U.S. justice denounces prosecutor's racially charged question

(Reuters) - Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday condemned racially charged language used by a federal prosecutor in Texas.

The justice, appointed to the court by President Barack Obama in 2009, took the relatively unusual step of writing a statement to accompany the nine-member Supreme Court's announcement that it would not take up a criminal case.

Sotomayor took issue with the question asked by the prosecutor, identified in the trial transcript as Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Ponder.

While questioning an African-American defendant in a drug case, Ponder asked: "You've got African-Americans, you've got Hispanics, you've got a bag full of money. Does that tell you - a light bulb doesn't go off in your head and say, this is a drug deal?"

The first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor wrote that the prosecutor had "tapped a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our nation."

The question was "pernicious in its attempt to substitute racial stereotype for evidence," she added. Sotomayor also accused the Obama administration of playing down the issue.

The defendant in the case, Bongani Charles Calhoun, wanted the Supreme Court to order a retrial because he said his right to a fair trial was violated when the question was asked. He was convicted of three offenses over his role in a drug conspiracy.

Initially, the administration declined to file a response to Calhoun's claim, indicating government lawyers did not think it merited attention.

"I hope never to see a case like this again," Sotomayor wrote.

Justice Stephen Breyer signed on to Sotomayor's statement.

Reached by telephone on Monday, Ponder declined to comment.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, where Ponder is listed as working, said the matter had been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles allegations of attorney misconduct. He declined to comment further.

Tom Moran, the Houston-based lawyer who filed Calhoun's Supreme Court petition, said Sotomayor's statement should be taken to heart by other prosecutors.

Moran said Ponder "got slapped around pretty good" by the justice.

The Supreme Court did not take up the case on Monday, because Calhoun had failed to raise his argument earlier in the appeals process, as required under the law, Sotomayor wrote.

At trial, Calhoun's argument was that although he was present when federal agents arrested him and several other men, he was unaware of the illegal activity.

The case is Calhoun v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, 12-6142.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Mohammad Zargham)

Republican Senator McCain says Hagel not qualified as defense secretary

(Reuters) - Republican Senator John McCain on Sunday said his former colleague Chuck Hagel was not qualified to be U.S. defense secretary but the Senate would likely vote on his nomination rather than hold it up with procedural hurdles.

Before going on a weeklong recess, Republican lawmakers succeeded in delaying a Senate vote on Hagel's nomination earlier this month. Hagel is expected to win confirmation if a vote is held because Democrats control 55 votes in the 100-seat Senate.

"I do not believe that Chuck Hagel, who is a friend of mine, is qualified to be secretary of defense," McCain of Arizona said on CNN's "State of the Union" show.

"I believe that when the questions are answered, and I believe they will be by this coming week that the president deserves an up or down vote" on Hagel, said McCain, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Hagel's nomination was likely to go for a vote in the Senate "barring some additional revelation," he said.

Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, angered Republicans when as senator he broke from his party by opposing former President George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

Republicans are demanding more information from the administration related to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, last year.

The Senate confirmation vote on John Brennan for CIA director also faces delay over the request by Republicans for more information related to Benghazi.

"I don't want to put a hold on anybody, but the American people deserve answers about Benghazi. There are so many questions that are still out there, including what was the president doing the night Benghazi happened?" McCain said.

(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Kerry makes first foreign trip as top U.S. diplomat

(Reuters) - John Kerry views his first trip as U.S. secretary of state as a listening tour, but the leaders he meets will want to hear whether he has any new ideas on Syria, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kerry arrived on Sunday in London, the first stop on a nine-nation, 11-day trip that will also take him to Berlin, Paris, Rome, Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha before he returns home on March 6.

After talks with allies in London, Berlin and Paris, the centerpiece of Kerry's European tour is a visit to Rome where he hopes to meet members of the Syrian opposition as well as a wider group of nations seeking to support them in their nearly two-year quest to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Those talks, however, appeared to be in some doubt as a result of dissension within the opposition about the utility of such international meetings given the continuing violence.

Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war in the last 22 months since fighting broke out between rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and government forces and allied militias.

"The Syrian opposition leadership is under severe pressure now from its membership, from the Syrian people, to get more support from the international community and in that context there's quite a bit of internal discussion about the value of going to international conferences," the official told reporters travelling with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

"The point that we're trying to make ... is that they have an opportunity in Rome with the meeting that the Italians have offered to host to see the very countries that have been their greatest supporters," the official said.

President Barack Obama has limited U.S. support to non-lethal aid for the rebels who, despite receiving weapons from countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are poorly armed compared to Assad's army and loyalist militias.

U.S. officials travelling with Kerry declined to say what new thoughts he may have on ending the violence.

They also said they did not expect any breakthroughs in Berlin on Tuesday when he meets Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia, which along with China has blocked U.N. Security Council resolutions to sanction the Assad government.

Russia has said that insisting on Assad's departure as a condition for peace negotiations between the government and the opposition would prevent such talks from ever taking place. The opposition, backed by the United States and much of Europe, has made plain Assad can play no role in a future Syrian government.

"We are not expecting this meeting to be a big breakthrough either, but we're going to keep working it," a second senior U.S. official told reporters with Kerry.

IRAN TALKS

Kerry makes his first foreign trip as senior U.S. diplomats, along with counterparts from Britain,China, France, Germany and Russia, will meet Iranian officials on Tuesday in Kazakhstan in an effort to persuade Iran to curtail its nuclear program.

The United States and many of its allies suspect Iran may be using its civil nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons, a possibility that Israel, which is regarded as the Middle East's only nuclear power, sees as an existential threat.

Iran says its program is solely for peaceful purposes, such as generating electricity and making medical isotopes.

Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution think-tank said Saudi King Abdullah would regard himself, rather than Kerry, as the listening party and want to hear of any new U.S. approaches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran and other issues.

"There is not a high level of expectation that it is going to be able to break the logjam on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, get Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program and topple Bashar al-Assad," he added. "The Saudis will understand that Kerry will try to put a new face on policies which are now pretty well known but they will be looking for what's new."

(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Paul Simao and Stephen Powell)

In South Carolina, disgraced former governor seeks a resurrection

(Reuters) - The appearance by a candidate for South Carolina's 1st Congressional District here last week was delayed. The event's co-host, an undertaker, had been detained at his funeral home by an unexpected "delivery."

A couple of people in the audience laughed as they realized what sort of delivery a funeral home receives. Questions of life and death seemed oddly appropriate because the afternoon's guest of honor was a man who is trying to undergo a political resurrection: former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

As governor in early 2009, Sanford - a tanned conservative Republican who preached limited government - was widely seen as a potential candidate for president in 2012.

But then he disappeared for six days in June 2009, without telling his family or staff. It turned out he was in Argentina, visiting a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. The episode destroyed Sanford's marriage and earned him a censure from state legislators who agreed that he had brought "dishonor, disgrace and shame" to South Carolina.

And that, it seemed, was the end of the Mark Sanford story.

He served out his term as governor but left office in January 2011 and headed for his family's farm in Beaufort, South Carolina. He became a footnote in a state whose recent political history has been shaped by the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement and the legacy of the late Strom Thurmond, a one-time segregationist and governor who served in the U.S. Senate for nearly a half-century.

Now Sanford, 52, is back - in search of a dramatic comeback by running for the same congressional seat that he won almost two decades ago, before he was governor.

In talking about putting his life back together, Sanford gives off new-age vibrations. During an interview with Reuters, he seemed well-versed in the language of recovery and often referred to his "inner journey."

Even without Sanford and reminders of his scandal, the race has the makings of spectacle: It features 16 candidates in the Republican primary on March 19, including Robert "Teddy" Turner, the rebel conservative son of Ted Turner, the liberal cable television billionaire.

For Sanford, it was a surprising opportunity created by the unexpected retirement of U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, which caused a shift in the state's Republican leadership. Governor Nikki Haley appointed Representative Tim Scott to fill DeMint's seat. The opening of Scott's seat gave Sanford a chance to return to public life that Sanford said he found irresistible.

Given that voters are familiar with Sanford - some of whom have cast ballots for him five times - most analysts expect Sanford to outlast the Republican field, even in a district where some religious conservatives could find it hard to forgive him.

Many of the 15 other Republicans concede that they are hoping to finish second to Sanford, then have other candidates' supporters rally around them (and against the former governor) in a primary run-off vote.

There is another twist: The Republican primary winner is likely to face on May 7 in a special election Democrat Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, an official at Clemson University and sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, who has been known to bring his antics into South Carolina politics. Colbert was scheduled to join his sister at fundraisers in New York and South Carolina this weekend.

The conservative district has sent a Republican to Congress since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. So most political analysts in South Carolina expect Sanford to eventually win back his old congressional seat despite his scandal and a celebrity presence on the Democratic side.

But first, Sanford is making the case that he has learned from his fall and moved past his mistakes.

During a coffee gathering on Thursday, Sanford pointed to a woman in the audience he had talked with earlier.

"She said, ‘Mark, quit apologizing,' " Sanford recalled. "I know I need to do that. She said, ‘You did that on the first day. People got that. You need to move on.' And I said, ‘Indeed, I do.' "

HIS ‘INNER JOURNEY'

During the interview, Sanford said the past few years have changed him for the better.

After confessing to cheating on his wife, he was stripped of his position atop the Republican Governors Association. Six months later, his wife divorced him. He is now engaged to Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine journalist whom Sanford called his "soulmate" during a news conference after the scandal broke, and for whom Sanford gave up his old life.

Meanwhile, Sanford's ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, who used to manage his campaigns, published a memoir titled "Staying True."

After leaving the governor's office and returning to his farm, Sanford said he spent time building a bridge, a cabin and barn with his four sons. He showed off a bruised fingernail, which he said was caused by a falling plank of wood.

"In the wake of so much destruction, I wanted to construct," he said in the interview.

Sanford's longtime friend Tom Davis, his former chief of staff, said that Sanford's time in near-isolation was "Thoreauvian," comparing the former governor's days on the farm to the writer Henry David Thoreau's psychologically therapeutic years living near Walden Pond in Massachusetts in the 1850s.

Sanford seems to agree.

"I said to a buddy, 'You know, I'm becoming a Buddhist Christian,' which is sort of a weird way of putting it, but you know Buddhism focuses on the moment," Sanford said. "I think that ... Western society achievers, whatever your walk of life, are always focused on the next step."

For the most part, Sanford leaves his personal life out of the campaign. He thinks that voters are willing to do the same - even as some opponents' ads have questioned his honesty.

"I've experienced how none of us go through life without mistakes," Sanford said in his first campaign ad released this week. "But in their wake, we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances, and be the better for it."

One voter who heard Sanford speak on Thursday in Charleston said that times had changed, particularly among South Carolina Republicans who voted for former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich in last year's Republican presidential primary.

Many people in the state backed Gingrich despite fresh allegations that Gingrich had once asked a former wife for an open marriage. Gingrich supporters said they were less concerned with Gingrich's personal life than his politics, and that they favored him as a more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, the Republicans' eventual nominee for president.

But, "if it had been 25 years ago ... good Lord," said Anne Keigher, 75, an architect from Charleston.

At a time when Washington is viewed by voters as a politically gridlocked failure, Sanford talks about his three terms as a congressman as a success.

He also says he was railing about government spending before it was stylish. His sunny disposition can turn apocalyptic when he talks about debt and the value of the U.S. dollar.

'I BLEED'

The unfolding drama in Washington over taxes, debt and spending seemed a bit distant, however, when Sanford and 12 other Republican candidates appeared Thursday at a Golden Corral restaurant in Blufton. Each was given five minutes to make a case to members of the Beaufort County Republican Club.

Sanford did not mention his family nor the scandal that put him in national headlines. He did brag about shortening the wait times at the state Department of Motor Vehicles as governor.

Some of Sanford's rivals are frustrated by the attention he gets. One candidate refused to answer questions about Sanford. Another dismissed the "air of celebrity" surrounding the race.

One challenger, Andy Patrick, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who praised his rivals for their conservative values, has sent out a mailer to voters attacking Sanford.

"Many will forgive," it reads, "But how can we forget? Mark Sanford. The trust is gone."

After the turmoil of the last four years, is Sanford comfortable with the attacks that are coming his way?

"No," Sanford said in the interview. "I'm a human being. I bleed."

(Editing by David Lindsey and Cynthia Osterman)

Justices poised to query voting rights focus on South

(Reuters) - When the Supreme Court last scrutinized the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2009, Justice Anthony Kennedy peered down from the bench and asked why federal rules were tougher for Alabama and Georgia than for Michigan and Ohio.

Chief Justice John Roberts pointedly added that it seemed lawyers defending the rules, which were created to protect black voters, believed that even in modern times "southerners are more likely to discriminate than northerners."

Now four years later, as the landmark law faces another challenge, the skepticism of Roberts and of Kennedy, often the decisive vote on racial dilemmas, is likely to emerge with even greater force.

In the dispute to be heard on Wednesday, the crucial issue is whether Congress may continue to require certain states, mainly in the South, to show that any proposed election-law change would not discriminate against African-American, Latino or other minority voters.

The screening provision known as Section 5 is one of the pillars of the law passed after the notorious "Bloody Sunday" on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, when state troopers attacked civil rights marchers with clubs and tear gas. The act broadly prohibited poll taxes, literacy tests and other rules depriving blacks of the franchise. In the 1960s, such measures existed throughout the nation but were especially common in the South with its legacy of slavery.

The modern relevance of the issues was underscored in the 2012 presidential election campaign when courts nationwide heard civil-rights challenges to newly adopted state voting-districts, voter identification laws, and polling-place limits, for example on hours of early voting. The most restrictive laws ended up being blocked before the November elections.

As the 2009 remarks of Kennedy, Roberts and other justices signaled, the conservative Supreme Court majority is skeptical that today's South still needs special oversight. The new case from Shelby County, Ala., is likely to come down to whether Congress documented sufficient evidence in its 2006 renewal of the law to justify treating different locales differently.

The Obama administration is defending the provision, asserting that the South still needs tough supervision. The court's ruling in one of the most closely watched cases this term could affect federal oversight of a swath of states through 2031 as well as the extent of minority participation in elections in crucial jurisdictions.

Nine designated states (and parts of seven others) must obtain federal approval before making any election-law changes, such as for voter-identification rules or in district boundaries. The nine fully covered states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Conservative advocates and southern officials who have banded together against Section 5 say it is an archaic measure that encroaches on state sovereignty. The U.S. government, backed by civil rights groups, counters that in the case of Shelby County v. Holder that Congress has rightly continued to single out places with the worst bias.

In 2009, the Supreme Court avoided the large question about the scope of Congress's power to remedy discrimination and decided the case from Texas on narrow grounds. But Chief Justice Roberts fired a warning shot about how the court might ultimately rule when he wrote, "Things have changed in the South. Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels."

In his brief for the Obama administration defending Section 5, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli acknowledged that "there is no question that ‘things have changed in the South' since 1965." But Verrilli stressed that Congress found that states covered by Section 5 were still resisting minority voters' "right to participate in the political process."

He pointed to a federal court's decision last year that Texas legislators had redrawn voting districts along racial lines and disadvantaged minority voters. In separate 2012 actions, judges blocked Texas from imposing a tough voter-ID rule and Florida locales from curtailing an early-voting period. Critics of Section 5 note, however, that in 2012 northern states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania tried to impose voting restrictions that were rejected by courts.

PERPETRATORS TO VICTIMS

When Congress first adopted Section 5 in 1965, it wanted to prevent places with a history of bias from continually imposing new rules that would keep blacks from the polls. As the court observed when it upheld the law against its first challenge, in 1966, Congress found case-by-case litigation costly and inadequate to stop abuses. Congress sought "to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims," the court observed.

As Congress has repeatedly renewed Section 5, it has retained a coverage formula linked to discriminatory practices of the 1960s and early 1970s. But it has allowed jurisdictions that can show a new, clean record to "bail out" and has extended coverage beyond those states originally covered.

In Shelby County's appeal to the Supreme Court, lawyer Bert Rein says Section 5 and its coverage formula achieved their goals and that Congress failed to document in 2006 the kind of systematic obstruction that originally warranted tough scrutiny.

Still, in Alabama, the U.S. Justice Department has repeatedly and recently blocked proposed electoral changes. One 2008 incident occurred in Shelby County when the city of Calera implemented a redistricting plan that caused the one African American on the city council to lose his seat. After the Justice Department forced Calera to redraw the map with fairer lines, he won his election.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer Debo Adegbile will represent that council member, Ernest Montgomery, and other Shelby County African Americans, on Wednesday.

Adegbile was at the lectern in 2009, on behalf of African Americans in that Texas case, when Chief Justice Roberts said it appeared the message of Section 5's defenders was that "southerners are more likely to discriminate than northerners."

Adegbile said then, and insists today, that it's not that discrimination does not happen outside Section 5's covered states but that repetitive violations are concentrated in those within its scope. "Voting discrimination continues," Adegbile told Reuters in a recent interview, "particularly in Alabama, and indeed Shelby County's own recent record proves that point."

(Editing by Howard Goller and Eric Walsh)

Senate panel to vote on U.S. Treasury nominee this week

(Reuters) - A Senate panel will vote this week on the nomination of Jack Lew to be U.S. treasury secretary, the committee said on Sunday.

The Senate Finance Committee will meet on Tuesday to vote on Lew, President Barack Obama's pick to replace Timothy Geithner at Treasury, said the panel's chairman, Max Baucus.

At a hearing earlier this month Lew defused heated questions from lawmakers about his work at Citigroup, paving the way for his expected confirmation by the full Senate.

The committee will also vote on Tuesday on the nominations of William Schultz to be general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and Christopher Meade to be general counsel of the Treasury Department, the panel said.

(Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Eric Beech)

Kerry to visit Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Gulf on first trip

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19, 2013 (Reuters) — Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to four Western European countries as well as Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf from February 24 to March 6 on his first trip as the top U.S. diplomat, the State Department said on Tuesday.



Kerry will visit London, Berlin, Paris and Rome, where he will attend a gathering of foreign ministers to discuss the civil war in Syria, and then on to Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at her daily briefing.

Kerry was sworn in as secretary of state on February 1, replacing Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Will Dunham)

Four dead, including gunman, in California shooting frenzy

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 19, 2013 (Reuters) — A gunman on a shooting rampage in southern California killed three people on Tuesday in an attack at a home and three carjackings, before killing himself with a shotgun as officers closed in, police said.



The rolling spate of violence, which saw at least one execution-style killing, spanned several miles across a number of communities in suburban Orange County, southeast of Los Angeles, including in the cities of Tustin and Santa Ana.

The violence again heightened nerves in southern California, just a week after a massive manhunt for a fugitive former Los Angeles policeman wanted in a series of shootings targeting officers and their families ended in a fiery standoff in the mountains above Los Angeles.

In Orange County, authorities first received a call on a shooting before dawn on Tuesday at a home in Ladera Ranch, 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, said Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino.

Officers arrived to find a woman shot to death. The gunman, who was in his 20s, fled the scene in a sport utility vehicle and headed to the city of Tustin, about 15 miles away, Amormino said.

The gunman committed his first carjacking in Tustin, near the 5 Freeway, where he shot and wounded a person, police said. That person is expected to survive, Amormino said.

Blocks away at an off-ramp for the 55 Freeway, on the border between Tustin and Santa Ana, he targeted a man with a BMW vehicle in a second carjacking, police said.

"He orders him out of the vehicle, walks him to the side of the curb and then executes our victim," said Santa Ana police spokesman Corporal Anthony Bretagna.

Behind the wheel of the BMW, the gunman drove back into Tustin where he committed another carjacking, killing one person and wounding another, police said.

At one point, the gunman also opened fire on a freeway, causing minor injuries to one person and damaging two cars, Tustin police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Garaven told reporters near a command post in his city.

Authorities said they were still investigating the motive of the gunman, who killed himself with a shotgun after officers pulled him over in his stolen vehicle in the nearby city of Orange, police said.

Police said they were still seeking to determine any possible relationship between the gunman, whose name has not been released, and the woman at the home in Ladera Ranch. None of the gunman's other victims knew him, Garaven said.

"We're still investigating how many victims we might have," Garaven said. He added that some more people or cars may have been hit when the gunman opened fire on the 55 Freeway.

Despite early reports he was using two so-called "long guns," which include weapons such as rifles, only the shotgun has been recovered so far and police said it was unclear if the attacker had another firearm.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Andrew Hay)

SEC sues over Heinz option trading before buyout

Feb. 15, 2013 (Reuters) — U.S. securities regulators filed suit on Friday against unknown traders in the options of ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co, alleging they traded on inside information before the company announced a deal to be acquired for $23 billion by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc and Brazil's 3G Capital.

The suit, in federal court in Manhattan, cites "highly suspicious trading" in Heinz call options just prior to the February 14 announcement of the deal. The regulator has frequently in past filed suit against unnamed individuals where it has evidence of wrongdoing, but is still trying to uncover the identities of those involved.

That trading, the suit said, caused the price of the particular call option they bought to soar 1,700 percent and generated unrealized profits of more than $1.7 million.

The regulator claims the traders are either in, or trading through accounts in, Zurich, Switzerland. The account had no history of trading in Heinz over the last six or so months.

It has also obtained an emergency order to freeze assets in the Swiss account linked to the trading. In the suit, the SEC refers to the account as the "GS Account" and in a statement Goldman Sachs Group Inc said it was cooperating with the regulator's investigation.

"Irregular and highly suspicious options trading immediately in front of a merger or acquisition announcement is a serious red flag that traders may be improperly acting on confidential nonpublic information," Daniel Hawke, chief of the SEC's Division of Enforcement's Market Abuse Unit said in a statement.

Representatives of Heinz and Berkshire Hathaway were unavailable for immediate comment. A 3G representative declined to comment. The founder of 3G, Jorge Paulo Lemann, is from Brazil, but has made a home in Switzerland since the 1990s. He has not been implicated in any wrongdoing related to the deal.

After the deal was revealed on Thursday, options market experts called Wednesday's trading "suspicious and incredibly well-timed." [ID:nL1N0BEBMR]

The suit marks the second time in less than six months that the SEC has taken action over a 3G acquisition. In September 2012, the regulator got a court order to freeze the assets of a Wells Fargo & Co stockbroker who allegedly traded on inside information about 3G's 2010 acquisition of Burger King.

In that case, the SEC said the stockbroker got the information from a client who had invested in one of 3G's funds.

The suit also marks the second time in two years that controversy has erupted over a Berkshire acquisition target.

In March 2011, Berkshire struck a deal to buy chemical company Lubrizol for $9 billion. Less than three weeks later, Berkshire said Buffett lieutenant David Sokol was resigning and disclosed he had been buying Lubrizol shares while pushing Buffett to acquire the company. The SEC dropped a probe into Sokol's trading earlier this year.

The suit is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Certain Unknown Traders in the Securities of H.J. Heinz Co, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-1080.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Bernard Vaughan.; Writing by Ben Berkowitz.; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Gregorio Tim Dobbyn and Andre Grenon)

President Obama honors six staff killed in Newtown school massacre

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2013 (Reuters) — President Barack Obama marked a poignant moment in his push to curb gun violence as he awarded presidential medals posthumously on Friday to six educators killed in the Newtown school massacre, saying they gave their lives to protect "the most innocent and helpless among us."


Consoling tearful relatives as they stepped on stage at the White House, Obama paid homage to the four teachers and two administrators killed in the December 14 shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, a tragedy that sparked nationwide calls for tighter gun control laws.

Though Obama made no public mention of his gun-control drive, the solemn ceremony unfolded against the backdrop of vocal resistance from gun advocates and their supporters on Capitol Hill to any new restrictions. In private, however, the president was said to have assured victims' relatives: "We're really trying to get something done."

As Obama handed out the Presidential Citizens Medals, the nation's second-highest civilian honor, he focused on the slain women's courage. Twenty first-graders were also killed in the attack, which was carried out by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

They came to school that morning with "no idea that evil was about to strike," Obama told the audience. "And when it did they could have taken shelter by themselves, they could have focused on their own safety, on their own well-being, but they didn't."

"They gave their lives to protect the precious children in their care and gave all they had for the most innocent and helpless among us. That's what we honor today."

Obama, who has called the day of the mass shooting the worst of his presidency, is moving swiftly to try to build momentum for gun control legislation. He even used his otherwise policy-heavy State of the Union address on Tuesday night to make an impassioned appeal for lawmakers to act.

But he faces an uphill battle against a powerful pro-gun lobby and a strong U.S. tradition of hunting and gun ownership. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Principal Dawn Hochsprung, school psychologist Mary Sherlach and teachers Rachel D'Avino, Lauren Rousseau, Anne Marie Murphy and Victoria Soto were killed in the attack.

SPECIAL ATTENTION TO NEWTOWN FAMILIES

At the same time as Obama paid tribute to the Sandy Hook educators, he honored a dozen other Americans in fields that included child development, gay rights, military veterans assistance, immigrant outreach and helping disabled women. They were selected from among nearly 6,000 nominations.

But he gave special attention to the Newtown victims, wrapping mothers and daughters in his arms as the families stood one-by-one to accept the medals.

Hochsprung's mother wiped away tears as she was handed the award. The 47-year-old principal was shot dead reportedly when she sought to confront the shooter after hearing gunshots.

D'Avino's sister, Sarah, who recounted Obama's closed-door comment, said his meeting with the families contrasted with his visit to grief-stricken Newtown in December in the aftermath of the massacre, when he carefully avoided discussing the fraught politics of gun control.

"What he said today is that we're really trying for you," she told reporters after the ceremony in the East Room. Her 29-year-old sister provided behavioral therapy at the school.

D'Avino acknowledged the political hurdles but insisted they could be overcome.

"I don't think anyone is insinuating we're trying to take away every single gun in the country. But there is no reason this kid was able to fire off as many rounds as he did, in as little time as he did," she said. "Nobody is protecting their home with a Bushmaster and a 30-round clip, I'm sorry. They are not."

Sherlach's husband Bill blew a kiss toward the heavens and patted his heart as he stood with Obama. "There needs to be a number of things addressed - gun safety, mental health, school safety and parenting," he said later outside the White House.

With a packed second-term agenda that includes immigration reform and climate change, Obama - who has pledged to use the full power of his office to secure tougher gun laws - is seeking progress on the issue before painful memories of December's shooting fade from the public's consciousness.

His push for reinstatement of a ban on assault rifles is seen as possibly the toughest sell in a country where many Americans see gun control as an infringement of their rights.

Obama's call for criminal background checks for all gun buyers is seen having the best chance of winning over Republicans, but that proposal also faces opposition.

The influential National Rifle Association has launched a major advertising campaign against Obama's gun proposals and deployed its lobbyists in force on Capitol Hill.

By Matt Spetalnick
and Margaret Chadbourn

(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Vicki Allen and David Brunnstrom)

White People Have to Give Up Racism

Last week, I argued that a repeal of so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws and the outlawing of racial profiling are necessary but insufficient to prevent murders like that of Trayvon Martin. On Twitter, someone asked me, “What’s your solution?” My short answer: white people have to give up racism.

As complicated an issue as race has become in the United States, that might sound like an overly simplistic answer, but it’s the root of it all. While we’ve all come up internalizing racism, since it’s all around us, only one group of people actually benefits from its existence. Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils. If you’re white, you can be completely oblivious, passively accepting the status quo, and reap the rewards.

Over time, those living on the other side, whether black, Latino, Asian, or Native American, have fought back and shamed white people into sharing the power and the spoils of capitalism. A few people of color have managed to achieve levels of success, as we typically define it, that rival their white counterparts. So, a popular narrative has become, “These few tokens beat the odds, why can’t all of you?” In fact, no one defeats racism; they just succeed in spite of it. But most don’t.

No, it’s not the job of people of color to win over racism, it’s the responsibility of white people to abandon it altogether. We’ve reached a point here in America, though, where we believe the worst of racism is over and the remaining animus is either not worth mentioning or dying off. Neither is true. Racism is the foundation; it literally built this country. It’s going to keep showing up. Denying that doesn’t solve the problem, it exacerbates it, making it so we can’t ever achieve real solutions.

Then Trayvon dies, or Rodrigo Diaz dies, or we debate protecting Native American women from sexual assault, and the promise of America doesn’t match up to the reality. But we've accepted the falsehood of equal opportunity. We’re a nation constantly lying to ourselves instead bettering ourselves.

So my solution? White people have to let go of racism. From the avowed racist, to the anti-racist activists, to the “I’m not a racist, I have two black friends” folks, to the “I don’t see color” people and everyone else between or on the margins. It has to be a concerted effort on the part of white people to actively reject racist beliefs, thoughts and actions.

Your next question is probably, "How?” Listening to people of color, earnestly, is a start. We’ve been at this a long time, shouting about where injustice lives, but white people’s response has often been reminiscent of a popular Jay-Z lyric: "We don’t believe you, you need more people." And then, when a white person has a “Black Like Me” moment—experiencing the type of discrimination typically reserved for people of color—white people are suddenly outraged. It would be laughable if it weren’t so insulting. Our stories are real. We have lived them and then recorded them, not because it’s fun to do so, but to draw attention to where change is needed. All white people have to do is listen.

Which brings me to another point and general pet peeve of mine: white people have to diversify their media consumption. Even the most liberal and noble anti-racists can be guilty on this one. A few prominent, usually very bright, but generally non-threatening folks of color become the cherry-picked spokespeople for the entire media world, knowing they could never adequately represent the complexity of the group to which they’re assigned. Yet, white people turn to them as the Yoda of all things race-related at the expense of deepening their understanding. People of color have been locked out of mainstream media outlets for so long, we started making our own out of necessity (Ebony, Latino, PODER, Essence magazines, as well as many online spaces). Vital conversations often take place there about the ways in which we experience the world. White people should check them out.

Before that, though, the chief job should be admitting there is a problem. White people have to name it, and it can’t be a cutesy euphemism that dodges the issue. We don’t have a “race problem,” we aren’t struggling with “race relations,” no one has been a victim of “reverse racism.” Let’s try this: “The United States is a racist country and because of that, I, as a white person, am the beneficiary of power and privileges that have an adverse effect on citizens of color.” There’s no shame in admitting such. It’s just a necessary starting point.

From there, I don’t know what happens. We’ve never tried to develop public policy alongside good faith actors who were actually invested in eliminating racism. No one knows what that looks like. Some of us would like to give a shot.

The US government should answer for the violence it has unleashed, from Chicago to Yemen, Mychal Denzel Smith writes.

The Biggest Republican Lie

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) says Senate Republicans will unanimously support a balanced-budget amendment, to be unveiled Wednesday as the core of the GOP’s fiscal agenda.

There’s no chance of passage so why are Republicans pushing it now? “Just because something may not pass doesn’t mean that the American people don’t expect us to stand up and be counted for the things that we believe in,” says McConnnell.

The more honest explanation is that a fight over a balanced-budget amendment could get the GOP back on the same page — reuniting Republican government-haters with the Party’s fiscal conservatives. And it could change the subject away from  social issues — women’s reproductive rights, immigration, gay marriage – that have split the Party and cost it many votes.

It also gives the Party something to be for, in contrast to the upcoming fights in which its members will be voting againstcompromises to avoid the next fiscal cliff, continue funding the government, and raising the debt ceiling.

Perhaps most importantly, it advances the Republican’s biggest economic lie – that the budget deficit is “the transcendent issue of our time,” in McConnell’s words, and that balancing the budget will solve America’s economic problems.

Big lies can do great damage in a democracy. This one could help Republicans in their coming showdowns. But it could keep the economy in first gear for years, right up through the 2014 midterm elections, maybe all the way to the next presidential election.

Perhaps this has occurred to McConnell and other Republicans.

Here’s the truth: After the housing bubble burst, American consumers had to pull in their belts so tightly that consumption plummeted – which in turn fueled unemployment. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity in the U.S. No business can keep people employed without enough customers, and none will hire people back until consumers return.

That meant government had to step in as consumer of last resort – which it did, but not enough to make up for the gaping shortfall in consumer demand.

The result has been one of the most anemic recoveries on record. In the three years after the Great Recession ended, economic growth averaged only 2.2 percent per year. In the last quarter of 2012 the economy contracted. Almost no one believes it will grow much more than 2 percent this year.

In the wake of the previous ten recessions the U.S. economy grew twice as fast on average — 4.6 percent per year. It used to be that the deeper the recession, the faster the bounce back. The Great Depression bottomed out in 1933. In 1934, the economy grew more than 8 percent; in 1935, 8.2 percent; in 1936, almost 14 percent.  

Not this time. Unemployment is still sky high. The current official rate of 7.9 percent doesn’t include 8 million people (5.6 percent of the workforce) working part-time who’d rather be working full time. Nor those too discouraged even to look for work. The ratio of workers to non-workers in the adult population is lower than any time in the last thirty years – and that’s hardly explained by boomer retirements.

Wages continue to drop because the only way many Americans can find (or keep) jobs is by settling for lower pay. Most new jobs created since the depth of the Great Recession pay less than the jobs that were lost. That’s why the real median wage is now 8 percent below what it was in 2000 

Republicans who say the budget deficit is responsible for this are living on another planet. Consumers still don’t have the jobs and wages, nor ability to borrow, they had before the recession. So their belts are still tight. To make matters worse, the temporary cut in Social Security taxes ended January 1, subtracting an additional $1,000 from the typical American paycheck. Sales taxes are increasing in many states.

Under these circumstances, government deficits are not a problem. To the contrary, they’re now essential. (Yes, we have to bring down the long-term deficit, but that’s mostly a matter of reining in rising healthcare costs – which, incidentally, are beginning to slow.)

If Republicans paid attention they’d see how fast the deficit is already shrinking. It was 8.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 2011. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts it will shrivel to 5.3 percent by the end of 2013 if we go over the fiscal cliff on March 1 — and some $85 billion is cut from this year’s federal budget. Even if March’s fiscal cliff is avoided, the CBO expects the deficit to shrink to 5.5 percent of the GDP, in light of deficit reduction already scheduled to occur.

This is not something to celebrate. It translates into a significant drop in demand, with nothing to pick up the slack.

Look what happened in the fourth quarter of 2012. The economy contracted, largely because of a precipitous drop in defense spending. That may have been an anomaly; no one expects the economy to contract in the first quarter of 2013. But you’d be foolish to rule out a recession later this year.

The budget deficit and cumulative debt are not the “transcendent issue of our time.” The transcendent issue is jobs and wages. Cutting the budget deficit now will only result in higher unemployment, lower wages, and more suffering.

Article by: ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.

Article source: nationofchange.org