July 2009 Archives
The Setting
The men met at a picnic table in the rose garden.
So here's the situation. You're a certified nurse's assistant, helping seniors get the care they need to live out their final years with dignity. You love your job, but the pay's terrible, you're always short-staffed, and the turnover is constant. So you talk to your co-workers and decide you should form a union, to have more of a say in the way things are run. Management's answer? If you keep speaking out, you're fired.
A slew of recent polls showing President Barack Obama's job approval ratings at essentially normal levels and a partisan divide reasserting itself suggest that the political landscape was not as dramatically transformed last November as Democrats had hoped.
"They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay for abortions," gripes a senior in this provocative new ad from Family Research Council Action. It will air in five states: Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska.
The Republican Party seems to be gaining some traction in attacking President Obama's agenda and pulling him down a peg or two in public esteem.
The need for President Barack Obama to conduct "beer diplomacy" between a respected black scholar and the white policeman who arrested him demonstrates that race relations have yet to fade into the background of U.S. society.
It has been a shocking couple of days in America.
Shock No. 1: The first African-American president reacts to a race-laced police encounter with perhaps a different reflex than his predecessors. The Cambridge police "acted stupidly" in the case of Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., President Barack Obama says. Who would have guessed that we citizens don't always see eye-to-eye across the racial divide?
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court on a sharp party-line vote, handing President Barack Obama a victory and putting the federal judge one step closer to becoming the nation's first Latina justice.
Obama has unwittingly made his real beliefs clear. From time to time, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas have naturally talked about growing up African-American under far less tolerant conditions than those we take for granted today.
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us.
That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially.
If race were the only issue, there would be much less hyperventilation about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s unpleasant run-in with the criminal justice system. After all, it would hardly be the first time a black man had unjustly been hauled to jail by a white police officer. The debate -- really more of a shouting match -- is also about power and entitlement.
This is a new twist. Since the triumph of the civil rights movement, minorities have been moving up the ladder in politics, business, academia, just about every field.
With a summer sun shining at midnight and reindeer meat on most every breakfast menu, Alaska isn't exactly the microcosm of America Sarah Palin claimed it was last year.
Full broadcast and selected clips
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The 'FOX News Sunday' panel discusses the possibility of Congress passing health care reform
Georgetown University's Michael Eric Dyson and columnist Kathleen Parker discuss with Bob Schieffer the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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Georgetown University's Michael Eric Dyson and columnist Kathleen Parker on the controversy over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.; White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) discuss health care reform; Plus, Bob Schieffer put the Gates affair into perspective.
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He has been cautious in addressing race-related matters. By staunchly supporting friend Henry Louis Gates Jr., arrested in Cambridge, Mass., he take sides in a highly charged racial controversy.
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From the president to everyday people, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the talk of the town.
For three days, members of a Senate committee pressed Sonia Sotomayor on her view of the law and how individual experience affects judicial decisions. And for three days, Sotomayor was careful to avoid political blunders that might derail her confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. 
President Barack Obama came alive about 50 minutes into Wednesday night's news conference - when somebody finally changed the subject.
President Barack Obama says his White House is more open than previous administrations and is disputing complaints he hasn't fulfilled a campaign promise to negotiate health care on C-SPAN.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday the United States will stick to its schedule and remove all its troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 even though there will be "tough days ahead."
After more than a week of tirelessly pressuring Congress to move his top domestic priority, President Barack Obama may have to settle for a fallback strategy on health care overhaul.
Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin is aggressively pushing back against reports that claim an independent investigator has found evidence she may have violated Alaska's ethics laws.
With Congress and the White House squabbling over health care reform, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said on Tuesday he's not really sure which insurance company covers him.
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Trust in President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies to identify the right solutions to problems facing the country has dropped off significantly since March, according to a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll. 
The co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, Sheila Crump Johnson, endorsed Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell on Monday.
Stereotypes simply don't apply these days in Portland, Ore. A conservative Christian minister and an openly gay mayor of this progressive city provide a glimpse of what could be Christianity's future. Welcome to "Jesus' favorite city."
The White House says President Barack Obama's pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison in January is still in place, even though two task forces he set up to review detention and interrogation policies will miss deadlines Tuesday to make recommendations. 
As political theater, the Sonia Sotomayor hearings tanked faster than the 2008 Fred Thompson presidential campaign. They boasted no drama to rival the Clarence-Anita slapdown, the Bork hissy fits or the tearful exodus of Samuel Alito's wife. There was rarely a moment to match even the high point of the Senate's previous grilling of Sotomayor -- in 1997, when she was elevated to the Second Circuit. 
In his most recent remarks, President Obama has stopped mentioning what had been his mantra -- that the House and Senate finish their health-care bills by the August recess -- and switched to a less specific call to fast action. 
An anti-hate crimes vigil forms in New York. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act is edging closer to passage.
Lawmakers flock to 113 C St. S.E. for cheap rent, weekly dinners, Bible studies and spirituality sessions that serve as a sort of group therapy for some of the country's most powerful men. 
The Episcopal Church, convening this week for its tri-annual convention, has moved to permit the ordination of more openly gay bishops and is poised to formally permit bishops to allow gay marriage ceremonies.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offers his take on the proposed health care bills.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius responds to critics of proposed bills.
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Sunday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, preview what's ahead for President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said his former colleague and boss Walter Cronkite earned the trust of America "because he was a reporter."
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) bemoaned that any health care proposal which taxes wealthy Americans and small businesses will "kill a lot of jobs" on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.
After a tough week on health care reform, President Barack Obama used a hastily convened White House appearance Friday to press Congress to step up the pace, saying once again that "now is the not the time to slow down."
Crowded
On the first day of testimony, nominee Sonia Sotomayor faced a hearing room packed with observers, photographers, lawmakers and their aides. The vacant seat at the lower right belongs to Senator Arlen Specter, who arrived a few minutes late.
Max Baucus
Democratic Senator from Montana
In a direct address to black America, President Barack Obama said that while "there's probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today... the pain of discrimination is still felt" by Latinos, Muslims and gays, as well as African-Americans.
As President Obama presses the House and Senate to finalize their own versions of health care reform, the real battle over the issue is just heating up -- and it's about to get very personal. 
By the third morning of Sonia Sotomayor's hearings to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, the atmosphere in the room was practically jovial. Despite the best efforts of some Republicans to spark a confrontation on hot-button issues like abortion, gun rights or her general approach to judging, Sotomayor had largely steered clear of any trouble, and the process had taken on an air of inevitability. 
Whatever Sonia Sotomayor does to reward herself -- a glass of wine, an ice cream sundae, a bubble bath -- surely she must be giving herself a small pat on the back after surviving her first day of cross-examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee without any kind of gaffe.
The Gist:Narrowing the persistent gap in achievement between white and minority students is one of the toughest challenges in education. In its first major report of the Obama Administration, the Department of Education offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the achievement gap between white and black pupils, based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The NAEP (pronounced "nape") is a federal standardized test -- known as "the nation's report card" -- administered to fourth- and eighth-grade public school students in reading and math.
Lawyers on Tuesday gave sharply contrasting biographies of a 15-month-old Oregon girl whose parents believe in faith healing and are charged with manslaughter in her death.
It is likely that Judge Sotomayor will face some questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week about her 2001 "wise Latina" remark.
Aside from intelligence and experience, we are told that one of the best things Sonia Sotomayor will bring to the Supreme Court is diversity.
In a speech to the NAACP's centennial convention, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Tuesday he was taking the first "baby step" in rebuilding the GOP's relationship with black America.
"I have come here today not only to bring greetings, but also to renew our relationship with the NAACP and the African-American community," said Steele, the RNC's first black chairman, according to prepared remarks.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor firmly denied racial bias Tuesday at her Senate confirmation hearing and said an oft-criticized remark about her Hispanic heritage affecting judicial decisions was a rhetorical device gone awry.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned in an op-ed Tuesday that President Barack Obama's energy plan represents an "enormous threat" to the American economy. 
Intensely focused, Sonia Sotomayor sits like a statue as senator after senator addresses her, as well as a nationwide TV audience, at her confirmation hearing for Supreme Court justice. Occasionally, she nods her head when one of them says something particularly nice about her.
1. You Can Read It -- Right Now -- Online
On July 6, the world's oldest Bible went digital. The 4th century Codex Sinaiticus manuscript ("The Sinai Book") is one of the most important texts in Christianity, dating to the time of Constantine the Great.
We're coming up on the sixth-month anniversary of the Obama administration. The economy it inherited was a real mess. Things have gotten better to the extent that they aren't falling apart as quickly. But Obama's problem is that he was elected as a man of destiny who could quickly and effectively change the world. "Change" was his mandate. An eighth of his term is up, and what has really changed?
The most important Roman Catholic figure in preparing the president for his first meeting today with Pope Benedict XVI--and in reaching out to the American Catholic community in advance of the visit--is someone whom few Catholics would recognize.
One of the striking features of the Obama White House's faith outreach and messaging is that it keeps the effort going even in areas that have yielded few dividends.
To some Republican activists, an epic battle over Sonia Sotomayor is just the kind of jolt the Republican Party needs to get out of its doldrums.
Roland Martin will anchor a new Sunday public affairs show aimed at a black audience that will debut in September on the TV One network.
John McCain, Chuck Schumer, Karen Hughes, Andrea Mitchell, Bob Shrum, Roger Simon
The 'FOX News Sunday' panel discusses CIA secret programs and what Congress should be briefed on.
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Bob Schieffer spoke with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination hearings. Washington Post's Kevin Merida and syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker weigh in on plans to investigate harsh interrogation tactics. Plus, Schieffer on Michael Jackson's memorial service.
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To watch Senators Leahy and Sessions debate Sotomayor, Cheney and investigations, click on the video player below.
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Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said today that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's judicial philosophy, as articulated in her speeches, marks "a blow, I think, at the very ideal of American justice."
"This Week" Transcript with Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
Kyl: 'No Chance' Health Reform By August
Despite President Obama's calls for health care reform legislation before congress leaves for its August recess, the GOP Senate minority whip told me today there is "no chance" it'll get done.
President Barack Obama used the historic platform of his first speech as president in sub-Saharan Africa to deliver a pointed critique of African governments that no previous American president could have delivered so forcefully.
St. Peter's Square
The President's motorcade arrives at the Vatican.
ABC's "This Week" -- Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
Body language says a lot about a world leader's audience with the Pope. During his 2007 visit to Pope Benedict XVI's private library, President George W. Bush sat down across the desk from the pontiff as if he had just landed on his own porch in Crawford, Texas: leaning back in the velvet chair, legs crossed, apparently eager to show his command of the situation. (Click here to view Obama Vatican highlights.)
There have been two main theories of why things went so wrong at General Motors. One is that the company is run by a bunch of ingrown retreads with no sense of where the automotive business was headed.
Welcome to Italy
G8 host, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi greets U.S. President Barack Obama on the first day of the three-day conference.
Sen. John Ensign's parents shelled out big bucks to pay off their son's mistress, the latest twist in an unfolding scandal that has upended the political career of the one-time rising GOP star.
When President Obama meets with Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, there will be no right-wing Catholic demonstrators upbraiding the pontiff, as they did Notre Dame earlier this year, for conferring the church's legitimacy upon this liberal politician.
An Oregon couple is the latest to be tried for prohibiting medical treatment for their sick child. A look at 'faith healing' in America.
Palin and her autistic nephew Karcher Bruce attend an autism awareness fundraiser at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
Not much news in Vanity Fair's epic-length Sarah Palin profile, but there are two tidbits I haven't seen before on the Alaska governor's faithy side. First, Christian publisher Zondervan is issuing a separate, special edition of Palin's forthcoming memoir:
The leaders of the G-8 countries meeting in the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila issued on July 8 an unusually tough statement on Iran's postelection crackdown, calling on the regime to respect the rule of law and human rights.
Sarah Palin is that most exotic of American creatures: an Alaska original, raised and ripened in an environment remote, extreme, unfamiliar -- and free. A land of self-invention, where no one bats an eye at a mom-deckhand-governor-whatever-comes-next.
The Obama Administration should stop bailing out corporate disasters and abandon plans to move health care onto the backs of taxpayers.
President Obama and other leaders backed historic new targets for tackling global warming last night in an agreement designed to pave the way for a world deal in the autumn.
For the first time, America and the other seven richest economies agreed to the goal of keeping the world's average temperature from rising more than 2C (3.6F).
Landing
President Barack Obama, his daughters Sasha (left) and Malia and his wife Michelle depart Air Force One at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport. Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ended a seven-year hiatus in U.S.-Russian summits on July 6, 2009.
We couldn't help but include this. It is very touching.
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What do religious conservatives know about Sarah Palin that everyone else doesn't?
While most political folks are wondering aloud about the outgoing Alaska governor's next move--and while Palin herself admits she's foggy about future plans--conservative Christian activists are expressing confidence that she'll stay in national politics.
The Palins were staying with Sarah's in-laws Bob and Blanche Kallstrom when the soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska sat down for an interview. The Kallstroms are two of the 2,500 full-time residents of Dillingham, Alaska, and owners of the Bristol Bay Inn and a hardware store.
Whenever President Obama has taken questions with a visiting head of state at the White House, inevitably a news outlet from the foreign delegation will ask him about his feelings toward that leader individually or their country as a whole. Rarely is anything useful gained from that discussion from the perspective of the American press.
Some of the punditry about embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's faithiness are taking me back to the days when those of us in the news business weren't expected to know too much about religion. 
By State of the Union
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Focus on the Family's vice president of communications E-mails to protest my post about the silence of family values groups on Mark Sanford's affair. Focus, he says, has hardly kept quiet, responding to interview requests from Politico, the Washington Times, and a small New England newspaper. 
THE judge condemned Bernie Madoff's crimes as "extraordinarily evil." The New York Daily News, whose publisher was a Madoff victim, chose "The Pariah" as its front-page headline and promised that the dastardly villain would suffer "everlasting consumption in the jaws of the devil." The Times declared that the Madoff case, by attaching a human face to a financial meltdown that produced fear, panic and loss, had "put an entire era on trial."
It is not now as it hath been of yore. Summits between the leaders who live in the White House and the Kremlin once transfixed the world, as competing superpowers, ideologies and worldviews clashed. But when Barack Obama visits Moscow on July 6, it will be something of a rarity for the U.S. President: a rather dull trip. Obama will encounter no cheering crowds or overly excited local media. 
In bowing out as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin harkened back to her high school basketball days -- although there was no sign of the "Barracuda," as she was nicknamed for her ability to cut through the opposing team's offenses. In a hastily called press conference on the eve of a three-day holiday, Palin presented herself as a point guard exhausted by the "full court press from the national level."
AP transcript of an interview with President Barack Obama on Thursday.
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Q: Appreciate the time.
Obama: You bet.
Q: News out this morning: unemployment rate up to 9.5 percent, and it's of course expected to go higher, as you've said that it probably would. What do you tell Americans who are worried that this really will be a jobless recovery, that they may not be able to find jobs, even if the economy gets better?
President Barack Obama said former Russian President Vladimir Putin and his hand-picked successor should expect an in-person reminder the Cold War is over when the U.S. leader makes his first trip to a Moscow summit.
Days before he departs for Russia, Obama said Thursday that Putin "still has a lot of sway" in his nation as its nominal prime minister. "I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated," he said. "Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."
Around the time of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, I turned to my father at the dinner table one night and said, "It's amazing, Dad -- 50 years, and you never once had an affair. How do you account for that?"
He replied simply, "I can't drive."
Watching the governor of South Carolina cry like a little girl because his sexy e-mails got forwarded to his local newspaper, the State, made me wonder whether the real secret to a lasting marriage lies in limiting your means of escape. Whether you're putting the Buick Regal in reverse or hitting "Send" on a love note, you're busting out of your marriage, however temporarily, and soon enough there will be hell to pay.
The conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush was the most faith-based president in recent history, by a long shot. Citing Jesus as his favorite philosopher and Billy Graham as a mentor, Bush won evangelical voters in numbers not previously seen. In office, he launched a controversial office of faith-based initiatives and consulted religious leaders in developing science policy. Bush routinely opened cabinet meetings with prayer and acknowledged conferring with "a higher father" before going to war in Iraq.
The defeat of incumbent Norm Coleman in the drawn-out Minnesota Senate race leaves Republicans without a Jewish senator for the first time in half a century.
President Barack Obama wants to produce early results after promising to reset relations with Russia, hoping to emerge from a Moscow summit next week with clear progress on reducing both nations' nuclear arsenals and changing the way the Russian people view the United States.
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The Republican Party put an inordinate amount of faith in Norm Coleman's long-shot legal challenge, spending a million bucks on the idea that he'd catch a break in court.
But like dominoes, each Coleman legal challenge failed, one after another, ruling after ruling, until the final, decisive blow Tuesday when the Minnesota Supreme Court picked apart Coleman's arguments and awarded Democrat Al Franken the Senate seat.
Israel is considering what it can do to enable a full-fledged Mideast peace process and Palestinian-Israeli negotiations to take off, including instituting a temporary freeze on settlements, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday.
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