No Deal: NSA Domestic Surveillance Program Will Expire

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., talks with reporters outside of the Senate Chamber following his address to the Senate in Washington, Sunday, May 31, 2015. Senate Republicans say they've been unable to make a deal to extend contested anti-terror provisions.

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The NSA's domestic surveillance program expired at midnight after the Senate failed to reach a deal to pass legislation Sunday evening.

The expiration came after the Senate convened for a rare Sunday session to deal with the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act.

Before adjourning without reaching a deal, the Senate made some progress, clearing a key procedural hurdle on the USA Freedom Act, but due to procedural objections by Sen. Rand Paul, the Senate was unable to hold any additional votes to move forward with the measure.

Three key provisions of the Patriot Act expired at midnight -- Section 215, which authorizes the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records; a roving wiretap provision that allows law enforcement officials to monitor terror suspects that use multiple phones; and a program that officials can use to monitor "lone wolf" terror suspects, not connected to any known terrorist organizations.

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The NSA started the shutdown process at 4 p.m. Sunday. It will take an entire day to reboot the system, if Congress passes legislation reforming the metadata collection program.

Senators returned to Capitol Hill Sunday afternoon, just hours before key provisions of the Patriot Act, including the NSA's controversial bulk collection of American's phone records, were set to expire.

The Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle on the House-passed USA Freedom Act with a vote of 77 to 17. But objections by Paul, R-Kentucky, delayed further votes on the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell originally opposed the House-passed USA Freedom Act, but Sunday, he said it was the only option.

"It certainly is not ideal," McConnell said. "This is where we are, colleagues. A House-passed bill with some serious flaws. An inability to get a short-term extension to try to improve the House-passed bill in the way we would normally do this."

Mike Theiler/Reuters

PHOTO: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, left, walks from his office with staff to the floor of the Senate on a rare working Sunday, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, May 31, 2015.

The White House urged lawmakers to act quickly in the coming days to reach an agreement to pass the House bill.

"The Senate took an important -- if late -- step forward tonight," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement Sunday. "We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible. On a matter as critical as our national security, individual senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly."

Shortly before the vote, McConnell tried to hold a vote for a two-week extension the "lone wolf" and roving wiretaps provisions. But Paul, who has said he will force the expiration of the NSA's domestic surveillance program, objected.

It was a tense moment between Paul and McConnell, who has endorsed Paul's 2016 presidential bid. Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell blasted the opponents of the NSA program, a direct shot at Paul.

"We shouldn't be disarming unilaterally as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive and we certainly shouldn't be doing so based on a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation launched in the unlawful actions of Edward Snowden," McConnell said.

Paul has promised to use procedural maneuvers to "force the expiration" of the domestic spying program.

"We are here this evening because this is a very important debate. This is a debate over the Bill of Rights. This is a debate over the Fourth Amendment. This is a debate over your right to be left alone," Paul said on the Senate floor Sunday. "We are not collecting the information of spies. We are not collecting the information of terrorists. We are collecting all American citizens' records all of the time.

"I'm not going to take it anymore. I don't think the American people are going to take it anymore," Paul said.

Early in the afternoon, Senate Democrats urged McConnell to pass the USA Freedom Act.

"Just take it up and pass it," Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of the lead sponsors of the measure, shouted on the Senate floor.

"The time for excuses and inaction has passed. The American people, the intelligence community professionals that strive to protect them deserve better. We have a few hours to work things out and pass the USA Freedom act, but there's no room for error. There's very little time," Leahy said. "The deadline to act is midnight tonight."

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Mystery Woman Dumps Rare, Collectable Apple Computer Worth $200K At Recycling Center

MILPITAS (CBS/AP) — A recycling center in the Silicon Valley is looking for a woman who dropped off an old Apple computer that turned out to be a collectible item worth $200,000.

Victor Gichun of Clean Bay Area says the woman dropped off boxes of electronics that she had cleaned out from her garage after her husband died.

She didn't want a tax receipt or leave her contact information, and it wasn't until a few weeks later that workers at the recycling center opened the boxes to discover an Apple I (one) computer inside.

It was one of only about 200 first-generation Apple computers made in 1976.

Gichun sold the computer to a private collection, and he wants to split the proceeds with the mystery donor.

© Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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US police kill more than two people a day, report suggests

• 31 May 2015
• From the section US & Canada

There is no standardised system for recording shooting deaths across the country's thousands of law enforcement agencies

Data collected by the Washington Post newspaper suggests that the number of people shot by US police is twice as high as official figures claim.

The paper said that during the first five months of this year, 385 people - more than two a day - were killed.

The number of black people was disproportionately high among the victims, especially unarmed ones.

Official statistics rely on self-reported figures from law enforcement agencies.

They suggest about 400 people have been killed each year since 2008.

The US has seen a number of controversial cases where unarmed black people have been killed by white police officers.

A series of police killings of unarmed black people has sparked major protests

Police are allowed to use deadly force when they fear for their lives or the lives of others, however there is currently no reliable way of tracking police shooting deaths.

Instead, the government relies on self-reported figures from the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies. The figures exclude killings deemed not to have been justified.

The Washington Post says it logged every fatal shooting in 2015 by police in the line of duty using interviews, police reports, local media reports and other sources.

It found a homicide rate of almost 2.6 per day so far this year - more than double the average 1.1 deaths per day reported in FBI records over the past decade.

"These shootings are grossly under­reported," former police chief Jim Bueermann told the newspaper. "We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don't begin to accurately track this information."

Among the report's other findings:

• Black people were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusted for local population
• Most were armed, but one in six was unarmed or carried a toy weapon
• 365 men and 20 women were killed
• Most (118) were aged 25-34, while 94 were 35-44. Eight were children younger than 18
• In all three 2015 cases in which charges were subsequently filed against police officers, videos had emerged showing officers shooting a suspect during or after a chase on foot.

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Pope Francis, once a chemist, will soon issue an authoritative church document laying out the moral justification for fighting global warming, especially for the world's poorest billions.

From Galileo to genetics, the Roman Catholic Church has danced with science, sometimes in a high-tension tango but more often in a supportive waltz. Pope Francis is about to introduce a new twist: global warming.

The field of genetics was started by a Catholic cleric, Gregor Mendel. Entire aspects of astronomy, including the genesis of the Big Bang theory, began with members of the Catholic clergy. While some religions reject evolution, Catholicism has said for 65 years that it fits with the story of creation.

But when lay people think of the church and science, one thing usually comes to mind: The prosecution of Galileo Galilei for heresy because he insisted that the Earth circled the sun and not the other way around.

The Catholic Church "has got an uneven and not always congenial relationship with science," said science historian John Heilbron, who wrote a biography of Galileo. But after ticking off some of the advances in science that the church sponsored, the retired University of California Berkeley professor emeritus added, "probably on balance, the Catholic Church's exchange with what we call science is pretty good."

The Catholic Church teaches that science and faith are not contradictory and even work well together. After lukewarm opposition to the theory of evolution in the late 19th century, the church has embraced that field of science that other faiths do not. There are remaining clashes about the ethics of scientific and medical practices — such as abortion and using stems cells from embryos — but that's more about morality than reality of science.

"The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it," Pope Francis said last October, echoing comments made by his predecessors. "The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve."

With that complicated history looming, Pope Francis, once a chemist, will soon issue an authoritative church document laying out the moral justification for fighting global warming, especially for the world's poorest billions.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography climate scientist, briefed the pope on climate change. He said scientists felt they were failing in getting the world to understand the moral hazard that man-made warming presents. Now, he said, scientists who don't often turn to religion are looking forward to the pope's statement.

"Science and religion doesn't mix, but environment is an exception where science and religion say the same thing," Ramanathan said. "I think we have found a common ground."

The church found little such common ground with Galileo 382 years ago.

"Everything you know (about Galileo) is wrong but the truth unfortunately doesn't make the church look any better," said Brother Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation in Arizona.

Galileo was put under house arrest for the rest of his life after he continued to publish work showing the Earth orbiting the sun, despite warnings from the pope and the Inquisition. But it was more than a theological issue, said Heilbron and University of Wisconsin science historian Ron Numbers.

It was partially a personality conflict between Galileo and Pope Urban VIII, former friends. The pontiff felt betrayed personally by the astronomer because Galileo had promised to include in a postscript the pope's philosophy that contradicted Galileo's work, Heilbron said. Galileo didn't. And it was also about geopolitics, because the church was trying to fight back against the Protestant Reformation and felt the need to show that it would not permit dissent, he said.

Galileo wasn't sent to prison and "he had his meals catered from the Tuscan embassy so he didn't have to eat Inquisition food," said Numbers, editor of the book "Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion."

That past had receded until the mid-19th century when in the United States, several books on the conflict between religion and science cited Galileo's experience to make the church look bad, said Numbers, the grandson of a president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Now politicians and others who reject mainstream climate science, like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, compare themselves to Galileo because scientists scorn them. In fact, Galileo was persecuted for espousing science, not denying it, said Harvard University science historian Naomi Oreskes.

For centuries before and after Galileo, the Catholic Church was the main supporter of astronomy, often using the rooftops of churches to study the heavens.

"The church has promoted science in different ways. Thanks to Galileo we are here," said the Rev. Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory in Italy. "Thanks to the Catholic Church, Galileo exists because he was a Catholic, a good Catholic."

The pioneer of solar astronomy, Angelo Secchi, was an Italian priest who observed the sun and planets from a telescope on a church roof, Consolmagno said. The man who came up with the idea of the Big Bang theory, Georges Lemaitre, was a Belgian priest. The then-pope, Pius XII, didn't squelch the Big Bang theory, but wanted to adopt it as proof of God's handiwork.

Lemaitre convinced him to dial it back. Science evolves, he said, and was not an immutable underpinning for church doctrine, Numbers said.

The Vatican even has a science academy.

"Our job in principle is to follow scientific developments closely and then inform on particular occasions the Vatican about new development," said the academy's president, Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist Werner Arber. He is a Protestant and academy members include non-Catholics, like Ramanathan, and even atheist Stephen Hawking.

For Consolmagno, astronomer and cleric, that's no big deal: "If you believe in truth, you are worshipping the same God as I am."

__

Online:

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences: http://ift.tt/1cv6vzb

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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A Muslim high school in Ontario that complained about its boys' soccer team having to play against a team that included girls has been told it must abide by gender equity rules.

Diana Mehta, The Canadian Press
Published Friday, May 29, 2015 5:25PM EDT
Last Updated Saturday, May 30, 2015 11:50AM EDT

TORONTO -- A Muslim high school in Ontario that complained about its boys' soccer team having to play against a team that included girls has been told it must abide by gender equity rules.

The ISNA High School, located on the outskirts of Toronto, had complained earlier this week about a soccer game in which its all-male team played against a Catholic high school whose team included two girls.

ISNA, which describes itself as a progressive co-ed independent school that strives to abide by Qur'anic injunctions, raised an objection at the game about the girls' presence on the field, and the girls sat out the second half.

The Region of Peel Secondary School Athletic Association -- which ISNA is a member of -- said the Muslim school complained about the situation for "religious reasons."

After examining the matter, ROPSSAA ruled that all its member schools are expected to abide by regulations that say if a sport isn't available for a girl on a female team, she is eligible to participate on a boys' team after a successful tryout.

ROPSSAA chair Paul Freier says the association's gender equity policy comes from the rules used by the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations.

"If a girl is good enough to play on the boys' team she can play," he said, adding that if a similar objection arose in the future, the school teams would have to decide to either play the game anyway, or default the match.

Freier noted that ISNA had been a member of the association for a number of years and hadn't had any problems in the past.

"I think probably they were just caught off guard," he said. "We assume every school that joins is expected to adhere to the constitution and bylaws of ROPSSAA."

In a statement issued Friday night, ISNA said its soccer team "regrets the confusion and misunderstandings that have arisen" from the incident.

The school explained that the team's coach offered to forfeit the game "due to the religious commitment of non-contact with members of the opposite gender who are not family members."

"The opposing team chose to substitute the female players as opposed to accepting the forfeit. In hindsight, ISNA high school regrets that the female players felt they could not participate," the school said.

"It was never the team's intention to exclude female participation, which was reflected in the offer to forfeit. The team sincerely regrets if any team members or participants were hurt or felt discriminated based on their gender due to the accommodation made by the opposing team."

The school said it "fully respects" ROPSSAA's rules and plans to consult the organization on whether any accommodations can be sought on the issue.

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Bill would require gun owners to have liability insurance or pay $10,000 fine

There's been a surge of gun-control legislation in Congress in recent weeks. The latest efforts would require gun owners to have liability insurance coverage before being allowed to purchase a weapon or face a fine of up to $10,000.

The Firearm Risk Protection Act, introduced Friday by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, N.Y., provides an exemption for service members and law enforcement officers.

"We require insurance to own a car, but no such requirement exists for guns," Maloney said. "The results are clear: car fatalities have declined by 25 percent in the last decade, but gun fatalities continue to rise.

"An insurance requirement would allow the free market to encourage cautious behavior and help save lives," she added. "Adequate liability coverage would also ensure that the victims of gun violence are fairly compensated when crimes or accidents occur."

Earlier this month, Maloney introduced legislation that would require personal sellers to obtain background checks before transactions could be made at gun shows. Another effort, this one from Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-NJ, would require federally licensed ammunition dealers to confirm the identity of those wanting to purchase ammunition online by verifying photo identification in person.

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Joe Biden says his son has died of brain cancer

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, addresses the final session of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina September 6, 2012.

Reuters/Jason Reed

Former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, died on Saturday after battling brain cancer, the vice president said. He was 46.

"The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words," Vice President Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

"We know that Beau's spirit will live on in all of us, especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children, Natalie and Hunter," he said.

Beau Biden had announced last year he planned to run for governor of Delaware in 2016.

He was diagnosed with brain cancer in August 2013 and underwent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. After getting a "a clean bill of health" in November of that year, his cancer recurred in the spring of 2015, the vice president's office said.

He sought aggressive treatment and had been hospitalized this month at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center outside Washington. His family was with him when he died.

"Beau embodied my father's saying that a parent knows success when his child turns out better than he did," the vice president said. "In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known."

Beau Biden was very close to his father and a familiar presence in his political campaigns.

After eight years as attorney general in Delaware, Beau Biden joined the investor law firm Grant & Eisenhofer in 2015.

He served a year-long tour in Iraq as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard and underwent surgery at a cancer center in Texas last year. He suffered a mild stroke in 2010.

President Barack Obama paid warm tribute to Beau Biden, saying he took after his father.

"He studied the law, like his dad, even choosing the same law school. He chased a life of public service, like his dad, serving in Iraq and as Delaware's Attorney General," Obama said in a statement.

"Like his dad, Beau was a good, big-hearted, devoutly Catholic and deeply faithful man, who made a difference in the lives of all he touched, and he lives on in their hearts."

The vice president has faced family tragedy before.

Shortly after winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1972, his wife Neilia and three children were in a car crash. Neilia and their daughter were killed, while their two sons, Beau and Hunter, were injured.

Biden opted not to move to Washington, choosing instead to make the 2 1/2-hour daily round-trip train commute from Delaware to his Senate job so he could spend more time with his sons. He married Jill Jacobs some five years after his first wife died.

Biden took office as vice president when Obama entered the White House in January 2009. He has a deep knowledge of Washington politics after decades in Congress and a folksy, avuncular style that contrasts with what many consider Obama's more aloof manner.

Biden has not publicly ruled out a run for president in 2016, but he would face tough odds to gain an advantage over his friend, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is far ahead in public opinion polls in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

(additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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US Senators Cast Vote In Favor Of Medical Marijuana Access For Veterans

Washington, DC: Members of the US Senate Appropriations Committee voted last week in favor of expanding medical cannabis access to United States veterans. The vote marks the first time that a majority of any body of the US Senate has ever decided in favor of increased cannabis access.

Committee members decided 18 to 12 in favor of The Veterans Equal Access Amendment, sponsored by Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Sponsors added the provision in committee to a must-pass military construction and veterans' affairs spending bill (the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act). The full Senate is expected to approve the language imminently.

Weeks ago, House members narrowly killed a similar amendment in the House version of the Military Appropriations Act by a floor vote of 210 to 213. Once the Senate passes its version on the floor, House and Senate leaders will reconcile the two versions.

The Daines/Merkley amendment permits physicians affiliated with the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to recommend cannabis therapy to veterans in states that allow for its therapeutic use. Under federal law, VA doctors are not permitted to fill out written documentation forms authorizing their patients to participate in state-sanctioned medical cannabis programs.

Stand-alone legislation (HR 667) to permit VA physicians to recommend cannabis therapy is pending in the US House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans Affairs: Health Subcommittee. A similar provision is also included in Senate Bill 683/HR 1538, The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States (CARERS) Act.

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500.

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Obama: 'Handful of Senators' Standing in Way of Patriot Act

Blaming a "handful of senators" for stalled national security legislation, President Barack Obama said Friday he has told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other senators that he expects them to take action swiftly to extend key Patriot Act provisions.

Without action by midnight Sunday, a number of tools that permit law enforcement to pursue and investigate suspected terrorists will expire. Obama pinned responsibility directly on the Senate if something were to go awry.

"I don't want us to be in a situation in which for a certain period of time those authorities go away and suddenly we are dark," he said. "And heaven forbid we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the Senate."

Among the provisions that would expire is the National Security Agency's ability to search and amass Americans' phone records. The most prominent critic of the legislation is Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a GOP presidential contender. In an interview Friday between campaign stops in South Carolina, Paul said voters are encouraging him to continue fighting the government's bulk collection programs.

McConnell is calling the Senate back into session Sunday, just hours before the midnight deadline, "to make every effort to provide the intelligence community with the tools it needs to combat terror," his spokesman, Don Stewart, said Friday.

But it's not clear lawmakers will have any new solution.

Obama argued that changes made in the Patriot Act would provide greater civil liberties protections while retaining essential law enforcement tools. He said many of the authorities that would expire are non-controversial, such as the use of so-called "roving wiretaps" that track suspects through their multiple cell phone usage.

"The only thing that is standing in the way is a handful of senators who are resisting these reforms despite law enforcement and the (intelligence community) saying 'let's go ahead and get this done,'" he said as he wrapped up an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

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Texas 'open carry' law passes, allowing guns in holsters on the street

Texas lawmakers have approved the carrying handguns openly on the street. Photograph: Igor Golovniov/Zuma Press/Corbis

Texas lawmakers approved carrying handguns openly on the streets of the nation's second most populous state on Friday, sending the bill to the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it and reverse a ban dating to the post-civil war era.

Gun owners would still have to get a license to carry a handgun in a visible holster.

The state – known for its wild west, cowboy history and some of the nation's most relaxed gun laws – has allowed concealed handguns for 20 years. Concealed handgun license holders are even allowed to skip the metal detectors at the state Capitol, as state troopers providing security assume they're armed.

But Texas was one of only six states with an outright ban on so-called open carry, and advocates have fought to be allowed to keep their guns in plain sight. Cast as an important expansion of the second amendment right to bear arms in the US constitution, it became a major issue for the state's strong Republican majority.

Nudged by Abbott's pledge to sign open carry into law, House and Senate Republicans muscled the bill through the legislature. The House gave final approval on a mostly party-line 102-43 vote, drawing gleeful whistles from some lawmakers. A short time later, the Senate passed it 20-11, also along party lines, with all Republicans supporting it and all Democrats opposing.

Both did so after making concessions to law enforcement groups, who had been upset by an original provision in the bill barring police from questioning people carrying guns if they had no other reason to stop them.

The final bill scrapped that language, meaning police will be able to ask Texans with handguns in plain sight if they have proper licenses to be carrying them.

Before Friday's vote, police groups demanded that Abbott veto the bill.

Gun control advocates have argued that open carry is less about personal protection than intimidation. Gun rights groups have staged several large public rallies in recent years, sometimes at notable historical landmarks such as the Alamo, where members carried rifles in plain sight, which is legal.

The open carry debate also stirred drama at the Capitol early in the legislative session, when gun rights advocates confronted one state lawmaker in his office. The lawmaker, Democrat Poncho Nevarez, was assigned a state security detail and House members voted to make it easier to install panic buttons in their offices.

Just like the current concealed handgun law, the bill requires anyone wanting to openly carry a handgun to get a license. Applicants must be 21, pass a background check and receive classroom and shooting range instruction — although lawmakers have weakened those requirements since 2011.

Texas has about 850,000 concealed handgun license holders, a number that has increased sharply in recent years.

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Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid a man to conceal a sexual relationship they had while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid a man to conceal sexual misconduct while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught, a federal law enforcement official told NBC News on Friday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity. Tribune newspapers reported earlier in the day that two unnamed federal officials said that Hastert paid a man from his past to conceal sexual misconduct.

Related: Ex-Speaker Hastert Indicted Over Cash Withdrawals

Hastert was indicted Thursday on charges that he structured bank withdrawals to avoid federal reporting requirements and later lied about it to the FBI.

The indictment said that Hastert was paying an unidentified person from his past to conceal Hastert's "prior misconduct." The indictment did not specify the alleged misconduct or name the person.

The Yorkville, Illinois, school district where Hastert taught and coached wrestling from 1965 to 1981 said that it had "no knowledge of Mr. Hastert's alleged misconduct, nor has any individual contacted the District to report any such misconduct."

Representatives for Hastert have not returned requests for comment from NBC News.

Charles Hastert, a nephew, told NBC News earlier Friday that his uncle "has always been as honest and clean as they come." He said he believes the charges are probably a political witch-hunt.

House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, said in a statement Friday that, "The Denny I served with worked hard on behalf of his constituents and the country. I'm shocked and saddened to learn of these reports."

Hastert's former assistant coach, Anthony Houle, and Hastert's first state wrestling champion, Gary Matlock, said they were shocked by the indictment and defended the former coach and Congressman's character, in interviews conducted before sources said the case involved alleged sexual misconduct.

"The gentleman was a super professional as a teacher, as a coach, as a human being," Matlock said. "I would refer to him as my second father."

"There isn't anything that happened in the six years that I worked with Denny that would ever make me believe that there was anything improper," Houle said.

Jeff Jerabek, who was on the wrestling team in the mid-1970s, said he had never heard so much as a rumor of impropriety. He described Hastert as friendly and in tune with his students.

"If you had a problem, it wouldn't be hard to talk to him about it," said Jerabek, whose two older brothers were also on the team. "I remember one time I was walking along with a frown and he said, 'Hey smiley, cheer up.' Some teachers, it's just a job. Not him. He was a friendly guy."

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http://ift.tt/eA8V8J Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid a man to conceal a sexual relationship they had while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught via top scoring links : news http://ift.tt/1PTbrGh

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