"What if the Democrats signed a pledge never, ever to cut entitlements?" Costello pressed. "Would that be a great negotiating tool on the super committee?"

The thesis is that, even after Party apparatchiks lost their ability to pick candidates in smoke-filled rooms, they learned to maintain control of the process by influencing voters. The classic example would be the 2000 Republican primary, which George W. Bush wrapped up behind closed doors long before a single vote was cast, though he did have to hold off an outsider challenge from John McCain. If the Party is deciding, they’re going to decide to nominate Romney, a vastly stronger choice than Gingrich.

In May of 2009, as President Barack Obama prepared to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, he let something terrible slip--something that could threaten the very fabric of our civilization! He would try and pick a new judge for our highest court that possessed "empathy," or the ability to identify “with people’s hopes and struggles” when making decisions that would intimately affect their lives.

In other words, slightly different than how Justice Clarence Thomas does it ...

The IRS, concluding a three-year investigation, ruled that the Progress and Freedom Foundation's donations to Gingrich were "consistent with its stated exempt purposes," and Gingrich's course and course book "were educational in content."

The foundation, which posted the IRS decision on its Web page, welcomed what it said was a "clean bill of health." An IRS spokesman said the agency is barred by law from commenting on rulings.

Gingrich blustered about throwing Chris Dodd and Barney Frank into jail. Herman Cain touted Alan Greenspan – yes Alan Greenspan – as a great Fed Chair. That roused Ron Paul to tout the merits of going back to the gold standard. Michelle Bachmann reminded us of all those children and her voice in the wilderness, where, as far as we can tell, she remains. Rick Perry was AWOL most of the night, but aptly summarized the evening saying: “We don’t need to focus on this policy or that policy. We need to get America working again.”

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is again in the news. The two Americans released this month by Iran have reported that when they complained about conditions in their Tehran prison, the jailers would "immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay." Such is the power of symbols.

United in their cause to bring down President Obama, Republicans of both camps now must choose a side in order to try and defeat him. The awkward marriage of Tea Party purists and establishment Republicans faces its first Dr. Phil moment as Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney battle it out for the GOP presidential nomination for the next six months or longer.

A continuation of the TV series “Dallas” is due in 2012. How long will it take before we fixate on the fact that James Richard Perry is another J. R.?

Some of this is natural — the man is the governor, after all. But we didn’t obsess about the state this way when Governor Bush was the presidential candidate.

Pelosi, the former speaker who presides over a shrunken Democratic minority in the House, likely will come into play. Any plan that passes the Senate, be it McConnell fallback option or a more ambitious proposal like the one being crafted by the so-called Gang of Six, will only be able to pass the House if Democratic votes push it over the finish line.

"Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase," Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn't violate the pledge? "We wouldn't hold it that way," he said.

LIE: We've increased, under this administration, spending 35 percent in 2.5 years.  ~~~ TRUTH: When President Obama took office ... the first thing he did was bring the cost of the wars into the budget process. This is why it appears that spending increased by a staggering sum. Bush had waged the wars off the books for his 8 year term, and Obama felt that their cost was a budget item and should be transparently disclosed.

Dick Cheney stridently defended Bush era torture programs, calling harsh interrogation tactics "the most important steps we took that kept us safe for 7 years." He also advocated reinstating waterboarding, telling Wallace that enhanced interrogation "worked, and provided absolutely vital pieces of information."

Three things President Obama didn't do in his speech to the nation on Libya: He didn't predict the future, he didn't put Col. Moammar Gadhafi on a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" poster, and he didn't pronounce an "Obama Doctrine" for redeeming a fallen world through bombing.

... it's important to try to have calm and civilized discussions about all issues of public policy, even when - especially when - the underlying issues are matters of life and death. The alternative is nasty polemics, and a principal effect of nasty polemics is to exclude people from discussion who don't want to engage in nasty polemics.

Which was more effective forcing change from the top down or encouraging it from the bottom up? Shock and Awe was bombastic and a boon to Halliburtan, Bechtel, Xe and thousands of war profiteers. Many lives have been lost and many more are wounded both physically and psychologically. Not just our own brave military but innocents on the other side. America seen throughout the Nations of Islam as America's war against them all. Our military seen in Iraq qnd Afghanistan as an occupying force.

Another approach began with a speech in Egypt. A speech that sparked a yearning for democracy among the people. A revolution from the bottom up. The people against the Despotic Plutocracies. We expected to be greeted in Iraq as liberators. Not so much but in these revolts among these people "yearning to be free" there is a chance for democracy. We can't force democracy; it must be sought.

Will democracy come to North Africa and the Middle East?

Bolton said: "Our military has a wonderful euphemism called 'national command authority.' It's a legitimate military target. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi is the national command authority. I think that's the answer right there."

Please, please, please: Don't fall for any of this. ~~~ The Donald, in case you've forgotten, has taken us all down this road before, when he spent months flirting with a third-party bid for president in 2000. Just like now, he promised to tap his own vast fortune, attracted a torrent of publicity, and fared decently in polls -- around 15 percent in trial heats against Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Poor Sal Russo. The Tea Party Express leader had a rough day. Booked on MSNBC's "Hardball" to discuss Michele Bachmann's upcoming State of the Union rebuttal, instead he found himself confronted by Bachmann's idiotic whitewash of American history in a speech in Iowa over the weekend.

Grover Norquist ... has publicly taken two positions -- skepticism on the war in Afghanistan and support for criminal justice reform -- that are typically associated with progressives, and that are rarely heard in the halls of Congress. In each case, Norquist's position is undergirded by his commitment to cut government spending.

A new survey commissioned by the Afghanistan Study Group reveals that conservatives and tea party voters are growing concerned about the sustainability of US operations in Afghanistan.

Dick Cheney and other GOP heavyweights are setting up a fundraiser for Maria Cino, a former Bush Commerce Department official and Deputy Transportation Secretary who may soon be announcing her intent to challenge Michael Steele for the RNC chair position.

If one looks very hard, it's possible to find experts who oppose the New START nuclear arms limitation treaty with Russia. For example, there's John Bolton ...

The Wall Street insider trading investigation may lead everyday investors — already rattled by a stock market meltdown, a one-day "flash crash" and the Madoff scandal — to finally conclude that the game is rigged.

"A large part of trading has to do with trust, and I don't have it," says Mark Swenson, a 43-year-old plumber from New Hampshire who refuses to buy individual stocks.

"If she wanted the Republican nomination she'd be working on the inside," one influential Republican told me a few days ago. "She'd be building relationships with Republican Senators and representatives, governors, and state party officials. She'd be smoothing the feathers she ruffled by backing Tea Party candidates. She'd be huddled with GOP kingmakers."

The real reason insurers want the GOP leading Congress again is not to repeal "Obamacare," but to try to gut some of the provisions of the law that protect consumers from the abuses of the industry, such as refusing to cover kids with preexisting conditions, canceling policyholders' coverage when they get sick, and setting annual and lifetime limits on how much they'll pay for medical care.

Let's have more tax cuts, unlinked to any specific spending cuts and while we're still fighting two wars — because that worked so well during the Bush years to make our economy strong and our deficit small. Let's immediately cut government spending, instead of phasing cuts in gradually, while we're still mired in a recession — because that worked so well in the Great Depression. Let's roll back financial regulation — because we've learned from experience that Wall Street can police itself and average Americans will never have to bail it out.

"If he wanted to keep me, he had to follow my way. If I wanted to keep him, I have to follow his way. I had a broken heart as I drove away. We don't show our feelings. I kissed his hand and said goodbye. This is the last time I saw him."

He remembers his last glimpse of his father: As Osama bin Laden walked away, he wore the same small, mysterious smile he had when he suggested his sons become suicide bombers.

John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life."

Fox News' Gretchen Carlson claimed that Obama was "inviting another 9/11." John Bolton added, "How can an American president say that as if he's a detached observer and doesn't care about Americans dying? I think people have been worried about his qualifications to be commander in chief for a long time, and that ought to prove it."

Straining to miss the point, the Heritage Foundation wrote, "Saying that we could 'absorb' an attack does not mean that we want to absorb one. Americans want to be successful in the war on terror. Setting us up for defeat is far from a winning strategy."

"Yes, progressives are depressed and despondent about the future, but . . . . it doesn't excuse the obscenity of comparing our political opponents to killers and terrorists." For the reasons I explained, it seems to me that only jingoistic blindness can account for the belief that it is "obscene" to compare the American architects and enablers of the attack on Iraq and the worldwide torture regime (among other crimes) to "killers and terrorists." The former are the latter, by definition.

More than a flaky Florida pastor's cancelled threat to burn the Quran (or the actual scattered torchings that took place the same day), the ground zerio rally answered the question posed repeatedly over the past few weeks: Why are millions of Americans suddenly caught up in a torrent of fear and fury over Islam so strong that both the president and the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan have warned of deadly consequences? What motivates the outpouring of rancor against Muslims, especially in the conservative media? How did they escape until now?

The question is why he steered the discussion in this direction, rather than toward the real (GOP) elephant in the room: this ginned-up populism sweeping the country, fueled by a creepy resurgence of racism and xenophobia. A discussion about the drawdown in Iraq—whose invasion hardly endeared us to the Muslim world—could just as easily have lent itself to a discussion about domestic issues of the same stripe, like the furor over the "ground-zero mosque"; the record numbers of Americans who believe Obama practices Islam (18 percent, according to Pew, and 31 percent of all Republicans); the GOP's exploitation of this myth (Mitch McConnell slyly fueled it on Meet the Press two weeks ago); the Glenn Beck rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech; the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod at the USDA over a doctored "anti-white" video.

Despite his turtle-like appearance and seeming Ambien-induced demeanor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can tell a gripping tale. And yesterday on the Senate floor, he told some tall ones. Republicans, it turns out, supported unemployment benefits for the victims of the Bush recession all along. And just days after he joined the Republican Tax Cut Fairies by laughably claiming "There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue," Mitch McConnell blamed Democrats for the flood of red ink that windfall for the wealthy actually produced

Ignoring the claims of his GOP colleagues including Jon Kyl and Judd Gregg (not to mention Rand Paul and Sharron Angle) that jobless benefits are a "disincentive for them to seek new work" which leads those without work "to stay on unemployment" or just "sit there," McConnell insisted

"America was excited about its new relationship" with the country's first African-American president — Perino digs deep into her vault of keen-eyed political analysis, looks at where Obama is today, and likens his relationship with the American people to her single friends' bad romances with their boyfriends:

The coverage of the growing disconnect between President Obama and America reminds me of some of my single friends lamenting the distance they feel with their boyfriends.

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card.

"There is still a land of opportunity, friends — it's called Texas," Perry said. "We're creating more jobs than any other state in the nation. … Would you rather live in a state like this, or in a state where a man can marry a man?"

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, George Bush, famously or infamously, had to be instructed on the existence of and differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims. He had no idea--despite centuries of warfare between the two sects--that there was a difference.

... As has been previously reported, the Cordoba House is being built by Sufi Muslims, a mystical sub-sect of the Shia Muslims and considered apostates of Wahabbist Sunni sub-sect of al Qaeda.

Oh look, a poll revealing the shocking fact that 20% of Americans are delusional about Imam Barack Obama's religious fealty. Let's see how long it takes for the Washington Post to blame the dastardly Internet ...

Cenk filled in for Dylan Ratigan again and wrapped up Friday's show with a spot praising the Democrats for finally looking like they're striking the right chord with their latest political ad going after Republicans for their views on privatizing Social Security and handing the funds over to Wall Street with a few very huge qualifiers following that praise that I could not agree with more.

A noticeably subdued Keith Olbermann, acknowledging his membership in the 'professional left' about which Robert Gibbs groused, set the record straight on whom to blame for the slings and arrows constantly suffered by the Obama administration since entering the White House.

You gotta bet that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was so goddamned pleased with himself when, in an interview with The Hill, he got his nasty on about "the professional left." See how brave he is? Attacking the people from whom the President is supposed to have spawned?

One thing you can confidently say about 21st-century America is this: Our icons of seemingly frivolous spectacle often embody deeply significant and disturbing truths. What was Balloon Boy but a deadly serious commentary on national gullibility and misplaced priorities? What was Joe the Plumber but a fun-house reflection of our destructive deification of ignorance? And what was Matt Bellamy last week other than proof that much of our country could care less about its Constitution?

If we allow ourselves to measure the Afghan conflict in terms of victory or defeat (as escalation and occupation supporters have), we have to judge the mass-murdering megalomaniac's efforts a win.

In challenging that judgment, it doesn't matter how many more Afghans or Pakistanis our military forces manage to kill, maim, or capture. It doesn't even matter in that judgment, how we regard our military's nation-building defense and enabling of the Afghan regime intended to keep their Taliban from regaining power and influence.

All that we need to make that negative judgment of our military campaign and al-Qaeda's progress is to take account of our very military presence and offensive activity which has resulted in a stalemated conflict between the U.S.-led military forces and each and every Afghan or Pakistani who dares to resist our military's opportunistic advance across their homeland.

More lies, more distortions ----- GOP as Cumpulsive Liars
Instead of calling for an extension of Bush's tax cuts, which House Republican leaders support, they refer to the looming "Democrats' tax hikes."

Under the heading "Job Creation," Republicans call the expiring tax cuts, set to lapse at the end of this year, a Democratic plan "on increasing taxes by $3.8 trillion."

Ms. Palin : "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

The bill passed in a final vote—but only after Republicans made Democrats wait an extra 30 hours after cloture, a formality that parties usually waive.

Why are Republicans so determined to stop the benefits—even for 30 hours?

It would go a long way toward reducing the deficit.
The Academy Award-winning director of "Born on the Fourth of July" and "JFK" said that America's natural wealth was too important to be left in private hands, telling journalists in central London that oil and other natural resources "belong to the people."

I've just got to wonder if it's possible to find a bigger political hack than Louisiana Senator David Vitter. Mr. Drill-baby-drill Diaper-boy apparently thinks that unless the President just did a few more photo ops down in Louisiana and caused who knows what kind of problems for anyone within ten miles or more of him with the security involved when a President of the United States goes anywhere, the media isn't going to cover what's going on.

This week, GOP U.S. Senate candidate in Florida, Marco Rubio, said he would not support extending unemployment benefits to nearly 3 million Americans unless spending cuts were identified to offset the $33 billion cost. "At some point, someone has to draw a line in the sand and say we are serious about not growing debt," Rubio said. At the same time, Rubio wants to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent — at a cost of nearly $700 billion over the next ten years — with no offset.

Well isn't this just special? Here's the one place Republicans are willing to work with the Obama administration. Destroying what's left of our social safety net and Social Security if they listen to the advice of this debt commission.

DOBBS: The fact that we've witnessed both the Bush administration and now the Obama administration…refuse to secure the borders, refuse to enforce immigration law — at what point does this rise to the level of a breach of oath to protect the Constitution of the United States?

SMITH: I think we're on the verge of being there right now. … Whatever law they're not enforcing, I think it comes awfully close to a violation of their oath of office.

A Bush administration civil rights appointee says the conservative media uproar over allegations the Justice Department is protecting the New Black Panther Party from voter-intimidation prosecution is a "fantasy" designed to oust Attorney General Eric Holder and harm the Obama administration.

The book is due out on November 9, exactly a week after the midterm elections. But if past is prelude when it comes to newsmaker books, the details are likely to leak out earlier, possibly right around election day…deluxe edition for $350 !

Recently this President [Obama] claimed the power, through his then Director of National Intelligence Admiral Blair, to kill Americans on foreign soil if the President thinks they're engaged in acts of terrorism. That would be murder.

Colorado Republican Ken Buck wants to be perfectly clear: He does not think President Obama poses a bigger threat to the country than Al Qaeda. That's an honor he reserves for the "progressive liberal movement." Got it?

Beck proves every day how excrementally evil he is. He should not have the microphone or the platform. There will come a day where he'll look in the mirror and actually see who he is.

I hope his children grow up to be just like him, but liberals. That would be a start toward making the universe right again.

Scott Brown was hailed as the Tea Party candidate. Now the newly elected junior senator is under fire from the very groups that are credited with his victory.

Club for Growth also runs an independent political group that spent about $5 million on Internet advertising and other activities during the 2008 elections, records show. Contributors to that group have included employees of J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the libertarian Cato Institute, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

"Do media outlets like The New York Times aid and abet terrorists by leaking national security secrets," Fox News host Brian Kilmeade wondered.

An editorial that places blame for antigovermental ideology onto Cheney/Bush (by way of Reagan.) Points past T-Baggers to the need for politicians who govern well not by idiotology

Another GOP odddity tries to outdo Murdock. Mr. Nutting lives up to his name.

Dr. James Dobson, a longtime leader of the Christian-right movement which played key roles in electing Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, appears to have admitted defeat in the so-called culture wars.

"We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict," said Dobson, 72, in a recent speech to Focus on the Family staff. "Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles."

I COULDN'T BELIEVE THIS CIVILITY

Barack Obama is so many things. To far-right conservatives during the campaign he became a radical Marxist who was going to make us into a communist country. To far-left liberals we was Bush-lite, a compromiser who wasn't going to end the war fast enough. He even was tagged as a radical Muslim by some of the same detractors who said he went to the wrong Christian church.

He was accused of getting elected solely on his charisma when he drew throngs of admirers to his campaign appearances. Now those same naysayers claim, after every news conference, that he's too boring and doesn't bring Busby Berkeley dancers with gushing water fountains to his addresses

A US government lawyer argued against revoking a high-profile travel ban on leading Oxford University Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan in a court appeal on Tuesday.

The visa ban -- apparently based on Ramadan's donations to a group linked to the Palestinian militants Hamas labeled a terrorist organization by Washington -- was instituted under former president George W. Bush's administration.

As a center of Canada's oil industry, Calgary – in the relatively conservative province of Alberta – would seem to be an ideal place for George W. Bush to give his first post-presidential speech.

But Bush was greeted by more than the 1,500 business people who paid as much as $315 to hear him speak Tuesday. Plenty of shoes were thrown as at least 100 protesters gathered and chanted "war criminal," angry that Bush chose Calgary for his first speech after leaving the White House in January. At least two demonstrators were hauled away by police after brief skirmishes.

Even out of power and away from the White House, former President George W. Bush seemingly cannot get away from calls for his prosecution.

The latest outcry comes from a Canadian attorney with Lawyers Against the War, who said she will file a suit against Bush and bar his entry to Canada over alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Former President Bush plans a visit to Canada on March 17 for a speaking engagement at Calgary, on invite from the city's chamber of commerce.

In a little-noted passage of a mostly ignored speech, President Barack Obama said last week that the government faced "a real choice between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe and those that are designed to make a defense contractor rich."

It was notice, amid all the caterwauling over Mr. Obama's stimulus package, that the president meant to put the kibosh on the GOP's favorite method for spreading the wealth around. A prize ox of the conservative ascendancy was about to be gored.

After years of tepid support, Washington appears primed to jump-start stalled Everglades restoration.

The House on Wednesday approved a giant budget bill with $183 million for Everglades projects, including $60 million for bridging the Tamiami Trail. Also tucked into the measure is a tiny provision crafted to circumvent a Miccosukee lawsuit blocking the Trail improvements.

In addition, the Obama administration has named Terrence ''Rock'' Salt, who has spent 18 years overseeing federal Everglades restoration efforts, to a key White House post directing civil works projects.

President Obama, having campaigned on a promise to end the culture of cronyism, seems poised to appoint one of his biggest campaign fundraisers as the next American ambassador in London.

Although the nomination of Louis Susman has not yet been signed off by the White House and the US State Department, the 71-year-old investment banker's name has been strongly linked with the post in recent days.

Mr Susman is a long-time Democratic donor who spotted the potential of his fellow Chicagoan almost five years ago and has since acted as a so-called "bundler", by drawing in multiple campaign contributions up to the legal maximum of $4,600 from his network of wealthy Wall Street contacts.

President Barack Obama took aim at the "casual dishonesty" of Bush administration budgets Monday, saying he'll abandon accounting "tricks" used to hide the ballooning deficit and pledging to cut a $1.3 trillion federal shortfall in half during his first term.

"I want to be very clear," Obama said to open a "fiscal responsibility summit" at the White House. "We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration and the next generation."

Washington State law prohibits the possession of marijuana except for certain medical purposes. Hempfest is not one of them. Yet each summer when the event draws thousands to the Seattle waterfront to call for decriminalizing marijuana, participants light up in clear view of police officers. And they rarely get arrested.

"Police officers patrolling are courteous and respectful," said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

A conservative legal group is suing the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to reveal exactly how the first $350 billion of the financial services bailout was spent.

Larry Klayman and his organization, Freedom Watch, said they're concerned money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was given to investment firms on the basis of the banks' political influence. The group noted that that jobs have been lost and that stock prices haven't recovered since the bailout. But Freedom Watch hasn't provided specific evidence of wrongdoing.

Like others bundled against the cold on Inauguration Day, a few dozen people along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route were determined to catch a glimpse of President Obama. But they wanted him to see their simple, unmistakable message spelled out on black-and-white signs, adding a call-and-response chant for emphasis.

[A demonstrator dressed up as George W. Bush in a prison outfit protested at the White House before the inauguration. (Mike Segar/ Reuters) ]A demonstrator dressed up as George W. Bush in a prison outfit protested at the White House before the inauguration. (Mike Segar/ Reuters)
"Who's our president?" one shouted.

"Obama!" the group answered.

"Who's going to arrest Bush?"

"Obama!"

Despite initial "hopes for co-operation" the Vatican has fallen out with President Obama just days after his inauguration, accusing him of "arrogance" for overturning the "global gag rule" or ban on state funding for family-planning groups which facilitate abortions overseas.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that with "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right",

Kudos to President Barack Obama for closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, and the CIA's network of secret, or "black,'" prisons abroad, both blots on America's honour and grave violations of international law.

The U.S. conquered Cuba in the 1898 Spanish-American War. Washington then installed a U.S. citizen as president who granted Washington base rights to Guantanamo in perpetuity. A century later, the U.S. made a similar sweetheart deal in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Marine Corps is proposing to completely withdraw from Iraq later this year and shift 20,000 Marines to Afghanistan, boosting the Obama administration's plan to devote significant new resources to the Afghan war.

Gen. James Conway, the top Marine commander, said Friday that the combat portion of the Iraq war was effectively over. "The time is right for Marines in general terms to leave Iraq," he told reporters.

For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city." Those were the most important words President Obama spoke on his first full day in office. Obama then signed executive orders to shift the balance back toward openness in government. At least in theory, the burden of proof will move from those who would release information to those who would classify it. It's significant Obama led off this way. He went right after not just George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but an eternal bureaucratic impulse.

On Wednesday, the president met with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen and Central Command commander four-star Gen. David Petraeus. Gates, supported by Mullen and Petraeus, vigorously argued that the president should back away from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Iraq within the next 16 months and space out the withdrawal over a longer period of time. However, the president instructed the three officials to prepare a plan that would still implement the 16-month withdrawal period, Pentagon sources said.

Saleh al-Mohaisen, a Saudi who runs a jewellery shop in Riyadh, said he was "overjoyed" when Mr Obama was elected.

"I wanted to send him a letter by courier to wish him well and explain how Muslims and Arabs feel," he said. "I felt that he could understand Arab suffering."

It also sends a strong signal to the world about the very different form the U.S. government's policymaking apparatus will take in the new administration.

Shinseki was the combat-experienced and widely respected Army chief of staff who publicly defied his political masters, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, by denying their contentions that the United States would be able to either get out of Iraq fast or keep the country pacified with only a handful of American troops.

President Barack Obama yesterday promised the US will "actively and aggressively" work for an elusive Middle East peace deal and will dispatch a high-powered envoy to the region as a matter of urgency.

Speaking to diplomats at the state department on his second day in office, he set out his widely-awaited views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ending the near silence he had maintained over the last few weeks.

The first US Internet president is an online sensation, triggering a tidal wave of Web traffic as he officially seized the nation's reins.

Millions around the world commented, Twittered, posted and prayed as they watched Barack Obama's inauguration live on the Internet, pinning their hopes on a new world order and era in American politics.

Akamai Technologies, which specializes in assuring that websites don't crash under the weight of heavy online traffic, saw digital content streaming surge to record levels -- more than two terabytes of data per second.

Editorial writers around the world have been taking their final printed whacks at George W. Bush, accusing the president of tarnishing America's standing with what many saw as arrogant and incompetent leadership.

As the outgoing administration coasts toward a quickly approaching, inevitable end, its dwindling number of staunch supporters is waging a media offensive in an effort to polish the blood-soaked legacy of George W. Bush.

We've heard it echoed in every corner of the national media. Bush wants to be seen as a "liberator of millions." Rove insists that "history will be kind" to his former boss. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is sure that "this generation" will thank George W. Bush.