He once led a six-day takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, and mounted an armed 71-day occupation of the town of Wounded Knee, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Wounded Knee was the scene of the last major conflict of the American Indian Wars, in which 350 Lakota men, women and children were massacred by United States troops in 1890.

 Photo

 While his protests won some government concessions and drew national attention and wide sympathy for the deplorable social and economic conditions of American Indians, Mr. Banks achieved few real improvements in the daily lives of millions of Native Americans, who live on reservations and in major cities and lag behind most fellow citizens in jobs, housing and education.

 To admirers, Mr. Banks was a broad-chested champion of native pride. With dark, piercing eyes, high cheekbones, a jutting chin and long raven hair, he was a paladin who defied authority and, in an era crowded with civil rights protests, spoke for the nation’s oldest minority.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 To his critics, including many American Indians, Mr. Banks was a self-promoter, grabbing headlines and becoming a darling of politically liberal Hollywood stars like Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando. His severest detractors, including law-enforcement officials, said he let followers risk injury and arrest while he jumped bail to avoid a long prison sentence and did not surrender for nearly a decade.

 Mr. Banks and Mr. Means first won national attention for declaring a “Day of Mourning” for Native Americans on Thanksgiving Day in 1970. Their band seized the ship Mayflower II, a replica of the original in Plymouth, Mass., and a televised confrontation between real Indians and costumed “Pilgrims” made the American Indian Movement leaders overnight heroes.

 In 1972, the two organized cross-country car caravans on “Trails of Broken Treaties.” They converged on Washington with 500 followers to protest Indian living standards and lost treaty rights, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs and held out for nearly a week, destroying documents and the premises, until the government agreed to discuss Indian grievances and review treaty commitments.

 Photo

 In 1973, after a white man killed an Indian in a saloon brawl and was charged not with murder but with involuntary manslaughter, Mr. Banks led 200 American Indian Movement protesters in a face-off with the police in Custer, S.D. It became a riot when the slain man’s mother was beaten by officers. After he left town, Mr. Banks, who said he had merely tried to ease tensions, was charged with assault and rioting.

 It was the last straw. “We had reached a point in history where we could not tolerate the abuse any longer, where mothers could not tolerate the mistreatment that goes on on the reservations any longer, where they could not see another Indian youngster die,” he told the author Peter Matthiessen.

 Weeks later, the siege that made Mr. Banks and Mr. Means famous across America began when 200 Oglala Lakota and A.I.M. followers with rifles and shotguns occupied Wounded Knee. About 300 United States marshals, F.B.I. agents and other law-enforcement officials cordoned off the area with armored cars and heavy weapons, touching off a 10-week battle of nerves and gunfire.

 Amid wide news media coverage, the significance of the battlefield was not lost on many Americans. Dee Brown’s best-selling book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West” (1970) had recently explored the record of massacres and atrocities against Native Americans on the expanding frontier, undermining one of the nation’s fondest myths.

 Proclaiming a willingness to die for their cause, Mr. Banks and Mr. Means demanded the ouster of Richard Wilson, the elected leader of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, whom they called a corrupt white man’s stooge. The government refused. Shootings punctuated the days of stalemate, leaving wounded on both sides. Two Indians were killed, and a federal agent was shot and paralyzed.

 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Sign Up for the Race/Related Newsletter Join a deep and provocative exploration of race with a diverse group of New York Times journalists. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

 When it was over, Mr. Banks and Mr. Means were charged with assault and conspiracy. After a federal trial, with the defense raising historic and current Indian grievances, a judge dismissed the case for prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal wiretaps and evidence that had been tampered with.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 By then, Mr. Banks was a pre-eminent spokesman for Native Americans. He mediated armed conflicts between Indians and the authorities in various states. But his own legal troubles were not over.

 Charged with riot and assault with a deadly weapon for his role in the 1973 melee in Custer, he was found guilty in 1975. Facing up to 15 years in prison, he jumped bail and fled to California.

 With 1.4 million signatures on a petition supporting Mr. Banks, Gov. Jerry Brown granted him asylum in 1976, rejecting extradition to South Dakota by saying his life might be in danger if he were sent back. Mr. Banks later became chancellor of Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University, a small two-year college for Indians in Davis, Calif.

 Deprived of California sanctuary when Governor Brown was succeeded by a Republican, George Deukmejian, in early 1983, Mr. Banks found a new refuge on an Onondaga reservation near Syracuse. Federal officials said he would be arrested only if he left the reservation. But in 1984, weary of his confined life, he returned to South Dakota voluntarily and was sentenced to three years in prison.

 Photo

 Paroled in 1985 after serving only 14 months, he moved to the Pine Ridge Reservation to work as a drug addiction and alcoholism counselor. He also turned his life around, embracing sobriety, giving talks on public service and organizing cross-country events that he called Sacred Runs, which became popular among supporters of Native Americans in later years.

 “We were the prophets, the messengers, the fire starters,” Mr. Banks said in an autobiography, “Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement” (2005, with Richard Erdoes). “Wounded Knee awakened not only the conscience of all Native Americans, but also of white Americans nationwide.”

 Dennis James Banks was born on the Leech Lake Reservation on April 12, 1937. He never knew his father. His mother abandoned him to his grandparents.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 When he was 5, he was taken from his family and sent to a series of government schools for Indians that systematically denigrated his Ojibwa (Chippewa) culture, language and identity. He ran away often, until, at 17, he returned to Leech Lake.

 Unable to find work, he joined the Air Force and was stationed in Japan, where he married a Japanese woman, had a child with her and went absent without leave. Arrested and returned to the United States, he never saw his wife or child again. After being discharged, he moved to Minneapolis, drifted into crime, was arrested in a burglary and went to jail for two and a half years.

 Photo

 Released in 1968, he founded the American Indian Movement with an Ojibwa he had met in prison, Clyde Bellecourt, and others to fight the oppression and endemic poverty of Native Americans. He became chairman and national director as the group, based in Minneapolis, forged alliances and grew rapidly. After two years it said it had 25,000 members.

 Within a year A.I.M., with its flair for guerrilla tactics, joined a lengthy occupation of Alcatraz Island, the former federal prison site in San Francisco Bay.

 After his fugitive years, Mr. Banks had a modest movie career. He had roles in Franc Roddam’s “War Party” (1988), Michael Apted’s “Thunderheart” (1992), Michael Mann’s “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992, with Russell Means), and Georgina Lightning’s “Older Than America” (2008), which explored the devastating effects of Indian boarding schools like those Mr. Banks had been forced to attend.

 Mr. Banks also appeared in documentaries: “We Shall Remain, Part V: Wounded Knee” (2009), a Ric Burns “American Experience” television film directed by Stanley Nelson; “A Good Day to Die” (2010), directed by David Mueller and Lynn Salt; and “Nowa Cumig: The Drum Will Never Stop” (2011), directed by Marie-Michele Jasmin-Belisle.

 Besides his wife and child in Japan, Mr. Banks had many children with other women. In addition to Ms. Banks Rama, he is survived by 19 children, 11 with the surname Banks: Janice, Darla, Deanna, Dennis, Red Elk, Tatanka, Minoh, Tokala, Tiopa, Tacanunpa and Arrow. The others are Glenda Roberts, Beverly Baribeau, Kevin Strong, D. J. Nelson-Banks, Bryan Graves, and Pearl, Denise and Kawlija Blanchard. Mr. Banks is also survived by more than 100 grandchildren, Ms. Banks Rama said.

 Mr. Banks was the 2016 vice presidential nominee of the California Peace and Freedom Party, which identified itself as socialist and feminist. The party’s presidential candidate was Gloria La Riva. As a single-state ticket, they won 66,000 votes.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 In recent years, Mr. Banks lived with some of his children in Kentucky and Minnesota. He was an honorary trustee of the Leech Lake Tribal College, a two-year public institution in Cass Lake, Minn. Mr. Means, who also appeared in movies and wrote a memoir, died on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 2012 at age 72.

 In 1990, both men joined a ceremony at the Pine Ridge Reservation commemorating the centenary of the Wounded Knee massacre.

 “Maybe we opened up some eyes, opened some doors,” Mr. Banks told The Los Angeles Times. “And it was at least an educational process here. Fifteen years ago, there was no newspaper here, no radio station. Now there’s more community control over education.” ||||| Rating is available when the video has been rented.

 This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| Angered over a long history of violated treaties, mistreatment, and discrimination, 200 members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupy the tiny hamlet of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

 Former Sioux and Ojibwa convicts attempting to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area founded the American Indian Movement in 1968. Borrowing some tactics from the antiwar student demonstrators of the era, AIM soon gained national notoriety for its flamboyant protests. Many mainstream Indian leaders, though, denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical. In 1972, a faction of AIM members led by Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier sought to close the divide by making alliances with traditional tribal elders on reservations. They had their greatest success on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, after a group of young whites murdered a Sioux Indian named Yellow Thunder. Although Yellow Thunder’s attackers only received six-year prison sentences, this was widely seen as a victory by the local Sioux accustomed to unfair treatment by the racist Anglo judicial system. AIM’s highly visible publicity campaign on the case was given considerable credit for the verdict, winning the organization a great deal of respect on the reservation.

 AIM’s growing prestige and influence, however, threatened the conservative Sioux tribal chairman, Dick Wilson. When Wilson learned of a planned AIM protest against his administration at Pine Ridge, he retreated to tribal headquarters where he was under the protection of federal marshals and Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Rather than confront the police in Pine Ridge, AIM decided to occupy the symbolically significant hamlet of Wounded Knee, the site of an 1890 massacre of a band of unarmed Sioux by the U.S. Cavalry. Wilson, with the backing of the federal government, responded by besieging Wounded Knee.

 During the 71 days of the siege, federal officers and AIM members exchanged gunfire almost nightly. Two Native Americans were killed and a federal marshal permanently paralyzed by a bullet wound. The leaders of AIM finally surrendered after a negotiated settlement was reached. In a subsequent trial, the judge ordered their acquittal because of evidence that the FBI had manipulated key witnesses. AIM emerged victorious and succeeded in shining a national spotlight on the problems of modern Native Americans.

 The troubles at Wounded Knee, however, were not over. A virtual civil war broke out between the opposing Indian factions on the Pine Ridge reservation, and a series of beatings, shootings, and murders left more than 100 Indians dead. When two FBI agents were killed in a 1975 gunfight, the agency raided the reservation and arrested AIM leader Leonard Peltier for the crime. The FBI crackdown coupled with AIM’s own excesses ended its influence at Pine Ridge. Peltier was convicted of killing the two FBI agents and sentenced to life in prison. Peltier’s supporters, however, continue to maintain his innocence and seek a presidential pardon to this day. ||||| Dennis Banks, one of the country's most influential American Indian activists, was a key figure in the 1970s standoff with federal agents at Wounded Knee. The American Indian Movement he helped found drew attention with a string of high-profile occupations.

 But some who worked closely with Banks saw him more as a thoughtful intellectual than a strident fighter. Away from the media spotlight, he worked to preserve American Indian culture, promote wellness on Indian reservations and export traditional products such as wild rice to markets as far-flung as Japan.

 Banks died Sunday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester from complications following open-heart surgery, his family said. He was 80.

 "Someone who has such courage as Dennis Banks was everything to us," said Winona LaDuke, the prominent American Indian advocate who considers Banks a major inspiration. "He was a leader in our community, not just to talk but to be there for the community."

 In a moving post on Banks' Facebook page signed by his children and grandchildren, his family said Banks "started his journey to the spirit world" just after 10 p.m. Sunday. His children sang traditional songs and prayed over him as he took his last breaths. He had developed pneumonia after surgery 10 days earlier.

 "We felt like he was improving, but the pneumonia came on real fast," Tashina Banks, one of Banks' 20 children, said as she traveled Monday afternoon in a family caravan with her father's body from Rochester to a funeral home in Buffalo.

 Dennis Banks

 The family said Banks will be buried Saturday in his home community of Leech Lake in northern Minnesota.

 Banks, or "Nowa Cumig" in his native language, was born April 12, 1937, on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. At age 5, he was placed at a boarding school in southwestern Minnesota. At 17, he joined the military and served in Japan.

 In 1968, Banks was among the founders of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, which started out as a protest against police treatment of American Indians in south Minneapolis and spread nationwide. Under Banks' leadership, marches and takeovers became AIM's signature tactics.

 Banks participated in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, the San Francisco Bay Area island that had housed a federal prison. In November 1972, he led AIM in a takeover of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs building in the nation's capital, a protest dubbed "The Trail of Broken Treaties."

 Laura Waterman Wittstock, then a reporter for the American Indian Press Association in Washington, D.C., said AIM's grass roots organizing riveted the Washington press corps. In Banks, the movement had a thoughtful spokesman.

 "I was impressed with his intelligence and his ability to articulate clearly what he was doing," she said.

 Banks and other AIM members made their biggest mark in 1973, when federal agents clashed with hundreds of protesters occupying Wounded Knee in southwestern South Dakota, the site of an 1890 massacre of Indians by federal troops.

 Protesters and federal authorities were locked in a standoff for 71 days. Two tribal members were killed and a federal agent seriously wounded. Banks and fellow AIM activist Russell Means were charged in 1974 for their roles in the uprising.

 After a trial in federal court in St. Paul that lasted several months, a judge threw out the charges on grounds of government misconduct.

 Bill Means, Russell Means' brother, said the two activists helped craft their defense with their lawyers. They used the courtroom and regular news conferences to launch an indictment of the federal authorities' tactics.

 "What we did in the 1960s and early 1970s was raise the consciousness of white America that this government has a responsibility to Indian people," Banks once said.

 Banks' refusal to shun confrontation made him a divisive figure both in the mainstream and among some reservation officials, recalled Jim Parsons, a retired Star Tribune reporter who covered Banks extensively.

 "He was being a militant, disturbing the status quo," Parsons said. "AIM was controversial even on the reservation because they were challenging the power of the local tribal chiefs."

 Banks spent 18 months in prison in the 1980s after being convicted of rioting and assault for a protest in Custer, S.D., earlier in 1973. He avoided prosecution for several years because California Gov. Jerry Brown refused to extradite him, and the Onondaga Nation in New York gave him sanctuary.

 LaDuke said following media coverage of the Wounded Knee trial was a formative experience; as an 18-year-old Harvard University student five years later, she joined AIM and worked for the organization. Banks eventually became a close friend. She said she will remember his humor and kindness, and a joyful dance they shared at a traditional ceremony in northern Wisconsin several years ago.

 "He was probably badass, as they say, but I didn't really see that side of him," she said.

 Fighter, thinker: Some saw Banks as strident; others lauded his intelligence and thoughtfulness.

 Although Banks kept a lower profile in recent years, friends say he remained active in advocacy until his death. In 2010, Banks joined other Ojibwe from the Leech Lake and White Earth bands who tested their 1855 treaty rights by setting out nets illegally on Lake Bemidji a day before Minnesota's fishing season opener.

 LaDuke said Banks, who launched a successful wild rice and maple syrup business, pitched in to oppose the genetic engineering of wild rice. To nurture pride in native traditions, he started canoe races on the Mississippi, securing a trip to Japan as a prize. LaDuke ran into him at the Dakota Access pipeline protests in western North Dakota last year.

 He also organized caravans that stopped at Indian reservations across the country to raise awareness about various issues, most recently the unsolved murders and assaults of native women.

 "Dennis was one of the greatest defenders of Indian rights and human rights of this generation" said Means.

 Services in various locations around the state begin Wednesday, with a wake at noon at the American Indian Center, 1530 E. Franklin Av., in Minneapolis. Another wake will be held Thursday and Friday at Banks' home near Federal Dam.

 A traditional burial will be Saturday at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig Cemetery at Battle Point on the Leech Lake Reservation. The time for that rite is also pending.

Summary: – Dennis Banks, one of the founders of the American Indian Movement, died on Oct. 29 at the age of 80. Banks, a member of the Chippewa tribe who was born on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota, died of complications from pneumonia 10 days after undergoing open-heart surgery, the Star Tribune reports. He came to prominence in 1968, with the advent of the American Indian Movement, a political force that raised awareness about Native American issues through the use of marches and sit-ins and sometimes-violent confrontations with authorities. In its heyday the group occupied Alcatraz prison and took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC, for six days. Banks and his organization are perhaps most famous for their 1973 standoff with federal agents at the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, the New York Times reports. On Feb. 27, 1973, 200 AIM followers and Oglala Lakota staged an armed occupation of the town of Wounded Knee, SD, and weathered a 10-week siege by US marshals and FBI agents. Two of the protestors were killed and one federal agent shot and paralyzed. Banks was charged with assault and conspiracy, but a federal judge dismissed the case, citing government misconduct. A Facebook message signed by his children and grandchildren said those present at Banks' death "proudly sang him the AIM song as his final send off."


Video (02:37) : Frigid weather is headed our way. Paul Douglas lets us know how long it will stay.

 The forecast high of zero degrees for the Vikings-Seahawks game on Sunday at TCF Bank Stadium would make it the coldest home playoff game in team history and among the frostiest in NFL history.

 There have been only nine games in league history where the high temperature during the game never got above zero.

 The Vikings’ coldest playoff game at Met Stadium was 9 degrees in 1970 against San Francisco. Their coldest game, -2 against Chicago, was the sixth most frigid in NFL history.

 The coldest NFL game was the “Ice Bowl,” the league’s title game between Green Bay and Dallas at Lambeau Field on New Year’s Eve in 1967. The temperature was -13 and wind chills hit -48.

 NBC broadcaster Cris Collinsworth, who will be calling Sunday’s game, likes to refer to the coldest game by windchill in league history. Collinsworth played for the Bengals when they beat San Diego on Jan. 10, 1982 at Riverfront Stadium for the AFC title when the temp was -9 and wind chills hit -59.

 COLDEST VIKINGS HOME GAMES

 -2 vs. Chicago, Dec. 3, 1972 (wind north 11 mph)

 0 vs. Green Bay, Dec. 10, 1972 (wind SW 9 mph)

 5 vs. Los Angeles, Nov. 29, 1964 (wind NW 12 mph)

 9 vs. Chicago, Dec. 5, 1970 (wind north 25 mph)

 9 vs. San Francisco*, Dec. 27, 1970 (wind north 10 mph)

 11 vs. Cleveland*, Jan. 4, 1970 (wind NW 8 mph)

 12 vs. Carolina, Nov. 30, 2014 (wind NW, 17 mph)

 12 vs. Los Angeles*, Dec. 26, 1976 (wind NW 13 mph)

 13 vs. N.Y. Giants, Dec. 27, 2015 (wind NW 8 mph)

 15 vs. San Francisco, Dec. 4, 1977 (wind East 15 mph)

 *playoff game ||||| EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. -- The Minnesota Vikings' first outdoor home playoff game in more than 39 years could be the coldest in their history, with temperatures projected to hit a high of 1 degree Sunday.

 Editor's Picks PFF: Four matchups to watch in wild-card round Will the Steelers exploit Bengals CB Dre Kirkpatrick? Can the Vikings' OTs hold up against the Seahawks' pass rush? Steve Palazzolo examines the key matchups that could sway each wild-card game.

 Before the Vikings face the Seattle Seahawks in what is forecast to be one of the coldest games in NFL history, they are taking steps to help fans brave frigid weather during a playoff game for the first time in two generations.

 The Vikings announced Thursday that they will provide hand warmers at entry gates Sunday, and Caribou Coffee will provide free coffee in the Vikings' fan zone southwest of TCF Bank Stadium. The University of Minnesota will also open Mariucci Arena -- where the Gophers' men's hockey team plays -- as a warming house for fans beginning three hours before kickoff.

 The team said it will allow non-battery-operated blankets in the stadium and encouraged fans to bring Styrofoam, cardboard or newspapers to place under their feet. TCF Bank Stadium, which was built in 2009, has bleacher seating in the corners and end zones.

 "We know Minnesotans are resilient when it comes to cold weather and unified when it comes to the Vikings, so we view this Sunday's game as a rallying moment," Vikings president Mark Wilf said in a statement. "At the same time, we want our fans to be smart and safe when they are supporting the team, and we are taking a few extra steps to assist in that effort this Sunday."

 According to Accuweather.com, the "RealFeel" for Sunday's game will be minus-23 degrees.

 The coldest game Minnesota has played at TCF Bank Stadium was during Week 13 of the 2014 season when it was 12 degrees at kickoff. AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt

 The coldest home game in Vikings history was Dec. 3, 1972, with a temperature of minus-2 at kickoff. The field at Metropolitan Stadium that day was "like painted concrete," Vikings Hall of Fame defensive end Carl Eller said Thursday morning.

 If the temperature is below zero at kickoff Sunday, it will be one of the six coldest playoff games in NFL history. The last playoff game with a subzero temperature at kickoff was the 2007 NFC Championship Game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants, when it was minus-1 at Lambeau Field.

 The Vikings' frigid day at their temporary home on the University of Minnesota campus could also be their last; they will move back indoors next year, when U.S. Bank Stadium is scheduled to open in downtown Minneapolis.

Summary: – For those cynical fans who believe hell will freeze over before the Minnesota Vikings win a championship, your time might have finally arrived. The forecast is calling for some incredibly cold temperatures when the Vikings take on the Seattle Seahawks in the first round of the NFL playoffs on Sunday. The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports the temperature at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium at game time is supposed to be right around zero degrees—at the warmest. If that holds true, it would be one of the 10 coldest games in NFL history. ESPN is a little more optimistic, calling for a whopping high of 1 degree. Though the network also points out it will feel like -23 degrees with the wind chill. The Vikings, who are waiting for their new stadium to be built, are playing an outdoor home playoff game for the first time in nearly 40 years, ESPN reports. The stadium will be providing free hand warmers and coffee, and fans are encouraged to bring blankets and cardboard or newspaper to put under their feet. According to the Star-Tribune, the coldest game in NFL history is known as the "Ice Bowl." Green Bay and Dallas played for the 1967 championship with the temperature hovering around -13 degrees (with a wind chill of -50 degrees). And while it won't get that cold Sunday, the inevitable Seahawks victory might make it feel that way for Vikings fans.


Published on Nov 3, 2017

 Rosie O'Donnell explains the origins of her long-running feud with Donald Trump and her plans to get a Robert Mueller tattoo.

 » Subscribe to Late Night: http://bit.ly/LateNightSeth

 » Get more Late Night with Seth Meyers: http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-se...

 » Watch Late Night with Seth Meyers Weeknights 12:35/11:35c on NBC.

 LATE NIGHT ON SOCIAL

 Follow Late Night on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LateNightSeth

 Like Late Night on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LateNightSeth

 Find Late Night on Tumblr: http://latenightseth.tumblr.com/

 Connect with Late Night on Google+: https://plus.google.com/+LateNightSet...

 Late Night with Seth Meyers on YouTube features A-list celebrity guests, memorable comedy, and topical monologue jokes.

 NBC ON SOCIAL

 Like NBC: http://Facebook.com/NBC

 Follow NBC: http://Twitter.com/NBC

 NBC Tumblr: http://NBCtv.tumblr.com/

 NBC Pinterest: http://Pinterest.com/NBCtv/

 NBC Google+: https://plus.google.com/+NBC

 YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/nbc

 NBC Instagram: http://instagram.com/nbctv

 Rosie O'Donnell Tells the Origin Story of Her Feud with Donald Trump- Late Night with Seth Meyers

 https://youtu.be/8M57Tt0uEM0

 Late Night with Seth Meyers

 http://www.youtube.com/user/latenight... ||||| Many have turned their backs on Donald Trump following his comments about immigration, but one former controversial beauty queen feels torn.

 Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner made headlines during her year wearing the crown after reports surfaced that the she was underage drinking and eventually tested positive for cocaine.

 Instead of stripping the title from the pageant queen, Trump offered her a second chance and allowed her to enter rehab, so his recent choice of words took Conner by surprise.

 Donald Trump's public feuds

 "He did a huge service for me and he really helped me out a lot," she shared with the Daily News. "Because I feel like he took such a strong step forward for the recovery movement by sending me to treatment and breaking the stigma in that way but when we throw around words like rapists and druggies it's extremely irresponsible because it adds to the stigma of addiction."

 Miss USA Tara Conner gives her response to the interview question on stage during the Miss Universe 2006 pageant. (Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images)

 "If you're gonna make such a strong comment on a race or even just people in general maybe back that up with: how are you gonna help people in recovery and make that more of an option for people who are struggling with addiction and alcoholism, instead of just adding to the stigma?"

 Regardless of her distaste for his word choice, the former Miss USA admits if she saw him now she would just feel gratitude.

 "I would be very gracious for what he has done for me and my life because he helped change my life, I will forever be grateful for that," she explained.

 The former Miss USA, who the media referred to as "Mess America," says she has been sober for 8 ½ years, but still struggles with the disease every day.

 "I still have my days where I wake up and feel unhealthy and that's when I have to use the tools that I've been given or that I've learned so that I can try to get back in the healthy chair because you don't just get sober and you graduate and you're fine, it's a disease I'm gonna have for the rest of my life, but I have to make that choice every day that I wake up," she shared.

 Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing! ||||| “Do you see I’m a little edgy?” Rosie O’Donnell asked Seth Meyers midway through her interview on Late Night Thursday to promote her role in the new Showtime series SMILF. “I spend like pretty much 90 percent of my waking hours tweeting hatred towards this administration.”

 “That is a two-way street,” Meyers pointed out, noting that Donald Trump has been targeting O’Donnell for a very long time. Perhaps most famous was the moment during the first Republican primary debate when Trump responded to Megyn Kelly’s question about his history of misogynistic statements by saying, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

 “Over a decade,” O’Donnell said.

 It all started back when O’Donnell was co-hosting The View. As she explained, there was a young woman who had recently been crowned “Junior Miss Trump Atlantic City Pageant Sexist Winner,” as O’Donnell put it, when she was “caught” by the New York Post kissing a woman at a bar downtown. Trump held a press conference and announced that he had forgiven her for her transgressions.

 “What is he, the pimp and she’s the prostitute?” O’Donnell remembered saying at the time. “He’s the moral arbiter of 20-year-old behavior now, right?” From there, she went on to talk about how he has been “bankrupt four times, that he got all his money from his father, and that he notoriously cheats private contractors out of their money.”

 After she said all that on The View, Trump “went batshit crazy.”

 “So, you know, as bad as everyone feels and they have felt since November 8th, I know for me, I’ve been in a severe depression,” O’Donnell told Meyers. “Although, I’d like to say, today after your show I’m going to get a Bob Mueller tattoo. Because I love him!”

 When Meyers described Mueller as a “severe” man, O’Donnell said, “He looks to me like Superman. Like Captain America. Like justice has finally arrived back on our shores! And we are going to right ourselves again!”

 “I will say that if Trump gets indicted, it would be really great if Mueller let you serve the papers,” Meyers replied.

 O’Donnell said that when Trump first rode down that escalator to announce his campaign she was “laughing her ass off” because she thought it “would never happen.” Even her therapist assured her that Trump could never actually win the election.

 How wrong they were.

Summary: – Head to the Trump Twitter archive, type in "Rosie," and you can see in scathing detail the online manifestation of the longtime feud between the president and Rosie O'Donnell. But did we ever really know what started it? O'Donnell offered her take Thursday night on Late Night With Seth Meyers, after the host pointed out that Trump had been going after O'Donnell for what seems like forever, per the Daily Beast. "Over a decade," O'Donnell confirmed, before revealing that she believed the brouhaha all started after something she said on TV when she was co-hosting The View. O'Donnell notes that after Tara Conner, Miss USA 2006, was caught engaging in underage drinking and tested positive for cocaine use that year, Trump announced at a presser he would forgive her. Rosie remembers thinking, "What is he, the pimp and she's the prostitute? He's the moral arbiter of 20-year-old behavior now, right?" And so she scoured the internet (she says she went on Wikipedia) and found some "easily accessible" nuggets—including that Trump went "bankrupt four times, that he got all his money from his father, and that he notoriously cheats private contractors out of their money"—and then shared them on The View. And that, she says, is when Trump went "bats--- crazy." O'Donnell and Meyers also dished on the Robert Mueller Russia investigation, with Meyers noting, "I will say that if Trump gets indicted, it would be really great if Mueller let you serve the papers." O'Donnell replied, "I have put in that request by tweet. I'm waiting to hear."


But that has not always been the case. In Colorado, the federal government has largely allowed the state-regulated medical-marijuana industry to operate, and supporters said they hoped the government would take a similar laissez-faire stance as the new laws took effect.

 “I don’t see D.E.A. agents sweeping into Colorado and Washington and enforcing drug laws that were previously enforced by local agencies,” said Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief who campaigned for the Washington measure despite a personal preference for dry martinis over pot brownies. “It would be extremely poor politics. The will of the people has been expressed.”

 Although elected officials, parents’ groups and top law enforcement figures opposed the measures, they nevertheless won support with voters who saw little harm with regulating marijuana similarly to the way alcohol is. Colorado’s marijuana law passed with 54 percent support, and Washington’s with 55 percent.

 Colorado and Washington are among 18 states with medical marijuana laws, but they become the first in the nation to approve the use for recreational purposes. A similar measure in Oregon failed on Tuesday.

 As soon as the laws are certified, it will be legal under Colorado and Washington law for adults 21 years and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana. In Colorado, people will be able to grow as many as six plants. In Washington, users will have to buy their marijuana from state-licensed providers.

 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

 “They can’t arrest you for it, and they can’t seize it,” Mr. Stamper said. “It’s yours.”

 The measures will also set up regulations for industrial hemp, a fibrous plant that contains traces of the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana.

 The laws do not allow people to light up in public, and cities and counties will be able to block marijuana retailers, in much the same way that blue laws have restricted alcohol sales for decades. And it remains illegal to drive a motor vehicle while high on the drug.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Supporters say the laws will end thousands of small-scale drug arrests while freeing law enforcement to focus on larger crimes. They estimate that taxing marijuana will bring in millions of dollars of new revenue for governments, and will save court systems and police departments additional millions.

 Opponents warned that the law — despite its 21-year age minimum — would set Colorado and Washington on a collision course with the federal government and encourage teenagers to use marijuana.

 It is still unclear how much will change. The streets here in Denver and across Colorado are already lined with shops, their windows decorated with green crosses and pot leaves, advertising all-natural plant treatments and herbal health aids.

 “Coloradans are accustomed to having this stuff above ground, supervised by state authorities and having it regulated,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supported legalization.

 To advocates, the real power of the measures’ passage may be that they signal a change in the way voters think about drugs and drug policy in the United States.

 Brian Vicente, a leading campaigner for the Colorado initiative, summed it up this way: “It’s a historic one, man.” ||||| DENVER—Now that measures legalizing some recreational marijuana for adults use have won approval in Colorado and Washington, state regulators and lawmakers must decide how to navigate federal opposition as they implement voters' desires.

 The measures flout federal law, under which marijuana sales and possession remain illegal. Oregon voters Tuesday rejected a similar pot-legalization measure.

 "The... ||||| Colorado officials and marijuana advocates on Wednesday looked toward an imminent confrontation with the federal government one day after voters in the state endorsed a measure to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

 Gov. John Hickenlooper said he is trying to speak soon with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to learn how the Justice Department will respond to the legalization measure’s passage.

 Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said, despite his opposition to legalization, he would work with the state legislature to implement the new law — which he doubted the federal government would allow to stand. Proponents of Amendment 64, the measure voters approved with nearly 55 percent support on Tuesday, said they were optimistic the federal government would “respect the will of Colorado voters.”

 And the Colorado U.S. attorney — the top federal prosecutor in the state — remained largely mum on how the conflict would play out. In a statement, local U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Jeff Dorschner reiterated that the Justice Department’s intent to enforce the federal law that makes all marijuana possession or sales a crime “remains unchanged.”

 “My sense is that it is unlikely the federal government is going to allow states one by one to unilaterally decriminalize marijuana,” Hickenlooper said, adding, though, “You can’t argue with the will of the voters.”

 What lies ahead for Colorado — after it and Washington on Tuesday became the first states in the nation to buck federal law by legalizing marijuana for any purpose — is largely unknown territory. No state since the beginning of marijuana prohibition has rolled back restrictions on cannabis to the extent Colorado now has.

 Amendment 64 allows people 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and grow up to six plants in their homes. The law won’t take effect, though, until Hickenlooper issues a proclamation certifying the vote. That will likely take at least a month. By law, it doesn’t have to happen until Jan. 5.

 Until then, all non-medical marijuana possession and cultivation in Colorado remain a crime. In other words, at least for a few more weeks, the time to puff has not yet come to pass.

 Amendment 64 also creates a system in which marijuana could be sold at specially regulated retail stores — which would be separate from medical-marijuana dispensaries. The details of that system must still be worked out by the state legislature and the Department of Revenue. The first recreational marijuana stores would likely not open until 2014, said Brian Vicente, one of Amendment 64’s proponents.

 Before that happens, the federal government might choose to intervene by, among other options, filing a lawsuit arguing that the law’s retail sales section violates the U.S. Constitution because it frustrates federal drug laws.

 “Coloradans should not expect to see successful legal challenges to the ability of the federal government to enforce its marijuana laws in Colorado,” Suthers wrote in a statement. “Accordingly, I call upon the United States Department of Justice to make known its intentions regarding prosecution of activities sanctioned by Amendment 64.”

 The measure’s supporters said they are optimistic the federal government will allow the law to stand, and they heralded their victory Tuesday as the first step in a nationwide push to end marijuana prohibition.

 “Things are moving,” Mason Tvert, one of the campaign’s chief proponents, said. “They’re moving quickly. We think the writing is on the wall.”

 Amendment 64 — which polls showed hovering at around 50 percent support heading into Election Day — won with what even supporters said was a surprising amount of cushion. With roughly 1.28 million votes in its favor, it drew more support than President Barack Obama did in winning Colorado.

 It passed in more counties than it lost — 33 to 31. It won in seven counties that voted for Republican Mitt Romney and lost in only one — Conejos — that voted for Obama.

 “We are at the tipping point on marijuana policy,” Vicente said. “This is an area where our voters and our citizens are really leading.”

 Drug-abuse prevention professionals, though, said Wednesday that Colorado is going down a dangerous path. They predicted marijuana legalization would increase pot use, especially among young people, and lead to higher rates of drugged driving and substance abuse.

 “We need to let people know it is not OK for youths to use marijuana,” said Christian Thurstone, a substance-abuse treatment doctor at Denver Health medical center. “We need them to realize it’s not OK for young people to drive under the influence of marijuana.”

 John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/john_ingold

Summary: – Colorado and Washington state are now chill with citizens having a little pot—but the drug is still very much illegal in Uncle Sam's eyes, leaving states to chart a difficult path. When it comes to medical marijuana, the feds have tended to crack down on large operations and leave small, personal growers alone; that track record may offer a model for enforcement under the new laws. For its part, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency says its stance "remains unchanged," the New York Times notes. But “I don’t see DEA agents sweeping in ... and enforcing drug laws that were previously enforced by local agencies,” says a former Seattle police chief. "It would be extremely poor politics. The will of the people has been expressed.” The new law could bring in $180 million in taxes and savings over three years, says a Colorado group: "We want to be a model for the rest of the country on how to do this right." Washington advocates similarly say pot shops could bring in $500 million to $600 million in taxes annually. But thorny issues remain, including how to establish bank accounts for a business that's federally banned, the Wall Street Journal notes. "This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through," says Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who the Denver Post reports has been in touch with US Attorney General Eric Holder regarding federal policy. "That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don't break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly."


A Bronx man is running for mayor of New York City 17 years after he hijacked a plane at JFK Airport with a handgun and a knife and ordered the pilots to fly to Antarctica.

 Aaron Commey is the Libertarian candidate for mayor and will be on the ballot in all five boroughs on Nov. 7. But on July 27, 2000, he was 22 years old and suffering from delusional disorder and paranoid schizophrenia when he walked onto a Boeing 757 bound for Las Vegas and rushed into the cockpit while brandishing a handgun.

 Commey told the pilots to clear out the plane’s 150 passengers and crew members, according to reports from the time. He then remained in the plane for five hours while law enforcement and the pilots tried to negotiate. Commey asked, at different times, to be flown to Argentina or Antarctica.

 He later explained that he had planned to parachute into Antarctica to destroy the “Cabal,” a secret organization that wanted to “take over the world through mass destruction.”

 In the end, the plane never took off and nobody was injured, while Commey was arrested and charged with five crimes, including attempt to commit aircraft piracy.

 RELATED: Who's who in the 2017 NYC mayoral race?

 In an interview with City & State this week, Commey admitted he didn’t have a typical candidate biography.

 “It’s definitely a valid question … ‘Well, how can we trust you, when you’re this guy who tried to hijack a plane?’” he said. “I am not the same person that I was. I was definitely severely mentally ill. And in addition to recovering from my mental illness without medication, I am a completely different person in terms of how I approach situations and I’m committed to nonviolence.”

 In September 2003, Commey was found not guilty on all counts by reason of insanity. But he would remain incarcerated in federal prison until his release in 2015. According to a legal filing, he was assigned to a medical center run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons for treatment. In 2004 he was transferred to Federal Medical Center, Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, where former Rep. Anthony Weiner is scheduled to report next month to serve a 21-month sentence.

 “I spent about 15 years in prison, was never convicted,” Commey said. “And it shaped me into the person I am today.”

 Commey said that government officials and judges refused to let him go for years, despite having doctors say he had fully recovered. “Experiencing my own personal injustice, seeing injustice happen to other guys,” he said, “that’s one of the things that had driven me to wanting to get involved to try to change the system.”

 It also turned him into a Libertarian. “It showed me a side of government a lot of people think of in the abstract, but feeling it up close and personal made it all that more real to me,” he said. “And there was really only one party I saw that was tackling that aspect of government.”

 Commey is an extreme long shot in the mayor’s race. He has not been active on the campaign trail, and has raised almost no money, putting up about $2,300 of his own funds while getting just $495 from donors. He has not been included in any major polls. In 2013, Libertarian candidate Michael Sanchez got just 446 votes in the mayoral election, or 0.16 percent of the total.

 Commey’s website, which includes both scenes of New York and videos of the Philadelphia skyline, does not go into detail about his past, but mentions “experience overcoming his own trials and tribulations with the justice system and mental health issues.”

 The candidate’s unusual history has not been widely reported, but Commey had openly spoken about the hijacking attempt, his mental illness and incarceration in an interview with The Black Business School and Libertarian sources like Think Liberty TV and Lions of Liberty.

 But as a mayoral candidate, the one-time air pirate thought his past would get more attention.

 “I was shocked, because I expected this to be the first thing out the gate and like nobody said anything,” he said. “I’m like, wow, OK. I’ll tell the story when the opportunity arises, but I really thought people were going to have much more of a reaction to it.” ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City mayoral candidate says he's "shocked" that so little attention has been paid to his arrest for trying to hijack an airliner at gunpoint 17 years ago.

 In July 2000, Aaron Commey (KOH'-may) boarded a National Airlines plane in New York and ordered the pilots to fly to Argentina or Antarctica. It never took off and nobody was injured.

 He was acquitted by reason of insanity in 2003 and was released from a prison medical facility in 2015.

 The Libertarian candidate tells the news magazine City & State New York that it's reasonable for voters to wonder if he's suited for office.

 He says he has fully recovered and is "committed to nonviolence."

 Commey says he has experienced and witnessed injustice and wants to change the system.

Summary: – A New York City mayoral candidate says he's "shocked" that so little attention has been paid to his arrest for trying to hijack an airliner at gunpoint 17 years ago. In July 2000, Aaron Commey (it's pronounced KOH-may) boarded a National Airlines plane in New York and ordered the pilots to fly to Argentina or Antarctica, per the AP. It never took off and nobody was injured. He was acquitted by reason of insanity in 2003 and was released from a prison medical facility in 2015. The Libertarian candidate tells the news magazine City & State New York that it's reasonable for voters to wonder if he's suited for office and that he's surprised the issue has gotten so little attention. "I was shocked, because I expected this to be the first thing out the gate and like nobody said anything." Commey, who was 22 at the time and suffering from delusional disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, says he has fully recovered and is "committed to nonviolence." Commey says he has experienced and witnessed injustice and wants to change the system.


Seeing is believing

 The home of over 5.1 million full archive pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News print editions

 Search and browse our historical collection to find news, notices of births, marriages and deaths, sports, comics, and much more

 Dates range from 1860 to today for The Philadelphia Inquirer and 1960 to today for the Philadelphia Daily News ||||| Story highlights A 7-year-old boy was caught with 9 bags of heroin in his pants pocket at school

 DA: The boy's grandmother "lost track" of the heroin while she was babysitting

 The DA faults school district for not doing enough to inform authorities, parents

 The Pennsylvania school district says it contacted local police

 Rather than a bagged lunch, a Pennsylvania first-grader brought bags of heroin into school -- giving some to at least one classmate before teachers caught him with a pocket full of drugs, authorities say.

 Two days later, the boy's 56-year-old grandmother was arrested on charges of endangering the welfare of children and drug offenses for allegedly losing track of the heroin while babysitting, according to a local district attorney's office.

 Chester County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney Tom Hogan expressed outrage over any child bringing a drug as potent as heroin into an elementary school. He also lashed out at the boy's school district for not doing more to inform parents as well as authorities, including his office.

 "Any exposure to heroin for a young child is likely to result in death," Hogan said in a statement released Monday. "The (grandmother) is lucky that she was not responsible for the death of her own grandson or somebody else's child."

 According to a criminal complaint detailed by Hogan's office, Pauline Bilinski-Munion was babysitting her grandson and a 1-year-old baby last Thursday at a residence in Modena, Pennsylvania. Bilinski-Munion had "brought heroin into the house and lost track of it," according to the district attorney's office, which referred to her as "a known heroin user."

 The next day, the 7-year-old brought several bags of heroin with him into Caln Elementary School. Teachers overheard the child talking about the bags, and later found nine bags of what proved to be heroin -- with each bag stamped, "Victoria's Secret" -- in the boy's pants pocket, the prosecutor's office said.

 The child initially claimed he found the heroin in the school yard, only to later admit he'd gotten them from home. The drugs were then handed over to the Coatesville Area School District Police.

 Another child's mother later claimed that she'd found an additional bag of heroin, with the same "Victoria's Secret" wording, on her 7-year-old as they were walking late Friday afternoon in a nearby mall, authorities said.

 What happened next is a matter of dispute.

 The school district didn't respond to repeated CNN calls for comment. But CNN affiliate KYW reported that, in a statement, the district "immediately contacted Caln Township, Coatesville city and (the) South Coatesville Police Departments."

 Yet Hogan faulted the school system for what he characterized as its "late and vague notification to parents about a 'dangerous and illegal' substance," and failing to alert his office, which didn't start investigating until hearing about the story in the media on Saturday.

 "The school district didn't call 911, didn't call the DA's office, did not freeze all the kids in place, they did not call in emergency personnel to check all the kids to make sure they were OK," he told KYW. "They did not check to see if there was heroin anywhere else around."

 Following her arrest Sunday, Bilinski-Munion was charged and held with bail set at $25,000. Efforts by CNN to reach her relatives have been unsuccessful, and it wasn't immediately known who is representing her in court.

Summary: – Babysitting her grandson, a Pennsylvania grandmother misplaced her heroin—and it turned up in the 7-year-old's pockets at school a few days later, CNN reports. So says the district attorney, who warns that "any exposure to heroin for a young child is likely to result in death." The boy—who was carrying nine bags of the stuff, each stamped "Victoria's Secret"—allegedly gave some to a classmate, whose mom found it, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The grandmother "is lucky that she was not responsible for the death of her own grandson or somebody else's child," DA Tom Hogan says. Indeed, heroin "can be ingested through the skin," a police rep says. Now, Pauline Bilinski-Munion has been arrested and charged over drugs and endangering children's welfare. She's not the only one facing Hogan's ire: He also says the school "didn't call 911, didn't call the DA's office, did not freeze all the kids in place ... [or] call in emergency personnel to check all the kids to make sure they were OK." The school offered only a "late and vague notification to parents about a 'dangerous and illegal' substance," Hogan says. The school, however, says it contacted police immediately.


The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.

 Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix".

 When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans".

 What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

 In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama's first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that "the Bush Administration's excessive reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

 But when it comes to Obama's assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He's maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.

 Last night, NBC News' Michael Isikoff released a 16-page "white paper" prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama's power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama's kill list - that is still concealed - but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.

 This new memo is entitled: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force". It claims its conclusion is "reached with recognition of the extraordinary seriousness of a lethal operation by the United States against a US citizen". Yet it is every bit as chilling as the Bush OLC torture memos in how its clinical, legalistic tone completely sanitizes the radical and dangerous power it purports to authorize.

 I've written many times at length about why the Obama assassination program is such an extreme and radical threat - see here for one of the most comprehensive discussions, with documentation of how completely all of this violates Obama and Holder's statements before obtaining power - and won't repeat those arguments here. Instead, there are numerous points that should be emphasized about the fundamentally misleading nature of this new memo:

 1. Equating government accusations with guilt

 The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears US government defenders referring to "terrorists" when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism. This entire memo is grounded in this deceit.

 Time and again, it emphasizes that the authorized assassinations are carried out "against a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or its associated forces who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States." Undoubtedly fearing that this document would one day be public, Obama lawyers made certain to incorporate this deceit into the title itself: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida or An Associated Force."

 This ensures that huge numbers of citizens - those who spend little time thinking about such things and/or authoritarians who assume all government claims are true - will instinctively justify what is being done here on the ground that we must kill the Terrorists or joining al-Qaida means you should be killed. That's the "reasoning" process that has driven the War on Terror since it commenced: if the US government simply asserts without evidence or trial that someone is a terrorist, then they are assumed to be, and they can then be punished as such - with indefinite imprisonment or death.

 But of course, when this memo refers to "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida", what it actually means is this: someone whom the President - in total secrecy and with no due process - has accused of being that. Indeed, the memo itself makes this clear, as it baldly states that presidential assassinations are justified when "an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US".

 This is the crucial point: the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.

 Those who justify all of this by arguing that Obama can and should kill al-Qaida leaders who are trying to kill Americans are engaged in supreme question-begging. Without any due process, transparency or oversight, there is no way to know who is a "senior al-Qaida leader" and who is posing an "imminent threat" to Americans. All that can be known is who Obama, in total secrecy, accuses of this.

 (Indeed, membership in al-Qaida is not even required to be assassinated, as one can be a member of a group deemed to be an "associated force" of al-Qaida, whatever that might mean: a formulation so broad and ill-defined that, as Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller argues, it means the memo "authorizes the use of lethal force against individuals whose targeting is, without more, prohibited by international law".)

 The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations. This memo - and the entire theory justifying Obama's kill list - centrally relies on this authoritarian conflation of government accusations and valid proof of guilt.

 They are not the same and never have been. Political leaders who decree guilt in secret and with no oversight inevitably succumb to error and/or abuse of power. Such unchecked accusatory decrees are inherently untrustworthy (indeed, Yemen experts have vehemently contested the claim that Awlaki himself was a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat to the US). That's why due process is guaranteed in the Constitution and why judicial review of government accusations has been a staple of western justice since the Magna Carta: because leaders can't be trusted to decree guilt and punish citizens without evidence and an adversarial process. That is the age-old basic right on which this memo, and the Obama presidency, is waging war.

 2. Creating a ceiling, not a floor

 The most vital fact to note about this memorandum is that it is not purporting to impose requirements on the president's power to assassinate US citizens. When it concludes that the president has the authority to assassinate "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida" who "poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US" where capture is "infeasible", it is not concluding that assassinations are permissible only in those circumstances.

 To the contrary, the memo expressly makes clear that presidential assassinations may be permitted even when none of those circumstances prevail: "This paper does not attempt to determine the minimum requirements necessary to render such an operation lawful." Instead, as the last line of the memo states: "it concludes only that the stated conditions would be sufficient to make lawful a lethal operation" - not that such conditions are necessary to find these assassinations legal. The memo explicitly leaves open the possibility that presidential assassinations of US citizens may be permissible even when the target is not a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat and/or when capture is feasible.

 Critically, the rationale of the memo - that the US is engaged in a global war against al-Qaida and "associated forces" - can be easily used to justify presidential assassinations of US citizens in circumstances far beyond the ones described in this memo. If you believe the president has the power to execute US citizens based on the accusation that the citizen has joined al-Qaida, what possible limiting principle can you cite as to why that shouldn't apply to a low-level al-Qaida member, including ones found in places where capture may be feasible (including US soil)? The purported limitations on this power set forth in this memo, aside from being incredibly vague, can be easily discarded once the central theory of presidential power is embraced.

 3. Relies on the core Bush/Cheney theory of a global battlefield

 The primary theory embraced by the Bush administration to justify its War on Terror policies was that the "battlefield" is no longer confined to identifiable geographical areas, but instead, the entire globe is now one big, unlimited "battlefield". That theory is both radical and dangerous because a president's powers are basically omnipotent on a "battlefield". There, state power is shielded from law, from courts, from constitutional guarantees, from all forms of accountability: anyone on a battlefield can be killed or imprisoned without charges. Thus, to posit the world as a battlefield is, by definition, to create an imperial, omnipotent presidency. That is the radical theory that unleashed all the rest of the controversial and lawless Bush/Cheney policies.

 This "world-is-a-battlefield" theory was once highly controversial among Democrats. John Kerry famously denounced it when running for president, arguing instead that the effort against terrorism is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world".

 But this global-war theory is exactly what lies at heart of the Obama approach to Terrorism generally and this memo specifically. It is impossible to defend Obama's assassination powers without embracing it (which is why key Obama officials have consistently done so). That's because these assassinations are taking place in countries far from any war zone, such as Yemen and Somalia. You can't defend the application of "war powers" in these countries without embracing the once-very-controversial Bush/Cheney view that the whole is now a "battlefield" and the president's war powers thus exist without geographic limits.

 This new memo makes clear that this Bush/Cheney worldview is at the heart of the Obama presidency. The president, it claims, "retains authority to use force against al-Qaida and associated forces outside the area of active hostilities". In other words: there are, subject to the entirely optional "feasibility of capture" element, no geographic limits to the president's authority to kill anyone he wants. This power applies not only to war zones, but everywhere in the world that he claims a member of al-Qaida is found. This memo embraces and institutionalizes the core Bush/Cheney theory that justified the entire panoply of policies Democrats back then pretended to find so objectionable.

 4. Expanding the concept of "imminence" beyond recognition

 The memo claims that the president's assassination power applies to a senior al-Qaida member who "poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States". That is designed to convince citizens to accept this power by leading them to believe it's similar to common and familiar domestic uses of lethal force on US soil: if, for instance, an armed criminal is in the process of robbing a bank or is about to shoot hostages, then the "imminence" of the threat he poses justifies the use of lethal force against him by the police.

 But this rhetorical tactic is totally misleading. The memo is authorizing assassinations against citizens in circumstances far beyond this understanding of "imminence". Indeed, the memo expressly states that it is inventing "a broader concept of imminence" than is typically used in domestic law. Specifically, the president's assassination power "does not require that the US have clear evidence that a specific attack . . . will take place in the immediate future". The US routinely assassinates its targets not when they are engaged in or plotting attacks but when they are at home, with family members, riding in a car, at work, at funerals, rescuing other drone victims, etc.

 Many of the early objections to this new memo have focused on this warped and incredibly broad definition of "imminence". The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer told Isikoff that the memo "redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning". Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller called Jaffer's objection "an understatement", noting that the memo's understanding of "imminence" is "wildly overbroad" under international law.

 Crucially, Heller points out what I noted above: once you accept the memo's reasoning - that the US is engaged in a global war, that the world is a battlefield, and the president has the power to assassinate any member of al-Qaida or associated forces - then there is no way coherent way to limit this power to places where capture is infeasible or to persons posing an "imminent" threat. The legal framework adopted by the memo means the president can kill anyone he claims is a member of al-Qaida regardless of where they are found or what they are doing.

 The only reason to add these limitations of "imminence" and "feasibility of capture" is, as Heller said, purely political: to make the theories more politically palatable. But the definitions for these terms are so vague and broad that they provide no real limits on the president's assassination power. As the ACLU's Jaffer says: "This is a chilling document" because "it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen" and the purported limits "are elastic and vaguely defined, and it's easy to see how they could be manipulated."

 5. Converting Obama underlings into objective courts

 This memo is not a judicial opinion. It was not written by anyone independent of the president. To the contrary, it was written by life-long partisan lackeys: lawyers whose careerist interests depend upon staying in the good graces of Obama and the Democrats, almost certainly Marty Lederman and David Barron. Treating this document as though it confers any authority on Obama is like treating the statements of one's lawyer as a judicial finding or jury verdict.

 Indeed, recall the primary excuse used to shield Bush officials from prosecution for their crimes of torture and illegal eavesdropping: namely, they got Bush-appointed lawyers in the DOJ to say that their conduct was legal, and therefore, it should be treated as such. This tactic - getting partisan lawyers and underlings of the president to say that the president's conduct is legal - was appropriately treated with scorn when invoked by Bush officials to justify their radical programs. As Digby wrote about Bush officials who pointed to the OLC memos it got its lawyers to issue about torture and eavesdropping, such a practice amounts to:

 "validating the idea that obscure Justice Department officials can be granted the authority to essentially immunize officials at all levels of the government, from the president down to the lowest field officer, by issuing a secret memo. This is a very important new development in western jurisprudence and one that surely requires more study and consideration. If Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had known about this, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble."

 Life-long Democratic Party lawyers are not going to oppose the terrorism policies of the president who appointed them. A president can always find underlings and political appointees to endorse whatever he wants to do. That's all this memo is: the by-product of obsequious lawyers telling their Party's leader that he is (of course) free to do exactly that which he wants to do, in exactly the same way that Bush got John Yoo to tell him that torture was not torture, and that even it if were, it was legal.

 That's why courts, not the president's partisan lawyers, should be making these determinations. But when the ACLU tried to obtain a judicial determination as to whether Obama is actually authorized to assassinate US citizens, the Obama DOJ went to extreme lengths to block the court from ruling on that question. They didn't want independent judges to determine the law. They wanted their own lawyers to do so.

 That's all this memo is: Obama-loyal appointees telling their leader that he has the authority to do what he wants. But in the warped world of US politics, this - secret memos from partisan lackeys - has replaced judicial review as the means to determine the legality of the president's conduct.

 6. Making a mockery of "due process"

 The core freedom most under attack by the War on Terror is the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process. It provides that "no person shall be . . . deprived of life . . . without due process of law". Like putting people in cages for life on island prisons with no trial, claiming that the president has the right to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield without any charges or trial is the supreme evisceration of this right.

 The memo pays lip service to the right it is destroying: "Under the traditional due process balancing analysis . . . . we recognize that there is no private interest more weighty than a person's interest in his life." But it nonetheless argues that a "balancing test" is necessary to determine the extent of the process that is due before the president can deprive someone of their life, and further argues that, as the New York Times put it when this theory was first unveiled: "while the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch."

 Stephen Colbert perfectly mocked this theory when Eric Holder first unveiled it to defend the president's assassination program. At the time, Holder actually said: "due process and judicial process are not one and the same." Colbert interpreted that claim as follows:

 "Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do. The current process is apparently, first the president meets with his advisers and decides who he can kill. Then he kills them."

 It is fitting indeed that the memo expressly embraces two core Bush/Cheney theories to justify this view of what "due process" requires. First, it cites the Bush DOJ's core view, as enunciated by John Yoo, that courts have no role to play in what the president does in the War on Terror because judicial review constitutes "judicial encroachment" on the "judgments by the President and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force". And then it cites the Bush DOJ's mostly successful arguments in the 2004 Hamdi case that the president has the authority even to imprison US citizens without trial provided that he accuses them of being a terrorist.

 The reason this is so fitting is because, as I've detailed many times, it was these same early Bush/Cheney theories that made me want to begin writing about politics, all driven by my perception that the US government was becoming extremist and dangerous. During the early Bush years, the very idea that the US government asserted the power to imprison US citizens without charges and due process (or to eavesdrop on them) was so radical that, at the time, I could hardly believe they were being asserted out in the open.

 Yet here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed - and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight. If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable.

 DOJ white paper ||||| It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.

 The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Summary: – The Obama administration's rationale for when it's OK to kill US citizens is fundamentally un-American, writes Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian. For example, the Justice Department memo says the US is justified in going after terrorists—based on the assertions of US officials supposedly in the know about who is or isn't a terrorist. Where's the due process? "The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo—and those who defend Obama's assassination power—willfully ignore it." The memo has at its core the "Bush/Cheney worldview," writes Greenwald in his lengthy critique. "If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable." Read Greenwald's full column here. At Salon, David Sirota thinks the memo makes clear that the "ever-expanding drone war" is so out of control that not even the Constitution can rein it in. It is, in short, "too big to curtail." Read Sirota's column here.


Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter

 / Updated / Source: TODAY By Scott Stump

 During last year's trial in which graduating senior Owen Labrie was charged with sexually assaulting a younger student at the prestigious St. Paul's School, his accuser was shielded in anonymity by law.

 Chessy Prout, who was 15 years old at the time of the incident, has now decided to publicly reveal her identity in order to speak out about the crime.

 "I want everyone to know that I am not afraid or ashamed anymore, and I never should have been,'' Prout told Savannah Guthrie in an exclusive interview that aired on TODAY Tuesday.

 Labrie, 20, was acquitted on three counts of felony sexual assault in August 2015 and convicted on three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault, felony illegal use of computer services and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child. He is currently appealing the verdict.

 Labrie had been accused of raping Prout during a ritual called the “Senior Salute” at the prestigious boarding academy in Concord, New Hampshire. The ritual involves seniors trying to have sex with younger girls in the school before graduating.

 "It's been two years now since the whole ordeal, and I feel ready to stand up and own what happened to me and make sure other people, other girls and boys, don't need to be ashamed, either,'' Prout said.

 Prout says the criminal trial, which made national headlines, could have been avoided.

 "We had been prepared to just receive an apology letter,'' she said. "We had been prepared to finish this and just move forward with our lives and let them move forward with their lives, but, you know what, in the pursuit of justice I would've done anything."

 Prout took the stand and testified for three days during the trial.

 "It was something that was necessary,'' she said. "Although it was scary and although it was pretty difficult...I wouldn't be where I am today without having been able to speak up for myself during that time,'' she said.

 RELATED: Prout’s family files suit against St. Paul’s School

 In October 2015, Labrie was sentenced to a year in jail, but was initially free while the appeal of the verdict was pending. Labrie was ordered to adhere to a curfew from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. at his mother’s house in Vermont, but was found by a judge to have violated the curfew in March and taken into custody to begin serving his jail sentence.

 However, he was freed on bail again in May after a New Hampshire judge gave him another chance to live at his mother’s house as long as he wears a GPS monitor as he awaits his appeal. Labrie is also currently registered as a sex offender in New Hampshire pending his appeal.

 Chessy Prout with her family during Savannah Guthrie's exclusive interview. TODAY

 "I hope he learns,'' Prout said. "I hope he gets help. And that's all I can ever hope for in any sort of process like this. Because if he doesn't learn, he will do it to another young woman."

 While Labrie was convicted on misdemeanor charges, the jury acquitted him of the more serious felony sexual assault charges.

 "They said that they didn't believe that he did it knowingly, and that frustrated me a lot because he definitely did do it knowingly,'' Prout said. "And the fact that he was still able to pull the wool over a group of people's eyes bothered me a lot and just disgusted me in some way."

 St. Paul's School had long been part of Prout's family, as her father, Alex, is a graduate along with her older sister, Lucy. Chessy was adamant about returning to school in the wake of the trial, but said previous male friends would no longer speak to her.

 On one occasion, she claims a pair of senior football players organizing a Powder Puff football game said, "We're only directing this at the upper formers because we're not allowed to look at lower formers anymore."

 "I looked at them like this and thinking that that had to be approved by the rector of the school,'' Prout said. "And they let those boys go up there and make a joke about consent and the age. I said to myself, 'That's it, I don't have to deal this anymore.

 "I tried my best to go back to my school and try to have a normal life again. But if they're going to treat this topic as a joke, this is not a place I want to be."

 In June, the Prouts filed a civil lawsuit against the school, arguing that it failed to protect children entrusted to its care. St. Paul's School issued the following statement to TODAY:

 "As was the case when the survivor was a student here and subsequently, the School admires her courage and condemns unkind behavior toward her. We feel deeply for her and her family. We have always placed the safety and well-being of our students first and are confident that the environment and culture of the school have supported that. We categorically deny that there ever existed at the School a culture or tradition of sexual assault. However, there’s no denying the survivor’s experience caused us to look anew at the culture and environment. This fresh look has brought about positive changes at the School."

 On Aug. 15, attorneys for St. Paul’s School made a request that Prout's identity be publicly released. The school argued that her family is attacking its reputation “from behind a cloak of anonymity,” according to court documents.

 "Unfortunately, it seems like the school's reputation became more important than supporting our daughter,'' Prout's mother, Susan, told Guthrie.

 "There was just no recognition that I had gone through something like this,'' Chessy said. "And that is one of the reasons why we're pushing for change."

 In response NBC News' specific question about programming, the school says they:

 Employ developmentally appropriate education models designed to prevent and reduce risky adolescent behavior.

 Implement healthy boundary and bystander intervention programming for adults and students.

 Engage external teams of experts to examine the health of the student culture.

 Bring in leading experts to train the faculty on adolescent relationships, consent, sexuality, and culture.

 Created an Associate Head of School position for the purpose of integrating and advancing healthy culture initiatives.

 Continually assess and strengthen our advising system and the role of the head of house.

 Regularly review and clarify rules governing student behavior.

 Regularly review and upgrade our security systems.

 Led a nationally recognized symposium on the influence of technology on adolescent relationships

 Prout is now working with the non-profit Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment (PAVE) organization, which "works both to shatter the silence and prevent sexual violence through social advocacy, education and survivor support." PAVE is launching a new site, I Have the Right To, on Tuesday in the wake of Prout's interview.

 TODAY

 "I want other people to feel empowered and just strong enough to be able to say, 'I have the right to my body. I have the right to say no,''' Prout said.

 Prout has been grateful for the support of her family during the trial and its aftermath.

 "I just can't imagine how scary it is for other people to have to do this alone, and I don't want anybody else to be alone anymore,'' she said.

 Follow TODAY.com writer Scott Stump on Twitter. ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — A teen who was sexually assaulted during a game of sexual conquest at a prestigious New Hampshire prep school said Tuesday in her first public comments that she is no longer ashamed or afraid and she hopes to be a voice for others.

 Chessy Prout spoke in an interview on NBC's "Today" show about what happened to her at St. Paul's School in 2014 when she was a 15-year-old freshman.

 "It's been two years now since the whole ordeal, and I feel ready to stand up and own what happened to me and make sure other people, other girls and boys, don't need to be ashamed, either," said Prout, now 17 and about to start her senior year at a different school.

 The Associated Press normally does not identify victims of sexual assault, but Prout has now spoken publicly about the case.

 Former St. Paul's student Owen Labrie, of Tunbridge, Vermont, was arrested in 2014, days after graduating from the Concord school. Prosecutors alleged he assaulted the girl as part of a competition known as the Senior Salute in which some seniors sought to have sex with underclassman.

 Labrie was convicted last year of misdemeanor sex assault charges and a felony charge of using a computer to lure the student. He was acquitted on three counts of felony sexual assault.

 Labrie was sentenced to a year in jail, but he remains free pending appeal.

 Prout's parents have sued the school, arguing it should have done more to protect their daughter. The school has denied it could have prevented the assault, but it has since taken steps to "prevent and reduce risky adolescent behavior."

 In the interview, Prout said she sometimes gets panic attacks and hides in her closet and rocks on the floor. She wants to use the experience to help others.

 "I want everyone to know that I am not afraid or ashamed anymore, and I never should have been," she said.

Summary: – A year after her sexual assault at St. Paul's School made headlines, Chessy Prout says she's tired of hiding. "I want everyone to know that I am not afraid or ashamed anymore, and I never should have been,'' she tells Today of the May 2014 assault. Prout was just 15 when she was sexually assaulted at the prestigious New Hampshire school while on a date with senior Owen Labrie, who is out on bail while appealing his conviction of misdemeanor sexual assault. Prout says she was "disgusted" that Labrie—acquitted of felony sexual assault charges—convinced a jury that he didn't knowingly rape her "because he definitely did do it knowingly," but says she hopes he learns from his crime. "Because if he doesn't learn, he will do it to another young woman." Prout—who also described having panic attacks and hiding in her closet, per the AP—has teamed up with nonprofit Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment and says she wants to encourage "other people to feel empowered and just strong enough to be able to say, 'I have the right to my body. I have the right to say no.''' In an effort to bring about change, she's also filed a civil case against St. Paul's, which accused her of attacking the school "from behind a cloak of anonymity" and filed a request that her identity be released. The school denies "a culture or tradition of sexual assault" existed there but says Prout's case has already "brought about positive changes," including new faculty training and updates to security systems. (Read Prout's testimony here.)


NASHVILLE — Newt Gingrich again avoided the intense campaigning in Michigan Monday, opting instead to spend the day in Nashville appealing to Tennessee voters in advance of Super Tuesday.

 The former House speaker participated in a health care roundtable, a rally on the steps of the Tennessee statehouse, and attended a fundraiser in Franklin. His wife, Callista Gingrich, appeared at the Tennessee chapter of “Women With Newt.” The events weren’t retail politics in the traditional sense as they took place in law firms and with state lawmakers at the Tennessee statehouse.

 Text Size -

 +

 reset

 Gingrich also got a boost from former Tennessee senator and 2008 presidential candidate Fred Thompson. Thompson appeared with Gingrich at the Nashville rally and hosted a fundraiser for him.

 Gingrich stressed his Southern ties to Tennessee, which borders Georgia, which he represented in Congress for over two decades.

 “As a Georgian, I guess I’ve been coming in and out of Tennessee for a very, very long time,” Gingrich said at his lunch event.

 A strong performance in Tennessee is central to Gingrich’s strategy going forward — he is staking his campaign on a strong finish in the Southern states that vote on Super Tuesday.

 Tennessee is the third-largest prize on Super Tuesday — which is one week away — with 58 delegates. Gingrich’s campaign did not file the full slate of delegates in here, though that lack of delegates now won’t affect his share of the vote on primary night (Rick Santorum didn’t file any delegates here either).

 In Milner, Ga., on Sunday, Gingrich said he “hope[d] to do very well” in Tennessee, in addition to winning Georgia, doing well in Oklahoma and “surpris[ing] people” in Idaho’s caucuses.

 Gingrich is hoping his presence in Tennessee will help him gain momentum here, despite the fact that he’s at the end of the pack in recent polling. In a Vanderbilt University poll released Monday, Gingrich came in fourth with 10 percent. Rick Santorum led the pack with 33 percent, followed by Mitt Romney at 17 percent and Ron Paul at 13 percent.

 Gingrich’s day wasn’t without a few stumbles. He got only a small crowd at his rally outside the Tennessee statehouse, and the event was interrupted by Occupy protesters, who shouted things like “End the war on women!” and “Palestinians are not an invented people!”

 Gingrich responded by using a line he’d just used about President Barack Obama: “In terms of being out of touch with reality…” ||||| NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said today the unrest the United States was seeing in Afghanistan was just "the tip of the iceberg."

 "We're not going to fix Afghanistan. It's not possible. These are people who have spent several thousand years hating foreigners," Gingrich said. "And what we've done by staying is become the new foreigners. And this is a real problem."

 Gingrich said that in his judgment, the problems the U.S. faces in the Middle East are too big and complicated for military solutions.

 "There's some problems where what you have to do is say 'You know, you're going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life because I'm not here - you clearly don't want to hear from me how to be unmiserable,'" Gingrich said.

 Gingrich was critical of President Obama last week for apologizing to Afghanistan after the burning of copies of the Koran sparked mass protests. Gingrich said the president should not have apologized since two Americans were killed.

 Today, Gingrich also took a swipe at Afghan president Hamid Zarzai. "My prediction is, the Karzai government is playing us for fools," Gingrich said. "So my view is that we need to be, we need to have a president who is prepared to tell the truth about who is trying to kill us."

Summary: – That's harsh. After blasting President Obama for apologizing for the burning of Korans at Bagram, Newt Gingrich now has some advice for Afghanistan: "Live your own miserable life." It's past time for America to quit that nation, Gingrich groused. We’re "not going to fix Afghanistan. It’s not possible," Gingrich expounded on the stump in Tennessee, reports ABC News. "These are people who have spent several thousand years hating foreigners. There’s some problems where you have to say, ‘You know, you’re going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life because you clearly don’t want to hear from me how to be unmiserable.'" If you're still unclear about where he stands, Gingrich hammered President Hamid Karzai for "playing us for fools." Gingrich dodged Michigan campaigning and focused instead on Tennessee yesterday. A strong showing in the state on Super Tuesday is key to his continued participation in the race, notes Politico.