A court convicted Amir Mirzaei Hekmati of “working for an enemy country,” as well as membership in the CIA and “efforts to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism,” the semi-official Fars news agency reported Monday.

The sentence came down five months after Hekmati’s arrest.

Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA, on its English website, said the court found him “caught red-handed in armed struggle against God” and “corrupt on Earth.”

“In the proceedings Hekmati said he had the motivation to infiltrate (the) Iranian intelligence system on behalf of the CIA,” a report said.

Hekmati’s parents said they were “shocked and terrified” by the news.

“We believe that this verdict is the result of a process that was neither transparent nor fair,” Behnaz Hekmati wrote in a statement on behalf of herself and her husband Ali.

“Amir did not engage in any acts of spying, or ‘fighting against God,’ as the convicting judge has claimed in his sentence. Amir is not a criminal. His very life is being exploited for political gain,” the statement said.

“A grave error has been committed, and we have authorized our legal representatives to make direct contact with the Iranian authorities to find a solution to this misunderstanding. We pray that Iran will show compassion and not murder our son, Amir, a natural born American citizen, who was visiting Iran and his relatives for the first time.”

The statement also said Iran was denying that Amir is a U.S. citizen.

Previously, the family said Hekmati was being represented by a government-appointment lawyer despite their repeated efforts to hire a private lawyer for him.

American accused of spying in Iran Hekmati was arrested in August while visiting his grandmother and other relatives, his family in Michigan said last month.

The Hekmatis said their son served in the Marines from 2001 to 2005. Later, he started his own linguistics company and contracted his services to the military as well as civilian businesses.

His military contracts included cultural competency training. He worked with troops at military bases to promote understanding and positive communication with people of other cultures, his family said.

Fars reported that Hekmati said he worked for the U.S. Army for four years and later the CIA, where he was sent to Afghanistan and had access to secret documents.

Fars also reported that Hekmati told a judge he worked for the CIA and that he was to be paid for delivering information to Iran’s intelligence ministry.

He was supposed to give his information to the Iranians in two parts — the first part for free, and if they liked it, he would ask for $500,000 for the second part, the news agency said.

Hekmati said he was to get a receipt from the intelligence ministry for the money, Fars reported. The judge speculated whether the receipt would later be used as evidence linking Iran to terrorist activities, the news agency said.

If Iran had paid, Hekmati told the judge, he would have kept the money and lived in Iran, according to Fars.

Iran’s notorious secretive trials have been assailed by human rights groups and governments around the globe.

The U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report on Iran says the court system is, in practice “corrupt and subject to political influence.” And while the country’s constitution provides defendants the right to a public trial, presumption of innocence, and a lawyer of his or her choice, “These rights were not respected in practice.”

Hekmati’s sentencing comes amid tensions between Iran and the United States. The U.S. government and other Western nations have sanctioned Tehran over its failure to cooperate on nuclear issues.

Hekmati is the latest in a series of Americans to face arrest in the country in recent years.

Three U.S. hikers, also accused of spying, were arrested in 2009 and ultimately released. Sarah Shourd was freed on medical grounds in 2010; Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were freed in September 2011.

Journalist Roxana Saberi was arrested in January 2009 and convicted of espionage in a one-day trial that was closed to the public. She was freed in May that year.

Reza Taghavi, an Iranian-American retired businessman, was freed by Iran in 2010 after being held more than two years on suspicion of supporting an anti-regime group, his lawyer said.

Iranian-American Kian Tajbakhsh was among many people arrested in July 2009, amid post-election protests and a massive government crackdown. Exactly what he was convicted of was not clear. In March the next year, he was allowed temporary release within the country to celebrate the Persian New Year. That temporary release was later extended, according to the website freekian09.org, which works for his release.

Arson investigators counted 53 fires, most starting in parked cars, since early last Thursday, but none since the man was detained at 3 a.m. Monday, according to Los Angeles Fire Capt. Jaime Moore.

Two other men were arrested on arson charges just hours after the first fires in Hollywood early Thursday, Moore said.

The latest arrest came when a sheriff’s deputy stopped a van near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood early Monday, Moore said. The van matched the description of a vehicle believed related to some of the suspicious fires and the driver resembled a man seen in a surveillance video near the scene of one fire, he said.

The suspect will be publicly identified after the booking process is completed Monday afternoon, Moore said.

The video showed a man who appears to be in his late 20s to mid-30s, with a ponytail, dark hair and a receding hairline.

Eleven of the fires took place overnight, in the very early hours of Monday: nine within the city of Los Angeles and two in West Hollywood, fire department spokesman Cecco Secci said.

Cars were set on fire in Hollywood and Van Nuys, Capt. Jaime Moore of the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

The joint arson task force, organized after investigators saw a pattern to the fire, will continue its work despite the arrests, Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith said at a news conference Monday.

“We’re not resting,” Smith said. “Remain vigilant.”

No one has been killed or seriously injured, though one firefighter was slightly injured, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.

More than $2 million in damage has been done, the mayor said.

There is “some reason to believe” the vast majority of the fires was started “by the same person or persons,” the mayor said.

It was unclear if there was any connection between the two men arrested last week, ages 22 and 55, and the newest suspect.

“It’s an absolute abomination that this person would do this in a very densely populated area of Los Angeles,” Villaraigosa said.

Hundreds of investigators are working together from various and local and federal departments, the mayor said.

Los Angeles has not seen such a rash of fires since the city’s riots in 1992.

City councilman Tom LaBonge described the fires as the work of an arsonist who struck “like lightning.”

“There’s nothing worse than something that can be prevented,” the councilman said.

A joint task force that includes city and county fire and police department officials is investigating the string of fires.

It includes about 25 personnel from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who spokesman Patrick Gorman said would be on the scene by Monday.

These personnel have “special experience to determine the cause and origin of fires,” Gorman said.

Moriarty said the law enforcement officers “executed a search warrant” Sunday morning at a single-family residence.

“We interviewed a number of people, (but) we did not make any arrests,” he said.

There is a $60,000 reward in the case.

Police were asking residents in the area to bring forward any surveillance video from their properties that might show suspicious activity. Residents are also being encouraged to follow the “see something, say something” motto and report suspicious behavior to authorities.

Officials sought Sunday to show their commitment to finding the person or people behind the fires.

“We’re not going to rest and we’re going to put all the resources out there,” Assistant Fire Chief Patrick Butler said.

They also asked residents to help deter the perpetrator by leaving porch lights on and locking their vehicles, as many of the fires were set using cars as incendiary devices.

“Auto fires, as soon as they get going, they get really hot, really fast,” Butler said. “They essentially give off their own combustibles.”

Some of the fires spread to nearby buildings, though no injuries have been reported. Among the homes damaged was one that was once occupied by the Doors frontman Jim Morrison.

“When you have millions of people living with millions of cars in these very dense neighborhoods, this is becoming a new form of domestic terrorism that really has got our community in a very bad spot,” West Hollywood Mayor John J. Duran said Saturday.

Both eastbound and westbound lanes were closed following the crashes, which began about 4 a.m. local time (5 a.m. ET), said Garry Flot, New Orleans police spokesman. It was unknown how long the interstate would be closed, he said.

Twenty-two people were transported to hospitals with minor to critical injuries. Another 37 complained of minor injuries at the scene but refused medical care, Flot said.

One firefighter suffered a cut on his face while performing his duties at the scene, Flot said. He was taken to a local hospital for stitches.

A CNNMoney survey of 20 top economists finds their fear of the economy falling into a new recession has retreated in the last three months, as they put the chances of a new downturn at only about 20%. Three months ago, they believed there was about a 30% chance. Only two of them have raised the risk of recession.

The economists also believe that the final economic readings will be among the strongest of 2011.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s overall economic health, is expected to have grown at a 3.3% annual rate. That would be the best pace of growth since the spring of 2010 and nearly twice the 1.8% rate in the third quarter.

“Preliminary data is pointing to a solid fourth quarter of GDP growth that should carry the economy through the next 6 months,” said Sean Snaith, economics professor at the University of Central Florida.

The economists surveyed also expect that employers added 140,000 jobs to payrolls in December, which would mark the third straight month of improved hiring.

But they’re not getting overly excited about the outlook for growth in 2012. Growth for the full year is expected to be a more modest 2.4%, with only 2% growth in the first three months of the year.

Employers are expected to add only 1.6 million jobs, which comes to less than the 150,000 a month needed to keep pace with population growth — little changed from the expected gains in 2011 that left most economists and job seekers dissatisfied. The unemployment rate is forecast to edge down to 8.4% by the end of 2012, little changed from the current 8.6% rate.

Those surveyed also don’t believe the prolonged slide in home values will come to an end in the new year, with most expecting that higher housing prices won’t come until 2013 or later.

The economists are widely split on the biggest headwinds facing the economy going forward. The five who cite excess government debt make that the most popular choice, but four each pick continued weakness in the housing market and damage to the labor market by prolonged high unemployment.

And a variety volunteer their own risks, including those posed by the European sovereign debt crisis, Congressional gridlock and general uncertainty in the business conditions. To top of page

Less than a week earlier, the bodies of another two women were found in the trunk of a car parked at a vacant dwelling, Detroit police said.

Three of the four victims were linked to online ads that “specifically dealt with prearranged adult dating services,” Police Chief Ralph L. Godbee said at a Monday afternoon news conference.

“We felt it is imperative to alert the public that deciding to meet unknown persons via the Internet can be extremely dangerous,” Godbee added.

In the Christmas morning incident, “the victims have been identified tentatively and are black females, ages 28 and 29,” Godbee said.

The bodies found on December 19 were those of two African-American women aged 23 and 24, and neither body showed outer signs of trauma, according to Godbee.

“We are awaiting the medical examiner’s final report for the determination of the cause of death for each of the females.” Godbee added.

Godbee identified the website carrying ads that three of the victims were linked to as backpage.com.

The website did not immediately respond to an e-mail from CNN Monday afternoon seeking comment after Godbee’s news conference.

Backpage.com told CNN in 2010 that it promptly responds to law enforcement inquiries, and said the site includes links to help users notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children if they identify potential abuses.

In addition, the website includes links for the FBI, Federal Trade Commission, and the Polaris Project, a program set up to help victims of human trafficking.

Christopher Sullivan, 22, had just returned home to California from Kentucky where he was stationed while recovering from injuries sustained during a suicide bombing attack in December 2010 while he was in Afghanistan. The San Bernadino County Sun reported that the Army specialist narrowly survived the attack which killed five members of his unit and left Sullivan with a cracked collar bone and brain damage. Sullivan was awarded the Purple Heart after the incident.

Sullivan, 22, was shot at the party in his honor on Friday after an “argument and physical confrontation” with 19-year-old Ruben Ray Jurado, San Bernadino Police Department Sgt. Pete Higgins told CNN.

Accompanied by an attorney, Jurado turned himself in to authorities in Chino Hills early Monday afternoon, said Lt. Gwendolyn Waters. He was then transferred to the custody of San Bernardino police and was to be booked into jail, she said.

Jurado will face charges of attempted murder, police said.

The fight broke out after Jurado and Sullivan’s younger brother began arguing about football, his mother, Suzanne Sullivan, told CNN.

“[He] pulled out a gun and shot him twice,” she said.

Higgins said Jurado then fled the scene after the shooting.

Sullivan was rushed to a hospital where he was being treated, officials said.

“Right now, my son is hanging in physically,” Suzanne Sullivan told CNN. “He’s on 100% life support. He can move his head and he responds through nodding and blinking to us. His eyes aren’t always open but we try to encourage him to do so as often as possible.”

She said her son tried to ask what happened to him at the hospital and when they told him he wanted to know “Why?”

“We told him what it was about and he just closed his eyes,” Suzanne Sullivan told CNN.

Suzanne Sullivan said she was told the suspect and her son may have gone to school and played football together.

She also said she couldn’t believe what had happened to her son, who she said joined the Army to try and help her out.

“He’s a wonderful son … the best person you could meet on this Earth,” she said. “He’s a giver, not a taker and just wants to be there for and help people. He was so happy when he joined the Army because he really wanted to defend his country.”

Sullivan and her family have been at her son’s bedside at a local hospital. A fellow soldier from Christopher Sullivan’s 101st Airborne Division brought the infantry’s flag to the hospital, Suzanne Sullivan told CNN.

“He loved his platoon, he loved his fellow soldiers,” she said as she began to sob. “He was so proud to serve our country.”

Tears rolled down Christopher Sullivan’s face when he saw the flag of the Screaming Eagles, the nicknamed for the division, his mother said.

“I asked Chris if he wanted to me to hang it on the wall or cover him in it,” Suzanne Sullivan said. “He nodded that he wanted me to cover him with it. Once I did that he started to cry, which made me start to cry. It’s been really hard on all of us.”

She said she was distraught over the news that her son, who was already recovering from injuries sustained during his tour abroad, had returned home only to be paralyzed during a party in the U.S.

“He once told me that if defending this country takes his life so be it,” she said. “But to see he survived that and now for this to happen to him, just breaks my heart.”

Suzanne Sullivan said her family is having a difficult time coming to terms with what happened. They hope the Jurado will turn himself him.

“We just want justice to be done,” she said.

Anyone with more information on this case is asked to call Det. Michele Mahan at 909-384-5619 or Sgt. Gary Robertson at 909-384-5663, or call WeTip anonymously at 800-78-CRIME.

The decline was disappointing in light of several other recent reports, which painted a more positive picture of the housing market.

In recent weeks, reports on new home sales, existing home sales and home building all recorded increases. In addtion, mortgage rates are at record lows, which should be giving homebuyers an added boost.

However, tight lending standards and a glut of foreclosures continue to weigh on the housing market, said Pat Newport, a housing market analyst for IHS Global Insight.

With so many homes for sale at distressed prices, the home price numbers come as no surprise, he said.
Home prices headed for triple dip

“The numbers are pretty bad and will get even worse over the next two years,” he said.

The 20-city index has dropped every month since April. Since the housing bust began in mid-2006, homes have lost nearly 33% of their value.

Peter Morici, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, said home prices remain weak because demand for existing homes is soft. Many potential buyers are migrating to rental markets or buying new homes that had been sitting unsold for months.

According to Morici, the current home price levels represent a correction from inflated prices reached during the bubble.

“Prices are where they belong and that’s where they’ll stay,” he said.

Nineteen of the 20 cities posted declines in October, with Phoenix the only exception. Prices went up there 0.3% compared with September.

Midwest markets and the Atlanta metro area fared badly, with Atlanta prices down 5% in October following a 5.9% plunge in September. To top of page

Darrin Hanna, who has a cousin who is a member of the North Chicago City Council and another cousin who is a state legislator, died after he was arrested in connection with a domestic dispute incident, CNN affiliate WLS reported.

Hanna’s body showed signs of being shocked with a Taser and struck with a baton, authorities told CNN.

“At the time of the autopsy, we found multiple trauma points,” Artis Yancey, coroner of Lake County, Illinois, told CNN. “Some of the trauma points were identified as Taser shocks on the deceased’s body. We believe the other trauma was from baton strikes.”

Hanna’s family is suing the city in federal court for wrongful death, and the suit alleges that the officers were summoned to Hanna’s apartment because of a domestic dispute, according to CNN affiliate WBBM. The lawsuit says Hanna’s girlfriend was escorted from the building by police, and police beat and shocked Hanna for 20 minutes even though he didn’t resist arrest, WBBM reported.

The suit says that Hanna was removed from the apartment on a stretcher with a sheet over his head, WBBM reported.

City officials said they are investigating the case. WBBM and WLS said Hanna has a cousin on the city council and another in the Illinois General Assembly, but those individuals didn’t return messages from CNN Thursday.

“The city of North Chicago regrets Mr. Hanna’s death and we are investigating the amount of force used in his arrest,” said Chuck Smith, the city attorney. “The North Chicago police department is looking into claims of improper use of force by officers. And we have disciplined officers for improper use in the past.”

Smith says six officers involved in Hanna’s arrest have been reassigned to desk jobs pending the results of the investigation.

“They have not been suspended,” Smith said. “They will not collect a paycheck while sitting at home. They will perform administrative duties.”

The death of Hanna, 45, has caused uproar in North Chicago, where many residents complain of excessive force by police.

His death is the second instance of alleged police brutality to surface in the past month in North Chicago. A videotape of another alleged incident of police misconduct — in which a man was allegedly injured by an officer in a police station — was played before the city council earlier this week, Smith said.

The video appears to show an officer striking a man at a police booking station, grabbing him by the throat and pushing his face into a wall.

Smith confirmed the video incident took place at a North Chicago police station. A separate investigation has been launched into the videotaped incident, Smith said.

The Lake County coroner is awaiting results of pathology tests in the Hanna case.

“Because this case is so complicated, we had to ask for outside help,” coroner Yancey said, referring to the tests. “We had to bring in a (private) neuro-forensic pathologist and a forensic pathologist who specializes in cardio or heart events.”

The 14 scenes depicting Jesus Christ’s birth have long been a popular attraction among area residents and tourists to the southern California city.

This year, however, atheists have taken over most of the two-block stretch, nearly shutting out and angering a group of churches who contend the atheists have organized against the Christians and gamed a city lottery process allocating the holiday exhibit space.

In response, a leader of the atheist group says he’s just looking for evenhanded treatment to present his beliefs in a public space — and goes so far as to say that the city shouldn’t even be allowing any religious or even atheist expression in the park.

That’s why he and his group have put nothing on half of the park exhibit spaces that they’ve secured from the city this year.

The atheists are declaring the politically left-leaning seaside town of Santa Monica as their latest battleground in a national movement to assert their rights.

“I’m part of a growing movement in America of atheists standing up for their rights. It’s a very exciting time for us that we’re having more of an impact in our society,” said Damon Vix, the organizer of the atheist group.

“I’m a civil rights activist, and atheists have been discriminated against for as long as I’ve been an atheist — since high school,” added Vix, 43, a freelance prop maker who lives in Burbank, California.

But Hunter Jameson, the Nativity scene committee chairman representing 14 Santa Monica groups that are mostly churches, said the church members are now planning to petition the city in 2012 to change the process so that creches would be better represented on the park bluffs adjacent to downtown Santa Monica.

“There’s a very militant atheist movement that’s trying to drive out vestiges of the truth. They’re trying to deny the truth that this nation is founded on Christian principles,” Jameson said.

“These people, atheists, a number of them, like Mr. Vix, are bound and determined to drive away from any public place any manifestation that Americans are God-loving people,” Jameson added. “This is not fair, this is not just.”

The atheists group won from the city 18 of the 21 exhibit spaces — leaving only two plots to the Christian churches and one to a rabbi erecting a Menorah scene. The venue is Palisades Park, with vistas of the Santa Monica Pier and, in the distance, the coastal mountains of Malibu.

“We don’t object to them being there. We just object to them manipulating the rules, to try to deprive us of our freedom of speech,” Jameson said. “You add everything together, there would be enough room in the two blocks to take care of all the displays. It’s a matter of portioning the space fairly, and we are undertaking a petition drive.”

Caught in the middle of the dispute are city officials, who say the lottery process is governed under federal law, and there’s nothing they can do about this year’s results.

What enabled the atheists to garner the vast majority of the park’s exhibit space is they loaded up the applicant pool by constituting 11 of the 13 applications, according to the atheist group The other applicants were for the Menorah scene and the Nativity scene.

Vix and 10 Los Angeles area friends he recruited make up the 11-member alliance, though three of them aren’t atheist but agreed to join because they don’t agree with the city’s policy of supporting religious displays, Vix said.

When names were drawn, one of the atheists’ names came up first, and he claimed a maximum nine exhibit spaces, followed by the rabbi who asked for one, and then another atheist who secured nine more, city officials said.

When Jameson’s name came, only two spaces were left, and he took both of them, city officials said.

“The first thing to make clear is that the whole process is governed by federal law that has designated public parks as public forums. In these public forums, individuals have maximum protection,” said Barbara Stinchfield, Santa Monica’s director of community and cultural services.

“In the past we’ve been able to accommodate everyone who has applied. This year, instead of the three requests, we’ve had (13) requests, whose total request for spaces exceeded the spaces we’ve had. So we had to develop a system to allocate the space that wasn’t governed by the content of the display because the First Amendment protects them,” she said.

“We literally pulled names out of a basket and started assigning spaces until all the spaces were allocated,” Stinchfield said.

The church groups are using their two spots to display three creches.

“We didn’t evaluate the content of displays in making the decision of who got the spaces,” Stinchfield said.

Jameson, the Nativity scene committee chairman, said the church groups are upset that the atheists don’t live in Santa Monica, though Vix said he has worked there and that he and his friends visit and shop there. Jameson doesn’t live in Santa Monica either, but he attends church there, he said.

“The gist of it is that out-of-town atheists are attempting to hijack the nearly 60-year-old Santa Monica Nativity scenes Christmas celebration,” Jameson said.

“There is not a whole lot we can really do about it” this year, Jameson added. “We’re not trying to get rid of anybody. If we had all our displays up there, they would take a block, and one block would be left over. We just think that a local display deserves some preference in a local park. We’re not saying ban them (the atheists). We’re just saying there should be preference given to our local and historic display – the Nativity scenes.”

Dix, who consulted with the American Atheists and the Freedom from Religion Foundation in preparing his group’s applications, has left nine of the 18 exhibit spaces blank, he said.

On the remaining parcels, Dix and his friends have installed 18-inch-by-24-inch signs that include quotes from the Founding Fathers and U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state, he said.

One sign was caged within a chain link fence — for protection from vandals, Dix says — it states: “Religions are all alike — founded upon fables and mythologies.”

The sign attributes the quote to Thomas Jefferson, but Dix said he couldn’t verify whether Jefferson actually made that statement.

Stated Dix: “I know it’s close to what he believed, and it’s probably taken a little bit out of context at most.”

Another display features a Freedom from Religion Foundation banner that begins: “At this season of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world,” according to Dix.

That banner is the second one installed this month; the first one was vandalized, Dix said.

The measure cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives by unanimous consent, a procedural move allowing the measure to pass even though most members of Congress are now home for the holidays.

Among other things, the measure also includes a two-month extension of emergency federal unemployment benefits and the so-called “doc fix,” a delay in scheduled pay cuts to Medicare physicians.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill shortly, wrapping up a legislative year marked by repeated partisan brinksmanship and declining public approval of a seemingly dysfunctional Congress.

Obama is also expected to sign a separate appropriations bill funding the government through September 2012, before heading off to Hawaii to join his family for the holiday break.

House and Senate members will resume negotiations on a year-long extension of the tax cut — along with a lengthier unemployment benefits extension and doc fix —

Political analysts believe that the showdown over the payroll tax cut has eroded GOP strength on the party’s core issue of lower taxes. While GOP leaders first questioned the merit of the tax holiday and then complained that a short-term extension would be more trouble than it’s worth, Obama used the standoff to portray the Republicans as defenders of the rich with a callous attitude toward the burdens of the middle class.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, finally succumbed Thursday to calls from across the political spectrum for House Republicans to stop blocking congressional approval of the two-month extension, which had been previously approved by the Senate in overwhelming bipartisan fashion.

Boehner, in announcing the deal to reporters late Thursday, insisted the House GOP’s prior opposition to the Senate plan was the right thing to do, even if it turned out to be politically questionable.

“It may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world,” Boehner said, but the end result was “we were able to fix what came out of the Senate.”

The speaker also acknowledged the pressure he was under, saying: “I talked to enough members over the last 24 hours who say we don’t like the two-month extension and if you can get this fixed, why not do the right thing for the American people even if it’s not exactly what we want.”

Thursday’s agreement produced essentially the same proposal House Republicans rejected from the Senate earlier this week. House Republicans were given slim political cover through the addition of legislative language designed to ease the administrative burden on small businesses implementing the plan, as well as a commitment to continue negotiations on a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and other benefits.

While the two-month extension was shorter than desired, Obama repeatedly urged congressional leaders over the past week to follow through on their stated intention to negotiate a one-year extension that all parties now publicly claim to favor.

Under the deal, the payroll tax will remain at the current 4.2% rate instead of reverting to the 6.2% rate it was at before the cut enacted last year. Without congressional action, the higher rate would have returned in 2012, meaning an average $1,000 tax increase for 160 million Americans. The typical worker’s take home salary would have been reduced by about $40 per pay period without the tax cut.

A tea party-led House GOP uprising last weekend caused Boehner to initially reject the Senate’s two-month plan, instead pushing for an immediate 12-month extension and setting up this week’s political showdown in the final days before the payroll tax cut was set to expire. Critics of the House GOP’s stance insisted that the Senate’s shorter extension was necessary to give negotiators more time to hammer out a deal over how to pay for the continuation.

By the time Thursday rolled around, however, the speaker was ready to raise the white flag of surrender. According to GOP sources, Boehner held a conference call Thursday afternoon with his fellow House Republicans in which the speaker refused to allow any members to ask questions or raise objections. One Republican House member on the call described Boehner as “tired and ticked off.”

Analysts said Boehner had little choice but to back down.

“It became increasingly obvious he had to fold,” said CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen, using poker terminology. Boehner was under “intense pressure from senior Republicans” over a situation that “became so botched,” he said.

Darrell West , the vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said the issue has worked in the favor of Democrats because they had Republicans “seemingly willing to accept a tax increase” by opposing the Senate extension of the payroll tax cut.

Boehner’s stance drew sharp criticism, including an editorial this week in the conservative Wall Street Journal that said House Republicans had lost the political advantage of advocating tax cuts to Obama and the Democrats.

On Thursday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, publicly called for Boehner to accept a short-term extension. Similar statements by other conservative Republicans showed the tide turning against the speaker and his GOP lieutenants.

Conservative Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wisconsin, was among those adding his voice to GOP calls for House Republicans to relent in their standoff.

“While I would prefer a year-long tax holiday, I refuse to let anyone play games with my constituents who stand to face a significant tax hike if we don’t act,” Duffy said Thursday in a statement. “That’s why I will support any option to extend the payroll tax cut.”

A number of Republicans have said the party should have declared victory after winning an agreement by Obama — as part of the payroll tax cut package — to make a decision within the next 60 days on whether to proceed with the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Republicans and some Democratic union leaders say the controversial pipeline will create thousands of new jobs; critics question its environmental impact.