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  Rahm Emanuel votes Hillary over Biden for 2016

  Jim Avila, Richard Coolidge and Jordyn Phelps at Power Players1 hr ago

  Power Players.
  
  As a former White House insider in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, Rahm Emanuel has worked closely with Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. But when it comes to who would be the better Democratic presidential candidate come 2016, his mind is made up.
  Emanuel votes Hillary.
  
  “If she chooses to run, I've already said I'm going to support her,” the mayor of Chicago told “Power Players.”
  
  "Joe's a good friend, personally,” said Emanuel. “He's obviously worthy of being considered because he's a great vice president, a great senator, has something to offer … In this case, so does the former secretary of state, senator, and first lady.”
  
  Though Emanuel said he is confident that Clinton would win a hypothetical presidential matchup if she chooses to run, he added that Clinton is weighing the prospects of a presidential bid against other personal life factors.
  

  “She's about to be a grandmother,” he said. “And she cares about that, and making sure she has the time. Being a congressman, being a mayor, being a president, being a candidate for president, time is not one of the commodities you have a lot of.”

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  Medal of Honor recipient defied threat of death to help wounded comrades

  Jonathan Karl, Richard Coolidge and Jordyn Phelps at Power Players1 day ago

  Politics Confidential
  
  When former Army Sgt. Kyle White and his platoon came under surprise attack along a remote trail in Afghanistan in November 2007, he was resigned to dying.
  
  “I pretty much realized there was no chance of survival after I took those fragments in my face after being knocked out,” said White, 27. “I had no hope for getting out of there, but it was kind of like, OK, but if that is going to happen, I'm going to do what I can to help my battle buddies until that does.”
  
  But White didn’t die that day.
  
  Despite being wounded himself, incurring two concussions, and running through direct enemy fire multiple times, White survived the four-hour battle while risking his own life to help wounded soldiers and, ultimately, saved the life of former Spc. Kain Schilling.
  
  White was recognized by President Obama at the White House on Tuesday with the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for military valor.
  
  

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  When Bill Clinton calls screaming at 2 a.m.: Rep. James Clyburn tells all in new memoir

  Jeff Zeleny, Richard Coolidge and Jordyn Phelps at Power Players2 days ago

  The Fine Print
  
  The call came at 2:15 a.m. on Jan. 27, 2008, awaking Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina. He instantly recognized the voice on the other end of the line.
  It was Bill Clinton and he was angry.
  
  “If you bastards want a fight, you damn well will get one,” Clyburn recalls Clinton screaming at him, a moment the congressman recounted in his new memoir, “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black.”
  
  “He was very upset,” Clyburn told “The Fine Print” of the incident. “His wife had just suffered a major defeat in the South Carolina primary, and I had not been involved in it, but Bill Clinton thought otherwise.”
  
  Despite Clinton’s belief to the contrary at the time, Clyburn maintains that he played no role in Obama’s sweeping victory over Clinton in the South Carolina primary, having made a promise to the Democratic National Committee that he would stay out of the 2008 nominating fight between Clinton and Obama.
  
  Since the time of their heated late-night phone call, Clyburn said his relationship with Clinton has healed somewhat.
  
  

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  Can U.S. do anything to stop extremists from selling Nigerian girls to fund terror?

  Martha Raddatz, Richard Coolidge & Jordyn Phelps at Power Players6 days ago

  On the Radar
  
  What started as the kidnapping of nearly 300 girls from a boarding school in remote Nigeria has turned into an international rallying cry to rescue the girls nearly a month after their disappearance.
  
  The United States and other members of the international community have now sent aid and military assistance to Nigeria to help in the search, but a former commander of the United States’ military operations in Africa said that these newest efforts likely aren’t enough to save all the girls.
  
  “I think the one thing that's almost certain is the young girls are no longer together,” Retired Gen. Carter Ham told “On the Radar.” “They've almost certainly are dispersed in small groups or even individuals. And my guess is, given the porous nature of these borders, that many of them are probably already outside of Nigeria, thereby complicating the search for them.”
  “But I don't think we should give up hope,” he later added. “What's the likelihood that all of the girls will be rescued? It is pretty remote. But if you get one, that's one. And if you get more than that, then that's good.”
  
  

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• Disillusioned: Why the 'Obama generation' won't vote

  Susan Saulny, Richard Coolidge and Jordyn Phelps at Power Players7 days ago

  Power Players
  Young people are more disillusioned about government and politics than at any time since 2000, a new survey from the Harvard Institute of Politics reveals.
  “The message of the survey is that trust is down in almost every single institution that we've measured and cynicism is up significantly,” John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, told “Power Players” in a recent interview.
  The Institute of Politics’ newest survey of 18- to 29- year-olds found that less than a quarter of these young people plan to “definitely” vote in the 2014 midterm elections. Della Volpe attributes this sharp drop in millennial political participation – which, by contrast, was at a record high in 2008 – to a general “frustration with Washington” and the lack of change under Obama’s watch.
  

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  A tale of two Al Frankens: How the comedian transformed into an 'impeccable' senator

  Jeff Zeleny, Richard Coolidge and Jordyn Phelps at Power Players8 days ago

  The Fine Print
  Long before Al Franken took to the political stage as a U.S. senator, he was making the country laugh at politicians’ expense as a comedian for “Saturday Night Live.” But when this funny guy decided to make a serious run for the Senate six years ago, the jokes more or less stopped.
  “I’m still funny,” the Minnesota Democrat told “The Fine Print,” as he toured rural Minnesota. “I'm funny with my colleagues. My colleagues will all tell you I'm funny.”
  Asked what Franken, the comedian, would say about Franken, the senator, he said dryly that he wouldn’t have much material to work with. He chuckled, describing his first term in the Senate as “impeccable.”
  “He would say I did well because I’m the same person, not two different people,” Franken said, adding that he would be “a really hard person to satirize.” With a laugh, he said: “I’ve made some small mistakes, I suppose.”
  “When I was doing satire and making fun of politicians, I was scrupulously fair,” he added. “So when I would make fun of a politician, it was only because they were screwing up in some way.”
  Franken said his serious job demands serious behavior. But he insists that he’s always been this way.
  

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  Ripped from the headlines: 'Scandal' star Tony Goldwyn says show closer to reality than you may think

  Jeff Zeleny, Jordyn Phelps, and Alexandra Dukakis at Power Players9 days ago

  The Fine Print
  As wild as many of the Washington plot lines of ABC’s hit drama “Scandal” may be -- complete with murder, election rigging, and a super-secret spy organization -- the show isn't always entirely implausible.
  So says Tony Goldwyn, who plays President Fitzgerald Grant III in the show.
  “It seems outlandish, but some of it might be closer [to reality] than we think,” Goldwyn told “The Fine Print” in an interview that brought the fictional president to the real White House, and perhaps further blurred the line between truth and reality for “Scandal” fans everywhere.
  Take, for example, a story line the show’s creator and writer Shonda Rhimes developed before a similar scenario actually played out in real life.
  “The NSA scandal, the Edward Snowden thing … six months before that happened, Shonda came up with this crazy insane storyline about someone stealing NSA secrets and threatening to leak them,” Goldwyn said.
  On playing the role of the president, Goldwyn said he tries to keep in mind that the character is in a constant state of crisis.
  

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  Cracking the 'Confidence Code': Why men often outperform women in the workplace

  Susan Saulny, Jordyn Phelps and Alexandra Dukakis at Power Players13 days ago

  Power Players
  Despite major strides in recent decades, women have yet to attain full equality in the professional world. And evidence presented in a new book by a pair of powerful female journalists suggests that the biggest factor holding women back isn’t lack of competence.
  The culprit is a lack of confidence.
  “There actually is a confidence gap, there’s science behind this,” BBC World News America anchor Katty Kay told “Power Players.”
  Kay and ABC News’ Claire Shipman are the co-authors of “The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance.”
  “In the classroom we are superstars, and then we get into the real world and something changes,” Kay added. “The rules change. And women don't play so well. You have to have a certain amount of confidence, and I think that’s the bit of the equation perhaps that women are missing.”
  Shipman and Kay were struck by the topic of women’s self-assurance - or lack thereof - while doing research for another book, “Womenomics,” a collaboration they published in 2009 about working women’s empowerment.
  

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  Ralph Nader's America: Impeach Obama, decriminalize drugs, libertarians & progressives unite!

  Jeff Zeleny, Jordyn Phelps, and Alexandra Dukakis at Power Players15 days ago

  The Fine Print
  What if Washington politics were no longer defined by partisan gridlock but instead by a cross-party alliance that forged solutions? The alliance would be unstoppable.
  That’s the premise of the new book “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State” by longtime political activist and five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who contends that such a left-right alliance is not just the stuff of imagination but is actually emerging.
  “On Capitol Hill, I'm seeing more and more in Congress, left and right,” Nader told “The Fine Print.” “It was a vote in the House over a year ago over the NSA snooping, it almost broke through … so we're beginning to see formulations that once they click together, they're unstoppable.”
  Nader was referring to a vote in July 2013 over a measure known as the Amash Amendment that would have curtailed the National Security Agency’s ability to collect bulk phone call data. The measure narrowly failed by 12 votes, in part due to a concerted White House lobbying effort on Capitol Hill.
  

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  Meet the 'Keystone Killer': How cowboys and Indians could join to defeat oil pipeline

  Rick Klein, Jordyn Phelps, and Alexandra Dukakis at Power Players16 days ago

  Top Line
  

  An alliance of cowboys and Indians, complete with an encampment of tepees and a horseback protest, have taken to the nation’s capital to stand in opposition to the proposed Keystone oil pipeline.

  In this episode of “Top Line,” we visit the tepee encampment that has become a week-long fixture on the National Mall in D.C. to talk to prominent Nebraska anti-Keystone pipeline activist Jane Kleeb, who is leading the effort and has been dubbed the “Keystone Killer” by Rolling Stone Magazine.

  “Farmers and ranchers have joined tribal communities as well as in first nations in Canada in order to say we don't want this pipeline risking our property rights and our water,” said Bold Nebraska executive director Jane Kleeb. “Tribes want to pass down the water and land to future lands just like our farmers and ranchers do, and the Keystone XL risks all of that.”