U.S. to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century as he vowed to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War.

The surprise announcement came at the end of 18 months of secret talks that produced a prisoner swap negotiated with the help of Pope Francis and concluded by a telephone call between Mr. Obama and President Raúl Castro. The historic deal broke an enduring stalemate between two countries divided by just 90 miles of water but oceans of mistrust and hostility dating from the days of Theodore Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill and the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cuban missile crisis

“We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in a nationally televised statement from the White House. The deal, he added, will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”

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Analyst: We underestimated North Korea

(CNN) -- As the United States gets ready to blame the Sony hack on North Korea, a troublesome question is emerging: Just what is North Korea capable of?

Experts say the nation has spent scarce resources on building up a unit called "Bureau 121" to carry out cyberattacks.

North Korea has been blamed in the past for attacks in South Korea, but the Sony hack -- if indeed North Korea is behind it -- would seem to represent an escalation of tactics.

"I think we underestimated North Korea's cybercapabilities," said Victor Cha, director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University. "They certainly didn't evidence this sort of capability in the previous attacks."

Cha was referring to attacks on South Korean broadcasters and banks last year.

In March 2013, South Korean police said they were investigating a widespread computer outage that struck systems at leading television broadcasters and banks, prompting the military to step up its cyberalert level.

The South Korean communications regulator reportedly linked the computer failures to hacking that used malicious code, or malware.

An investigation found that many of the malignant codes employed in the attacks were similar to ones used by the North previously, said Lee Seung-won, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Science.

North Korea denied responsibility.

A spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army labeled the allegations "groundless" and "a deliberate provocation to push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to an extreme phase," according to KCNA, the North Korean state news agency.

North Korea has similarly denied the massive hack of Sony Pictures, which has been forced to cancel next week's planned release of "The Interview," a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
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Cuba-U.S. relations change: Bells ring in Havana, anger erupts in Miami

Havana (CNN) -- Church bells rang out Wednesday afternoon in Havana, marking a major moment in history -- Cuba and the United States are renewing diplomatic relations after decades of ice-cold tension.

Word of the massive change was met with passionate opinions and some protests in the United States. And tearful celebrations erupted in the streets of the island after President Raul Castro announced the news in a televised address.

But there was uncertainty and some anger amid the joy.

Dissident Cuban blogger Yusnaby Perez tweeted that his neighbor asked him whether a change in U.S.-Cuban trade relations would mean that he could finally afford to buy meat.

Other dissidents worried that their concerns will now be overlooked.

Yoani Sanchez, a well-known Cuban blogger, decried what she described as a carefully plotted victory for the Castro regime in the swap of detained U.S. contractor Alan Gross for Cuban spies imprisoned in America.

"With the main obstacle for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations eliminated, the only unknown is the next step," she wrote in a column for 14ymedio.com. "Is the Cuban government planning another move to return to a position of force vis-a-vis the U.S. government? Or are all the cards on the table this time, before the weary eyes of a population that anticipates that the Castro regime will also win the next move."

Even with the next steps unclear, happiness spread quickly through a market in the heart of Cuba's capital, where crowds watched speeches from Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announcing the news on TV screens. "In the audience," 14ymedio reported, "many threw kisses to Obama and hugged each other."

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What’s in the spending bill?

The $1.01 trillion spending bill unveiled late Tuesday will keep most of the federal government funded through next September -- and it's packed with hundreds of policy instructions, known on Capitol Hill as "riders," that will upset or excite Democrats, Republicans and various special interest groups.

So, what's in the bill? We've sifted through the legislation, consulted supporting documents from Democratic and Republican aides, and called out some of the more notable and controversial elements below. (If you want to review detailed reports on all 12 parts of the spending bill, click here.)

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Congress squabbles over policy but reaches spending deal

Washington (CNN) -- Top lawmakers agreed to $1.1 trillion government funding bill late Tuesday, just two days before federal agencies are due to run out of money. The negotiating breakthrough likely means the government will stay open as usual, avoiding a potential shutdown.

The release of the bill was held up until late Tuesday night as negotiators haggled over a series of controversial policy provisions.

"This bill fulfills our constitutional duty to fund the government, preventing damage from shutdown politics that are bad for the economy, cost jobs and hurt middle class families," said Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, and Kentucky Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican, in a joint statement.

"While not everyone got everything they wanted, such compromises must be made in a divided government," they said.

The measure bars the District of Columbia from using any money to implement a law the city recently passed to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Many Democrats on Capitol Hill maintain that Washington city leaders should be able to carry out a policy voters supported, but Congress has authority over the city's finances.

One of the provisions will allow for increased political donations, specifically the amount donors can give to national parties to help fund conventions, building funds and legal proceedings, such as recounts. Rather just giving the current cap of $32,400, donors would be able to give up to $97,200 for each of those actions -- for a total of $324,000 annually, according to Adam Smith, communications director for Public Campaign, a nonpartisan group that supports campaign finance reform.

The talks also yielded a compromise on a school lunch program championed by first lady Michelle Obama. The spending bill includes a measure that gives local school districts some flexibility on how they enforce nutrition standards for whole grain items on menus.

Some Democrats are already expressing opposition to a provision that repeals what they view as a key financial regulation that was part of a package of reforms for Wall Street banks. The spending bill does away with a rule that prevented banks from using funds backed by taxpayers to trade derivatives, which they argue contributed to the financial collapse in 2008.

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Senate report: CIA misled public on torture

Washington (CNN) -- The CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees during the Bush era didn't work, were more brutal than previously revealed and delivered no "ticking time bomb" information that prevented an attack, according to an explosive Senate report released Tuesday.

The majority report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee is a damning condemnation of the tactics -- branded by critics as torture -- the George W. Bush administration deployed in the fear-laden days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The techniques, according to the report, were "deeply flawed" and often resulted in "fabricated" information.

The report is reigniting the partisan divide over combating terrorism that dominated Washington a decade ago. Democrats argue the tactics conflict with American values while leading members of the Bush administration insist they were vital to preventing another attack.

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Court declares Virginia’s congressional map unconstitutional

A panel of federal judges on Tuesday declared Virginia’s congressional maps unconstitutional because they concentrate African American voters into a single district at the expense of their influence elsewhere.

The decision, handed down in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, orders the Virginia General Assembly to draw up new congressional maps by April — potentially launching a frenzied and highly political battle for survival within Virginia’s congressional delegation.

The order delivered another victory for Democratic plaintiffs hoping to break up black-majority districts, which they say have been drawn by Republicans who have used the Voting Rights Act to dilute the influence of minority voters.

A similar case in Alabama in which Republicans prevailed will be heard by the Supreme Court this term.

“We’re obviously thrilled with the results,” said Marc Elias, a lawyer on the Virginia case who represented two voters from the district where the unconstitutional redistricting took place. “The Republicans engaged in impermissible racial gerrymandering in a cynical effort to gain seats. . . . We look forward to the state doing a new redistricting to comply with the court’s orders.”

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Eric Garner Case: 5 Things You Need to Know About the Grand Jury

A grand jury in New York City is close to announcing a decision on whether to indict a white police officer in the case of Eric Garner, a black man who died after being put in a choke hold by the cop this summer.

Eric Garner: How the NYPD Is Preparing for the Grand Jury Decision

Here are five things you need to know:

Location:

The case is being heard by a grand jury on Staten Island, officially known as Richmond County.

The District Attorney's office is well-regarded, but remains the smallest of the five D.A.’s offices in New York City. It is also the only office headed by a Republican, Daniel Donovan. Staten Island is the only borough of New York City where the Republican Party has any real presence whatsoever.

Historically, police officers from nearby boroughs such as Brooklyn and Queens live or have lived on Staten Island.

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What We See In The Eric Garner Video, And What We Don't

The rough grooves of the Eric Garner story probably feel familiar to lots of folks by now: an unarmed black man dies after an encounter with the police, agitating old tensions between residents and the officers who patrol their neighborhoods.

The Garner case is already rippling out into broader political conversations, like the value of the "broken windows" strategy which targets low-level offenses that have made arrests climb in the city even as crime is near record lows. (Garner was initially approached by the police because he was suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes on the street.)

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Sen. Lindsey Graham: GOP-led Benghazi report is 'full of crap'

Washington (CNN) -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has some harsh words for the recently released Benghazi report, led by his own party.

"I think the report is full of crap," Graham told Gloria Borger on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"I don't believe that the report is accurate, given the role that Mike Morell (deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time) played in misleading the Congress on two different occasions. Why didn't the report say that?"

The investigative report Graham is referring to was released Friday by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, and Ranking Member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Maryland.

The report finds little to support the questions that have been raised about CIA actions on the ground in Benghazi the night of the deadly attack on September 11, 2012.

Graham, who has maintained a critical voice in the Benghazi controversy over the past two years, says it's "garbage" that the report finds no members of the Obama administration lied to cover up what happened in Benghazi.

"That's a bunch of garbage," Graham said. "That's a complete bunch of garbage."

The investigation also found the security at the diplomatic outpost was weak and also described a "flawed" process used to create talking points for House members and for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose public statements after the attack incensed critics who said the administration was trying to avoid calling the attack terrorism.

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Executive actions on immigration have long history

President Obama’s executive action to protect millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation is an act that both follows and departs from precedents set by his predecessors.

As immigrant advocates — and the White House itself — point out, presidents have a long history of using their discretionary enforcement powers to allow people to enter and remain in the country outside the regular immigration laws. But Obama’s move offers relief to more people than any other executive action in recent history — about 3.9 million people, or roughly 35% of the estimated total unauthorized-immigrant population — a point that some opponents have used to differentiate Obama’s action from those of past presidents.

Obama’s announcement follows his decision in June 2012 to grant temporary reprieves from deportation for 1.5 million eligible unauthorized immigrants who’d been brought to the U.S. as children — the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. In the memorandum announcing DACA, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano framed it as part of the executive branch’s role “to set forth policy for the exercise of discretion within the framework of the existing law.” Obama’s executive order expands that program, and protects other groups, using a similar rationale.

Most previous executive actions on immigration were targeted fairly narrowly, according to a summary compiled by the American Immigration Council. The 39 “executive grants of temporary immigration relief” since 1956 listed by the council covered, among other groups, Ethiopians fleeing that country’s Marxist military dictatorship in the 1970s, Liberians who escaped their country’s brutal civil wars, and foreign students whose academic eligibility was interrupted by Hurricane Katrina.

Other actions taken by prior administrations affected considerably more people. Most of them were eventually formalized or superseded by legislation, though sometimes — as often happens with complicated subjects such as immigration — the new laws led to new issues.

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President Obama on Par with President Bush, does it make the President's Action Legal?

President Barack Obama’s unilateral move to lift the risk of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants has so incensed rank-and-file Republicans, their leaders are actively tamping down potential cries for impeachment. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said that sort of outrage is "bogus," and she went to the history of the immigration debate to prove it.

In 1990, President George H. W. Bush, a Republican, by executive action forestalled deportations for about 1.5 million illegal immigrants.

"What Obama plans to do is roughly on the same scale as what Bush did," Maddow said on Nov. 17, 2014.

We know there’s a vigorous debate whether the current move has the same legal standing as the executive actions taken by Bush and by President Ronald Reagan for that matter. Our focus here is simply on the numbers, with a hat tip to Vox for their work on this.

The count for Obama

According to reports, Obama plans to announce plans to stop deporting the parents of children who are U.S. citizens. We’ve seen a couple of estimates of how many people that would affect. The Pew Research Center said about 3.5 million. The New York Times put the figure at 4 million. Citing White House sources, the New York Times said an additional 1 million people would be touched by other facets of the new policy, giving a total of 5 million. That’s very close to the Migration Policy Institute’s estimate of 5.2 million.

Since there are about 11.4 million undocumented immigrants, Obama’s order will change the rules for about 40 percent of total population.

Again, this is based on reports. But that’s all that Maddow would have had to go on when she made her comments.

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G.O.P. Promises to Swiftly Counter Obama’s Immigration Moves

WASHINGTON — Republicans on Thursday vowed a swift and forceful response to the executive action on immigration that President Obama is to announce in a prime-time address, accusing the president of exceeding the power of his office and promising a legislative fight when they take full control of Congress next year.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will become majority leader in January, said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday morning that Mr. Obama would regret choosing to ignore the wishes of the American people.

“If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act,” Mr. McConnell said just hours before the president was scheduled to speak to the nation on television. “We’re considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. Make no mistake. When the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act.”

Mr. McConnell did not say what options Republicans were considering, but the party is sharply divided about how far to go in trying to thwart Mr. Obama’s action. Many Republicans are looking for ways to cancel funding to the government agencies that would oversee the implementation of the president’s order.

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Americans strongly support a path to citizenship. That means less for Obama than you think.

Breaking: Americans support a path to citizenship.

About six in 10 support a new pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, according to a new poll from NBC News and Wall Street Journal. And that number jumps to a whopping 74 percent if you qualify that the undocumented immigrants must take steps like paying back taxes.

The very same poll, though, also asked people whether they support legal status -- shy of citizenship -- for illegal immigrants. Support for this, somewhat amazingly, is just 39 percent, with 48 percent opposed.

In other words, huge majorities support a path to citizenship. But on a path to legal status, it's reversed. What?

If you're confused, you're not the only ones. So are the American people. And with President Obama set to announce his big immigration executive action on Thursday night, his biggest public-perception hurdle is a conflicted and uncertain American public that offers these kinds of contradictory emotions.

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Obama's immigration plan: 'Deport felons, not families'

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama will order immigration officers to deport "felons not families" as he wields executive power to shield five million undocumented immigrants in the most sweeping overhaul of the immigration system in decades.

Obama will reject claims he is offering a free pass to undocumented immigrants and argue that "the real amnesty" would be leaving a broken system as it is now, according to excerpts of his remarks released by the White House.

"Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I'm describing is accountability -- a commonsense, middle ground approach," Obama will say.

"If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you're a criminal, you'll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up."

Obama will lay out changes he is making to immigration laws without the consent of Congress. A key element of his plan is to instruct immigration authorities to prioritize expulsion action against gang members, felons and suspected terrorists rather than law abiding undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and residents and others, senior administration officials said.

The changes will offer those who qualify the chance to stay temporarily in the country for three years, as long as they pass background checks and pay back taxes. But they will not be offered a path to eventual citizenship or be eligible for federal benefits or health care programs. And, in theory, the measures could be reversed by a future president.

Republicans are slamming Obama's use of executive authority as a mammoth presidential power grab. But aides said the President was tired of waiting to act and felt compelled to go it alone because House Republicans refuse to vote on a bill to fix the broken immigration system that cleared the Senate more than 500 days ago.

"Instead of working together to fix our broken immigration system, the President says he's acting on his own," Republican House Speaker John Boehner said in a YouTube video released before the president's speech. "The President has said before, that he's not king and he's not an emperor. But he's sure acting like one."

But Obama will say he is acting in a manner consistent with action taken by every Republican and every Democratic president in half a century.

"To those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill."

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Rosebud Sioux Tribe: House Vote On Keystone XL Pipeline An ‘Act Of War'

The president of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux (Sicangu Lakota Oyate) tribe has called the House of Representatives' vote to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline an “act of war,” the Summit County Citizen's Voice reported on Saturday.

"The House has now signed our death warrants and the death warrants of our children and grandchildren. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe will not allow this pipeline through our lands,” President Cyril Scott said in a statement. “We will close our reservation borders to Keystone XL.”

Scott said he and other tribal elders have not been appropriately consulted on the pipeline, which would run through the tribe's land. He also contended the House vote violates the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties, which gave the Black Hills to the Sioux Nation, according to the Summit County Citizen's Voice.

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Landrieu says she has 60 votes to advance Keystone pipeline

Washington (CNN) -- Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu says she has the 60 votes she needs for the Senate to advance a measure Tuesday that would authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Landrieu has been scrambling to attract at least 15 Democrats to join 45 Republicans to reach the critical 60-vote procedural threshold. She told reporters at the Capitol on Monday night that she'd reached that mark.

"I feel very comfortable," Landrieu said.

At least 14 Democrats have said they will support the measure. But it's not clear who has agreed to provide the final vote or whether Landrieu's comments simply reflect optimism.

One of Landrieu's top targets, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said it won't be him. Another target, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said he is leaning against supporting the bill.

If she can shepherd the legislation through the Senate, it would allow Landrieu to demonstrate her influence one last time ahead of a Dec. 6 run-off election in Louisiana, where she faces Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, who sponsored the bill authorizing the pipeline when the House approved it on Friday.

If the Senate ultimately passes the Keystone bill, a confrontation could emerge between Congress and President Barack Obama. The president said at a news conference late last week that he doesn't want Congress to intervene in the State Department's long-running consideration of the project -- and offered his most specific critique of it yet.

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Samuel Alito v. The Press

(CNN) -- Sam Alito doesn't have "any complaints" about the press corps who cover the Supreme Court -- but the Associate Justice could do without "incredibly snarky" columnists.

"Some of the columns that are written, you know, are another story," Alito said, in a rare public lecture on Constitutional history and law presented by the New York Historical Society on Saturday. "Some of them are written by people who are not very knowledgeable."

Alito took particular issue with a New Republic column critical of the cloistered culture of the Court.

"I was reading one, actually, reading one this morning that was complaining about the current membership of the Court, because unlike in past days, according to this columnist, we don't have a representation of drunks, philanderers, and a few, you know, a few other n'er do wells."

The column - entitled "Yale, Harvard, Yale, Harvard, Yale, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Columbia" - argues "while we have gained diversity of background, we haven't gained diversity of experience" and was penned November 13 by Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate and regular Court watcher for the past 15 years.

"The current justices are intellectually qualified in ways we have never seen," Lithwick wrote.

"Compared with the political operators, philanderers, and alcoholics of bygone eras, they are almost completely devoid of bad habits or scandalous secrets. This is, of course, not a bad thing."

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America’s most gerrymandered congressional districts

This election year we can expect to hear a lot about Congressional district gerrymandering, which is when political parties redraw district boundaries to give themselves an electoral advantage.

Gerrymandering is at least partly to blame for the lopsided Republican representation in the House. According to an analysis I did last year, the Democrats are under-represented by about 18 seats in the House, relative to their vote share in the 2012 election. The way Republicans pulled that off was to draw some really, really funky-looking Congressional districts.

Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably. Considering this dynamic, John Sides of The Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog has argued convincingly that gerrymandering is not what's behind the rising polarization in Congress.

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A ton of people didn’t vote because they couldn’t get time off from work

You've heard the news by now that turnout in the 2014 midterms was the lowest in any election since 1942, when voters were busy with, you know, other stuff. In short, only 36 percent of the voting-age population bothered to cast a ballot last week. A large proportion of them simply aren't registered to vote at all. But past numbers suggest upwards of 20 percent of Americans adults were registered to vote, but couldn't be bothered to - what's their excuse?

A new Pew Research Center report has some answers. They tracked down 181 registered voters who said they did not vote this year and asked them their reasons for doing so. While it's a smallish sample and we should be cautious about interpreting it too broadly, respondents gave some illuminating answers.

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