Yeshiva World News

Virginia congressman Jim Moran, known for repeatedly clashing with pro-Israel and Jewish groups, is retiring.

Moran, 68, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, announced Wednesday that he would not seek reelection since his Northern Virginia seat is heavily Democratic and is unlikely to be competitive in November. President Barack Obama won 68 percent of the vote in both 2012 and 2008, and Moran coasted with 65 percent of the vote in 2012.

His district includes one of the fastest-growing Jewish populations in the Washington area, and in the 2002 election he solicited a letter from Jewish lawmakers praising his support for Israel.

Only a year later, Rep. Moran clashed with pro-Israel groups and with Jewish members of his Democratic caucus over claims he made in 2003 that without Jewish support, the United States would not have launched the war with Iraq.

“If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,” Moran said in 2003, according to the Reston Connection newspaper. “The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.”

Faced with criticism, Moran issued an apology Monday for the comments. “I should not have singled out the Jewish community and regret giving any impression that its members are somehow responsible for the course of action being pursued by the administration, or are somehow behind an impending war,” Moran said.

But in 2007, he reused his initial charge that the “extraordinarily powerful” pro-Israel lobby played a strong role promoting the war in Iraq.

In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is “the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don’t think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful — most of them are quite wealthy — they have been able to exert power.”

Moran was condemned by the ADL and other calls for him to step down. But in an interview with The Washington Post, Moran said, “It’s unhealthy for the American political process for any group within our society to be able to decide who should and who shouldn’t represent a constituency.”

“I would like to have a reasonable, objective discussion about AIPAC’s foreign policy agenda. But it’s difficult to do that because any time you question their motives, you are accused of being anti-Semitic,” he added.

Back in 2001, Moran said in an appearance before the American Muslim Council that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was coming to Washington “probably seeking a warrant from President Bush to kill at will with weapons we have paid for.”

Moran’s retirement at the end of the year is likely to attract several Democrats competing in a primary over his seat.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

A UCLA professor is urging those who “have a Jewish-sounding name” to lobby their senators against the new bipartisan bill that would level sanctions if Iran fails to comply with the Geneva agreement.

Mark Kleiman (born to a Jewish family, according to Wikipedia), a professor of Public Policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, writes in a blog post published Wednesday that Jewish voters are key to convince the now growing number of Senators to drop their support of the bipartisan bill on Iran.

“If you’re a constituent of, of contributor to, Mark Begich (Alaska), Michael Bennet (CO), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Cory Booker (N.J), Ben Cardin (Md.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Chris Coons (Del.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Mark Pryor (Ark.),Charles Schumer (N.Y.), or Mark Warner (Va.), please consider making a phone call or sending a fax or email telling that Senator to back off the lunatic piece of warmongering legislation known as the Kirk-Menendez bill, designed to torpedo the nuclear deal with Iran. As of now, they’re all co-sponsoring it. Please consider making your voice heard especially strongly if you’re Jewish, or have a Jewish-sounding name.”

The blog post provided readers with a form of letter that should be sent.

Dear Senator X:
President Obama and Secretary Kerry seem to have pulled off a diplomatic miracle by negotiating Iran out of its nuclear-weapons program. Please refrain from making their job harder.
Very truly yours,

When asked by The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo to describe the “Jewish-sounding name” call, Mr. Kleiman lashed out at those supporting the bill, cultivated by billionaire Sheldon Adelson’d warchest.

“There’s a carefully cultivated misimpression that warmongering with respect to Iran is popular with Jewish voters, while in fact it’s popular only with Sheldon Adelson,” Kleiman wrote via email. “So it’s especially important for politicians to hear from Jewish constituents who prefer the good outcome offered by the Obama/Kerry approach to the bad one sure to result by deliberately torpedoing an amazing diplomatic success.”

“Because – given the false impression cultivated by Adelson’s money – an email from someone named Shapiro has a surprise factor not generated by the same email from someone named O’Hara,” Kleiman asserted.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

The US and the EU classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Twitter, one of the world’s most important social networks, has now suspended the account that the organization used to spread its message of terror and hate.

After Twitter suspended the official account of Hamas’ military wing , the Al Kassam Brigades. The terrorist organization blamed Israel:

“The Kassam Brigades confirmed that they did not violate Twitter’s terms of service ever, asserting that reason behind the suspension is Twitter’s subordination to US government and ‘Israel’ as usual. Jewish-Christian incitation against the Kassam active account, so long exposed Israel’s war crimes and violations against the Palestinian civilians led to the suspension of the Kassam Twitter account. The Kassam Brigades strongly condemned the act and asserted its right to freedom of speech and expression and media.”

Let’s take a look at Twitter’s Terms of Service. Section 1 of Twitter’s TOS says:

“You may use the Services only if you … are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States.”

Because Hamas is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under s219 of the USA’s Immigration Act, it is thereby “barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States”. By using Twitter, a company based in the US, Hamas was indeed violating the company’s Terms of Service.

Hamas demands freedom of speech and expression, but the organization has often been quick to censor and arrest journalists in Gaza, and anyone who speaks against them. Recently, Hamas shut down two media bureaus in the Gaza Strip. They are also known to beat up journalists whose coverage they don’t agree with.

Have you checked out YWN Radio yet? ClickHERE to listen!

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

The share of countries with a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion reached a six-year peak in 2012, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

Jews were harassed in 71 countries in 2012, slightly higher than the year before (69 countries, which was the previous high), up from 51 in 2007.

Overall, accross the six years of the study – Jews, who comprise less than 1% of the world’s population, experienced harassment in a total of 95 countries, while members of other world faiths were harassed in a total of 77 countries.

In 2012, some religious groups were more likely to be harassed by governments, while others were more likely to be harassed by individuals or groups in society. Jews, for instance, experienced social harassment in many more countries (66) than they faced government harassment (28). By contrast, members of other world faiths, such as Sikhs and Baha’is, were harassed by some level of government in more countries (35) than they were by groups or individuals in society (21).

Read more here

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

The Senate Intelligence Committee says the deadly assault on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, could have been prevented if U.S. officials had heeded warnings of terrorist activity, including threats to Western targets, and had improved security in response.

The report also says analysts inaccurately referred to protests as the reason for the violence, without enough intelligence to rely on.

Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, says she hopes this will put to rest conspiracy theories about the militant attacks that night. Republican vice chairman Saxby Chambliss says the report shows despite a deteriorating security situation in Benghazi, the U.S. government did not do enough to prevent the attacks.

The committee report makes 18 recommendations to improve security at diplomatic and intelligence posts overseas.

Have you checked out YWN Radio yet? ClickHERE to listen!

(AP)

Gov. Chris Christie’s approval rating and credibility remain strong among New Jersey voters surveyed in a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Sixty-six percent of the voters who have heard or read something about the George Washington Bridge lane closures say they believe Christie did not personally order the traffic jams. Even 53 percent of Democrats polled say they don’t believe Christie was involved.

Half say Christie’s aides acted alone while 41 percent say the governor knew what his aides were doing.

Voters approve of the job Christie is doing 55 to 38 percent, down from an all-time high of 74 percent in February 2013.

The telephone survey was conducted from Jan. 10 to Jan. 13 and has sampling error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

Have you checked out YWN Radio yet? ClickHERE to listen!

(AP)

President Barack Obama is expected to endorse changes to the way the government collects millions of Americans’ phone records for possible future surveillance, but he’ll leave many of the specific adjustments for Congress to sort out, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the White House intelligence review.

That move would thrust much of the decision-making on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act toward a branch of government that is deeply divided over the future of the surveillance apparatus and in no hurry to settle their differences and quickly enact broad changes. Among the key decisions Obama is expected to leave to Congress is whether the National Security Agency should continue hold the trove of phone records or move the data to the phone companies or another third party.

In a highly anticipated speech Friday, Obama is also expected to announce broader oversight of the process that helps determine which foreign leaders the U.S. government monitors. And he’s likely to back increased privacy protections for foreign citizens, a step aimed at soothing international anger over U.S. surveillance programs.

The speech marks the culmination of a monthslong review sparked by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, who leaked a trove of classified documents about the secret surveillance programs last year.

In another revelation about NSA activities, The New York Times reported Tuesday that the agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world — but not in the United States — that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines.

The NSA calls the effort an “active defense” and has used the technology to monitor units of China’s Army, the Russian military, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime U.S. partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported.

White House officials on Tuesday cautioned that the review Obama has been conducting is not complete and that the president could make additional decisions in the coming days. Obama is reviewing more than 40 recommendations from a presidential commission.

The U.S. judiciary threw cold water on one proposal Obama has indicated he supports: putting an independent privacy advocate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which currently hears only from the government. Speaking for the entire judiciary, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said Tuesday that appointing an independent advocate to the secret court is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive.

Officials familiar with the White House review say the panel’s recommendation to strip the NSA of its authority to hold Americans’ phone records has proven difficult for Obama. The panel proposed moving the records to the phone companies or another third party and requiring the NSA to get separate authority from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court each time it wants to access the data.

Obama has suggested he is open to moving the data out of the NSA. But officials say he is unlikely to announce specific entities he believes should hold the records in the future, in part because telephone companies have balked at the proposal to bring the data back under their control. They’re worried about their exposure to lawsuits and the price tag if the U.S. government asks them to hold information about customers for longer than they already do.

Some lawmakers are pushing for Obama to get specific in his recommendations about the future of the bulk collections.

“It would be useful to set a timeline for the restructuring of the metadata program,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “But I would not make the reforms reliant in all cases on congressional action.”

Many privacy advocates support requiring Congress to codify any changes to Section 215, arguing that legislation is the only way to ensure they last beyond Obama’s presidency. And two phone executives said the cellular industry has told the government it would only accept changes to its role in the programs if they were legally required to do so.

The executives spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the private discussions with the government. The U.S. officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the White House review by name.

Section 215 has been one of the most controversial aspects of the Patriot Act, which passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and increased the government’s surveillance powers. Congress reauthorized the law in 2011.

The section became known as the “library records provision” because it allowed the government to seize a wide range of documents, including library records. It requires the government to show that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the records are relevant to an investigation intended to “protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

Last month, a federal judge declared the program is probably unconstitutional and said there is little evidence it had thwarted any terror plot. The Justice Department has staunchly defended Section 215, saying it was narrowly written and has safeguarded liberties.

(AP)

It may be bad timing, but it seems the media was fevered to carry a story that has more to do about the impact of a race in 2-3 years from now, even though the public is less interested in it. According to a new PEW Research poll, the Ft. Lee Christie story drew little public interest.

Only 18% of U.S. adults said they followed news about Christie’s apology for the lane closures ordered by his aides very closely, according to the poll. By contrast, 44% very closely followed news about the cold winter weather and 28% tracked news about the economy.

There also has been little short-term change in opinions about Christie: 60% say their opinion of Christie has not changed in recent days, while 16% now view him less favorably and 6% more favorably.

The poll found that majorities of Republicans (69%), Democrats (55%) and independents (60%) say that their opinion of Christie has not changed lately. Among Republicans, about as many say their opinion has become more favorable (9%) as less favorable (10%).

More Democrats say their opinion has become less favorable (25%) than more favorable (3%). Among independents, 14% say their opinion of Christie has become less favorable and 6% more favorable.

Overall, 57% of those who tracked news about Christie and watching his apology say their opinion of him has not changed; 29% say it has become less favorable, while 11% say it has become more favorable.

Republicans overall, those who followed the story at least fairly closely are closely divided between those who are more favorable to Christie (18%) and less favorable (17%), with 62% saying their opinion hasn’t changed.

Democrats who closely followed Christie’s apology have come to have sharply less favorable opinions of Christie: 43% say their opinion is now less favorable, 3% more favorable. Nonetheless, half (50%) say their opinion hasn’t changed.

In addition, Mr. Christie job approval also took a slight slip but is still largely positive, according to the latest Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll, released Tuesday.

Gov. Christie’s job rating currently stands at 59% approve to 32% disapprove among New Jersey residents and 58% to 35% among registered voters. His job approval stood at 65% approve just one month ago. This is the first time since Superstorm Sandy struck the state over 14 months ago that the governor’s approval rating has dipped below 60%. Christie’s current job rating is still higher than any poll ratings he had in his term prior to Sandy.

Republicans are sticking by Christie, giving him an 89% approval rating which is in line with the 85% GOP support he received last month. Approval has dropped among independents from 73% in December to 62% now and among Democrats from 47% in December to 38% now.

“It looks like the bridge incident has dimmed Christie’s more than year-long Sandy afterglow just a bit. Still, his job performance numbers remain strong and suggest that the governor can bank on some continued goodwill as this story develops,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

The rocky relationship between the Obama administration and the current government of Israel is no secret. But apparently, former U.S. Secretary of Defense – under Bush and Obama – Robert Gates’ emotional loath towards Prime Minister Netanyahu once led him to try and ban Netanyahu from the White house, Jeffrey Goldberg reports.

In his new book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” Mr. Gates highlights his apparent loathing for Netanyahu, whom he first met when he was a deputy national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and Netanyahu was Israel’s deputy foreign minister.

“I was offended by his glibness and his criticism of U.S. policy — not to mention his arrogance and outlandish ambition — and I told national security adviser Brent Scowcroft that Bibi ought not be allowed back on White House grounds,” Mr. Gates writes.

Gates also recalls the moment he later expressed himself about Netanyahu being an ‘ungrateful’ ally. In 2010, PM Netanyahu reportedly lectured Gates at length on the possible dangers Israel may face during a conversation about American arms sales to Saudi Arabia. According to Gates, Netanyahu asked him, “What about a counterbalancing investment in our military? How do we compensate on the Israeli side?” Gates goes on to write: “Exasperated, I shot back that no U.S. administration had done more, in concrete ways, for Israel’s strategic defense than Obama’s.”

Gates writes that he told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that Israel should welcome the sale to Saudi Arabia because the two countries shared a common enemy in Iran. “I urged that if Israel couldn’t see Saudi Arabia as a potential ally against Iran, he should at least tactically concede that its hostility to Iran was in Israel’s interest,” Gates writes.

Following the infamous tense meeting between Netanyahu and Obama, where Netanyahu lectured the President in the Oval Office over israel’s history, Mr. Gates told a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank.

Gates also writes in his memoir that he is very worried about Israel’s future, and particularly about the policies of the Netanyahu government. “I, as a very strong friend and supporter of Israel, believe Jerusalem needs to think anew about its strategic environment,” Gates writes. “That would require developing stronger relationships with governments that, while not allies, share Israel’s concerns in the region, including those about Iran and the growing political influence of Islamists in the wake of the Arab Spring. … Given a Palestinian birthrate that far outpaces that of Israeli Jews, and the political trends in the region, time is not on Israel’s side.”

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

Manchester, usually slow and behind, has become the first Jewish town to follow America and Israel and enact the cost of a £350,000 eruv. The Manchester Community Eruv has a perimeter of more than 13 miles and covers parts of Prestwich, Crumpsall and Higher Broughton.

Organizers told the BBC the Manchester eruv is “the largest in the country.”

“It is going to make a major difference to the life of very many people including people wheeling children,” said Rabbi Yahuda Brodie, chief executive of the Manchester Beth Din. “Mothers with young children for example find it very difficult to get out of the home on Sabbath days and attend synagogue.”

The Manchester eruv took 10 years to plan and construct and is the UK’s most technically complex enclosure, according to the London Jewish Chronicle.

Eruv committee chair Shimmy Lopian told The JC the eruv will be a life-changer “making Shabbat more lively for families able to be more involved in shuls and go to the park, while disabled people can go out in wheelchairs”.

According to the Eruv website, the cost of maintaining the Eruv is estimated at £30,000 a year. This is needed to cover the costs of inspection, local authority licensing, repairs and general maintenance.

Eruv experts from Jerusalem spent 10 days inspecting the enclosure before declaring it ready for use on Friday, the UK newspaper reported. Shabbos Parshas BeShalach was chosen to start the eruv as a symbolic connection to this week’s Parsha.

But not all was honey for the relatively small Orthodox Jewish community in Manchester.

Although haGaon Reb. Menachem Mendel Schneibalg, Av Beis Din of Machzikei Hadas, was one of the leading rabbanim supporting the eruv, the Satmar community Yetev Lev (Zalis), posted messages on the bulletin board at Satmar Beis Midrash that one cannot carry this Shabbos and one must not rely on the new eruv at all.

“We order all members of the community, not to rely on the eruv installed here, including women and children, even during hard times, and not to carry,” one ad, signed by community rabbi Rabbi Mordechai Meller, read.

Satmar, combating the Eiruv, reportedly, spread false statements on behalf of Rav Chaim Halprin that Hagaon Rabbi Mendel Schneibalg is opposed to the eruv.
via Bhadrei Haredim

But a video published online by the Eiruv founders, showed one of the rabbis reading a letter to Rav Schneibalg, confirming that it was done with his consent and directing.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in the United States, in Gallup’s annual list. She’s the frontrunner for president in 2016, if she decides to run. But in the world, well,the former secretary of state is actually at the bottom of who the world admires most, behind celebs and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates is the World’s most admired person, ahead of Pope Francis and President Obama, according to a new YouGov.com poll conducted for the Times of London.

Among Americans, Pope Francis is the most admired, followed by president Obama, evangelist Billy Graham and former President George W. Bush. Even Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s most controversial and popular conservative talk radio host, beat Clinton, who is only the 10th on the list.

YouGov polled samples of 13 countries that hold more than half the world’s population and asked people to name who they admire most. Obama and the pope dominated the list in many countries. For example, in France, Obama was the top pick. In German it was the pope.

But Clinton, who plans to run on her record as a world diplomat, doesn’t show up in the top 10 of the other highlighted lists in the YouGov poll online. In Britain, Hillary doesn’t even make it in the list of 30 most admired people.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie turned everything around in the first few minutes of his press conference Wednesday morning. While pundits – including myself – rushed to announce the end of his presidential campaign in 2016, hindered by the revelations about the emails surfing in the Ft. Lee scandal, Mr. Christie put himself in the box with two words: “I apologize.”

The Ft. Lee scandal, reportedly, using a traffic jam to punish a Democratic rival undermines Mr. Christie’s front-runner image as a bipartisan leader that moderate Republicans can rely on as an alternative to the crazy talkers on the right hand side of the Party seeking the nomination for President.

“The episode is tricky for Mr. Christie and his aides. His cantankerous manner and independent streak are essential to his White House ambitions; advisers view them as an asset in early primary states like New Hampshire that have a history of embracing blunt-talking politicians,” NY Times’ Michael Barbaro wrote.

Now there is a new worry: that what once seemed like a refreshing forcefulness may come off as misguided bullying.

But GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway told The Washington Examiner that Christie is likely to survive the affair, but would not be the only one standing at that side of the aisle.

“Although an ‘in-the-dark-about-Bridgegate’ Christie will be fine, other candidates who share space with him in the center-right of the political spectrum may sense an opening. That could include Gov. Jeb Bush who, like Christie, is a media favorite and supports some pro-immigrant reforms and Common Core. The real test now will be how these candidates now fare in early polls in early primary and caucus states and whether the donors who have lined up behind Christie will stay superglued to him or look around for an alternative.”

After watching Christie’s – still ongoing for over 90 minutes – press conference, done without a Teleprompter and mostly without notes, she said said that the governor should be able to move on because his performance hit the right tone.

“He just solidified his spot as a 2016 frontrunner,” she said noting how different his press conference was compared to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s defense following the Benghazi incident. “Hillary never has and never could hold a presser like this, devoid of ‘uhs’ and dodges and filled with raw emotion, humility, apology and resolve. She should have hired Chris Christie to coach her before the Benghazi hearing,” said Ms. Conway.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)

The White House is bristling over former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new memoir accusing President Barack Obama of showing too little enthusiasm for the U.S. war mission in Afghanistan and sharply criticizing Vice President Joe Biden’s foreign policy instincts.

In a book set for release next week by the publishing house Knopf, Gates writes that Biden is “a man of integrity,” but also a political figure who has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Gates, a Republican, also slammed the National Security Council under Obama’s watch. The Republican cited what he called the “controlling nature” of the White House, writing that Obama’s national security team “took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level.”

Such tell-all books are not new to Washington and they’re woven into the city’s cultural fabric. In the inside-the-Beltway political culture, they burst into view, make a splash on TV, online and in the press and quickly fade. But in the case of the Gates book, the White House chose to speak out quickly and sharply.

The National Security Council issued a statement late Tuesday asserting that Obama relies on Biden’s “good counsel” every day and considers him “one of the leading statesmen of his time.” Not only that, the White House issued a highly unusual invitation for news organization representatives to photograph Obama and Biden sitting together Wednesday at their weekly private luncheon. It was another sign that the president was not putting any distance between himself and Biden.

Former senior White House adviser David Axelrod said he was surprised when he heard about Gates’ book. “He (Gates) always indicated he had a good working relationship with the president,” Axelrod said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Key passages of Gates’ book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War,” were published in The Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

In his memoir, Gates asserted that Obama showed a growing frustration with U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

“I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes.

Obama approved the strategy of putting 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and placing Gen. David Petraeus in charge, even though some top advisers opposed the so-called surge he announced in December 2009.

In recalling a meeting in the situation room in March 2011, Gates writes: “As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

According to published reports about the book, Gates reveals he often found himself tempted to quit because of adversarial treatment he received from members of Congress. Gates served 4½ years as defense secretary, the last years of the George W. Bush administration and the first years of Obama’s.

According to the published accounts of the book:

—Gates said that in private, members of Congress could be reasonable. “But when they went into an open hearing, and the little red light went on atop a television camera, it had the effect of a full moon on a werewolf.”

—Gates recalls Obama and his secretary of state at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton, discussing their opposition to Bush’s 2007 surge of troops in Iraq. “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. … The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”

—Gates at times criticizes the Bush administration as well as its successor. He holds the Bush administration, in which he also served as defense secretary, responsible for what he considered misguided policy that squandered the early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Times.

—In praise of Obama, Gates calls the president’s decision to order Navy SEALs to raid a house in Pakistan believed to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden “one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House.”

(AP)

A German court has decided to shelve the case against a 92-year-old former member of the Nazi SS, saying there are too many gaps in the evidence some 70 years later to deliver a verdict.

Dutch-born Siert Bruins, now a German citizen, went on trial in September in the western city of Hagen on charges that he executed a resistance fighter in the northern Netherlands in 1944.

Bruins’ lawyer argued his client didn’t know of plans to kill the fighter, and that another now-deceased SS man pulled the trigger.

The dpa news agency reported Wednesday that the court shelved the case instead of delivering a verdict, saying too much evidence was missing and it was no longer possible to question witnesses in many cases.

(AP)

The Internal Revenue Service says there has been a big jump in thieves stealing Social Security numbers to fraudulently claim tax refunds.

The agency said it launched 1,492 criminal investigations into identity theft last year, a 66 percent increase from the year before. Prosecutions and indictments more than doubled. The numbers dwarf those from just two years ago.

In all, the agency said Tuesday it has flagged 14.6 million suspicious tax returns since 2011, blocking more than $50 billion in fraudulent refunds.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told reporters this week that stopping identity theft is a top priority for the agency. A recent inspector general’s report said the IRS is stepping up efforts to fight identity theft but thieves are getting more aggressive.

(AP)