Politics

Watchdog says U.S. taxpayers can’t know if investment is paying off

For years, American taxpayers have been able to chart how well the Afghanistan security forces they’re funding are faring, because “capability assessments” detailing their progress have been routinely released.

Not anymore.

As the U.S. military prepares to withdraw most of its 34,000 troops still in Afghanistan by the end of this year, the American-led command there has suddenly made such information secret, according to a congressional watchdog.

Classifying the data “deprives the American people of an essential tool to measure the success or failure of the single most costly feature of the Afghanistan reconstruction effort,” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, says in Thursday’s quarterly report to Congress. “SIGAR and Congress can of course request classified briefings on this information, but its inexplicable classification now and its disappearance from public view does a disservice to the interest of informed national discussion.”

U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $50 billion training and outfitting Afghan security forces. In the prior quarterly report, issued in July, the IG used the then-available-but-now-classified data to report that 92% of Afghan army units, and 67% of Afghan national police units, were “capable” or “fully capable” of carrying out their missions.

“The Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF] capability assessments prepared by the [U.S. and NATO-led] International Security Assistance Force Joint Command have recently been classified, leaving the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction without a critical tool to publicly report on development of the ANSF,” the report says. “This is a significant change.”

The capabilities of Afghan forces become more important as the U.S. and its allies pull out, leaving local troops to battle the Taliban largely on their own. There are reports that Taliban forces are gaining ground in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province, vacated earlier this week by U.S. Marines and British troops, and in the northern part of the country.

Past SIGAR reports have used summary data about major Afghan units’ readiness, sustainability and other measurements to trace their progress. More detailed reporting on smaller units has always been classified to keep the Taliban and other insurgents ignorant of Afghan military weaknesses. “It is not clear what security purpose is served by denying the American public even high-level information,” the report says.

“SIGAR has routinely reported on assessments of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police as indicators of the effectiveness of U.S. and Coalition efforts to build, train, equip, and sustain the ANSF,” the report says. “These assessments provide both U.S. and Afghan stakeholders—including the American taxpayers who pay the costs of recruiting, training, feeding, housing, equipping, and supplying Afghan soldiers—with updates on the status of these forces as transition continues and Afghanistan assumes responsibility for its own security.”

ISAF didn’t respond to a request seeking an explanation for the change in classification.

Sen. Angus King now backs the Democrat, saying the independent candidate can't win

Maine’s independent voters are being urged by two of their own to support the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in order to stave off the re-election of the state’s conservative Republican governor.

Independent Sen. Angus King switched his endorsement from independent Eliot Cutler to Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud in the state’s three-way race for the governor’s mansion. The announcement followed a Cutler press conference Wednesday in which he said Mainers should “vote their conscience” in the Nov. 4 election, a seeming admission that he can’t win.

King, who served two terms as governor, said he still likes Cutler, but he cited realpolitik as the reason for his switch.

“My feelings about Eliot on these matters have not changed since I endorsed his candidacy four years ago and again this past August,” said King. “But, like Eliot, I too am a realist. After many months considering the issues and getting to know the candidates, it is clear that the voters of Maine are not prepared to elect Eliot in 2014.”

King said that he had worked with Michaud for 20 years and that he has “what it takes to be Maine’s next governor.”

The moves Wednesday will likely shore up support for Michaud even though Cutler has not dropped out of the race. On Tuesday, the Republican Governor’s Association released an ad reminding voters that King didn’t endorse Michaud. LePage has struggled in his bid for reelection and is in a neck and neck race with Michaud. Cutler, who lost to LePage by less than two points in another three-way race four years ago, has done even worse, polling recently between seven and 16 percent, according to Real Clear Politics.

“This was not an easy decision, but I think the circumstances require that those of us who have supported Eliot look realistically at the options before us at this critical moment in Maine history,” said King.

The race is not the only one in the nation where the top two candidates have been trying to edge out a potential spoiler. Chad Taylor, the Kansas Democrat running for Senate, announced last month that he would withdraw from the race, boosting independent Greg Orman’s bid to unseat Republican Sen. Pat Roberts. And in South Dakota, Democrat Rick Weiland complained this week that national party members failed him in focusing their attacks on Republican Mike Rounds—giving Independent Larry Pressler a reprieve—instead of fueling his own candidacy.

Both of their shows will broadcast and livestream on Election Night

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not only broadcasting live episodes of their shows on Election Day, but the specials have—hands down—the best names.

CNN’s “Election Night in America” sounds downright boring when compared to The Daily Show’s “Democalypse 2014: America Remembers It Forgot to Vote” and The Colbert Report’s “Midterms ‘014: Detour to Gridlock: An Exciting Thing That I Am Totally Interested In—Wait! Don’t Change the Channel. Look at this Video of a Duckling Following a Cat Dressed Like a Shark Riding a Roomba! ‘014!”

No, seriously. That’s what it’s called.

The coverage will air back-to-back on election night on Comedy Central. Viewers can also stream coverage on Comedy Central’s website and mobile app. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show.

Campaign says "there is no scandal here”

The Republican Senate candidate in Iowa copied-and-pasted large portions of her op-eds in local newspapers from other sources, according to a new report.

BuzzFeed, citing side-by-side comparisons of the offending articles and source material, reports that many of the op-eds Joni Ernst wrote for local papers as a state Senator contained large swaths of text from summaries sent to many state legislators. Some of Ernst’s work also reportedly contains lines from speeches and news releases by Gov. Terry Brandstand. BuzzFeed presents several of the passages containing nearly identical text for comparison.

The Ernst campaign told BuzzFeed these instances are taken from pieces created “for the express purpose of reproduction” and they are “no different than what virtually every state lawmaker in the nation does, including Iowa Democrats.”

“Despite BuzzFeed’s every effort, there is no scandal here,” the campaign said.

Ernst, who’s facing Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in a tight Senate race in the state, is just the latest politician to be caught up in allegations of plagiarism. In recent years at least three politicians have been accused of lifting other people’s words and calling them their own, including Republican Sen. Rand Paul. Earlier in October, Democratic Sen. John Walsh had his master’s degree revoked after the U.S. Army War College found he plagiarized an important academic paper.

[BuzzFeed]

Reformers urge the president to sign an expansive order allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S.

Immigration activists are ratcheting up the pressure on Barack Obama, warning the President that a failure to live up to expectations for executive action on immigration would jeopardize his party’s standing with the Hispanic community.

“We won’t take any more excuses,” says Cristina Jimenez of the immigration-reform group United We Dream. “What we expect from the President is for him to use his legal authority to enact a program that will protect as many people from our community as possible.”

Obama pledged over the summer to take executive action this fall on immigration in the absence of legislation to fix a broken system. That promise crumbled under political pressures, as vulnerable Democrats in red states cajoled the White House into postponing the move until after Nov. 4. Now, as the midterms draw near, some reformers fear they’re about to be brushed off once more.

As the White House begins to weigh the scope of executive action, the early whispers among immigration reformers are that Obama may fall short of the lofty targets the movement has set for him. The President is considering an order that would grant temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to a sizable number of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., a step he could take unilaterally by expanding the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The overarching question is how many undocumented immigrants he will protect. The White House signaled over the summer that it could extend administrative relief for up to several million undocumented immigrants and their families. By delaying the decision for political reasons, Obama has nudged expectations even higher.

At a “bare minimum,” said Pablo Alvarado, executive director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the immigration orders should include “an extension of work authorization to everyone who would qualify under the Senate bill and an end to the Secure Communities program and policies that criminalize immigrants. The President has the legal authority, the moral obligation, and the political capital required to take these important steps.” The Senate bill, which passed the upper chamber in June 2013 with 68 votes, would provide relief to some 8 million undocumented immigrants.

“This is an action that frankly we believe the President should have taken months ago,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “The president has broad legal authority to do this. It’s really about his political will.”

But there is growing concern that Obama may lack the will to make a bold unilateral move, especially if his party suffers sweeping losses in elections that were, in many ways, a referendum on his policies. Two anonymous sources cited by Buzzfeed, which reported Tuesday that final recommendations were being sent to Obama, pegged the number in the low seven figures. And even some of Obama’s allies worry that a President with a mixed record on immigration and an instinct for the middle ground will disappoint the Hispanic community once again.

“We’re definitely concerned,” says a Democratic source involved with the immigration-reform push, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid angering the White House. “The history of this presidency is one of trying to accommodate the opposition.”

Timing is a mystery as well. The White House continues to say that Obama will act this year. But some in the immigration-reform movement worry the deadline could push once again. On Nov. 9, Obama leaves for a weeklong trip to Asia. The Thanksgiving lull arrives soon after. Then Congress needs to hammer out a deal to extend government funding, which expires in mid-December, amid a crammed lame-duck calendar. Executive action on immigration could throw a wrench in those budget talks.

Immigration reformers urged Obama to withstand those pressures. “Some might worry the backlash against a bold program will be too great,” said Hincapié. But that backlash will exist whether the President extends relief to one person, 1 million or many more. “We’re holding the president to his word,” she added. “There are no more excuses.”

Russian hackers may have jumped the White House's digital fence

Speaker calls on Obama to fire anonymous staffer

The White House and the Speaker of the House are clashing over a profanity.

A day after The Atlantic quoted a senior Obama administration official calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a chickens–t,” Speaker John Boehner called on the president to identify the offender and show him or her the door. The quote has intensified the spat between the White House and the Israeli government, and sent the Obama administration’s clean-up operation into overdrive.

“What I can tell you is that, in the clearest terms possible and the most open forum possible, that those comments as they were reported do not accurately reflect at all this administration’s view about the nation of Israel, the strength of the relationship between our two countries or the leadership of that important ally,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.

In a statement, Boehner said that Obama sets the tone for his administration. “He either condones the profanity and disrespect used by the most senior members of his administration, or he does not,” he said. “It is time for him to get his house in order and tell the people that can’t muster professionalism that it is time to move on.”

Earnest fired back during the daily press briefing, referencing Boehner’s own history of “salty language.”

“It’s an interesting observation by the speaker of the House, whom you all know has a penchant for using some pretty salty language himself,” Earnest said. “So it’s a little rich to have a lecture about profanity from the speaker the House.”

In 2008, before Obama was elected, Boehner implied that Obama was “chickens–t” for repeatedly voting “present” in the Illinois State Senate instead of casting tough votes.