Justice Department won't prosecute Attorney General Holder for contempt of Congress
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department declared Friday that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to withhold information about a bungled gun-tracking operation from Congress does not constitute a crime and he won't be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.
The House voted Thursday afternoon to find Holder in criminal and civil contempt for refusing to turn over the documents. President Barack Obama invoked his executive privilege authority and ordered Holder not to turn over materials about executive branch deliberations and internal recommendations.
In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, the department said that it will not bring the congressional contempt citation against Holder to a federal grand jury and that it will take no other action to prosecute the attorney general. Dated Thursday, the letter was released Friday.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the decision is in line with long-standing Justice Department practice across administrations of both political parties.
"We will not prosecute an executive branch official under the contempt of Congress statute for withholding subpoenaed documents pursuant to a presidential assertion of executive privilege," Cole wrote.
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Republicans look to election to give them a chance to repeal health care law
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Turned away at the Supreme Court, congressional Republicans sketched a strategy Friday to repeal the nation's health care law in 2013 that requires a sweeping election victory carrying Mitt Romney to the presidency and the party at least to narrow control of the Senate.
Romney sought to turn the court's decision upholding the two-year-old law into a campaign battle cry, saying the 5-4 ruling had injected "greater urgency" into his challenge to President Barack Obama. "I think many people assumed that the Supreme Court would do the work that was necessary in repealing Obamacare," he said, adding that the justices "did not get that job done."
Several Republicans seized on a portion of Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion that said the centerpiece of the law, a requirement to purchase insurance, was constitutional because it is based on Congress' power to impose a tax. "Those who will end up paying the heaviest burden for not buying government-mandated insurance won't be the wealthiest Americans, but the very middle class families the president claims to defend," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
The White House said that was an argument it was happy to have. Presidential press secretary Jay Carney said Obama has signed legislation cutting middle class taxes repeatedly, that Republicans want to extend existing income tax cuts for the wealthy and then add "another $5 trillion...that would disproportionately benefit" the same group.
At the same time, the administration announced the latest in a series to steps to implement a law that already has curbed insurance company abuses and cut costs for seniors with high prescription drug costs. Officials said another round of financing was available for states to set up health insurance exchanges, the one-stop markets for consumers scheduled to open in 2014.
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Congress passes student loans, highway jobs, flood insurance package; sends measure to Obama
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress emphatically approved legislation Friday preserving jobs on transportation projects from coast to coast and avoiding interest rate increases on new loans to millions of college students, giving lawmakers campaign-season bragging rights on what may be their biggest economic achievement before the November elections.
The bill sent for President Barack Obama's signature enables just over $100 billion to be spent on highway, mass transit and other transportation programs over the next two years, projects that would have expired Saturday without congressional action. It also ends a bare-knuckle political battle over student loans that raged since spring, a proxy fight over which party was best helping voters muddle through the economic downturn.
Under the bill, interest rates of 3.4 percent for subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduates will continue for another year, instead of doubling for new loans beginning on Sunday as scheduled by a law passed five years ago to save money.
Had the measure failed, interest rates would have mushroomed to 6.8 percent for 7.4 million students expected to get the loans over the coming year, adding an extra $1,000 to the average cost of each loan and antagonizing students -- and their parents -- four months from Election Day.
The Democratic-led Senate sent the measure to Obama by a 74-19 vote, just minutes after the Republican-run House approved it 373-52. The unusual display of harmony, in a bitterly partisan year, signaled lawmakers' eagerness to claim credit for providing transportation jobs, to avert higher costs for students and their families and to avoid being embarrassed had the effort run aground.
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Egypt's president-elect vows to fight for authority, claims leadership of revolution
CAIRO (AP) -- In front of tens of thousands of cheering supporters, Egypt's first Islamist and civilian president-elect vowed Friday to fight for his authority and symbolically read an oath of office on Cairo's Tahrir Square on the eve of his official inauguration.
Mohammed Morsi's strongly worded speech was a show of defiance as he gears up to power struggle with the country's ruling generals who passed a constitutional declaration taking over major presidential powers in the days before election results were announced after a bitter campaign.
"Everybody is hearing me now. The government, the military and the police ... No power above this power," he said as the crowd roared. "I reaffirm to you I will not give up any of the president's authorities. I can't afford to do this. I don't have that right to that."
"You are the source of legitimacy and whoever is protected by anyone else will lose," he told his supporters.
He also addressed popular demands, vowing to work for the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik jailed in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York landmarks, as well as detained Egyptian protesters facing military tribunals.
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Firefighters search for bodies in Colorado blaze; crews report progress against the flames
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- Firefighters went from one smoldering pile to another Friday in search of bodies in the nearly 350 homes burned to the ground by the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.
As crews on the front lines made slow but steady progress against the flames, Police Chief Pete Carey said fewer than 10 people altogether were unaccounted for. The remains of one person were found Thursday in what was left standing of one home, and a second person who lived there was missing.
The 26-square-mile blaze -- one of several wildfires burning out of control across the tinder-dry West -- was reported to be 15 percent contained, and authorities began lifting some of the evacuation orders for the more than 30,000 people who fled their homes a few days ago.
After growing explosively earlier in the week, the fire gained no ground overnight, authorities reported Friday. And the weather was clear and mostly calm, a welcome break from the lightning and high wind that drove the flames.
"The focus for today is to hold what we got," extend the fire lines to contain more of the blaze, and bring in more heavy equipment, said Rich Harvey, incident commander for the fire.
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AP sources: US, Afghans say some Taliban at Gitmo could go to Afghanistan in goodwill gesture
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is considering a new gambit to restart peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan that would send several Taliban detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials told The Associated Press.
Under the proposal, some Taliban fighters or affiliates captured in the early days of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and later sent to Guantanamo under the label of enemy combatants would be transferred out of full U.S. control but not released. It's a leap of faith on the U.S. side that the men will not become threats to U.S. forces once back on Afghan soil. But it is meant to show more moderate elements of the Taliban insurgency that the U.S. is still interested in cutting a deal for peace.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others have said that while negotiations with the Taliban are distasteful, they are the best way to settle the prolonged war.
The new compromise is intended to boost the credibility of the U.S.-backed Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai and U.S. officials are trying to draw the Taliban back to negotiations toward a peace deal between the national Afghan government and the Pashtun-based insurgency that would end a war U.S. commanders have said cannot be won with military power alone.
The Taliban have always been indifferent at best to negotiations with the Karzai government, saying the U.S. holds effective control in Afghanistan. The Obama administration has set a 2014 deadline to withdraw forces and is trying to frame talks among the Afghans beforehand.
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Republicans in at least 4 states want to abandon Medicaid expansion after high court ruling
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Republicans in at least four states want to abandon an expansion of Medicaid in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, and more than a dozen other states are considering it in the wake of the Supreme Court decision removing the threat of federal penalties.
The high court upheld most of Obama's law, but the justices said the federal government could not take away states' existing federal Medicaid dollars if they refused to widen eligibility to include adults who are only slightly above the poverty line. Some Republican governors and lawmakers quickly declared that they would not carry out the expansion.
The states considering whether to withdraw from the expansion include presidential battlegrounds Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado.
"One thing is clear, state legislatures will play a big role in the future of Obamacare," said Republican state Rep. Todd Richardson of Missouri.
For elected officials, the high court decision presented a stark choice: agree to accept an ambitious expansion of Medicaid or leave behind a vast pile of federal money that could provide health care to millions of poor constituents.
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Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorcing after 5 years of marriage
NEW YORK (AP) -- Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing, bringing an end to one of Hollywood's most unexpected marriages, one that spawned euphoric couch-jumping on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and endless speculation in the tabloids.
After five years of marriage, Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise on Thursday, said Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields.
"This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family," Holmes's attorney Jonathan Wolfe said Friday. "Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest."
"Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children," Cruise's representative, Amanda Lundberg, told The Associated Press. "Please allow them their privacy to work this out."
Cruise, 49, wed the 33-year-old Holmes in 2006 in an Italian castle after publicly declaring his love on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." His starry-eyed celebration (in which he famously jumped on the studio couch) was a public display that forever after altered the moviegoing public's perspective of the action star.
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Chimps attack, severely injure American man at Jane Goodall sanctuary in South Africa
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Chimpanzees at a sanctuary founded by famed primatologist Jane Goodall pulled a Texas graduate student into their fenced-off enclosure, dragging him nearly a half-mile and biting his ear and hands.
Andrew F. Oberle was giving a lecture to a group of tourists at the Chimp Eden sanctuary on Thursday when two chimpanzees grabbed his feet and pulled him under a fence into their enclosure, said Jeffrey Wicks of the Netcare911 emergency services company.
The 26-year-old anthropology student at the University of Texas at San Antonio, suffered "multiple and severe bite wounds," Wicks said.
He was in critical condition Friday after undergoing surgery at the Mediclinic hospital in Nelspruit, 180 miles (300 kilometers) from Johannesburg, hospital officials said.
Oberle, who was doing research at the sanctuary, had crossed the first of two fences separating the chimpanzees from visitors and was standing close to the second fence, which is electrified, at the time of the attack, said Edwin Jay, chairman of the Jane Goodall Institute South Africa.
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Roger Federer overcomes 2-set deficit against Frenchman Benneteau at Wimbledon
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) -- Roger Federer overcame a two-set deficit Friday at Wimbledon to avoid his earliest Grand Slam exit since 2004.
The six-time champion found himself two points from defeat on six occasions but survived a tense fourth-set tiebreaker and beat Julien Benneteau in the third round, 4-6, 6-7 (3), 6-2, 7-6 (6), 6-1.
"It was a tough match," Federer said. "Oh my God, it was brutal. Obviously, a bit of luck, maybe, on my side. Who knows? But I tried hard. I fought 'til the very end."
Federer avoided the fate that befell nemesis Rafael Nadal 24 hours earlier on the same Centre Court. Nadal, a two-time champion, made his quickest exit from a major since 2005 when No. 100-ranked Lukas Rosol beat him in five sets Thursday.
Benneteau had won his past four five-set matches, but this time he was the wearier player at the end, twice requiring thigh massages from a trainer for cramps during the fifth set. Federer cracked a forehand return winner into the corner to break for a 3-1 lead and pulled away from there.
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