has consistently said he supports a path to
citizenship. Clinton would have a better case if she specifically said
Rubio needs to provide more clarity on how quickly his plan would grant
immigrants that citizenship–especially if he no longer supports creating a
new visa category that would smooth the path to a green card. After all,
that’s a critical step on the way to citizenship.

We wavered between One and Two Pinocchios, but ultimately tipped toward
Two. Rubio has taken a relatively lonely position in the GOP on
immigration, and it’s not quite fair to suggest his position on citizenship
has been inconsistent.

(Update: Our friends at PolitiFact correctly note that Sen. Lindsey Graham
of South Carolina, who also backed the Senate bill, is also considering a
presidential run and has not wavered from advocating a path to citizenship.
They gave Clinton a “mostly false,” equivalent to Three Pinocchios. Given
that Clinton mentioned “potential” candidates, that may be a fair
assessment.)

Two Pinocchios
-- 
*Alexandria Phillips*
*Communications | Press Assistant*
*Hillary for America *
https://www.hillaryclinton.com

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HRCRapid" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email-masked].
To post to this group, send email to [email-masked].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.