QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We have suffered.We are grieving. But we are not bending.”
Vice President Joe Biden, during a public memorial service in Cambridge, Mass., to honor slain MIT officer Sean Collier Article, 2A
White House ‘open’ to FAA-furlough fix
WASHINGTON - The White House signaled Wednesday that it would look at legislation eliminating Federal Aviation Administration furloughs blamed for lengthy flight delays for airline passengers, while leaving the rest of $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts in place.
Meanwhile, the senior members of the Senate Commerce Committee met with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta to consider possible ways to eliminate the delays.
According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which is privy to FAA data, there were 5,800 flight delays across the country for the three-day period beginning Sunday, when the furloughs took effect. Some were caused by weather. The union said that compares with 2,500 delays for the same period a year ago.
At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said that if Congress “wants to address specifically the problems caused by the sequester with the FAA, we would be open to looking at that.”
Newtown schools won’t get extra guards
NEWTOWN, Conn. - Residents have rejected budgets that included money for extra school security in the wake of the December school shootings, and Newtown leaders suggested that the spending and required tax increases were a hard sell as economic weakness lingers.
Voters on Tuesday turned down the $72 million school budget by 482 votes and rejected the $39 million town government budget by 62 votes. Nearly 4,500 residents voted on the plans, which would have represented an increase of more than 5 percent next fiscal year.
Officials had put an extra $770,000 in the school and town budgets to hire extra police officers and unarmed security guards in each of Newtown’s public and private schools. The plan was spurred by the Dec. 14 massacre.
Jeff Capeci, chairman of the Legislative Council, said the higher school budget also would have expanded halfday kindergarten to full-day and allowed for the hiring of a new high school administrator and for capital spending and technology.
Court pressed on Fast, Furious subpoena
WASHINGTON - A U.S. House of Representatives lawyer told a federal judge that the judge has the power to decide whether the Justice Department must comply with a subpoena issued in a congressional probe of Operation Fast and Furious
Kerry Kircher, the House general counsel, told U.S.
District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Wednesday in Washington that unless she steps in, the balance of power between Congress and the White House will tilt too heavily in favor of the president.
Kircher argued against a Justice Department request to throw out a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder filed by the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to enforce a subpoena in the panel’s inquiry into so-called gun walking. That practice allowed illegal gun purchases in the U.S. in an effort to link the weapons to Mexican gangs.
Kircher noted that Holder was cited for contempt by the panel for refusing to turn over documents it sought.
“That didn’t get us anywhere,” Kircher said.
Drug czar: ‘Pot’ states no focus changer
BALTIMORE - The nation’s drug czar said Wednesday that the legalization of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado won’t change his office’s mission of fighting the country’s drug problem by focusing on addiction treatment.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy, released President Barack Obama’s 2013 strategy for fighting drug addiction Wednesday. The strategy includes a greater emphasis on using public-health tools to battle addiction and diverting nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of prisons.
The key to the administration’s efforts to deliver health care to drug addicts is in the federal health-care overhaul because it will require insurance companies to cover treatment for substance abuse.
The strategy outlined by Kerlikowske also supports a greater emphasis on criminal-justice changes that include drug courts and probation programs aimed at reducing incarceration rates.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 04/25/2013