Oscar Pistorius sentenced to max 5 years in prison for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Could serve 10 months. 3 years suspended on guns offense. Prosecutor considers appeal (BBC)
In the News
- New Ebola czar won’t testify!
- Ebola response: Dems vs GOP
- “Using shorthand” / talking points
- CDC: New guidelines for Ebola care
- Monitoring ends for 44 in Texas
- Thousands of fed workers on paid leave
- Nazis/Social Security: Dem demands investigation
- Ukraine used cluster bombs, evidence indicates
- SCOTUS: Property rights vs firearms regs
- Panic over “Orwellian” Twitter study
- Monica Lewinsky tells of humiliation
New Ebola Czar Won’t Testify!
• Ron Klain, the WH’s new Ebola czar, will not testify before the House Oversight Committee Friday on the U.S. response to the Ebola epidemic. Klain starts his new job Wednesday. The WH didn’t give a reason for why it declined Chair Darrell Issa’s invitation (dunno that you really need one…) (Hill, TRNS, me)
• The Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on 6 November, two days after the midterms, to discuss the Ebola crisis. The WH has held preliminary discussions with the Senate about a new funding request to fight Ebola, according to a pair of congressional sources. No word on a House Appropriations Committee hearing (hmmm)
• WH deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Monday that “the professionals who know how to deal with these issues” believed a travel ban “could actually endanger more people.” A travel ban “drives people underground instead of traveling through existing protocols that allows us to screen for Ebola, they seek to avoid detection.”
• Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) plans to introduce legislation banning travel between the U.S. and the three West African countries hit hardest by Ebola. About eighty-five members of Congress are in favor of a travel ban in some form, according to a tally by The Hill. Other members of Congress plan to introduce various bills addressing visas (below)
Ebola Response: Dem vs GOP
• Republican leaders, conceding the futility of a flight ban from Ebola-afflicted West Africa, are refining their response to the outbreak, pressing to suspend visas for travelers and create “no boarding” lists (NYT, me)
• But a supercharged political atmosphere is making legislative nuance difficult two weeks before midterm elections and days before a hearing on Friday on the Ebola response called by the House Oversight Committee, a panel riven by partisan division (throat slashing gestures included)
• Republicans on the campaign trail continue to goad Democrats to embrace a broad travel ban, although no direct flights to the U.S. from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea exist. A flight ban would have to ground connecting flights from Brussels, Amsterdam and other European cities (you’re going to ground flights from Paris?)
• Democrats are slamming Republicans for slashing budgets of the CDC and other federal agencies charged with stopping the spread of Ebola, even after the WH circulated talking points to House Democrats in advance of a hearing last week that said funding had been adequate
“Using Shorthand” / Talking Points
• House Republican leadership aides have repeatedly said lawmakers are not calling for an actual ban of airline flights, even as the likes of Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Republican leader, and Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) have done just that
• McConnell, said spox Don Stewart, was “using shorthand” last week when he said “It would be a good idea to discontinue flights into the U.S. from that part of the world.” In reality, Republicans aren’t planning a legislative response, at least for now, Republican leadership aides said Monday. They merely want their voices heard (confusedly)
• “The president has the authority to put a travel ban into effect right now,” said Kevin Smith, spox for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). “The speaker has not ruled out bringing the House back to address the Ebola crisis if our oversight efforts demonstrate a need for legislation to help combat the spread of the disease.” (really? when?)
• Meanwhile, most Democrats continue to adhere to the Obama admin’s position on travel restrictions, which were laid out last week in the talking points, as taken up Monday by Rep Elijah Cummings (D-MD), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee:
• “At the end of the day,” he said, “election-year posturing about a travel ban wastes precious time that should be spent mobilizing to attack this disease at its source – in Africa – so it does not continue to end up on our shores.”
• Graphic: How hospital workers are supposed to treat Ebola safely (NYT)
CDC: New Guidelines for Ebola Care
• The CDC issued new guidelines on Monday evening for the protection of hospital workers caring for patients infected with Ebola – guidelines that might have prevented the infection of two nurses had they been in place a month ago. The new recs have been reviewed at American hospitals that have successfully cared for Ebola patients (NYT, WaPo, CNN, Reuters, me)
• The procedures are based on the very strict procedures used for years by Doctors Without Borders, Dr Tom Frieden, CDC’s exec director, said. They’re voluntary, not required by law
• Among other changes, the guidelines say that no skin should be left uncovered; that street clothes and shoes should be replaced with waterproof fabric and boots; and that every step of putting on and taking off equipment must be done under the eyes of a supervisor whose job is to prevent mistakes
• The revamped guidelines represent the CDC’s recognition that Ebola victims require precautions quite different from those for patients with airborne disease like SARS, MERS, avian flu or TB. The most difficult and dangerous part of the process, experts agree, is removing safety gear when its surfaces are covered with infectious particles
Monitoring Ends for 44 in Texas
• Forty-four people who came into contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan are now officially cleared after not demonstrating any symptoms during a 21-day monitoring period. Four others will complete their 21-day monitoring period soon (CNN, TRNS, me)
• Nigeria was declared Ebola-free Monday, following an announcement that Senegal is rid of the virus. However, Ebola is still spreading rapidly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, health officials report
• Texas nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, who helped care for Duncan, remain hospitalized as they battle the virus. A nurse’s aide in Spain, Teresa Romero, who had contracted Ebola after caring for a patient with the virus, is now free of the virus. But officials killed her symptom-free per dog
• The Pentagon has designated four major military hospitals in the U.S. as treatment centers for any potential U.S. troops that contract Ebola while on deployment in West Africa
• Fresh fighting broke out Monday night in the north of the Syrian town of Kobane, after two days of relative calm. U.S.-led forces said they carried out six air strikes around Kobane on Sunday and Monday (BBC)
Tens of Thousands of Fed Workers on Paid Leave
• Tens of thousands of federal workers are being kept on paid leave for at least a month – and often for longer stretches that can reach a year or more – while they wait to be punished for misbehavior or cleared and allowed to return to work, govt records show (WaPo, me)
• According to a forthcoming GAO report, during a three-year period that ended last fall, more than 57,000 employees were sent home for a month or longer. The tab for these workers exceeded $775 million in salary alone
• The extensive use of so-called administrative leave continues despite govt personnel rules that limit paid leave for employees facing discipline to “rare circumstances” in which the employee is considered a threat
• The study found that supervisors used wide discretion in putting employees on leave, including for alleged violations of govt rules and laws, whistleblowing, doubts about trustworthiness and disputes with colleagues or bosses. Some remain on paid leave while they challenge demotions and other punishments
• While the employees stayed home, they not only collected paychecks but accrued pension earnings, vacation and sick days and moved up the federal pay scale
Confusing Guidance?
• Office of Personnel Management says it has at times given guidance to managers across govt on how admin leave should be used. Brenda Roberts, OPM’s deputy associate director for pay and leave, said “We’ve always stated it’s for brief periods of time.”
• But spox for several agencies, asked why they put hundreds or thousands of employees on paid leave for long periods, said they relied on OPM for guidance
• During the three-year period reviewed, DoD put about 8,600 employees on leave for one to three months, nearly 900 for three months to a year and 123 for more than a year. DoJ, however, has taken steps to rein in the use of admin leave, limiting it to 10 workdays unless the assistant AG for admin approves a longer period
• A wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was sent home for more than a year after she disagreed repeatedly with an environmental decision by the agency and argued with her supervisor. Agency lawyers said her behavior was disruptive, according to her attorney, Debra Roth
• The biologist took her case to the Office of Special Counsel, which found that she was a whistleblower who had suffered retaliation. She’s now negotiating the terms for returning to her job. “They just didn’t want to deal with her,” Roth said
• Ahmed Abu Khattala, the Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, pleaded not guilty Monday before a federal judge to 18 charges, including several that carry the death penalty (AP, me)
Nazis/Social Security: House Dem Demands Investigation
• Rep Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), a high-ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, demanded Monday that the Obama admin investigate the payment of millions of dollars in Social Security benefits to suspected Nazi war criminals and former SS guards, some of which continue to this day (AP, me)
• The payments flowed through a legal loophole that gave the DoJ leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal U.S. govt records
• The Social Security Admin has refused AP’s requests for the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts. AP last week appealed the agency’s denial of the info through FOIA. The appeal also cited several concerns about SSA’s handling of the FOIA request
• Among those receiving Social Security benefits were SS troops who guarded Nazi death camps, a rocket scientist accused of using slave laborers to advance his research in the Third Reich and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland
• Update: When asked about the situation, WH spox Eric Schultz said Monday, “Our position is we don’t believe these individuals should be getting these benefits.” He said the DoJ has said it has “aggressively pursued Nazi war criminals and brought over 100 of them to justice.”
Four + Getting Benefits Now
• There are at least four living beneficiaries. They include Martin Hartmann, a former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany, and Jakob Denzinger, who patrolled the grounds of the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland. Hartmann lives in a spacious apartment in Osijek in Croatia. Denzinger wouldn’t discuss his situation
• Because Nazi war crimes were committed outside the U.S. and almost always against non-Americans, Nazi suspects couldn’t be tried in U.S. courts. The only other legal option was to prove they lied to immigration authorities about what they did during the war, and then to attempt either deportation or extradition
• The deals that were reached instead allowed the DoJ’s former Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, to skirt lengthy deportation hearings and increase the number of Nazis it expelled from the U.S.
• But internal U.S. govt records obtained by AP reveal heated objections from the State Dept to OSI’s practices. Social Security benefits became tools, U.S. diplomatic officials said, to secure agreements in which Nazi suspects would accept the loss of citizenship and voluntarily leave the U.S.
Uproar in U.S. Govt
• Since 1979, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the country kept their benefits. The Social Security Admin itself expressed outrage in 1997 over the use of benefits, docs show, and blowback in foreign capitals reverberated at the highest levels of govt
• Neal Sher, a former OSI director, said State Dept cared more about diplomatic niceties than holding former members of Adolf Hitler’s war machine accountable. In the midst of the objections, the “Nazi dumping” stopped. But the benefits loophole wasn’t closed
• DoJ spox Peter Carr said in an emailed statement that Social Security benefits never were employed to persuade Nazi suspects to depart voluntarily
• The SSA refused to disclose the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits or the total amount of the payments made to them. Spox William “BJ” Jarret said the agency doesn’t track data specific to Nazi cases (why not)
• More than 60 federal contract workers protested for increased wages at the Smithsonian’s annual Board of Regents meeting Monday. Chants of “What about the workers?” interrupted a speech (TRNS)
Ukraine Used Cluster Bombs, Evidence Indicates
• The Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munition on several occasion into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city with a peacetime population of more than one million, according to physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims (NYT, me)
• Sites where rockets fell in the city on 2 and 5 Oct showed clear signs that cluster munitions had been fired from the direction of army-held territory, where misfired artillery rockets still containing cluster bomblets were found by villagers in farm fields. The two attacks wounded at least six people and killed a Swiss employee of the International Red Cross
• Further, in a report released later Monday, Human Rights Watch says the rebels have most likely used cluster weapons in the conflict as well, a detail that NYT couldn’t independently verify. An August cluster-munitions attack on the village on Starobesheve, in Ukrainian army hands, was probably carried out by pro-Russian rebels or by Russian troops, the report says
&&&
• The Ukrainian army’s use of cluster munitions, which shower small bomblets around a large area, could add credibility to Moscow’s version of the conflict, which is that the Ukrainian national govt is engaged in a punitive war against its own citizens. The Oct strikes occurred nearly a month after a ceasefire agreement
• If confirmed, the use of cluster bombs by the pro-Western govt could complicate efforts to reunite the country, as residents of the east have grown increasingly bitter over the Ukrainian Army’s tactics to oust pro-Russian rebels
• Press officers for the Ukrainian military denied that their troops had used cluster weapons during the conflict and said the rocket strikes in Donetsk should be investigated. They also said rebels in the area had access to powerful rocket systems from Russia that could fire cluster munitions
• Hong Kong officials are scheduled to meet student leaders for talks tonight. Monday, chief exec CY Leung objected to open elections on the grounds that with “numeric representation,” then “you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” (BBC, NYT, me)
SCOTUS: Property Rights vs Firearms Regs
• The Supreme Court will decide whether a convicted felon barred from possessing guns can sell or transfer the weapons to another person after he had surrendered them to authorities (AP, Hill, me)
• The justices on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Tony Henderson, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent arrested and charged with distributing marijuana. He agreed to turn over 19 firearms to the FBI as a condition of his release
• After pleading guilty, Henderson wanted to sell the weapons to a friend or transfer them to his wife. (sure) But a federal district court found that technically would give Henderson possession of the weapons in violation of federal law. A federal appeals court agreed
• Henderson said the guns had nothing to do with his crime and the FBI never said the guns were seized
• President Obama’s handed Republicans some more ammo for campaign ads. In an interview with Al Sharpton, he talked about Dem candidates who haven’t welcomed him campaigning with him. “The bottom line, though, these are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress.” (WaPo, me)
Panic Over “Orwellian” Twitter Study
• Commissioner Ajit Pai, one of two Republicans on the five-member FCC, warned in a WaPo op-ed Saturday about a National Science Foundation study of people’s communications on Twitter, which he said amounted to govt monitoring of speech, “seems to have come straight out of a George Orwell novel.” (Hill, me)
• “In the U.S., the govt has no business entering the marketplace of ideas to establish an arbiter of what is false, misleading or a political smear,” he wrote. “The federal govt has no business spending your hard-earned money on a project to monitor political speech on Twitter.” (why not? – depends what govt does with it, surely)
• The “Truthy” study, funded by the National Science Foundation, is being developed by Indiana University researchers to study how popular ideas and jokes spread throughout popular culture. One focus is the spread of “political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution,” researchers said
• “While the vast majority of memes arise in a perfectly organic manner, driven by the complex mechanisms of life on the web, some are engineered by the shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns,” the university explained
• To Pai, the project sounds a lot like the FCC’s controversial plan to study the editorial practices of newsrooms, which many said could be a violation of the constitutional rights of freedom of the press. Pai was a major critic and his alarms helped to have it scrapped (disturbing trend to shut down research some people don’t like)
• RIP fashion designer genius Oscar de la Renta, 82, who died on Monday. This HuffPo piece has a great selection of pics of celebs wearing his designs. Adore his work and have worn his designs
Monica Lewinsky Tells of Humiliation
• Monica Lewinsky has broken a decade-long silence to announce her campaign to end cyberbullying and today’s toxic culture of internet shaming. In her first ever public address, the former mistress of President Bill Clinton revealed her plan to launch a “cultural revolution” against the sort of online harassment she experienced firsthand in the late 1990s
• “I was Patient Zero,” said Lewinsky, now 41, to an auditorium full of 1,000-plus high-achieving millennials at Forbes’ inaugural 30 Under-30 summit in PA. “The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the internet.” (Forbes, Hill, Politico, TRNS, me)
• Lewinsky became emotional telling of the miserable months after then-unknown gossip website the Drudge Report broke the news of her relationship with Clinton – a public humiliation exacerbated by the release of the Starr Report online later that year, offering intimate details of their trysts
• “Staring at the computer screen, I spent the day shouting: ‘oh my god!’ and ‘I can’t believe they put that in’ or ‘That’s so out of context,'” she said. “And those were the only thoughts that interrupted a relentless mantra in my head: ‘I want to die.'”
• Lewisnky noted the story of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who killed himself in 2010 after intimate photos of him were posted online. Lewinsky called the tragedy “one of the principal reasons I’m standing here today.” She met with Clementi’s parents. She intends to share her story with victims of cyberbullying and online harassment
• It’s official: Sharknado 3 coming in 2015 “takes on the Feast Coast” – yup, it’s coming to DC! I knew they couldn’t resist. Big sharks eat little sharks
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Victoria Jones
TRNS’ Nicholas Salazar, Paayal Zaveri and Celina Gore contributed to this report |
