Boxer adds to calls for Calif. lawmaker to resign

AAAMar. 27, 2014 5:09 PM ET
Boxer adds to calls for Calif. lawmaker to resign
By JULIET WILLIAMSBy JULIET WILLIAMS, Associated Press  

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, right, D-Sacramento, is consoled by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, after Steinberg and fellow Democrats called for Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to resign his seat in the wake of his arrest on federal corruption and firearm charges, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. Steinberg said lawmakers will immediately suspend Yee unless he steps down. The announcement comes hours after Yee was arrested and appeared in federal court. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, right, D-Sacramento, is consoled by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, after Steinberg and fellow Democrats called for Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to resign his seat in the wake of his arrest on federal corruption and firearm charges, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. Steinberg said lawmakers will immediately suspend Yee unless he steps down. The announcement comes hours after Yee was arrested and appeared in federal court. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, talks to reporters after he called for Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to resign his seat in the wake of his arrest on federal corruption and firearm charges, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. Steinberg said lawmakers will immediately suspend Yee unless he steps down. The announcement comes hours after Yee was arrested and appeared in federal court.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, center, D-Sacramento, calls for Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to resign his seat in the wake of his arrest on federal corruption and firearm charges, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. Flanked by fellow Senate Democrats, including Sen. Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, left, and Mark Leno, of San Francisco, Steinberg said lawmakers will immediately suspend Yee unless he steps down. The announcement comes hours after Yee was arrested and appeared in federal court. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, center, D-Sacramento, calls for Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to resign his seat in the wake of his arrest on federal corruption and firearm charges, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. Flanked by fellow Senate Democrats, including Sen. Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, left, and Mark Leno, of San Francisco, Steinberg said lawmakers will immediately suspend Yee unless he steps down. The announcement comes hours after Yee was arrested and appeared in federal court. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, center, D-Sacramento, calls for Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to resign his seat in the wake of his arrest on federal corruption and firearm charges, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. Flanked by fellow Senate Democrats, including Sen. Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, left, and Mark Leno, of San Francisco, Steinberg said lawmakers will immediately suspend Yee unless he steps down. The announcement comes hours after Yee was arrested and appeared in federal court. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Sen. Barbara Boxer is calling on a Democratic California state senator to resign from office following his arrest on public corruption and firearms charges.

Boxer on Thursday joined the Democratic leader of the Senate in demanding Yee to resign or face suspension by his colleagues. So far, Yee has only announced he is dropping out of the Secretary of State race.

Yee’s lawyer says the senator plans to plead not guilty to charges of accepting more than $ 42,000 to influence legislation and introduce an undercover FBI agent to an arms trafficker.

Yee’s spokesman and chief of staff did not return calls for comment.

Boxer said she supports the investigation, which sends a message that there is no place in public life for criminals who violate the public trust.

Associated Press

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

News Topics: General news, Government and politics, Elections, Political resignations, State legislature, Political corruption, Legislature, Indictments, State governments, Political issues, Law and order

People, Places and Companies: Leland Yee, Barbara Boxer, California

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Boxer adds to calls for Calif. lawmaker to resign

Pennsylvania Lawmaker Invites Predatory Payday Loans Into His State

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Pennsylvania Lawmaker Invites Predatory Payday Loans Into His State

Lawmaker says bill would protect Idahoans from gun confiscation

Michael Locklear
KBOI2
February 11, 2014

A Republican state lawmaker, worried the Obama administration might try to take away some guns, has put forward a bill that would punish Idaho officers for confiscating firearms.

“The supervisors would be penalized if they gave an order to confiscate firearms or ammunition,” said Sen. Marv Hagedorn of Meridian.

The measure calls for a $ 1,000 fine for officers who instruct their subordinates to seize guns based on a federal order. The second offense would slap officers with a misdemeanor and they’d lose their jobs. The penalties are meant to protect Idahoans from having their guns confiscated.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 at 1:31 pm

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Lawmaker says bill would protect Idahoans from gun confiscation

Iraq needs Kurdish oil income to avert budget collapse -lawmaker

Iraq needs Kurdish oil income to avert budget collapse -lawmaker
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By Suadad al-Salhy and Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD Sun Jan 19, 2014 9:50am EST

BAGHDAD Jan 19 (Reuters) – Iraq cannot finance its projected 2014 budget deficit unless the northern Kurdistan region pays its oil export revenue into the national treasury – or loses its share of state spending, a senior lawmaker said on Sunday.

Haider al-Abadi, head of parliament’s treasury committee, told Reuters the budget, swollen by extra expenditure, would “collapse” if the state kept paying the autonomous region its 17 percent share even as the Kurds withhold oil export proceeds.

Baghdad’s chronic quarrel with Kurdistan over how to manage and share Iraq’s energy resources intensified this month when the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) said oil had begun flowing to Turkey for export via a pipeline outside federal control.

Last week Iraq’s oil minister threatened legal action and drastic trade reprisals against Turkey and any foreign companies involved in what he called the “smuggling” of Iraqi oil.

Kurdistan’s Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani arrived in the Iraqi capital on Sunday to pursue talks on an issue that has bedevilled relations between Iraq’s Arabs and minority Kurds.

“We go to Baghdad with the intention of closing gaps,” KRG spokesman Safeen Dizayee said before the talks, which he said would focus on increasing Kurdistan’s oil output and a mechanism for marketing its exports.

Abadi said the draft budget projected a deficit of about 21 trillion Iraqi dinars ($ 18 billion), assuming the Kurds paid the treasury the revenue from budgeted oil exports of 400,000 barrels per day – a target industry sources say far exceeds Kurdistan’s current export capacity of around 255,000 bpd.

To Baghdad’s fury, the Kurds handed over no oil export revenue last year because of an unresolved dispute over the payment of oil companies operating in the northern region.

For much of 2013 the Kurds were trucking what industry sources estimated was up to 60,000 bpd of crude and condensates to Turkey, while the independent pipeline was being completed.

In 2012, the Kurds exported 61,000 bpd of crude via the Baghdad-controlled pipeline to Turkey, so the revenue went automatically to the central government.

Baghdad complained at the time that the Kurds should have exported more than double this amount, however.

BUDGET CRUNCH

Abadi said state spending had risen sharply in the draft budget due to increases in pensions and the minimum public sector wage, child benefits and student allowances.

Echoing remarks made in the past week by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi, Abadi said the central government would have to cut the Kurds’ budget share.

“They are not contributing, so why should they get something out of it?” he asked in an interview. “At the moment we have a deficit of 21 trillion. If you add 15 to 16 trillion to it, the budget will collapse,” he said, estimating the additional shortfall if no Kurdish oil revenue is handed over.

Abadi, who is also a senior member of Maliki’s Shi’ite Islamist Dawa party, said time was running out for the budget to be passed before parliament is dissolved ahead of an election on April 30. He said it would be hard to muster a quorum of 163 of the assembly’s 325 members during an electoral campaign.

Kurdish and Sunni Muslim opposition lawmakers would stay away, as would MPs busy campaigning or those without a motive to turn up because they were not running for re-election, he said.

Abadi accused the Kurds of seeking to prolong oil talks until after the poll to entrench a fait accompli whereby they pocket their own revenue from oil “officially” piped to Turkey and still receive their 17 percent share of the federal budget.

Kurdish officials say that in practice Kurdistan receives closer to 10 percent of the national budget.

Even if the Kurds paid over notional oil revenues of 17 or 18 trillion dinars from exports of 400,000 bpd, Abadi said, Baghdad would only just be able to bridge its 2014 budget gap.

He said the withholding of Kurdistan’s earnings also violated a U.N. Security Council resolution under which all Iraqi oil export proceeds must be paid into a U.N.-approved account in New York from which five percent must be deducted to pay war reparations to Kuwait for Iraq’s 1990 invasion.

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U.S. lawmaker investigates whether Russia behind Snowden"s leaks

WASHINGTON Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:12pm EST

A picture of Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), is seen on a computer screen displaying a page of a Chinese news website, in Beijing in this June 13, 2013 photo illustration.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said on Sunday he is investigating whether former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden had help from Russia in stealing and revealing U.S. government secrets.

“I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands – the loving arms – of an FSB agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” U.S. Representative Mike Rogers told the NBC program “Meet the Press,” referring to the Russian intelligence agency that is a successor of the Soviet-era KGB.

Snowden last year fled the United States to Hong Kong and then to Russia, where he was granted at least a year of asylum. U.S. officials want Snowden returned to the United States for prosecution. His disclosures of large numbers of stolen U.S. secret documents sparked a debate around the world about the reach of U.S. electronic surveillance.

Rogers did not provide specific evidence to back his suggestions of Russian involvement in Snowden’s activities, but said: “Some of the things we’re finding we would call clues that certainly would indicate to me that he had some help.”

Asked whether he is investigating Russian links to Snowden’s activities, Rogers said, “Absolutely. And that investigation is ongoing.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on “Meet the Press” that Snowden “may well have” had help from Russia.

“We don’t know at this stage,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein said Snowden gained employment at the National Security Agency “with the intent to take as much material down as he possibly could.”

On the ABC program “This Week,” U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, also expressed his belief that Snowden had foreign help.

“Hey, listen, I don’t think … Mr. Snowden woke up one day and had the wherewithal to do this all by himself,” he said.

“I personally believe that he was cultivated by a foreign power to do what he did,” McCaul said.

Asked whether he thought Russia was that “foreign power,” McCaul said, “You know, to say definitively, I can’t. I can’t answer that.”

‘TOTALITY OF THE INFORMATION’

Rogers indicated that the nature of the material that Snowden obtained suggested foreign involvement.

“When you look at the totality of the information he took, the vast majority of it had to do with military, tactical and operational events happening around the world,” he told the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

Michael Morell, the former deputy CIA director, said he shared Rogers’ concern about what Russian intelligence services may be doing with Snowden.

“I don’t have any particular evidence but one of the things I point to when I talk about this is that the disclosures that have been coming recently are very sophisticated in their content and sophisticated in their timing – almost too sophisticated for Mr. Snowden to be deciding on his own. And it seems to me he might be getting some help,” Morell said on “Face the Nation.”

Other U.S. security officials have told Reuters as recently as last week that the United States has no evidence at all that Snowden had any confederates who assisted him or guided him about what NSA materials to hack or how to do so.

Snowden told the New York Times in October he did not take any secret NSA documents with him to Russia when he fled there in June 2013. “There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” Snowden told the Times.

In remarks aired on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” President Vladimir Putin discussed Snowden’s freedom of movement in Russia and that the American would be free to attend the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics.

“Mr. Snowden is subject to the treatment of provisional asylum here in Russia. He has a right to travel freely across the country. He has no special limitation. He can just buy a ticket and come here,” Putin said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham, Toni Clarke and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Jim Loney and Chris Reese)

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U.S. lawmaker investigates whether Russia behind Snowden"s leaks

Anti-Gun Colorado Lawmaker Resigns Rather Than Face Recall

A third Democratic Colorado state senator facing possible recall after voting for gun-control measures says she will resign.

Sen. Evie Hudak of Denver’s western suburbs announced her resignation Wednesday, less than a week before opponents planned to turn in petitions seeking her recall. The resignation means Democrats will appoint an interim successor and keep a one-seat majority in the Senate next session.

Two other Democratic senators were ousted from office in September, Sens. John Morse of Colorado Springs and Angela Giron of Pueblo.

The recall efforts came after Colorado’s Democratic Legislature and governor last year approved a slate of gun-control measures including ammunition magazine limits and expanded background checks. The limits were the first adopted outside the East Coast after the Sandy Hook shootings.

© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Anti-Gun Colorado Lawmaker Resigns Rather Than Face Recall

Lawmaker: Terrorists change tactics after leaks

A top House lawmaker says those who want to harm the U.S. are already changing their behavior after leaks about classified U.S. surveillance programs.

The House intelligence chairman, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, says it’s part of the damage from disclosures by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of two NSA programs that collect millions of telephone records and track Internet activity. He gave no details.

Top committee Democrat, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland says he’s concerned that Snowden fled to Hong Kong, because of China’s spying on the U.S.

They spoke after meeting NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, who says he hopes to declassify details of dozens of attacks allegedly disrupted by the programs. Alexander says they don’t want to “cause another terror attack by giving out too much information.”

Associated Press

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Lawmaker: Terrorists change tactics after leaks