Breaking with a decades-old tradition of anti-government sentiment coming from the Oval Office, President-elect Barack Obama's Thursday speech on the economic turmoil facing the country presented government as the solution to the problem. (Los Angeles Times)
Senate Democrats are already airing their doubts about Obama's economic stimulus package (Roll Call -- subscription), leaving Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner scrambling to "overhaul" the initiative. (Washington Post)
Obama wants to delay the switch to digital television -- slated for Feb. 17 -- to give the Commerce Department more time to distribute coupons for digital-to-analog converters. No specific new date was stated. (Politico)
The National Academy of Sciences is calling on Obama to loosen restrictions on the export of advanced technology, arguing that national security-inspired laws keeping high-tech wares from being sold overseas are "arcane." (New York Times)
Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106-year old woman Obama noted in his victory speech Nov. 4, is hanging on -- "I ain't got time to die because I've got to see a black president" -- and plans to watch the inauguration from home in Atlanta. (New York Times)
A joint session of Congress tallied up Obama's 365 electoral votes Thursday, officially making him the president-elect. (Los Angeles Times)
Obama is still negotiating with the Secret Service to keep his BlackBerry so, according to the president-elect, he can "stay in touch with the flow of everyday life." (AP)
Name Game
Obama has tapped Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, Internet scholar and long-time friend, to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which oversees e-government initiatives. (NationalJournal.com)
Continuing his reshuffling of the Defense Department, Obama named four new appointees for top jobs at the Pentagon Thursday. (Army Times)
Obama may tap former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. as the next head of NASA, which would make him the first black chief of the space agency. (Newsweek)
Confirmation Wars
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is rallying congressional opposition to CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Obama's pick for surgeon general, saying the neurosurgeon "lacks the requisite experience." (Politico)
Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle was treated with kid gloves in his return to the Hill Thursday for confirmation hearings, with few questions raised about how he would handle Medicare and Medicaid or about his wife's lobbying activities. (Washington Post)
When Vice President-elect Joe Biden resigns his seat, he will leave Democrats with just nine votes on the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning Attorney General-designate Eric Holder will need to pick up one Republican vote to secure his nomination. (Politico)
Holder pushed hard for clemency for members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations during his tenure at the Justice Department under President Clinton, newly revealed information that could complicate his confirmation. (Los Angeles Times)
Inauguration Conflagration
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is as "confident as humanly possible" that his agency has not been given any reason to worry about a terrorist threat on Jan. 20. (Wall Street Journal)
The inauguration rental boom that sent weekend home rentals soaring into the tens of thousands of dollars on craigslist appears to be a bust, with supply far outstripping demand and crowd estimates for the historic event being reined in. (Washington Post)
Wall Street has donated $5.7 million of the $27.3 million Obama has already raised for his inauguration. (Wall Street Journal)
More than 200 bars, restaurants and nightclubs have already secured permits to stay open until 4 a.m. over inauguration weekend. (Washington Post)
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Responded on December 20, 2011 10:10 AM
flat stomach
yeah that was so sweet when all the bars stayed open late that night, me and my friends were bar hopping all night! Took me 2 days to recover so that I could finally work on my abs in attemt of getting in shape.