From the moment that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle took his name out of the running for HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius has been the name that everyone is talking about. And it’s easy to see the appeal: She is an enormously popular Democratic Governor in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one. [...]
The administration announced late this afternoon that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has accepted Obama’s nomination to be HHS Secretary. The finalization of her selection comes just in time for Sebelius to participate in the White House summit on health reform early next week.
Sorry to be late about this, but a few thoughts about the President’s Iraq plan: 1. This is a pretty conservative drawdown, with most of the troops staying in place until after the Iraqi National Elections next December. That’s the reason why McCain etc have supported it. And yes, 50,000 is a pretty robust residual [...]
It’s hard out there for a Wizards player. The team re-signs Gilbert Arenas to a $111 million contract only to see him sit out the season (again) with a knee injury. With a half-dozen other players injured throughout the season, the Wizards win all of 11 games by the All-Star Break. A true basketball fan [...]
Focus on the Family announced today that founder James Dobson is officially stepping down as chair of the organization. It’s a move that’s long been in the works–six years ago, Dobson resigned his position as president and CEO of Focus, and internally the organization has been paving the way for current CEO Jim Daly to [...]
It’s Friday afternoon, and this Brooks Kraft shot from our White House Photo Blog seemed to offer some good possibilities for a caption contest:
The reviews of Bobby Jindal’s rebuttle to Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress have not been exactly, um, raves. And,Politico’s Ben Smith scoops it just keeps getting worse: apparently the story that Jindal told “during Katrina” was, actually, a few days later and didn’t unfold the way he remembered it. Update: If you [...]
Every week Katherine Lanpher talks with TIME business and economics reporters to sort through the headlines, forecasts, news and numbers to help readers/listeners weather these challenging times. This week I did a spot on TIME’s new financial toolkit to talk about Obama’s budgetary ambitions and the challenges he’ll face in implementing his agenda. Take an [...]
Remember how much grief Al Gore got for claiming in the first 2000 presidential debate that he had accompanied then-FEMA Director James Lee Witt to a fire disaster scene in Texas? (It turned out that while Gore had indeed been on many disaster visits with Lee, he hadn’t accompanied him on the one in question.) [...]
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.– Moments before Barack Obama announced his new plan for Iraq Friday, the president made a “courtesy call” to his predecessor, George W. Bush, to brief him on the new military strategy, said spokesman Robert Gibbs. Earlier in the day, Obama also called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki to brief him on the [...]
