Jeb Bush considers run for the White House; could face challenges, including surname
MIAMI — Jeb Bush gets the question at just about every public appearance these days: Will you run for president?
The former Florida governor gives a well-worn answer: “I can honestly tell you that I don’t know what I’m going to do.” It’s an answer that won’t satisfy the GOP faithful for much longer.
The scion of the Bush political dynasty will likely be asked the question many times in the coming weeks as he raises his profile with appearances in Tennessee, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas — where he’ll bump into another possible 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Bush’s “yes” or “no” is one of the most significant factors looming over the 2016 Republican presidential contest. A White House bid by the brother and son of presidents would shake up a wide-open GOP field, attract a legion of big-money donors and set up a showdown with the influential tea party movement. Bush has said he’ll consult with his family this summer and make a decision by the end of the year.
Oklahoma court resets scheduled executions so prison officials can seek supply of lethal drugs
OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections.
The decision came in a lawsuit in which two inmates had sought more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them later this month. The inmates had sought a stay of their executions, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said that request was moot because the state Department of Corrections doesn’t have enough drugs on hand to carry out their death sentences.
Oklahoma and other states that have the death penalty have been scrambling for substitute drugs or new sources for drugs for lethal injections after major drugmakers — many based in Europe with longtime opposition to the death penalty — stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.
While the judges didn’t rule on the merit of the inmates’ stay request, they pushed their executions back a month — Clayton Lockett to April 22 and Charles Warner to April 29.
Sectarian tensions flare up in Lebanon as Sunnis block roads to protest Hezbollah blockade
BEIRUT — Sunni Muslim demonstrators used burning tires to close key roads across Lebanon Tuesday to protest a blockade of their brethren by Shiite gunmen, officials said, as the country struggles to keep a lid on simmering sectarian tensions enflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria.
In one of the most ominous signs, an AP reporter saw protesters marching among cars stopped at a Beirut roadblock and warning drivers with Shiite emblems on their vehicles that Sunnis would not be cowed by the powerful Shiite militant Hezbollah group. There was no violence, and all of the cars eventually moved on unscathed.
Lebanon, which is still haunted by its own 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, has been deeply polarized by the current conflict in Syria. Lebanese Sunnis largely support the predominantly Sunni opposition in Syria, while Shiites have backed President Bashar Assad’s government.
That dynamic has sent sectarian hatreds soaring in Lebanon, particularly since the country’s most powerful political and military force, Hezbollah, dispatched its fighters last year to Syria to bolster Assad’s forces. Many Sunnis also resent Hezbollah’s unmatched political and military position in Lebanon.
Against that backdrop, hundreds of angry young Sunni protesters forced roads to close Tuesday across the country to protest a dayslong Hezbollah blockade on the predominantly Sunni town of Arsal near the Syrian border.
By wire sources