The nation in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I am neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American.”

Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency, on his decision to leak documents exposing secret U.S. government surveillance programs Article, 1A

Boehner pledges to support farm bill

The House farm bill received a major endorsement Wednesday when Speaker John Boehner announced that he would support the agriculture and nutrition legislation that the chamber is to begin work on this month.

“I’m going to vote for the farm bill to make sure that the good work of the Agriculture Committee and whatever the floor might do to improve this bill gets to a conference so that we can get the kind of changes that people want in our nutrition programs and in our farm programs,” Boehner said.

Shortly before the Senate voted to approve its version of the farm bill Monday, Boehner said he had some issues with the provisions currently in the House version - specifically a program to help dairy farmers - but nevertheless said the measure would be brought up for a vote.

“As a longtime proponent of top-to-bottom reform, my concerns about our country’s farm programs are well known,” Boehner said in a statement. “But as I said on the day I became speaker, my job isn’t to impose my personal will on this institution or its members.”Doubt cast on where IRS scrutiny began

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of small-government groups didn’t begin in the Cincinnati office that examines applications for tax-exempt status, said Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“We know it didn’t originate in Cincinnati,” Camp, a Michigan Republican, told reporters Wednesday in Washington, citing interviews that committee staff members conducted with IRS employees.

Camp’s comments contradict excerpts of interviews released by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Cummings has cited the comments of a self-declared “conservative Republican” IRS manager in Cincinnati, who said one of his employees identified the first Tea Party case and flagged it for further attention.

At the same time, those transcripts and others released by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the oversight committee, show that IRS lawyers in Washington were involved soon afterward.

Immigration talks shift to borders

WASHINGTON - Senate debate on far-reaching immigration legislation turned Wednesday to border security, with Republicans arguing that the bill needs much stronger provisions in that area and Democrats suggesting that some in the GOP are just out to kill the legislation.

This discordant note burst into view just a day after senators voted overwhelmingly to officially open debate on the bill.

The measure sets out a 13-year journey to citizenship for some 11 million illegal aliens, allowing the process toward citizenship to begin only after certain border-security goals have been met.

An amendment offered by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would prohibit anyone from taking the first steps toward citizenship until the secretary of Homeland Security has certified to Congress that the U.S.-Mexico border has been under control for six months.

“I believe some Republicans with no intention of voting for the final bill, no intention, regardless of how it’s amended, seek to offer amendments with the sole purpose of derailing this vital reform,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Reputed mob boss denies tattling to FBI

BOSTON - The lawyer for James “Whitey” Bulger, the reputed onetime Boston mob boss, told a packed courtroom Wednesday morning that his client was many things - bookmaker, drug dealer and loan shark who made “millions and millions” of dollars from his underworld dealings. But there was one thing he never was - an informant for the FBI.

“James Bulger is of Irish descent,” J.W. Carney Jr., the lawyer, declared in his opening argument. “And the worst thing an Irish person could consider doing is becoming an informant. That was the first and foremost reason why James Bulger was never an informant against people.”

There was a secondary reason, too, Carney said, also of a tribal nature. The FBI was mainly interested in the Italian Mafia, but Bulger could not have been of use, Carney said, because he did not know much about Italian organized crime.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 06/13/2013

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