Gun control advocates mark 6 months since shooting

Newtown families, gun control groups mark 6-month anniversary of massacre with lobbying push

Associated Press -

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, some of the victims' families are heading to Capitol Hill to remind lawmakers they are painfully waiting for action, while some of the president's allies are asking him to do more without any new prospects of legislation to toughen gun laws.

The lobbying visit Tuesday and Wednesday is one of several observances gun control proponents are planning for the half-year anniversary of the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 first graders and six staff in Newtown, Conn. The Sandy Hook families and other activists are keeping pressure on lawmakers to expand background purchases for firearm sales, despite Senate rejection of the measure in April and no indication votes have shifted.

Nicole Hockley, who lost 6-year-old Dylan at Sandy Hook, said their family's pain has only gotten worse as time goes by without the younger of their two sons at home. She says the fight for new laws, which they've also taken to several states, has left them emotionally exhausted, but they won't give up "no matter how long it takes."

"It is very disappointing that six months have passed, and although we are making progress in individual states, we aren't making progress on the federal level when it comes to background checks when an overwhelming number of Americans support it," she said in a telephone interview.

Gun control advocates also are anticipating further action from President Barack Obama, who said he would do everything he could to stem gun violence even without Congress.

The Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank with close ties to the White House, is asking Obama to issue a dozen more executive actions they say are within his power to reduce gun crimes. The group has been pushing those measures in meetings with the White House, where point man Vice President Joe Biden declared in an email to supporters Friday, "This fight is far from over."

Obama issued 23 executive actions in the aftermath of Sandy Hook and hasn't ruled out doing more. His aides say he isn't planning to announce any new initiatives or hold a gun-related event this week but will likely acknowledge the anniversary.

Arkadi Gerney, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said their recommendations build on Obama's earlier actions with more specific measures to vigorously prosecute gun crimes. The center's suggestions include a system to alert local police when felons attempt to buy guns, allowing firearms dealers to run the same background checks on their own employees as they do for customers, penalizing states that don't provide mental health data to the background check system and confiscating firearms from domestic abusers.

Gerney said one recommendation grew out of the Boston bombing case, after the suspects reportedly scratched off the serial number on a handgun used in a firefight with police to prevent tracking. He says Obama's Justice Department could require manufacturers to place a second serial number inside the barrel or another hidden location.

"What you want is a whole series of laws that makes it harder for dangerous people to get guns and holds them accountable when they do get guns," Gerney said. "Most are about enforcing the laws that already are on the books and that's something the NRA and the gun lobby has said it supports."

But the National Rifle Association, which has successfully helped block any new guns laws, says it sees no further need for executive action. "The problem we have is lack of enforcement and lack of prosecution," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said there's plenty more that the president can do to stem gun violence. But he argued the most meaningful difference has to come from Congress passing a law to make the background checks that are currently required for sales in stores to apply to online and gun show purchases.

Glaze said his group is trying to pressure senators who voted against background-check legislation in April with television ads and a summer bus tour kicking off in Newtown on Friday, the six-month anniversary date, that is scheduled to travel to 25 states. Also, several groups are holding an event in front of the Capitol Thursday.

Democratic Senate aides said it was unlikely Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would force a new vote on the background-check legislation unless he had the 60 votes needed to win or, at the very least, had more votes than previously.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Friday that he hopes another vote will come yet this year and that the families' presence will help move it up on the agenda. Asked if he and other proponents have started collecting the additional votes they need, Blumenthal said, "I can't point to a senator who has reversed positions. But certainly my conversations indicate that they're thinking long and hard."

One aide suggested that senators would be likely to announce their decisions to switch together rather than doing it one at a time.

Like their previous visits this spring, the Newtown families' lobbying trip is being organized by non-profit Sandy Hook Promise and is aimed at meeting with lawmakers who have yet to commit to supporting background checks. But this time they are trying to open a conversation on potential mental health legislation and also will meet with members of the House who have yet to vote on a gun bill.

"It might not be right now, but it will happen eventually," Hockley said. "It's not a matter of if, it's a question of when. We know Americans support this."

Other Sandy Hook parents who lost their children and plan to go on this week's lobbying trip are Mark Barden, father of Daniel; Nelba Marquez Greene and Jimmy Greene, parents of Ana; Neil Heslin, father of Jesse; Francine and David Wheeler, parents of Ben. They will be joined by relatives of two staffers who were killed — Bill Sherlach, whose wife, Mary, was the school psychologist; and Terri and Matthew Rousseau, mother and brother of substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau.

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Zawahri steps into row between Syrian and Iraqi al Qaeda wings

Iraq hit by wave of bomb attacks, killing dozens

BAGHDAD (AP) — A wave of car bombings rocked central and northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and extending the deadliest eruption of violence to hit the country in years.

Attackers initially targeted market-goers early in the morning, then turned their sights on police and army posts after sunset. Security forces scrambled to contain the violence, blocking a key road in central Iraq and imposing a curfew in the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Mosul after the blasts went off.

Killing in Iraq has spiked to levels not seen since 2008. The surge in bloodshed, which follows months of protests by the country's Sunni Arab minority against the Shiite-led government, is raising fears that Iraq is heading for another bout of uncontrollable sectarian violence.

The upsurge comes as foreign fighters are increasingly pouring into neighboring Syria, where a grueling civil war has taken on sectarian overtones similar to those that pushed Iraq to the brink of its own civil war in 2006 and 2007.

Syria's conflict is fueling sectarian tensions inside Iraq, with Iraqi al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants cooperating with ideological allies among the Syrian rebels, while Iraqi Shiite militants increasingly fight alongside forces loyal to Syria's Iranian-backed regime.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday's attacks — as has been the case for much of the violence in recent weeks — but coordinated car bombings in civilian areas and against security forces are frequently the work of al-Qaida's front group in Iraq, known as the Islamic State of Iraq.

Monday's deadliest single attack hit Diyala province when three parked car bombs exploded virtually simultaneously around a wholesale fruit and vegetable market at the height of business in the town of Jidaidat al-Shatt. The town is just outside the provincial capital of Baqouba, about 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

The blasts killed 15 people and wounded 46. Soon after the explosions, security forces sealed the roads linking Baqouba to Baghdad in an apparent effort to prevent further attacks.

Shortly after midday, another car bomb went off near a fish market in the northern Baghdad suburb of Taji, killing seven shoppers and wounding 25, police said.

In the northern city of Tuz Khormato, police said a parked car bomb exploded near a small outdoor market just before the sunset, killing three people and wounding 22. The town is about 200 kilometers (130 miles) north of Baghdad.

Baqouba and the surrounding Diyala province were once the site of some of the fiercest fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in Iraq, and it remains a hotbed for terrorist attacks. The area is religiously mixed and witnessed some of the worst atrocities as Shiite militias battled Sunni insurgents for control in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The three car bombs used in the attack near Baqouba were deployed in different locations in and around the market in order to inflict the most damage and casualties, police said. One of the vehicles was a pickup truck loaded with produce that was parked inside the market.

Last Friday, Diyala was the site of another deadly bombing. A suicide attacker drove an explosives-laden car into a bus carrying Iranian Shiite pilgrims visiting holy shrines in Iraq, killing 11 and wounding more than two dozen. The attack took place in the town of Muqdadiyah, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad.

Provincial councilman Sadiq al-Husseini blamed that attack and Monday's bombing in the produce market on al-Qaida-linked groups.

"When the grip is tightened on these groups, they resort to random attacks on residents and foreign pilgrims in order to show to the people that they are still active," he said. "Our security forces still lack intelligence and bomb detecting equipment" to stop such attacks, he said.

In the evening, a rapid-fire wave of five car bombings erupted in the volatile northern city of Mosul, killing at least 24 and wounding 114, according to Ninevah provincial governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi.

Al-Nujaifi said four of the car bombs exploded when their drivers rammed them into security checkpoints. The fifth detonated while a bomb disposal team was trying to diffuse it.

Mosul authorities imposed a curfew on the city following the blasts. Mosul, the capital of Ninevah province, which borders Syria, has been one of the hardest areas to tame since bloodshed erupted after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

A suicide car bomber also struck a security checkpoint near Madain, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding 10 others, according to police.

Four others were killed when a bomb exploded near a cafe in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad late Monday. Police said the blast injured 12. Another explosion in the al-Ameen neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad wounded six.

Hospital officials confirmed the death tolls. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the details to reporters.

According to the United Nations, at least 1,045 Iraqi civilians and security personnel were killed in May. The tally surpassed April's 712 killed — at the time, Iraq's deadliest month since 2008. According to an Associated Press count, more than 100 people have been killed so far in June.

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Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

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Washington Turns on the NSA Blinders to Target Weird 'IT Guy' Leaker Instead

Washington Turns on the NSA Blinders to Target Weird 'IT Guy' Leaker Instead

Most members of Congress are not outraged by the National Security Agency's programs to collect all phone calls and emails. They are outraged that someone would expose the existence of those programs. Now that the leaker has gone public — Edward Snowden is still holed up somewhere in Hong Kong, with "way, way more" secrets — the campaign to discredit him as a nutcase or weirdo has begun.

RELATED: Feinstein 'Open' to Public NSA Hearings

The Sunday shows were busy, but that was just the start. On ABC's This Week, Rep. Mike Rogers, who chairs the House intelligence committee, dismissed Snowden and The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, who was on the reporting end of the leaks. "He doesn't have a clue how this thing works. Neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous," Rogers said. (Mike Rogers' understanding of these programs has been called into question, too.) New York Rep. Peter King demanded an investigation into Snowden. On CBS on Monday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said yes, Congress would look at if any laws were broken — by the leaker. Cantor promised the investigation into Snowden would be "serious." CBS's Charlie Gibson asked, "Isn't the question how this person could have had access to this information? And done what he has done?" Cantor responded, "We need the answers, there's no question about that." Yes, we need answers, he said, not about the NSA programs — he defended those — so much as why a young-ish employee at Booz Allen Hamilton was in a position to expose them. "We have a contractor that has been hired … this 29-year-old, who's now holed up in some hotel in Hong Kong claiming to be the defender of democracy somehow in the People's Republic of China," Cantor said, sounding a bit incredulous.

RELATED: Zero Dark Verizon: Why D.C. Hates Leaks Until It Loves Hunting Them Down

Half of Booz Allen's 25,000 employees have a top secret security clearance. Ninety-eight percent of the company's revenue comes from the U.S. government, and it specializes in intelligence technology. That means at Booz Allen alone, there are thousands of computer nerds with access to America's secrets. Computer nerds tend to be more weird than your average congressman or focus-grouped network TV anchor. And it's not impossible that Snowden is weird. It's that the weirdness of his personality should be a secondary concern after the weirdness of the government creating a database of when, where, and to whom every single phone call in America was made.

RELATED: Washington Is Trapped in Its Own Prism of Data-Mining Self-Defense

But many in the media have picked up the focus on Snowden. "The man who stepped forward to say that he leaked this week’s bombshell national security documents is a 29-year-old computer technician who never finished high school and washed out of his Army training," Politico's Philip Ewing and Tony Romm report. "So how did a guy like that get access to America’s most sensitive secrets?" (The phrase "washed out of his Army training" means a lot coming from people who type on the Internet for a living. And let's not forget that reporters think — rightly! — an English major entitles them to the nation's most sensitive secrets.)

RELATED: Graham Threatens Hagel Confirmation Over Benghazi

Snowden told The Guardian he enlisted in 2004 to join Special Forces, but was discharged when he broke both his legs in a training accident. An Army spokesman told Politico's Stephanie Gaskell, "His records indicate he enlisted in the Army Reserve as a Special Forces Recruit (18X) on 7 May 2004 but was discharged 28 September 2004. He did not complete any training or receive any awards." We don't know what the differences in those dates really mean. It could be that Snowden signed on the dotted line in 2003, and went into basic training in 2004. The five-month stint in the Army could mean he got through basic training but was injured in advanced training. Or it could mean he was injured in basic training and it took a while to get a medical discharge. That said, it's a sign the Army is scraping for dirt when it notes Snowden didn't get any "awards." When government officials start to tar Snowden, Slate's Farhad Manjoo writes, remember, they're the ones who hired him: "he's the IT guy, and not a very accomplished, experienced one at that."

RELATED: China and Hong Kong Hold Edward Snowden's Fate

Even those opposed to the programs Snowden has taken public don't seem to have much confidence they will change. Sen. Rand Paul, the most famous libertarian in Congress, has written a fiery op-ed inThe Guardian condemning President Obama for the massive surveillance, which he calls unconstitutional. But the Kentucky Republican does not appear to have much confidence anything will change:

On Thursday, I announced my Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013, which ensures that no government agency can search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause. We shall see how many join me in supporting a part of the Bill of Rights that everyone in Congress already took an oath to uphold.

"We shall see" indicate Paul has doubts his bill will go anywhere. The main point of his missive is to remind us that the likely 2016 presidential candidate still has strong anti-Washington bona fides: "That I have to keep reintroducing the fourth amendment — and that a majority of senators keep voting against it — is a good reflection of the arrogance that dominates Washington."

A fellow skeptic of the NSA's programs, Oregon Sen. Ed Merkley, conveyed a sense of futility in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Friday night. The Democrat explained that after he'd been briefed on the NSA's phone call metadata collection, he couldn't talk about it publicly, but he could introduce a bill to compel the government to explain its secret legal rationale justifying it.

MERKLEY: I proposed the secret court law amendment that said these interpretations by secret court will be declassified so we could have a debate here in America about privacy and security.

MADDOW: How much support did you get for that proposal?

MERKLEY: We had 30-plus members vote for the amendment but we also had the chair of the committee [Sen. Dianne Feinstein] say that she supported the idea I was presenting and she would join me...

And so, she joined with me and Senator Wyden, Senator Mark Udall as well, and we wrote a letter in this case to the FISA court asking for declassification. And we didn`t get back a yes.

Maddow suggested Merkley's proposal might get more support now, but Merkley didn't speculate. Comments from lawmakers who are more supportive of the surveillances programs are even less encouraging. Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, cited the same problem Merkley did — that it's very difficult to debate programs you're legally prohibited from talking about publicly. But Feinstein seemed less concerned with this problem. "I'm open to doing a hearing every month, if that’s necessary," Feinstein said on This Week. "Here's the rub: the instances where this has produced good — has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks, is all classified, that's what's so hard about this."

Turkey premier to meet with Istanbul protesters

Associated Press/Burhan Ozbilici - A Turkish protester sleeps in Kugulu Park in Turkish capital, Ankara, Monday, June 10, 2013. In a series of increasingly belligerent speeches to cheering supporters Sunday, Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a verbal attack on the tens of thousands of anti-government protesters who flooded the streets for a 10th day, accusing them of creating an environment of terror. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici

Protesters talk at the Gezi Park of Taksim Square in Istanbul, Monday June 10, 2013. Turkey's main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has called on the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop escalating tensions as anti-government protests that have led to three deaths entered their 11th day. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Protesters form a human chain to carry watermelons at the Gezi Park of Taksim Square in Istanbul, Monday, June 10, 2013. Turkey's main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has called on the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop escalating tensions as anti-government protests that have led to three deaths entered their 11th day. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's prime minister will meet with a group of protesters occupying Istanbul's central Taksim Squarethis week, the deputy prime minister said Monday, as the government sought a way out of the impasse that has led to hundreds of protests in dozens of cities.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said, however, the government would no longer tolerate "illegal acts," and implied that the occupation of Taksim and its accompanying Gezi Park would be over by the weekend.

"Illegal acts in Turkey from now won't be allowed and whatever needs to be done according to the law will be done," he said after a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "All necessary actions against illegal acts will have been completed, and we will see this all together, by the weekend."

The protests appeared on the wane, with the smallest number of demonstrators in the past 11 days gathering in Taksim on Monday night. The protesters occupying Gezi Park remain, however.

Smaller protests occurred in Ankara too, with about 5,000 people demonstrating. Police there have used water cannon and tear gas to break up demonstrations almost every night.

Three people have died and more than 5,000 have been treated for injuries or the effects of gas during the protests. The government says 600 police officers have also been injured.

Erdogan will meet Gezi Park protesters Wednesday, following a request by some of the protesters, Arinc said, but not at the square. With no clear leadership organizing the Gezi occupation, it was unclear who the prime minister would be meeting.

The unrest was sparked by a violent police crackdown on a peaceful sit-in by protesters objecting to a project replacing the park with a replica Ottoman-era barracks.

The crackdown, in which protesters were confronted with tear gas and water cannon as they slept, galvanized tens of thousands of Turks. The demonstrations quickly turned into a denunciation of what many see as Erdogan's increasingly autocratic ways and attempts to impose Muslim values on a country with secular laws — charges the prime minister vehemently rejects.

A law restricting the sale of alcohol and banning its advertising — one of the things protesters had pointed to as evidence of decreasing social tolerance — was signed into law by President Abdullah Gul on Monday.

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Associated Press writer Elena Becatoros in Istanbul contributed to this report.