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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Voter suppression laws are already deciding elections

Voter suppression efforts may have changed the outcomes of some of the closest races last week. And if the Supreme Court lets these laws stand, they will continue to distort election results going forward.

The days of Jim Crow are officially over, but poll-tax equivalents are newly thriving, through restrictive voter registration and ID requirements, shorter poll hours and various other restrictions and red tape that cost Americans time and money if they wish to cast a ballot. As one study by a Harvard Law School researcher found, the price for obtaining a legally recognized voter identification card can range from $75 to $175, when you include the costs associated with documentation, travel and waiting time. (For context, the actual poll tax that the Supreme Court struck down in 1966 was just $1.50, or about $11 in today’s dollars.)

Whatever the motivation behind such new laws — whether to cynically disenfranchise political enemies or to nobly slay the (largely imagined) scourge of voter fraud — their costs to voters are far from negligible.

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U.S., China Unveil Ambitious Climate Change Goals

BEIJING (AP) — The United States and China pledged Wednesday to take ambitious action to limit greenhouse gases, aiming to inject fresh momentum into the global fight against climate change ahead of high-stakes climate negotiations next year.

President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would move much faster in cutting its levels of pollution. Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to cap China's emissions in the future — a striking, unprecedented move by a nation that has been reluctant to box itself in on global warming.

"This is a major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship," Obama said, with Xi at his side. "It shows what's possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge."  The unexpected declaration from the world's two largest polluters, unveiled on the last day of Obama's trip to China, reflected both nations' desire to display a united front that could blunt arguments from developing countries, which have balked at demands that they get serious about global warming. Yet it was unclear how feasible it would be for either country to meet their goals, and Obama's pledge was sure to confront tough opposition from ascendant Republicans in Congress.

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TOP 2016 Contenders for President not fairing well for President, poll suggests

If 2014 voters know what they’re talking about, 2016 voters may not have many good options for president. The national exit polls Tuesday asked whether a number of possible 2016 candidates would make good presidents, and no one comes out looking good. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks least bad, with 42 percent of respondents saying she would make a good president, and 52 percent saying she wouldn't. The four Republicans voters weighed in on had support in the 20s.

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McConnell and Boehner's goals for the 114th Congress

In January, the Republicans will take control of the U.S. Senate, as well as shore up their majority in the House of Representatives. What will they do with their newly won power?

House Speaker John Boehner and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have laid out some of their top legislative priorities. It’s a range of issues -- everything from dismantling the Affordable Care Act to passing international trade agreements, and shutting down the possibility of another government shutdown.

The GOP leadership didn’t campaign on a formal agenda, instead unveiling their priorities after they won the Senate majority. We want to take note of Boehner and McConnell’s goals now so we can revisit them in 2016, at the end of the 114th Congress, and see what was accomplished, what fell apart, and where Republicans compromised.

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Voter turnout in 2014 was the lowest since WWII

  General election voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest it's been in any election cycle since World War II, according to early projections by the United States Election Project.

Just 36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots as of last Tuesday, continuing a steady decline in midterm voter participation that has spanned several decades. The results are dismal, but not surprising -- participation has been dropping since the 1964 election, when voter turnout was at nearly 49 percent.

The last time voter turnout was so low during a midterm cycle was in 1942, when only 33.9 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

Voter turnout during presidential elections is, as a rule, significantly higher. More than 58 percent of eligible voters submitted ballots in 2012 and nearly 62 percent did so in 2008. By contrast, only 41 percent of eligible voters voted in 2010 and 40.4 percent in 2006.

This year, Maine boasted the highest turnout in the nation, with 59 percent of the eligible population submitting their votes. Indiana had the lowest turnout rate, with just 28 percent of eligible voters participating.