Obama denounces Benghazi cover-up charges as ‘political circus’

President Barack Obama gestures during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Monday, …
President Barack Obama on Monday furiously dismissed as a "political circus" Republican charges that his administration had misled Americans about the Benghazi, Libya. Obama said the suggestion dishonors the memory of the four U.S. citizens killed last September.

"There’s no there there,” Obama said during a joint question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister David Cameraon at the White House. "And the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly, has a lot to do with political motivations."

The president’s angry words came after news reports surfaced Friday that the White House had overseen a process that repeatedly watered down Administration talking points on the attack, removing references to possible involvement by al-Qaida and to prior warnings about threats in Benghazi. Republicans have charged that the White House was worried about the potential political fallout from the spectacular terrorist attack in Obama's re-election campaign. The White House has repeatedly denied that it deliberately misled the public.

"The whole issue of talking points frankly throughout this process has been a sideshow," Obama said.

The talking points, which portrayed the attack as evolving from a demonstration of anger at an Internet video that mocked Islam, "pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing," he added, referring to his top-secret morning intelligence review with the CIA.

While protests against the video in Egypt led to an assault on the American embassy in Cairo, officials in Libya never reported a demonstration outside the compound in Benghazi before the assault that claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Obama aides have said that the decision to scrub references in the talking points to al-Qaida and another extremist group, Ansar al-Sharia, reflected the intelligence community's uncertainty about the role they played.

"Immediately after this event happened, we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were," Obama said. "It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on US embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film. And nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days."

The president also pointed to his first public remarks on the attack, in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, 2012, when he lumped the events in Benghazi in with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes as "acts of terror."

But he and other senior officials declined in subsequent days to label the attack the work of terrorists. And U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice linked the Benghazi assault to the Internet video when she appeared on morning news shows the first Sunday after the attack.

"I’ve just got to say, here’s what we know: Americans died in Benghazi," Obama said. "What we also know is clearly they were not in a position where they were adequately protected.

"The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism and what I pledged to the American people was we would find out what happened we would make sure that it did not happen again and we would make sure that we held accountable those who had perpetrated this terrible crime. And that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do," he said.

Obama praised the work of envoys like Stevens and diplomats and other personnel serving overseas today, and declared: "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus."

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Ex-SC Gov. Sanford back in political office

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Former Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford revived a scandal-scarred political career by winning back his old congressional seat Tuesday in a district that hasn't elected a Democrat in three decades.

The comeback was complete when he defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert. With 87 percent of the precincts reporting, Sanford had 54 percent of the vote.

Sanford, who turns 53 later this month, has never lost a race in three runs for Congress and two for governor. And he said before the votes were counted Tuesday that if he lost this race, he wouldn't run for office again.

"I think you can go back in and you can ask for a second chance in a political sense once," he said Tuesday after voting in the special election.

Sanford saw his political career disintegrate four years ago when he disappeared for five days, telling his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He returned to admit he had been in Argentina with his mistress — a woman to whom he is now engaged. Sanford later paid a $70,000 ethics fine, the largest in state history, for using public money to fly for personal purposes. His wife, Jenny, divorced him.

Green Party candidate Eugene Platt also ran.

Sanford's 1st District, slightly reconfigured from the one he held for three terms in the 1990s, is strongly Republican and Mitt Romney took it by 18 points in last year's presidential race. But Sanford had to battle against his own past indiscretions and a well-financed campaign mounted by Colbert Busch in which she outraised her Republican rival.

Three weeks before the special election, news surfaced that Sanford's ex-wife had filed a court complaint alleging he was in her house without permission in violation of their divorce decree, leading the National Republican Congressional Committee to pull its support from the campaign. Sanford must appear in court Thursday on the complaint.

Sanford said he tried to get in touch with his ex-wife and was in the house so his youngest son would not have to watch the Super Bowl alone.

The seat became vacant when U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint resigned from his Senate seat late last year. Governor Nikki Haley then appointed the sitting congressman, Tim Scott, to fill DeMint's seat.

Colbert Busch had said after she voted in Mount Pleasant, across the Cooper River from Charleston, that she felt positive and encouraged. But in the end, despite Sanford's past being an issue for some voters, she was defeated.

Gabriel Guillard, 49, a massage therapist and teacher, said she liked Colbert Busch but would have voted for anyone but Sanford.

"I would do anything to make sure Mark Sanford doesn't get back in because of his past behavior," she said. "And I am so tired of South Carolina being a laughingstock. I'm so sick of it."

Others didn't let the past dictate. Marion Doar, 79 and retired from careers in the military and business, said he voted for Sanford.

"Sanford was a fine fellow," he said. "He still is a fine fellow. Following his heart as he did was foolish but it happens."

Sanford already has survived a 16-way GOP primary with several sitting state lawmakers and Teddy Turner, the son of media magnate Ted Turner. He also won the primary runoff. Colbert Busch defeated perennial candidate Ben Frasier with 96 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary.

Colbert Busch, 58, picked up the endorsement of The Post and Courier over the weekend. The Charleston newspaper called her "a welcome tonic" for those who suffer from "Sanford Fatigue — a malady caused by overexposure to all of the cringe-worthy details of his 2009 disgrace as governor, his ongoing efforts for redemption via the political process, his resurgent personal problems, etc."

Sanford, despite losing national GOP support, picked up the endorsement of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a tea party favorite who is well-known in the district.

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Obama backs Planned Parenthood in political fight

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama vowed Friday to join Planned Parenthood in fighting against what he said are efforts by states to turn women's health back to the 1950s, before the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, and singled out the GOP-governed states of North Dakota and Mississippi for criticism.

"When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they're not just talking about you," Obama said, becoming the first sitting president to address the abortion-rights group in person. "They're talking about the millions of women who you serve."

Obama asserted that "an assault on women's rights" is underway across the country, with bills introduced in more than 40 states to limit or ban abortion or restrict access to birth control or other services.

"The fact is, after decades of progress, there's still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century," he said. "And they've been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women's health."

Last month, North Dakota Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed a law that bans abortions as early as six weeks, or when a fetal heartbeat is detected, making the state the most restrictive in the nation in which to get the procedure.

Obama said "a woman may not even know that she's pregnant at six weeks."

More than a year ago in Mississippi, a "personhood" ballot initiative that would have defined life as beginning at fertilization was defeated by 58 percent of voters in November 2011, the same election in which staunch abortion opponent Phil Bryant, a Republican, was elected governor. Bryant had campaigned for the initiative. Abortion opponents are expected to soon begin a signature-drive to get a similar initiative on the ballot in 2014 or 2015.

"Mississippi's a conservative state, but they wanted to make clear there's nothing conservative about the government injecting itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor," Obama said of the voters there.

The president lauded Planned Parenthood's nearly 100 years of providing cancer screenings, contraception and other health services for women and assured those fighting to protect abortion rights that they have an ally in him.

"You've also got a president who's going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way," Obama said.

In North Dakota, Republican state Rep. Bette Grande, an abortion opponent from Fargo who introduced the bill banning most abortions based on a fetal heartbeat, said she was happy Obama took notice of her state's stance on the issue.

"He is pointing it out because it's true. We have taken a serious look at the life of a child, and the nation is paying attention to that," she said. "We are dealing with life in North Dakota and something as basic as a beating heart."

Laurie Bertram Roberts, Mississippi president of the National Organization for Women, said voters in her state, while conservative, did not misunderstand what "personhood" would have meant for women and families.

"We understand that when you give a fertilized egg the rights of a person, that affects every aspect of pregnancy and reproductive health," she said.

Obama's pledge to stand with Planned Parenthood echoed his rhetoric in last year's presidential campaign after Republican rival Mitt Romney said he'd eliminate the organization's federal funding if elected. That incident, coupled with other issues, led Democrats to begin accusing Republicans of waging a "war on women." Obama went on to win a second term with 55 percent of the female vote, polls showed.

The president originally was scheduled to address Planned Parenthood on Thursday night, but the appearance was delayed to allow him to spend more time in Texas with the loved ones of those who were killed or injured in last week's explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas.

In his short speech on Friday, Obama made no reference to a pair of abortion-related issues that made headlines in recent weeks.

On April 5, a federal judge in New York gave Obama's administration 30 days to begin allowing over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill, saying the government's decision to limit such sales to those aged 17 and older was "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable."

Planned Parenthood sided with the judge; the administration has yet to say whether it will file an appeal.

In Pennsylvania, abortion provider Kermit Gosnell is standing trial on charges of killing babies after they were born alive at his West Philadelphia clinic. He also is charged in the 2009 overdose death of a 41-year-old patient. Closing arguments in the case were set for Monday.

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Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss., and James MacPherson in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this report.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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Political consultants celebrate themselves at Washington gathering

By Samuel P. Jacobs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This is a golden era for political consultants - well, except for those Republicans still smarting from the November elections.

But Americans' political tastes tend to run in cycles, so there is always a mix of hope and wariness when consultants at both ends of the ideological spectrum gather, as they did in Washington last week, to toast the profession's top operatives.

Five months after Mitt Romney was thumped in the race for the White House - a loss that some placed at the feet of the small group of men and women who advised the Republican presidential challenger - the meeting of the American Association of Political Consultants threw together Democratic and Republican operatives who have dedicated their lives to undoing one another's work.

Even those whose clients lost in November feel they have plenty to celebrate in a business that boasts of increasing sophistication as well as profits.

In a video message played at the conference's Hall of Fame luncheon on Thursday, President Barack Obama paid wry respects to an industry that is populated by over-the-top personalities but seen by many Americans as fathering the bitter and costly ways of U.S. politics.

"There is nothing political consultants love more than celebrating their own genius," Obama said.

The 2012 election left many of the Republican campaign professionals feeling less like geniuses after their candidate was outmaneuvered by a sitting president they had believed to be vulnerable.

"Elections make you look smarter than what you are, and more stupid," said Ed Goeas, president of The Tarrance Group, a Republican strategy firm. "This was not an election for Republican consultants that made us look smarter."

After the loss in November, complaints among the Republican activists directed at the party's consultant class have been at full boil.

Appearing last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering for influential right-wing activists, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin blasted party leaders such as Karl Rove, the former George W. Bush adviser, who she said have led the Republican Party astray.

"Now is the time to furlough the consultants, and tune out the pollsters, send the focus groups home and throw out the political scripts, because if we truly know what we believe, we don't need professionals to tell us," Palin said, calling for more staunchly conservative candidates.

(Never mind that Palin's own political action committee doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to consultants in 2012.)

CPAC also featured a panel with the indelicate title: "Should we shoot all the consultants now?"

Dale Emmons, a Democratic strategist from Kentucky and president of the consultants' association, said Republicans should hold their fire.

"To those who want to shoot all the consultants, I don't advise they do that," Emmons said. "I know the abilities of the people I compete against are strong."

Emmons said that perhaps no collection of advisers could have steered Romney around an incumbent president with a superior organization on the ground - one that was well positioned to take advantage of the nation's growing minority vote, which went heavily for Obama.

Few consultants or top aides who worked with the Romney campaign appeared at last week's gathering, which featured two days of panels - several dissecting the campaign's failings.

Former Romney press secretary Andrea Saul, a routine presence for the campaign on cable television, and Alex Lundry, a top data researcher for Romney, did participate.

For Obama advisers, the meeting was something of a victory lap. The president's pollster, Joel Benenson, began the conference with comments about the strength of the Democratic campaign's polling program and the weakness of various public surveys.

His colleagues David Axelrod and David Plouffe, top strategists for Obama's two winning presidential runs, were inducted into the association's Hall of Fame on Thursday.

"At first, I wondered whether this was a real organization or something that Axe and Plouffe made up last week," Obama said during his videotaped remarks.

A HAND ON THE 'WHEEL OF HISTORY'

A quartet of Republican strategists known for steering Republicans to victories in past elections - Arthur Finkelstein, Lance Tarrance, the late Bob Teeter and the late Lee Atwater - was honored.

Atwater, who died of cancer in 1991, is best known for orchestrating often-controversial campaigns that helped turn the South increasingly toward the Republican Party in the 1980s.

His aggressive campaign style inspired a generation of Republican consultants and led critics to accuse him of race-baiting, particularly for his work as George H.W. Bush's campaign manager in the 1988 presidential campaign.

On Friday night, the consultants handed out dozens of awards, celebrating the year's best in advertising, fundraising and mailing.

The consultants are sensitive to the criticism that they profit from the dysfunction of U.S. politics and were eager to stress their influence on candidates who they believe can help change the country for the better.

Plouffe, who managed Obama's 2008 campaign, said their lives amounted to putting a hand on the "wheel of history."

On his way out the door Thursday, Plouffe stopped to chat with a fellow consultant. Plouffe warned about the potential cost of the presidential election in 2016. Last year, each side of the presidential contest spent more than $1 billion.

"By '16, it's going to be $2 billion," Plouffe said.

The consultant sure hoped so.

"From your mouth," he said, "to God's ears."

(Reporting by Samuel P. Jacobs; Editing by David Lindsey and Eric Beech)

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Political consultants celebrate themselves at Washington gathering

By Samuel P. Jacobs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This is a golden era for political consultants - well, except for those Republicans still smarting from the November elections.

But Americans' political tastes tend to run in cycles, so there is always a mix of hope and wariness when consultants at both ends of the ideological spectrum gather, as they did in Washington last week, to toast the profession's top operatives.

Five months after Mitt Romney was thumped in the race for the White House - a loss that some placed at the feet of the small group of men and women who advised the Republican presidential challenger - the meeting of the American Association of Political Consultants threw together Democratic and Republican operatives who have dedicated their lives to undoing one another's work.

Even those whose clients lost in November feel they have plenty to celebrate in a business that boasts of increasing sophistication as well as profits.

In a video message played at the conference's Hall of Fame luncheon on Thursday, President Barack Obama paid wry respects to an industry that is populated by over-the-top personalities but seen by many Americans as fathering the bitter and costly ways of U.S. politics.

"There is nothing political consultants love more than celebrating their own genius," Obama said.

The 2012 election left many of the Republican campaign professionals feeling less like geniuses after their candidate was outmaneuvered by a sitting president they had believed to be vulnerable.

"Elections make you look smarter than what you are, and more stupid," said Ed Goeas, president of The Tarrance Group, a Republican strategy firm. "This was not an election for Republican consultants that made us look smarter."

After the loss in November, complaints among the Republican activists directed at the party's consultant class have been at full boil.

Appearing last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a gathering for influential right-wing activists, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin blasted party leaders such as Karl Rove, the former George W. Bush adviser, who she said have led the Republican Party astray.

"Now is the time to furlough the consultants, and tune out the pollsters, send the focus groups home and throw out the political scripts, because if we truly know what we believe, we don't need professionals to tell us," Palin said, calling for more staunchly conservative candidates.

(Never mind that Palin's own political action committee doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to consultants in 2012.)

CPAC also featured a panel with the indelicate title: "Should we shoot all the consultants now?"

Dale Emmons, a Democratic strategist from Kentucky and president of the consultants' association, said Republicans should hold their fire.

"To those who want to shoot all the consultants, I don't advise they do that," Emmons said. "I know the abilities of the people I compete against are strong."

Emmons said that perhaps no collection of advisers could have steered Romney around an incumbent president with a superior organization on the ground - one that was well positioned to take advantage of the nation's growing minority vote, which went heavily for Obama.

Few consultants or top aides who worked with the Romney campaign appeared at last week's gathering, which featured two days of panels - several dissecting the campaign's failings.

Former Romney press secretary Andrea Saul, a routine presence for the campaign on cable television, and Alex Lundry, a top data researcher for Romney, did participate.

For Obama advisers, the meeting was something of a victory lap. The president's pollster, Joel Benenson, began the conference with comments about the strength of the Democratic campaign's polling program and the weakness of various public surveys.

His colleagues David Axelrod and David Plouffe, top strategists for Obama's two winning presidential runs, were inducted into the association's Hall of Fame on Thursday.

"At first, I wondered whether this was a real organization or something that Axe and Plouffe made up last week," Obama said during his videotaped remarks.

A HAND ON THE 'WHEEL OF HISTORY'

A quartet of Republican strategists known for steering Republicans to victories in past elections - Arthur Finkelstein, Lance Tarrance, the late Bob Teeter and the late Lee Atwater - was honored.

Atwater, who died of cancer in 1991, is best known for orchestrating often-controversial campaigns that helped turn the South increasingly toward the Republican Party in the 1980s.

His aggressive campaign style inspired a generation of Republican consultants and led critics to accuse him of race-baiting, particularly for his work as George H.W. Bush's campaign manager in the 1988 presidential campaign.

On Friday night, the consultants handed out dozens of awards, celebrating the year's best in advertising, fundraising and mailing.

The consultants are sensitive to the criticism that they profit from the dysfunction of U.S. politics and were eager to stress their influence on candidates who they believe can help change the country for the better.

Plouffe, who managed Obama's 2008 campaign, said their lives amounted to putting a hand on the "wheel of history."

On his way out the door Thursday, Plouffe stopped to chat with a fellow consultant. Plouffe warned about the potential cost of the presidential election in 2016. Last year, each side of the presidential contest spent more than $1 billion.

"By '16, it's going to be $2 billion," Plouffe said.

The consultant sure hoped so.

"From your mouth," he said, "to God's ears."

(Reporting by Samuel P. Jacobs; Editing by David Lindsey and Eric Beech)

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Questions arise over political intel providers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Requiring more disclosure from "political intelligence" entrepreneurs who gather information on Congress and other government activities and sell it to investors would help securities regulators in their investigations of insider trading, congressional watchdogs said Thursday.

At the same time, however, the Government Accountability Office said it is skeptical about the ability to determine how much the rapidly growing political intelligence industry impacts trading and other investment decisions.

"Even when a connection can be established between discrete pieces of government information and investment decisions, it's not always clear whether such information could be definitively categorized as material," the GAO said in its report.

Securities and Exchange Commission officials told the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, that requiring more transparency from political intelligence providers would aid the commission. "More information could allow enforcement staff to identify relationships or make connections between the various individuals involved in an investigation of potential insider trading," the GAO said, according to the report.

It's also difficult to determine how much nonpublic information is being sold to clients as political intelligence, according to the report. Many of the political intelligence firms meld information they've obtained with other analysis and research, the GAO said.

According to the report, Congress would also have to weigh any new regulations with "related practical and legal issues" including additional costs.

The GAO report was required under a law passed by Congress last year banning insider trading by lawmakers, aides and other government officials and requiring more financial disclosures from them.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., who led the effort to pass the so-called STOCK Act, released a joint statement saying the GAO report showed the importance of transparency in the political intelligence industry.

"When a political intelligence professional is paid to gather inside information from congressional or agency sources that can be used to make investment decisions, that professional should have to register and disclose his or her activities to the public," Grassley and Slaughter said in the statement.

The lawmakers said they would reintroduce legislation requiring political intelligence firms to register publicly. That requirement was initially included in the STOCK Act legislation but was stripped out when the bill came to a vote and replaced with language requiring the GAO study. Republicans said the disclosure requirement as it was written was too broad.

"This simple idea enjoyed strong bipartisan support from both houses of Congress last session, and when we re-introduce this disclosure requirement, we expect it to once again have widespread support among lawmakers and the public," the lawmakers said.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on how a report from Height Securities, a Washington-based firm, to Wall Street clients on Monday led to a flurry of trades involving healthcare companies.

A report from the company predicted, correctly, that the Obama administration would reverse a previously announced decision to change Medicare Advantage rates. Soon after the report came out, according to the Journal, shares of several large insurance companies rose as much as 6 percent.

___

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Political intelligence gathering tough to oversee: study

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two lawmakers on Thursday renewed their bid to regulate the business of selling information gleaned from government contacts after a study said the political intelligence industry was difficult to define and would be hard to police.

Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Louise Slaughter said they would reintroduce a bill requiring political intelligence gatherers to register with the government and disclose information about their activities.

Such requirements were stripped from legislation passed last year to curb insider trading by lawmakers, their staffs and executive-branch employees.

The Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act instead called for more study of the growing industry surrounding the collection and sale of non-public information about legislative, regulatory and executive branch matters to Wall Street investors and corporations.

The study released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office came to few conclusions.

"The prevalence of the sale of political intelligence is not known and therefore difficult to quantify," the GAO said. "The extent to which investment decisions are based on a single piece of political intelligence would be extremely difficult to measure."

At the time the STOCK Act was being debated by Congress, Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, had suggested that the political intelligence industry could be racking up annual sales of $100 million, largely employing former congressional staffers and government officials.

Unlike lobbyists, who are subject to strict disclosure laws, people who collect information through direct, informal contacts with lawmakers, staffers and other government officials are not subject to any laws or guidelines.

The sale of such information is often bundled with industry research or policy analysis services, making it difficult to determine exactly what information clients use to make their investment decisions.

Often, multiple sources of information are combined when deciding to buy or sell securities, the study said.

"Even when a connection can be established between a discrete piece of government information and investment decisions, it is not always clear whether such information could be definitively categorized as material," the GAO said.

Still, Grassley and Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from upstate New York, said these professionals should be registered with the government and their activities disclosed, just like lobbyists.

"This report shows the dire need for transparency in the political intelligence industry, which profits from the cozy relationship between Washington, D.C., and Wall Street," the two lawmakers said in a statement.

WHAT IS 'DIRECT CONTACT'?

The GAO noted that insider trading laws now apply to both the executive and legislative branches of government, prohibiting officials and lawmakers from using or disclosing material non-public information for their own benefit.

Firms selling political intelligence maintain they have policies in place to ensure that they follow those laws.

If Congress chose to supplement these laws with disclosure requirements for political intelligence gatherers, it would have to deal with a lack of consensus on key definitions such as what constitutes "direct contact," or an "investment decision" or even what constitutes such intelligence, the study said.

On Capitol Hill, where information is used as currency among lawmakers, congressional staff, constituents, trade groups and the media, such requirements could make life more difficult.

The GAO said they could even prompt challenges based on perceived restrictions to free speech.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by Xavier Briand)

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Australia's gun controls a political template for the U.S.

By James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard wore a bullet proof vest under his suit when he addressed an angry crowd of gun owners in 1996, telling them he was going to ban automatic and semi-automatic weapons for the safety of all Australians.

At other rallies, effigies of his deputy prime minister Tim Fischer were hanged by opponents of gun control.

The battle for gun control in Australia, after the country's worst massacre in which 35 people were shot dead, was risky both personally and politically. Howard alienated a large part of his conservative, rural base and was almost thrown from office.

But the gun reforms made Australia a safer place, with fewer homicides and suicides, and both Howard and Fischer are now urging U.S. President Barack Obama to take his gun control campaign to the people, just as they did, to gain a consensus.

"I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people. I also knew it wouldn't be easy," Howard wrote in the New York Times earlier this year.

"Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair...I understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative," wrote Howard, adding he hoped his example would contribute constructively to the U.S. gun debate.

Obama wants to ban military assault rifles and high capacity ammunition clips after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December. But his plans appear to be losing momentum ahead of debate in the U.S. Senate this month.

BRUTAL GUN POLITICS

Six weeks after Howard won office in 1996, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed man, used semi-automatic rifles to kill 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Fischer, a Vietnam war veteran, farmer and gun owner, said the politics of gun control in Australia were brutal.

"It was a battle royal, and John Howard laid down a template that was worth defending and taking to the public square, taking to the people, and shifting the tectonic plates in the process. And the result ... 200 less coffins a year on a conservative estimate," Fischer told Reuters.

"It was the right thing to do, but people had to be persuaded of it. And this is why our friends in the United States ... should now consider seriously taking it in a big way to the public square."

In Australia, gun owners were compensated when they handed in previously legal weapons. Almost 700,000 guns were destroyed, halving the number of homes with a gun. That would be equal to taking 40 million guns out of action in the United States.

But the reforms angered many constituents of Fischer's rural-based National Party, who vented their anger two years later at the ballot box. The pro-gun One Nation party won almost one million votes and the government narrowly avoided defeat.

Australia had 13 gun massacres in the 18 years before the 1996 gun reforms, but has not suffered any mass shootings since.

Studies found a marked drop in gun-related homicides, down 59 percent, and a dramatic 65 percent drop in the rate of gun-related suicides, in the 10 years after the weapons crackdown.

But some Australian gun owners, like hunter Stephen O'Donnell, still oppose Howard's gun control laws, arguing they have simply created paperwork not made Australia safer.

O'Donnell, a license kangaroo shooter, can only use a single shell, bolt-action rifle, limiting his ability to control mobs of kangaroos and feral pests which can wreak havoc on farms.

"If I could have a semi-automatic, that would be a much more efficient way of doing it. You could take multiple targets a lot quicker," he said.

(Editing by Robert Birsel and Michael Perry)

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10 political words we should use more often

Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...

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