Secret Service calls Nugent over anti-Obama screed
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rocker and gun rights champion Ted Nugent says he will meet with the Secret Service on Thursday to explain his raucous remarks about what he called Barack Obama‘s “evil, America-hating administration” — comments some critics interpreted as a threat against the president.
“The conclusion will be obvious that I threatened no one,” Nugent told radio interviewer Glenn Beck on Wednesday. Nugent said he’d been contacted by the agency and would cooperate fully even though he found the complaints “silly.”
The controversy erupted after the self-styled “Motor City Madman” made an impassioned plea for support for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the National Rifle Association meeting in St. Louis last weekend. “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November,” Nugent said of the Obama administration.
He also included a cryptic pronouncement: “If Barack Obama becomes the next president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
Outraged Democrats circulated the remarks and suggested they were threatening. Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie confirmed that the agency was looking into the matter but declined to give details. “We are aware of the incident and we are taking appropriate follow-up,” Ogilvie said.
Nugent said he was simply trying to galvanize voters. The hard rocker, best known for 1970s hits like “Cat Scratch Fever,” is a conservative activist and has a history of heated and sometimes vulgar criticism of Obama. Nugent endorsed Romney after speaking to him last month.
Norway gunman wants freedom or death for massacre
OSLO (AP) — The right-wing fanatic on trial for massacring 77 people in Norway says he wants either freedom or death, calling the country‘s prison terms “pathetic” and arguing for the return of capital punishment, which was last used here to execute Nazi collaborators after World War II.
In the third day of his terror trial, Anders Behring Breivik was grilled by prosecutors about the anti-Muslim militant group he claims to belong to.
He rejected their suggestions that the “Knights Templar” doesn’t exist, but admitted he had embellished when describing the network in a 1,500-page manifesto he published online before the bomb-and-shooting rampage on July 22.
“In principle it is not an organization in a conventional sense,” he said, describing it as a leaderless network consisting of “independent cells.”
Prosecutors told reporters after Wednesday‘s hearing that they don’t believe the group is real or that the meetings Breivik claims took place in Liberia, Britain and the Baltic countries ever happened.
The issue is of key importance in determining Breivik‘s sanity, and whether he’s ultimately sent to prison or compulsory psychiatric care for carrying out Norway‘s worst peacetime massacre.
If found sane, Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society. If declared insane he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he’s considered ill.
“Acquittal or the death penalty are the only logical outcomes of this case,” the confessed killer said. “I view 21 years in prison as a pathetic sentence.”
According to Amnesty International, Belarus is the only country in Europe that still applies the death penalty; two young men were executed there last month. Russia announced a moratorium on capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe in 1996 and pledged to abolish it, but has not done so.
Norway abolished capital punishment in peacetime in 1905 but retained it for war crimes until 1979. After World War II, Norway executed 24 Norwegians, 13 Germans and one Dane. The last execution was in 1948.
Breivik described himself as a resistance fighter ready to die for his cause. He said there were too many “keyboard warriors” among Europe‘s far-right militants, and that they have a lot to learn from al-Qaida, including its methods and glorification of martyrdom.
The 33-year-old Norwegian claims Muslim immigrants are colonizing Europe, with the tacit approval of liberal “multiculturalist” governments. That’s why he says he chose to attack the government headquarters in Oslo and the annual summer camp of the Labor Party‘s youth wing.
Panetta apologizes over new military photo scandal
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta apologized Wednesday for gruesome, newly revealed photographs that show U.S. soldiers posing with the bloodied remains of dead insurgents in Afghanistan. He said war can lead young troops to “foolish decisions” and expressed concern the photos could incite fresh violence against Americans.
The White House called the two-year-old photos “reprehensible,” joining Panetta and other top military officials in expressing regret for the latest in a string of embarrassing missteps by the U.S. military in a war that‘s built on earning the trust and confidence of ordinary Afghans. In recent months, American troops have been caught up in controversies over burning Muslim holy books, urinating on Afghan corpses, an alleged massacre of 17 Afghan villagers and other misdeeds.
“This is war. I know that war is ugly and it’s violent, and I know that young people sometimes caught up in the moment make some very foolish decisions,” Panetta said. “I am not excusing that behavior, but neither do I want these images to bring further injury to our people or to our relationship with the Afghan people.”
“My apology is on behalf of the Department of Defense and the U.S. government,” Panetta told a news conference in Brussels following a meeting of NATO allies at which the way ahead in Afghanistan was the central topic.
The photos were published in Wednesday‘s Los Angeles Times. One shows members of the 82nd Airborne Division posing in 2010 with Afghan police holding the severed legs of a suicide bomber. The same platoon a few months later was sent to investigate the remains of three insurgents reported to have accidentally blown themselves up — and soldiers again posed and mugged for a photo with the remains, the newspaper said.
A photo from the second incident appears to show the hand of a dead insurgent resting on a U.S. soldier’s shoulder as the soldier smiles.
Panetta said he had urged the newspaper not to publish the photos, which it said it were given by a member of the 82nd Airborne.
“The reason for that is those kinds of photos are used by the enemy to incite violence, and lives have been lost by the publication of similar photos in the past,” he said in Brussels. His British counterpart, Philip Hammond, said he regretted the “besmirching of the good name” of all coalition troops who act properly.
There was no evidence of a violent Afghan backlash in the first hours following the photographs‘ publication.
In fact, there was no immediate comment from the Afghan government or President Hamid Karzai’s office, and many officials said they were not aware of the pictures, which were taken in Zabul province. The governor of the province, Ashraf Nasary, said he could not comment because he did not know about the incident or who was involved.
Mark Jacobson, an international affairs expert at the German Marshall Fund and a former deputy NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, said the picture-taking incident appeared to reflect a failure of military leadership.
Canada considering request to take U.S. prisoner
TORONTO (AP) — Canada said Wednesday that the U.S. wants to send back the last remaining Western detainee at Guantanamo, and the Canadian government must now decide whether to take him.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is considering repatriating Omar Khadr, the ministry said in a statement. It did not say when a decision was expected, but a U.S. official suggested it could be soon.
Khadr, 25, pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a U.S. soldier and was eligible to return to Canada from Guantanamo Bay last October under terms of a plea deal.
Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002, and he has spent a decade in Guantanamo. He received an eight-year sentence in 2010 — but only one year had to be served at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
John Norris, Khadr‘s Canadian lawyer, said Khadr likely would be imprisoned in Canada and serve out his sentence under Canadian law. He thinks that would make Khadr eligible for parole as early as the spring of 2013.
It will be up to Canada’s national parole board to release him, he added.
At the U.S. State Department, meanwhile, spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that the U.S. and Canada were in talks over Khadr.
“We‘re not going to be able give you a transfer timeline, but we’re working quickly and deliberately to close this process out,” Toner said.
A Canadian government official said the U.S. asked Canada to repatriate Khadr as a diplomatic favor, and Canada previously agreed to look favorably at the request. The official said the U.S. would pay to move Khadr to Canada.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Three agents out in wake of Secret Service scandal
WASHINGTON (AP) — Moving swiftly, the Secret Service forced out three agents Wednesday in a prostitution scandal that has embarrassed President Barack Obama. A senior congressman welcomed the move to hold people responsible for the tawdry episode but warned “it‘s not over.”
The agency announced three agents are leaving the service even as separate U.S. government investigations were under way.
The Secret Service did not identify the agents being forced out of the government or eight more it said remain on administrative leave. In a statement, it said one supervisor was allowed to retire and another will be fired for cause. A third employee, who was not a supervisor, has resigned.
The agents were implicated in the prostitution scandal in Colombia that also involved about 10 military service members and as many as 20 women. All the Secret Service employees who were involved had their security clearances revoked.
“These are the first steps,” said Rep. Pete King, R-New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the Secret Service. King said the agency’s director, Mark Sullivan, took employment action against “the three people he believes the case was clearest against.” But King warned: “It‘s certainly not over."
King said the agent set to be fired would sue. King said Sullivan had to follow collective bargaining rules but was “moving as quickly as he can. Once he feels the facts are clear, he’s going to move.”
The embarrassing scandal erupted last week after 11 Secret Service agents were sent home from the colonial-era city of Cartagena on Colombia‘s Caribbean coast after a night of partying that reportedly ended with at least some of them bringing prostitutes back to their hotel. The special agents and uniformed officers were in Colombia in advance of President Barack Obama’s arrival for the Summit of the Americas.
A White House official said Wednesday night that Obama had not spoken directly to Sullivan since the incident unfolded late last week. Obama‘s senior aides are in close contact with Sullivan and the agency’s leadership, said the official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
In Washington and Colombia, separate U.S. government investigations were already under way. King said he has assigned four congressional investigators to the probe. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, sought details of the Secret Service investigation, including the disciplinary histories of the agents involved. Secret Service investigators are in Colombia interviewing witnesses.
In a letter to Sullivan, Issa and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee‘s ranking Democrat, said the agents “brought foreign nationals in contact with sensitive security information.” A potential security breach has been among the concerns raised by members of Congress.
The incident occurred before Obama arrived and was at a different hotel than the president stayed in.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said news of the three agents leaving Secret Service was a positive development.
“I’ve always said that if heads don‘t roll, the culture in a federal agency will never change,” the Iowa lawmaker said in a statement. “Today’s personnel actions, combined with the swift removal and investigation, are positive signs that there is a serious effort to get to the bottom of this scandal.”
New details of the sordid night emerged Wednesday. A 24-year-old self-described prostitute told the New York Times that she met an agent at a discotheque in Cartagena and after a night of drinking, the pair agreed the agent would pay her $800 for sex at the hotel. The next morning, when the hotel‘s front desk called because the woman hadn’t left, the pair argued over the price.
“I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’” the woman told the newspaper in an interview in Colombia. She said the two argued after the agent initially offered to pay her about $30 and the situation escalated, eventually ending with Colombian law enforcement involved. She said she was eventually paid about $225.
Judge quits Trayvon Martin case, cites conflict
ORLANDO, Florida (AP) — The Florida judge presiding over the Trayvon Martin shooting case removed herself Wednesday after the attorney for defendant George Zimmerman argued she had a possible conflict of interest relating to her husband.
Judge Kenneth M. Lester Jr. will preside over the case, including the Friday bail hearing for the neighborhood watch volunteer, according to a news release from the court.
Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder for the Feb. 26 shooting of the unarmed Martin, 17. Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense after the teen attacked him. Martin‘s family and supporters claim Zimmerman was the aggressor, targeting Martin for suspicion mainly because he was black. Zimmerman’s father is white and his mother Hispanic.
Florida Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler had said she would make a decision by Friday, when the hearing had been set. Her husband works with Orlando attorney Mark NeJame, who was first approached by Zimmerman‘s family to represent the neighborhood watch volunteer.
But NeJame declined and referred them to Mark O’Mara, who is now representing Zimmerman. NeJame has since been hired by CNN to comment on the case.
Galluzzo said he had a conflict because of his personal and business relationship with O‘Mara.
O’Mara said he requested that Recksiedler step down now because the case is just beginning and he wanted any possible conflict to be addressed right away rather than in the middle of the case. Recksiedler was assigned the case after Zimmerman‘s arrest last week.
Lester, 58, was first elected to the bench in 1996. The Chicago native grew up in central Florida and graduated from the University of Florida College of Law in 1980, a year behind the special prosecutor in the case, Angela Corey.
Scorching talk: Romney, Obama battle over economy
President sketches his case for re-election in swing-state Ohio
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) — Their battle joined, challenger Mitt Romney savaged President Barack Obama‘s handling of the economy on Wednesday while the commander in chief commiserated up close with victims of the recession and warned that Republicans would only make matters worse.
“Obama is over his head and swimming in the wrong direction” when it comes to the economy, Romney said in a scorching speech delivered across the street from the football stadium where the president will deliver his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech this summer.
“Even if you like Barack Obama, we can’t afford Barack Obama,” the former Massachusetts governor declared, an evident reference to the president‘s ability to transcend at least some of the public’s dissatisfaction with the pace of the recovery. Romney quoted liberally — and mockingly — from Obama‘s 2008 campaign pledges to repair the economy.
At the same time, Obama sketched his case for re-election in swing-state Ohio, where he met with unemployed workers who have enrolled in job training programs. Then he spoke at the Lorain County Community College.
“Right now, companies can’t find enough qualified workers for the jobs they need to fill” locally, he said. “So programs like this one are training hundreds of thousands of workers with the skills that companies are looking for. And it‘s working.”
By contrast, he said, between the years 2000 and 2008, Republican policies produced “the slowest job growth in half a century ... and we’ve spent the last three and a half years cleaning up after that mess."
Campaign symbolism counted for much on a day that seems destined to be replicated often in the six months until Election Day.
The Republican challenger delivered his scathing denunciation of the president‘s policies with the Bank of America Stadium over his shoulder. Aides dubbed his remarks a pre-buttal to the president’s own, and early-arriving partisans heard a recorded medley of rock music that included “It‘s Still the Same.”
Each man taunted the other at times.
“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Obama said in an evident reference to Romney, whose father was president of American Motors, an automaker.
Romney jabbed that unlike four years ago, when Obama walked through stage-set columns at his convention, things would be different this summer.
“You‘re not going to see President Obama standing alongside Greek columns. He’s not going to want to remind anyone of Greece,” Romney said, “because he‘s put us on a road to become more like Greece,” where crushing debt has led to an austerity plan and public protests.
It was only within the past two weeks that Romney shed his competition for the Republican presidential nomination, and he is still in the process of trying to unite his party after a three-month primary struggle in which he had trouble appealing to hardcore conservatives.
But already, elements of the fall campaign are falling into place.
Obama’s campaign was airing Spanish language radio ads in Orlando, Florida, Las Vegas and Denver — all in states that the president won four years ago and that figure to be fiercely contested in the fall.
From Ohio, Obama hopscotched to Michigan for two fundraisers, the first a reception at Dearborn‘s Henry Ford Museum, where Romney in 2007 launched his unsuccessful bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.
Speaking in a museum named for the founder of Ford Motor Co., Obama got some of his biggest cheers when he highlighted his administration’s efforts to rescue the American auto industry. Later, at a private dinner fundraiser in Bingham Farms, he said that the industry‘s recovery didn’t just help Michigan, it “helped to give America a vision of what we could be.”
For his part, Romney arranged an appearance for Thursday at a factory in Lorain, Ohio, shadowing Obama‘s Wednesday trip to the area. Obama toured the factory as part of his 2008 campaign — and it was closed later.
Polls consistently show the economy is the top issue for the nation’s voters, who will decide whether to accept Romney‘s indictment or Obama’s reassurances. Given recent trends, each man has a case to make.
In Ohio, joblessness was 9.1 percent in February 2009, shortly after Obama took office. It stood at 7.6 last month.
In North Carolina, joblessness was 9.5 percent then, and stands at 9.9 now.
In Michigan, where Obama was appearing late Wednesday, it was 12.5 percent in 2009 and is 8.8 percent now.
In all three states, unemployment rose in the months immediately after Obama took office as the recession deepened and financial markets trembled.
“Right now we have two competing visions of our future. And the choice could not be clearer,” said Obama. He said he was sure Republicans were “patriots. I‘m sure they’re sincere in -- in terms of what they say. But their theory, I believe, is wrong."
Without mentioning Romney by name, he said, “Instead of moderating their views even slightly, you now have Republicans in Washington, the ones running for president, proposing budgets that shower the wealthiest Americans with even more tax cuts, folks like me who don‘t need them, weren’t looking for them."
But Romney was relentless as he ripped into the president.
“Virtually nothing he has done has made it more likely for people to get jobs,” he said.
Reading from Obama‘s campaign pledges from the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, he said the president has “failed by the measurements he set. You won’t hear that at this convention, but you‘re going to hear it at ours.”
He added: “We’re a trusting people. We‘re a hopeful people. But we are not dumb, and we are not going to fall for the same lines from the same person just because it’s a different place."
Teen pleads guilty to weapons charge in Utah school bomb plot
SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) -- A 16-year-old boy who authorities said plotted to bomb his Utah high school, inspired by the 1999 Columbine school massacre, has pleaded guilty to a weapons charge, and prosecutors recommended he spend six months in juvenile detention.
The teenager entered the plea on Tuesday in juvenile court in Ogden, Utah, to one count of possession or use of a weapon of mass destruction, court spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said.
Prosecutors said the teen, who attended Roy High School near Salt Lake City, was serious about carrying out the bomb plot.
The 16-year-old was arrested in January with classmate Dallin Morgan, 18, after another Roy High student showed police text messages about a plan the boys had to, in their words, “get revenge on the world."
Police have said the 16-year-old, who Reuters is not identifying because he is a minor, and Morgan concocted a detailed plot to bomb an assembly at the school and planned to steal a small plane from a nearby airstrip and fly away.
Court papers said the 16-year-old told police he was fascinated with the 1999 shooting massacre at Colorado‘s Columbine High, in which two high school seniors killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide.
Searches of the two Utah students’ homes turned up maps of Roy High along with flight training manuals and simulation programs on DVDs. No explosives were found, but the charges included an accusation of criminal conspiracy that let prosecutors pursue a weapon charge, although no bomb was found.
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