Ahad, 13 Oktober 2013

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Senate Leaders Talk; GOP Blames Obama for Gridlock - New York Times

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 09:03 AM PDT

By JEREMY W. PETERS and ASHLEY PARKER

Published: October 13, 2013

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Sunday kept up the drumbeat of blame against President Obama for what they say is his failure to negotiate with them on the fiscal crisis that will come to a head on Thursday, when the government will run out of money to pay its bills. As the Republicans pointed fingers at the White House, Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell were set to sit down again on Sunday in an effort to come up with some sort of agreement — even one that will kick the most pressing problems down the road for a few weeks or months.

Their discussions appear to be the only hope, at least on Sunday, for a deal after talks between House Republicans broke down on Saturday, with no indication when they would resume. The House was not meeting on Sunday, although the Senate would be called into session.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on ABC's "This Week" that he could feel a deal "coming together" as Mr. Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mr. McConnell, the chamber's top Republican, prepared for their second day of talks.

But Mr. Graham also warned his colleagues that the longer the showdown lasted, the more damage they were doing to Congress. "To my colleagues in the House on both sides, and to my friends in the Senate, we're ruining both institutions," he said.

Some of the senators also sought to redirect the conversation from the shutdown and debt ceiling fight to the issue that closed the government on Oct. 1: the House Republicans' insistence that they would not pass any spending bill that included financing for the new health care law.

Mr. Graham, for one, said that "defunding Obamacare" or delaying it for a year was "not a realistic possibility now." The law partly went into effect the same day the government shut down.

"The shutdown will be old news next year," he added. "Obamacare's faults will be front and center in 2014 if we don't screw this up."

But Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said Mr. Obama was to blame for his refusal to deal with the fiscal crisis. "This is the first time in history that a president of the United States has said, 'Look, I'm not even going to talk about it,' " Mr. Portman said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added later: "The president should engage. You've got to deal with the underlying problem, which is the spending problem."

On CNN's "State of the Union," Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, played down fears that a default on the debt this week would be the cause of a downgrade of the nation's credit rating, as happened during a similar showdown in 2011. The downgrade, he said, was not caused by the threat of default, but by the size of the United States' debt.

"The vast majority of people are afraid of what this growth of our debt is going to do to us," he said.

On Saturday, Mr. Reid said he was slightly optimistic about his dialogue with Mr. McConnell. "I hope that our talking is some solace to the American people and the world," he said. (Not far away, officials meeting in Washington at the annual sessions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank publicly expressed alarm that the United States might provoke a global debt crisis by Congress's inaction.)

"Senator McConnell and I have been in this body a long time," Mr. Reid added. "We've done things for a long time together. We don't agree on everything, and that's, as you know, an understatement."

The relationship between the two men has been so chilly that it took two other senators, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, to arrange the meeting.

For Speaker John A. Boehner and other House Republicans, the options were much grimmer. If Mr. Boehner compromises, he risks angering the conservatives who dominate his conference. For its part, the White House is sticking with its stance that it will not negotiate until the government is reopened and the debt ceiling is raised.

The White House has no public events planned on Sunday, although aides did not rule out that Mr. Obama might confer with some lawmakers, as he did with Senate Democrats on Saturday afternoon. Mr. Schumer, who was at that meeting, said: "There's a will among all three parties — the president, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans. Now we'll see if there's a way."

Earlier on Saturday, conservatives left their meeting at the Capitol in a sour mood, with many saying they were outraged that Mr. Obama had refused to meet them halfway.

Representative John Carter of Texas described Mr. Obama as "acting like a royal president."

"He's still 'my way or the highway,' " Mr. Carter said.

With concerns growing that global financial markets could be thrown into turmoil if Congress does not agree to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans said they did not know whether Mr. Boehner would have enough support from the most conservative members in his conference to put a Senate plan up for a vote — if the leaders reach a deal.

"The question is: What will Senate Republicans do; what will Senate Democrats do?" said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois.

Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, added: "The problem here is that we don't have a functioning majority. After three weeks of this, they're still not figuring it out. I don't know what it takes."

The failure of talks with the White House further strained the relationship between House Republicans and the president. It was the House Republicans' refusal to approve a spending bill unless it stripped financing from the health care law that shut down the government. And now Republicans in the Senate and the House are looking for a way out of the crisis.

With the latest developments, Representative Aaron Schock, Republican of Illinois, said there had been "a total breakdown in trust" between House Republicans and the administration.

Feelings ran so high on the House floor on Saturday morning that there was a brief altercation between Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat, and Chris Vieson, the floor director for Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader. There were conflicting reports about whether the conflict became physical or was confined to words, but both sides said they had apologized.

If Republicans needed any reminder about how outraged their most conservative supporters would be if they committed to a compromise that did not include provisions to weaken the health care law, they needed look no further than out the window. Glenn Beck, the fiery radio personality, was leading a group of Tea Party activists on the National Mall.

Cousin confesses to killing missing toddler in decades-old 'Baby Hope' case - New York Daily News

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 09:01 AM PDT

The answer to the Baby Hope murder mystery was all in the family.

Cops arrested a cousin of the toddler brutally murdered 22 years ago — marking a dramatic turn in one of the city's most notorious cold cases.

Conrado Juarez, 52, confessed Saturday to killing the girl and disposing of her body in a cooler with the help of his sister, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

His tiny victim, whose name had been a mystery for more than two decades, was identified for the first time as 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo.

Juarez, a dishwasher from the Bronx, told cops he sodomized and then quietly smothered Anjelica with a pillow in a hallway at his sister's home in Astoria, Queens.

When the little girl went motionless, Juarez summoned his sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, from another room, Kelly said.

Juarez-Ramirez, who was caring for the girl, insisted they secretly get rid of her body, Kelly said.

She brought him a filthy cooler — as the other family members living there remained unaware of the cruelty underway just down the hall, Kelly said.

Juarez and his sister, who is now dead, carried the cooler out of the apartment and took a black livery cab to Manhattan, where they dumped the icebox along a wooded stretch of the Henry Hudson Parkway.

"They then separated and Juarez returned to the Bronx and his sister to Queens," Kelly said, "never to speak of the heinous act again until the NYPD investigators, through their relentless investigation, caught up with Juarez."

The man's arrest on Friday capped a case that vexed some NYPD investigators throughout their entire careers.

"You know that phrase, 'I'm on cloud nine'? That's where I am right now," said former NYPD Detective Jerry Giorgio, who had the case for more than two decades until retiring from the NYPD in 1997.

The child's rotting remains were found stuffed inside the blue and white picnic cooler along the parkway near Inwood on July 23, 1991. The little girl weighed only 28 pounds and had been folded in half. She was naked, bound and sexually abused.

Detectives pursued hundreds of leads that turned up nothing. As the years passed, the investigators' affection and sorrow for the mystery child grew. They eventually named her Baby Hope.

Investigators paid for the the nameless girl's burial at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx and inscribed a touching message on her tombstone: "Because we care."

"I'm very happy and certainly I'm relieved to the fact that when we visit this plot out in St. Raymond's we can now attach a name to this little girl," Joseph Reznick, the former commander of the detectives in the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, said Saturday.

The case returned to the spotlight last week when cops announced that an anonymous phone tip led them to identify the dead girl's mother.

Detectives obtained the mom's DNA profile from an envelope she had licked. Her DNA matched a sample taken from Anjelica's remains, a source said.

Investigators built up the family tree, tracing relatives from Queens to the Bronx and all the way to Mexico, where Anjelica's father was born.

They learned that when the child's parents split, her father took her and a sister to the home in Queens. Anjelica's mother, who a source said had 10 children by three men, took custody of a third sister, Kelly said.

The girl's unidentified father has not been found, a source said.

Through old-fashioned street work, detectives tracked down Juarez's Bronx address. Juarez's daughter answered the door and told cops a lie: that Juarez now lived in Mexico and had been there for the past 12 years, Kelly said. But his wife told investigators a different story, saying he was at work at a downtown Manhattan restaurant.

Investigators used a ruse to lure Juarez out of the eatery and then persuaded him to talk with them, a law enforcement source said.

The interrogation lasted five hours, the source added.

"At the beginning he was blowing smoke, but he finally just gave it up," the source said.

When Juarez confessed, "it was like there was a big weight lifted off his shoulders," a different source said.

The mustachioed monster said nothing as he was led out of the cold case offices in Brooklyn, his hands cuffed behind his back.

Juarez, a father of four also known as Enidino Juarez, was charged with second-degree murder and showed no remorse at his arraignment late Saturday night. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail.

"I think we have a long way to go before we know what really happened," his court-appointed lawyer, Michael Croce, said after the hearing.

Juarez's neighbors in Morris Heights recalled seeing the quiet, unassuming man pushing shopping carts full of bottles he had collected.

"He would be digging through trash cans," said Andre Holloway, 30. "He was always by himself."

Giorgio said he expects Juarez to draw quite a bit of unwanted attention behind bars.

"They will have their way with this guy in prison, even though he's in his 50s," the ex-detective told the Daily News. "But what bugs me is that he got to live for another 20 years with no conscience at all."

With Jan Ransom and Ryan Sit

On a mobile device? Click here to watch the video.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Ahad, 13 Oktober 2013