Here is a news article: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are the first casualties of the winnowing GOP presidential debate field, as Fox Business Network announced Thursday night that they both officially missed the cut for next week’s contest.

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 Christie and Huckabee are the only two candidates who had previously appeared on the main debate stage to get cut by the network, which set a threshold of 2.5 percent in four major polls for the top contest. They’ll instead participate in the undercard debate, a demotion that could serve as a major blow for their campaigns.

 The writing was on the wall for Christie by Wednesday night, when he received 2 percent of the vote in Fox News’s latest poll. Poll watchers noted that Christie’s stagnant numbers in a handful of recent surveys, including the Fox one, made it increasingly unlikely that he’d be able to stay above that threshold.

 Because Fox Business did not release which polls it would use in advance, Christie's fate remained in limbo until the network announced the lineup on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

 Most pundits had considered Huckabee, who received 4 percent support in the Fox News poll, in a safer spot. He is a former Fox News host who won the 2008 GOP Iowa caucuses and finished second behind Sen. John McCainJohn Sidney McCainThe Memo: GOP fears damage from Trump’s move on DACA Rescue efforts underway after F-16 crashes in Arizona McCain, Whitehouse urge SCOTUS to affirm Wisconsin gerrymandering decision MORE (R-Ariz.) for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

 Both Christie and Huckabee barely missed the mark, finishing with 2.25 percent in the four polls considered — those conducted by Fox News, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University and Investor's Business Daily. If either candidate scored just 1 percentage point higher in any of those polls, they would have made it onto the debate stage.

 Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulPaul calls for bipartisan DACA solution This week: Harvey aid at top of long to-do list as Congress returns Trump, Congress face packed September agenda MORE (R-Ky.) just made it in with an average of exactly 2.5 percent.

 Just an hour before Fox Business was scheduled to announce the lineup, Christie’s campaign announced that he would be on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” presumably to push back against the fears that the debate snub would hurt his presidential bid.

 Despite missing out on the main stage, Christie had received praise in recent weeks for his late-October debate performance as well as deeply personal remarks on drug addiction captured by The Huffington Post.

 Christie tweeted just moments after the announcement with a reference to that Huffington Post video.

 It doesn’t matter the stage, give me a podium and I’ll be there to talk about real issues like this: https://t.co/Fqu5Qi2piX #BringItOn — Chris Christie (@ChrisChristie) November 6, 2015

 Huckabee was also defiant in the face of Fox’s decision.

 “I’m happy to debate anyone, anywhere, anytime,” he said on Twitter. “We are months away from actual votes being cast and neither the pundits nor the press will decide this election, the people will.”

 The main debate stage will include the eight remaining Republican candidates who participated in last month's CNBC debate: Real estate mogul Donald Trump Donald John TrumpSean Spicer to speak at gas industry conference Ex-World Bank president: Congress must crack down on Trump’s trade policies Hillary Clinton to sit down with CBS's Jane Pauley on Sunday MORE, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioRubio: Trump should 'clearly outline' what he wants on DACA Trump issues Florida emergency declaration ahead of Hurricane Irma East Coast watching for chance of Hurricane Irma MORE (Fla.) Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzNorth Korea fears demand attention despite domestic concerns Cruz: N. Korean test 'serious escalation' of its ability to commit mass murder Sunday shows preview: Trump faces aftermath of Harvey MORE (Texas), former CEO Carly Fiorina, former Gov. Jeb Bush (Fla.), Gov. John Kasich (Ohio) and Paul.

 Huckabee and Christie will join Gov. Bobby Jindal (La.) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) in the undercard debate. Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamWeek ahead: Congress returns to take up bipartisan health care effort DACA debate turns toward Congress as Trump readies decision Graham backs Trump ending DACA with 6-month delay MORE (S.C.) and former New York Gov. George Pataki missed qualifying for the undercard because they failed to poll at one percent in any of those four polls.

 Neither Graham nor Pataki received any support in three of the polls. The fourth poll, NBC/WSJ, did not initially include the names of any of the candidates who had previously appeared in the undercard. Their names were only included if a respondent declined to support any of the top-tier candidates. ||||| Play Facebook

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 New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will not be on the main debate stage when Republican presidential candidates square off for their fourth debate next week.

 Fox Business Network announced Thursday that Christie, who has made the main stage at the previous three debates, will be in the undercard debate for the low-polling candidates. It is a blow to the Garden State governor who has seen a slight uptick in the polls after a strong performance at the CNBC debate last month.

 PHOTOS - On the Stump: Chris Christie's Presidential Campaign

 Earlier in the day, Christie told NBC’s Hallie Jackson, “either way, I'll be in Milwaukee Tuesday night debating the big issues of our country, putting my voice onto those issues and that’s what really matters the most. But would I pick it? No of course not."

 It doesn’t matter the stage, give me a podium and I’ll be there to talk about real issues like this: https://t.co/Fqu5Qi2piX #BringItOn — Chris Christie (@ChrisChristie) November 6, 2015

 Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made the final slot in the primetime debate.

 Debate host Fox Business Network announced candidates must have a polling average of at least 2.5 percent in the four most recent polls. To make the earlier debate, candidates must average at least 1 percent in one of the four most recent polls.

 Republicans Lindsey Graham, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore did not make the cut.

 On the main stage of the Fox Business Network debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be:

 Donald Trump

 Ben Carson

 Marco Rubio

 Ted Cruz

 Jeb Bush

 Carly Fiorina

 John Kasich

 Rand Paul

 In the earlier debate will be: |||||
A summary of this is?

– There's another GOP debate on Tuesday, and the stage will feature fewer candidates—though not because anyone has dropped out. Host Fox Business on Thursday announced the lineup, and Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee have been relegated to the early debate. The criteria the decision was based on: a minimum polling average of 2.5% in four recent polls. The Hill reports the two finished at 2.25%, with Rand Paul barely making it in at the 2.5% cutoff. Seven will be joining Paul in Milwaukee, per NBC News: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. The early debate will also feature Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum; Lindsey Graham and George Pataki didn't make the cut, having failed to grab at least 1% in any of the four polls.


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 Renowned wine collector Rudy Kurniawan forged some of the finest vintages in the world, a series of French experts told his New York fraud trial Thursday.

 The 37-year-old Kurniawan, once considered one of the top-five wine collectors in the business, faces up to 40 years in jail if convicted of wire and postal fraud.

 Born in Indonesia, he had also been living illegally in the United States since 2003 when his asylum bid was rejected.

 Kurniawan rose rapidly to the top of his profession thanks to his exceptional palate, capable of identifying the finest wines, and spent millions of dollars each year.

 But prosecutors say he sold ordinary wine that he blended in his kitchen "laboratory" and re-bottled to masquerade as vintage wines worth thousands of dollars.

 Laurent Ponsot, of the acclaimed Domaine Ponsot winery in France, said he was alerted by email two days before an April 2008 auction in New York where 97 purported bottles of Domaine Ponsot were to be sold for $440,500-$602,000.

 He was told that the auction was offering bottles of Clos Saint-Denis from 1945 and 1949 and sent him the catalogue.

 "It is an appellation we started in 1982," Ponsot told the jury.

 He contacted Acker Merrall & Condit demanding the wines be withdrawn and flew to New York.

 Ponsot said he arrived at the auction house 10 minutes into proceedings.

 "The wines were there, in the room," he said.

 Ponsot got them withdrawn from sale at the last minute.

 Kurniawan, wearing an impeccable grey suit, sat expressionless in court, chewing on mints as Ponsot spoke.

 Several of the bottles were produced in court and Ponsot pointed out the forgeries.

 "This one is very obvious," Ponsot said. "Clos Saint-Denis, and it says 1945. This cannot exist. And a label from Nicolas? We never sold to Nicolas," he said, the bottle in his hand.

 "And a Clos de la Roche 1929?" They only began bottling in the 1930s, Ponsot said as the jurors took notes.

 Ponsot said he had lunch the next day with Kurniawan and asked him where he had got the Domaine Ponsot wine.

 "I saw him watching his plate, saying, 'I don't know, I buy so many bottles'. I found it bizarre," he said.

 Ponsot asked him again by email in May 2008. Kurniawan responded on June 5, giving him the name "Pak Hendra in Asia."

 Ponsot said he found out that Pak is the equivalent of "Mister" and that Hendra is a very common name in Indonesia.

 He saw Kurniawan again in May 2009 in Los Angeles, asking him for more details.

 "He promised he would send me the details the next day, I am still waiting," Ponsot told the jury.

 After allegedly trying to sell more dubious wine at auction in London via an intermediary in 2012, Kurniawan was arrested at his home in Arcadia in the suburbs of Los Angeles in March that year.

 Laurent Roumier of the Domaine Roumier winery, also testified to forgeries including a Bonne Mares, another vintage Burgandy dated 1923 -- again before bottling began.

 Aubert de Villaine, a co-manager of Romanee-Conti one of the most prestigious wineries in the world, was invited to look at various labels found at Kurniawan's home.

 "It is extraordinary to see that number of lables for wines that have completely disappeared," he told the court. "I never had so many in my hand."

 After Thursday's hearing he told AFP that he hoped for a guilty verdict. Roumier said something had to be done.

 "This case isn't unique," he told AFP.

 The defense has portrayed a young man who desperately wanted to fit into the richer, older world of rare wine collectors, and painted a picture of a man being made a scapegoat.

 bd/jm/sg ||||| A California man once known as a fine wine collector and dealer was convicted on two counts of fraud Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.

 Rudy Kurniawan was charged with mail fraud for creating and then trying to sell wine that was counterfeit. He was also... ||||| First federal prosecution for selling fake wine yields a conviction; Indonesian collector faces possible sentence of 40 years

 Rudy Kurniawan did something unprecedented in the world of rare wines in 2006. An Acker, Merrall & Condit auction of his wines raised $24.7 million, the largest total ever for a single consignor. On Wednesday, Dec. 18, Kurniawan set another precedent. A federal jury pronounced him guilty of fraud for selling counterfeit wines and defrauding a finance company, making the 37-year-old Indonesian the first person tried and convicted for selling fake wines in the U.S.

 Wearing an ill-fitting gray suit, Kurniawan stood tight-lipped, with his hands crossed in front of him, as a middle-aged woman, the forewoman for a 12-person jury, read the verdict. He gave no reaction. His lawyers did not look at him. The jury deliberated for about an hour and 45 minutes before returning at 10:55 a.m. with the decision.

 Burgundy winemaker Laurent Ponsot, who has attended each day of the proceedings, told Wine Spectator after the verdict, "I feel no pity for him. It's good justice."

 Kurniawan surfaced in rare wine circles a decade ago and quickly became a fixture at tastings and auctions, known for his passion for Burgundy and a talent for sniffing out fakes. Fellow collectors dubbed him “Dr. Conti” for his love of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Soon he was scouring cellars in America and Europe, looking for collectible wines, and selling hundreds of bottles at auctions and in private sales.

 An Indonesian of Chinese ancestry, he had been living in Los Angeles for several years. (An immigration court ordered him to leave the country in 2003, but he appealed the case and it was pending.) Kurniawan was always vague about how he was spending millions of dollars on rare wines, as well as a Lamborghini and a wardrobe full of expensive watches. He said his family had done well in business in Asia.

 But Kurniawan’s image as a savvy collector was tarnished when 22 lots of rare Burgundies supposedly from Domaine Ponsot were withdrawn from a 2008 Acker, Merrall & Condit auction at the request of proprietor Laurent Ponsot. As first reported by Wine Spectator, a collector with doubts on the wines’ authenticity had alerted Ponsot, who traveled to New York to make sure they were withdrawn. Asked where he had found the wines, Kurniawan was evasive.

 More doubts surfaced soon as other collectors questioned wines Kurniawan had sold and it was revealed that he owed millions of dollars to Acker and some of its clients. Collector Bill Koch filed a lawsuit against Kurniawan in 2009. In February 2012, wines consigned by Antonio Castanos, a Los Angeles restaurateur and wine dealer, were withdrawn from a London auction by Spectrum after collectors raised doubts about them. Castanos testified in court this past week that he was a straw man for Kurniawan. A month after the Spectrum sale, FBI agents knocked on Kurniawan’s door, arrested him and conducted a protective sweep of his home. They found hundreds of bottles, labels, corks, stamps and notes that looked like the raw materials for making rare wines.

 That physical evidence would form the foundation of the prosecution’s case, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hernandez and his team laid out boxes and boxes of the materials on a large table for the jury to see. An expert witness explained how labels had been copied and altered to create rare old bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Château Latour. He added that he had examined at least 1,077 counterfeit wines over his career sourced from Kurniawan, including many at that 2006 sale and 267 bottles FBI agents seized from Kurniawan’s home. And three of Burgundy’s top vignerons took the stand to say that bottles Kurniawan sold bearing their winery’s labels were fakes.

 The defense team, led by lawyer Jerome Mooney, tried to turn the suspicions toward the wine-collecting community, arguing that the market is full of counterfeits and that Kurniawan was being made a scapegoat. Mooney asked the winemakers whether the market was flooded with fake Burgundies. He tried to raise doubts about the credibility of the witnesses. In his closing arguments, Mooney claimed Kurniawan had merely been “reconditioning” and touching up the wines found in his home. And the labels, he argued, were for wallpaper in a home Kurniawan was building.

 But the jury didn’t buy it. After the verdict was read, Judge Richard Berman set a sentencing date for April 24. Kurniawan faces a possible 40 years in prison, as well as fines. "He really just wanted to be accepted," Mooney said after the decision. "People were very supportive of him, but the moment he was arrested, everybody ran. My theory: He comes up with some wines that were truly rare. Suddenly people want to be with him. When he couldn't find more, he made it." ||||| The Man Who Duped Millionaires Into Paying Big Bucks For Fake Wine

 Enlarge this image iStockphoto iStockphoto

 He was the man with "the nose of a blood hound," as one wine critic once put it.

 Rudy Kurniawan was once the toast of the fine-wine world, renowned for his ability to find some of the rarest — and priciest — wines in the world.

 He was also, prosecutors alleged, a fraud who duped some of the country's wealthiest wine purchasers with counterfeit bottles of wine that he manufactured in his home laboratory.

 And on Wednesday, a Manhattan jury agreed, finding Kurniawan guilty of fraud in connection with selling counterfeit wines and of defrauding a finance company.

 The sensational trial began Dec. 9 in a Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors have argued that Kurniawan used his exceptional palate to blend together younger wines with older French wines of poor vintage. He then slapped counterfeit labels on the bottles, prosecutors say, and passed them off as some of the rarest wines on Earth. When these bottles turned up at auctions, the excitement of coming across them often overshadowed bidders' skepticism of whether they were the real thing.

 Among those who believed they were duped is billionaire industrialist Bill Koch — yes, a brother to those Kochs — who said he spent $2.1 million on 219 bottles of Kurniawan's wine.

 Born in Indonesia but residing in California, Kurniawan began turning heads in the fine-wine scene around 2002, winning over sommeliers, wine critics and auctioneers with his palate and his generosity. He often footed the bill at restaurants, where he poured thousands of dollars of wine from his personal collection for his friends.

 "I've never known him not to bring a bottle," testified Truly Hardy, director of auction operations for Acker Merrall & Condit.

 Around 2004, prosecutors say, Kurniawan began passing off his fake wines. Last week, both Koch and Laurent Ponsot, of top Burgundy winemaker Domaine Ponsot, testified that they had long suspected that Kurniawan's wares weren't quite what they seemed. Ponsot told jurors that he became suspicious of Kurniawan in 2008, after the collector consigned to auction dozens of bottles of Domaine Ponsot wine of a vintage that had never existed.

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

 Kurniawan was arrested in March 2012. Among the colorful evidence the FBI seized from his home are stacks upon stacks of rare French wine labels that Kurniawan allegedly forged using a laser printer.

 But the central mystery for oenophiles has been slower to unravel: What types of wines might Kurniawan have actually poured into those bottles?

 And is it even possible to imitate the taste of, say, a rare half-century-old bottle from Bordeaux? One expert says yes, but not without some very old wine mixed in.

 "One of the tricks is having some old wine character" — which you can't get without including aged wine in the blend, says Andrew Waterhouse, a wine chemist and professor of oenology at the University of California, Davis.

 The "old wine character" might not always strike the casual drinker as desirable. For example, if a bottle of Bordeaux purports to be more than two decades old, he says, its contents should have the distinctive, herbaceous aroma of canned asparagus.

 "When you're tasting a rare, old wine, that's part of the deal," Waterhouse says.

 Kurniawan likely had a lot of unremarkable old wine at his disposal.

 This week, British wine expert Michael Egan inspected invoices addressed to Kurniawan, which included a 2007 order for 904 old bottles of Burgundy. The bottles are cheap by Kurniawan's standards (about $60), and the particular 1970s vintages listed are "very ordinary to poor," Egan testified. When asked how many bottles of the Burgundy he'd recommend to his own clients (who include Koch), Egan answered dryly: "Zero... unless they were cooking with it."

 The prosecution's claim that Kurniawan used young California wines in his counterfeits doesn't surprise Waterhouse. He points out that the finest vintages in France correspond historically with warmer summers. Climatic conditions are similarly favorable in California wine country, where almost every summer is dry and warm.

 "Of course, you have to use wines of high quality," Waterhouse adds, but many of the California bottles presented as evidence are "fantastic." He points to a 2006 bottle of Marcassin, a California pinot noir seized from Kurniawan's house. Its $200 price tag isn't exactly cheap, but it is much less than the thousands of dollars that Kurniawan's bottles fetched at auction.

 Ironically, many of Kurniawan's artful fakes were probably never sipped or even opened. Wine collectors often view rare bottles as investments or trophies to be displayed.

 As for Kurniawan's famous palate? Sitting in federal court, he could be seen nursing it with a steady supply of Mentos, Altoids and M&Ms. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Rudy Kurniawan wanted to be a big name in the world of wine, and on Wednesday he achieved that dream: He became the first person ever convicted in the US of concocting and selling counterfeit wine, reports Wine Spectator. The 37-year-old native of Indonesia duped scores of millionaires—including Bill Koch, brother of the political Koch brothers—and other wine aficionados over the years until his scheme unraveled. He now faces up to 40 years in prison on fraud convictions, including one for using his fake wine as collateral to get a $3 million loan, reports the Wall Street Journal. Kurniawan, who has lived in Los Angeles for several years, knew his stuff. He didn't pour two-buck-chuck into fancy bottles and try to pass it off. Instead, prosecutors say he blended young wines with older French vintages to produce wines sophisticated enough to pass for some of the rarest known to collectors, explains NPR. His big stumble came in 2008, when renowned French winemaker Laurent Ponsot spotted, up for auction, counterfeit bottles created by Kurniawan that had supposedly come from Ponsot's own vineyard. The bottles were from the years 1945 and 1949, except "it is an appellation we started in 1982," Ponsot explained to the jury, per the AFP. "I feel no pity for him," said Ponsot after the verdict in Manhattan. "It's good justice." (Click for the story of an elaborate wine heist that fell apart.)


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Poland’s deputy defense minister has resorted to schoolyard insults against Paris, claiming his nation taught the French to “eat with a fork.” It comes after France withdrew Poland’s invite to an event, following a breakdown in Airbus helicopter talks.

 Referring to the Euronaval 2016 event set to take place in Paris next week, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Bartosz Kownacki told TVN24 news channel that “the French side officially invited us a long time ago and now they are showing us the door.”

 “But these are the people we taught to eat with a fork a couple of centuries ago, which may explain their behavior today. This is obvious history, and I invite you to read up on that.”

 Read more

 The revoked invitation was delivered to Warsaw via the Polish Embassy in Paris, according to media reports. The cancelation was confirmed to AFP by a source familiar with the matter.

 While there is indeed reason to believe that King Henry III introduced forks to his subjects after discovering them in Poland, where he had previously been elected king, there is no actual evidence to prove that Kownacki’s claim is true.

 Some historians believe the king actually discovered the almighty fork during a stay in Venice after leaving Poland.

 Although Kownacki is clearly angry over the canceled invitation to the Euronaval event, his remarks have been condemned by Poland’s liberal opposition, as well as the spokeswoman of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, Beata Mazurek, who described the comments as “unfortunate” and “not very diplomatic.”

 “Minister Kownacki is perhaps the first politician to commit diplomatic suicide by fork,” the Polish Polityka weekly said in an article on its website.

 The snub came after Poland halted talks with French aviation company Airbus, which were aimed at the purchase of 50 Caracal helicopters by Warsaw. The suspended talks were met with a furious response from Airbus chief executive Tom Enders, who said his company had never been treated so badly by any government.

 The talks had been backed by Paris, and the cancellation unleashed tension between the two governments, with French President Francois Hollande postponing a visit to the Polish capital.

 READ MORE: New Poland defense minister in hot water over Jewish conspiracy theory

 There is disagreement, however, over which side actually ended the talks.

 The Euronaval 2016 event is supported by the French Ministry of Defense and the French Navy. The five-day naval and maritime defense exhibition is set to include a range of industry-related security technologies, products, and services. It is seen as one of the most important exhibitions of its kind in Europe.

 Diplomacy is not always something Polish defense officials excel at. Earlier this year, Kownacki’s boss, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, lashed out at the US saying “people who only built their state in the 18th century are going to tell us what democracy is?” The statement came after the US and the EU criticized Poland over the democratic process relating to the Constitutional Tribunal reform. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Was fork use in Europe pioneered by the Poles?

 Poland "taught the French how to use a fork", a Polish deputy minister has said, amid a continuing row over a cancelled defence contract.

 Deputy Defence Minister Bartosz Kownacki also accused the French of lacking "class" after losing the multi-billion dollar contract to build 50 Airbus Caracal helicopters for Poland.

 A Law and Justice party spokeswoman said the remarks were "unfortunate".

 Poland is to buy US Black Hawks instead. Airbus has threatened to sue.

 Speaking on TV, Mr Kownacki accused France of responding by withdrawing the offer of free accommodation and a car for the Polish delegation at a defence fair in Paris next week.

 "They are a people who learned to eat with a fork from us a few centuries ago. So maybe this is why they are behaving in this way now," he said.

 MPs from the opposition Civic Platform party called for him to be fired.

 A bumpy ride for Poland's Law and Justice party

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Paul Adams examines the political scene in Poland

 "Forkgate" is the latest in a series of controversies Law and Justice has become embroiled in since taking power last November.

 Earlier this month the government retreated from imposing a near-total ban on abortion after massive street protests by women.

 The party has also been criticised by the EU for taking control of state media appointments and for reforms to Poland's constitutional court.

 Read more: Poland returns to conservative roots with Law and Justice win

 The previous Civic Platform-run government had chosen Airbus to supply Poland with helicopters after a tendering process.

 But the Law and Justice party, which took power last November, said the deal was bad for Poland and scrapped it.

 Forks are believed to have spread from the Byzantine Empire to southern Europe in the early part of the Second Millennium and were commonly used in northern Europe by the 1800s. |||||

– Note to self: Don't anger Poland's deputy defense minister, or he'll remind you about your country's uncouth eating habits from the 1500s. That was Bartosz Kownacki's reaction after France apparently rescinded Poland's invite to the Euronaval maritime defense fair next week, the Guardian reports. And that disinvite was because Poland apparently backed out of buying 50 Airbus helicopters and decided to buy US Black Hawks instead; France was said to be backing the original Airbus deal, per the BBC. But while the dialogue started to take a turn for the worse regarding the choppers and the negotiations, it's Kownacki's comments on a particular dining utensil that's now causing a commotion. "These are the people we taught to eat with a fork a couple of centuries ago, which may explain their behavior today," Kownacki sniffed to the TVN24 network, via RT.com. "This is obvious history, and I invite you to read up on that." He was referring to the story that King Henry III of France eagerly introduced the fork to the French population after he first came across it in Poland while he was king there. Historians aren't sure if this is how it actually happened, though, noting Henry also may have stumbled across the fork in Venice. Either way, some aren't happy with Kownacki's dining diss, with a member of Poland's Law and Justice Party calling his remarks "unfortunate," while a Polish weekly notes, "Minister Kownacki is perhaps the first politician to commit diplomatic suicide by fork." (A first-grader was suspended for the eating utensil he brought to school.)


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July 2, 2014 - Obama Is First As Worst President Since WWII, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; More Voters Say Romney Would Have Been Better

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 President Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II, 33 percent of American voters say in a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today. Another 28 percent pick President George W. Bush.

 Ronald Reagan is the best president since WWII, 35 percent of voters say, with 18 percent for Bill Clinton, 15 percent for John F. Kennedy and 8 percent for Obama, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Among Democrats, 34 percent say Clinton is the best president, with 18 percent each for Obama and Kennedy.

 Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush, 39 percent of voters say, while 40 percent say he is worse. Men say 43 - 36 percent that Obama is worse than Bush while women say 42 - 38 percent he is better. Obama is worse, Republicans say 79 - 7 percent and independent voters say 41 - 31 percent. Democrats say 78 - 4 percent that he is better.

 Voters say by a narrow 37 - 34 percent that Obama is better for the economy than Bush.

 America would be better off if Republican Mitt Romney had won the 2012 presidential election, 45 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say the country would be worse off.

 Missing Mitt are Republicans 84 - 5 percent and independent voters 47 - 33 percent, while Democrats say 74 - 10 percent that the U.S. would be worse off with Romney.

 "Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

 "Would Mitt have been a better fit? More voters in hindsight say yes."

 American voters say 54 - 44 percent that the Obama Administration is not competent running the government. The president is paying attention to what his administration is doing, 47 percent say, while 48 percent say he does not pay enough attention.

 President Obama's job approval rating, inching up since a negative 38 - 57 percent in December, 2013, his all-time low, is stalled at a negative 40 - 53 percent. This compares to the president's negative 42 - 50 percent job approval in an April 2 national survey.

 Today, the president gets negative scores of 10 - 88 percent from Republicans, 31 - 59 percent from independent voters, 37 - 57 percent from men and 42 - 49 percent from women. Democrats approve 79 - 13 percent.

 The president gets mixed grades for character as voters say 48 - 48 percent that he is honest and trustworthy and 51 - 47 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. He gets a negative 47 - 51 percent for leadership qualities.

 The economy and jobs are the most important problems facing the country today, 35 percent of voters say, with 12 percent listing politicians/campaigns/corruption, 6 percent each for healthcare and foreign affairs, 5 percent for the budget and 4 percent each for education and immigration.

 Obama gets negative grades for his handling of most key issues:

 Negative 40 - 55 percent for handling the economy;

 Negative 37 - 57 percent for foreign policy;

 Negative 40 - 58 percent for health care;

 50 - 40 percent for the environment;

 Negative 44 - 51 percent for terrorism;

 From June 24 - 30, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,446 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 2.6 percentage points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones.

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

 For more information, visit http://www.quinnipiac.edu/polling, call (203) 582-5201, or follow us on Twitter

 3. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Approve 40% 10% 79% 31% 37% 42% 46% 45% 36% 36% Disapprove 53 88 13 59 57 49 44 47 57 57 DK/NA 7 3 8 10 6 9 10 7 7 6

 TREND: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President? (* High also 59% Mar 2009)

 APPROVE....... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Jun 04 Dec 10 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2009* 2013 Approve 40 42 40 41 38 59 38 Disapprove 53 50 54 53 57 31 57 DK/NA 7 8 6 7 6 10 6

 35. Thinking about the United States Presidents we have had since World War II: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which one would you consider the best president?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Harry Truman 4% 4% 4% 6% 6% 4% 2% 2% 4% 10% Dwight Eisenhower 5 4 2 8 6 4 8 5 3 6 John Kennedy 15 6 18 17 14 15 21 9 15 17 Lyndon Johnson 3 - 6 1 4 2 2 2 4 2 Richard Nixon 1 2 - 1 1 1 4 1 - - Gerald Ford 1 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 1 - Jimmy Carter 2 - 4 2 2 3 - 2 5 2 Ronald Reagan 35 66 6 36 37 33 18 36 42 34 George Bush Senior 3 6 1 4 2 4 1 6 3 2 Bill Clinton 18 3 34 16 18 18 21 24 14 14 George W. Bush 1 1 - 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Barack Obama 8 4 18 2 6 10 10 10 6 5 DK/NA 4 2 5 4 3 5 11 2 2 5

 TREND: Thinking about the United States Presidents we have had since World War II: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which one would you consider the best president?

 Jul 02 Jun 01 2014 2006 Harry Truman 4 7 Dwight Eisenhower 5 5 John Kennedy 15 18 Lyndon Johnson 3 1 Richard Nixon 1 1 Gerald Ford 1 1 Jimmy Carter 2 5 Ronald Reagan 35 28 George Bush Senior 3 2 Bill Clinton 18 25 George W. Bush 1 3 Barack Obama 8 na DK/NA 4 4

 36. Which of these twelve presidents we have had since World War II would you consider the worst president: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Harry Truman - - - - - - - - - - Dwight Eisenhower 1 1 1 - - 1 - - 2 - John Kennedy - - - - - - - - - - Lyndon Johnson 3 4 3 2 4 3 5 4 2 3 Richard Nixon 13 5 20 14 11 15 12 12 16 13 Gerald Ford 2 - 2 2 3 - 2 1 1 2 Jimmy Carter 8 14 1 9 11 6 4 7 8 13 Ronald Reagan 3 - 6 3 4 3 4 4 4 2 George Bush Senior 2 - 4 1 1 2 - 3 1 2 Bill Clinton 3 4 1 3 2 3 2 2 4 2 George W. Bush 28 5 54 23 26 30 38 34 21 22 Barack Obama 33 63 4 36 34 32 24 29 39 34 DK/NA 4 3 4 4 4 4 10 3 1 5

 TREND: Which of these twelve presidents we have had since World War II would you consider the worst president: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?

 Jul 02 Jun 01 2014 2006 Harry Truman - 1 Dwight Eisenhower 1 - John Kennedy - 1 Lyndon Johnson 3 4 Richard Nixon 13 17 Gerald Ford 2 2 Jimmy Carter 8 13 Ronald Reagan 3 3 George Bush Senior 2 3 Bill Clinton 3 16 George W. Bush 28 34 Barack Obama 33 na DK/NA 4 5

 37. Do you think Barack Obama has been a better President than George W. Bush, worse, or about the same as President Bush?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Better 39% 7% 78% 31% 36% 42% 45% 45% 35% 34% Worse 40 79 4 41 43 38 25 32 48 49 About the same 20 13 16 27 21 19 28 22 17 16 DK/NA 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 2

 TREND: Do you think Barack Obama has been a better President than George W. Bush, worse, or about the same as President Bush?

 Jul 02 Jan 13 Nov 17 Jul 21 Jan 13 2014 2011 2010 2010 2010 Better 39 46 43 42 43 Worse 40 30 37 32 30 About the same 20 22 19 23 23 DK/NA 1 3 2 3 4

 38. How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right; almost all of the time, most of the time, only some of the time, or hardly ever?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Almost all the time 2% 1% 4% - 2% 1% 2% 3% 1% 1% Most of the time 12 5 21 9 12 11 18 11 11 10 Some of the time 49 48 56 45 43 54 50 48 47 50 Hardly ever 37 45 17 45 42 33 29 37 41 39 DK/NA 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 - 1 1

 TREND: How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right; almost all of the time, most of the time, only some of the time, or hardly ever?

 ALMST+MOST.... High Low Jul 02 Jan 21 Dec 10 Nov 12 Oct 01 Mar 24 Dec 10 2014 2014 2013 2013 2013 2010 2013 Almost all the time 2 2 1 2 3 2 1 Most of the time 12 13 11 13 14 17 11 Some of the time 49 50 46 49 51 50 46 Hardly ever 37 33 41 35 31 30 41 DK/NA 1 2 1 1 2 1 1

 39. Would you say that Barack Obama - is honest and trustworthy or not?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Yes 48% 15% 85% 42% 42% 53% 57% 51% 45% 44% No 48 81 12 53 53 43 35 45 53 51 DK/NA 4 4 3 5 4 4 9 3 2 5

 TREND: Would you say that Barack Obama is honest and trustworthy or not? (* Low also 44% Nov 2013)

 YES........... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Jan 13 Dec 10 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2011 2013* Yes 48 48 46 46 44 63 44 No 48 47 49 49 52 31 52 DK/NA 4 5 5 4 4 6 4

 40. Would you say that Barack Obama - has strong leadership qualities or not?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Yes 47% 21% 78% 41% 44% 50% 65% 53% 41% 38% No 51 77 21 57 54 48 32 47 56 59 DK/NA 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 - 2 2

 TREND: Would you say that Barack Obama has strong leadership qualities or not?

 YES........... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Jan 13 Jan 08 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2010 2014 Yes 47 49 49 46 47 66 46 No 51 48 48 51 51 32 51 DK/NA 2 3 3 3 2 2 3

 41. Would you say that Barack Obama - cares about the needs and problems of people like you or not?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Yes 51% 19% 86% 47% 49% 53% 62% 56% 48% 47% No 47 79 12 51 49 45 36 42 51 51 DK/NA 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2

 TREND: Would you say that Barack Obama cares about the needs and problems of people like you or not?

 YES........... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Nov 12 Dec 10 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2008 2013 Yes 51 51 51 50 48 70 48 No 47 45 46 48 49 22 49 DK/NA 2 3 3 2 3 7 3

 42. In the Presidential election of 2012, if Mitt Romney had become President instead of Barack Obama, do you think that, in general, the nation would be better off than it is today or worse off than it is today?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Better off 45% 84% 10% 47% 48% 42% 35% 41% 49% 51% Worse off 38 5 74 33 36 40 44 43 35 35 SAME (VOL) 10 4 9 13 10 9 13 13 7 7 DK/NA 7 7 7 6 6 8 8 4 8 7

 TREND: In the Presidential election of 2012, if Mitt Romney had become President instead of Barack Obama, do you think that, in general, the nation would be better off than it is today or worse off than it is today? (* election of 2008, if John McCain)

 ROMNEY MCCAIN................ Jul 02 Jan 13 Jul 21 Jan 13 2014 2011* 2010* 2010* Better off 45 32 37 35 Worse off 38 41 35 37 SAME(VOL) 10 14 15 17 DK/NA 7 13 13 11

 43. What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?

 Tot Economy and Jobs Total 35% Unemployment/Jobs 15 Economy general 14 Cost of living 2 Minimum wage too low 1 Business leaving/Outsourcing 1 Economy other 2 Politicians/Campaigns Total 12% Politicians/Campaigns genrl 3 Obama administration 2 Political corruption 2 Politicians leadership 1 Politicians/Campaigns other 4 Healthcare Costs/Ins/HMO's 6% Foreign Affairs/Policy Total 6% Foreign affairs/Policy gen 2 Priorities home, not abroad 1 Middle East 1 Military issues 1 Foreign Affairs/policy other 1 Budget Total 5% Budget deficits 2 Gov too big/Gov spending 1 Budget general 1 Budget other 1 Immigration 4% Education Total 4% Education general 2 Funding education 1 Education other 1 War total 3% War general 2 War/Iraq 1 Terrorism Total 3% Terrorism general 1 Security/Safety 1 Terrorism other 1 Lack of ethics/Morality 3% Environment/Pollution 2% Lack of religion 1% Class inequality 1% Crime/Violence 1% Family breakdown/Family values 1% Taxes 1% Energy crisis/Gas prices 1% Middle class/Working class 1% Poverty/Homeless 1% Other 5% DK/NA 4%

 44. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling - the economy?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Approve 40% 9% 76% 34% 37% 43% 40% 48% 37% 38% Disapprove 55 88 18 61 59 52 52 50 60 58 DK/NA 4 3 6 4 4 5 9 3 3 5

 TREND: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the economy? (* Low also 32% Sep 2011)

 APPROVE....... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Mar 04 Oct 06 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2009 2011* Approve 40 40 39 39 37 57 32 Disapprove 55 55 56 58 59 33 64 DK/NA 4 4 5 4 4 10 4

 45. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling - foreign policy?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Approve 37% 9% 70% 31% 36% 39% 45% 40% 36% 32% Disapprove 57 86 23 63 60 54 45 55 60 61 DK/NA 6 5 7 6 4 8 10 5 4 7

 TREND: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling foreign policy?

 APPROVE....... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Apr 29 Jul 02 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2009 2014 Approve 37 39 40 41 42 57 37 Disapprove 57 55 49 51 49 32 57 DK/NA 6 6 11 8 9 11 6

 46. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling - health care?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Approve 40% 7% 78% 32% 39% 40% 38% 45% 38% 39% Disapprove 58 92 20 64 58 57 61 52 60 56 DK/NA 3 1 2 4 3 2 1 3 2 5

 TREND: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling health care?

 APPROVE....... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Jul 02 Dec 10 2014 2014 2014 2014 2013 2009 2013 Approve 40 39 36 35 34 46 34 Disapprove 58 58 59 61 62 42 62 DK/NA 3 3 5 4 4 13 4

 47. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling - the environment?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Approve 50% 27% 80% 45% 49% 52% 68% 57% 42% 42% Disapprove 40 60 14 44 44 37 24 34 49 47 DK/NA 10 13 6 11 8 12 9 10 9 11

 48. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling - terrorism?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Approve 44% 17% 77% 38% 42% 46% 55% 47% 42% 38% Disapprove 51 78 18 56 54 47 43 46 54 55 DK/NA 5 5 5 6 3 7 2 8 4 7

 TREND: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling terrorism?

 APPROVE....... High Low Jul 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Nov 12 May 05 Jul 02 2014 2014 2014 2013 2013 2011 2014 Approve 44 48 52 50 52 67 44 Disapprove 51 41 41 41 42 27 51 DK/NA 5 10 6 8 6 7 5

 52. Would you describe the state of the nation's economy these days as excellent, good, not so good, or poor?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Excellent 1% 1% 1% - 1% - 1% 1% - 1% Good 22 11 34 22 23 21 25 20 22 24 Not so good 43 41 50 39 41 45 41 50 40 40 Poor 34 47 15 39 35 33 32 30 38 35 DK/NA - - 1 1 - - 1 - - 1

 TREND: Would you describe the state of the nation's economy these days as excellent, good, not so good, or poor?

 EXLNT+GOOD.... High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Dec 10 Nov 12 Dec 10 Mar 04 2014 2014 2014 2013 2013 2003 2009 Excellent 1 - 1 - 1 3 - Good 22 26 21 20 21 37 3 Not so good 43 44 44 44 41 42 28 Poor 34 30 33 36 36 16 68 DK/NA - - 1 1 1 1 -

 53. Do you think the nation's economy is getting better, getting worse, or staying about the same?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Better 26% 10% 47% 20% 28% 24% 29% 30% 23% 23% Worse 31 43 12 35 29 32 28 24 36 34 The same 43 46 40 43 41 44 43 45 41 42 DK/NA 1 1 - 1 1 1 1 - - 1

 TREND: Do you think the nation's economy is getting better, getting worse, or staying about the same? (* Low also 11% Sep 2011)

 BETTER........ High Low Jul 02 Apr 02 Jan 22 Dec 10 Nov 12 Jan 18 Oct 06 2014 2014 2014 2013 2013 2011 2011* Better 26 29 28 29 28 36 11 Worse 31 29 26 28 31 20 44 The same 43 42 44 42 40 43 44 DK/NA 1 1 1 1 1 2 1

 54. Do you think Barack Obama has been better for the economy than George W. Bush, worse, or about the same as George W. Bush?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Better 37% 8% 74% 28% 35% 38% 43% 41% 34% 33% Worse 34 65 4 36 35 34 28 28 38 40 The same 27 26 20 34 29 26 27 30 25 25 DK/NA 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 2 2

 55. Do you think that in general the Obama administration has been competent in running the government, or don't you think so?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Yes 44% 13% 80% 36% 38% 48% 50% 47% 41% 39% No 54 86 17 62 59 49 45 51 57 58 DK/NA 3 2 2 2 3 2 5 2 2 3

 TREND: Do you think that in general the Obama administration has been competent in running the government, or don't you think so?

 Jul 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Nov 12 2014 2014 2014 2013 2013 Yes 44 42 43 40 43 No 54 53 55 56 53 DK/NA 3 5 2 3 3

 56. Do you think President Barack Obama is paying enough attention to what his administration is doing, or don't you think so?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Yes 47% 23% 78% 37% 44% 49% 54% 54% 45% 35% No 48 72 19 57 52 45 39 43 50 57 DK/NA 5 5 3 5 4 6 7 3 4 8

 TREND: Do you think President Barack Obama is paying enough attention to what his administration is doing, or don't you think so?

 Jul 02 Jan 22 Jan 08 Dec 10 Nov 12 2014 2014 2014 2013 2013 Yes 47 45 45 41 43 No 48 47 50 52 51 DK/NA 5 8 6 6 6

 57. Do you support or oppose the health care law passed by Barack Obama and Congress in 2010?

 AGE IN YRS.............. Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ Support 43% 9% 83% 35% 43% 43% 46% 48% 41% 40% Oppose 55 90 15 62 56 54 51 51 58 56 DK/NA 2 1 2 3 2 3 2 1 2 4

 TREND: Do you support or oppose the health care law passed by Barack Obama and Congress in 2010? ||||| A new poll from Quinnipiac University rumbled around the Internet on Wednesday morning, and with good reason. The University's description of the survey begins, "President Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II, 33 percent of American voters say." And then, for good measure, it continues, "America would be better off if Republican Mitt Romney had won the 2012 presidential election, 45 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say the country would be worse off."

 One takeaway from that: Romney's support has slipped two points since the 2012 election, when he got 47 percent support. We're not trying to be flip about the poll, which is the latest in a long line showing that Americans are generally unhappy with the direction of the country. But as with so much else, the more interesting details lie underneath the exciting headlines.

 We'll start with that "worst president" thing. Quinnipiac helpfully includes a similar question that it asked in July of 2006, when then-president George W. Bush's poll numbers were in the middle of their long slide downward. Here are the worst presidents since World War II as identified by American voters in 2006 and in 2014.

 July 2006 July 2014 George W. Bush (34 percent) Richard Nixon (17 percent) Bill Clinton (16 percent) Jimmy Carter (13 percent) Barack Obama (33 percent) George W. Bush (28 percent) Richard Nixon (13 percent) Jimmy Carter (8 percent)

 No one has benefited more from the Obama presidency, it seems, than Bill Clinton. Or perhaps, there's an element of partisanship at play.

 Let's switch to the Mitt Romney number. This isn't new; a Post poll found the same thing last year. What jumped out at us in the new data, though, is what happens when you consider the age of the respondents. Here's how people answered Quinnipiac's question about if the country would be better or worse off under Romney, by age group. (In each of the charts that follow, the blue bar is the response more favorable to Obama. So here, it indicates those who think the country would have been worse off under Romney. Gray bars are usually "other;" on this one, they're "the country would be the same.")

 People under 50 are more likely to think that the country is better off with President Obama -- but less strongly than those over 50. That chart, incidentally, looks something like this one, which is the exit poll data on the overall vote from the 2012 election.

 You can see how the margin of support for Obama has eroded in each age group. The overall trend, however, is the same. Older voters like Obama less.

 That pattern holds up on issue after issue.

 And it holds up on the "who's the worst president" question, too. (On this one, the blue bars are Bush and the gray bars are Nixon.)

 When asked to compare the last two presidents, the same.

 On most of the issue questions, the same pattern holds, with some notable exceptions. On the environment, young people overwhelmingly approve of Obama.

 But health care?

 It's probably safe to assume that the erosion of Obama's poll numbers is related to the question above, or the number of people in his base that also disapprove of his handling of the economy.

 That's what's a problem for Obama, not people thinking he's the worst president or wishing they'd elected Mitt Romney. Speaking of, Quinnipiac has another bit of historical data in its overview of this poll. In July 2010, the pollsters asked whether the country would have been better off under John McCain than Obama -- only 18 months into his first term.

 A plurality said it would be. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The public isn't just unhappy with President Obama, it has him pegged as the worst president of the modern era, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Asked to pick the worst president since World War II, 33% said President Obama, pushing him ahead of George W. Bush, who got 28%. Ronald Reagan was deemed the best post-war president by 35%, followed by Bill Clinton (18%) and John F. Kennedy (15%). What's more, by a 45-38 margin, the public said it would have been better off electing Mitt Romney—mirroring this earlier poll. But Philip Bump at the Washington Post thinks that if you dive in, the poll reveals a more pressing concern for Obama. Look at the demographics, and you'll see that on almost every question—including the "worst president" ones—people under 50 still support Obama, while older people vehemently don't. There are two notable exceptions: Younger voters don't approve of Obama's handling of healthcare or the economy. "That's what's a problem for Obama, not people thinking he's the worst president or wishing they'd elected Mitt Romney."


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– Iran has been making increasing noises about its drone program, and Tehran's latest sabre-rattling says that it now has an advanced drone that can take off vertically, ie, without a runway. As Reuters reports by way of Iranian state media, a lead researcher claimed that the drone would be tested yesterday and "unveiled" next year, adding that the drone "enjoys ultra-advanced technology and has been built for the first time in the world." The drone is reportedly also capable of hovering in mid-air, and is silent, adds the AP. Iran earlier this week claimed it had drones far more advanced than Hezbollah's.

DUBAI Iran will increase its naval presence in the Gulf to strengthen its authority over three islands which the United Arab Emirates says are its territory, Tehran said on Sunday.

 The islands sit near oil shipping routes at the mouth of the strategic Strait of Hormuz and the challenge over their sovereignty is a constant threat to Iran's fragile relations with its Arab neighbors.

 "The security of the Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf is part of the various strategies of the naval force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said, according to the website of state television IRIB.

 Jafari was speaking at a ceremony inaugurating a fifth "naval defense zone" at the port of Bandar Lengeh. He said the IRGC was "increasing, expanding and improving the expert capability in naval defense" in the five zones.

 "The fifth zone of the Guards' naval force is one of the naval defense chains which is in particular responsible for the defense of the Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf," he said.

 The 41-year-old dispute between Shi'ite Muslim Iran and the Sunni UAE over the islands - Greater and Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa - has nationalist and ethnic overtones and was inflamed when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Abu Musa in April.

 In September, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan said Iran's "occupation" of the three islands was against international law.

 Last month Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tehran would consider downgrading ties with the UAE over the dispute, although the foreign ministry later denied the report, according to state television.

 (Reporting By Yeganeh Torbati and Zahra Hosseinian; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) ||||| Iran's media is reporting the country has produced a domestically-made drone capable of hovering in midair.

 The Sunday report by several newspapers including the conservative Resalat says an advanced vertical take-off and landing or VTOL drone will be displayed in February.

 Resalat quoted Abbas Jam, who is director of the project, as saying that the drone can also fly in silence.

 Earlier in October Iran said it obtained images of sensitive Israeli bases taken by a drone that was launched by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement that month and downed by Israel.

 Iran says other drones made dozens of apparently undetected flights into Israeli airspace from Lebanon in recent years. Israel has rejected that.

 Iran frequently claims breakthroughs in military technology and other achievements. Most are impossible to independently confirm. |||||


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These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET

 MONUMENT, Colorado Colorado's top state prison official was shot and killed when he answered the front door of his house, setting off a hunt for the gunman and raising questions about whether the attack had anything to do with his position.

 Authorities are also looking for a dark-colored "boxy" car seen near the house of Tom Clements, 58, when he was shot around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in Monument, north of Colorado Springs. The vehicle's engine was running and a witness reported seeing one person driving away in the car.

 Lt. Jeff Kramer of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office said investigators have not ruled anything out, but the shooting could have been related to Clements' job as executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections.

 "As the director of the Department of Corrections or any similar type position, it could in fact open someone up to be a target of a crime such as this. Although we remain sensitive to that, we also want to make sure that we remain open-minded to other possibilities as well," Kramer said.

 The FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation have joined the case, he said.

 The home of the Clements family in Monument, Colorado. / CBS

 Clements, 58, was appointed to serve as the head of the DOC by Governor John Hickenlooper in January 2011 after he served for more than three decades in the Missouri Department of Corrections. He oversaw operations of state and private prisons and parole operations.

 Hickenlooper, red-eyed and somber at Wednesday's news conference, said he didn't think the killing was part of any larger attack against his cabinet.

 In an email to Department of Corrections employees notifying them of the killing, Gov. Hickenlooper said, "I can hardly believe it, let alone write words to describe it. I am so sad. I have never worked with a better person than Tom, and I can't imagine our team without him."

 The governor described Clements as "unfailingly kind and thoughtful."

 A family member called 911 to report the shooting. Search dogs were called in to comb through a wooded area around Clements' home, and authorities were going house to house trying to find out what neighbors heard and saw.

 Clements lived in a wooded neighborhood of large, two-story houses on expansive 2-acre lots dotted with evergreen trees in an area known as the Black Forest. Long driveways connect the homes to narrow, winding roads that thread the hills. Clements' home was out of view, behind a barricade of crime-scene tape in the road.

 It would have been simple to find where Clements lived. It took two clicks to get his correct street address through a publicly available internet locator service Wednesday morning. The listing also included his previous home address in Missouri.

 While Clements generally kept a low profile, his killing comes a week after Clements denied a Saudi national prisoner's request to be sent to his home country to serve out his sentence.

 Colo. prisons chief shot and killed at home

 Homaidan al-Turki was convicted of sexually assaulting a housekeeper and keeping her as a virtual slave. Clements said state law requires sex offenders to undergo treatment while in prison and that al-Turki had declined to participate.

 Al-Turki, a well-known member of Denver's Muslim community, was convicted in state court in 2006 of unlawful sexual contact by use of force, theft and extortion and sentenced to 28 years to life in prison. A judge reduced the sentence to eight years to life.

 Al-Turki insisted the case was politically motivated. He owned a company that some years ago sold CDs of sermons recorded by Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

 Al-Turki's conviction angered Saudi officials and prompted the U.S. State Department to send Colorado Attorney General John Suthers to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan and al-Turki's family.

 After Clements' shooting, someone with the State Department called the Colorado Corrections Department.

 Prisons spokeswoman Alison Morgan said she had no details on the call other than to say it wasn't connected to the shooting investigation and may have been a simple courtesy. "They called us because we have a cooperative international program with them," she said.

 Attorney Henry Solano, one of al-Turki's attorneys, said he has not been contacted by investigators. He refused to comment on the shooting.

 State officials said they have increased security for top Colorado government appointed officials and have increased security at the governor's mansion in the wake of the incident. Officials told KCNC reporter Brian Maass the move was purely precautionary and there was no threat that would make it seem other state leaders were in danger.

 Clements is at least the second state prisons chief killed in office. Michael Francke, director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, was stabbed to death outside his office in 1989 in what prosecutors described as a bungled car burglary.

 A former Oregon prison inmate, Frank Gable, was found guilty of aggravated murder in 1991 and sentenced to life in prison. He and supporters contend he was wrongly convicted.

 Clements' slaying was reminiscent of the 2008 killing of Adams County prosecutor Sean May. His wife was six months pregnant when he was shot and killed as he returned from work to his home in northwest Denver. His killer was never found.

 Gov. Hickenlooper ordered flags lowered to half-staff at public buildings until the day after Clements' funeral. Clements is survived by his wife, Lisa, and their two daughters. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 DENVER — The wounds and rage from a mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater were still raw one morning last July when Gov. John W. Hickenlooper went on national television to discuss grief and guns. Shaken and groping for answers, he nevertheless cast doubt on one idea: that tighter gun laws could have prevented the carnage.

 “This person — if there were no assault weapons available, and no this or no that — this guy’s going to find something, right?” he said on CNN, referring to the gunman whose rampage killed 12 and wounded dozens. “If it was not one weapon, it would have been another.”

 Eight months later, Mr. Hickenlooper is poised to sign some of the toughest new gun control laws in the nation, capping a journey that has transformed a popular, data-driven Western Democrat who takes his son shooting into an unlikely frontman for bringing new gun laws into the center of the United States. The bill signing is expected on Wednesday.

 “It absolutely lays a path for the rest of the country,” said Jill Hanauer, a Democratic strategist in Denver. “If you can do it here, you can do it anyplace.”

 Democrats hope the expanded background checks and new limits on ammunition clips are signs of a durable shift in a Western swing state where the biggest political affiliation is “unaffiliated.”

 A decade ago, Colorado was loosening concealed-weapons laws and facing court challenges over a law that stripped legal protections for gay residents. It has now legalized marijuana, voted twice for Barack Obama, approved civil unions for same-sex couples and allowed illegal immigrants to pay cheaper in-state tuition rates at state colleges.

 Where Democrats see progress, Republicans see overreach. About one in three Colorado households own a gun, and Republicans are hoping the state’s hunters and sport shooters, libertarians and social conservatives will punish Democrats in next year’s state-level elections. Conservatives in southwestern Colorado have already submitted petitions to recall State Representative Mike McLachlan, a Democrat who supported the gun bills.

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 “We are not the East Coast or the West Coast,” said State Senator Ellen Roberts, who joined fellow Republicans to attack the package in a 12-hour Senate debate. “There will be political blowback.”

 When it came to guns, Mr. Hickenlooper, 61, a onetime oil geologist and brewpub owner, said he simply wanted solutions.

 “We were just pulling our hair out, saying, What can you do?” the governor said. “Rather than feeling good, something that can make a difference. What are best practices? Where can we improve?”

 Aides said his strategy reflected a pragmatic approach, one that extended to his days as a business owner or as mayor of Denver. In 2010, a year of fervid partisanship, he cruised to the governor’s seat by running as a pragmatist who rejected nasty campaigning. He even filmed a television ad in the shower (clothes on) and promised voters a muck-free campaign.

 But guns were risky territory. Colorado had not passed new gun laws since just after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. Any move by Democrats would instantly be characterized as a “gun grab.”

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 After attending funerals and memorial services for the victims of the Aurora movie theater shooting, Mr. Hickenlooper started asking questions about guns and death. Did ammunition limits make sense? Did background checks really keep guns away from potential killers?

 As Democrats started drafting bills, Mr. Hickenlooper sent his staff on a research expedition, seeking data on mass shootings, crime statistics and gaps in mental health laws.

 “He put our people through their paces,” said Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which lobbied and advertised in support of the bills. The National Rifle Association bought radio and print ads condemning the measures.

 Throughout the autumn, as Mr. Hickenlooper and his staff drove around the state, the topic kept coming up in conversations with suburban parents and hunters, gun advocates and ranchers. He asked: What limits could you support? Which ones go too far? He met with the head of the N.R.A. On a three-day bicycle tour in Eastern Colorado’s more conservative plains, he asked farmers and rural Coloradans their opinions.

 On some issues, he was out in front. In his annual State of the State speech in January, he jump-started the debate with a call to expand Colorado’s background check system. After Columbine, Colorado voters closed a loophole to require checks not only at retail gun shops but also at gun shows.

 Other measures stirred a deep ambivalence. Some critics said he was not taking a bold enough stance on one of the defining issues of his governorship — one easily as consequential as raucous debates over oil and gas drilling (he is a proponent) or the parallel plagues of wildfire and drought.

 When Democrats at the Capitol proposed limiting ammunition magazines to 15 rounds, Mr. Hickenlooper did not jump on board. He knew the Glock 17 was one of the most popular handguns in the country, and outlawing its 17-round clips would be deeply unpopular with some gun owners.

 A gun-magazine manufacturer in Northern Colorado threatened to leave if the law passed, potentially sending 200 jobs to places like Wyoming or Texas. Not good news in a state where unemployment, though falling, is at 7.3 percent.

 For weeks, aides said Mr. Hickenlooper was “examining” the proposal. He suggested he would support the bill, then hesitated.

 But he had seen a study saying that 30 percent to 40 percent of slain police officers had been killed with high-capacity magazines. At a conference in Washington, he talked to government staff members from Arizona who described how Jared L. Loughner, the gunman in the mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, had been subdued as he changed clips. Eventually, and with reservations, Mr. Hickenlooper decided to support the 15-round limit.

 “It seemed like in the end there might be more benefit than harm,” he said.

 As the bills marched ahead, hundreds of outraged gun owners and dealers crammed the halls of the gilded Capitol to vent. Cars drove around the building, honking like angry geese in opposition to the measures.

 An airplane even circled overhead, towing a banner that read, “Hick: Do Not Take Our Guns.”

 But supporters say most Coloradans, even those who shoot skeet and store elk meat in their deep freezes, quietly support the new laws.

 In December, a telephone survey of 905 Coloradans by Keating Research found that 80 percent agreed with expanded background checks and 61 percent supported magazine limits.

 Mr. Hickenlooper is running for re-election next year, and his opponent — Republicans are still looking for a candidate — will almost certainly try to bludgeon the governor with the gun package.

 But to Mr. Hickenlooper, it is time for the fight over guns to end.

 “Coloradans are very nonpartisan, common-sense, pragmatic people,” he said. “There’s just a common-sense approach to these kinds of issues that tries to look at the real facts, make a decision and say, Let’s move on.” |||||

– Tom Clements, the executive director of Colorado’s department of corrections, was shot dead last night—but the who and why remain a mystery. Clements was shot fatally in the chest as he answered the door of his home in Monument, Colo., reports NBC, but nobody else in the house was harmed. Although there's no clear connection, the timing is notable: the shooting comes on the eve of tough and controversial new gun laws in the state, following the movie theater massacre in Aurora last year. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to sign new legislation today that will restrict magazine capacity and expand background checks on private and online firearms sales. But his first duty this morning was instead to pen a letter to Department of Corrections employees. "I can hardly believe it, let alone write words to describe it," wrote Hickenlooper. "I am so sad. I have never worked with a better person than Tom, and I can't imagine our team without him."


Article:

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says she's open to holding public hearings on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

 Several senators – both defenders and critics of the NSA’s data-mining programs – have called for more public debate since the disclosures of those methods this week.

 “I'm open to doing a hearing every month if that's necessary,” Feinstein said on ABC’s “This Week.”

 The California Democrat held a classified session on the program on Capitol Hill last Thursday, which was attended by 27 senators. And she has defended the NSA program, saying it has helped thwart terrorist attacks.

 Still, she acknowledged it was difficult for authorities to detail to the public how those methods have been helpful because of the classified nature of the information.

 “We can't actually go in there and - other than the two that have been released - give the public an actual idea of people that have been saved, attacks that have been prevented, that kind of thing,” Feinstein said.

 On the show, Feinstein referenced two terrorist plots where the NSA programs have been used: the case of David Headley, who was eventually sentenced for his involvement in the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, and Najibullah Zazi, who had planned an attack on the New York subway system in 2009.

 Read more about: Dianne Feinstein, Surveillance, National Security Agency ||||| WASHINGTON — In mid-February, Senator John McCain went on the NBC program “Meet the Press” to explain his unhappiness with President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary. A week later, he took to “State of the Union” on CNN to chat about sequestration (bad) and the attack in Benghazi (worse).

 In May, he was on “Fox News Sunday,” talking about Middle East politics with Chris Wallace. Last week, Mr. McCain, who was in California for his oldest son’s wedding, hit “Face the Nation” on CBS, via satellite, to discuss his trip to Syria.

 Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is not his party’s most recent presidential nominee. He is no longer the highest-ranking Republican on any major Congressional committee. And as party spokesmen go, these days he is just as often speaking against Congressional Republicans as with them.

 Yet on many given Sundays — over 60 of them since 2010 — Mr. McCain repairs to a television studio in Washington to hold forth. On “Face the Nation” alone, Mr. McCain has appeared more than any other politician in the program’s 60-year history.

 His Sunday ubiquity has set off some grumbling in Washington that producers give him too much airtime. It also tends to solidify the impression in living rooms across America that he remains the spokesman for, and titular head of, his party.

 “Really?” Mr. McCain said with a soupçon of glee when informed of his record-breaking Sunday showiness. “Well I enjoy them. I find it is the best way to communicate with the American people.”

 In many ways, the Sunday morning talk shows are like ID lanyards and BlackBerries. While much of the nation has lost interest in them, they hold a big — some would say disproportionate — sway in Washington.

 The programs’ producers and members of Congress — and, to some degree, White House officials — collaborate in a weekly seduction ritual in which producers try mightily to get the most powerful guests and newsmakers of the moment, as the guests’ staffs weigh the risks of stepping before some of the toughest questioners in Washington.

 When it comes to a dream guest, program hosts say, Mr. McCain checks almost every box: a senior Republican senator who can speak authoritatively and contemporaneously on many issues, flies secretly to Syria, compares members of his own party to deranged fowl and yet is a reliable opponent of most Obama administration policies.

 “What makes a good guest is someone who makes news,” said Mr. Wallace, the Fox host. “To make news, you have to be at the center of the news and willing to talk about it in a noncanned way, someone who always come to the shows ready to play.”

 He went on: “I sometimes think to myself, ‘Gee we’ve had McCain on a lot,’ ” not to mention Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. “But the fact of the matter is they are good guests.”

 And good guests become frequent guests. The programs tend to be dominated by a handful of predictably quotable politicians. Others make only rare appearances when a pet issue rears its head. And still others, by choice or by elimination, never make the cut at all.

 “I usually go where I’m asked,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, who has not been on a Sunday talk show in the last few years. “I did Greta the other night,” Mr. Isakson pointed out, referring to the Fox News program “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren.”

 Mr. Isakson, like several other Republicans, says Mr. McCain does not serve as a spokesman for them or their party. “We all speak for ourselves,” he said.

 Critics of the Sunday programs argue that the words spoken on them are at once too calculated and overly interpreted, simply by virtue of where they are delivered. “You can go on Charlie Rose midweek and have a long conversation that ends in a game of strip poker and no one will pay attention,” said Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “You go on a Sunday show, and everyone is looking for the slightest change, a new syllable, some new nuance.”

 The prominence of guests with strong points of view can give viewers a false sense of proportion to certain sides of policy debates. This is most clearly the case with Mr. McCain, whose advocacy for military intervention in Syria and criticism of the administration’s policies there might create a sense that there is a robust policy debate over the matter in Washington when there really is not.

 “In order to deal with complexity but also create a basis for entertainment,” said Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center, “you need someone who knows what they are talking about who is pursuing daylight between themselves and the administration.”

 Many guests believe that the talk shows also contribute to the partisan disharmony in Washington, though that may be like blaming a speck of pepper for the flavor of a 10-gallon pot of soup. Even the highest-rated programs attract fewer than 2.5 million viewers, a tiny audience by the standards of network television.

 “There is a tendency on the Sunday shows to look more toward partisan polarization,” said David Gergen, a senior analyst for CNN who has advised four presidents. “They seek out people who are further out on the spectrum,” Mr. Gergen said, adding that “more than one senator” has told him the story of being bumped for a more partisan guest when they expressed moderate positions on issues in pre-interviews, something producers and hosts say is untrue.

 “We aren’t looking for someone because of their ideological view,” said Bob Schieffer, the chief Washington correspondent for CBS and the moderator of “Face the Nation.” “We are trying to move the story forward.”

 Many Congressional staff members, when faced with the weekly talk show requests, apply the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm. One misstatement or shading can hurt a campaign and damage a career, as Susan E. Rice, who is the United States ambassador to the United Nations and is about to become Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, learned when she went on a series of shows one Sunday last September to discuss the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

 The term “talking points” will now follow her into retirement.

 Mrs. Clinton avoided the Sunday talk shows for most of her short Senate career and wisely avoided the cameras after the Benghazi episode; Mr. Obama also stayed away when he was a senator, recalled Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for the National Security Council, until Hurricane Katrina.

 “That was around an event and a message,” Mr. Vietor said. “It made sense to do it. To go on as a lawmaker and play pundit minimizes you as a lawmaker.”

 Some of the hosts complain that the White House sends out far too few high-level officials, a contention underscored by Mr. Schieffer’s thinly veiled contempt for the White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer when he appeared on a recent Sunday to address a variety of scandals that have bedeviled the administration.

 “They tend to send out people who don’t seem to have direct knowledge of the story,” Mr. Schieffer said, noting that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was a frequent guest when he was a senator but rarely appeared now. Mr. Schieffer added that Mrs. Clinton would have been preferable to Ms. Rice after the Benghazi attack.

 Despite their low ratings, the Sunday talk shows make headlines, and they are closely watched by Washington power brokers. Even the programs’ critics concede that they are a rite of power passage for politicians making their way to the top.

 They can also be entertaining. Mr. Wallace remembered asking former President Bill Clinton a question that sent him into a paroxysm of rage. “My first thought was, ‘How am I go to handle this?’ ” he said. “Second, I thought, ‘This is great television.’ ”

 Finally, because Mr. Clinton carried on at such length, Mr. Wallace thought of the South Carolina senator waiting in the wings. “We had to call and bump Lindsey,” he said. ||||| Sen. John McCain on Sunday defended the wide-reaching government surveillance programs revealed last week, arguing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court system gives them “appropriate.”

 Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union,” whether he was bothered by the programs, the Arizona Republican replied: “No, not really.”

 “I believe that the FISA court system is an appropriate way of reviewing these policies,” said McCain, a top defense hawk on Capitol Hill.

 (Also on POLITICO: Guardian reporter talks about NSA reporting)

 “To somehow think that because we are having phone calls recorded as far as their length and who they were talking to, I don’t think that that is necessarily wrong if they want to go further and they have to go to this court,” McCain added.

 The phone-records program has its defenders in Congress, with top intelligence leaders arguing that those methods helped prevent potential terrorist attacks. But civil libertarians such as Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have criticized the initiatives for reaching too far into Americans’ privacy.

 Read more about: John McCain, Surveillance, National Security Agency ||||| 'I would be more than happy to speak to them,' he says on law enforcement. | POLITICO Screen grab

 Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald said in an interview Sunday that he has not heard from law enforcement authorities about his reporting into the National Security Agency’s surveillance tactics.

 “Any time they would like to speak to me, I would be more than happy to speak to them,” Greenwald said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I will tell them that there is this thing called the Constitution and the very First Amendment of which guarantees a free press.”

 Greenwald reported last week that under a government order, Verizon has turned over millions of phone records to the NSA as part of a vast data-mining program. A follow-up article from Greenwald reported that the government collected 97 billion pieces of data in March.

 (Also on POLITICO: Reporters say there's a chill in the air)

 He also shed some insight into the motivations of his sources.

 “They risked their careers and their lives and their liberty because what they were seeing being done in secret inside the United States government is so alarming and so pernicious that they simply want one thing,” Greenwald said. “That is, for the American people at least to learn about what this massive spying apparatus is, and what the capabilities are, so that we can have an open, honest debate about whether that’s the kind of country that we want to live in.”

 Greenwald pushed back against comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who called the disclosures of the surveillance programs “reckless.”

 “The only thing we’ve endangered is the reputation of the people in power who are building this massive spying apparatus about any accountability who are trying to hide from the American people what it is that they are doing,” Greenwald said. “There is no national security harm from letting people know that they are collecting all phone records, that they are tapping into the Internet, that they are planning massive cyberattacks -- both foreign and even domestic.”

 Read more about: Constitution, National Security Agency, James Clapper, Glenn Greenwald ||||| House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Sunday that Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who broke the story of the National Security Agency’s surveillance methods, ‘doesn't have a clue’ on how the program works.

 Rogers, a Michigan Republican, warned of security risks that could come with the disclosures of the programs and argued that Greenwald’s source should be prosecuted if identified. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) agreed Greenwald’s source should face prosecution.

 “He doesn't have a clue how this thing works,” Rogers said on ABC’s “This Week” of Greenwald. “Neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous.”

 (Also on POLITICO: Reporters say there's a chill in the air)

 Rogers said the disclosures were harmful because Greenwald’s source did not have all of the information to depict an accurate portrayal of the NSA’s data-mining program. If the sources were legitimately concerned, Rogers said they should have come to authorities on Capitol Hill instead of the media.

 “Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous, is dangerous to us,” Rogers said. “It's dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath of which that person took.”

 Read more about: Dianne Feinstein, Surveillance, National Security Agency, Glenn Greenwald, Mike Rogers |||||
What is a summary?

– Glenn Greenwald is resolutely standing by his story, telling ABC today that if the NSA comes calling, “I will tell them that there is this thing called the Constitution, and the very First Amendment of which guarantees a free press.” Of his sources, the Guardian reporter dismissed claims of recklessness, saying they "risked their careers because what (is) being done inside the United States government is so alarming and so pernicious that they simply want ... for the American people at least to learn about what this massive spying apparatus is, so that we can have an open, honest debate about whether that’s the kind of country that we want to live in.” Further, he says, as per Politico, “The only thing we’ve endangered is the reputation of the people in power." Elsewhere in NSA news on your Sunday dial: Rand Paul wants to sue: I'm going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I'm going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies; ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying, 'We don't want our phone records looked at' then maybe someone will wake up and things will change in Washington." Mike Rogers thinks Greenwald 'doesn't have a clue:' “Neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous. Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous, is dangerous to us. It's dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath of which that person took.” Dianne Feinstein wants hearings: "I'm open to doing a hearing every month if that's necessary." But there's a but: "We can't actually go in there and - other than the two that have been released—give the public an actual idea of people that have been saved, attacks that have been prevented, that kind of thing." John McCain thinks it's OK: “I believe that the FISA court system is an appropriate way of reviewing these policies. To somehow think that because we are having phone calls recorded as far as their length and who they were talking to, I don’t think that that is necessarily wrong if they want to go further and have to go to this court." Speaking of McCain, the New York Times ... has this piece on the faces you keep seeing on the Sunday shows over and over and over again.


News article:

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 Yes ||||| The suspect in the shooting at the congressional baseball practice earlier this week had a list including the names of some members of Congress on him, CBS News has confirmed.

 A U.S. official told CBS News that James Hodgkinson, the Alexandria shooter, had a list of names including GOP Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, and Trent Franks of Arizona. Duncan and Brooks were at the Alexandria, Virginia, field where GOP members of Congress were practicing for a congressional baseball game Wednesday, although Duncan left before the shooting began. The Daily Caller first reported that Hodgkinson had a note listing members of Congress on his person.

 One source told CBS News the note is not considered an "assassination list," but it is clear Hodgkinson had a group of people he was focused on recently. Sources tell CBS News there were many writings among Hodgkinson's possessions, either on his person, in bags he carried or had in his vehicle.

 Doctors give update on Scalise's condition

 The gunman opened fire around 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, striking five people, including House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise. Scalise remained in critical condition Thursday afternoon, and although doctors say his condition has improved some over the last 36 hours, he will require further surgeries, time in the hospital and rehabilitation.

 Hodgkinson died of his wounds Wednesday.

 Federal authorities are investigating Hodgkinson's motives, including examining social media posts that included anti-Trump and anti-Republican sentiments. The FBI believes Hodgkinson had moved from Illinois to Alexandria in recent months, and was living in his vehicle.

 The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) traced the two weapons recovered from the scene -- a 9 mm handgun and a 7.62 caliber rifle. At this time, there is no evidence the suspect obtained the weapons illegally.

 CBS News' Andy Triay contributed to this report ||||| WASHINGTON — The gunman who targeted Republican congressmen this week at a baseball field in suburban Washington was carrying a list with the names of at least three lawmakers, and had pictures of the ballpark stored on his cellphone, two law enforcement officials said on Friday.

 One of the officials said there were no explicit threats written on the list that was found on the body of James T. Hodgkinson, who was killed on Wednesday morning in a shootout with the police in Alexandria, Va., after he took aim at Republican lawmakers preparing for a charity baseball game against congressional Democrats.

 Image Representative Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, is said to have been on a list carried by the gunman. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images

 The official said the list included at least three names: Representatives Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina and Trent Franks of Arizona, according to the two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the shooting remained under investigation. ||||| Story highlights None of the victims were on the list

 A law enforcement source said it is not clear that it was an attack list

 Washington (CNN) A list of names -- including some Republican members of Congress -- was found with the Alexandria shooter, according to a law enforcement source and Rep. Mo Brooks, who was on the list and present at the practice but unharmed by the shooting.

 James Hodgkinson, 66, from Belleville, Illinois, was shot dead by police after opening fire in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday. Hodgkinson maintained a social media presence that was pro-Bernie Sanders and anti-Republican.

 The law enforcement source tells CNN that it's not clear it is an assassination list. None of the victims injured in the attack were on the list, the law enforcement source said.

 House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise was the only congressman injured in the shooting.

 Brooks told CNN that he was contacted by Capitol Police and told his name and office number were on the list. Brooks said the list was short and the other names he was told of were also GOP congressmen. Brooks says he is "advising my office personnel and friends to be extra wary in my presence."

 Read More |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The Alexandria shooter carried a list bearing the names of some Republican congressmen when he went on his early-morning rampage on Wednesday. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama confirms to CNN that he was on the list as was his office number. Reps. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina and Trent Franks of Arizona were also on it, per CBS. (A Fox News reporter puts the number of names on the list at six, tweeting they are all Freedom Caucus members, though most other reports still specify three.) The note is not considered an "assassination list," per CBS, but indicates that shooter James Hodgkinson, 66, was eyeing a specific group of lawmakers. Franks declined to talk about the list but tells CNN "it's clear that [the attack] was premeditated." Hodgkinson, an anti-Republican activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who was shot dead by cops, had two photos of the field on his cellphone, per the New York Times. For some time before the attack, Hodgkinson used a YMCA next to the ballpark, where he was frequently seen tapping on his laptop in the lobby. Duncan and Brooks were among the reps on the baseball diamond, though Duncan left early. Brooks was uninjured. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the only rep who was shot, remained in critical condition after two operations to stop internal bleeding and repair a leg bone, per the Times. He will likely undergo further surgeries. Police are probing Hodgkinson's motives, including his social media posts in which he railed against Republicans and President Trump, per CBS. (Threats to reps of both parties increased last week.)