Obama: No excuse for GOP not to vote on a court nominee
Obama: No excuse for GOP not to vote on a court nominee
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) — President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that Republicans have no constitutional grounds to refuse to vote on a Supreme Court nominee, and he challenged his political foes in the Senate to rise above the “venom and rancor” that has paralyzed judicial nominations.
As Obama cast the dispute over filling the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia as a test of whether the Senate could function, there were early signs that Republican resistance could be eroding. Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley suggested he might be open to considering Obama’s yet-to-be named nominee, an indication his party may be sensitive to Democrats’ escalating charges of unchecked obstructionism.
“I intend to do my job between now and January 20 of 2017,” Obama told reporters at a news conference. He said of the nation’s senators, “I expect them to do their job as well.”
Obama was in California for a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders gathered for two days of diplomacy. But his attention was divided at that conference.
Since Scalia’s unexpected death at a Texas ranch on Saturday, White House lawyers and advisers have been scrambling to refine and vet a list of potential replacements, while also devising a strategy to push a candidate through the Republican-led Senate.
Pope to Mexican youth: Jesus doesn’t want you to be hit men
MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — Pope Francis urged Mexico’s young people to resist the lure of easy money from dealing drugs and instead value themselves during a visit Tuesday to the heartland of the nation’s narcotics trade. “Jesus, who gives us hope, would never ask us to be hit men,” he said.
Francis brought a message of hope to Mexico’s next generation during a youth pep rally in Morelia, capital of Michoacan state, a major methamphetamine production hub and drug-trafficking route.
It was by far the most colorful event of his visit, featuring butterfly-winged dancers and mariachi bands — and a crowd so enthusiastic that Francis got pulled over by people grabbing at him.
Improvising at times from his text, Francis told the crowd that he understood that for young Mexicans it was difficult to feel their worth “when you are continually exposed to the loss of friends or relatives at the hands of the drug trade, of drugs themselves, of criminal organizations that sow terror.”
But, he insisted, by following Christ they would find the strength to say “it is a lie to believe that the only way to live, or to be young, is to entrust yourselves to drug dealers or others who do nothing but sow destruction and death.”
IS faces budget crunch, cutting perks and trimming salaries
BEIRUT (AP) — Faced with a cash shortage in its so-called caliphate, the Islamic State group has slashed salaries across the region, asked Raqqa residents to pay utility bills in black market American dollars, and is now releasing detainees for a price of $500 a person.
The extremists who once bragged about minting their own currency are having a hard time meeting expenses, thanks to coalition airstrikes and other measures that have eroded millions from their finances since last fall. Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses, the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars.
Necessities are dwindling in its urban centers, leading to shortages and widespread inflation, according to exiles and those still suffering under its rule. Interviews gathered over several weeks included three exiles with networks of family and acquaintances still in the group’s stronghold in Raqqa, residents in Mosul, and analysts who say IS is turning to alternative funding streams, including in Libya.
In Raqqa, the group’s stronghold in Syria, salaries have been halved since December, electricity is rationed, and prices for basics are spiraling out of reach, according to people exiled from the city.
“Not just the militants. Any civil servant, from the courts to the schools, they cut their salary by 50 percent,” said a Raqqa activist now living in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, who remains in close contact with his native city. But that apparently wasn’t enough close the gap for a group that needs money to replace weapons lost in airstrikes and battles, and pays its fighters first and foremost. Those two expenses account for two-thirds of its budget, according to an estimate by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a researcher with the Middle East Forum who sources Islamic State documents,