Government Executive - Authors - Brian Resnick

The Man Who Killed a President Over a Political Appointment

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 13:00:00 -0400

Walking into the main exhibit hall of the Mütter museum in Philadelphia is like entering a mausoleum. The remains of the departed are encased in its walls, but instead of marble nameplates obscuring the view, glass panes allow visitors to look in and marvel. Each specimen tells a story of a life not normal: From the skeleton of a man whose muscles turned to bone, to the world’s largest human colon (it looks like a gnarly root of an oak tree), and the attached livers of conjoined twins. All found their way here through donation or because doctors of yore would take souvenirs from their autopsies. I’ve come to check out one specimen in particular.

“These are all my brains,” curator Anna Dhody says, scanning a shelf in the museum’s cellar. We’re in the wet specimen room, a restricted area that resembles a walk-in pantry from hell. Cold like a grocer’s freezer aisle, its shelves are crammed with jars of assorted human viscera shining sickly under fluorescent lighting. “Theoretically he should be here with all my brains,” she says. A few beats pass in silence. “Ahh, here we go.”

Next to a shallow dish of kneecaps, that’s where we find it—“Charlie,” as Dhody calls him. (Ten years curating a museum of medical oddities and you too will be on first-name basis with the specimens, she says.)

In a slender jar, several sections of century-plus-old brain float—like marinated artichokes in a jar—in a solution of 70 percent alcohol and 30 percent water. A label reads: “Portions of brain of Charles Guiteau, assassin of President Garfield.”

The brain of Charles Guiteau is more than an historical oddity. Scientists at the time of his death thought it could unlock a mystery that had plagued and terrorized humanity from the beginning: What separates a normal man who lives by the law from a man motivated senselessly to murder? Guiteau’s murderous act, his apparent insanity, and the ensuing diagnosis of his brain came at a point in history where society was shifting away from the idea of sin being a black and white question, to one where we recognize there’s a great field of gray obscuring these answers.

One hundred thirty years ago, those pieces of gray matter resided in the body of a five-foot-five man with a crooked smile and a damned destiny.

Charles Guiteau, born September 8, 1841 in Freeport Illinois, was, by all accounts, not a stable person. Guiteau bounced around from being a failed lawyer, a charlatan preacher, and a sticky fingered bill collector. He dodged rent his whole life, and subsided mainly from the sympathy of his sister. He abused his wife, and when he wanted to divorce her, he slept with a prostitute to speed up the proceedings. Guiteau was quick to jump on bandwagons, just to abandon them in a fury. Like that time he joined the infamous Oneida community, a utopian-religious (and sex) commune in upstate New York. Guiteau worshipped its leader John Noyes—”I have perfect, entire and absolute confidence in him in all things,” Guiteau wrote of him—before fleeing (twice) and threatening Noyes with blackmail. Guiteau would later plagiarize Noyes’s writings as his own.

By 1875, Guiteau’s father thought his son had been possessed by the devil. His sister’s physician had declared him insane after he threatened her with an axe. Even Noyes—a man who practiced a life of free-love polyamorism, and preached that Jesus had returned to Earth in the year 70 A.D.—later wrote prosecutors that “Guiteau’s insanity had always consisted of vicious and irresponsible habits.”

As he aged, Guiteau increasingly felt the divine dictating his actions. “Like Paul, he had been chosen to preach a new Gospel,” The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, a 1968 history of the case, explains of his mental state.

Guiteau was crazy by many accounts, but not debilitatingly so. Acquaintances often mistook him for an eccentric. He was able to make it through life without being picked up by police or restrained in asylum.

That was, until 1880, when the voices inside his head led him to the Grand Old Republican party.

Cartoon showing Charles J. Guiteau holding pistol and paper reading, "an office or your life!" published in the satyric magazine Puck. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Before Guiteau murdered Garfield, he was a die-hard supporter. In the lead up to the 1880 election, Guiteau would haunt Republican party offices, begging to contribute to the election effort. He was relentless, and party officials caved and allowed him to deliver one incoherent speech to a small group of black voters in New York City.

The contribution was minimal, but in Guiteau’s mind, “It was this idea that elected General Garfield,” he wrote. And what should be his reward? A cushy European diplomatic post. First, he thought Vienna. No: only Paris would do.

After the election, Guiteau moved to Washington to collect his imagined prize. These were the days when any ordinary citizen could pay visits to officials. Guiteau roamed the halls of the State Department and White House, imploring anyone who would listen that he deserved a diplomatic post.

Meanwhile, he was wasting away. The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau describes his state:

He had no source of income, no lecturing, no books to sell, no bills to collect; he had no family; he never had any friends. His clothes, shabby enough when he reached Washington, were deteriorating. Even in March, with snow on the ground, he went about without boots or an overcoat. By June, his worn sleeves were pulled down over his hands and his coat buttoned up to his neck, for he had no collar and possibly lacked a shirt as well.

He didn’t get the diplomatic job. On one visit to the State Department, Secretary of State James Blaine barked at Guiteau “Never bother me again about the Paris consulship as long as you live.”

The words stung, and set Guiteau off on a bizarre chain of logic which would result in his demise. Blaine was a menace to the Republican party. To get rid of Blaine, he reasoned, he had to kill the president. After all, it was Garfield’s fault that such a man served in the State Department. Guiteau heard these instructions from God himself. It wouldn’t be an assassination, but a divinely ordained “removal.” The plan was essentially motiveless, as the the death of the president wouldn’t stand to benefit Guiteau or any Republican. “In the president’s madness he has wrecked the once grand old Republican party; and for this he dies,” Guiteau wrote in a letter of admission.

After weeks of careful stalking, Guiteau shot Garfield, twice, at the Baltimore and Ohio train depot in D.C. Upon being shot Garfield said “I am a dead man.” He’d lay in agony for 80 more days before that assertion became true.

Guiteau never really had a shot of going free in trial. He was the most hated man in America, and the only person to come to his defense with his brother-in-law, an attorney with very little courtroom experience. During the trial, Guiteau—who served as his own co-counsel—would shout obscenities and broke out into song on one occasion. He also declared “The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.” (Which sounded crazy at the time, but actually has some truth to it. “His doctors were ‘the best doctors’ meaning old school,” Dhody explains. “They had trained before the theory of antisepsis, so they were not taking the necessary precautions, they were not sterilizing instruments they were not sterilizing hands.” They also believed a person could be fed rectally, and would give Garfield regular beef broth enemas. Garfield died many pounds thinner and riddled with infection.)

The trial became less about Guiteau’s guilt or innocence, and more of a battleground for the day’s leading mental health researchers to debate a deep, dark question that stretched beyond the sad circumstances of the accused’s life: What was wrong with Guiteau and criminals like him?

The media covered the case in a similar fervor as, many years later, it would the O.J. trial. Each day newspapers would publish transcripts of the proceedings. On the first day of the trial, the courtroom was packed, standing room only, with more waiting outside. This was the biggest stage possible for physicians working in the murky science of the mind. “No single problem divided American psychiatrists more sharply than the proper definition of criminal responsibility,” Rosenberg writes in The Trial.

On trial with Guiteau were two theories of culpability.

The one supported by the prosecution was called the M’naghten test, which stipulated that if the accused simply knew the difference between right and wrong, he could be held accountable for his actions. Guiteau was intelligent enough to know that murder was a crime, and therefore should be sentenced. Maybe it was a life of sin that led him to his consistent erratic behavior, the prosecution admitted. But like an alcoholic taking a first swig, that was on Guiteau. In the mind of John Gray, the superintendent of the Utica State Hospital and the chief medical witness of the prosecution, Guiteau was simply a depraved individual. “I see nothing but a life of moral degradation, moral obliquity, profound selfishness, and disregard for the rights of others,” Gray said at trial. “I see no evidence of insanity, but simply a life swayed by his own passions.”

The defense’s physicians proposed a much more radical theory: That even though some people may know the difference between right and wrong, they aren’t capable of processing reality. Edward Charles Spitzka, a cocky 30-year-old who was a fierce opponent of the M’naghten rule, testified on Guiteau’s behalf.

Spitzka agreed with Gray: Yes, Guiteau had lived an immoral life. But in Spitzka’s view, Guiteau suffered from a mental condition that prevented him from understanding morality in the first place. He called this moral insanity—something we might regard today as sociopathy—which he described as “a person who is born with so defective a nervous organization that he is altogether deprived of that moral sense.”

To Spitzka, Guiteau’s condition was “analogous in that respect to the congenital cripple who is born speechless, or with one leg shorter than the other, or with any other monstrous development, that we now and again see.” These poor souls should be pitied. Throughout the trial, Guiteau believed that the American people and the newly sworn in President Chester Arthur would rally to his side, realizing Guiteau was an instrument of the divine. How is that based in any understanding of reality?

“When people brought up the notion of moral insanity, it was a way of broadening the notion of ‘what is a legitimate illness,’” Rosenberg says on recent phone call. “And it was saying, in effect, that you could be seemingly rational [but still mentally ill]—cognition was not enough of a test of health. Of course to many people that was subversive. It pushed the boundaries of what you could be held responsible for.”

Spitzka believed that this moral insanity was the result of a deformity in Guiteau’s brain, which he likely acquired through heredity. If only doctors could open him up, they’d plainly be able to see the difference.

Doctors did open him up. That is, after he was found guilty and sentenced to hang from a noose until dead. The chance to autopsy an infamous criminal was irresistible to top doctors at the time. “You had all these illustrious, well known physicians, they all wanted to get their hands on his body, because they wanted to be the one who could say ‘hey, this is what did it,’” Dhody says. “They were trying to find any visible, physical reason for why he did what he did.” One of the examiners was a fellow at the college that runs the Mütter museum, which is why “Charlie” is in its collection.

The autopsy didn’t completely vindicate Spitzka’s ideas, but it did lend them some evidence. “Several medical journals, previously hostile to any suggestion that the assassin might have been insane, now reversed their position” after the autopsy, Rosenberg wrote.

The autopsy hinted that Guiteau may have contracted syphilis during one of his encounters with prostitutes. In its later stages, syphilis infects the brain and causes mental instability. “The dura mater that surrounded his brain was thicker than normal, that is sometimes a characteristic of neurosyphilis,” Dhody says. The autopsy also found damage to blood vessels in several areas.

But that diagnosis doesn’t hold up under modern-day scrutiny. George Paulson is the former chair of Neurology at the Ohio State University who, in 2006, reviewed the autopsy records for the journal Historical Neuroscience. Looking back, he says, the evidence for neurosyphilis is inconclusive. “Most people with third stage syphilis—even though they can be grandiose and paranoid and get demented, usually it doesn’t hang on slowly for four or five years,” Paulson says. There’s usually a dramatic loss of cognitive function, he says. Guiteau was crazy for decades. Doctors now could definitely prove whether he had syphilis post-mortem, Paulson says, but not in the 1880s. It’s more likely Guiteau was schizophrenic, with a side of grandiose narcissism.

The law likes hard rules, which mental health avoids. We can all know crazy when we see it, but the line between a culpable mind and an insane one isn’t so easily drawn. These events occurred more than 13 decades ago, but similar dramas play out in courtrooms every year. Who of sound mind could act like James Holmes, who knowingly and without much reason opened fire in a crowded Colorado theater? His insanity plea was rejected by a jury, though he was spared a death sentence. “In a way [diagnosis] makes it simple, but it doesn’t make the social process about ‘what do you do about the guy’ simple,” Rosenberg says.

Guiteau willed his body to a local minister who felt some sympathy for him, on the condition that he would receive a proper burial. Grave robbing, especially of the notorious, wasn’t unprecedented. A secret gravesite was selected in the sub cellar of the Army jail. A 1890 New York Times investigation recalls what happened next. “The body lay there undisturbed for a few days… It had been cemented into its resting place, and the stone flags covered it so that is was profoundly hidden.” But “unknown and mysterious men were constantly prowling around.” Prison officials feared that a guard or convict may exhume Guiteau and sell his body.

So Guiteau’s body was dug up by the authorities in secret. It was boiled in a chemical solution and reduced to a skeleton. “Upon the skull,” the Times recalled, one could still see Guiteau’s “sardonic leer.” The remains were boxed up, “and, without ceremony or fresh service, put away.”

The Mütter museum has another famous brain in it’s collection: Albert Einstein’s. In the main collection room, a slice of his cauliflower-shaped cranial tissue is mounted on a slide under a magnifying glass.

Scientists have been speculating for years what might have been different about it, what clues it holds to the secret of his singular genius. Most apparent was that is showed few signs of the neurodegeneration that come with aging. His autopsy also noted that his brain lacked a sylvian fissure, which may have allowed for increased neurological connections across his mind. But for the most part, it was a normal brain. Even a little lighter than average.

What in the brain separates a man like Einstein from a man like Guiteau is not always possible to discern post-mortem. Genius or psychosis can only be seen in life. “In so many cases, you have these incredibly mentally ill people but the brain is not physically different upon gross examination,” Dhody says. “That’s why studying the brain is much easier to do on living individuals than on dead; a dead brain is a dead brain. It’s static—all the electricity, all the spark is gone.”

I think of that, staring into the glass jar with Guiteau’s brain. It’s just dead matter. The scaffolding of a house, not its contents. I take out my camera and start to take pictures.

“He would have loved this,” Dhody says, as I start, trying to capture his best angles.

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House Speaker John Boehner Is Resigning From Congress

Brian Resnick, Matt Berman, Clare Foran, and Nora Kelly, National Journal — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 09:56:27 -0400

Long under-fire from conservatives in his caucus, House Speaker John Boehner will resign effective October 30th, leaving both his speakership and his congressional seat, he said in a statement Friday morning.

“Today, my heart is full with gratitude for my family, my colleagues, and the people of Ohio’s Eighth District,” Boehner said in the press statement released several hours after one of his aides confirmed the exit. “God bless this great country that has given me—the son of a bar owner from Cincinnati—the chance to serve.”The speaker made the announcement to House Republicans in a “very moving and humbling speech,” according to one member.

Attempting to steer and unite a House Republican conference that is often pulled in different directions by moderate and conservative factions has been a defining feature of the speaker’s tenure. The last several years of Boehner’s speakership have been defined by lurches from one budget deadlock to another.

That tension has been on full display, and at times appeared at risk of boiling over, during the current debate over federal funding for Planned Parenthood and government spending in Congress, now likely to be Boehner’s last fight as speaker.

A Boehner aide said Friday that the speaker had planned to resign at the end of last year, but his plans changed once former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his reelection. “The Speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution,” the aide said. Boehner has been speaker since Republicans won the House following the 2010 election.

A spokesperson for Eric Cantor tells National Journal the former Republican majority leader is not commenting on Boehner’s resignation today.

The speaker left the Capitol Friday without speaking to reporters. He’s expected to appear live on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday.

Boehner’s resignation will be seen as a victory to some members of the conservative wing of the House, namely members of the House Freedom Caucus. Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina offered a motion to vacate the chair—removing Boehner from the speaker’s position—back in July, but efforts to remove Boehner hadn’t fully taken off in the months since. According to a report from CNN, some Freedom Caucus members wanted to wait until Pope Francis left Washington to move on a vote. The conservative Heritage Action, often a Boehner foe, took something of a victory lap after the news, saying “Today’s announcement is a sign that the voice of the American people is breaking through in Washington. Now is the time for a principled, conservative leader to emerge.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the number two Republican in the House, called Boehner a “leader, mentor, and most of all friend” in a statement on Friday. “He will be missed because there is simply no one else like him,” McCarthy said, adding: “Now is the time for our conference to focus on healing and unifying to face the challenges ahead and always do what is best for the American people.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, whose name was immediately floated as a speaker contender in the minutes after this morning’s announcement, characterized Boehner as a “great leader” for the GOP in a statement, and said his resignation is “an act of pure selflessness.” Though Ryan says he won’t be pursuing the speakership himself, he said he’s “confident our conference will elect leaders who are capable of meeting the challenges our nation faces.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Boehner in a speech from the Senate floor on Friday, crediting the House Speaker with the ability to “transform a broken and dispirited Republican minority into the largest Republican majority since the 1920s.” Displaying empathy for the oft-embattled leader, McConnell, who has also worked to rein in an at-times unruly Republican conference, said: “John knows what it’s like to struggle and to dream of something better.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Boehner’s resignation “seismic for the House” during a press conference Friday morning. She called the exit “a stark indication” of the House Republican’s “disarray” and what she said is an “obsession” with shutting down the government. Pelosi said she has not yet heard from Boehner personally. Dubbing the speaker “the latest Tea Party victim,” Pelosi’s PAC sent out a fundraising pitch off the news.

The news arrives just a day after a moment that, for the House Speaker, represented one of the highlights of his political career. After extending invitations to heads of the Catholic Church for more than 20 years, Boehner finally succeeded in getting a pope to visit and address a joint-meeting of Congress.

On Thursday, the famously sharp-tongued Republican leader appeared highly emotional during Pope Francis’ speech to Congress, a winding address that touched on immigration, the environment, and the family.

Boehner teared up during the speech, pausing many times to wipe away tears with a handkerchief.

Zach C. Cohen contributed to this article.

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Trump and the Benefits of Narcissism in Politics

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 10:00:00 -0400

It's safe to assume Donald J. Trump has very high self-esteem.

Who else but Trump would take complete credit for making immigration a talking point during the first GOP debate? (it's a GOP debate! Of course immigration will be mentioned!) Who else but Trump could answer the question, "What was the last thing you apologized for?" with: "It was too many years ago to remember. I have one of the great memories of all time, but it was too long ago."

Trump is breaking every convention of presidential politics—flaunting his unapologetically egotistical, politically incorrect style—and baffling pundits in the process. Trump is oftenlampooned for this, but maybe the joke's on everyone else. His grandiosity appears to be working. By force of personality, Trump is taking an idea as far-fetched as a competitive Trump presidential bid and turning it into glittering reality.

W. Keith Campbell is less shocked than the pundits. While not admitting to being a narcissist himself, Campbell is one of the foremost narcissism researchers in the United States, having authored dozens of academic papers and some books on the topic.

"Narcissism is about being grandiose," he says. "It's about being better than people: I'm better, I'm stronger, I'm more special, more important."

In the lab, Campbell has seen how narcissistic subjects come to dominate group task assignments. He was also apart of a team that studied historical levels of narcissism in American presidents and found evidence the personality trait correlated with effectiveness in office.

So what can politicians learn from narcissism research? Campbell explains below in this lightly edited interview.

(And keep in mind, although Trump stands out in self aggrandizement, any person running for president is sure to score high on a narcissism assessment scale. "That's a job requirement," Campbell says. "You have to think, 'I should rule the free world.'")

Whether politicians are truly narcissistic or not, we often see them—particularly Trump—project a narcissistic persona. Are there benefits to projecting narcissism in politics?

People who are narcissistic are often propelled into these positions of leadership. They rise to leadership. In leadership research, we often look at emergent leadership [how people become leaders] and then success as a leader. What narcissism predicts really well is emergent leadership. People who are narcissistic are good at becoming leaders. In part, because they want to, and in part, because they project confidence that people want.

Once they get to leadership positions, it's a real mixed bag. There are positives and negatives.

What are some of the down sides?

It's a really interesting story with narcissism and leaders. There's some work showing a trade-off between risk and narcissism. Meaning that leaders who are narcissistic are willing to take a lot of risks—big, public risks. When it works, they look like heroes. When it fails, they blame everybody and go to another job. You see this in a lot of corporate situations, when a narcissistic leader comes in and makes massive changes. That's what everyone is scared of when they get a new boss.

Another trade-off we see—and we see this in our historical work on presidents—is ethics. Based on historian ratings, we see presidents who were very narcissistic like [Lyndon] Johnson and [Richard] Nixon, who made big changes but also had ethical issues that went with it.

Are there benefits to being a narcissistic outside the realms of politics and leadership?

There's a very similar pattern you see in both romantic relationships and leadership positions. People who are narcissistic, they find more relationships, more romantic relationships. They tend to be seen as attractive. They tend to be liked initially. And then their relationships often have ethical problems down the line: infidelity, manipulation, control issues.

What in your opinion is the ideal personality of a leader?

It's really challenging, because part of it depends on the context. If you are in a highly functioning organization in a good economy, you want someone who is an ethical manager to keep it going. What happens in very unstable economic climates is that people often look to strong leaders. And leaders who appear strong appear narcissistic. [Vladimir] Putin is a great example. He does a lot of self-promotion.

The key to [effective] narcissism: Can you turn it off when you are listening to your advisers? Then it works. But when you are so narcissistic you can't take advice from people, you ruin your relationships with your friends, your family. Then people won't trust you. Then it can be very destructive.

(Image via Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com )

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Democrats Say 'Comprehensive Immigration,' Republicans Say 'Bureaucrats'

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 16:19:42 -0400

Ted Cruz said one of the following quotes in his presidential campaign announcement. Hillary Clinton said the other in her first major speech of the campaign. Can you guess which is which?

"... imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare."

"I believe that success isn't measured by how much the wealthiest Americans have, but by how many children climb out of poverty."

Easy, right?

For humans with some political knowhow, this task is simple. The word "repeal" in the context of "Obamacare" immediately signals a Republican talking point, whereas Democrats are more likely to refer to "the wealthiest Americans" in a statement about poverty.

The question that data scientists at Quorum, a political analytics firm, sought to answer was this: Can computers use a similar process to come to the same conclusion? Could they teach a computer to predict political party from speech?

Mining the text of House and Senate floor speeches in the Congressional record, Quorum cofounder Jonathan Marks and his team wanted to see if they could accurately predict which congressional members belong to which party.

"We gave the computer a large amount of text, which had been fed by Republicans and Democrats," Marks explains. "And then we asked it to identify patterns in the way that Democrats and Republicans talk that make them different."

The program searched for the favorite words used by each party, but it also searched for the words that were uniquely favored by each party. Each party may say "America" often. But Republicans are much more likely to say "bureaucrats," for example.

According to Marks, about 80 percent of the variation in the difference between what representatives say in Congress can be explained by party affiliation. According to his computer program, here are the words and phrases with the greatest predictive power for both parties.

Republican Words

Bureaucrats

Obamacare

Job creators

Raise taxes

Mandates

IRS

Illegally

Stimulus

Promises

Liberal

Obama administration

Burdensome

Government spending

American energy

Amnesty

Democratic Words

Wealthiest

Tax breaks

Republican colleagues

Minimum wage

Climate change

Comprehensive immigration

Tax cuts

Pollution

Unemployment insurance

Republican budget

African-American

Republican leadership

Equality

Working families

Middle class

(Image via pashabo/ Shutterstock.com)

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Video: Obama Spoke Wednesday About Bill Cosby

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 16:00:50 -0400

During a Wednesday press conference on the Iran nuclear deal, President Obama was asked an off-topic question. April Ryan, a correspondent with American Urban Radio Networks, inquired: "Would you revoke the Medal of Freedom from Bill Cosby?" Since last year, the actor and comedian has been facing mounting allegations from multiple women that he drugged and raped them. Cosby received the award in 2002.

Obama replied:

With respect to the Medal of Freedom: There's no precedent for revoking a medal. We don't have that mechanism, and as you know, I tend to make it a policy not to comment on the specifics of cases where there might still be, if not criminal, then civil issues involved. I'll say this: if you give a woman—or a man, for that matter—without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that's rape. I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.

Watch the exchange:

(Top image via Randy Miramontez/Shutterstock.com)

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Obama: Argument for Rejecting Iran Deal 'Defies Logic'

Brian Resnick and Priscilla Alvarez, National Journal — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:16:53 -0400

This is it: President Obama's moment to defend what may become the most lasting and consequential foreign policy decision of his tenure.

"Yesterday was a historic day," the president said at a press conference Wednesday. "With this deal, we cut off every single one of Iran's pathways to a nuclear program—a nuclear weapons program. And Iran's nuclear program will be under severe limits for many years. Without a deal, those pathways remain open. "

Obama announced a day ago that Iran, the U.S. and other nations struck a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions. While some have hailed it as an accomplishment of diplomacy, possibly thwarting a regional arms race and preventing a future U.S. military campaign against Iran, others—most vocally Republicans and the Israeli government—have called the deal dangerous, emboldening a nation that's known to be a state sponsor of terror.

The president acknowledged these concerns, but said the deal serves its purpose. He hinted at lawmakers opposed to the accord, calling their view flawed.

"That because this deal does not solve all those other problems [the U.S. has with Iran]—that that's an argument for rejecting this deal—it defies logic," Obama said. "It makes no sense."

Congress has 60 days to review the 159-page deal, and the White House has a tough sell ahead. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the administration came into the talks from a "flawed perspective: reaching the best deal acceptable to Iran, rather than actually advancing our national goal of ending Iran's nuclear program." Obama has said that he will veto any legislation to kill the bill. The president needs 34 total senators on his side to ensure that veto won't be overturned, according to NPR.

On Wednesday, Obama asked that lawmakers evaluate "this agreement based on the facts. Not on politics, not on posturing, not on the fact that this is a deal I bring to Congress as opposed to a Republican president, not based on lobbying, but based on what [is in] the national interest in the United States of America."

He said he has spoken to leaders in Congress from both parties, and that his national security team is offering "extensive briefings" about it. On Wednesday morning, Vice President Joe Biden went to the Hill to brief House Democrats on the deal.

The accord will reduce Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium, as well as the number of centrifuges and sanctions on the country's economy. It would increase the "breakout" time—the time it would take for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon if it breaks its promise, and calls for international inspections of Iranian facilities.

The final round of negotiations included the extension of a series of self-imposed deadlines as negotiators from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.S., and Iran hammered out the details in Vienna. They reached an agreement on the 18th day of talks.

Obama elaborated on what hasn't changed in regards to U.S. relations with Iran.

"We'll still have problems with Iran's sponsorship of terrorism, its funding of proxies like Hezbollah that threaten Israel and threaten the region. the destabilizing activities that they're engaging in, including in places like Yemen. And my hope is that building on this deal, we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivize them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative, to operate the way we expect nations in the international community to behave: but we're not counting on it."

Obama addressed the Israeli government's concerns about the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long criticized the negotiations, said Tuesday the agreement had made the world "a much more dangerous place."

"I think there are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran's position in the world generally," Obama said. "I've said this to Prime Minister Netanyahu, I've said it directly to the Israeli people. But what I've also said is that all those threats are compounded if Iran gets a nuclear weapon."

Diplomacy, Obama said, was the country's best option. "Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it's resolved through force, through war," Obama said.

He also acknowledged there are limitations to the United States' negotiating power. "We don't have diplomatic leverage to eliminate every vestige of a peaceful nuclear program in Iran," he said. "But we do have the leverage to make sure they don't have a weapon.

The American public appears somewhat divided on the new agreement. According to anAssociated Press poll conducted in the week before it was announced, 51 percent of respondents said the United States should engage in a diplomatic relationship with Iran. Forty-five percent said the number of sanctions against the country should remain at their current level, and 32 percent said there should be more sanctions.

In Iran citizens cheered in the streets after the news of the deal broke. To Iranians, the end of sanctions means the end of economic isolation from the broader world.

Obama offered a warning to Iran on Wednesday.

"With this deal, if Iran violates its commitments, there will be real consequences," he said. "Nuclear-related sanctions that have helped to cripple the Iranian economy will snap back into place."

(Image via Borna_Mirahmadian/Shutterstock.com)

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The Stunning ISIS-Related Allegations Against the Son of a Boston Cop

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 10:30:17 -0400

The latest American arrested for alleged ISIS sympathies and possessing firearms to presumably be used in a domestic attack is the 23-year-old son of a Boston police captain. His father, according to ABC News, was one of the first responders in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Arrests of American citizens with alleged intentions to carry out terrorist plots in the name of ISIS often take dramatic story arcs, but this one is laden with tragic irony.

According to the Justice Department's account, Alexander Ciccolo—who also goes by the name Ali Al Amriki—planned, like the Tsarnaev brothers in the 2013 attack, to set off a pressure-cooker bomb loaded with shrapnel in a crowded area. His father is Police Capt. Robert Ciccolo, who works at Boston police headquarters. According to a local CBS affiliate, the older Ciccolo turned his son into law enforcement.

"Ciccolo spoke with a cooperating witness in recorded conversations about his plans to commit acts of terrorism inspired by [ISIS], including setting off improvised explosive devices, such as pressure cookers filled with black powder, nails, ball bearings, and glass, in places where large numbers of people congregate, such as college cafeterias," a Justice Department press release states. "Prior to his arrest, agents observed Ciccolo purchase a pressure cooker similar to that used in the Boston Marathon bombings."

In a search of Ciccolo's apartment, law enforcement found "several partially constructed 'Molotov Cocktails,'" the press release continues. Ciccolo is charged with the illegal possession of firearms, including two pistols and two rifles.

In its investigation, the FBI was told by "a close acquaintance" of Ciccolo that he

had a long history of mental illness and in the last 18 months had become obsessed with Islam. The acquaintance also said that the defendant had recently stated that he believed that the "faith is under attack" and that he is "not afraid to die for the cause."

In a recording with a cooperating FBI witness, Ciccolo praised a lone-gunman terrorist attack in Tunisia that killed 38 people.

"Awesome, you know that, ah, that brother in Tunisia was impressive," the FBI recorded Ciccolo saying, according to the release. "He got like 38, 39 people … one guy … that is a huge accomplishment I think."

After Ciccolo was arrested, a DOJ detention memo reads, he stabbed a nurse during a routine medical screening.

"During his meeting with the nurse, the defendant grabbed a pen and forcefully stabbed the nurse in the head, leaving a bloody hole in the nurse's skin and causing the pen to break in half," the memo reads.

According to ABC News, FBI officials said Ciccolo's arrest is one of several in relation to threats of ISIS-inspired violence around the Fourth of July holiday.

(Image via Marcio Jose Bastos Silva / Shutterstock.com)

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Obama: 'The Affordable Care Act Is Here to Stay'

Brian Resnick — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:48:23 -0400

Twice, President Obama's signature domestic accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, has been reviewed under the mortal threat of the Supreme Court. And twice it has survived.

"Today, after more than 50 votes in Congress to repeal or weaken this law, after a presidential election based in part on preserving or repealing this law, after multiple challenges to this law before the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act is here to stay," Obama said from the White House on Thursday, with Vice President Joe Biden standing alongside him.

In a 6-3 ruling on Thursday in King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's insurance subsidies, keeping state exchanges in 34 states intact. If the case had gone the other way, the decision would have invalidated health care subsidies for millions of Americans. Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the majority opinion, wrote that such a scenario would have sucked Obamacare exchanges into a "death spiral."

Obama struck a triumphant tone. "This law is working exactly as it's supposed to," he said. "In many ways, that law is working better than we expected it to. For all the misinformation campaigns, all the doomsday predictions, all the talk of death panels and job destruction, for all the repeal attempts, this law is now helping tens of millions of Americans."

Obama implied that the Supreme Court decision means people should accept his health care as the law of the land and that the debate over it is now over.

"This is health care in America," he said.

But Obama said there is still work left to do. Under the law, states have the option to expand Medicaid coverage with federal funds. Many Republican-led states have declined to so.

"We've still got states out there that for political reasons are not covering millions of people that they could be covering, despite the fact that the federal government is picking up the tab," Obama said.

Thursday's decision, while a victory for the president, also saves Republicans from a messy political scenario. With subsidies gutted, Congress would have had to scramble to patch the law to shield the Americans that would lose their coverage, most of whom reside in red states. President Obama had previously said that the Court "probably shouldn't even have" taken up the case that was decided today.

The decision is the latest in a series of wins for the Obama administration this week. The Court also ruled Thursday, in a 5-4 decision, in favor of a legal maneuver the administration uses in its efforts to prevent housing discrimination. And on Wednesday—after weeks of anticipation, a much-hyped failed House vote, and Democratic defections—Congress voted to give the president wide-ranging authority on negotiating global trade deals.

Obama expressed hope that the end is near for legal challenges to his health care law.

"This was a good day for America," he said. "Let's get back to work."

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Obama on Charleston: 'I've Had to Make Statements Like This Too Many Times'

Brian Resnick and Priscilla Alvarez, National Journal — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 17:14:02 -0400

Once again, President Obama addresses a nation in mourning.

Wednesday night, a lone gunman opened fire in a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine. Police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime. The suspect, a 21-year-old white male, has appeared in photographs wearing pro-apartheid paraphernalia. He was apprehended Thursday morning. "First, we must confirm this individual is involved in it," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said shortly after the arrest.

President Obama was joined by Vice President Joe Biden during the Thursday press statement.

"There is something particularly heartbreaking about a death happening in a place in which we seek solace and we seek peace in a place of worship," Obama said, noting the historical significance of the church in which the shooting occurred. "Mother Emanuel is, in fact, more than a church. This is a place of worship that was founded by African Americans seeking liberty. This is a church that was burned to the ground because its worshippers worked to end slavery. ... This is a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America."

The shooting prompted Obama to reiterate his position on combatting gun violence in America.

"I've had to make statements like this too many times," Obama said. "We don't have all of the facts, but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun."

The president continued, suggesting that the country has to act to prevent gun violence. "Now is the time for mourning and for healing, but let's be clear at some point, we as a country, we have to reckon with the fact that this mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries," Obama said. "It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it."

Vice President Joe Biden echoed these words in a joint statement with his wife released Thursday afternoon. "As a nation we must confront the ravages of gun violence and the stain of hatred that continues to be visited on our streets, in our schools, in our houses of worship, and in our communities," the Bidens said.

Obama said he and the first lady knew the pastor killed in Wednesday night's shooting. "To say that our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and their community doesn't say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel," he said.

Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said in a press statement that both President Obama and Vice President Biden have personally called him, offering condolences and assurances of federal support.

"We all woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken," said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, fighting through tears. "We have some grieving and pain that we have to go through."

Obama often cites his own life and experience in trying to narrate horrific events and express empathy for victims. After the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, he referenced his feelings as a father whose daughters were not much different than those who were killed. In the wake of the death of Trayvon Martin and its resulting trial, Obama spoke of his experience being an African-American man in America.

The shooting in Charleston hits on both of these identities.

"The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked."

He quoted the words Dr. Martin Luther King said in the wake of the 1963 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama.

"'They [the ones who died] say to each of us,' Dr. King said, 'black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely with who murdered them but about the system, and the way of life, the philosophy, which produced the murderers,'" Obama said, quoting King. "'Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.'"

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The U.S. Government's Battles With Professional Sports

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Thu, 28 May 2015 13:26:10 -0400

Professional sports are ripe for corruption: The proliferation of vast sums of cash and competition in zero-sum games push people to actions on the edges of legality. But other scandals require oversight as well: controversy over team names, tax exemptions, and other non-illegal but controversial dealings compel government figures to interfere.

Along with prosecuting illegal sports gambling or stamping out counterfeit sports merchandise, figures in the U.S. government sometimes go after the big leagues themselves. Here are some examples.

U.S. Attorneys Take on FIFA

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Wednesday that the United States was pursuing criminal charges against 14 defendants in a case involving FIFA, the world's governing soccer body. Among the charges: money laundering, corruption, racketeering, and obstruction of justice. The United States can bring charges against international figures because FIFA's dealings have intersected with the U.S. financial system. Law enforcement officials in Switzerland, where seven individuals were arrested, are working with the United States to extradite the accused.

Steriods in Baseball

Perhaps the most widely publicized federal investigation into professional sports was the 20-month Senate investigation of steroid use in major league baseball. Former Senator George Mitchell, a Democrat from Maine, commissioned the 409-page report that was released in 2007. (Congress can investigate and regulate professional sports under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution.) The report identified 86 players involved in steroid or performance-enhancing drug use—most notable among them, Roger Clemens. Bud Selig, then baseball's commissioner, called the findings "a call to action." The MLB's drug testing policies became more stringent after the report was released.

The Washington Football Team

Last summer, the U.S. patent office canceled six of the Redskins' trademark logos because the office considered the team's name "disparaging to Native Americans." The effect was to weaken the team's ability to thwart counterfeit merchandisers. The team has been under increasing public and government pressure to change its name over the last several years. In 2014, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma wrote to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. "The National Football League can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur," the bipartisan pair of legislators wrote.

The (Dropped) Case Against Lance Armstrong

For two years, U.S. attorneys investigated cyclist Lance Armstrong over allegations that he operated a doping ring while riding professionally, and thus defrauded his sponsors. The investigation was dropped in 2012 for unclear reasons. Armstrong admitted publicly to taking performance enhancing drugs in January 2013.

The NFL's Tax-Exempt Status

Facing political pressure from Congress, the NFL decided to drop its tax-exempt status in April. Its tax exemption was a magnet for criticism: The U.S. treasury was missing out on millions of tax dollars from an organization that aims to take in $25 billion in annual revenue by 2027. "Professional sports organizations aren't fooling anybody," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said in January. "Organizations like the NFL and NHL are for-profit businesses making millions of dollars each year. These are not charities nor are they traditional trade organizations. They are for-profit businesses and should be taxed as such."

Operation Hook Shot

In 2011, the Justice Department charged 10 people with the conspiracy to commit sports bribery, and the operation of an illegal gambling ring. Two former University of San Diego basketball players (one of whom was an all-time top scorer for the school) and an assistant coach were alleged to have attempted to influence the final scores of basketball games during the 2009-2010 NCAA men's basketball season, so that accomplices could make the right bets in Las Vegas casinos. According to the Justice Department, the scheme—which also involved the distribution of marijuana—netted $120,000. A total of ten people were indicted in the case as the result of the FBI investigation dubbed "Operation Hook Shot."

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Newly Released Emails Detail Benghazi Correspondence

Brian Resnick and Nora Kelly, National Journal — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:03:00 -0400

The New York Times on Thursday released 350 pages of Hillary Clinton's personal emails related to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. The emails are a subset of the 850 pages that the State Department turned over to the special House committee investigating the attack. And they are but a fraction of the 55,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department from her personal account earlier this year. The Times's analysis finds that the emails the newspaper received do not appear to contain classified information.

A few details immediately stand out.

1. On Sept. 12, 2012—the day after the attack that killed Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans—Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal emailed the secretary of State intelligence details suggesting that demonstrators angered by an anti-Islam video had launched the assault. Blumenthal was not a State Department official, but rather a longtime Clinton friend and aide. According to the Times, Clinton forwarded Blumenthal's emails to Jake Sullivan, a State Department foreign policy adviser.

That initial Sept. 12 report contained information Blumenthal obtained about a conversation between senior security officials in Libya and the country's interim president at the time, Mohammed Magariaf. Blumenthal reported intelligence that the attacks "were also inspired by and linked to an attack on the U.S. mission in Egypt on the same day."

Another source told Blumenthal that a politically fraught "atmosphere" in the country—the result of "current covert efforts" to link Magariaf "directly to foreign intelligence services"—also significantly contributed to the attacks.

2. But Blumenthal soon emailed details contradictory to the video story: He advised Clinton that Libyan security officials suggest the attack was orchestrated by a Libyan terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaida. He wrote that sources said "the attacks had been planned for approximately one month."

Blumenthal wrote that Libyan security officials "do believe that the attackers having prepared to launch their assault took advantage of the cover provided by the demonstrations in Benghazi protesting an internet production seen as disrespectful to the prophet Mohammed." Libyan officials also reported that the "attackers were ... looking for an opportunity to approach the consulate under cover in a crowd."

Clinton responded to the message, "We should get this around ASAP." (According to the Times, this message was sent in response to Blumenthal's updated account of events.)

Despite that second account's revelations, the White House maintained for several days the narrative that an anti-Islam video precipitated the attack. On Sept. 16, 2012, then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice told ABC's This Week that "based on the information that we have at present ... in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous—not a premeditated—response."

3. According to the Times, Amb. Stevens wrote to Clinton a year and a half prior to the raid, and said he was considering leaving Benghazi due to security concerns. The email contained "sensitive but unclassified" information on Stevens's travel plans.

Earlier this week, a federal judge rejected the State Department's proposal to release Clinton's emails in one batch by January 2016 and instead ordered that emails from her tenure as secretary of State be released on a rolling basis. Clinton told reporters Tuesday that she has asked the State Department to "please move as quickly as they possibly can" on the release of her emails.

Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this article.

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Obama Announces New Initiative to Help Young Minorities, As Police Deploy in Baltimore

Brian Resnick and Priscilla Alvarez, National Journal — Tue, 05 May 2015 10:25:07 -0400

On Monday, President Obama introduced a spinoff of his My Brother's Keeper initiative in hopes of reducing the racial gap in the U.S. economy amid recent turmoil in Baltimore, while in a cable-news splitscreen, police in the city responded in force to an alleged handgun violation.

"That sense of unfairness and of powerlessness, of people not hearing their voices, that's helped fuel some of the protests we've seen in places like Baltimore and Ferguson and right here in New York," Obama said from Lehman College in New York. "The catalyst of those protests were the tragic deaths of young men and a feeling that law is not always applied evenly in this country. In too many places in this country, black boys and black men, Latino boys, Latino men, they experience being treated differently by law enforcement."

The president expanded on his comments last week on confrontations between law enforcement and young black men as a "slow-rolling crisis."

"What we gathered here to talk about today is something that goes deeper than policing. It speaks to who we are as a nation and what we're willing to do to make sure that equality of opportunity is not an empty word," he said.

During the president's remarks, confusion and outrage again gripped Baltimore. Contradictory reports circulated about a police incident near where protests and riots broke out last week. While some bystanders told reporters that a man had been shot by police, police officials quickly dismissed those accounts as "unfounded." According to CNN, Baltimore Police were trying to arrest the man on a possible handgun violation. Police say the man dropped the gun, and it fired. According to the Baltimore Sun, police say the man was arrested and then hospitalized "out of an abundance of caution." A revolver was recovered with one spent cartridge, a Baltimore police spokesperson told reporters on scene. "The police never discharged any weapons," he said. "He [the man with the gun] is not shot... No one was injured."

President Obama unwittingly narrated from hundreds of miles away.

"We ask police to go into communities where there's no hope," Obama said, almost concurrently. "Eventually something happens because of the tensions between society and these communities, and the police are just on the front lines of that."

The nonprofit, called My Brother's Keeper alliance, is a spinoff of My Brother's Keeper, which was introduced by the president in February 2014 as an attempt to improve the futures of young minority males. Former Deloitte CEO Joe Echevarria will lead the alliance with a team that also includes singer John Legend. The advisory group is stacked with athletes and former government officials, including Shaquille O'Neal, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Attorney General Eric Holder. Thus far, the alliance has announced $80 million in commitments, according to the president.

Obama touted the involvement of the private sector Monday. "They're not doing it just to assuage society's guilt. They're doing this because they know that making sure all of our young people have the opportunity to succeed is an economic imperative," he said.

Broderick Johnson, chairman of the White House's My Brother's Keeper Task Force, said the alliance will join private-sector organizations "to focus on expanding opportunity and tearing down barriers facing our youth."

To do so, the alliance will use corporate donations to provide grants to programs and to assist in community infrastructure.

"They're going to help build our communities. They will make our communities safer," Obama said on the success of minority youth. "They aren't part of the problem, they're potentially part of the solution if we treat them as such."

Johnson called the initiative "deeply personal," adding that "as a proud son of Baltimore, this week's announcement comes at a time of unique and special resonance for me."

Monday's announcement follows last week's unrest in Baltimore linked to the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a spinal injury while in police custody. Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced charges Friday against six officers involved in Gray's arrest, ranging from assault to second-degree murder.

The alliance may also provide a clue into what Obama plans to take on post-presidency. Obama alluded to his aspirations Thursday. "I'll be done being president in a couple years, and I'll still be a pretty young man," he said while speaking to students at the Anacostia Library. "So, I'll go back to doing the kinds of work that I was doing before. Just trying to find ways to help people, help young people get educations, and help people get jobs, try to bring business into neighborhoods that don't have enough businesses. That's the kind of work that I really love to do."

He repeated those remarks Monday, saying "this will remain a mission for me and for Michelle, not just for the rest of my presidency, but for the rest of my life."

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The Shocking Claims in the Terrorism Indictment of Two New York Women

Brian Resnick and Nora Kelly, National Journal — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 16:00:00 -0400

Two women in New York City have been charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Justice Department said Thursday. The women, Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, "did knowingly and willfully" plan to use an explosive device in an attack on U.S. soil, the complaint against them reads. Both Velentzas and Siddiqui are U.S. citizens.

The Justice Department indictment alleges that the women researched methods to make car bombs, fertilizer bombs, and pressure-cooker bombs. The complaint alleges that Siddiqui obtained "multiple propane tanks" and had instructions on "how to transform propane tanks into explosive devices."

Much of the complaint stems from conversations between the two women and an undercover officer. Here are some of the standout details. Of course, all Justice Department claims are alleged until proved in a court of law.

◆ Siddiqui said that ever since the Boston Marathon bombing, Velentzas "has been obsessed with pressure cookers." Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are said to have used two pressure cooker bombs during their April 2013 attack. The latter brother is now on trial in the Massachusetts capital; his brother died during a manhunt shortly after the attack.

◆ The background photo on Velentzas's phone was "an image of [Osama] bin Laden holding an AK-47 gun." She told the undercover investigator that bin Laden's ideology was similar to her own.

◆ Velentzas told the undercover investigator that if she were to be arrested by police she would try to take their weapons. "If we can get even one of their weapons, we can shoot them," she allegedly said. "They will probably kill us, but we will be martyrs automatically and receive Allah's blessings."

◆ Siddiqui penned a poem for the magazine Jihad Recollections in 2009 called "Take Me to the Lands Where the Eyes Are Cooled." In the poem, she describes how she hits "cloud nine with the smell of turpentine, nations wiped clean of filthy shrines" and says there's "[n]o excuse to sit back and wait—for the skies rain martyrdom." The magazine, which is now defunct, was a forebear to the online magazine Inspire, an English-language publication first produced by al-Qaida in 2010.

◆ Siddiqui also wrote a poem in 2006 for a blog/website of Samir Khan, the American founder ofInspire who was killed in a drone strike in 2011.

◆ During one meeting, Velentzas and Siddiqui discussed how they should work to not be like Faisal Shahzad—the man who attempted to attack Times Square with a car bomb in 2010. Shahzad's device never detonated.

◆ The pair obtained a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, a volume that documents how to make explosives with household items. "We must study this because they are killing Muslims," Siddiqui allegedly told Velentzas while discussing the book.

◆ The undercover officer also downloaded the book and during a conversation with the two women asked, "We read chemistry books with breakfast. Like, who does that?" Velentzas replied, "People who want to make history."

◆ In December, Velentzas said the shooting deaths of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu was evidence of how easy it is to kill a police officer. "She added that killing a police officer is easier than buying food, because sometimes one has to wait in line to buy food," the Justice Department complaint states.

◆ Velentzas told the undercover investigator "why we can't be some real bad bitches?" and that she wanted to be referred to as a citizen of ISIS. She said this right after pulling a knife from her bra and demonstrating how to stab someone if attacked.

◆ Velentzas once called a video of a suicide bomb attack the "best video on the Internet."

◆ Velentzas told Siddiqui and the undercover officer "to be careful" when watching explosive-making instructional videos on YouTube, because the government could be tracking whomever watches them. She also cautioned against buying an overabundance of Clorox in case someone were to get suspicious and tell the NYPD.

◆ The two women often read up on chemistry using non-nefarious textbooks, too. In August, Siddiqui and the officer visited a public library to look up chemistry books for beginners. The two also met with Velentzas to learn about electricity and how it can be used to cause a fire or explosion. The two women "implied that their goal was to learn how to blow up a bomb from afar rather than conduct a suicide bombing."

(Image via Atanas Bezov/Shutterstock.com)

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Is Hillary Clinton’s Famous Name Boosting Her in Early 2016 Polls?

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 13:00:00 -0400

Hillary Clinton is beating everyone. A recent CNN/ORC poll found that when Clinton is matched up against every probable 2016 opponent—Democrat and Republican—she wins.

"None of the top candidates in this field gets within 10 points of Hillary Clinton," CNN wrote. The poll was conducted March 13-15, (after news broke of her email controversy) and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. It adds to the narrative that 2016—or at least the Democratic primary—is Clinton's to lose.

Clinton won this hypothetical election, but she also wins another contest: name recognition. Ninety-nine percent of poll respondents said they were familiar with the former secretary of State.

What about her Republican competition? Forty-eight percent said they have never heard of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Fifty-six percent didn't know neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and 39 percent were unfamiliar with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was the most recognizable Republican, but 14 percent of poll participants had never heard of him.

What that means is this: For about half of Americans, the question "Who would you vote for: Hillary Clinton or Scott Walker?" is effectively "Who would you vote for: Hillary Clinton or some Republican governor?"

Many Republicans will choose "some Republican governor" over Clinton no matter what. But if national elections are swung by independent voters (who may or may not exist in practice, but that's another story) we can't really know if independent respondents in the CNN poll are picking Clinton because they like her, or because they're more familiar with her.

Research suggests that when voters don't know much about candidates in a given race, name recognition sways electoral choices. In 2013, researchers at Vanderbilt University tested this theory in an experiment involving subliminal messages and a fake election between two fictional men: Mike Williams and Ben Griffin.

Before the mock election, participants in the experiment saw letters and words flash by in rapid succession on a computer screen. In this flurry of words, half the participants saw the name "Griffin." But they didn't realize they saw it: The name flashed on screen for a total of 40 milliseconds. That's .04 seconds, barely enough time to record a thought. Psychologists call this priming, a process by which small, subtle cues can change future behavior.

Then, came the test, a simple question: "Imagine two candidates are running for political office: Mike Williams and Ben Griffin. If you were eligible to vote in this election, for which candidate would you vote?" Participants were not given any further information about the candidates, like party affiliation.

For those who had seen the name "Griffin" flash on screen for barely an instant, "Griffin" had a 5-point advantage at the ballot box. "Name recognition provides a sense of viability," says Cindy Kam, a coauthor of the study. "In cases where people have not heard of a challenger, then it's very difficult to imagine that challenger could be viable."

The computer scenario actually isn't all that contrived: consider the amount of time a person spends looking a campaign yard sign while breezing by in a car.

Kam says it's unlikely that name recognition is a factor in general elections. Come Election Day, both the Democratic and Republican candidates are household names. But it is possible, she says, that name recognition affects voter sentiment in early polls.

"These polls that are happening even a year before anything, this is a low-information context," Kam says. "This is where name recognition matters."

In the same poll, CNN also asked Republicans and Democrats about their respective primaries. It found that Bush is winning the GOP primary race, with 16 percent of Republican respondents saying they would vote for him. The runner-up is Walker, with 13 percent. The poll's margin of error is 4.5 percentage points. But if Bush is the front-runner in the poll, is it because he's truly more well-liked, or is it because more people know who he is? After all, 86 percent of respondents recognized Bush, versus the 52 percent who recognized Walker. The effects of name recognition may be stronger in party primary polls than in general-elections poll because respondents aren't choosing between parties, just names.

The same goes for Clinton when she's pitted against the lesser-known Democrats who may run against her. Vice President Joe Biden has a very recognizable name (just 6 percent said they didn't know him), but he's trailing far behind Clinton. That could be in part because voters don't see him as viable a candidate: just 15 percent of Democratic respondents chose him for the Democratic nomination. (To be fair, the vice president has made far fewer gestures to suggest he's running.) CNN didn't bother to ask respondents if they knew former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who has been hinting at a White House bid. The poll has him at 1 percent in a hypothetical Democratic primary, but his numbers will likely rise should he announce he's running.

In the long run, however, the numbers from these early head-to-head polls don't mean much.

"The idea that at this point that these trial heats may reveal something about Election Day, I don't see any value there," says Jon Krosnick, director of the Political Psychology research group at Stanford University and an expert on survey research methods. "These politicians have not yet begun to campaign."

But when they do, will these early polls hurt or help their momentum? In other research, Kam has found evidence that early polls can influence future poll results. Trailing candidates are more easily discounted, while those in the front of the pack gain greater attention. "When people feel like a candidate has no chance, they are less likely to be curious about that candidate and less likely to search on Google for the candidate," she said.

Though early polls have little predictive value for voters, they might influence the elites who are deciding where to spend their money. Republican donors might see CNN's poll, for example, and conclude that Bush is a safe bet.

Low name recognition doesn't necessarily mean candidates like Walker and Carson are going to lose. Clinton's name comes with political baggage; theirs might not for a large percentage of voters. And the Republican contenders know that. "There is a great opportunity to be had in not having the same name recognition as the more well-known candidates," Carson said in a statement to National Journal. Our American Revival, the Super PAC supporting Walker, framed the former governor's situation similarly. "He looks forward to talking with even more Americans about [his] reform ideas in the coming weeks and months," the group said in a statement.

Relative unknowns have reason to be optimistic. In 2006, when CNN asked poll respondents about a Barack Obama, 37 percent said they didn't know who he was.

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Harry Reid Will Not Seek Re-Election in 2016

Brian Resnick and Marina Koren, National Journal — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 09:43:33 -0400

Sen. Harry Reid announced Friday that he will not seek re-election to the Senate next year.

"I want to be able to go out at the top of my game," he told The New York Times in an interview. "I don't want to be a 42-year-old trying to become a designated hitter."

Reid, 75, will retire after serving 30 years in Congress, and over 10 years as the leader of the Senate Democrats.

Earlier this year, the Senate minority leader suffered severe injuries to his ribs and right eye after he fell while exercising, leading some to wonder whether his health would keep him out of the race in 2016. While recovering, he had limited vision, and had to rely on staffers to help him read documents. But Reid had insisted he would seek re-election.

In a YouTube video posted Friday, Reid said his fall put things into perspective.

"This accident has caused us for the first time to have a little downtime. I have had time to ponder and think," he said. "We've got to be more concerned about the country, the Senate, the state of Nevada—than us. And as a result of that, I'm not going to run for re-election."

But his retirement is not about the fall. "The decision that I have made has absolutely nothing to do with my injury, has nothing to do with my being minority leader, and it certainly has nothing to do with my ability to be re-elected," he said.

Reid said that his race in Nevada would take up campaign money that's much more needed in other competitive states for Democrats.

"We have to make sure that the Democrats take control of the Senate again," Reid said. "And I feel it is inappropriate for me to soak up all those resources on me when I could be devoting those resources to the caucus."

But he had a warning for his Republican colleagues. "My friend Sen. McConnell, don't be too elated," he said. "I'm gonna be here for 22 months, and you know what I'm going to be doing? The same thing I've done since I first came to the Senate."

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is considered a favorite to take over Reid's post as minority leader, called Reid "one of the best humans beings I've ever met" in a glowing statement Friday. "He's so respected by our caucus for his strength, his legislative acumen, his honesty and his determination," Schumer said. "He has left a major mark on this body, this country, and on so many who have met him, gotten to know him, and love him."

Reid's retirement gives Democrats an opportunity to introduce voters to a new candidate; likely one with higher approval ratings. In recent years, as Reid has managed the perennially stuck Senate, he has become the face of any perceived Democratic-caused gridlock. Whichever Democrat runs for the Nevada seat in 2016, they will enjoy the benefits of being on the ticket in a presidential year when higher turnout—especially of Nevada's growing Latino population—is expected to bolster Democrats' chances.

Republican Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval had been considered as a possible 2016 challenger to Reid. In December, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller spoke to Sandoval about running . "We've had conversations, yes," Sandoval told The Washington Post , but said he has not made a decision.

Reid was first elected in 1986. He grew up in a house without plumbing, where, according to the Almanac of American Politics , he had to hitchhike 40 miles to high school. As a young man, Reid was a middleweight boxer, who then put himself through law school working nights as a Capitol Hill police officer. "I would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight," Reid told Bloomberg in 2004.

In the video announcing his retirement, Reid referred to his boxing days. "These bruises I have on my face, on my eye are an inconvenience but trust me, they're nothing compared to some of the bruises I got when I was fighting in the ring."

Lauren Fox contributed to this article.

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White House Says Obama Would Sign a Short-Term DHS Bill

Brian Resnick and Priscilla Alvarez, National Journal — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:48:26 -0500

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that President Obama would sign a stopgap measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security for three weeks and prevent a partial government shutdown, if he's presented with one.

"If the president is faced with a choice of having the Department of Homeland Security shut down or fund that department for a short-term, the president is not going to allow the agency to shut down," Earnest told reporters on Friday. "He will sign a short-term extension."

On whether Obama would address the potential shutdown, Earnest said, "if we've learned anything about the cliffhanger moments in Congress in the last few years, it's that the unpredictable can happen and it may necessitate a presidential statement."

However, Earnest said the pressure is on House Speaker John Boehner to bring to a vote a measure that would fully fund DHS, and avoid a stopgap. "The choice for the president is a little difficult, but the choice for the speaker of the House is really easy," Earnest continued. "Let's hope he makes the right one."

The Senate passed a clean DHS funding bill Friday. Senate Democrats are waiting for the House to pass a bill that would exclude provisions to block the president's executive actions on immigration.

The House is debating a short-term bill that would extend current funding of the DHS until March 19. Boehner proposed the stopgap funding measure on Thursday night, a sign that a compromise may be met before Friday's midnight deadline. Until that point, Boehner had maintained the "House had done its job" in passing a DHS funding bill—albeit one that also sought to inflict a political wound on Obama.

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Why Women Are Wired for Governance

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 17:00:00 -0500

There are currently more women serving in Congress than at any other time in history. This undoubtedly is a benefit for the institution, which for most of its history has been a boy's club. And the change has had immediate, major impact: Consider the bipartisan coalition of female House members who banded together to stop an abortion bill, over a measure that would require women to report rape to authorities.

Aside from the issue of equal representation, there's a deeper reason why women are good for governance. Women, on a psychological level, are better at engaging in political discussion with those they disagree with. They are less susceptible to the partisan biases that often blind politicians.

Make no mistake, everyone is susceptible to partisan bias—it's baked into our DNA. What Patrick R. Miller and Pamela Johnston Conover are concluding in their new study published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities, is that the effects of this bias are less pronounced in women.

The experiment

Conover and Miller recruited 460 college-aged participants (230 men, 230 women, slightly more Democrats than Republicans), and had them read editorials purportedly written by Republican Mitch McConnell or Democrat Harry Reid. The test: whether partisans would give the editorial written by the opposing party any consideration, as measured by time spent reading, and whether the partisan gave any credit to the argument. The overall result was not surprising: When Democrats read the Reid editorial, they'd spend more time with it and they liked it more than the McConnell one. The same went for Republicans and McConnell. The text of the editorial was the same in each condition.

But then Conover and Miller broke the results down by gender.

"Women were certainly not immune to the biasing effect," they concluded. "But they demonstrated significantly less rejection of the outparty argument than men." They spent more time reading the argument, evaluated it less harshly, and were more willing to support the position. Summing up: They were more willing to consider the opposing side. Among men and women most sensitive to political discussion, men rated the opposing party's editorial 2.4 points worse on a 36-point scale.

But why are women better listeners?

Here's how partisan bias usually works. It's kind of a "path-to-the-darkside" progression: Our party identities get tied with our personal identities. When there's an attack on our party, we take it as an attack on ourselves. When we're attacked, we get anxious. When we're anxious, we're defensive. When we are defensive, there's a greater incentive to protect the party than, let's say, accept troubling facts. What Miller and Conover conclude is that women have less anxiety about threats to their parties. Being less anxious means being less defensive, which results in better political dialog.

You don't need a scientific study to know that women make for good political communicators. It was women, after all, who ended the shutdown stalemate in October 2013. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, fed up with lack of movement to reopen the government, recruited a bipartisan group to get negotiations going again, including fellow female Republican Lisa Murkowski. "I probably will have retribution in my state," Murkowski told The New York Times of the negotiations with Democrats. "That's fine. That doesn't bother me at all." Clearly, she wasn't showing anxiety. She was leading the way.

On a national survey included in the study, women indicated less anxiety at the prospect of interacting with political opponents. Whereas with men, their partisan identity predicted their levels of anxiety, women stayed on an even keel. "Women were significantly less anxious than men at all levels of partisan identity [i.e. how political you are]," the paper finds. And those most anxious about political conflict are the least likely to be open to interacting with opponents. "More anxious partisans engaged in less cross-party political discussion." Anxiety aside, men overall, reported less willingness to listen, a scientific conclusion that shouldn't surprise [insert marriage joke here].

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YouTube's GloZell Asks Obama About the Castros, Who Put the 'D— in Dictatorship'

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:21:03 -0500

Faced with sagging viewership of the State of the Union on television, the White House pushed hard this week to ignite some Internet virality around the president and his policies. Thursday, President Obama spoke with three YouTube "celebrities" who have a combined following of 13.8 million as a part of that effort. Around 22,000 people watched the live webcast concurrently, according to the YouTube player page .

The celebrities were not professional journalists. So Obama shouldn't have been too surprised when GloZell, a YouTube star known for antics such as taking a milk-and-cereal bath , asked him this question:

"I grew up in Florida and I have a lot of close friends who are Cuban Americans. And I've heard the stories of their families escaping ... to get away from the Castros. The guy puts dick in dictatorship. How do you justify dealing with the Castros?"

Other interviewers included Bethany Mota, known for her crafting videos, and Hank Green, known for being the brother of best-selling author John Green.

None of Obama's answers were particularly enlightening. For the Cuba question, he responded with his now boilerplate, "if you do something for 50 years and it doesn't work" explanation of why policy needs to change.

Green lobbed Obama an extreme softball, saying "Obamacare has worked for me." Mota asked about education affordability. Obama responded explaining his plan to make community college free. "That's awesome," Mota replied. She also asked him what superpower he'd like to have. "I guess the flying thing," Obama said. Mota's final question was a selfie request.

By forgoing the traditional news media in these interviews, Obama was able to broadcast his common talking points to a potentially new audience, with little pesky pushback from the interviewers. A smart move for White House communication, though not exactly conducive to the pursuit of journalism.

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Eric Holder Keeps Chipping Away at ‘The War on Drugs’

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 10:00:00 -0500

Attorney General Eric Holder effectively gutted a national policy Friday called equitable sharing—a policy that for decades has allowed law enforcement to seize billions of dollars from criminal activities.

Under the policy—often called civil forfeiture—law enforcement has been able to channel drug money, stolen vehicles, and even real estate, back into their budgets. The policy was set up as an incentive for good police work. But it has become susceptible to abuse, with law enforcement seizing assets from law-abiding citizens.

It's another example of how Eric Holder, whose departure from the Justice Department is pending the confirmation of his replacement, may just become President Obama's most lasting domestic-policy legacy. During his tenure, Holder has been chipping away at "war on drugs" era policies—such asreducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and not challenging states for enacting marijuana legislation. The intended effect is to combat the mass, disproportionate incarceration of blacks in the nation's prisons.

Civil forfeiture is a component of that chipping away. The program was set up to encourage local forces to make drug stops. Abuses of the program inflict the most harm on the people without the means to mount legal battles in order to get their stuff back.

States may still allow civil forfeiture under their own laws, and Holder's decision does not impact the seizure of illegal firearms, ammunition, or other weapons. It prohibits officers from taking property without evidence of a crime.

In many cases, local authorities seize the assets and hand them over to the federal government, which would then split the bounty. Holder's new policy makes it clear: States cannot use federal law to make such seizures anymore. "With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons," Holder said in a statement Friday.

In 2013, Sarah Stillman collected dramatic examples of civil forfeiture for an eye-opening New Yorkerstory. In it, she describes motorists being pulled over for minor traffic offenses and having their money or jewelry taken away from them, the parents of a small-time pot dealer having their home seized, and how some police forces derive the majority of their budgets from such seizures.

The policy will shake the status-quo in many police budgets across the country. "For hundreds of police departments and sheriff's offices the seizure proceeds accounted for 20 percent or more of their annual budgets in recent years," the Washington Post notes.

But Holder's actions can only go so far, as they do not affect individual state laws. All the assets seized since 2008 are worth $5.3 billion, notes the Post. But local seizures, without the federal government, amounted to $3 billion of that.

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FBI Arrests Ohio Man for Plot to Attack U.S. Capitol

Brian Resnick and Emma Roller, National Journal — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:40:12 -0500

The Justice Department announced Wednesday a Cincinnati-area man has been arrested in connection to a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol and kill government officials.

"Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, OH, was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence," the Justice Department said in a statement.

The criminal complaint against Cornell includes messages he sent in an instant message to an FBI informant. "I believe that we should wage jihad under our own orders and plan attacks and everything," Cornell wrote to the FBI informant. "We already go a thumbs up from the Brothers over there." Cornell also mentioned Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaida-affiliated U.S. citizen who was killed in a drone strike in 2011.

During an in-person meeting between Cornell and the informant, Cornell "indicated that he considered the members of Congress as enemies and that he intended to conduct an attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.," the Justice Department complaint reads.

Here is the full criminal complaint:

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Obama Takes Over The Colbert Report

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 09:51:10 -0500

This was President Obama at his most self deprecating.

Monday night, Obama was the guest on a special edition of The Colbert Report filmed at George Washington University. But he didn't just come for a sit-down interview. At the beginning of the broadcast, the president interrupted Colbert before "The Word"—a section of the show where Colbert lampoons conservative talking points—and delivered the segment himself.

"Stephen, you've been taking a lot of shots at my job, I decided to take a shot at yours," the president said. "How hard can this be? I'm going to say whatever you were about to say." To make it sound more presidential, Obama renamed the segment "The Decree." He then read the lines, which were not flattering toward him. It was amusing.

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Remember: 83,000 American Veterans Are Still Missing

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 10:00:49 -0500

Veterans Day is a time to reflect on the service and sacrifices of the men and women who have put themselves in harm's way for this country. But it is also a time to remember and acknowledge that the government's various programs often stumble and fail in the handling of veterans' issues.

Here's a statistic: 83,000 American service personnel are still missing in action. These soldiers are assumed dead, but are still unaccounted for. They rest in unmarked graves in foreign countries, or are taking on sediment at the bottom of the ocean. 73,500 of them fought in World War II; 9,645 in the wars since.

The Defense Department's Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office, known as DPMO, and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or J-PAC, are charged with matching remains with names. But these offices "find" and account for only around 70 of these veterans every year.

It doesn't take a lot math to conclude that several dozen identifications per year is barely a scratch on an 83,000 total. The problem isn't that DOD doesn't know where the remains are. The problem is institutional—a bureaucracy using slow, outdated processes in lieu of faster scientifically backed techniques. "DOD's capability and capacity to accomplish its missing persons accounting mission is being undermined by long-standing leadership weaknesses and a fragmented organizational structure," a 2013 Government Accountability Office report concluded in summary.

"J-PAC's lab hasn't prioritized DNA analysis, despite it being an advancement that has revolutionized forensic science," ProPublica reported in a sweeping investigation earlier this year. "Scientists engaged in similar work elsewhere do the opposite. They start with DNA and let it drive the process, taking samples from bones they dig up and cross-referencing them against databases of DNA from the families of the missing to find a match."

The numbers left missing from WWII are a particular cause for immediate action. As the siblings of these missing WWII veterans begin to fade into history, the chances of making a firm genetic identification of these soldiers grows dim as well. Many of the missing WWII veterans died before having the children whose genetics could also identify them.

"Of the more than 83,000 missing persons who have yet to be accounted for," GAO reported, "recovery of only an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 persons can be reasonably expected, due to the circumstances of some of the losses."

Many of the unfound lie in mass graves in the countries they died fighting in. Others are buried and are memorialized by gravestones declaring them known only to God. The room for progress is ample. Congress has mandated that the Defense Department start matching 200 soldiers peryear by 2015. And earlier this year Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the two offices that oversee the identifications (DPMO and J-PAC) would be consolidated into one. "If we put together a better institution, organization, better management, better structure, better use of our resources, then I hope we'll be far more effective in being able to accomplish the mission of identifying these missing remains and getting these missing remains brought home to the families," Hagel told reporters in March. The reorganization is set to occur sometime in 2015,according to ProPublica.

Even so, 200 identifications a year is still just a scratch. It's still a scratch, even if only 25,000 of the missing can be identified. As for the rest—well—they're just going to get left behind.

(Top image via Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com)

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White House Sheep, a History

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 09:00:00 -0400

President Woodrow Wilson wanted sheep.

It was 1918, and "while riding in one of the White House automobiles through the country with Dr. Grayson [a personal friend] the president remarked that he would like to see some sheep at the White House, and that Mrs. Wilson would like to see them, too," according to a Washington Post report from April of that year.

It was settled. "President Wilson intends to raise some sheep on the White House lawn," the story surmised. And it was a nice enough idea. Wilson and his wife, according to the White House history website, wanted to be the model family for supporting the war effort. Over the next two years, auctions of the White House wool would yield $52,000 for the Red Cross.

But trouble lurked.

"President Wilson is having no end of trouble with the flock of sheep he purchased recently to graze on the White House lawn," a May 12, 1918, Washington Post article reported. The problem: The sheep were scared of the cars that had started to appear across the District of Columbia in increasing numbers.

"Two of the sheep developed serious illness yesterday and are under the care of specialists from the Department of Agriculture," the Post's reporting continued.

The animals had been getting along nicely, until yesterday. The fact that one of the sheep has the "dips" is said to be due to the fact that it became frightened by passing automobiles and similar noises to which it was not accustomed.

By 1920, the flock had grown to 48 and had "eaten up nearly all the grass in the rear" of the White House. Seeing the destruction of the White House backyard, Wilson ordered the flock to graze in the front, prompting frantic preparations to fence in "the numerous flower beds and the more delicate trees which adorn the front lawn to save them from the flock," a Post story from that May states.

But by August of that year, Wilson had had enough of the sheep. "President Wilson has decided to retire from the sheep business," the Post declared.

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The ISIS Conflict Has Saturated the American Mind

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 10:18:09 -0400

In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 94 percent of Americans said they were following the news of the horrendous and tragic beheadings of American journalists at the hands of ISIS. That number is astounding, seeing how public knowledge of the news can often be lacking.

The widening conflict in Syria and Iraq is clearly on the public's collective mind. In its latest national news quiz, the Pew Research Center finds that 67 percent of Americans can correctly indicate that ISIS controls territory in Syria. Compare that with only 38 percent of Americans who know who the Prime Minister of Israel is. On the quiz, the only topic Americans were better informed about was the minimum wage. Below are the full results of the poll. (Pew notes some "moderate differences" between Republicans and Democrats on correct answers. "Republicans tend to do somewhat better than Democrats overall," it states. Mainly, Republicans were more familiar with the Common Core and the fracking boom in North Dakota.)

The Pew news quiz, while in some ways trivial (it isn't an exhaustive survey of all the topics Americans should be aware of, so make comparisons warily), does indicate where the public's attention is. On last year's quiz, Americans scored highest on identifying Edward Snowden, who embodied the dominant news story of the year.

Pew has found a growing national attention toward the Islamic State in other questionnaires as well. In September, it found Americans' concern growing over Islamic extremism, as seen in the chart below.

Saturation news about issues such as ISIS and Edward Snowden's NSA leaks moves public opinion. In that September survey, Pew noted a reversal of a trend that had just been gaining momentum the year before. During the height of the Snowden coverage in the media, 47 percent of Americans said that protecting civil liberties was more important than security concerns relating to the war on terrorism. This year, with the proliferation of ISIS, that figure is at 35 percent.

Does that mean that the average American is fickle? No. It's that people respond to the events unfolding around them. It's a reminder that a big enough news story can get masses to see the world differently.

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Is the White House Door Locked Yet?

Brian Resnick, National Journal — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:15:54 -0400

After Omar Gonzalez, a troubled veteran of Iraq, successfully scaled White House fences Friday and gained entry into the mansion with a knife in hand, the first question most asked was, "How did it happen?"

This is the White House, after all. How could the center of American executive power be so simply breached? There was no elaborate plan (as far as we know) on Gonzalez's part. He just climbed the fence. These incidents happen sporadically—remember the bullet fired into a White House window in 2011?—but serve as dramatic reminders that the White House is indeed a target.

On Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest addressed those concerns. The White House, although it is the seat of the president's power, is also a very popular tourist destination, he said. People, daily, take photos on the sidewalks in front, and tours are conducted regularly. Earnest would not say if this tourist access would be restricted. The Secret Service, he said, is reviewing security protocols. The front door, Earnest explained, has been kept open because a great many people go in and out of it each day.

"After Friday night's incident," Earnest said of the door, "that will be secured." Earnest also said the president was "obviously concerned," but is confident in the Secret Service investigation into the breach.

"The Secret Service has beefed-up controls around the fence line of the White House complex," Earnest assured. This includes "stepped-up training for officers who are standing on the front lines of the White House" and "additional surveillance resources," he said.

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