‘Ultimate blame’ on White House for Boston attack, says Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday that the Obama administration was ultimately to blame for failing to prevent last week's attack at the Boston Marathon.

The South Carolina lawmaker was asked if he believed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was responsible for terror suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev avoiding detection by federal law enforcement. American authorities were tipped off by Russian intelligence that Tsarnaev had ties to overseas terror groups.

"I have no idea who bears the blame. I just know the system is broken. The ultimate blame I think is with the administration," Graham said.

"The FBI and the CIA are ... they have great people, but you know we're going backwards in national security. Benghazi and Boston to me are examples of us going backward."

Tsarnaev was killed last Friday after a shoot-out with police in the Boston suburbs. His brother, Dzhokhar, was arrested hours later and has been charged as a co-conspirator in the terror attack that left three dead and hundreds wounded.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed in 2011 by the FBI and reportedly put onto a terror watch list by the CIA. Other reports have suggested that his naturalization application was halted after the Russian tip.

"That’s system failure, 12 years after 9/11," Graham said. "And it gets worse, the suspected radical Islamist, the person we got warning letters about is openly on the Internet for months talking about killing Americans and engaging in radical jihad against the United States and we were unable to connect the dots and pick that up. The rest is history."

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the government's handling of the Tsarnaev terror tip was "under investigation."

"The issues related to this case and procedures and how they worked, what we learned in a warning from Russia, for example, and the action that sparked the FBI to take and to look into Tamerlan Tsarnaev — all of these issues are obviously under investigation," Carney said.

In a statement, the FBI said the Russian government had provided them "information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups."

The agency said it investigated Tsarnaev's phone records, online activity, known associations, travel history and education. The FBI also interviewed Tsarnaev and his family.

"The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2001," the agency said in a statement.

- Jeremey Herb contributed. Updated at 2:28 p.m.

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Sens. Graham, Paul split over harm from sequestration cuts

GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C) and Rand Paul (Ky.) on Sunday highlighted the split within the Republican party on the effect of the looming $85 billion in sequester spending cuts slated to take effect on March 1. 

In interviews on "Fox News Sunday" Defense hawk Graham said the cuts would devastate the military, while Tea Party conservative Paul argued that the sequester is not really a cut at all in government spending.

Graham said President Obama was shirking his duty as commander in chief by allowing the cuts to come into effect.

"On his watch we are going to unravel the greatest military in the world,” he said. “Iran is watching us...we are allowing people to be slaughtered in Syria.”

Graham said that the Senate Democratic proposal to replace the sequester with more tailored defense cuts, farm program cuts and tax increases was laughable. 

“Let's put Obamacare on the table,” he proposed.

Paul, however, was far more comfortable with allowing sequestration.

He said that while the across-the-board nature of the cuts is not ideal, the cuts are needed. 

“Ideally we would have done the right thing and passed appropriation bills... the sequester is sort of a hammer,” said Paul. 

But he added that the sequester and 8 years of similar cuts slated to take effect still leave spending on an upward path. 

“The sequester is really a reduction in the rate of growth of spending, it is not a real cut in spending,” he said. “Even with the sequester, spending will still rise overall.”

Paul denounced Obama for listing new programs in his State of the Union address. and proposing to pay for them with tax increases. He added that attempts by Obama to paint the GOP as the party of protecting tax breaks for the wealthy were false.

“It is our job to explain to the public big government doesn't help the poor,” he said. “His massive debt causes prices to rise.”

Paul also told "Fox News Sunday" that he would only run for president in 2016 if he can win and that he will not decide on a possible bid until next year. 

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Graham tells president to stop 'cheerleading' for new gun laws

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Wednesday he was unimpressed by the section of President Obama's State of the Union imploring Congress to allow a vote on new gun regulations, telling reporters the country doesn’t “need a cheerleader for new gun laws.”

“We need somebody to enforce the laws we have,” Graham said, according to CNN. “I do wish the cheerleading would stop and the prosecutions begin.”

Graham went on to say that only 44 of the 80,000 people who failed a background check last year were prosecuted, suggesting the Obama administration was lax in enforcing current gun rules. The vast majority of those failed background checks were not referred to the government for investigation, an indication that applicants may not have actually broken any laws.

Pressed on whether he believed everyone who failed a background check should be prosecuted, Graham acknowledged many would-be gun purchasers had likely made innocent mistakes.

“But in the case of–I can give you some examples, I should have brought them with me–that if you fail the background check you’re providing, you’ve got strawman purchases,” he said. “Here’s what I would suggest: Out of the 80,000, more than 44 probably did it illegally.”

President Obama made an impassioned plea for a vote on new gun controls toward the end of his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Victims of gun violence and their families filled the chamber, and members of Congress wore green ribbons as a tribute to the victims of the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.

“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote,” Obama said, to some of the evening's loudest applause.

The president plans to push his gun measures — which include universal background checks on all firearm purchases, a renewed assault weapons ban, and limits on magazine size — during events Friday at the White House and in Chicago. In Washington, he we posthumously award the Presidential Citizens Medal to six educators who were killed during the Newtown shooting.

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Lindsay Graham: I Will Destroy America’s Solvency Unless The Social Security Retirement Age Is Raised

Although official Washington is currently fixated on the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” the biggest threat to American prosperity is the debt ceiling, which must be raised in February to prevent economic catastrophe. If Republicans refuse to reach a deal on the so-called cliff, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that they will spark a new recession in 2013. But if Republicans block action on the debt ceiling, they will make that potential recession look quaint. Without raising the debt ceiling, the United States will be forced to embrace austerity so severe it will lead to “a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008.”

But in an interview on Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to oppose this must-pass bill unless Social Security benefits are taken away from millions of future retirees:

I’m not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we get serious about keeping the country from becoming Greece, saving Social Security and Medicare [sic]. So here’s what i would like: meaningful entitlement reform — not to turn Social Security into private accounts, not to take a voucher approach to Medicare — but, adjust the age for Social Security, CPI changes and means testing and look beyond the ten-year window. I cannot in good conscience raise the debt ceiling without addressing the long term debt problems of this country and I will not.

Watch it:

This is extortion, plain and simple. It is the budgetary equivalent of threatening to break America’s legs unless Congress agrees to break the backs of millions poised on the edge of retirement. Graham’s position is that seniors should have to wait longer for their retirement benefits — even if they work in physically demanding jobs that literally tear the body apart by the time a worker reaches age 65 — and that those benefits should be reduced in the future.

And if Congress won’t agree to this deal, then Graham is prepared to thrust the nation into an economic calamity unheard of since the Great Depression.

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Sen. Graham vows to oppose new federal assault weapons ban

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pledged Sunday to oppose legislation to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban.

"I think the assault weapons ban didn't work then. It's not going to work now, and I will oppose it," Graham said on "Fox News Sunday."

Graham's opposition comes as a number of legislators prepare to push new measures to reduce gun violence in response to a shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that claimed the lives of 27, including 20 children. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) plans to introduce a new federal assault weapons ban in the next Congress. And on Sunday, President Obama said he wanted to sign into law new gun-control measures in 2013. 

Graham said the last assault weapons ban, which lasted for ten years, was ineffective.

"Well, we had the assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004 and the conclusion was, it did not change crime by banning assault weapons in an appreciable way, and last year with the lowest murder rate in the history of the United States, people buying more guns, murder rates have gone down -- you are talking about preventing mass murder by mentally unstable persons," Graham said. "You can't take every sharp object out of the reach of people like this."

Graham suggested he supported a proposal by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to post armed guards in schools to prevent shooting massacres similar to Sandy Hook. 

"I own an AR-15 and I have done nothing wrong by owning the gun. If you had armed security, with better rules of engagement, that, to me, is a better way to deal with the situation," Graham said. "And the best way is to identify these people before they act and do something about it."

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