Other times, though, it sneaks up on people. It seems modest at the time, but only later do Americans realize it marked a turning point — that something new had burst onto the national stage and the old rules no longer applied.

Did President Barack Obama have such a moment this week when he wept openly about children killed by gun violence?

Some say yes, and that Obama’s tears were more radical than people realize. Most people know the backdrop: While announcing executive orders Jan. 5 to strengthen gun control laws, Obama halted as the cameras clicked. He tried to regain his composure, but then the tears flowed as he talked about 20 schoolchildren murdered by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Some commentators later said the moment was remarkable because Obama is known for his apparent Spock-like emotional detachment.

But the moment was more than remarkable; it was revolutionary, several historians and political scientists say.

“This is the most emotion an American president has ever shown on camera,” says Jerald Podair, an associate professor of history at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. “I can almost guarantee that when there is some sort of collage shown of this president’s presidency, this one moment will be in there.”

Obama didn’t just get weepy, Podair and others say. He introduced something new to American public life on three levels: spiritual, political and presidential.

Remember the Hollywood movie “Air Force One”? In the 1997 film, a group of Russian terrorists hijack the president’s plane while he’s aboard. But they messed with the wrong president. The commander-in-chief, played by Harrison Ford, takes back control of Air Force One, trading punches and getting into gun battles with the terrorists.

The hit movie reinforced the notion of the action-hero president, a powerful man who knows how to “git ‘er done.” It’s why some historians talk with undisguised admiration about the mean streak of President Andrew Jackson, who once killed a man for insulting his wife; or the frontier-honed strength of the towering Abraham Lincoln.

But Obama was inspired by a new script when he wept openly before a White House audience, says Meg Mott, a political science professor at Marlboro College in Vermont.

Obama is the first U.S. president to come out of the African-American tradition, where pastors and congregations are encouraged to be publicly open about their pain, and even failures, Mott says. She noted the political context of Obama’s tears: He was admitting that he couldn’t get gun control legislation passed even after Sandy Hook because the issue had become so polarized.

“He is supposed to be the most powerful person in the world,” Mott says. “He is the leader of the free world. But he’s crying as if to say there’s nothing I can do but accept and admit the powerlessness of my situation.”

That’s not what American political leaders have traditionally done, she says. Most of them have long been defined by white Protestant sensibilities: Pain is best kept private; a little sniffle here and there and maybe a welling up in public, but that’s it.

“Most of our white Protestant leaders have made it a point of pride to keep their feelings buttoned up,” Mott says.

Obama is different. He comes out of the black church tradition, where leaders don’t hide how they feel. His appreciation for the black church and its most famous leaders is well known.

He keeps a bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office. He invoked King’s phrase, “the fierce urgency of now,” in his White House gun control speech. And, like a black preacher feeling the moment, he departed from his text to improvise during that speech.

In the black church tradition, leaders are expected to show emotion, even pain. When King delivered his last speech the night before he was killed — in which he said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop” — his eyes appeared to tear up as he admitted to the audience that he might not live much longer.

During worship services in black churches, it’s not uncommon to hear people publicly “testify” about their hardships or cry out for help. There’s a moral authority in powerlessness — being able to forgive, show mercy and “keep on keeping on” though the situation seems hopeless.

Obama “has experienced that power, the power of powerlessness,” Mott says.

Perhaps the only national political leader to approach Obama’s moment of naked vulnerability was a politician who knew something about suffering. His name was Robert Kennedy.

Kennedy’s moment came in Indianapolis in 1968. He was running for president and had stopped in a black community to speak when he learned that King had been assassinated. Fearing a riot, he stepped onto the back of a flatbed truck and broke the news to the shocked crowd.

He then invoked his suffering by referring to the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy:

“For those of you who are black and are tempted to … be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling,” he said. “I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.”

There was no riot in Indianapolis that night. Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

“He had to stop Indianapolis from exploding,” Mott says. “Rather than telling the crowd that I can solve this problem because I’m a Kennedy, he said we can work together because I know what it’s like to lose someone shot by white people.”

Presidents aren’t just political leaders. They’re paternal figures. George Washington was called “the father” of our nation. Lincoln was known as “Father Abraham.” These intimate designations speak to the close bond many Americans have traditionally forged with their presidents.

Obama, though, has long struggled to be accepted as “one of us” because he is so different from his Oval Office predecessors. Some critics have tried to turn his uniqueness into a political liability. The accusations — of being a socialist, of not hailing from “real America,” the birther conspiracies — all convey a suspicion that Obama is an interloper in the White House.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave voice to that suspicion last year when he declared at a dinner that “I do not believe that the president loves America.”

“He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me,” Giuliani said. “He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

That claim, though, won’t carry the same sting in the wake of Obama’s tears over the death of American schoolchildren, says Podair, the Lawrence University historian.

Here was a black man weeping over the murder of white children. Though Obama also invoked black children struck down by violence in Chicago in his speech, Podair noted that the moment the President broke down is when he cited the shootings of children at a predominantly white elementary school.

At that moment, Podair says, Obama stopped being the Oval Office interloper with the funny name.

“When he cries very movingly on camera, and he’s crying over white children, he is now the father-in-chief,” Podair says. “They are his children. He is clearly shedding tears over white children who he considers his children as well. It’s a major moment.”

The moment is also major because of how America has traditionally viewed black men, Podair says. They have long been viewed as “The Other” — the Great Criminal Menace, the Great Athlete, the Great Entertainer.

But Obama was just a man and a father when he cried, Podair says. Any ordinary person could relate to what he was feeling.

And for a black man to be ordinary in America is, well, extraordinary, Podair says.

“He’s not ‘The Other’ anymore,” Podair says. “He’s us, and in many ways, that’s Obama’s greatest triumph.”

Obama showed that a politician could both publicly cry and show strength at the same time, Howell says.

“Presidents get in trouble when they appear to be on their heels or aloof or disaffected. This was the antithesis of that,” Howell says. “This is not a president out of control. This is a president who is conveying dogged resolution.”

Amid his tears, Howell says the president made a subtle argument. He said that just as the Constitution gave Americans the right to bear arms, it also gave them the right to peaceful assembly, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — rights that were robbed from victims of gun violence.

“He’s vulnerable plus determined. He’s expressing anger but staking out constitutional rights,” Howell says. “It seems incredibly heady, but there is this deep expression of heart that’s being conveyed as well.”

How the president acts has an impact beyond politics, says Podair, the Lawrence University historian.

He says American men often get their cues on masculinity from presidents. Theodore Roosevelt’s “strenuous life” — his emphasis on hunting, adventure, being “in the arena” — inspired American men who feared they were going soft as more of them moved to cities at the turn of the last century. John Kennedy inspired an entire generation of men to stop wearing hats in public, and his wry, detached demeanor shaped masculine culture in the early 1960s, Podair says.

“Most presidents put their stamp culturally on their times,” Podair says. “They tell people, ‘This is how to be a man. This is how to dress. This is how to act.’ ”

Obama did the same for politicians and men when he wept this week, Podair says.

“Men are allowed to cry now. And now presidents are allowed to cry.”

Obama’s tears may fade from the news cycle. But he’s already suggested the moment won’t fade from his memory. During a town hall meeting on guns hosted by CNN, he said he was surprised by his tears. He also said he will continue to push for more gun control, regardless of the political costs.

“It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Secret Service cry on duty,” Obama says of his visit to Newtown, Connecticut, after the Sandy Hook shooting. “It continues to haunt me. It was one of the worst days of my presidency.”

Tuesday may turn out to be one of the more unforgettable days of his presidency. A president showing he’s not an all-powerful action hero, a black man weeping over white children, a politician changing the rules about public tears — perhaps something new did take place this week.

Obama’s critics have long said he is a radical, someone new to America, someone who is different from his Oval Office predecessors.

At least this week, they were right.

The post NEWS ANALYSIS: Why Obama’s tears are so revolutionary appeared first on Wave Newspapers.

For once, the nation’s bitter, polarized politics failed to swamp a conversation on gun violence.

In a CNN town hall moderated by Anderson Cooper, President Barack Obama faced off against critics of his new executive actions, including expanded background checks for gun sales — but both sides listened carefully, referred to shared concerns and avoided histrionics. One absent voice: the National Rifle Association, which declined CNN’s invitation to participate.

It was the kind of civilized exchange that some Americans thought they were in line for when Obama took office in 2009 promising to cleanse American politics of its “petty grievances” and “recriminations and worn-out dogmas.”

But the partisanship strangling Washington soon had Obama complaining that Republicans were obstructionist and unreasonable while GOP leaders saw him as polarizing and patronizing. The result has been that this side of the president’s character has not always been on display.

The event at George Mason University, came as Obama rededicates himself to an effort to reduce gun violence following a string of mass shootings and his own failure to get expansive reform efforts through Congress.

Obama fielded questions from supporters of his actions, including a priest, gun violence victims and a Chicago schoolboy who fears being shot, as well as critics ranging from a gun executive to a sheriff, a rape survivor and a murder victim’s widow.

The meeting of about 100 people invited by CNN on all sides of the debate was an unusual forum for the president. While Obama has conducted hundreds of town hall events as a candidate and president, it’s rare for him to hear so directly from ordinary Americans who oppose his policies.

His measured responses to questions also contrasted with the emotional and even angry tone he often uses while discussing gun control — and the fiery debate on firearms currently reverberating through the 2016 White House race. For instance, in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Oregon in October, Obama said that such killing sprees were “something we should politicize.”

But while Obama respectfully conversed with those who questioned him in person, he did not spare his foes in the gun rights debate, accusing them of spouting “imaginary fiction” about his motives and evoking the partisanship that typically encompasses the issues.

“The way it is described is that we are trying to take away everybody’s guns,” Obama said. “Our position is consistently mischaracterized … If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over-the-top, it is so overheated.”

He dismissed the notion that he was behind a plot to take away everybody’s guns “so we can impose martial law” as “a conspiracy.” And he tried to dispel it by pointing out that he lacked the time in office to take away the nation’s 350 million firearms.

“I’m only going to be here for another year,” he said.

But the president found himself on the spot as well.

Taya Kyle, the widow of Chris Kyle, the soldier featured in the movie “American Sniper” who was later murdered in a gun crime, told him that tightening gun laws would not work and would only punish crime victims.

“The laws that we create don’t stop these horrific things from happening. That is a very tough pill to swallow,” Kyle said, saying that criminals would not be stopped from getting guns even if background checks were expanded. Like Obama’s other questioners, Kyle’s critique was delivered in a civil, calm tone often absent from the rhetoric of politicians engaged in the gun control debate.

Obama’s most vocal adversary in the debate was not present, however. In an interview on Fox News, the NRA’s Chris Cox said Obama was “creating an illusion that he is doing something to keep people safe.”

His comments, and Obama’s criticism of the NRA, were a reminder of the hyper-partisanship of the guns issue that has helped to hamper any meaningful reforms to stem gun violence during the president’s tenure — and often halted movement on other issues as well.

But in the “Guns in America” town hall, Obama pleaded with citizens to at least come together on a limited set of measures to reduce thousands of gun deaths and regular mass shootings, striking a theme of unity and national possibility that was characteristic of the conciliatory rhetoric with which he made his political name.

“At least let’s figure it out. Let’s try some things,” he said.

In an interview with Cooper at the beginning of the evening, Obama attributed some of the tensions over the issue to divergent perceptions on gun ownership between rural and inner-city communities.

“Part of the reason, I think, that this ends up being such a difficult issue is because people occupy different realities,” he said.

He also acknowledged that he himself has never owned a gun and had little experience with them, stemming in part from his upbringing in Hawaii, where he said sport shooting is not as popular as in other parts of the country.

He then disputed the notion that most criminals got guns illegally or through personal connections, making background checks — a major focus on his policy initiative on guns — of little utility.

“All of us can agree that it makes sense to do everything we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who would do others harm, or themselves harm,” he said.

The president also called on Congress to set up a system that is “efficient” and doesn’t inconvenience lawful gun owners to create a background check system that would stem at least some illegal gun activity.

“The fact that the system doesn’t catch every single person … has to be weighed against the fact that we might be able to save a whole bunch of families from the grief that some of the people in this audience have had to go through,” he said.

Obama made a similar argument in response to a question from Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu, who said that the executive actions wouldn’t have prevented the mass shootings that prompted much of Obama’s push for greater gun control.

“How are we going to get them to follow the laws?” Babeu asked of those who commit gun crimes.

After Babeu was introduced as a Republican running for Congress, Obama responded with a hint of sarcasm as he wished him good luck in his race.

Though there were moments such as these when the president let his partisan colors show, for the most part Obama sought to address the concerns of gun owners in response to their questions. He also said he would be willing to speak to the NRA even though the organization declined to participate.

“I’m happy to meet with them. I’m happy to talk with them,” he said.

Showing the thorny nature of the national divide on the issue, a CNN/ORC poll released earlier Thursday evening found that a majority of the public supports the measures that Obama outlined this week but less than half of Americans think they will actually work.

Support for the measures crosses party lines, with 67 percent of those asked saying they favor the changes. Some 85 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents and 51 percent of Republicans support the president’s moves.

But 85 percent of those polled also said that the measures would not be effective in reducing the number of people killed by guns. And 54 percent of people, including 79 percent of Republicans, disapprove of Obama’s decision to go around Congress and implement changes to gun policy by using executive power.

Republican presidential candidates, many of whom have accused Obama of being obsessed with gun control and not sufficiently engaged in protecting Americans from attacks like the one launched by a radicalized Muslim couple in San Bernardino, last month, panned his appearance.

“Look, any time that there’s a crisis, a tragedy whether it’s San Bernardino or these tragic mass killings by deranged people the first impulse of the president of the United States and Hillary Clinton is to take more rights away from law-abiding citizens,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in a video.

Ben Carson, sent out pre-emptive tweets before Obama’s town hall.

“We need a president who will stop threatening legal gun owners, & start tackling the root causes of violent crime & terrorism in this country,” Carson tweeted.

The messages were an indication that the different tone on the gun debate featured in the town hall meeting is unlikely to be embraced on the campaign trail or throughout Washington.

The post Obama, critics connect at CNN’s town hall on guns appeared first on Wave Newspapers.

The attack, which killed 17 and wounded 21, was blamed on Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, who had been married two years and who had a 6-month-old daughter, whom Farook left with his mother early Wednesday morning, claiming he was taking his wife to a doctor’s visit and didn’t want to bring the baby along, according to Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Los Angeles.

Farook was born in the United States to Pakistani parents and was a five-year employee of the San Bernardino County public health agency, which was holding a holiday party when the shooting erupted. The Los Angeles Times reported that Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia last year, spent nine days there, and returned with a new wife, a Pakistani, he met online.

The Times also reported that a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Farook was in contact with a number of extremists and at least one person being monitored by federal officials, a Pakistani named Roshan Zamir Abbassi, who is an assistant Imam in San Bernardino, where Farook worshipped.

However, Abassi told The Times he barely knew Farook and only exchanged occasional hellos and goodbyes.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, the ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Times he had been briefed on the investigation and federal agents have not turned up any evidence that Farook had been “radicalized.”

But law enforcement sources told NBC News that Malik pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a statement on Facebook just before she and her husband carried out Wednesday’s rampage. Investigators are reported to be looking into whether the Pakistan-born Malik radicalized her husband.

At a news conference Thursday morning, David Bowdich of the FBI said Malik came to the United States with the U.S-born Farook in July 2014 on a work visa and had a Pakistani passport. The couple married after arriving in the U.S., which enabled her to gain legal permanent resident status last year.

The attack has brought new attention to the previously obscure K1 visa program, which is reserved for the fiances of U.S. citizens. Some advocates for stricter immigration enforcement are calling for investigations into the nation’s visa screening process and for the U.S. to halt its Syrian refugee program.

“New information coming to light regarding Tashfeen Malik’s citizenship reaffirms the fact that proper screening and vetting those coming into our country, whether with a visa or as a refugee, is not always possible,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for stricter immigration laws, said in remarks quoted by The Times.

Also on Thursday, U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, released a letter demanding that the Obama administration make available the immigration histories of Malik, her husband and their families in advance of a congressional vote on a bill that includes funding for the Syrian refugee and other immigration programs.

The K1 visa permits the foreign-citizen fiance of a U.S. citizen to travel to the U.S. and marry his or her sponsor within 90 days of arrival. It is one of dozens of visas that allow foreigners to enter the U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday that K1 applicants, like other visa applicants, undergo an extensive counterterrorism screening that includes checks based on fingerprints and facial recognition software.

A 45-year-old Los Angeles man was among those who died in the shooting rampage at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

Shannon Johnson

Shannon Johnson of Koreatown worked for nearly 11 years as an environmental health specialist at the San Bernardino County Public Health Department, according to his page on the LinkedIn networking website. He graduated from Cal State San Bernardino with a degree in health science in 2004.

“Shannon rose before dawn each morning to get to his job,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.

Johnson lived with his girlfriend Mandy Pfifer, a longtime member of the Mayor’s Crisis Response Team, whose volunteers offer residents various forms of assistance, including support for victims and survivors of tragedies and other devastating incidents.

“We offer our full support to Mandy in this unimaginably difficult time, and I send my deepest condolences to Shannon’s family and all who are grieving loved ones in the aftermath of this senseless tragedy,” Garcetti said.

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San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, fired between 65 and 75 rifle rounds during the shooting at a county health department holiday party, then unloaded about that number in a later confrontation with police.

Fourteen died in the holiday party carnage and 21 more were wounded, according to Burguan. He said two police officers suffered injuries in the subsequent shootout.

Authorities later found thousands more rounds of ammunition at the couple’s residence, 12 pipe bombs and hundreds of tools that “could be used to construct IEDs or pipe bombs,” the chief said.

Burguan said “we still don’t have a motive,” but speculated that the couple may have been planning more carnage.

“They were equipped … and they could have done another attack,” the chief said.

Farook — one-half of the couple behind the San Bernardino shooting massacre — was apparently radicalized and in touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Farook’s apparent radicalization contributed to his role in the mass shooting, with his wife Tashfeen Malik, of 14 people Wednesday during a holiday party for the San Bernardino County Health Department, where Farook worked, sources said.

A prayer circle forms at The Rock Church in San Bernardino after a shooting at the Inland Regional Center. (CNN)

Still, it wasn’t necessarily the only driver behind the carnage, as workplace grievances may have also played a role. President Barack Obama hinted as much Thursday when he said that the attackers may have had “mixed motives.”

Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia for several weeks in 2013 on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to take at least once in their lifetime, which didn’t raise red flags, said two government officials. It was during this trip that he met Malik, a native of Pakistan who came to the United States on a “fiancée visa” and later became a lawful permanent resident.

Officials had previously said that neither Farook and Malik were known to the FBI or on a list of potentially radicalized people. Nor had they had any known interactions with police until Wednesday’s deadly shootout that culminated in their deaths.

Yet Farook himself had communicated by phone and via social media with more than one person being investigated for terrorism, law enforcement officials said. A separate U.S. government official said the 28-year-old has “overseas communications and associations.”

As to what role those all played in the San Bernardino carnage, the official acknowledged, ” We don’t know yet what they mean.”

The nightmare began at Wednesday’s holiday party, where San Bernardino’s police chief said that Farook left abruptly “under circumstances that were described as angry.”

He returned with his wife dressed in “dark kind of tactical gear” and heavily armed — each with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun. And they opened fire.

The couple then led police on a chase, with Farook firing while Malik drove, that ended with their deaths in a hail of bullets.

They left behind an avalanche of pain. San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis saw it in the eyes of relatives of those killed, whose bodies were still in the Inland Regional Center early Thursday, according to county sheriff’s spokesman Deon Filer.

Davis told CNN, “The desperation and despair that they feel, we feel that for them also.”

Ten people were still hospitalized Thursday morning, split evenly between Arrowhead Regional Medical Center and Loma Linda University Medical Center. The Loma Linda hospital CEO, Kerry Heinrich, said two of the victims there were in critical condition.

Police have not released the names of those who died.

Once again after a mass shooting, Obama appealed Thursday for something to be done to prevent more heartache.

“Right now, it’s too easy,” he said. “We’re going to have to search ourselves as a society … to take basic steps that would make it harder — not impossible, but harder — to let individuals get access to weapons.”

The nightmare began around 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Inland Regional Center, a facility for developmentally disabled people in San Bernardino. That’s when Terry Pettit got a text message from his daughter, who was inside.

“Shooting at my work. People shot,” she wrote. “Pray for us. I am locked in an office.”

Around that time, Denise Peraza called her sister Stephanie Baldwin, thinking it might be time to say goodbye.

“As soon as the gunfire started, everyone dropped to the floor and they were underneath desks, and she was trying to shield herself with a chair, along with a man next to her,” Baldwin told CNN affiliate KABC. “Then, all of a sudden, she said she just felt [the bullet] going through her back.”

“I just want to tell you that I love you,” Peraza told Baldwin over the phone through tears.

Peraza survived.

Within minutes, officers stormed the building searching for an active shooter. They counted the dead — and shuttled the wounded out to triage.

“We had to come out with our hands up and be escorted across the street to the golf course,” a woman who works at the center told KCAL/KCBS.

“We stood there for hours, hours, witnessing clothing of deceased ones on the street, people crying, co-workers crying, us wanting to get to our children.”

Farook and Malik slipped away in a black SUV.

Not for long. Acting on information that quickly pointed police to Farook, they went to his home in the neighboring city of Redlands with a search warrant.

A black SUV drove by them. Slowly at first, then it sped away.

A police car took up pursuit, as the SUV raced back toward San Bernardino. While Malik drove, Farook shot out of the vehicle.

Some 21 officers returned fire. When the SUV came to a halt, it was riddled with bullet holes. The couple inside was dead.

One officer was wounded, but his injuries were not life-threatening, Burguan said.

In the chaos, police encountered a third person who was running away.

“We do not know if they were involved,” Burguan said. “We have that person detained.”

But they feel confident that there were only two shooters — Farook and Malik.

This is notable given that, while there have been many mass shootings, it’s extremely rare when they involve more than one shooter. Only two of the 28 deadliest shootings since 1949 in the United States have had more than one shooter.

The husband and wife didn’t leave behind a note at Inland Regional. But they did stash three explosive devices — rigged to a remote-controlled toy car — that didn’t go off.

And in their SUV, authorities found two .223-caliber rifles along with two pistols, which officials said were legally purchased three to four years ago.

Back at Inland Regional, authorities found three rudimentary explosive devices packed with black powder and rigged to a remote-controlled toy car. That remote was found inside the SUV. And in the vehicle was another pipe-like device, but it was not an explosive, Burguan said.

Authorities converged on the couple’s residence in Redlands, looking for any other evidence — more weapons or clues that could shed light on a motive.

The police chief said late Wednesday that terrorism couldn’t be ruled out. He did say that, given everything involved, the attack didn’t appear to be a spur-of-the-moment decision.

“I think, based on what we’ve seen, there was some degree of planning,” Burguan said.

“We don’t have a motive at this point. We are still searching the motive.”

Speaking Thursday from Washington, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged that “we don’t know a lot right now. But one thing that’s clear is that violence like this has no place in this country.”

“This is not what we stand for,” Lynch said. “This is not what we do … it’s not what we live for.”

Farook, an American citizen, was an environmental health specialist with the San Bernardino County health department, which was holding the holiday party. He had worked there for five years.

In an online profile, he described himself as a “Muslim Male living in USA/California/riverside” and his family as “Religious but modern.”

He “enjoys working on vintage and modern cars, reads religious books, enjoys eating out sometimes. Enjoys travelling and just hanging out in the back yard doing target practice with his younger sister and friends,” his profile read.

Farook’s brother-in-law Farhan Khan said he was “devastated” by the news.

“I have no idea why he would he do something like this. I have absolutely no idea. I am in shock myself,” Khan said. “I don’t have words to express how sad and how devastated I am.”

Khan said he last talked to Farook a week ago. Farook’s family had tried to reach him all day Wednesday but could not. Hussam Ayloush, the head of the Southern California chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said Farook and his wife had dropped off their 6-month-old girl with her grandmother and claimed they were going to a doctor’s appointment before the massacre.

“There’s absolutely nothing that could justify [this shooting],” Ayloush told reporters. “And we stand in mourning and sadness for what happened.”

CNN’s Alberto Moya, Tina Burnside, Dave Alsup, Devon Sayers, Andy Rose, Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Barbara Starr, Pamela Brown, Deborah Feyerick, Michael Martinez, Joshua Berlinger, Ashley Fantz, Joshua Gaynor, Jason Hanna, John Newsome, Stella Chan, Nadia Kounang and Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.

The post San Bernardino shooters had plenty of ammunition appeared first on Wave Newspapers.

“I saw love in that room. I see love everywhere I go,” Trump told reporters with characteristic bombast in an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.

Flanked by black religious leaders supporting his candidacy, Trump claimed there were more than 100 people in the two-and-a-half hour meeting, and that he expected “many, many endorsements” to come.

“This meeting was amazing. Amazing people,” Trump said. “The meeting went so much longer, and it went longer only because of the love. It didn’t go longer for other reasons.”

The billionaire real estate mogul also told CNN he did not make commitments to make financial contributions to the churches represented by the black leaders he met with.

Darrell Scott, the organizer of Monday’s meeting, said a formal endorsement was forthcoming.

“We made history today,” Scott said. “We had meaningful dialogue with Mr. Donald Trump. We voiced concerns that are sensitive to the African-American community and we asked questions and the questions were answered where we were all satisfied with the answers.”

Monday’s meeting was at the source of much controversy — and confusion.

Last week, his campaign initially trumpeted the event, calling it a meeting with “a coalition of 100 African-American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders who will endorse the GOP front-runner after a private meeting.”

But several black pastors invited to the gathering quickly rebutted the endorsement talk. This forced the cancellation of the planned press conference and left Trump in an awkward spot.

The backlash came as Trump has drawn fresh condemnation after a Black Lives Matter protester was physically attacked at his campaign rally. Rather than condemn the violence, the real estate mogul said that perhaps the person “should have been roughed up.”

Asked at the press conference to address Black Lives Matter movement, Trump said he had no interest in going there.

“I don’t want to discuss that,” he said. “Black lives are very important. White lives are very important. To me, all lives are very important.”

Not everyone attending Monday’s meeting was supportive of Trump.

Arriving at Trump Tower, some even shared their deep concerns about the candidate’s rhetoric, particularly about race and immigration.

Pastor Victor Couzens of Cincinnati, who attended Monday’s meeting and is not endorsing Trump, said the candidate owed the Black Lives Matter protester an apology. He also expressed reservations about what he considers Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric.

“It’s very unfortunate the way he has talked to not just the African-American community but the things he has said about women, Mexicans and Muslims,” Couzens told reporters on his way into Trump Tower. “What’s more discouraging than the things that he has said is the fact that in the face of him saying all these things, he continues to surge in the polls. That really concerns me.”

But plenty of attendees showed enthusiastic support for Trump, saying Trump has been villainized by his critics and some in the media.

“You want stories, you want controversy. Anybody who knows Donald Trump personally knows that he’s not a racist,” said Steve Parson, a black pastor from Richmond, Virginia. Parson said he was in “total support” of Trump.

In an op-ed in EBONY magazine published Friday, pastors, seminary professors and Christian activists critical of Trump asked the group backing the candidate to consider the impact that endorsing him could have on their congregations.

“By siding with a presidential candidate whose rhetoric pathologizes black people, what message are you sending to the world about the black lives in and outside of your congregations? Which black lives do you claim to be liberating,” the leaders wrote.

Scott, the organizer of Monday’s meeting, responded by saying African-Americans engaged in name-calling should be “ashamed.”

“They accused Mr. Trump of being an insulting individual but they’ve levied insults at us that I wouldn’t levy against people I hate,” Scott said. “They don’t know the Donald Trump that we know.”

CNN’s Tom Lobianco, Eric Bradner and Noah Gray contributed to this report.

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Mohammad, 18, was a computer science and engineer major from Santa Clara, the school said.

The FBI has joined the investigation into why Mohammad stabbed two students, one staff member, and a construction worker shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday as classes began, officials said.

As of Thursday morning, one of the student victims remained hospitalized, but is expected to recover, the school said.

The staff member suffered a collapsed lung and had surgery, the school said.

The construction worker and other student victim were treated and released Wednesday, the school said.

The campus, located 130 miles southeast of San Francisco, remained closed Thursday and is expected to reopen Friday.

Authorities have not released a motive in the stabbing, and it’s not known what relationship, if any, existed between the assailant and the victims, said James Leonard, a school spokesman.

Mohammed, who lived on campus, entered a classroom in the Classroom and Office Building at about 8 a.m. carrying a hunting knife with an 8-inch to 10-inch blade and stabbed one of the students, authorities said.

The construction worker, thinking it was a fight, went into the classroom and “ended up stumbling upon the stabbing in progress. I think, through his actions, that he ended up saving this student’s life,” Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said Wednesday.

Outside the classroom, the suspect attacked a female staff member and slightly injured the second student, Warnke said.

The suspect fled the building and was chased by two police officers, UC Merced Police Chief Al Vasquez said.

“When the suspect turned toward the officer, an officer-involved shooting occurred and the suspect succumbed to his injuries,” Vasquez said.

Warnke said the bomb squad was called as a precaution because the suspect carried a backpack.

“Events like this happen elsewhere, but not at UC Merced, which may be still small in student body but large in its sense of community — yet, it has happened,” Chancellor Dorothy Leland said in a statement on the school webpage. She said the injuries to stabbing victims were not believed to be life-threatening.

UC Merced, which opened Sept. 5, 2005, is the newest campus in the University of California system and is situated near Yosemite National Park.

CNN’s Sonya Hamasaki contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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Messages from the first march were echoed Saturday in speeches from African-American leaders, including Farrakhan, calling for unity and institutional reform in social justice issues affecting the black community.

Farrakhan, 82, spoke to the crowd on the National Mall in Washington and reflected on the importance of passing the torch to the next generation.

“We who are getting older … what good are we if we don’t prepare young people to carry that torch of liberation to the next step? What good are we if we think we can last forever and not prepare others to walk in our footsteps?” he said.

The overall message seemed to be directed at the black community at large, not just men. Many women and children were in the crowd and Farrakhan talked at length about how men should honor women.

Another difference: This rally was clearly aimed at the digital generation. A website, www.justiceorelse.com, carried a live webcast of the events and made it easy for people to donate money or volunteer. Speakers encouraged the crowd to share images and video of the rally on social media, and #MillionManMarch became a trending topic for much of the day.

The first march on Oct. 16, 1995, drew attendees — most of them black men — to Washington from all over the country for more than 12 hours of speeches calling on black men to take responsibility for improving themselves, their families and communities. On that day, Farrakhan spoke for more than two hours and expounded on the role of white supremacy in the country’s suffering while calling on black men to clean up their lives and become better fathers, husbands and neighbors.

Farrakhan blasted the white establishment again on Saturday.

“Moses was not an integrationist and neither are we,” he said. “Let me be clear. America has no future for you or for me. She can’t make a future for herself, much less a future for us.”

On passing the torch, he specifically mentioned Black Lives Matter, the group that arose in response to police-involved deaths of black men, as the “future leadership.”

“These are not just young people who happened to wake up one morning. Ferguson ignited it all,” he said. “So [to] all the brothers and sisters from Ferguson who laid in the streets, all the brothers and sisters from Ferguson who challenged the tanks, we are honored that you have come to represent our struggle and our demands.”

Civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis, who attended the first march, noted that in the crowd 20 years ago was an Illinois state senator who went on to become president, “so we’ve made some progress,” he told the crowd.

“But you and I know we’ve got a lot more progress to make,” he said. “There’s too much injustice, too much inequality, too much mass incarceration … too [many] situations in our community that need addressing, and that’s why we’re here today.”

U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Illinois, who also was present in 1995, said the rally was a testament to struggles and progress, past and present.

“We will march on so over-aggressive law enforcement procedures will not be the order of the day. We will march on until every child has access to high-quality education. We will march so that every citizen will know that they can get health care,” Davis said.

“Today’s gathering is a reaffirmation of the faith that the dark past has taught us and of the hope the present has brought us.”

CNN’s Jareen Imam contributed to this report.

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Tamir Rice was killed by an officer in training outside a Cleveland recreation center in November 2014. The shooting sparked controversy given Tamir’s age and the fact that he had a gun that resembled a handgun but fired pellets.

It also came as the nation reeled from police-involved shootings of unarmed African-American men. Tamir was black.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said a grand jury will decide whether Officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, will face charges.

The two reports, as well as a third one by the Highway Patrol, were posted on the prosecutor’s website Saturday night.

“These cases are, by their very nature, different than other matters that come to our office,” McGinty said in a written statement. “They demand a higher level of public scrutiny as well as a careful evaluation of the officer’s conduct and whether, under law, those actions were reasonable under the circumstances.”

S. Lamar Sims, the senior chief deputy district attorney in Denver, wrote one of the reports and concludes Loehmann’s decision to shoot Rice as he approached the officers was “objectively reasonable.”

“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Sims writes in his report. “However, for all of the reasons discussed herein, I conclude that Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.”

Neither Loehmann nor Garmback spoke with the reports’ authors.

An attorney for the Rice family said the experts were part of a whitewashing of the case. Subodh Chandra said the family wants the officers held accountable, but doesn’t think McGinty’s office is pursuing it.

“Any presentation to a grand jury — without the prosecutor advocating for Tamir — is a charade,” Chandra said. “To get so-called experts to assist in the whitewash — when the world has the video of what happened — is all the more alarming.”

Chandra criticized the experts as “pro-police” and said it was obvious from the video that the officers never assessed the situation.

“Reasonable jurors could find that conduct unreasonable,” he said, adding that the family believes the prosecutor “is working diligently to ensure that there is no indictment.”

Tamir had been playing near the swings of a recreation center near his home when he was shot on Nov. 22. He died a day later.

A witness called 911, reporting there was “a guy with a pistol,” adding that the weapon was “probably” fake.

Information that the gun the caller saw was probably not real and that the person holding it appeared to be a juvenile was not conveyed to Loehmann and Garmback, according to recordings that law enforcement released.

Video of the incident shows a patrol car pull up on the snowy grass near a gazebo where Tamir is standing. Within two seconds of exiting the police car, Loehmann shoots the boy.

The gun was in the waistband of Tamir’s pants. Sims writes that in the video it appears the boy’s hands moved toward his waistband but it is unclear if he reached for the gun.

Kimberly Crawford, a 20-year veteran of the FBI and a former instructor at the agency’s academy, writes that when the officers approached Tamir they were responding to a report of a male suspect with a gun he kept pulling from his pants.

“The after-acquired information — that the individual was 12 years old, and the weapon in question was an ‘airsoft gun’— is not relevant to a constitutional review of Officer Loehmann’s actions,” she wrote in one of the other reports posted Saturday.

She says Loehmann was required to make a threat assessment and a split-second decision on whether to shoot.

“His response was a reasonable one,” she writes.

McGinty said his office wasn’t using the reports to reach a conclusion and the grand jury will get to consider all the evidence once the investigation into shooting is done.

In June, McGinty released the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office report. Also that month — in a non-binding review of the case — a Cleveland judge found probable cause for the charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty against Loehmann.

CNN’s John Murgatroyd, Tony Marco, Dana Ford, Ralph Ellis and Melissa Gray contributed to this report.

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Before going into spinal surgery, Anastasia Boylan told her father the gunman entered her classroom firing.

“I’ve been waiting to do this for years,” the gunman told the professor teaching the class. He shot him point blank, Boylan recounted.

Others were hit too, she told her family.

Everyone in the classroom dropped to the ground.

The gunman, while reloading his handgun, ordered the students to stand up and asked if they were Christians, Boylan told her family.

“And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,’” Boylan’s father, Stacy, told CNN, relaying her account.

“And then he shot and killed them.”

Boylan, 18, was hit in the back by a bullet that traveled down her spine. While she lay bleeding on the floor, the gunman called out to her, “Hey you, blond woman,” her mother said.

She played dead — and survived.

Stacy Boylan also said the shooter delivered “a box” to someone during the shooting.

He said his daughter told him the man “gave somebody a box, somebody who lived, and said, ‘You gotta deliver this.’ Somebody has a box. I don’t know what that’s about.”

The massacre on the Umpqua campus Thursday left nine people dead and nine wounded. The gunman also died, although it’s unclear whether he was shot by police or committed suicide.

Speaking Friday morning on CNN’s “New Day,” Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said he had not heard anything about the gunman asking victims about their religion.

He also wouldn’t talk about why the shooting happened, saying, “It’s really too early to tell what the motive was.”

Hanlin reiterated that he will not officially identify the gunman, leaving that task to the state medical examiner’s office.

“I don’t want to glorify the shooter, I don’t want to glorify his name, I don’t want to glorify his cause,” Hanlin said. “I’m refusing to state his name. … You won’t hear his name from me or this investigation.”

Multiple law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation identified the gunman as Chris Harper Mercer, 26.

It was unclear if Mercer was a student at the college. Rita Cavin, interim president of the school, said Mercer was not believed to be a current student, but some students said they took courses with him.

One law enforcement official said the shooter had body armor with him and was heavily armed, with a large amount of ammunition — enough for a prolonged gunfight. Authorities recovered three pistols and one rifle at the scene, one official said.

Authorities credited a quick response by law enforcement for keeping the death toll from climbing.

The gunman’s death means officials will never definitively know what compelled him to carry out the attack at the Roseburg campus, about 180 miles south of Portland.

“He was a little odd, like sensitive to things,” said Rebecca Miles, who took a theater class with Mercer.

Throughout Thursday night, investigators talked to the gunman’s family and neighbors to try to piece together the puzzle.

“Obviously it’s been a devastating day,” Mercer’s father, Ian, told reporters outside his house in Tarzana. “Devastating for me and my family.”

Mercer apparently served a brief time in the military.

“A review of Army records indicate that Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer was in service at Ft. Jackson, S.C., from 5 November-11 December 2008 but discharged for failing to meet the minimum administrative standards to serve in the U.S. Army,” the Pentagon said in a news release.

Bronte Hart, who lives in the building where Mercer lived, said the man would “sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light.”

Hart said a woman she believed to be Mercer’s mother lived with him and was “crying her eyes out” Thursday.

Another neighbor, Steven Fisher, described him as “skittish.”

“His demeanor, the way he moved, always looking around,” Fisher said. “I got a bad vibe from him.”

One avenue investigators were pursuing are five blog posts on a website left by someone with an email address associated with Mercer.

The posts were left under the username lithium_love. Two of them were specifically about recent shootings: one about Vester Flanagan, who killed two local news reporters in Virginia, and one about the officer slain near Houston in August.

Speaking of Flanagan on Aug. 31, the blog post reads: “I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

The post also said, “And I have to say, anyone who knew him could have seen this coming. People like him have nothing left to live for, and the only thing left to do is lash out at a society that has abandoned them.”

The father of TV reporter Alison Parker, who was killed in the Virginia shooting, has written an opinion story in USA Today saying the United States is at war and calling for gun restrictions.

Initially, 10 wounded people were taken to Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, but one died in an emergency room, hospital spokeswoman Kathleen Nickel said Friday.

All those people had gunshot wounds to the head, abdomen and limbs, Dr. Jason Gray, the hospital’s chief medical officer, said Friday morning at a news conference.

Three people with gunshot wounds to the head were transferred to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield, he said. One of those patients is in critical condition and two are in serious condition, Nickel said. CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta said those three patients were women between the ages of 18 and 34.

Four patients underwent surgery at Mercy Medical, Gray said. One is in critical condition and two are in fair to good condition, he said. One surgery patient was discharged, he said.

On Thursday, two wounded people were treated in the emergency room and released, he said.

Gray said retired physicians and medical professionals who were on their days off rushed to the hospital to help care for the wounded.

Officials haven’t released the names of the victims, with Sheriff Hanlin saying investigators are “still trying to confirm a great amount of information floating around.” The Identities may be released Friday or Saturday, he said.

The shooting appears to have started in one building, before the gunman moved to another building. Those killed and wounded were found in at least two classrooms. Calvin, the college’s interim president, said the gunman initially opened fire in an English class.

Thursday was freshman Sarah Cobb’s fourth day at the college. She was in a nearby building when she heard the first gunshot.

“I looked over outside, and people were running away from the building, so I knew exactly what had just happened,” she said. “I said to the teacher, ‘We got to get out of here. There’s people running. We need to go.’ Then I heard the second and third gunshots happen.”

Another student, Cassandra Welding, said that when the shots rang out, the students in her class dropped to the ground — huddling behind backpacks and chairs, or underneath tables.

“We locked the doors, turned off the lights, and we were all pretty much in panic mode,” she said.

“We called 911 and called our parents, our loved ones. … We didn’t know what was going to happen, if those were our last words or not.”

Sheriff Hanlin said officers have canvassed the campus and investigated the suspect’s residence.

“Our victims and their families are our priority. Everything that we do from here on will be for them,” he said Thursday night.

The picturesque campus sits on a hill in a logging community, which is fairly rural but easily accessible from Interstate 5.

Roseburg has about 22,000 residents, and Umpqua isn’t a traditional college. The average age of its 13,600 students was 38 during the 2013-14 school year.

Cavin, the interim leader of Umpqua Community College, called Thursday “the saddest day in the history of the college.”

Crowds gathered Thursday night at a park to honor the victims. Some hugged, others wept as candles flickered in the dark. Bagpipes played in the background.

From 2009 to 2012, the area reported no sex offenses, assaults, liquor law violations, weapons possessions or hate crimes. Not even a robbery. The only crime listed was burglary: eight in 2009-10, 11 in 2010-11 and two in 2011-12, according to the school’s own reporting.

“This is so out of character for this whole area,” said Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst who lives in the area.

News of the shooting quickly reverberated through Washington and the 2016 campaign trail.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton called for “sensible gun control measures,” while Republican presidential contender Ben Carson said more gun control is not the answer.

A visibly upset President Barack Obama, delivering the 15th statement of his presidency addressing gun violence, said these incidents are becoming all too regular.

“Somehow this has become routine,” he said. “The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it. We’ve become numb to this.”

“Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel, and it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America — next week, or a couple months from now.”

Alek Skarlatos, the Oregon national guardsman recognized for helping to stop an armed terrorist aboard a train in France, told CNN affiliate KATU that he was a student at the school and would have been attending this semester if he hadn’t agreed to appear on “Dancing with the Stars.”

“It breaks my heart something like this would happen in Roseburg of all places,” he said. “This community is so small that everybody will know somebody hurt or killed in this attack.”

CNN’s Sara Sidner and Kyung Lah reported from Roseburg, and Ed Payne reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s AnneClaire Stapleton, Faith Karimi, Emma Lacey-Bordeaux, Eliott McLaughlin, Deborah Feyerick, Steve Almasy, Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, Eugene Scott, Shimon Prokupecz, Sheena Jones and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

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In interviews and appearances, the comedian is trying to emphasize that while the show is still a news satire at heart, it will be changing — sometimes markedly — with him in the chair.

For example: there will be more musical performances. Why? Because “I love music, that’s why more music,” Noah said in an interview.

And there will probably be fewer moments of media criticism, a hallmark of Stewart’s later years when he took aim at Fox News and CNN on a regular basis.

“Who knows, ‘The Daily Show’s’ new vision may not be particularly to skewer the media. It may be a different approach. That is what the show became,” Noah said.

He also said he’s not coming onto the show with a specific list of targets — which means he won’t be picking up right where Stewart left off.

“The Daily Show” is an American TV institution, particularly among progressives who cheered for Stewart’s scathing critiques of political failings. Noah says he shares Stewart’s progressive worldview.

But he also seems to have a mandate to broaden the show’s appeal. While he’s not a political junkie, he says he’s interested in all sorts of topics, from campaign news to sports to entertainment.

From Comedy Central’s perspective, the loss of some longtime Stewart fans could be counter-acted by viewers who didn’t make a habit out of Stewart’s “Daily Show,” but are willing to give the new, younger host a chance.

Stewart, who signed off in early August, is 52, while Noah is 31.

“Trevor truly represents the next generation,” Comedy Central President Michelle Ganeless said.

The hand-off is happening at a time of drastic change in late-night — Stephen Colbert just started on CBS’s “Late Show” three weeks ago — and in the wider media world.

The retooled show, still being produced largely by veterans of Stewart’s version, will find comedic fodder from social media scandals and new media juggernauts like BuzzFeed that didn’t exist when Stewart started in 1999.

But cable news anchors shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief. When I asked Noah how often he’ll be poking fun of CNN, he answered slyly, “How many things are you going to be doing that you consider joke-worthy?”

One of the TVs in his office is tuned to CNN. “I watch all of them,” he said of the TV news networks. “Sometimes the things that are said are ridiculous. I laugh at them. Sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes they’re right. A lot of the time, I learn.”

A native of South Africa, Noah brings an outsider’s perspective to American news coverage and politics. He’ll interview a politician for the first time on Wednesday night when New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie visits the show.

Perhaps the most telling booking, though, is the musician Ryan Adams, who will appear on Thursday night. He’ll perform a song from his new album of Taylor Swift “1989″ covers.

Noah explained: “I think he’s, in essence, done what we’ve done with ‘The Daily Show, and that is, he’s taking something that people love … something that’s very successful, and he’s gone, ‘This is my interpretation of it.’ People go, ‘Is it changed? Is it different?’ Yes. ‘But is it a thing we recognize?’ Yes. ‘Can I be a fan of both?’ Yes.”

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