U.S. Launches Airstrikes Against ISIS Near Baghdad, Marking First Step In Expanded Fight

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials said Monday the United States has taken the first step in its planned expanded fight against Islamic State militants, going to the aid of Iraqi security forces near Baghdad who were being attacked by enemy fighters.

The U.S. Central Command said it conducted two airstrikes Sunday and Monday in support of the Iraqi forces near Sinjar and southwest of Baghdad.

The strikes represent the newly broadened mission authorized by President Barack Obama to go on the offensive against the Islamic State group wherever it is. Previous U.S. airstrikes in Iraq were conducted to protect U.S. interests and personnel, assist Iraqi refugees and secure critical infrastructure. These strikes were in direct support of Iraqi forces fighting the militants.

Central Command said the strikes destroyed six Islamic State vehicles and one of the group's fighting positions that was firing on the Iraqi security forces.

U.S. officials said the Iraqi forces requested assistance when they came under fire from militants. Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the mission publicly by name.

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Obama To Send 3,000 Military Forces To Fight Ebola In West Africa

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is ramping up its response to West Africa's Ebola crisis, preparing to assign 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the afflicted region to supply medical and logistical support to overwhelmed local health care systems and to boost the number of beds needed to isolate and treat victims of the epidemic.

President Barack Obama planned to announce the stepped-up effort Tuesday during a visit to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta amid alarm that the outbreak could spread and that the deadly virus could mutate into a more easily transmitted disease.

The new U.S. muscle comes after appeals from the region and from aid organizations for a heightened U.S. role in combatting the outbreak blamed for more than 2,200 deaths.

Administration officials said Monday that the new initiatives aim to:

— Train as many as 500 health care workers a week.

— Erect 17 heath care facilities in the region of 100 beds each.

— Set up a joint command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts.

— Provide home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development will deliver to Liberia this week.

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Senate Update: Democrats Draw Almost Even. Is It The Money?

 When we officially launched our forecast model two weeks ago, it had Republicans with a 64 percent chance of taking over the Senate after this fall’s elections. Now Republican chances are about 55 percent instead. We’ve never quite settled on the semantics of when to call an election a “tossup.” A sports bettor or poker player would grimace and probably take a 55-45 edge. But this Senate race is pretty darned close.
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What’s happened? The chart below lists the change in our forecast in each state between Sept. 3 (when our model launched) and our current (Sept. 15) update

9/11 responders with rare cancer denied insurance coverage

(CNN) -- John Meyers remembers standing at ground zero, feeling like a small speck amid mountains of debris.

"Everything was pulverized," said Meyers, a former New York police officer and first-responder who provided security after the September 11 terror attacks. "It was nothing but dust."

For 20 days, during 14-hour shifts, Meyers breathed in countless chemicals; he even ate meals on site as the dust hovered.

Most of that time, he did not wear a mask. In retrospect, he said, "We were ingesting whole buildings."

Less than four years later, at age 46, Meyers was diagnosed with stage IV oropharyngeal cancer. One tumor had formed in Meyers' throat and two on his lymph nodes. An ultrasound later revealed another tumor near his collarbone.

"All four were malignant," said Meyers, who choked up as he recalled being diagnosed. "I asked, 'What's my chances?' No one could give me an answer."

According to the most recent data from the World Trade Center Health Program, there are nearly 3,000 cases of cancer among firefighters, police officers, contractors and civilians who worked or lived near the site of the attacks.

A growing number are being diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer, but some -- including Meyers -- are being denied insurance coverage because their cancers were diagnosed too soon after 9/11.

The minimum latency period for oropharyngeal cancers -- in other words, the minimum time period required to prove a link between exposure to toxins at ground zero and a diagnosis of that type of cancer -- is four years.

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13 years later, America remembers 9/11 horror

In Pennsylvania the victims were lauded as heroes. At the Pentagon, President Obama spoke of a nation that refused to "give in to fear." In New York, a somber roll call of the dead was peppered with tributes and declarations of love.

The nation on Thursday marked the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at the three sites where four hijacked planes crashed, a minutes-long wave of tragedy that killed almost 3,000 people, triggered at least two wars and rocked the entire world.

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ISIS can 'muster' between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters, CIA says

Washington (CNN) -- A CIA assessment puts the number of ISIS fighters at possibly more than three times the previous estimates.

The terror group that calls itself the Islamic State "can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria," a CIA spokesman told CNN on Thursday.

Analysts and U.S. officials initially estimated there were as many as 10,000 fighters, including those who were freed from prisons by ISIS, and Sunni loyalists who have joined the fight as the group advanced across Iraq.

"This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity and additional intelligence," the spokesman said.

The news came a day after President Barack Obama laid out his plan to "dismantle and ultimately destroy" ISIS, including authorizing airstrikes.

Mass executions and videotaped beheadings, including those of two American journalists, have led to the push for a broader counterterrorism mission, including possible airstrikes in civil war-torn Syria.

It's unclear how the ISIS ranks swelled, and whether the increased numbers include recruits from within Iraq.

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Judge Strikes Down Ohio's False Statement Campaign Law As Unconstitutional

A federal judge has ruled that Ohio's ban on false statements against candidates seeking office is unconstitutional.

The Susan B. Anthony List, a national anti-abortion group, challenged the campaign law when they attempted to put up billboards accusing then-U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) of supporting taxpayer-funded abortion by voting in favor of the Affordable Care Act. The billboard owner chose not to post the ads for fear of legal action after Driehaus filed a formal complaint against the ads' message with the Ohio Elections Commission.

Driehaus dropped the case after he lost his re-election bid, so a federal judge ruled the anti-abortion group could no longer challenge the law's constitutionality. An appeals court agreed, and the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court.

his time around, the anti-abortion group found success. U.S. District Judge Timothy S. Black ruled Thursday that the Ohio Elections Commission can no longer enforce political false statement laws.

Black clarified that his denouncement of false statement laws does not translate to approval of deceit on the campaign trail.

"Lies have no place in the political arena and serve no purpose other than to undermine the integrity of the democratic process," Black wrote in the ruling. "The problem is that, at times, there is no clear way to determine whether a political statement is a lie or the truth. What is certain, however, is that we do not want the Government (i.e., the Ohio Elections Commission) deciding what is political truth -- for fear that the Government might persecute those who criticize it."

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Supreme Court Adds Gay Marriage To Agenda

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has formally added gay marriage cases to the justices' agenda for their closed-door conference on Sept. 29.

The action Wednesday does not mean that the court will decide that day to hear state appeals of lower court rulings that struck down bans on same-sex marriage. But the late September conference will be the first time the justices have the issue before them. The meeting will be the justices' first since late June.

Appeals have been filed from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The gay couples who won in each case in the lower courts also favor Supreme Court review.

The justices could put off deciding whether to take up gay marriage until January and still be able to issue a decision by late June.

White House reportedly planning years-long campaign to destroy ISIS

The Obama administration is reportedly preparing a campaign to destroy the Islamic State militant group that could outlast the president's remaining time in office, according to a published report. 

The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reported late Sunday that the White House plan involves three phases that some Pentagon officials believe will require at least three years of sustained effort.

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The first phase, airstrikes against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is already underway in Iraq, where U.S. aircraft have launched 143 attacks since August 8. The second phase involves an intensified effort to train, advise, and equip the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and any Sunni tribesmen willing to fight their ISIS co-religionists. The Times reports that this second phase will begin sometime after Iraq forms a new government, which could happen sometime this week. 

The third, and most politically fraught phase of the campaign, according to The Times, would require airstrikes against ISIS inside Syria. Last month, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus warned the Obama administration not to launch airstrikes against ISIS in Syria without its permission. 

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Senate Polls Show Edge For GOP

Two sets of polls released Sunday find an edge for the GOP in a closely contested Senate midterm environment, although they differ on the size of that advantage.

A set of online CBS/New York Times/YouGov polls conducted in every Senate racefinds an electoral landscape that has remained both competitive and largely stable throughout the year, with changes of less than 4 points in nine of the 10 most competitive races. Republicans "hold at least a nominal lead in eight states held by Democrats, more than the six they need to retake the chamber," writes the New York Times' Nate Cohn. The Times' Senate model gives Republicans a 61 percent chance, or a "slight edge," of retaking the Senate.

The most notable change from the last wave of YouGov polling is in Alaska, where the survey shows Republican Dan Sullivan pulling ahead of Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska). Polling this year in the state has been both sparse and inconsistent.

A separate trio of Senate polls by NBC/Marist focusing on three of the most competitive states finds Republicans leading in Arkansas and Kentucky, while in Colorado the Democratic incumbent remains ahead.

The leading candidate's margins in all three NBC/Marist surveys -- 8 points in Kentucky and 5 points in Arkansas for the Republican candidates, and 6 points in Colorado for the Democrat -- are wider than those seen in HuffPost Pollster's poll-tracking model, which shows all three races remaining extremely competitive.
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Obama: Waiting will make immigration executive action 'more sustainable'

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama says he's postponing executive action on immigration until after November's elections because it would be "more sustainable" then.

Speaking to NBC's Chuck Todd, Obama said the immigration debate was affected by concerns over the large number of unaccompanied children from Latin America flocking to the U.S. border.

"The truth of the matter is that the politics did shift mid-summer because of that problem," he said.

"What I'm saying is that I'm going to act because it's the right thing for the country," Obama said. "But it's going to be more sustainable and more effective if the public understands what the facts are on immigration, what we've done on unaccompanied children and why it's necessary."

The decision to postpone means any political repercussions for trying to reform the immigration system by himself would come after the congressional midterm contests.

Obama still "will do something before the end of the year" on the issue, a White House official told CNN on Saturday.

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D.C. Circuit Court Agrees To Re-hear Obamacare Case

The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to re-hear the case of Halbig v. Burwell.

In July, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that people in the 36 states that use the federal health insurance exchange as part of the Affordable Care Act are ineligible for subsidized insurance. HuffPost's Ryan Grim and Jeffrey Young have more on that earlier decision here.

The same July day the D.C. Circuit Court panel ruled on Halbig, a Virginia federal appeals panel ruled the opposite way on an identical case. The plaintiffs in the D.C. case requested the Supreme Court to take on the case in August. according to the Wall Street Journal's Brent Kendall, oral arguments will be heard in December.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted an Obama administration request to have its full complement of judges re-hear a challenge to regulations that allow health insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states.

The announcement diminishes the prospect of Supreme Court review of the issue in the near term. The initial 2-1 appeals court ruling in Washington came out the same day that a panel of appellate judges in Richmond, Virginia, unanimously sided with the administration on the same issue.

The health law's opponents had hoped that the split rulings would lead the high court to take up the issue soon.

Now, the argument in the federal courthouse just a few blocks from the Supreme Court will take place on December 17.

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Former Virginia governor found guilty in influence-peddling case

CNN) -- A former rising star in the Republican Party, former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell was red-faced and sobbing Thursday after a jury convicted him and his wife on multiple counts related to influence-peddling while he was in office.

After more than a month of sometimes soul-baring testimony, the federal jury issued guilty verdicts on 11 counts against McDonnell, while clearing him on two others. His wife, Maureen, was convicted on nine while cleared on four.

The charges involved gifts the couple received from a businessman, including a Rolex watch, a $15,000 check for their daughter's wedding and other items that are legal under Virginia law. Prosecutors had to prove such gifts were accepted with corrupt intent.

Conspiracy, wire fraud, influence peddling

Both McDonnells were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the citizens of Virginia, wire fraud, conspiracy and influence-peddling. Mrs. McDonnell also was convicted on one count of obstruction.

The jury cleared them both of false statement charges, and cleared Mrs. McDonnell on one of the wire fraud counts and two of the influence-peddling counts.

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