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2/16: Helicopters

Trevor Francis
A six-year-old project to build state-of-the-art presidential helicopters has bogged down in a contracting quagmire that will challenge Mr. Obama’s desire to rein in military contracting expenses. The price tag has nearly doubled, production has fallen years behind schedule and much of the program has been frozen until the new administration figures out what to do about it.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will soon issue an executive order lifting an eight-year ban embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, a senior adviser said on Sunday. "We're going to be doing something on that soon, I think. The president is considering that right now," Obama adviser David Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday."
President Obama will sign the $787 billion economic stimulus plan in Denver on Tuesday, the White House said today, as he continues his efforts to communicate directly to the American public about the economic crisis. Obama had already announced a trip to Colorado and Arizona on Tuesday and Wednesday. He plans to announce his latest plans for reducing the number of housing foreclosures on Wednesday in Phoenix. Obama's decision to sign the stimulus bill in Denver is a striking departure from his first few weeks in office, when he held several signing ceremonies in the East Room of the White House.
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2/10: State Secrets

Trevor Francis
  • The Senate passes the stimulus bill. Now it's on to conference where the two chambers can iron out their differences before voting again next week.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan has passed the Senate and is on its way to difficult House-Senate negotiations.Just three Republicans helped pass the plan on a 61-37 vote and they're already signaling they'll play hardball to preserve more than $108 billion in spending cuts made last week in Senate dealmaking. Obama wants to restore cuts in funds for school construction jobs and help for cash-starved states. Those cuts are among the major differences between the $819 billion House version of Obama's plan and a Senate bill costing $838 billion. Obama has warned of a deepening economic crisis if Congress fails to act. He wants a bill completed by the weekend.
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SAN FRANCISCO — In a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration. In the case, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees filed suit against a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights for the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects were secretly taken to other countries, where they say they were tortured. The Bush administration argued that the case should be dismissed because even discussing it in court could threaten national security and relations with other nations.
The NSC will take on all national security matters that are strategic in nature and "of such importance that the president of the United States would care" about them, he said. Action groups from various departments and agencies will be formed around specific issues for as long as it takes to resolve them. "Some of these things will be very short-term. When the problem goes away, the group goes away." Others will be ongoing. "An Afghan strategic review, that's going to take a while," Jones said. "The policy that is generated from that review, and the implementation, is going to take a while."
Many Iranians are tired of isolation but some say Iran needs a hard-liner to win U.S. concessions not a moderate like Khatami, whose reforming efforts were mostly blocked by conservatives. Speaking to reporters after meeting Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani in Madrid on Sunday, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said: "They (Iranians) think the American attitude is positive, and they are just waiting for that attitude to manifest itself in some gesture." Some principals will be regulars at the NSC "just by force of issues," he said, and "you can't just designate the whole government as being there." But everyone should be kept aware of "what's going on" and given an opportunity to say, 'Wait a minute, I've got something to say here.' "
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2/6: Nukes

Trevor Francis
Obama abruptly changes his tone in his selling of the stimulus. Watch him lay the smack down. Obama seeks biggest nuclear weapons cut with Russia in a generation. WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. ...
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1/30-2/1: Outrage

Trevor Francis
Obama calls $18 billion in Wall Street bonuses "outrageous" and promises action. WASHINGTON "" President Obama branded Wall Street bankers "shameful" on Thursday for giving themselves nearly $20 bil...
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1/27: Muslim world charm offensive

Trevor Francis
  • As Middle East envoy George Mitchell leaves to try to broker peace between Israel and Hamas, Obama does his first post-inauguration TV interview with Arab channel Al-Arabiya and extends the hand of friendship. The whole video is worth a watch.
Said Feingold: "The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute."
The bill is a response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that said a person must file a claim of discrimination within 180 days of a company's initial decision to pay a worker less than it pays another worker doing the same job. Under the bill, every new discriminatory paycheck would extend the statute of limitations for another 180 days.