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Supreme Court gay-marriage rulings: Anything but simple

June 16, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

Supreme Court gay marriage rulings: Anything but simple
Eric Breese, left, of Rochester, N.Y., joins fellow George Washington University students and hundreds of others to rally March 27, 2013, outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act.(Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)

Story Highlights

Two decisions are likely to create questions for couples in civil unions
What happens when legally married couples try get divorced in a state without gay marriage?
Employers could be forced to change their benefit plans

(PhatzNewsRoom / USA Today) — WASHINGTON — If the range of possible Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage this month requires a scorecard, the potential confusion arising from those decisions may demand a manual.

It’s not as simple as whether gays and lesbians can marry or not, and whether they become eligible for federal benefits. The two decisions are likely to create new questions for couples in civil unions and those who move between states, as well as for employers.

As a result, what’s already a complex situation for many gay and lesbian couples could get more complicated, at least initially, says John Culhane, a law professor at Widener University’s Delaware campus and co-author of Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies.

“Obviously, we’re going to have to come up with a second edition pretty quickly,” Culhane says. “Whatever the court does, some things are going to change.”

A few of the potential decisions could make things easier or leave them unchanged, but those are among the more unlikely outcomes. The court could uphold California’s gay marriage ban, leaving the status quo there. It could declare a new right to marriage for all same-sex couples nationwide — an initial upheaval, but one offering long-term uniformity.

And the court could leave intact the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal benefits to legally married gays and lesbians in 12 states and the District of Columbia that allow same-sex marriage. The law has created an uneven situation within and among states, but at least such a ruling wouldn’t require change.

But if DOMA’s benefits ban is struck down or the case is thrown out on technical grounds, both of which appear more likely, several unanswered questions would arise:

– What happens if legally married couples have moved to a state without same-sex marriage? The section of DOMA that protects those states from having to recognize marriages performed in other states would apply to state benefits, but what about federal benefits? That could be up to President Obama — and future court cases.

That’s because some federal agencies base marriage rights on where the license was issued, so the federal benefits would follow the couple; for others, however — including Social Security — it’s the current residence.

“I don’t think anybody really knows how that’s going to play out,” says Steve Branton, a financial planner at Mosaic Financial Partners in San Francisco.

– What happens to couples in civil unions, from New Jersey to Hawaii, who currently receive virtually the same state benefits as those who are married?

Federal law does not recognize civil unions, so they wouldn’t automatically qualify for federal benefits. But Todd Solomon, an expert on domestic partner benefits at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, says another legal fight could be expected.

New opportunities also would arise for gay and lesbian couples if the federal law denying benefits is struck down. Some are straightforward, such as being able to contest the last three years of federal tax returns. Others are more dramatic; for instance, they could move to a gay-marriage state because of the added attraction of federal benefits.

Getting divorced is another matter: If a same-sex married couple moves to a state that has not legalized gay marriage, they may have to move back to the first state to break the marriage apart, Branton says. A San Francisco attorney jokingly coined such a marriage “wedlocked.”

Striking down DOMA also would force employers in the affected states to change their benefit plans.

“In the long run, it would be easier for employers,” says Richard Stover, an actuary with Buck Consultants who deals with human resources and benefits for gays and lesbians. Many employers’ health plans already cover same-sex spouses and domestic partners, he says.

As for California’s Proposition 8, most speculation has focused on rulings that would permit same-sex marriages to resume in California for the first time since 2008. That could happen if the Supreme Court upholds one of the lower court rulings, denies standing to those defending the law, or dismisses the case outright.

Some of those options could leave unanswered questions as well:

If the ban’s backers lacked the legal right to defend it, the federal district court ruling would stand. That could be interpreted to apply only to the two couples who sued, to the two counties where they live (Los Angeles and Alameda), or statewide.

If the case is dismissed, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision would stand. Three other states in the circuit — Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii — allow civil unions or domestic partnerships. Same-sex couples there might argue that they deserve marriage rights as well.

Says Culhane: “There’s always the question of how broadly precedent will be applied.”

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Gay marriage rulings: Experts predict what court will do

June 10, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

0bf0c8a15a0317c27fbce0c143fa9172 Gay marriage rulings: Experts predict what court will do
Ted Olson, right, lead Co-Counsel for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, with Proposition 8 plaintiffs Jeff Zarrillo, left, and Paul Katami, middle. Olson was commenting on the announcement that California’s same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional.(Photo: Damian Dovarganes, AP)

Story Highlights

One case pits backers of California’s gay marriage ban against two couples who want to marry
The ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act could be broader
Same-sex marriage foes don’t think court will extend gay marriage rights nationwide

(PhatzRadio / USA Today) — WASHINGTON — Mitchell Katine came to the Supreme Court 10 years ago for the final chapter of Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark gay rights case in which the justices struck down state sodomy laws.

Not even Katine nor the other lawyers working for John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in their battle against Texas’ sodomy law imagined the length and breadth of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision, which struck down all remaining state sodomy laws.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the 6-3 ruling “leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.” His warning proved prophetic within months, when Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court became the first to legalize same-sex marriage.

As the Supreme Court prepares to issue two historic decisions on gay marriage this month, however, the judges and lawyers who worked on both sides of those earlier cases don’t expect anything quite so eloquent or all-encompassing from a cautious and conservative court.

The consensus view: The justices will limit the expansion of gay marriage rights to California, with few if any implications for the rest of the country. Only on the Defense of Marriage Act, most agree, will the court strike a broad blow against discrimination by striking down the ban on federal benefits for married same-sex couples.

“It will really move us forward without going all the way,” Katine predicts, lamenting that Lawrence and Garner did not live to witness the moment. “I really wish they had not died and could see the true fruits of their labor.”

Houston attorney Gary Polland was on the other side of the issue in Lawrence. As chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, he backed the anti-sodomy statute and encouraged the state to prosecute the case. And while Katine celebrated Kennedy’s sweeping declaration of homosexual rights on June 26, 2003, Polland criticized what he saw as “legislating courts.”

Still, Polland says he won’t be surprised or angry if the high court does what Katine expects in the two same-sex marriage cases this month. The federal government had no business getting involved in family law in 1996 by defining which married couples could receive federal benefits, he says. And unlike 2003, he says, the Supreme Court would be right to limit its ruling on California’s gay marriage ban to that state only.

“I think it’s going to be an incremental move, whatever it is,” Polland says. “This court doesn’t want to be in the position of making political decisions for the country.”

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BAN

The guessing game on the same-sex marriage cases is a complex one, due not only to their nature but the wide array of choices facing the justices.

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, pitting backers of California’s gay marriage ban against two couples who want to marry, the ruling conceivably could affect just those two couples — or the entire country. The justices could rule broadly or narrowly on the merits of the case, or they could decide it doesn’t belong before them and send it back.

Several potential decisions would have the same effect, however: Gays and lesbians in California could marry, as two lower federal courts said they could. That result, veterans of past gay rights cases say, offers the court a reasonable middle ground.

“Anything that avoids giving momentum to either side in this highly debatable and intensive social debate that’s going on throughout the country would be the route, I think, that would guide them,” says John Greaney, a law professor at Suffolk University School of Law in Boston, who served on the Massachusetts court and voted with the majority in the 2003 Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case that legalized gay marriage. To get five votes on the Supreme Court, he says, “you have to tailor it as narrowly as possible.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage who have been on the losing side of cases dating back to Romer v. Evans — the 1996 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado voters could not rescind local laws banning discrimination against gays — take solace in the likelihood that the court won’t extend gay-marriage rights nationwide.

They cite several reasons for a go-slow approach: Chief Justice John Roberts’ preference for narrow rulings. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision for going too far and setting off recriminations from abortion opponents. The continuing debate that has led a dozen states to approve gay marriage and three dozen others to ban it.

“I think there’s a better chance of the people of California winning it all than there is of the country being placed under a constitutional regime requiring the creation of gay marriage,” says Teresa Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota, who filed an amicus brief in support of Texas’ sodomy ban a decade ago.

One particularly popular prediction: The high court will decide that the ban’s supporters lack the legal right to appeal the lower court rulings, given they do not represent the state government.

“It would be surprising if the court reaches a decision about Proposition 8′s constitutionality, because long-standing case law indicates that Proposition 8′s sponsors do not have standing,” says Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia University law professor who represented those challenging the Colorado referendum in Romer and the Texas statute in Lawrence.

Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. acting solicitor general who filed a brief against Texas in 2003, notes the justices referred often during oral argument to his Proposition 8 brief, which contends that the ban’s supporters have no fiduciary duty to the state of California and could not appeal on the state’s behalf.

Paul Smith, the lead attorney representing Lawrence before the Supreme Court a decade ago, says the decision may be several different opinions that add up to a plurality. “There’s going to be at least two opinions,” he predicts. “There may be five.”

DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT

If the Proposition 8 decision is destined to be limited, these litigators say, the ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor is more likely to be a broad one denying its constitutionality.

Among the reasons: Even though the Obama administration isn’t defending the federal law, which creates another issue of legal standing, it continues to enforce it. As a result, Edie Windsor, the lesbian widow challenging the law in New York, is out $363,000 in estate taxes.

In addition, gay marriage proponents and opponents agree, the court probably won’t want to decide both cases on narrow, procedural grounds. “I think there will be enormous pressure to decide the DOMA case on merits grounds,” Goldberg says.

But both sides also predict that while striking down DOMA, the justices won’t go so far as to grant gays and lesbians the additional legal protection accorded women and African-Americans known as “heightened scrutiny.” That would set a precedent that could be applied in other cases.

“That might open up a plethora of additional lawsuits,” says Greaney, the retired Massachusetts judge. “It would give the gay rights folks tremendous leverage going forward in all areas. The court probably would not want that.”

Judging from Kennedy’s questions during oral argument in March, they say, a narrow majority of justices could decide the case on grounds of federalism, or states’ rights, rather than on broader grounds of due process or equal protection.

Says Polland, the former GOP county chairman: “The federal government doesn’t have any jurisdiction in the family law field.”

Follow @richardjwolf on Twitter

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Analysis: Few options for companies to defy U.S. intelligence demands

June 9, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – U.S. Internet companies that want to resist government demands to hand over customer data for intelligence investigations have few legal options, due to the classified nature of such probes and a court review process shrouded in secrecy.

Google Inc, Facebook Inc and Microsoft Corp are among the big U.S. technology companies that were outed this week as key sources of data for the National Security Agency (NSA), under a surveillance program referred to inside the spy agency as Prism.

While the companies have uniformly denied knowledge of Prism and said they had not given the NSA direct access to their servers, U.S. officials have confirmed the existence of the program, which President Barack Obama defended as “a modest encroachment” on privacy that was necessary to protect national security.

The program relies on section 702 of the 2008 amended version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lets the government collect electronic communications for the purpose of acquiring intelligence on non-U.S. targets that pose a threat to national security.

For electronic service providers, the law says the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington can authorize a company to provide “all information, facilities, or assistance necessary.” In return for compliance, the company is compensated for its work and receives immunity from potential lawsuits.

Section 702 is a “broad tool to get the information they are looking for,” said Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco civil liberties group critical of the law.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court overwhelmingly approves FISA requests from the NSA, according to Justice Department reports. In 2012, the court received 1,856 applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches. All were approved except for one, which the government withdrew before the court could rule.

All of the court’s cases are kept secret, including rulings, and companies are not given details about the investigations they have been asked to provide information for, legal experts familiar with the process say. That encourages compliance as corporate lawyers do not want to hinder probes that may help prevent a terrorist attack, for example.

Any company that objects to a judge’s order can appeal to the entire Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, but there is no public data on whether they have ever done so. The law allows for further appeals to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s possible there have been challenges, but if so they are still secret,” said Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which unsuccessfully tried to overturn the 2008 law as unconstitutional.

Although the Justice Department is required to report to Congress each year on the number of applications it makes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a department spokesman said on Friday he was not aware of any requirement to disclose the number of challenges that companies brought to the court.

STATE SECRETS

The disclosure this week of the NSA’s secret and vast phone and email surveillance programs – involving major U.S. telecom and Internet companies – has prompted top Silicon Valley executives to demand greater transparency.

“We understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety — including sometimes by using surveillance,” Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a joint statement. “But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”

The technology companies, including Apple Inc, Yahoo Inc, Microsoft’s Skype, AOL and PalTalk, said they had not heard of Prism before. Former intelligence analysts said that was likely because the NSA only used that name internally.

The Washington Post first reported that Prism had voluntary cooperation from the companies but later wrote that they had been directed to comply with requests for help from the Attorney General. The Post initially reported that the companies gave officials access to their servers, then later cited a classified memo stating that analysts instead could issue queries to equipment installed at the companies.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the equipment had been strenuously negotiated with the companies and was the computer equivalent of a locked room for sharing data.

“Historically, you hear about such ‘partnerships,’ and intelligence has been doing things like this for a very long time,” said former NSA analyst Ron Gula, now chief executive of Tenable Network Security. “What’s changed is the volume.”

The extent of that change in volume remains unknown. Though executives at the technology companies vigorously denied handling bulk requests, mechanical queries by agencies could still produce large amounts of data.

COURT CASES

Google and Twitter, which is notably absent from the NSA slides about Prism that were published by the Washington Post, have gone to regular courts to oppose some other requests for data on their users.

These requests include National Security Letters, which are issued by the FBI and do not need to be approved by a court. Though more than 90 percent of those letters have come with a prohibition on their disclosure, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled recently those gag orders are unconstitutional.

Fights like these are rare. For instance, Section 215 provision of the 2001 USA Patriot Act requires companies to turn over business records. The Justice Department said in a 2009 letter to Congress that between 2004 and 2007, no recipient such requests “has ever challenged the validity of the order.”

Civil-liberties groups that have sued the government over suspected call-record programs and wiretapping, said they would use this week’s new disclosures to bolster existing cases and possibly file new suits.

In particular, they plan to argue against two of the main defenses used by the Justice Department to date: that a full trial on the issues would be impossible without revealing “state secrets” and that consumers lack standing to sue because they cannot show impact from the spying programs. Privacy advocates say this week’s disclosures puncture these defenses.

One factor that could become critical to any challenges against the NSA’s domestic surveillance program is what the agency does with the information after it is collected.

“The NSA gathers a lot,” said Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the NSA. “There are some fact patterns where there’s no way you’re going to catch terrorists without pooling this information somewhere where the government has access to it. It’s likely that you impose restrictions not on the collection of the data, but on the search.”

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Lawrence Hurley and David Ingram in Washington; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Sandra Maler)

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Opinion: Arming Syrian rebels fraught with risk

June 3, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

getty%203%2010%2011%20USS%20Harry%20Truman.preview Opinion: Arming Syrian rebels fraught with risk
(A F/A-18 fighter jet takes off from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean Sea, June 14, 2010.)

(PhatzNewsRoom / Reuters) — The UK, France and maybe America are edging towards a policy of arming Syria’s “moderate” rebels if planned peace talks with the Assad regime don’t produce a breakthrough. The idea would be to tilt the civil war in favour of moderates and against both Assad’s Iranian-backed regime and al Qaeda-style jihadists. But the scheme, while superficially attractive, is fraught with risk.

The West’s three nuclear powers clearly don’t have much appetite for intervention in Syria. Nobody is pushing for an Iraqi or Afghan-style invasion. There is also precious little desire to impose a Libyan-style no-fly zone – not least because it would be impossible to get United Nations’ authority for such a policy given Russia’s steadfast support for the Assad regime.

The West is anyway struggling to clarify why it should get involved in this increasingly grisly sectarian war. Syria doesn’t have much oil or gas, unlike Libya and Iraq. Nor is Assad threatening the West with al Qaeda-style attacks. It could even be argued, on the basis of realpolitik, that it could be in the West’s interests if Sunni jihadists and the Iran-Assad-Hezbollah Shi’ite axis exhausted each other in an orgy of mutual destruction.

There are, though, two reasons why the West might not wish to stand by as the death toll, already over 80,000, climbs ever higher. First, civil wars have a tendency to drag on. The one in neighbouring Lebanon, where I spent last week, lasted 15 years and left over 120,000 dead. Given Syria is about five times Lebanon’s size, a similar rate of killing would result in more than 600,000 deaths. Although humanitarian considerations are rarely the driver of foreign policy, it would be good if Western intervention really could cut the killing of innocent people – admittedly a big “if”.

The second, more hard-headed reason for the West not washing its hands of Syria is concern for spillover effects. There are already signs of Lebanon being sucked into the conflict: Hezbollah-dominated areas have seen rocket attacks and skirmishes with Syrian rebels in recent days.

If an al Qaeda-style regime were to take control of Damascus, with its presumed huge stash of chemical weapons, who knows what havoc it would wreak? It might not be just Israel that would feel the heat on its border given that many Sunni jihadists see their mission as global.

Such thinking seems to be behind the emerging plan to arm the moderate rebels. This would be intervention on the cheap, since it would not involve the West committing its own soldiers or weapons to the fight. Britain and France last week succeeded in lifting a European Union embargo on weapons sales, despite strong opposition from other European nations which want to keep out of the conflict completely.

Before pressing the button, the UK, France and possibly America (whose position on arms supplies is not clear) want to give peace one last chance. They are trying, so far without much success, to get Assad and the moderates (principally the Syrian National Coalition) round the negotiating table.

The prospect of supplying weapons is, in turn, being used as a carrot and stick to advance the peace talks. The moderates have an incentive to play ball because, otherwise, they won’t get weapons. Assad has an incentive to take part; otherwise his enemies will be better armed.

The snag is that nobody is holding out much hope for the peace talks. And the corollary of failure is that Western weapons supplies would then roll into Syria.

Advocates of such a policy argue that there is a triangular contest in Syria. In one corner is Assad, armed by Russia and Iran, and supported by foreign Shi’ite fighters – mainly from Iraq and Lebanon (in the form of Hezbollah). In another corner are the jihadists, financed by money from the Gulf, and supported by Sunni fighters from the Muslim world.

In the third corner are the moderates, who aren’t getting much help from anywhere. They are mainly Sunni too. And they are sometimes fighting alongside the jihadists against Assad. But because they are poorly resourced, they have failed to make much headway against Assad, while the jihadists have taken an increasingly important role in the revolution.

The idea is that, if the moderates are properly armed, they will not only start winning against Assad. They will also be able to edge aside the jihadists. There is also a parallel attempt by Saudi Arabia to channel money from the Gulf to moderates. Although staunchly Sunni, it saw how its original help for al Qaeda in Afghanistan boomeranged into an attempt to foment revolution at home.

Advocates of the pro-moderate policy don’t deny that some of the presumably fairly sophisticated weapons intended for moderates may end up in the hands of jihadists. Nor do they deny that Iran and Russia may react by stepping up their own arms supplies to Assad, with the result that the pace of killing will increase. Their argument, rather, is that conflict will end sooner and that whatever comes after Assad is more likely to be pro-Western.

While that is certainly possible, there are other scenarios. One is that the so-called moderates – who aren’t Western-style liberal democrats to start off with – may become radicalised as the conflict goes on. So a victory for them might not be so good for the West after all.

Another worry is that it may be too late to turn the tide in the moderates’ favour. If so, they may eventually decide to throw their lot in with the jihadists – taking their sophisticated weapons with them. Syria would then turn from a triangular contest into a bilateral one. The West, having unwittingly armed the jihadists, might ultimately conclude it would have been better off with Assad.

Yet another concern is that weaponry intended for Syria won’t stay there. It could be redeployed in other countries, creating yet more carnage – and possibly threatening the West’s interests more directly.

It is for these reasons that most European countries – and, until recently, even Britain, France and America – have been opposed to arming the rebels.

Two years ago the Syrian rebels were pursuing almost entirely nonviolent tactics to unseat Assad. He then cracked down so brutally that the revolution became militarised. Many of the nonviolent activists were killed; others resorted to violence themselves; yet others moved out of the struggle because there wasn’t room for them.

There are, though, still Syrians who would like to find a way of living together in peace. Now may not be the time for demonstrations and protests of the sort that are now racking Istanbul’s Taksim Square. But nonviolent activists can still play a role in building the institutions of a civil society. It is a shame that the West has spent so little effort identifying and supporting these people. They may be able to influence the conflict as it progresses – and they will be sorely needed if a peaceful Syria is ever to be rebuilt.

Hugo Dixon is Editor-at-Large, Reuters News. Before founding Breakingviews in 1999, which he edited until 2012, Hugo spent 13 years at the Financial Times, the last five as Head of Lex. His journalistic career began at the Economist. He is the author of the Penguin Guide to Finance and Finance Just in Time. He was named Business Journalist of the Year 2000 in the British Press Awards. He won the Decade of Excellence Award at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards 2008. Follow Hugo on Twitter @hugodixon.

ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED HERE ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN.

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Analysis: Changing Assad’s calculus

May 24, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

57640fb614d56d5e3046561db8453274 Analysis: Changing Assad’s calculus

(PhatzNewsRoom / Reuters) — AMMAN, Jordan – Secretary of State John Kerry and 10 European and Arab foreign ministers gathered here Wednesday night to again talk about helping Syria’s rebels.

Even as the international community discusses “grand strategy,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is taking decisive action.

With the help of thousands of fighters from Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq, he is close to achieving some of his largest military gains in two years.

Kerry, in a press conference, played down Assad’s military advances as “very temporary.” In truth, the Syrian leader and his foreign backers are gaining the upper hand in the conflict.

The Syrian opposition is in disarray; approving a major American military intervention is politically impossible in post-Iraq Washington; and a rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar has slowed their delivery of weaponry to the rebels. Diplomatically, Washington’s key interlocutor is Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, one of Assad’s primary international defenders.

One key factor favors Assad’s survival. Assad, his Allawite allies, Hezbollah and Iran are “all-in” inside Syria. They are hurling vast amounts of manpower, weaponry and money into the fight.

On the other side, supporters of Syria’s rebels are still trying to decide just how much assistance to offer. There is a strategy, but it is incremental.

The American “grand strategy” is threefold. First, increase military aid to the rebels, but not American aid.

Last month in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia and Qatar promised additional military assistance to General Salam Idris, the military leader of moderate Syrian opposition forces. They also pledged to curtail their support to the hard-line Islamist fighters who now dominate the opposition on the ground in Syria.

A senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Saudis and Qataris appear to be keeping their word. They have supplied weaponry to Idris’s force and their shipments to hard-line Islamists appear to be slowing.

“Indicators are good,” the official said, “but we want to see more.”

Meanwhile, American diplomats are trying to unite Syria’s fractious opposition. Since the head of the Syrian National Coalition, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, resigned last month, the group has struggled to name a leader. In Syria, the Istanbul-based coalition is still regarded as ineffectual. It is Islamist groups, flush with weapons, cash and hardened fighters, that dominate.

This week, the opposition council will expand from 60 representatives to between 90 and 100 members. This larger group will then choose a prime minister and other leaders.

Finally, Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov will host peace talks next month in Geneva. Theoretically, the opposition will be more militarily powerful and politically united.

At the same time, Russian officials have said that Assad’s prime minister, Wael al-Halqi, will attend peace talks in Geneva. The United States has also quietly dropped its objections to Iran being allowed to have some role in the talks.

In a best-case scenario, increased military support for the rebels and Russian pressure force will force Assad to bargain seriously. The centrifugal forces now unraveling Syria – sectarian tensions, jihadist fighters and foreign funding – will ebb.

“We don’t need more proof that now is the time to act,” Kerry said in his opening statements at the talks here. “What we need to do is act.”

American officials agree that their strategy depends on changing Assad’s calculation. “The balance of power on the ground must change,” said the senior State Department official.

Given the extent of support Assad is receiving from Iran and Hezbollah, that appears unlikely. Hezbollah fighters are playing a crucial role in the battle to take the strategic town of Qusayr. Iranians are now advising Syrian government units in Qusayr and around Damascus. Members of Iraqi Shia militias are fighting alongside Assad’s forces in several battles.

Assad and the Iranians are winning. If the Obama administration and its European and Arab allies want to support the rebels, they must do so now.

For the last two years, Washington and its allies have carried out a half-intervention. They provide enough aid to prolong the conflict but not enough to end it.

If the Obama administration and its allies are not going to sharply increase military assistance, their false talk of decisive aid should end. More empty rhetoric will prolong the bloodshed.

David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a former reporter for The New York Times. His latest book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East,” was published in April.

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Opinion: The Shocking IRS and Benghazi Scandal That Wasn’t

May 19, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

obama presser gold curtain Opinion: The Shocking IRS and Benghazi Scandal That Wasn’t

(PhatzNewsRoom / BillPress.com) — There’s nothing Washington likes better than a scandal. So official Washington was absolutely orgasmic this week while dealing with not one, but three scandals at the same time. Not one of which, sadly, was a sex scandal.

First, there were accusations of a “cover-up” in the aftermath of the bombing of our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Then came reports that the IRS was conducting a partisan witch-hunt against the tea party. Topping it all off was news of the Justice Department’s seizing phone records of Associated Press reporters. And hovering over all three was the perennial Washington parlor game: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Obama haters could hardly contain their glee. Mike Huckabee predicted that Benghazi would drive President Obama out of office. Sen. James Inhofe whispered the “I” word. Soon joined by Michele Bachmann. John Boehner demanded that unnamed IRS agents be arrested and sent to jail, presumably without a trial. And House Republicans scheduled multiple hearings on each controversy.

How disappointing for them when the week ended and two out of three scandals had all but disappeared. Only one was left: the Justice Department’s heavy-handed invasion of AP. As part of a criminal investigation into who leaked information about a successful intelligence operation to thwart the blowing up of an airliner headed from Yemen to the United States, DOJ subpoenaed the records of 20 phone lines at the AP, used by more than 100 reporters and editors, for April and May 2012.

The Justice Department’s raid of AP phone records is nothing less than a totally unjustified, wholesale trashing of the First Amendment. DOJ violated its own guidelines by failing to notify the AP of its action or narrowing the scope of its subpoena. It has also offered no explanation how, by reporting this story, which the administration itself was poised to released, the AP in any way jeopardized our national security. This is the one real scandal, which demands more attention and answers. Not so with Benghazi or the IRS.

As I wrote last week, the flap over Benghazi is nothing but a poorly disguised effort by panicked Republicans to prevent Hillary Clinton from running for president in 2016. John Boehner may be obsessed with Benghazi, but this car has run out of gas.

The scandal that received the most attention, the IRS and the tea party, is a lot more complicated than it first appears. True, there is no defending the IRS targeting members of either party. But there is also no defending the fact that far too many political groups today enjoy tax-exempt status simply because they disguise themselves as “social welfare” organizations.

Republicans try to paint the latest IRS flap as a new, Obama-inspired, Nixonian conspiracy aimed at conservatives. Nonsense. In fact, this problem dates back to 1959, when Congress passed a law defining 501(c)(4), or tax-exempt, organizations as those which operate “exclusively for purposes beneficial to the community as a whole.” That same year, however, the IRS adopted regulations awarding tax-exempt status to organizations only “primarily” engaged in social welfare. Ever since, using that loose definition — primary, not exclusive — they have granted tax-exempt status to groups that spend up to 49 percent of their funds on political activities. And refused to rescind tax privileges for those that spend far more.

For example, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington complained to the IRS about the American Action Network, a 501(c)(4), headed by former Republican Senator Norm Coleman, which spent 66.8 percent of its total spending from July 2009 through June 2011 on politics. The IRS did nothing.

So it’s important to understand. The issue of appropriate tax-exempt status goes way back. It was made worse by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which spawned a new wave of political organizations: the overwhelming majority, tea party chapters, of which more than 300 filed for tax-exempt status. IRS staffers decided to focus exclusively on them. Even though none of the tea party applications was denied, that concentration on the right was wrong. But it’s a case of bureaucratic bungling, not some vast left-wing conspiracy.

A new head of the IRS is a good start. Congress should next establish tough new standards for the IRS to follow in granting tax-exempt status. Then maybe Congress can get to work on a real scandal: gun violence in America.

(Bill Press began his career as a political insider and media commentator on KABC-TV and KCOP-TV, both in Los Angeles. Over the years, he has received numerous awards for his work, including four Emmys and a Golden Mike Award. The former co-host of MSNBC’s Buchanan and Press, CNN’s Crossfire and The Spin Room, Press has built a national reputation on thought-provoking and humorous insights from the left side of the political aisle.

Press is the author of six books: Spin This! (Atria, 2002), Bush Must Go! (Dutton Books, 2004), How The Republicans Stole Christmas (Doubleday, 2005), Trainwreck (Wiley, 2008), Toxic Talk (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), and his latest, The Obama Hate Machine (Thomas Dunne Books, 2012).

The host of radio’s nationally syndicated Bill Press Show (Monday-Friday from 6-9am ET), Press attends the daily White House press briefing and writes a syndicated newspaper column, distributed weekly by Tribune Media Services.)

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More Benghazi Hearings….No, Welcome to the “Stop Hillary Clinton in 2016: hearings

May 12, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

130508135109 01 benghazi hearing horizontal gallery More Benghazi Hearings....No, Welcome to the “Stop Hillary Clinton in 2016: hearings

(PhatzNewsRoom / BillPress.com) — Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who’s the most powerful woman of them all?

No doubt about it. Not Queen Elizabeth, Angela Merkel or Oprah Winfrey. The most powerful woman on the planet is former first lady, former senator from New York, former presidential candidate, former secretary of state, now recluse of Chappaqua, Hillary Clinton. She’s so powerful Republicans staged a sham congressional hearing this week to try to stop her from running for president in 2016.

Wednesday’s hearing before the House Government Oversight Committee was billed as an opportunity to learn new facts about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Nonsense. We learned nothing new. All we heard were three witnesses, egged on by House Republicans, implying that Clinton was somehow responsible for the murder of four Americans or the subsequent cover-up. Or both.

To anybody but the most rabid anti-Clintonite, such charges are absurd: long alleged, and oft debunked. But they’re part of a determined Republican campaign to politicize Benghazi which began the night of the attacks, before we even learned of the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, when Mitt Romney blamed the Obama administration for sympathizing with those who waged the attacks.This week’s hearing was only the latest installment.

Its political purpose was telegraphed days before the hearing opened. Failed presidential candidate Mike Huckabee declared Benghazi more serious than Watergate and predicted it would drive President Obama from the White House. Fired-by-Fox commentator Dick Morris laid blame for Benghazi squarely on Obama and Clinton, thereby ruining one presidency and possibly preventing another. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who warned the dam is about to break on Benghazi, stopped whining long enough to admit to the New York Times that criticizing the president is good politics for Republicans. And Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa predicted that the hearing would be damaging to Clinton.

Actually, Issa had already revealed his hand. Last month, he released a report accusing Clinton of personally signing an April 2012 cable turning down a request from then-Libyan Ambassador Gene Cretz for more security. But Issa ended up with egg on his face when the State Department pointed out that every State Department cable from Washington, even routine birthday greetings, carry the secretary’s automatic signature. Issa was further embarrassed when the New York Times pointed out that he had personally voted with House Republicans to cut half a billion dollars out of embassy security funding in 2011 and 2012.

The Benghazi attack had already been the subject of 10 congressional hearings. The latest provided no new facts, but two new allegations, neither of which holds water. Greg Hicks, deputy to murdered Ambassador Stevens, testified that his request for fighter jets had been turned down by the Pentagon. Had they arrived on the scene, Hicks insisted, they might have prevented the carnage, which is highly unlikely. Earlier, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pointed out that because the nearest jets, stationed at Italy’s Aviano Air Base, were not on standby that evening, it would have taken at least nine hours to round up the crews and deploy them. Meanwhile, tankers necessary to refuel the jets were based in England. Mission impossible.

Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism, complained that his request for elite U.S. Special Forces was also turned down by the Pentagon. But, again, Panetta previously testified they could not reach the scene until the following morning and that officers had serious Black Hawk down concerns about sending more Americans into a situation about which they still knew very little. Note that both decisions were made by Leon Panetta, yet all the blame’s being dumped on Hillary Clinton. But, of course, nobody expects Panetta to run for president in 2016.

Not surprisingly, House Republicans completely ignore the Benghazi investigation conducted immediately after the attacks by the Accountability Review Board. Headed by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs Chair Michael Mullen, the ARB slammed the State Department for not doing a better job of protecting our embassies and made 29 recommendations to improve security. It also placed blame for the killings where it belongs: on the terrorists, not Hillary Clinton.

Rather than focus on what improvements need to be made, however, Chairman Issa promises even more hearings on Benghazi. But he’ll have to wait at least two weeks. Eric Cantor’s already scheduled a vote in the House next week to repeal Obamacare for the 34th time! Do you see a pattern here?

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Opinion: Gun Control – Shame on the Senate

April 29, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

a0130faae004f50225e76e863804561c Opinion: Gun Control Shame on the Senate

(PhatzNewsRoom / BillPress.com) — Let me begin this column with an apology. Once a week, I pick an important issue and offer my reasoned analysis, based on the facts, of what it all means and how we should react. But there are times when the intellect fails and the heart and gut take over. And this is one of them.

In the spring of 1968, I walked into the McCarthy for President office in San Francisco and signed up as a volunteer. That was my first taste of politics and I’ve been involved in politics ever since, both as practitioner and observer. I’ve managed local, statewide and national campaigns, raised money for candidates, served as Democratic state chair of California and run for statewide office. I’ve made my living as a political commentator on radio and television in Los Angeles, San Francisco and nationwide.

Throughout those years, I’ve experienced a lot of joy, but also a lot of disappointment. Candidates I supported lost their elections. Politicians I helped elect soon forgot who their friends were. Causes I passionately believed in failed in the legislature or on the ballot. Yet, through it all, I never lost my faith in the political system. I always knew, and preached, that things would eventually work out for the best. I remained a believer.

Until now. Until this week’s shameful vote in the United States Senate on gun safety. I’m no longer a believer. I’ve lost my faith in our political system. I’ve given up on politics. And I’ve given up on Congress. Because if they can’t get this right, they can’t get anything right.

There is simply no excuse – “none!” for voting against extending criminal background checks to cover all gun purchases. Indeed, the arguments made by opponents of the Manchin-Toomey compromise bill don’t even pass the laugh test. How, for example, can anybody say he supports background checks at gun dealers, just not at gun shows? Really? In other words, it’s not OK for criminals to buy guns at licensed dealers, but it is OK for them to buy guns at gun shows or over the Internet. Give me a break.

In the biggest lie of all, other senators insist that expanded background checks will lead to some Big Brother gun registry that will in turn lead to federal agents seizing everyone’s guns. Baloney. Again, no such gun registry has been created to date, even though criminal background checks have been required of gun dealers since 1994. Not only that, both existing law and the Manchin-Toomey bill specifically prohibit storage and retrieval of personal data gathered in background checks. Manchin and Toomey make it a federal crime.

In the end, there are only three reasons why senators voted against common sense gun safety measures. One, they were born without a backbone. Two, they’re owned lock, stock and barrel by the NRA. Three, they don’t care. They don’t care about the American people. They don’t care about the victims of Columbine, Aurora or Virginia Tech. They don’t care about Gabby Giffords. They don’t care about 20 first-graders and six brave teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School. They don’t care about doing the right thing. They only care about saving their own political skin.

In the end, the vote on the compromise proposal to expand background checks was 54-46, six short of the 60 votes necessary to break the filibuster. Democrats share some of the blame. Four Democrats – Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas voted no. But most of the blame lies with the Republican Party. Even though four of them – John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mark Kirk of Illinois broke ranks and voted yes, Republicans as a block voted against background checks. In fact, Buzzfeed reports, six Republicans – Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, Mike Crapo and Chuck Grassley who voted for universal background checks in 1999, when the NRA supported them, voted against background checks this week, now that the NRA opposes them.

As Wednesday’s vote was announced, the cry of “Shame on you!”, resounded from the Senate gallery. It was the voice of Tucson hero Patricia Maisch, who grabbed a loaded magazine clip out of Jared Loughner’s hands as he tried to reload. In that dramatic moment, she showed more sense and courage than the entire Senate. We might as well send them all home.

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Opinion: Newtown Tragedy Brings Bipartisanship Back to Congress

April 14, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

cf60740a37860d1e63dfb2e1d674ef27 Opinion: Newtown Tragedy Brings Bipartisanship Back to Congress

(PhatzNewsRoom / BillPress.com) —- They started out with a lot in common Joe Manchin and Patrick Toomey. Sure, one’s a Democrat and one’s a Republican, but they’re both conservatives, both longtime gun owners and both sport an A rating from the National Rifle Association.

But now the two senators share a bigger honor. In the long-lost, problem-solving spirit of the U.S. Senate, the Democrat from West Virginia and the Republican from Pennsylvania have come together to forge a compromise on background checks that promises to break the logjam against any reasonable gun safety legislation.

Granted, expanded background checks are only one element of what’s needed to stem gun violence. But Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told me it was, by far, the most important element. Yes, bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are also critical. So is a crackdown on straw purchases. But if we did only one thing this year, said Lowy, universal background checks are the key. For a very simple reason. Because, under existing law, criminal background checks are only required for gun sales at licensed gun dealers. In a Jan. 16 speech on gun violence, President Obama claimed that as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check. Which means that at gun shows, on the Internet, from classified newspaper ads, or over the back fence purchases are made with no prior check on the buyer.

Those who couldn’t otherwise buy a gun are well aware of that huge loophole. Before the slaughter at Columbine High School, Eric Harris, one of the teenage killers, emailed his friends: If we can save up about $200 real quick, we can go to the next gun show and find a private dealer and buy ourselves some bad-ass AB-10 machine pistols. Closing that loophole, expanding background checks, is the most effective way to prevent criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, or others who shouldn’t have a dangerous weapon from buying one.

The Manchin-Toomey proposal isn’t perfect. While it would require background checks for all commercially advertised sales of guns, including gun shows, newspapers, magazines and the Internet, it would not require checks for unadvertised gun transfers, like from one family member to another. But, because there are so few of those sales, the bill is still a vast improvement over the status quo and as close to universal background checks as we are likely to get.

Most importantly, the Manchin-Toomey plan destroys every phony argument the NRA has raised against expanded background checks. They say they donâ€™t work. Nonsense. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between March 1994, when background checks were required as part of the Brady Act, and December 2008, they prevented 1.8 million criminals and other prohibited purchasers from buying a gun. In 2010 alone, the FBI and state law enforcement denied firearm purchases to 153,000 people.

The NRA says Congress should leave it up to states. That’s a road to nowhere. Since 1994, according to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, only six states have imposed universal background checks on all firearms sales at gun shows. Thirty-three states have done nothing. The rest are somewhere in between.

Next argument: Having to go through a background check takes too much time and costs too much money. Not true. Since 1998, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has conducted 167 million background checks. They consist of one phone call. They cost nothing. And they take less than a minute.

Equally absurd is the NRA’s slippery slope argument that background checks will automatically lead to a national gun registry which, of course, will lead to federal agents showing up at your door and taking away all your guns. Ain’t gonna happen. Background checks have been required at gun stores since 1994, and there’s no national gun registry. The NICS, in fact, prohibits retrieval and storage of personal information.

The Manchin-Toomey compromise almost guarantees that some form of gun safety legislation will pass the Senate. Thatâ€™s the good news. The bad news is that it then moves to the House, where Speaker John Boehner’s a captive of the NRA. Asked by reporters if he could guarantee a vote on such vital legislation, Boehner would only say: they’re going to wait and see what the Senate does. Sadly, in Washington today, that passes for leadership.

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Compromise sets up likely Senate debate on gun laws

April 11, 2013 By Admin Leave a Comment

130410093717 01 gun show 0410 story top Compromise sets up likely Senate debate on gun laws

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Newtown family members praise emotional Sen. Manchin for his courage
Two senators reach a deal to expand background checks to gun shows, Internet
President Obama would prefer stronger proposal, but says it is welcome progress
Democrats believe they have enough votes to overcome a GOP filibuster

Washington (CNN) — In a breakthrough on gun legislation, two U.S. senators — a Democrat and a Republican — announced Wednesday they had worked out a compromise on expanding background checks on firearms buyers to include gun shows and Internet sales.

The deal reached by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania, sets up the likelihood of a major Senate debate on gun legislation starting as soon as Thursday, when the chamber is expected to overcome a GOP filibuster attempt to block the proposals.

President Barack Obama and leading Democrats have pushed for tighter gun laws in the aftermath of the December school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

In an emotional scene later on Wednesday, Manchin choked up while meeting with relatives of Newtown victims who praised him for his political courage in taking on the powerful gun lobby.

“You give me more legislative strength than you know,” Manchin said at one point.

He then was unable to speak when asked by a reporter how the Newtown families affected his role in the negotiations with Toomey and others.

Despite the agreement reached by Manchin and Toomey, both rated as strong supporters of gun rights by the influential National Rifle Association, the prospects for significant gun legislation to win congressional approval remained uncertain.

The NRA responded to the Manchin-Toomey agreement by saying it would fail to address the core issues of gun violence.

“Expanding background checks at gun shows will not prevent the next shooting, will not solve violent crime and will not keep our kids safe in schools,” it said in a statement.

Following the Newtown shootings by a lone gunman, Obama called for a series of proposals including “universal” background checks on all gun purchases. Currently, the federal law requiring background checks covers licensed firearms dealers, with private sales excluded.

Fierce opposition by the NRA and its allies in Congress — mostly conservative Republicans but also some Democrats from gun-friendly states — made clear that the universal checks sought by Obama had no chance of passing, leading to efforts by Manchin, Toomey and others to work out a compromise.

“The bottom line for me is this: If expanding background checks to include gun shows and Internet sales can reduce the likelihood of criminals and mentally ill people from getting guns and we can do it in a fashion that does not infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, then we should do it, and in this amendment I think we do,” Toomey told reporters on Wednesday.

Asked later about criticism by the NRA and others, he told CNN that the proposed legislation was “not a cure-all, but I think it would be some progress.”

Manchin noted that the proposal meant that firearms buyers at gun shows would face the same background check currently required in sales by federally licensed gun dealers. In addition, it would close a loophole that exempts intrastate gun sales on the Internet from requiring a background check, he said.

Addressing concerns of the NRA that expanding background checks would burden law-abiding gun owners seeking to trade or gift weapons in a personal transfer, Manchin declared that “personal transfers are not touched whatsoever.”

Another provision would recognize the legitimacy of concealed weapons permits across state lines.

The Manchin-Toomey compromise also would require states and the federal government to provide records on criminals and the “violently mentally ill” to the national background check system, addressing a criticism by the NRA and other opponents of gun laws that the existing system lacks substantive information.

In addition, the plan calls for a new National Commission on Mass Violence to report in six months on “all aspects of the problem, including guns, school safety, mental health, and violent media or video games.”

The NRA said rejection of the universal checks sought by Obama was “a positive development,” and it called for “serious and meaningful solutions” to gun violence instead of “blaming law-abiding gun owners for the acts of psychopathic murderers.”

Obama said there are aspects of the proposal that he would like to see strengthened.

“But the agreement does represent welcome and significant bipartisan progress. It recognizes that there are good people on both sides of this issue, and we don’t have to agree on everything to know that we’ve got to do something to stem the tide of gun violence,” he said.

“Congress needs to finish the job,” Obama added, saying he would continue “asking the American people to stand up and raise their voices because these measures deserve a vote.”

Other reaction ranged from cautious support to angry rejection.

The Brady Campaign, named after the former White House press secretary wounded in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, called the compromise a “good step forward,” while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described it as “better than nothing” but a sellout to the gun lobby.

“This is a Congress that is captive of the extremists and there is no clearer proof of that than this,” Cuomo said on the “Capitol Pressroom” radio show, adding that the compromise meant “we are not talking about a significant package of gun control anymore.”

Manchin told reporters the compromise on background checks would be the first amendment offered when the Senate begins debating the package of gun legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Tuesday he would hold a vote on opening debate on the gun package Thursday, putting pressure on Manchin and Toomey to finalize their agreement intended to overcome a Republican filibuster of the legislation.

The filibuster pledged by 14 GOP senators means Reid, whose Democratic caucus holds 55 seats, needs 60 votes to open debate on the gun legislation.

Democrats believe that as many as a dozen GOP senators will vote with them, making up for the handful of pro-gun Democrats who might vote against launching debate on the bill.

Obama has made gun measures a major focus of his second-term agenda, holding events across the country to push for Congress to vote on the package.

He spoke Monday in Connecticut, where the Newtown shootings occurred, and Vice President Joe Biden made a similar call for action at the White House on Tuesday.

A successful GOP filibuster would prevent a vote on specific components of the legislative package. Even if an amended bill passes the Senate, approval from the Republican-led House remains uncertain.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was noncommittal on Wednesday on prospects for gun legislation, telling reporters he would wait to see what the Senate passes.

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson of California and Republican Rep. Peter King of New York said they planned to introduce legislation in the House similar to the Senate compromise by Manchin and Toomey.

Obama’s rhetoric has reflected the political uncertainty, with the president and his aides using increasingly personal language intended to shame Republicans into allowing public votes on measures that have public support but are fiercely opposed by the NRA.

On the other side, the NRA and its supporters in Congress say the Democratic proposals threaten the constitutional right to bear arms, and also offer ineffective responses intended as political show instead of real solutions to the problem of gun violence in America.

“On firearms questions, on Second Amendment questions, there’s a divide in this country,” NRA President David Keene told CNN. “To call it an ideological divide is too simple because it’s a cultural divide. When something happens, the folks on the other side from us say, ‘well the problem’s the gun, we need to do something about guns.’ ”

Failing to pass new gun laws would be a stinging defeat for Obama and Democrats.

However, a public perception that Republicans blocked popular proposals, such as expanding background checks, could harm GOP prospects in 2014 and 2016 among moderates they need in their corner to have any chance of countering strong support for Democrats by minority demographics such as Hispanic Americans, African Americans and the gay-lesbian vote.

A new national survey showed that 86% of Americans support some expansion of background checks.

At the same time, the CNN/ORC International poll released Wednesday also showed a majority of respondents fear that increased background checks would lead to a federal registry of gun owners that could allow the government to take away legally owned weapons.

Keene and other opponents worry that an expanded background check system would create a paper trail that could eventually be used to build a national gun registry, which they reject as unconstitutional.

They also contend it would prove a burden to law-abiding gun owners while doing nothing to stop criminals from getting hold of firearms.

“The one thing you know today is that if the government creates a record, it’s not secure,” Keene said, adding that requiring background checks on all gun sales — the so-called universal system — raised the question of “is it linked to a national registration scheme.”

According to a summary of the compromise proposal, it includes language that prohibits creation of a national gun registry or misusing information from background checks.

The high political stakes of the divisive gun law debate have bred hardball tactics and strategies.

The NRA has long kept a comprehensive scorecard of the voting records of legislators on gun issues, which it combines with campaign contributions to try to influence elections.

In response, a group led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Mayors Against Illegal Guns announced this week it was launching its own scorecard to identify members of Congress who vote against tougher gun laws.

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a package of gun laws proposed by Obama after the Newtown attack by a lone gunman.

Proposals in the committee’s package included expanding background checks on gun buyers, toughening laws against gun trafficking and straw purchases, banning semiautomatic rifles modeled after military assault weapons as well as large-capacity ammunition magazines, and coming up with ideas for improving school safety.

The weapons ban, which would update a similar 1994 law that expired a decade later, already has been dropped, though Reid has promised a floor vote on it as an amendment to the package.

Some states already have passed stricter gun laws similar to the federal proposals since the Newtown shootings. They include Connecticut, where the killings occurred, and Colorado, the site of two other notorious mass shootings that contributed to a renewed gun debate in America.

The current background check system was created in 1989. It requires federally approved gun dealers to check whether gun buyers have a criminal background or other problem to make them ineligible to purchase a firearm.

Under the system, the gun dealer maintains a record of the transaction, but the federal government keeps no such identifying paperwork.

According to a Justice Department report, less than 2% of those seeking to purchase firearms were denied because of background checks from 1998 through 2009.

Opponents cite that figure as evidence that the system fails to stop illegal weapons sales that the legislation seeks to target, while supporters say the result shows the system keeps some guns out of the hands of the wrong people and the system should be expanded and strengthened.

CNN’s Paul Courson, Ted Barrett, Paul Steinhauser and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.

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