Sen. Marco Rubio tells backers he is running for president
MIAMI — Hoping to turn his relative youth into a benefit, Sen. Marco Rubio entered the presidential race Monday with a promise to move politics beyond the past, a jab at both Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton and his one-time Republican mentor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Rubio is betting voters’ frustrations with Washington will help him defeat two members of America’s political dynasties and capture the White House. The first-generation Cuban-American faces an uphill climb to the GOP nomination in his effort to reshape how the electorate views Republicans as a party.
“This election is not just about what laws we will pass,” he said in his speech for his Miami kickoff rally Monday. “It is a generational choice about what kind of country we will be.”
He said it’s also a choice between the haves and have-nots, nodding to his own upbringing by working-class parents. “I live in an exceptional country where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”
Rubio, 43, spoke first to his top donors a day after Clinton announced her bid for the Democratic nomination and as she was traveling to Iowa on her first trip as a candidate.
Long, deliberate
process led Clinton to run for president
WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton spent nearly two years tiptoeing around a decision to run for president that much of the political world assumed was a done deal.
Clinton didn’t make a final call until the holidays. She spent her annual Christmas vacation last year in the Dominican Republic wading through 500 pages of memos and polling analysis, and discussing the material with her husband, former two-term President Bill Clinton.
When Clinton returned to New York there was no meeting with staff or email announcing her candidacy. The former senator and secretary of state simply started telling advisers to move forward with hiring and find a campaign headquarters.
Clinton formally launched her campaign Sunday in an online video
Ex-security guards convicted in Iraq shooting deaths get long sentences
WASHINGTON — A federal judge sentenced former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten to life in prison and three others to 30-year terms for their roles in a 2007 shooting that killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded 17 others.
The carnage in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square caused an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Slatten, who witnesses said was the first to fire shots in the incident, to life on a charge of first-degree murder. The three other guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were each sentenced to 30 years and one day in prison for charges that included manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and using firearms while committing a felony.
By wire sources.