WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama ordered $85 billion in budget cuts Friday that could slow the US economy and slash jobs, after blaming Republicans for refusing to stop the "dumb" spending cuts.
Obama complied with his legal obligations and initiated the automatic, across-the-board cuts in domestic and defence spending, following the failure of efforts to clinch a deal with Republicans on cutting the deficit.
- AFP/fa
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(CBS News) WASHINGTON - At his news conference Friday, President Obama was asked about his decision to get involved in the battle over same-sex marriage in California's ban on same-sex marriage. Late Thursday, the administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court, saying that California's ban on gays and lesbians marrying violates their constitutional rights.
"If the Supreme Court asks me or my attorney general or solicitor general, 'Do we think that meets constitutional muster?' -- I felt it was important for us to answer that question honestly. And the answer is no," said the president
CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford spoke with "Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley about the brief and its potential impact. A transcript of the conversation follows.
Obama: If I were on Supreme Court, I'd defend same-sex marriage
Obama administration urges Supreme Court to overturn Calif. same-sex marriage ban
Clint Eastwood signs pro-gay marriage brief
Scott Pelley: Jan, the court will hear arguments later this month that will impact all of this. I wonder what the president's comments today have to do with the case?
Jan Crawford: Well Scott, as the president said today,"I'm not a judge, I'm the president." His views carry no binding authority in the Supreme Court. Just because the administration is making this argument doesn't mean the court has to go along with it. The federal government is not directly involved in this case -- it's a challenge by same-sex couples in California to a California constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage. The administration chose to get involved to make a strong statement on gay rights that are reflected in his comments today. The brief in fact is more important politically and symbolically than legally.
Pelley: The case is centered on California. Could it have wider-ranging implications?
Crawford: Yes, it certainly could . Even though this case comes from California, it could have an enormous impact across the country. California is one of 30 states that has a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The decision could affect all of those laws -- that's more than half the states in this country. And if the Supreme Court agrees with the president -- that amendments like California's are unconstitutional -- many or all of those laws banning gay marriage could be in jeopardy.
President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.
President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.
He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.
But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.
"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."
READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester
Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.
Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.
The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.
"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."
The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.
The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.
"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."
Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester
Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.
Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."
But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.
"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."
Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?
The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama's administration threw its weight behind gay marriage on Thursday, urging the Supreme Court to strike down California's ban on same-sex unions.
The court is set to examine the issue on March 26, when it will study the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, a measure approved by a 2008 referendum that outlawed gay marriage in the most populous US state.
In a separate brief to the court concerning another case, the administration has asked justices to declare the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman -- unconstitutional.
The Justice Department filed the latest brief in support of moves to have the California measure overturned, arguing that it violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees citizens equal rights.
"The government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
"Throughout history, we have seen the unjust consequences of decisions and policies rooted in discrimination," he warned.
"The issues before the Supreme Court in this case... are not just important to the tens of thousands of Americans who are being denied equal benefits and rights under our laws, but to our nation as a whole."
The filing by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli is more narrowly focused on the California ban, and does not seek a ruling that would apply nationwide.
The administration's brief noted that seven other states -- Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island -- have measures that grant same-sex couples rights similar to those of married couples, while restricting marriage to heterosexual unions.
Those states would be affected by the California ruling.
The California law "provides to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners all the legal incidents of marriage, but it nonetheless denies them the designation of marriage, Verrilli wrote.
Therefore, "the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage does not substantially further any important governmental interest," he added.
Gay marriage opponents have seized upon the same similarities to claim there is no discrimination, saying California provides essentially the same rights and obligations of marriage to same-sex domestic partners.
Nine states and the US capital Washington currently allow gay marriage. The states include Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington.
The federal government is not a party in the case, but its friend-of-the-court brief marked a victory for gay rights groups challenging the California law.
The White House's support had been expected since Obama shifted his stance on the same-sex marriage question before his re-election last year.
"President Obama and the solicitor general have taken another historic step forward consistent with the great civil rights battles of our nation's history," said Chad Griffin, head of Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.
"The president has turned the inspirational words of his second inaugural address into concrete action by urging our nation's highest court to put an end to discrimination against loving, committed gay and lesbian couples."
Obama last month made the first-ever direct reference to gay rights in an inaugural address, saying: "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law.
"For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."
- AFP/ck
In its latest salvo against the financial industry, Anonymous claims to have leaked sensitive information related to Bank of America executives and the company's alleged effort to "spy and collect information on private citizens."
Par:AnoIA, a group that identifies itself as the Anonymous Intelligence Agency, said in a press release (PDF) yesterday that it had released 14 gigabytes of data on hundreds of thousands of executives at companies around the world, including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and TEKSystems, which the hackvisit collective claims was hired last year to spy on hackers and social activists.
The group says the data was not acquired during a hack but rather was retrieved from an unsecured server in Israel.
"The source of this release has confirmed that the data was not acquired by a hack but because it was stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs," Par:AnoIA said. "Looking at the data it becomes clear that Bank of America, TEKSystems, and others (see origins of reports) gathered information on Anonymous and other activists' movement on various social-media platforms and public Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels."
The documents leaked by Anonymous include "intelligence" reports allegedly compiled by TEKSystems on "daily cyber threats" from around the world and Internet activity related to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The group said the data retrieved revealed research methodology that was "sloppy, random, and valueless."
"Apparently a keyword list was used to match for items of interest on IRC, Twitter, and other social media," the press release said. "While the list has over 10,000 entries, only 1,125 keywords seem to be genuine, the rest are simply Wikipedia references."
CNET has contacted Bank of America for comment and will update this report when we learn more.
The data dump comes three weeks after the U.S. Federal Reserve confirmed that one of its internal Web sites had been hacked, a breach that appears to have occurred around the same time that Anonymous published log-in and private information from more than 4,000 U.S. bank executive accounts.
Bank of America raised the ire of Anonymous in 2010 when it announced that it would no longer process payments for WikiLeaks. Earlier moves by MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal resulted in retaliatory cyberattacks by the hacker group.
(CBS News) WASHINGTON - In a surprise Thursday, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning pleaded guilty to ten criminal counts in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history. Manning sent files to the website Wikileaks. He still faces trial on more serious charges.
Along with the guilty pleas, Manning gave his first detailed explanation of why he did it.
Reading from a 35-page statement, the Army private said he wanted the world to know the truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Depressed and frustrated by the wars, he used his job as a low-ranking intelligence analyst in Baghdad to download onto a CD hundreds of thousands of classified documents -- pus a few videos, one of which depict a helicopter gunship attack that killed two journalists in Iraq, which he found "troubling" because it showed "delightful bloodlust."
Judge accepts Manning's guilty pleas in WikiLeaks case
Manning's sexual orientation discussed in court
Describing himself as a misfit in the military, Manning told the judge he first contacted The Washington Post but didn't think the reporter took him seriously; then called The New York Times' tip line but never heard back.
He was home on leave during a blizzard, which paralyzed Washington, and left him stranded at his aunt's house when he decided to send the material to WikiLeaks, the website which had a reputation for exposing secrets.
He included a brief note, ending with "Have a good day," and went back to Iraq with "a sense of relief" and "a clear conscience."
Despite pleading guilty to some of the charges, Manning still faces a court martial and possible life sentence for allegedly aiding the enemy.
Prosecution attorneys have said they intend to show that some of the leaked documents were found by Navy SEALs in their raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout. According to a military attorney, the prosecution does not have to prove Manning intended for the documents to end up in enemy hands -- only that he knew it might happen.
Manning testified that no one at WikiLeaks pressured him for more documents and that he knew what he did was wrong.
Accused murderer Jodi Arias was forced to recount today each detail of how she killed her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, including re-enacting how he allegedly tackled her when she shot him, leaving her crying in her hands on the witness stand.
During hours of dramatic cross-examination by prosecutor Juan Martinez, Arias bawled as he asked her about stabbing, slashing and shooting Alexander on June 4, 2008.
"You would acknowledge that Mr. Alexander was stabbed, and that the stabbing was with the knife, and it was after the shooting according to you, right?" Martinez said in rapid succession.
"Yes, I don't remember," Arias said, covering her face with her hands.
"Do you acknowledge the stab wounds, and we can count them together, were to the back of the head and the torso?" Martinez said, flashing a photo of Alexander's bloodied body onto the courtroom projector. " Do you want to take a look at the photo?"
Arias, burying her face in her hands and shutting her eyes on the stand, mumbled, "No."
Alexander's sisters, seated in the front row of the gallery, also looked away, crying.
Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander on June 4, 2008 out of jealousy. He was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head twice.
Arias claims she killed in self-defense after Alexander had become increasingly violent with her. She could face the death penalty if convicted.
Martinez also forced Arias to demonstrate in court today how she claims Alexander lunged at her "like a linebacker," causing her to fire the gun at him. The pair argued over how exactly Alexander was positioned, and Martinez pushed her to explain what she meant.
"He lunges at me like a linebacker," Arias said.
"Like a linebacker, what does that mean?" Martinez asked.
"He was low. It was almost like he dove," she said, and trying to explain it further, added, "He was like a linebacker is the only way I can describe it unless I get up to act it out which I'd rather not do."
Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage
Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial
"Go ahead and do it," Martinez said. "Just stand. Go ahead."
Judge Sherry Stephens initially cleared the court as Arias demonstrated and then Martinez had her do it again after the jury and spectators were allowed back into the courtroom.
Standing and moving away from the witness box, Arias bent at the waist and spread out her arms and meekly made a slight lunging motion.
According to her testimony, Arias fired the gun as Alexander rushed at her, tackling her to the ground. She said she does not remember how she stabbed or slashed him.
It was a day of dramatics and anger as the prosecution pressed Arias on the details of the killing, with Martinez ending the afternoon of questioning by accusing Arias of lying throughout her direct testimony.
At one point Arias dissolved into tears, unable to answer pointed questions when shown a photo of Alexander's body lying crumpled in the bottom of the stall shower.
After a short pause, Martinez asked dryly, "Were you crying when you were shooting him?"
"I don't remember," Arias moaned.
"Were you crying when you stabbed him?" he said. "How about when you slashed his throat?"
"I don't remember, I don't know."
Martinez pressed on, "You're the one that did this right? And lied about all this right?"
"Yes."
"So then take a look at it," he barked.
Arias did not answer Martinez's question, crying into her hands instead. The judge, after a moment, called for the lunch recess to take a break from the testimony. Arias' attorney walked over and consoled her, telling her to "take a moment."
Until that moment, Arias had given vague answers to Martinez as he asked about the hours leading up to the murder. Arias, 32, has testified that she drove to Alexander's house on June 4, 2008, for a sexual liaison, that she had sex with Alexander and the pair took nude photos before an explosive confrontation ended with her killing him. She claims she doesn't remember stabbing Alexander, but insists it was in self-defense.
Martinez questioned her claims, asking exactly what they argued about and who encouraged whom to take the nude photos. He pointed out that Arias told Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa police department that she had to convince Alexander to take the nude photos in the shower, but that she testified on the stand that Alexander had wanted them.
TOKYO: Japan's coastguard said three Chinese surveillance ships were in the territorial waters of disputed islands in the East China Sea on Thursday.
The three marine surveillance ships entered the 12-nautical-mile territorial zone off Uotsuri, one of the islands, shortly after 7:00 am (2200 GMT Wednesday), the Japan Coast Guard said in a statement.
Beijing claims the Japanese-controlled islands, called the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyus in China.
The move was the latest in a series by Chinese government ships since Tokyo nationalised three islands in the chain in September, in what it said was merely an administrative change of ownership. The action sparked fierce protests in China.
- AFP/ck
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