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ByDavidEspoand Andrew Taylor The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Barack Obama on Friday urged the Senate to ratify a $1.1 trillion, House-passed spending bill that has roiled his Democratic Party, judg- ing it an imperfect measure that stems from "the di- vided government that the American people voted for." One day after House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi publicly chastised him for supporting the bill, the president said there were provisions "I really do not like." At the same time, he said there were other portions that "fund health insurance, early childhood education, the fight against climate change and expand manufacturing hubs to grow jobs." He offered his assess- ment as Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid also an- nounced support for the legislation, further under- scoring the split inside the party. The Democrats will lose control of the Sen- ate in January because of heavy losses in midterm elections last month and will go deeper into a House minority than at any time since 1928. With lawmakers ea- ger to wrap up work for the year, there was little doubt the huge spending measure would clear Con- gress within a day or two. To give the Senate time to complete action, Obama signed a 48-hour law over- night to keep the govern- ment funded through Sat- urday and prevent a shut- down that both parties have pledged to avoid. In case even more leeway was needed, the House passed a second stopgap bill that will run out at midnight on Wednesday. Nor was there much if any controversy over the spending levels in the spending measure, which provides funding to keep nearly the entire govern- ment operating through the Sept. 30 end of the current budget year. The sole exception is the Department of Homeland Security, which is funded only until Feb. 27. Republi- cans intend to try then to force the president to roll back a new immigration policy that removes the threat of deportation from millions of immigrants liv- ing in the country illegally. "That battle begins in just four weeks when we get the reinforcements of a Repub- lican Senate in January," Rep. Steve Scalise of Lou- isiana, the House Republi- can whip, said late Thurs- day night after the legisla- tion cleared the House. An unrelated portion of the bill changes the rules for severely distressed multi-employer pension funds, opening the way to possible cuts in benefits for future retirees. But much of the contro- versy surrounding the bill concerned a variety of pro- visions relating to finan- cial regulation, the envi- ronment, campaign financ- ing rules and more. Pelosi and other Demo- crats objected most vocif- erously to a pair of them. One raises the amount of money that wealthy donors may contribute to political parties for national conven- tions, election recounts and headquarters buildings. Generating far more un- happiness among Demo- crats was a section that eliminates a new regulation that was imposed on the na- tion's banks in the wake of the 2008 near-meltdown of the economy. The prospect of undo- ing that regulation in- flamed liberals, including some mentioned as poten- tial presidential candidates in 2016. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., a critic of big banks whose supporters urge her to run for the White House, criticized the proposal for the third day in a row on the Senate floor. She said that five years after passing new curbs, "Congress is on the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for the middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks again." Republicans pointed out that 70 rank-and-file House Democrats had supported an identical provision in a vote on a stand-alone bill in October of last year. WASHINGTON Obama urges Senate to pass $1.1 trillion spending bill By Stephen Braun The Associated Press WASHINGTON From the early stages of the CIA's co- ercive interrogations of ter- ror detainees, the agency's health professionals were intimately involved. Front-line medics and psychologists monitored and advised on abusive tactics, even as they some- times complained about the ethical dilemmas gnawing at them, according to this week's Senate intelligence committee report. Senior CIA medical officials helped the agency and the White House under President George W. Bush. The report describes rare moments when CIA health professionals openly balked and objected. But for four years, until Bush shuttered the CIA prison program in 2006, medical teams at each "black site" observed almost every step of proce- dures that President Barack Obama now calls torture. They oversaw water dousing to ensure detain- ees suffered but did not drown. They inserted feed- ing tubes and improvised enemas. They took notes when detainees were body- slammed and forced to stand for hours — interven- ing only to ensure that the brutal measures were not crippling enough to pre- vent the next round of in- terrogations. Medical ethicists, al- ready familiar with debate on the issue, say that both the Senate report and a CIA response fail to comprehen- sively tackle questions of medical morality and offer reforms. "The Senate report is quite an indictment, but it leaves the American peo- ple, whatever their politi- cal views, uncertain about how medical ethics should be upheld," said Dr. Ar- thur Caplan, head of medi- cal ethics at New York Uni- versity's Langone Medical Center. "The behavior we're reading about is flat-out un- ethical for any health pro- fessional." The Senate committee's report, a summary of a much larger 6,700-page doc- ument that remains classi- fied, includes an entire sec- tion about how two former Air Force psychologists de- vised the harsh techniques under a CIA contract and played conflicting roles as interrogators and health professionals. Committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says in a forward that the larger re- port "is far more extensive." The summary paints a highly critical portrait through case studies of the interrogations of al-Qaida suspects, showing how doc- tors and technicians tended to each detainee and what they privately told col- leagues and superiors in emails and memos. The CIA's official rebuttal says the agency "took seri- ously its responsibility to provide for the welfare of CIA's detainee population, including being able to ad- dress emergency and long- term medical and psycho- logical needs." In a Thurs- day news conference, CIA Director John Brennan did not specifically cite medi- cal personnel but acknowl- edged that agency "officers inadequately developed and monitored" the deten- tion program's "initial ac- tivities." But he added that most CIA officials worked "in accordance with the legal and policy guidance they were provided." "So it begins," an un- named medical officer emailed in August 2002 to leaders at CIA's Office of Medical Services in Vir- ginia after interrogators for the first time used a water dousing technique on a terror detainee. The captured al-Qaida suspect was strapped to a board in a Thailand prison while water poured over his face. The medic's email was care- fully clinical. "Longest time with the cloth over his face so far has been 17 seconds. This is sure to increase shortly. NO useful informa- tion so far." The internal clash be- tween medical personnel's interrogation duties and their oath to "first do no harm" is repeated through- out the Senate report. It says that the CIA's Office of Medical Services played a clear role advising CIA and Bush administration law- yers on which techniques could be used and how far interrogators could go be- fore inducing lasting pain or the threat of death. DETAINEES Re po rt : CI A me di cs a id ed , co mp la in ed a bo ut a ge nc y' s co nt ro ve rs ia l ta ct ic s J.SCOTTAPPLEWHITE—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., gets in an elevator to the Senate, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday as she arrived to release a report on the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities a er the 9/11 terror attacks. Publishes: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 Deadline: Thursday, December 18, 2014 & Christmas Eve Services Full Color included 2x2 $ 57 00 2x3 $ 82 00 Call Daleen at the Red Bluff Daily (530) 527-2151 ext. 101 Select"Subscribe"tabinlowerrightcorner Complete information for automatic weekly delivery to your email inbox That's it! This FREE service made possible by the advertisers in TV Select Magazine Kindly patronize and thank them. Click on their ads online to access their websites! 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