Obama visits family of slain TSA officer

President Barack Obama visited Monday with the family of TSA officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was killed at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month.

The President also met with Tony Grigsby and James Speer -- two other TSA officers who were wounded in the November 1 shooting incident.

A gunman stormed a terminal at the airport on November 1, killing Hernandez and injuring several others.

Hernandez is the first TSA officer to die in the line of duty.

Officers shot suspect Paul Ciancia multiple times during the assault.

He was hospitalized briefly, but is out and in the custody of U.S. marshals.

Ciancia has been charged with the murder of a federal officer and commission of violence at an international airport.

source:CNN

More blames thrown at Congress than President Obama over Park Woes during Shutdown.

U.S. Park Ranger Mirta Maltes stands near the road-closed sign leading to the Everglades National Park on Oct. 7 in Miami.

It may seem like a distant memory, but the images are indelible: grizzled veterans at the National World War II Memorial; armed rangers with massive signs and government SUVs; and county officials in Utah five national park areas.
The closure of the nation's 400 national parks, monuments, recreation areas, historic sites and battlefields during October's government shutdown became the searing emotional and political symbol of government gone awry.
Now comes an indication that the political fallout, if any, may harm congressional Republicans more than President Obama.
A national poll released Monday found that 60 percent of the 1,000 registered voters surveyed blamed the closure of national parks on Congress' failure to agree on a budget.
Roughly 30 percent believed that the Obama administration closed parks to make the government shutdown as painful as possible.
And 90 percent agreed that closing park areas was a problem. Roughly half of the respondents in every region of the country considered the closures a "big problem."
But the five-day survey, taken two weeks after the shutdown had ended, focused solely on the closure of national parks. It did not ask about any other impacts of the shutdown, such as , or WIC.
The survey was conducted by the Democratic polling firm of for the , a liberal think tank.
"The closing of the parks and other public lands during the shutdown was a teachable moment," says Hart president Geoffrey Garin.
More than 80 percent agreed that the barricades and closed signs blocking park entrances reminded them of the importance of national parks. And there's broad agreement about that across parties, including 90 percent of the Democrats in the survey, 77 percent of the independents and 74 percent of the Republicans.
Three-fourths agreed that the closures had dependent on parks tourism.
In fact, responding to the deep decline in park tourism, governors and local officials in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota and New York with state and private funds. to get eight national parks running again.
The poll also found widespread support for providing additional funding in general for National Parks and protecting them from budget cuts.

"Americans love their national parks and want them to be open and adequately funded," says Maureen Finnerty, a former parks superintendent who now chairs the
"Americans are sick and tired of those in Congress who use national parks and National Park Service employees as pawns in partisan budget showmanship games," Finnerty adds.
Still, most of those surveyed blamed both President Obama (53 percent) and congressional Republicans (60 percent) for the government shutdown that resulted in the closure of parks.
Relatively few trust Obama (37 percent) or Republicans in Congress (29 percent) to protect national parks and public lands.
And since the shutdown, the parks closures and the survey, the nation's political focus whiplashed to the failures of HealthCare.gov, the website that was supposed to facilitate the rollout of Obama's Affordable Care Act.
Garin of Hart Research acknowledges that the purported lessons of the shutdown may be fleeting.
"We don't know the durability of that conclusion from this teachable moment," he says.
The validity of the survey was questioned by reporters during an embargoed teleconference Friday.
"Asking about national parks is almost like saying, 'How much do you love kittens?'" said . "Saying [the shutdown] is a good reminder is not too shocking because national parks usually poll pretty well."
Garin responded with the assertion that "even when you explain that the point is to help reduce the budget deficit," people say "enough is enough" when parks are threatened.
But he also acknowledged that the poll's respondents "don't really see any of the players in Washington as necessarily doing enough to protect parks and public lands."
So, the great national park lockout of 2013 left the surveyed voters upset with and distrustful of both the White House and Congress. Only the parks survive with sympathy and reverence.
The survey, which used cellphones and land lines, consisted of randomly selected adults who said they were registered voters and had cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election. Democratic and Republican respondents were nearly evenly split with a quarter identifying themselves as independents.
Hart Research says the margin of error for the survey is +/- 3.1 percent.

NPR

US Closer To 'Zero Option' In Afghanistan As Troops Deal Hits Impasse

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has rejected a provision of a U.S.-Afghan security pact, putting the entire deal in jeopardy just days before the country's elite gather to debate it, a senior Afghan official and a Western diplomat said. The question of whether foreign troops will be able to search Afghan homes after NATO's combat mission ends next year has long been a sticking point of an agreement setting out the terms under which remaining U.S. forces will operate there. But in a series of meetings over the weekend the enter-and-search issue emerged as the biggest roadblock facing the security pact as Karzai dug his heels in, the Afghan official, who has been close to the talks, told Reuters. Without an accord on the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), Washington says it could pull out all of its troops at the end of 2014, leaving Afghanistan's fledgling security forces on their own to fight the Taliban-led insurgency. Two years ago, the United States ended its military mission in Iraq with a similar "zero option" outcome after the failure of talks with Baghdad, which refused to guarantee immunity to U.S. personnel serving there. The United States is concerned that as campaigning intensifies for Afghanistan's presidential election next April, it will be increasingly difficult to broker a security pact. "They want a window left open to go into Afghan homes, but the president does not accept that - not unilaterally and not joint," the Afghan official said, referring to house raids by U.S. troops either on their own or with Afghan forces. The U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul declined to comment, but a Western diplomat in Kabul with knowledge of the talks confirmed the two sides had reached an impasse. "It's a very tense time," the diplomat said. The New York Times also reported that the talks were at an impasse. "NO FLEXIBILITY" On Thursday, a five-day national gathering of the country's political, tribal and other elites, called a loya jirga, will begin to debate the BSA in Kabul. If an agreement on the pact is not reached by then, Karzai may tell the meeting in his opening address that he does not agree with the article about house searches, the official said. "If the jirga becomes about that one article then it risks seeing the entire document rejected," the Afghan official said. Talks stalled over the house-search issue during two meetings Karzai held at his palace with U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham and NATO's commander, General Joseph Dunford. "From our side there is no flexibility on this issue of allowing Americans to search Afghan homes, because this is more important than jurisdiction," the Afghan official said. Jurisdiction refers to giving all American service members in Afghanistan immunity from Afghan law, another U.S. demand that has been resisted by Karzai. The issues of jurisdiction and unilateral military operations by U.S. forces have been the main bones of contention in the months-long negotiations over the security agreement. The question of house searches, which have sometimes led to civilian deaths, is a highly charged one that has contributed to the rifts between Karzai and foreign forces in an increasingly fractious relationship. The United States wants to be able to conduct such searches to continue targeting al Qaeda and other militants in Afghanistan. Karzai is concerned that the hated searches could sap support for the government and foreign troops who stay on. Another meeting between Karzai, the U.S. envoy and the NATO commander was expected on Monday, though the official said there was little hope of a breakthrough. SOURCE: BI