In Wake of Newtown Shootings, N.R.A. Leader Faces Big Challenge

“Today,” Mr. Keene told a roomful of conservatives in Hawaii, “guns are cool.”

That, of course, was before the massacre at a Connecticut elementary school dramatically revived the once-moribund debate over gun control.

With the N.R.A. set to hold its first news conference on the shootings Friday after a weeklong silence, Mr. Keene is facing perhaps the biggest threat in decades to his organization’s gun rights stance.

He finds himself in the difficult position of persuading Americans outside the N.R.A. that guns are, if not “cool,” at least not the stark danger that President Obama made them out to be this week. “His instinct is to fight back and make his case as strongly as he can — that’s been his modus operandi for as long as I’ve known him,” said Craig Shirley, a conservative author and former business partner and occasional hunting buddy of Mr. Keene.

Indeed, Mr. Keene, 67, a combative and sometimes bombastic political operative who has advised Republican leaders from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney, has rarely shied from a fight.

In a videotaped confrontation that quickly made the Republican rounds in 2009, he threatened to punch a conservative filmmaker who challenged his leadership of the American Conservative Union and his criticism of “whining” by the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

And when Mr. Keene was a senior adviser to Senator Bob Dole’s losing presidential bid in 1988, his clashes with others in the Dole campaign became so heated that he and another top aide were fired midtrip, with the campaign manager yelling during a stopover at the Jacksonville airport to “Get their baggage off the plane!”

That fighter’s instinct puts him squarely in the tradition of past leaders of the N.R.A., a four-million-member group that has one of Washington’s most powerful, well-financed lobbying arms.

In the most iconic scene of defiance in the N.R.A.’s 141-year history, its most famous president — the actor Charlton Heston — lifted a colonial musket over his head in 2000 and dared opponents to take it “from my cold, dead hands!”

A year earlier, the N.R.A. spurned calls to cancel its convention in Denver less than two weeks after shootings at nearby Columbine High School killed 13 people. As 7,000 people protested, Mr. Heston declared that the N.R.A. “cannot let tragedy lay waste” to gun rights.

Even after the Columbine shootings, the N.R.A. was able to block a measure in 2000 to close the so-called gun-show loophole, allowing private gun sales at shows without background checks. The aftermath of the Columbine shootings provides one possible road map for how the N.R.A. may respond now.

The group has been uncharacteristically quiet in the week since the Connecticut shootings, and Mr. Keene and other N.R.A. officials did not respond to messages and e-mails seeking comment for this article.

The N.R.A. did offer a short statement of condolence four days after the shootings and said, without elaboration, that it “is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”

What it was billing as a “major news conference” Friday will be its first response to growing calls for greater gun restrictions. Mr. Keene, elected president last year, was also scheduled to appear Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

After past shootings, N.R.A. officials have stressed the need for greater safety training and enforcement of existing gun laws, without offering significant concessions to gun control advocates.

Josh Sugarman, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, which supports increased gun control, says he expects a similar approach this time.

“I don’t see him as any type of change-agent inside the organization,” Mr. Sugarman said. “What will guide the N.R.A. is to try to delay any action on guns for as long as they possibly can.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the position once held by former Representative Tom DeLay. He was majority leader in the House of Representatives, not the speaker.

View the original article here

Transit Authority Leader to Resign as He Eyes Republican Bid for Mayor

Mr. Lhota, a former deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani, was widely hailed after the authority restored much of its subway service within a week of suffering unprecedented damage from Hurricane Sandy.

Under a public officers’ law, Mr. Lhota cannot run for mayor and keep his job at the transportation authority.

Several messages left for Mr. Lhota were not immediately returned Tuesday. Adam Lisberg, the chief spokesman for the transportation authority, referred inquiries to Mr. Lhota, saying, “That’s not something that the M.T.A. can respond to.”

Though he has said little about his plans, Mr. Lhota has been maneuvering behind the scenes for a possible run. He floated the prospect of his candidacy during a meeting with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg this month. And Mr. Giuliani and several of his aides have spoken to local Republicans and business leaders about Mr. Lhota’s possible entry into the race.

It would seem to be an uphill battle in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than six to one. A former executive vice president for the Madison Square Garden Company, Mr. Lhota is well known among the city’s political and business elite, some of whom have recently clamored for him to enter the race.

But in a recent Quinnipiac University poll, Mr. Lhota lost, 60 percent to 9 percent, against an unnamed Democrat in a hypothetical mayor’s race.

Nonetheless, his entry into the race would immediately jolt a campaign that many had expected to be determined by the Democratic primary next year. He would be the first prominent Republican to enter the race.

On the Democratic front, the field is led by Bill de Blasio, the public advocate; John C. Liu, the comptroller; Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker; and William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller. The Democrats, seeking support from the liberal voters who tend to dominate turnout in party primaries, have courted support from labor; the prospect of a well-financed and well-connected Republican opponent in the general election could slow their shift to the left.

But Mr. Lhota would probably face a primary for the Republican nomination. A former Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Democrat, has been exploring a possible race as a Republican, as has John Catsimatidis, a billionaire grocer. Tom Allon, a newspaper publisher, and George T. McDonald, a founder of the Doe Fund, have both switched parties to run as Republicans.

Allies of Mr. Lhota have quietly sounded out Republican leaders around the city over the past few weeks about his possible run.

Many of the party leaders have expressed interest. In an interview on Tuesday, Guy V. Molinari, a longtime Republican power broker in Staten Island, where he was once borough president, said he would back Mr. Lhota should he decide to run.

“I would be on his side,” said Mr. Molinari, who described a recent meeting at his house with Lhota supporters. “He’d make a great mayor. He’s sharp, tough and he can handle the City of New York. Not that many people can.”

Securing widespread support from Staten Island’s Republican voters is considered essential for Republican mayoral candidates. The borough was an important factor in the elections of Mayor Giuliani and Mayor Bloomberg.

Mr. Lhota’s wife, Tamra, is no stranger to politics: She was a major fund-raiser for Mr. Giuliani when he ran for mayor.

A person close to Mr. Lhota said that by stepping down from the authority, he could engage in the kind of deep deliberations, with political operatives and potential donors, that he felt unable to as chairman of the authority. This person cautioned that while Mr. Lhota had warmed to the idea of a mayoral run, he had not yet made a decision.

Mr. Lhota’s next public appearance is scheduled for Wednesday, when the authority is expected to approve a fare increase that would raise the cost of a subway ride to $2.50.

It is unclear who might replace Mr. Lhota at the transportation authority, though during his tenure, he has authorized Thomas F. Prendergast, the president of New York City Transit, to conduct the duties of the chairman in his absence.

Two  members of the authority’s board said that Fernando Ferrer, a former Democratic nominee for mayor, would be named vice chairman.

Michael Barbaro and Danny Hakim contributed reporting.

View the original article here

U.N. Court Acquits Congo Rebel Leader of War Crimes

The acquittal of Mathieu Ngudjolo on charges including rape, murder and pillage was only the second verdict in the court's 10-year history and the first time it had cleared a suspect.

It also cast a shadow over ICC prosecutors' efforts to collect and present evidence of atrocities in complex conflicts thousands of miles from the court's headquarters in The Hague.

Judges said the testimony of three key prosecution witnesses was unreliable and could not prove definitively that Ngudjolo led the rebel attack on the village of Bogoro, but they emphasized that Ngudjolo's acquittal did not mean that no crimes occurred in the village.

"If an allegation has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt ... this does not necessarily mean that the alleged fact did not occur," Presiding Judge Bruno Cotte of France said.

Eric Witte, an expert in international law at the Open Society Justice Initiative, said the judgment "will send a worrying signal about the quality of ICC prosecutions."

He said Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda may now need to rethink the way her office builds its cases.

"A pattern of prosecution failures could undermine support for the court as a whole," Witte warned.

The court has indicted far more senior suspects than Ngudjolo, including Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo. Al-Bashir refuses to surrender to the court and Gbagbo is in custody in The Hague awaiting a possible trial.

Prosecutors say many villagers in Bogoro were raped before some 200 were hacked to death with machetes by rebel fighters on a single day in February 2003.

Rights organizations immediately called upon the court to explain the acquittal to victims and survivors in the village in Congo's eastern Ituri region, and to improve its investigations.

"The acquittal of Ngudjolo leaves the victims of Bogoro and other massacres by his forces without justice for their suffering," said Géraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, international justice advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The ICC prosecutor needs to strengthen its investigations of those responsible for grave crimes in Ituri, including high-ranking officials in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda who supported the armed groups fighting there."

Judges ordered Ngudjolo's immediate release, but Bensouda said she would appeal the acquittals and asked for Ngudjolo to be kept in custody. The court scheduled a hearing for later Tuesday to consider the request.

Ngudjolo showed no emotion as Cotte acquitted him.

Parts of eastern Congo remain virtual war zones even today, with rebel fighters believed to be backed by Rwanda locked in conflict with government forces.

While Ngudjolo was the first defendant cleared by the ICC, other war crimes tribunals based in The Hague and elsewhere have acquitted other suspects from war zones such as the former Yugoslavia.

Judges are still considering the evidence against another militia leader who stood trial with Ngudjolo, Germain Katanga, and are expected to deliver that verdict next year.

The only other ICC verdict, handed down earlier this year, convicted another Congolese rebel leader, Thomas Lubanga, of using child soldiers in battles in Ituri. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Ngudjolo's lawyer, Jean-Pierre Kilenda, said his client had always insisted he was innocent.

Judges "showed that this court respects the rights of defendants," the lawyer said.

View the original article here