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The day’s top national and international news
Tuesday, Jun 18, 2013 at 8:18 PM
Immigration Bill Would Trim Deficit by $200B: Gov't Report
AP
The Senate's immigration reform bill would trim the federal budget deficit by $197 billion over the next decade and would give about 8 million undocumented immigrants legal status, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released Tuesday. Those numbers were a boon to supporters of the bipartisan bill now facing debate in the Senate — a bill conservatives have deemed dead on arrival in the Republican-led House and which House Speaker John Boehner called "laughable" Tuesday. The much-anticipated new CBO report also estimated that while passing the bill would create new federal outlays of $262 billion in the first decade, it would also increase revenues — primarily from creating new income and payroll taxes — by $459 billion. The report also estimated that in the decade thereafter, deficits would drop by another $700 billion. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a "Gang of Eight" sponsor of the bill, called the report "a huge momentum boost for immigration reform."
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Feds Mull Overhaul of Phone Surveillance Program
AP
The National Security Agency is considering whether to stop stockpiling records of Americans' phone calls, the most controversial element of its just-leaked data surveillance programs, U.S. officials told Congress on Tuesday. The feds could instead let telecom companies keep the data until intelligence officials have a specific reason to review it for possible connections to terror plots, the officials told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander saying the agency would re-examine "how we actually do this program." The NSA's collection of millions of phone records was disclosed earlier this month after a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked documents on the program to The Guardian. Under the program, the NSA doesn't eavesdrop on calls but rather collects the metadata on the calls — the phone numbers, times and length of each call.
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House Passes GOP-Backed Abortion Ban
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The House passed a GOP-backed bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks roughly along party lines — though the measure now faces almost certain doom in the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Oval Office. Six Republicans and six Democrats in the House broke ranks with their party for the 228 to 196 vote. The vote on the measure, called the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," came after grumbling by moderate House Republicans that the vote was purely an effort by conservatives to pander to their bases — and that it wasn't doing Republicans in swing districts any favors with constituents. "We're getting the political messaging wrong," one GOP official said, while Rep. Charlie Dent called the debate "a stupid idea." Debate Monday afternoon was supposed to have been managed by Rep. Trent Franks, but after his recent Todd Akin-style gaffe ("the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low"), Rep. Marsha Blackburn took over that task.
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18 Mayors: Limit Use of Food Stamps to Buy Soda
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Obesity Is a Disease, Doctors' Group Says
Obesity was officially designated a disease Tuesday by the American Medical Association. The influential doctors' group doesn't have any official say in the matter — but its designation could have major implications for medical treatment, public policy and even job security, the group said. The designation could also make it easier for policymakers to enact changes in the way obesity is treated on a public health level — as such a designation did for smoking. "More widespread recognition of obesity as a disease could result in greater investments by government and the private sector to develop and reimburse obesity treatments," also, the AMA said. "Employers may be required to cover obesity treatments for their employees and may be less able to discriminate on the basis of body weight."
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FBI: Snooping Thwarted NYSE, Subway Bomb Plots
Government surveillance programs disrupted plots to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and subway system, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce revealed on Tuesday. The snooping also linked an American citizen in Chicago to the 2008 terror attacks on hotels in India and to a plot to bomb the offices of a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, Joyce also told members of the House Intelligence Committee. National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander, meanwhile, testified that the programs helped stop more than 50 "potential terrorist events" since the 9/11 attacks. Alexander said he would provide classified details on all of the plots to committee lawmakers on Wednesday.
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Blagojevich Lawyer Wants More Time to File Appeal
AP
Starbucks to Post Calorie Counts Nationwide
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20 minutes ago
After this Kermit Gosnell trial, (and) some of the horrific acts that were going on, the vast majority of the American people believe in the substance of this bill, and so do I.
Yahoo: 13,000 Data Requests From Law Enforcement in Six Months
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Journalist Michael Hastings Dies at 33
AP
Michael Hastings, the journalist best known for the 2010 Rolling Stone article that led to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation, died in a car crash in Los Angeles, according to his employers at BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone. Reporters and others he worked with through the years took to social media to pay their respects. Hasting's Rolling Stone piece "Runaway General," which featured McChrystal, then head of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, criticizing the Obama administration's handling of the war. McChrystal handed in his resignation to the White House days after the article was published. Hastings was 33 years old at the time of death.
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Facebook Outage Sparks Online Frenzy
AP
Is NSA Leaker a Whistleblower? Legally Speaking, No
AP
Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor employee who leaked classified documents about U.S. government data surveillance, has often been called a whistleblower. But legally speaking, he's not technically one, NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams explains. Snowden doesn't qualify for whistleblower protections under the law. Standard whistleblower laws, which protect government workers who expose wrongdoing from retaliation, don't apply to intelligence agency workers. A separate law applies to them — but even it wouldn't apply to Snowden, because he didn't expose the kinds of actions it protects. The programs he exposed are presumptively legal for now, given the assent of Congress and a special intelligence court. But even assuming the programs were unconstitutional, as Snowden's supporters contend, he would only be able to claim whistleblower status if he took his concerns to the National Security Agency's inspector general or a member of a congressional intelligence committee.
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Chrysler Recalls 1.56 Million Jeeps
AP
Chrysler is throwing in the towel in its dispute with the feds over millions of Jeeps and will recall 1.56 million vehicles that federal regulators said could erupt in flames if rear-ended. The deal puts to bed a very public disagreement between the auto maker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which had demanded a recall. Until Tuesday, Chrysler had appeared poised to refuse to comply with it, and it was expected to file papers Tuesday doing just that. Instead, it said that although it had found the vehicles weren't defective, it was voluntarily recalling all 1993 through 2004 Grand Cherokees and all 2002 through 2007 Liberty vehicles.
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Lew Unveils Less Loopy Signature for Dollar Debut
Treasury Department
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