General Motors: Obama's new deal

By Mark Silva

President Barack Obama voiced shock and outrage this evening over the slaying of a controversial Wichita, Kan., abortion-provider, Dr. George Tiller.

Tiller, 67, who remained one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, had been shot and wounded several years before. His clinic had been bombed. This time, the shooting as he served as an usher at his church today was fatal.

"I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning,'' Obama said in a statement issued by the White House this evening.

"However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion,'' the president said, "they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.''

Obama had personally addressed the national debate over abortion as he delivered a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame and received an honorary degree from the Catholic school this spring, over the protests of those who objected to a supporter of abortion-rights addressing graduates and accepting a degree. He suggested that, while the two camps on abortion are probably "irreconcilable,'' they must learn to respect one another's views.

And now, with the president's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, senators are attempting to fathom the philosophy of a judge who has not given observers much to work with on the subject during 18 years on the federal bench. The nation's highest court is divided 5-4 toward support of abortion rights, the majority including the retiring David Souter.

The gunman fled the church-shooting in Wichita today, but a 51-year-old suspect was arrested 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours later. Police have identified him as Scott Roeder. Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church. Roeder faces charges of murder and aggravated assault, police say.

by Mary Rourke

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the Titanic, the ocean-liner that sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean, died today. She was 97.

She died at a nursing home near Southampton, England, the port where she and her family boarded the ship on its only voyage, according to Charles Haas, the president of the Titanic International Society. Her death came on the 98th anniversary of the launching of the Titanic on May 31, 1911.

"She was a remarkable, sparkling lady," Haas told the Los Angeles Times today. "She knew her place in history and was always willing to share her story with others, especially children. She was the last living link to the story."

Dean was about 8 weeks old when she and her family set sail, third class, on the luxury ocean liner on April 10, 1912. Five days later, she was among some 700 passengers and crew rescued off the coast of Newfoundland. She and her mother, Georgetta, 32, and her brother Bertram, 23 months old, were put into lifeboats.

Her father, Bertram, 27, stayed on board the ship and was among more than 1,500 passengers and crew members who went down with the Titanic.

The late Milvina Dean pictured above, AP. See the full story of the Titanic's last survivor at the Los Angeles Times Web-site and here in the Swamp:

by Mark Silva

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation for the U.S. Supreme Court is "virtually filibuster-proof,'' one Democratic senator said today, but lawmakers should not be forced into any deadline for her confirmation, a Republican leader said.

And Republicans are agreeing today that it's time to shelve the most incendiary criticism that some of the party's most outspoken conservatives have aimed at President Barack Obama's first nominee for the Supreme Court, with the longtime federal jurist from New York poised to become the first Hispanic on the high court.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today that Sotomayor is headed toward confirmation with her compelling history and moderate record. On ABC News' This Week With George Stephanopoulos, the senator maintained that Sotomayor's comments most criticized comments about her own personal experience - how being a Latina informs her wisdom about some matters -- reflects a respect for the law while acknowledging her own background as the daughter of Puerto Rican parents.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said today that, with so many of legal opinions of the judge to review - after 11 years on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and seven before that on the District Court for the Southern District of New York -- senators should not be held to the president's desire that a confirmation vote take place before their summer vacation in August. The president wants Sotomayor ready for the start of the court's fall term in October.

While averting the comments of conservatives who have attempted to brand Sotomayor as a "racist,'' McConnell, appearing today on CNN's State of the Union with John King, said he cannot patrol what other Republicans have to say about the judge.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said on State of the Union that Sotomayor's hearings should be respectful and based on her record -- not on labels. Hutchinson, promising to review Sotomayor's record and give her a "fair shot,'' is considering a run for governor of Texas, with a large Latino population.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold the confirmation hearings, said today that he would prefer that fellow Republicans stop attacking the judge over remarks she made about her perspective as a child of Puerto Ricans when she addressed the University of California at Berkeley in 2001.

Sessions, appearing today on NBC News' Meet the Press, said he looks forward to meeting with Sotomayor - who will start making rounds of the Senate on Tuesday - and to hearing her explain her speak of her experiences and her decisions.

by Mark Silva

Cuba is ready to resume talks with the United States over the legal immigration of Cubans to the U.S. and postal service between the two nations, the Associated Press reports today.

The Communist government notified the Obama administration on Saturday that it had accepted a May 22 overture restart immigration talks suspended by former President George W. Bush in 2003, the AP's Matthew Lee reports, citing a State Department official requesting anonymity because the time and place of talks have not been determined yet. Cuba also has expressed a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. on combating terrorism and stemming drug trafficking as well as hurricane preparedness.

The official, speaking with reporters before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton left on a trip to El Salvador and Honduras, said the Cuban response is a "clear signal" that the administration and Havana government are willing to engage.

by Peter Nicholas and James Oliphant

It did not take long after moving 60 miles from the ethnically diverse neighborhoods of the Bronx to the campus of Princeton University for Sonia Sotomayor to make it clear she was not happy with the way the overwhelmingly white, male school was run.

In her sophomore year, Sotomayor walked into the office of university President William G. Bowen to demand more Latino faculty and students. Not satisfied with his response, she and others filed a complaint with the federal government, accusing the school administration of "an institutional pattern of discrimination."

"The facts imply and reflect the total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture," she wrote in the Daily Princetonian.

Sotomayor, considered a brilliant student, graduated summa cum laude from the Ivy League school in 1976. While there, she was a passionate advocate for minorities and displayed an intense interest in her heritage: Her parents had moved to New York from Puerto Rico before she was born.

From Princeton onward, a look at her life has shown, she has viewed the law as a tool for social empowerment.

But critics of Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination fear that as a justice she would take that concern too far, siding with the underdog as a matter of principle rather than on the basis of cleareyed legal judgment.

"It is perfectly appropriate for people to bring their life experience to their judging," said John C. Eastman, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who now serves as dean of the Chapman University School of Law. "But there's a difference between having that perspective and being able to put one thumb on the scale to benefit one group over another."

Photo of Sonia Sotomayor, above, from the Princeton University yearbook, 1976, the year she graduated summa cum laude in history. See the full report on Sotomayor in Tribune newspapers and here in the Swamp:

by Jim Puzzanghera

A deadline for General Motors Corp. bondholders to accept a revised debt-for-stock offer that could speed the carmaker's ride through Chapter 11 passed Saturday without any word on whether there was enough participation to satisfy the company and the Obama administration.

The offer would give holders of about $27 billion in bonds as much as 25% of a new, post-bankruptcy GM while wiping out most of the bond debt. The company and the administration hoped to get enough bondholders to agree so that the deal could be part of GM's expected bankruptcy filing on Monday.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive ongoing negotiations, said Thursday that a "judgment call" would be made as to whether the percentage of bondholders agreeing to the deal was acceptable. GM and Treasury Department officials had no comment after the offer expired at 5 p.m. EDT Saturday.

The last-minute maneuvering came as GM's board of directors reportedly met for a second straight day in Detroit on Saturday and Chief Executive Fritz Henderson prepared for a news conference Monday in New York, where the company is expected to file for bankruptcy protection in one of the largest Chapter 11 cases in U.S. corporate history.

The company made the latest proposal Thursday, a day after an earlier offer to bondholders expired with little support. That proposal, made by GM in April, would have given bondholders a total of 10% equity in a new GM in exchange for forgiving $24 billion, or 90%, of the bond debt.

The Obama administration wanted to try to strike a deal with bondholders before GM entered Chapter 11 to allow the process to move more quickly and smoothly by giving the bankruptcy judge fewer contentious issues to handle in court.

by Mark Silva

Life is like a box of chocolates.

Since the day that the Scottish singing sensation, Susan Boyle, floored the talent-show judges with her soaring number from Les Miserables, millions of people around the world have logged on to see a songbird in pigeon's feathers.

Yet the one who won the hearts of millions lost the home-telephone poll of the viewers of Britain's Got Talent tonight. Finishing second place isn't really losing, but then again it is. Because the winners walked away with cash and a date with the queen.

The 48-year-old Internet sensation placed behind a dance troupe called "Diversity" that will carry the $159,000 prize to the Royal Variety Show.

Yet, for all the British tabloid publicity surrounding the Scottish star's final frenetic days in the competition, she came out a champ tonight: "The best people won," Boyle said. "They're very entertaining,'' she said of Diversity. "Lads, I wish you all the best."

In her hometown of Blackburn, Scotland, friends and fans wore Boyle masks as they tuned in for the finals. Boyle belted it out, But Boyle also acknowledged that all of this had been quite stressful. In the end, she concluded that it had been "well worth it.''

It was.

by Mark Silva

The Obamas headed to New York City to see a play tonight

The first couple's Broadway date:: August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone at the Belasco Theater on W. 44th Street, according to theater executives cited by The New York Times' The Caucus blog. The White House has billed it as "a personal visit'' to New York - the couple left the White House this afternoon.

The Republican Party is giving the president something of a hard time of it today, pointing to all the people who are out of work, with unemployment ready to surpass 9 percent and a major American automaker teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - the GOP today hits the president with this emailed headline: Obama "Wings off to New York City for Night on the Town.''

We're having trouble understanding what General Motors' problems, or for that matter the joblessness of a lot of Americans, has to do with the president's Saturday night plans.

Maybe it's the conveyance - they aren't simply taking the keys to the limo - and the dustup that the White House faced over the costly photo-op of the "Air Force One" flyover over the Statute of Liberty. The first couple didn't take one of the jumbo jets tonight, however, opting instead for one of the smaller jets in the presidential fleet.

"Sasha And Malia aren't here tonight because they're grounded,'' Obama had joked one recent Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, as the GOP reminds us today. "You can't just take Air Force One on a joy ride to Manhattan,'' the president said then. "I don't care whose kids you are.''

by Mark Silva

With a long-promised address to the Muslim world next week, the White House says, President Barack Obama plans to underscore the "mutual interests and mutual respect'' that the United States and Muslim communities around the world have.

Obama will stand before an audience Thursday at Cairo University, at an event cohosted by Al-Azhar University for his televised address, and also visit a mosque while he is in Cairo.

"President Obama's speech will be an important part of his engagement with the Muslim world, which began in his inaugural and has continued through venues such as his interview with Al Arabiya, his Nowruz message, and his speech and town hall in Turkey,' Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing with reporters last night.

"The speech will outline his personal commitment to engagement, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect,'' Gibbs said. "He will discuss how the United States and Muslim communities around the world can bridge some of the differences that have divided them. He will review particular issues of concern, such as violent extremism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And he will discuss new areas for partnership going forward that serve the mutual interests of our people.''

The president's journey will start Wednesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a private meeting with King Abdullah.

"That obviously is also part of our outreach to the Muslim world,'' said Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, "but also an opportunity while he's in this vitally important region to discuss a range of important concerns from energy to Middle East peace to the fight against extremism.''

(Pictured above: Students on the campus of Cairo University, where President Barack Obama plans to address Muslim world. .Photo by Amr Nabil / AP)

by Mark Silva

Two former presidents, at odds politically but in arms personally, shared a stage yesterday, and one "retiring" late-night comedian wishes that he had one more day on his own stage to deal with this one.

Former President George W. Bush called fellow former President Bill Clinton "his brother" at the joint appearance in Toronto.

Bush, suggesting that there are "plenty of critics in America,'' averted any criticism for his own successor, President Barack Obama. But Bush and Clinton did allow some space between themselves on the question of the invasion of Iraq: Clinton said U.N. inspectors should have been given more time to search for weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion. Bush defended the invasion, and denied suggestions that it took the eye of the U.S. off the real war on terror: "I don't buy the premise that our attention was diverted.''

Bush, noting how much time his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and Clinton spend together on disaster relief efforts and the like, said mother Barbara Bush has suggested that, "President Clinton and father share the stage so much, he's like a son to her."

Jay Leno, the Tonight Show host who performed his final late-night appearance last night - yet really will only be moving to a new 10 pm EDT slot on NBC this fall to make late-night room for Conan O'Brien, suggested in his finale that Bush and Clinton might offer some fodder for another night tonight.

"I wish I had one more day,'' Leno said.

The organizers of the event, "A conversation with Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton,'' with tickets going for $200 to $2,500, and an audience of about 6,000, declined to say how much the former presidents were paid.

"President Clinton and I used to believe in free speech," Bush told the audience. "So thanks very much for coming -- we are glad you're here."

(Not everyone was glad Bush was there: The appearance prompted a protest outside Tornonto's Metro Convention center. Photo below by Jim Ross / The Canadian Press. And the AP contributed to this report.)

by Mark Silva

The popularity of the president -- with close to two thirds of those surveyed voicing approval of the job that President Barack Obama is performing four months into office-- may have something to do with the Republican Party's weekly message today.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, delivering the GOP's address today, repeats a mesage that the Republcians delivered last week, that the Obama administration's plans for promoting alternative energy will break the bank. Yet, in the course of today's address, Daniels aims his criticism squarely at someone else whose public approval has plummetted: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.), and mentions the president only in passing and mainly by title.

"I do wish President Obama well,'' Daniels says today. "I support his education reform ideas, anti-fraud initiative in social programs, and the great example he and his family are setting for families across America. And I endorse wholeheartedly his stated commitment to 'government that works.''

On the other hand, he says, "The national energy tax imposed by Speaker Pelosi's climate change bill would double electric bills here in Indiana, working a severe hardship on low-income families, but that's only where the damage starts.

"In a state where we like to make things, like steel and autos and RVs, it would cost us countless jobs, many of them heading off-shore to China and India. Our farmers and livestock producers would see their costs skyrocket. And our coal miners would be looking for new work, while we leave affordable, homegrown energy idle in the ground.''

See the address above, and read it below:

by Mark Silva

With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, President Barack Obama is making some history, touting the life's story of a judge whom he views as an embodiment of the American dream and defying Republicans to challenge her credentials.

The first parts have been easy, during the first few days of the president's presentation of his first appointee to the Supreme Court, potentially the first Hispanic to serve on the nation's highest court. The latter part has proven a little more difficult, though Republcian congressional leaders, by week's end, had come to regret the harshest words that the party's most conservative voices had employed.

"It was hard not to be moved by Judge Sotomayor's mother, sitting in the front row at the White House, her eyes welling with tears, as her daughter - who had come so far, for whom she sacrificed so much - was nominated to the highest court in the land,'' the president says today, in his weekly radio and Internet address.

"And this is what makes Judge Sotomayor so extraordinary,'' he says. "Even as she has reached the heights of her profession, she has never forgotten where she began. She has faced down barriers, overcome difficult odds, and lived the American dream...

"There are, of course, some in Washington who are attempting to draw old battle lines and playing the usual political games, pulling a few comments out of context to paint a distorted picture of Judge Sotomayor's record,'' the president says today. "But I am confident that these efforts will fail; because Judge Sotomayor's 17-year record on the bench - hundreds of judicial decisions that every American can read for him or herself - speak far louder than any attack; her record makes clear that she is fair, unbiased, and dedicated to the rule of law.''

See the address above, and the full text below:

by Mark Silva

Just as Republican leaders attempt to soften the party's criticism for Judge Sonia Sotomayor's widely critiqued comment about the wisdom of a Latino woman, relative to that of a white man, the White House is attempting to walk her back from it.

First the White House press secretary today, and then the president, in an interview taped with NBC News today, suggested that Sotomayor probably would have chosen her words differently than she did in 2001 if she had a chance to rephrase them.

"This is the quote,'' NBC Evening News anchor Brian Williams reminded President Barack Obama, in an interview that the network aired this evening: "'I would hope that a wise Latino woman, with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.'' The president's nominee for the Supreme Court said that in an address at the University of California at Berkeley.

"It's your judgment perhaps, having talked to the judge, that as we say, that's one of those she'd rather have back if she had it to redo?" the anchorman asked the president.

"I'm sure she would have restated it,'' Obama said. "But if you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through - that will make her a good judge.''

Conservative Republicans have attacked Sotomayor over the comment, with radio's Rush Limbaugh calling her a "reverse racist,'' former Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado saying it appears to be a racist comment and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggesting that if a white male had said something similar, he'd have to withdraw from consideration for the court.

"All this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is,'' the president said in his interview.

The criticism itself has raised eyebrows among more moderate Republicans who worry about the impression that the party is creating in attacking a clearly well-qualified woman who likely will become the first Hispanic member of the nation's highest court, at a time when Democrats, Obama in particular, have won the support of the nation's fastest growing minority.

Senior senators and GOP strategists "are trying to steer the debate over Sonia Sotomayor away from the apocalyptic battle cries of conservative icons Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh in favor of a more measured conversation about the legal philosophy and qualifications of the first Latino to be nominated to the court,'' our Washington Bureau's Janet Hook reports.

"It's terrible," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a National Public Radio interview aired today condemning Gingrich and Limbaugh for calling Sotomayor a racist. "This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent."

by Mark Silva

Here's another call for the closing of Guantanamo Bay:

From Army Gen. David Petraeus.

Closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will purge the United States of a symbol that enemies have used to divide the nation, the commander of U.S. Central Command and architect of the "surge'' in the Iraq war said today.

The U.S. military is "beat around the head and shoulders" with images of detainees held in Guantanamo, which President Barack Obama promises to close in a year, the commander of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, Petraeus said at a commencement address in Georgia today.

"I do believe very strongly that we should live our values," Petraeus said. "Generations of soldiers have fought to defend those values, and we should not shrink from living them, from operationalizing them, on the battlefield.

"We do not want our soldiers fighting with one arm behind their back, we do not want fair fights. We want our soldiers to be able to employ all the means that we've employed over there to support them and enable them when we make contact with the enemy," he said.

He was addressing the 38 graduates of Georgia Gwinnett College, a suburban Atlanta liberal arts school that opened in 2006.

by Mark Silva

The hundreds of billions of dollars that the federal government has pumped into the economy for a stimulus are "like a sugar high,'' says Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank.

To keep the wheels turning, Zoellick says, the nation will have to get its credit system working again.

"While the stimulus has given an impulse, it's like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working," Zoellick said in an appearance on Political Capital with Al Hunt, a Bloomberg TV show airing tonight.

"In terms of financial markets, I think people have broken the fall.''

Should the economy fail, after all the stimulus the government has provided, however, this could become known as the Twinkie defense.

by Mark Silva

Montana has a home where the terrorists can roam.

For all the "NIMBY" worries about what will happen to some 250 dangerous detainees once the Obama administration closes the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the good people of Hardin, Montana, are ready to open their doors.

Their jailhouse doors.

As Matthew Brown tells the tale for the Associated Press, the impoverished town on the Northern Plains, Pop. 3,400, is "so desperate that it built a $27 million jail a couple of years ago in the vain hope it would be a moneymaker.''

This is not the sort of federal "super-max'' in which President Barack Obama boasts that no one has ever busted free. This is a medium-securityllockup conceived as a holding facility for drunks and other scofflaws. But the town's fathers say they could beef it up with a couple of guard towers and more concertina wire. It has 88 cameras.

"Holy smokes -- the amount of soldiers and attorneys it would bring here would be unbelievable," says Clint Carleton, surveying his nearly empty restaurant, Three Brothers Pizza. "I'm a lot more worried about some sex offender walking my streets than a guy that's a world-class terrorist. He's not going to escape, pop into the IGA (supermarket), grab a six-pack and go sit in the park."

Yet, after Hardin's six-member town council passed a resolution last month laying out a welcome mat for Guantanamo's detainees, Montana's congressional delegation was quick to pledge that it would never happen, Brown notes.

"These Gitmo guys, they're a scary bunch," says Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat. "You've got to realize what you're getting into."

Democratic Sen. Max Baucus echoes the sentiment: "'We're not going to bring al Qaeda to Big Sky Country -- no way, not on my watch.''

by Mark Silva

For the record, while conservative combatants fight over the "code'' behind President Barack Obama's "e"-criterion for his Supreme Court nominee - "empathy'' - this is nothing new.

Former President George H.W. Bush - who was the first to appoint Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, to the federal bench, a District Court opening in 1991 - used the same word, empathy, to describe the Supreme Court justice whom he nominated back then.

Appearing alongside Judge Clarence Thomas, in 1991, as this clip from the C-SPAN video archive shows, Bush said: "I have followed this man's career for some time... He has excelled in everything that he has attempted. He is a delightful, and warm intelligent person who has great empathy and a wonderful sense of humor.''

by Mark Silva

There he goes again:

Slipping out of the White House for a cheeseburger.

This time the president, who recently took a hop across the Potomac River for a lunch of Ray's Hell Burgers in Arlington, Va., headed out for Five Guys hamburgers in Southeast Washington. This time, Obama didn't have the vice president with him. But he did have NBC anchorman Brian Williams along for the ride. An NBC News crew was trailing the president for a "day-in-the-life" at the White House documentary airing next week.

This time, he ordered take-out. And despite the stir that the president caused in burger-loving circles with his last outing, he stood by his taste for mustard today.

That day in the life included a motorcade departure a 12:42 p.m., with one NBC camera crew catching the walk to the car and another on the other side of the limo. The burger-cade arrived at Five Guys at 12:51 p.m., a few blocks from Nationals Stadium.

Obama, in shirtsleeves, approached the counter, scanned the posted menu and started ordering. Aides Reggie Love and Marvin Nicholson slipped him various requests. At one point, Obama brought up NBC's Williams, who ordered a cheeseburger with ketchup and fries. Obama peeled out at least four $20 bills.

"I need one cheeseburger and one fries for me. Jalapeno, tomato, mustard,'' the president told his order-taker (see it all here, courtesy of C-SPAN). "That's it for me ... Plus lettuce on mine too."

Obama walked around to greet fellow patrons and pose for photographs. He asked one woman with a distinct accent where she was from, and she said, "Ireland." Obama asked: "What part of Ireland?" Dublin, she replied. "Dublin?'' he said. "Outstanding. I've got to visit Ireland."

When his number was called, Obama claimed his order. He posed for a photo with Five Guys staff and left, carrying two large brown bags. The motorcade left at 1:05 and returned to the White House by 1:15 pm.

Obama, jacket over shoulder, strolled to the Oval Office as the cameras rolled on a day in the life.

(Photos of the president's cheeseburger run, at Five Guys above, returning home below, by Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images)

by Mark Silva

To the victors go the spoils -- and London, and Paris, and Copenhagen, and Tokyo.

President Barack Obama, like his predecessors, is dispatching some of the most prolific fundraisers of his presidential campaign to some of the nation's most prestigious foreign embassies, Bloomberg News' Jonathan Salant and Julianna Goodman report.

Such as Louis Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup Inc. senior investment banker who raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama's presidential campaign and another $300,000 for his inauguration. "On Wednesday,'' they note, "Obama nominated Susman to the post formally known as the Court of St. James'' -- U.S. ambassador to the U.K.

"Like Andrew Mellon, Joseph Kennedy and Walter Annenberg before him,'' Bloomberg's Salant and Goodman report, "Susman's credentials stem more from involvement in financing party politics than foreign policy experience. ''

Four of 12 diplomatic posts that the White House filled this week went to big donors.

"he practice of rewarding donors is a remnant of the spoils system that we abolished in the civil service," said career diplomat Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former ambassador to Afghanistan. "It is a dismal testimony to the importance of money in our electoral system."

"That said, the republic will survive the president selling a few embassies."

The others: -

by Mark Silva

Calling the protection of government and private information and communications networks "one of the most serious... security challenges of the 21st Century,'' President Barack Obama plans to appoint a new advisor to oversee a national effort at improving "cyber-security'' throughout the United States.

The president, citing millions of Americans who already have been "victimized'' by computer tampering, said today that his own presidential campaign computers were breached by hackers between August and October. Although none of the campaign's financial files were compromised, Obama said, the FBI and Secret Service were put to work on the problem and the campaign hired private security advisers.

It already had been reported last fall that hackers from China had compromised the campaign computers of both Democrat Obama and Republican rival Sen. John McCain, with large amounts of "policy related information'' downloaded. The Secret Service alerted both campaigns, which hired security consultants.

The president is creating a new post at the White House, a Cyber Security Coordinator, whom Obama plans to appoint soon.

The government will not "dictate'' any security measures for private industry, the president said, but rather work with business in coordinating security.

And, he said, "our pursuit of cyber-security will not include monitoring'' any private communications, but rather "keep the Internet as it should be, open and free.''

"My administration will pursue a new comprehensive approach to securing America's digital infrastructure,'' Obama said in an address in the East Room of the White House. "From now on, they will be treated as they should be... as a strategic national asset. We will assure that these networks are secure.

"When it comes to cyber-security, federal agencies have overlapping missions and don't cooperate (as well) as they should,'' Obama said. "This status quo is no longer acceptable, not when there is so much at stake. We can, and should, do better.''

Obama's so-called "cyber-czar,'' whom the president plans to name next week, will pick up where the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council have left off with a 60-day review of the vulnerabilities in public and private computer networks that the White House released today.

by Mark Silva

Former President George W. Bush, stepping cautiously onto the public stage a few months into retirement, maintains that lives were saved with the interrogations of suspected terrorists carried out by his administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Yet, unlike former Vice President Dick Cheney, who also argues that President Barack Obama's refusal to embrace anti-terrorism tactics which the former administration called "enhanced interrogation'' and which the current administration considers "torture,'' Bush stopped short of suggesting that his successor has left Americans more vulnerable to new danger.

"I made a decision within the law to get information so I can say, I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people," the former president said of the interrogations which his Justice Department authorized and which the CIA conducted. "I can tell you,'' Bush said, "the information gained saved lives."

In a 75-minute address to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, the former president spoke of his presidency and his personal life - but he withheld any criticism for the man who has succeeded him.

"Nothing I'm saying tonight is meant to criticize my successor," Bush told his audience. "There are plenty of people who are weighing in on that, but I didn't like when former presidents criticized me, and I'm not going to do it to him... "I wish him all the best."

(Photo of former President Bush by Jonathon Gruenke / Kalamazoo Gazette

by Mark Silva

Four months in, President Barack Obama's public approval rating is holding fairly steady, at close to two-thirds. And he is faring better, at this stage, than all three of his immediate predecessors.

Only Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan enjoyed higher public approval ratings in the Gallup Poll during May of their first year in office, Gallup reports today: JFK had 77 percent approval at this stage, Ike 74 percent and Reagan 68 percent.

At 65 percent approval, on average during May, Obama stands even with Jimmy Carter at this stage of his presidency.

And Obama is more popular, at this stage of his presidency, than George W. Bush was - 55 percent in May of his first year - Bill Clinton, at 45 percent, or Bush senior, at 60 percent.

The implications, for the new president four months into office, are serious: The ability to advance an agenda knowing that he still has public support on his side.

This will likely play into everything from Senate confirmation of his first nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, to his push for health care reform this summer. He is likely to have an easier time with that nominee than with health care, but Congress will have a hard time bucking the agenda of a popular president.

"Obama's consistent monthly averages above 60 percent clearly indicate he is still enjoying the honeymoon phase of his presidency,'' Gallup reports. "His popular support will certainly be tested in the coming months, though, as Congress begins work on some of his more ambitious initiatives, including his 2010 budget and healthcare reform.

"In addition to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is also attempting to advance the Middle East peace process and deal with the increasingly serious situation in North Korea. However, to date, according to the American public, he seems to be performing better than most of his immediate predecessors, and not worse than most post-World War II presidents.''

The president's approval rating comes from interviews with 13,310 adults conducted May 1 through May 27, with a possible margin of error of just one percentage point.

by Mark Silva

In the course of any debate, the most extreme views have a way of overshadowing sensible discourse. And they have a way of backfiring on the most extreme debaters -- iand perhaps their entire party, when the reckless are not reined in.

So it goes with Tom Tancredo, the former congressman from Colorado who might not even be a factor in the current debate over federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court if he hadn't sought the Republican Party's presidential nomination last year as an outspoken critic of illegal immigration - and if he hadn't also denounced the National Council of La Raza, one of the nation's oldest Hispanic advocacy groups, as a "Latino KKK without the hoods.''

It was Sotomayor's association with the organization, listed in a 2000 American Bar Association biography of the member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and also her own suggestion that a "Latina woman'' may be better suited to understand some things than a white male is, that prompted Tancredo to say this on CNN yesterday:

""If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case... which is, from my point of view any way, just nothing more than a ... Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that's going to convince me and a lot of other people that it's got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is 'All for the race. Nothing for the rest.' What does that tell you?''

What that tells La Raza is this: Tancredo doesn't know what he's talking about. For starters, La Raza says, that's not the organization's motto or what it's all about.

"It's not the first time for Mr. Tancredo when he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about," Lisa Navarrete, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, told the Talking Points Memo blog. "I don't know what he bases the assertion on, since he didn't provide any facts or evidence to that effect, as to why he calls us the Latino KKK. But I can assure you our motto or logo as he phrased it, is not what he says it is. It's not the motto of any Latino group... We've urged the [Republican] party to not allow people like Tom Tancredo to dominate the debate, as he has on the immigration issue... And he has, and it's cost them."

Or, as Glenn Thrush at Politico.com put it, writing about La Raza: "It is also one of the nation's oldest mainstream Hispanic advocacy groups, with 300 neighborhood affiliates and corporate sponsorship that includes Citigroup. And it has not been implicated in a 150-year history of lynchings, night rides, voter registration obstruction or enforcement -- at the barrel of a gun -- of Jim Crow segregation laws.''

Tancredo also had said in an interview on MSNBC the night before that Sotomayor "appears to be a racist.'' He was taking issue with Sotomayor's comment, speaking at the University of California, in 2001, that she "would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Sotomayor said this in her delivery of the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal published the lecture the following year.

And, naturally, La Raza was among the groups hailing President Barack Obama's nomination of a woman positioned to become the first Hispanic on the highest court.

"Today is a monumental day for Latinos. Finally, we see ourselves represented on the highest court in the land," said Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO. "udge Sotomayor's story personifies the American Dream for so many Latinos in this country."

by Mark Silva at 1:55 pm and updated at 8:20 pm EDT

The word from Air Force One, returning today from a West Coast party fundraising event, was that President Barack Obama put out an airborne telephone call to a coalition of supporters widely known as the permanent campaign.

The message: Start mobilizing for healthcare reform.

Because if Congress does not deliver on the promise this year, the president told supporters in a conference call, it will not happen.

"If we don't get it done this year, we're not going to get it done," Obama told supporters by air-phone.

The president's political organization, Organizing for America, plans a nationwide June 6 kickoff of house parties and other events to pressure lawmakers and demonstrate support for heath reform. The president was returning from a celebrity-studded Beverly Hills fundraiser, where the Democratic National Committee raised more than $3 million, when he talked about all this with his base of supporters.

At the Organizing for America Web-site, which features the video above, the president spells out three principles for healthcare reform: "Reduce Costs: Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control. Guarantee Choice: Americans must have the freedom to keep whatever doctor and health care plan they have, or to select a new doctor or health care plan if they choose. Ensure Affordable Care for All: All Americans must have quality and affordable health care.''

The Democratic National Committee this evening also distributed a transcript of the conference call that Obama held with Mitch Stewart, of Organizing for America, and some of the president's supporters in that airborne conversation today, and you can also hear that healthcare conversation here in the Swamp:

by Mark Silva

"We need to get this thing back on track,'' President Barack Obama said of the side-tracked peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

This, after a meeting in the Oval Office this afternoon between Obama and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authorty.

Obama, who noted that he campaigned with a pledge not to leave the issue of Middle East peace to the end of his first, or his second, term as president, said in a public session with reporters after the private meeting today that, while he cannot impose a timeline, he is insistent on seeing the Israelis and Palestinians return to the bargaining table.

At the moment, the Obama administration is placing pressure on Israel's leaders to suspend their settllements in the West Bank -- a key concession that always has been part of any formula for a "two-state solution'' or "roadmap to peace,'' as the Bush White House and now the Obama House have viewed it. The other part of that formula is a Palestinian guarantee of security, which has remained equally as elusive.

With the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talking again about West Bank settlements, and with the Palestinians divided between the West Bank government of Abbas and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, however, getting "this thing back on track'' will take more than a couple of meetings such as today's and the recent session that Obama held with Netanyahu at the White House.

Obama plans to travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt next week, with the president delivering an address to the Muslim world from Cairo University on June 4, when talk of getting peace talks back on track is certain to be part of the headlines again.

(Photo of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Barack Obama in the Oval Office today by Olivier Douliery / Abaca Press / MCT)

by Mark Silva

Mike Huckabee was governor of Arkansas.

Mike Huckabee has his own TV show.

And Mike Huckabee plays bass.

All of which is by way of explaining why Kris Allen, the hometown crooner from Arkansas and winner of American Idol 2009, will appear on stage Saturday with Huckabee, who also happened to run for president last year, as a Republican former governor of Arkansas and Baptist preacher.

The two will appear performing on Saturday's Huckabee, on FOX News Channel, at 8 pm EDT. (See photo above, courtesy of FOX News.)

If Scotland's Susan Boyle wins Britain's Got Talent on Saturday, maybe Huckabee will be able to book her the following week.

With a selection from Cats or Les Miserables.

by Mark Silva

As advocates of abortion rights attempt to fathom whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is with them or against them, the White House says President Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights, is "comfortable with her approach to judging.''

The president was careful not to ask his first nominee for the Supreme Court about how she might approach specific cases, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today of a one-hour interview that the president held last week with Sotomayor (pictured here in a court photo), a member of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

But did Obama speak with Sotomayor about the broader question of the constitutional right to privacy?

"Obviously we talked about this throughout the process,'' Gibbs said of the selection of the president's first nominee to the high court. "The president obviously is familiar with the Constitution and the teaching of constitutional law.

"In their discussions, they talked about the theory of constitutional interpretation generally, including her views on unenumerated rights in the Constitution and the theory of settled law,'' Gibbs said. "He left very comfortable with her interpretation of the Constitution being similar to that of his, though the bulk of the conversation was about her approach to judging.''

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, celebrating the start of his administration with a $3 million-plus, cellebrity-studded fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in Beverly Hills last night, told his audience that he "would put these first four months up against any prior administration since FDR.''

"I was gonna come out and sing, but my political advisers told me not to,'' Obama told the audience.

With an audience of Hollywood stars such as Kiefer Sutherland (pictured here definitely not butting heads with anyone), Jamie Foxx, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, the president responded to a call from the hall of, "Yes, we can,'' by saying:

"We've made some progress, yes, we have.... But we've got more work to do. We can't rest on our laurels.

"We didn't ask for the challenges that we face, but we don't shrink from them either," Obama said. ""It won't be easy. There will be setbacks. It will take time."

Conceding some "fits and starts'' during his first four months in the White House, the president told his audience: "I've made some mistakes, and I guarantee you I'll make some more.''

And he promised, as The Hill notes of the evening's event, and as the Politico.com video above shows: "But I want you to know, Los Angeles, you ain't seen nothing yet."

Obama was introduced by Dreamworks CEO and Democratic donor Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the co-hosts of the $30,400-per-couple dinner, along with fellow film producer Spielberg. Together with a $1,000-per-ticket concert with a larger audience for Jennifer Hudson and Earth, Wind and Fire, the party raised more than $3 million. Obama thanked his host, Katzenberg, by saying: "If it weren't for you, we would not be in the White House."

by Jim Tankersley

The U.S. Forest Service will announce a "time out" on new road-building and other development in designated roadless areas of national forests today, sources say, prolonging a see-saw battle over a policy first announced in the waning days of the Clinton administration.

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which former President Bill Clinton issued shortly before leaving office in 2001, protects nearly 60 million acres of national forest land from logging and other development, largely in Western states. It has faced a protracted court battle that pitted conservation groups against the timber industry and several of those states.

The Bush administration let the rule stand, but effectively undercut it by exempting large swaths of land from its protections - including parts of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska - and by allowing states to petition to set their own rules for development in those areas.

President Barack Obama voiced support for the Clinton rule on the campaign trail.

Since Inauguration Day, environmentalists have pressed the Obama administration to call the road-building "time out" and to instruct the Justice Department - which continues to defend some of the Bush policies in court - to change course and defend the original rule.

Obama's proposed "time out" is "needed and welcome," said Trip Van Noppen, president of the environmental group Earthjustice. "Roadless areas are important as the last remaining pristine areas in America, and they are a great bulwark in how we will protect our environment in an era of climate change."

by Mark Silva

Sara Jane Moore, who spent 32 years in prison after her attempted assassination of then-President Gerald Ford, says she was trying to trigger a revolution.

Moore, paroled now, also acknowledges "a serious error.''

The woman who fired a handgun at Ford in San Francisco in 1975 gave what NBC News called her first television interview this morning, on the Today show.

Moore had fired on Ford in September 1975 as he waved to a crowd, but a man nearby knocked the pistol from her hand and the shot went astray. Moore was sentenced to life in prison. She was released on parole in December 2007.

During her long incarceration, she said, she "gradually... began to realize that I had let myself be used. ... I definitely think that it was wrong. I think I was misled. I think I was mistaken. I think I made a serious error...

"It was a time that people don't remember,'' she said. "You know, we had a war ... the Vietnam War, you became -- I became -- immersed in it... We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that (shooting Ford) might trigger that new revolution in this country."

Asked why she is talking now, Moore, whose whereabouts now were not disclosed, said, "I think that one gets tired of being thought of as a kook, a monster, an alien, something like that. ... There has been a lot of curiosity. I thought, OK, let's do it,'' she said, asked what neighbors might think now. ""I hope they're OK with it."

by Mark Silva

It's no secret that the government classifies thousands of documents each year.

But it's time to see if too much is getting the confidential, secret or top-secret stamp, President Barack Obama says in a memorandum giving aides 90 days to review the way sensitive material is classified.

The president has ordered National Security Adviser James Jones to consult relevant agencies and recommend revisions in an existing presidential order on national security classification that spells out the rules under which agencies deem documents "confidential, secret" or "top secret."

Obama also has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to create a task force on standardizing so-called controlled but unclassified information - material that gets stamped "for official use only" or "limited official distribution.''

A presidential memo points to 107 different stamps for material also known as "sensitive but unclassified,'' and 130 different procedures for it all. Obama is asking that "information is not restricted unless there is a compelling need."

"A democratic government must be as transparent as possible and must not withhold information for self-serving reasons or simply to avoid embarrassment,'' Obama's memo states.

Executive agencies last year issued 23.4 million decisions to classify sensitive information -- as well as declassifying 33.4 million pages of "historically valuable records,'' according to the most recent annual report of the National Archives.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney always had refused to participate in that executive agency survey, arguing that, as president of the Senate, he really wasn't a member of the executive branch. Presumably, Vice President Joe Biden will be reporting in.

Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group that publishes declassified government documents and lobbies for more openness, applauds the Obama administration's move.

"Sure, we could have hoped for the president to make decisions today," Blanton said, "but this is warp speed in bureaucratic terms."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

by Mark Silva

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel does a lot of working out and dining out with lawmakers these days, and it has lot to do with checking out the stances of his former colleagues on Capitol Hill on the issues that matter to his boss.

Emanuel, a former congressman from Chicago, starts many mornings with a workout in the House gym, according to a report from Hans Nichols of Bloomberg News. Emanuel lifts weights, Nichols reports, but "the real exercise is gathering political intelligence from his one-time colleagues about congressional action on health-care and energy legislation.''

Emanuel ends some days "doing the same, dining with a bipartisan group of lawmakers at Bobby Van's Steakhouse, three blocks from the White House.'' This is one of D.C.'s top eateries.

Emanuel, who does "an enormous amount of sit-ups," is "doing what he's always done," says Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), "He's whipping us," Meeks says of Emanuel's skill at rounding up votes. "He's trying to figure out where we are."

Bloomberg suggests that Emanuel, "known for his tough tactics and profanity,'' also has "the ability to persuade at low volume and often over a glass of red wine. Emanuel rotates a roster of Republican lawmakers into his bi-weekly dinners at Bobby Van's, gauging the strength of their opposition to the president.''

"We're trying to get the backroom scoop about what's behind the headlines, behind the stories," says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican former representative from Peoria, Ill., who often joins Emanuel at these dinners. "You can really get to know somebody over dinner and a glass of wine."

See the full report on Emanuel at Bloomberg.

by Mark Silva

Initial public reaction to the nomination of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York for the U.S. Supreme Court runs more positive than negative, according to the Gallup Poll's first measure of President Barack Obama's first nominee for the nation's highest court.

Nearly half of all Americans surveyed this week rated the nomination as "excellent'' or "good'' - 47 percent - and another 20 percent rated the choice as "fair.'' Few of those surveyed judged the nomination as "poor'' - 13 percent.

Still, just 19 percent of those surveyed Tuesday night, the day the president announced his choice of Sotomayor, a member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, to replace the retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, deemed the president's nominee an "excellent'' choice.

Gallup, which has taken similar measures of public reaction to the nominations of other recent candidates for the Supreme Court, found that only Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., appointed by former President George W. Bush in 2005, drew a stronger initial review from the public. One quarter of those surveyed called Roberts an excellent choice.

The public's perspective on Sotomayor, who could become the first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court and only the third woman ever seated on the court should the Senate confirm the president's nominee, also is skewed along the lines of the party affiliation of Americans asked about the choice.

by Mark Silva

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania acknowledged that his chances of claming his own party's nomination for reelection next year were "bleak'' when he announced recently that he was moving back to the Democratic Party -- which he had left as a much younger man, before five terms in the Senate.

But now Specter can count on a challenge within his newly readopted party as well: Philadelphia-area Rep. Joe Sestak, a Democrat and retired admiiral who was only recently elected to Congress, said today that he intends to seek the party's Senate nomination.

"I personally have made a decision that I intend to get in this race, with one other item,'' Sestak said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer this evening. "I haven't sat down and had the time to sit down with my 8-year-old daughter or my wife to make sure that we are all ready to get in,'' Sestak said of the one remaining wrinkle.

"And I say that, if you don't mind, because when I got in this after getting out of the military 31 years in the first race two years ago, my daughter had a brain tumor,'' Sestak said. "And we needed to make sure we were getting in this to pay back for this great health care we have been given, together, as a unit. And so that's where the final decision will be made, with us as a nuclear family.''

The fact that the White House already has lent its endorsement to Specter's reelection bid as a Democrat next year will not dissuade Sestak, he maintains. Sestak supported Democrat Hillary Clinton over President Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary elections (Sestak and Clinton are pictured in a file photo above from the AP).

One potentially strong Republican contender, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, has decided not to seek the Senate seat.

"I was disappointed that the Washington political establishment had decided to anoint someone for Pennsylvanians,'' said Sestak, who had indicated before that he was "inclined'' to run. "And so I said I would wait and listen.

"And I've spent the last weeks going around Pennsylvania to see if others felt like me,'' he said. "I heard two things. One is, 'Joe, we'll make the decision. You should get in.' Number two is very similar... 'Arlen's got a lot, after four or five decades, of connections and money, so don't get in, no.'''

The White House has not asked him to sit it out, Sestak said, and, while the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, has called him, they haven't had a chance to talk about it.
.
"I'm pretty low on the totem pole,'' Sestak said of the Obama administration's concerns. "And they're fighting two wars overseas and one here at home.''

"But this is about us Pennsylvanians,'' Sestak said today. "And we need health care, not just in this next year, but through 2016. And that next four to six years, for my Pennsylvanians and for my daughter and for me, are very important to make sure that whoever is carrying the mantle of leadership forward is someone who will be with us consistently in this fight for the right issues.''

Here, courtesy of CNN, is a transcript of the rest of the talk:

by Mark Silva

Sen. Roland Burris played Hardball today, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked the junior senator from Illinois if he had tried to "squeeze'' former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for appointment to the Senate when he spoke with the governor's brother about helping the governor's campaign.

"I had no intention of raising money for the governor,'' Burris (D-Ill.) told Matthews. "I wanted to help the governor... But I could not raise any money, because if I did, it would look like I was trying to buy the seat... I could not do it, so I did not do it.''

Burris, appointed to the Senate seat three weeks after the ex-governor's arrest on federal corruption charges, had spoken with the governor's brother on Nov. 13 -- a conversation recorded by federal investigators. A newly released transcript shows Burris seeking to help Blagojevich while avoiding any appearance of trying to buy the Senate seat. The Senate Ethics Committee has requested it in its inquiry into the appointment.

He could not raise money for the governor, Burris told Matthews, because "if I do get appointed, that means I bought it."

Asked if all this does not smell of a "pay to play'' deal with the disgraced governor over the appointment to fill the vacated Senate seat of President Barack Obama, Burris said on the air today: "There was no deal... That's what I was seeking to avoid.''

(See the interview above, and read a transcript, courtesy of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, below. Sen. Roland Burris also faced reporters' questions about his conversation with the former governor's brother at the University of Illinois in Urbana today. Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images )

by Mark Silva

Is there a limit to Joe Biden's jokes?

The president suggested so when he reportedly rebuked his vice president for a remark about presidential friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett.

And we wondered if Biden wasn't pressing his luck the other day when he whispered something about relaxing into the ear of the president's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, at the podium in the East Wing and then congratulated her afterward on her performance at the announcement: "Piece of cake,'' Biden told Sotomayor.

But now we're wondering about the phone call to follow on the report from our colleague, Johanna Neuman, at Top of the Ticket, about Biden's joke about the tumbling TelePrompTer at the Air Force Academy commencement today. This, for a president whose critics contend that he can't operate with that prompter -- an entire Web-site devoted to the alleged ruminations of the president's speechmaking aid, "because there is no POTUS without TOTUS.''

"Not content to leave without a jaunty ad lib,'' Neuman reports of the vice president's commencement address today, "Biden noted that heavy winds were gusting through the ceremonies. One of his two TelePrompTers had toppled over. Alluding to the jokes of Obama's reliance on the speech-facilitators, Biden added:''

"What I am going to tell the president when I tell him his TelePrompTer is broken. What will he do then?''

That's what we're wondering.

(Vice President Joe Biden pictured with a graduate of the Air Force Academy today. And Academy graduates celebrating as a team of F-16 Thunderbirds fllew over the graduation ceremony at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, where Biden delivered the commencement speech and dropped a joke about the president on his way out. Photos by John Moore / Getty Images)

by Mark Silva

Are Las Vegas and Barack Obama even yet?

The resort city whose fathers cried foul when the president slammed bailed-out bankers for sin-city junkets has gotten plenty of publicity out of the president's stop for a Harry Reid fundraiser at Caesar's Palace and a stump-speech on solar energy today.

"You know, it's always a pleasure to get out of Washington a little bit,'' President Barack Obama said today, at Nellis Air Force Base, where he showcased the nation's biggest solar energy project in between fundraisers for Senate Majority Leader Reid last night and for the DNC in Beverly Hills tonight.

"Washington is okay, but it's nice taking some time to talk to Americans of every walk of life outside of the nation's capital. And there's nothing like a quick trip to Vegas in the middle of the week,'' Obama said to applause today. "Like millions of other Americans, we come to this beautiful city for the sights and for the sounds -- and today we come for the sun.''

Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons may not be ready to declare a truce yet, but to our ears, the sun-worshipping president now has made his amends for that February "town-hall'' remark in Indiana: "You can't take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime.''

There was a point to all of this today, too:

"Right now, we're standing near the largest solar electric plant of its kind in the entire Western Hemisphere -- the entire Western Hemisphere,'' the president said at Nellis. "More than 72,000 solar panels built on part of an old landfill provide 25 percent of the electricity for the 12,000 people who live and work here at Nellis. That's the equivalent of powering about 13,200 homes during the day.''

This is what else the president had to say, courtesy of the White House, about solar power in Nevada and the U.S.:

by Mark Silva

The president will appear with some well-known celebrity hosts tonight at a Beverly Hills fundraiser for the Democratic Party expected to raise about $3 million.

"Obama promised to bring people together,'' the L.A. Times' Tina Daunt notes, "and he'll certainly be doing that tonight, when former DreamWorks partners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen reunite to co-host dinner with President Barack Obama.

Other co-hosts for the fundraiser -- with a dinner ticket of $30,400, top-dollar soft-money donation for the Democratic National Committee -- include Ron Burkle and agent Ari Emanuel -- brother to the president's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

The event also will reunite Obama with the producer of the pre-inaugural Lincoln Memorial celebration, Don Mischer. And for those who cannot attend dinner, there is a $1,000-per-person reception, with $2,500 buying VIP seating and a performance by American Idol and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson and Earth, Wind and Fire.

Political guru Andy Spahn, organizing the event, says: "It's a very rough economy, but despite that there is tremendous excitement and enthusiasm for the president."

(Photo of film director Steven Spielberg at the unveiling of the new USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex in March, by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images)

by Mark Silva

This isn't exactly "Judge Sonia.''

But it is video of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the Supreme Court, questioning a government lawyer in the case of a Canadian citizen who was detained in New York City, suffered rendition to Syria and was tortured there.

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born, Canadian citizen was seized during a layover at Kennedy International Airport in September 2002, changing planes on his way home to Canada. Suspected of ties to al Qaeda, he was held in solitary for two weeks and interrogated before the government sent him to Syria.

He was imprisoned for nearly a year in an underground cell and tortured before the Syrians released him.

Contending that his rights were violated when he was confined without access to an attorney, both domestically and in Syria, Arar is seeking civil damages from federal officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In 2007, the Canadian government offered him a formal apology and compensation, but the Bush administration argued that, for reasons of national security, the case should never have been allowed to go to trial. The Canadian press reported in April that Arar, a computer engineer, remains on a U.S. watch list and still is barred from entry to the United States.

A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in June 2008 that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction to here Arar's case. All 12 judges of the court sat to hear an appeal of that ruling on Dec. 9, and Sotomayor took part by video conference.

The clip from C-SPAN's video library shows Sotomayor's questioning of the government's lawyer in December, with the judge pressing the attorney on the matter of torture and national security. Like everything else emerging in the first few days of the Sotomayor nomination, it's an excerpt from a much larger story.

by Mark Silva

In the first 100 days of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- a.k.a. the $787-billion economic stimulus act -- the White House maintains that 150,000 jobs already have been saved or created.

The GOP, whose House members unanimously opposed the act which the president signed into law on Feb. 17, calls the initiative "100 days of haste.''

"Just 100 days into the two-year economic recovery program, over $112 billion in Recovery Act funds has been obligated to stimulative programs and projects and over 150,000 jobs have been created or saved by the Recovery Act,'' the White House said in a statement issued today, as President Barack Obama touted the stimulus act in Nevada.

"One hundred days ago, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in half a century, we passed the most sweeping economic recovery act in history - a plan designed to save jobs, create new ones, and put money in people's pockets," Obama said in Nevada today. "Now, 100 days later, we are meeting our economic challenges head-on and beginning to see early signs of progress across the country."

But the Republican National Committee, suggesting that only a fraction of the funds have been spent -- and that unemployment has risen in the meantime -- dismisses the White House's 100-day report today as mere "spin.''

"In the Obama administrationm the word 'report' must be code for 'P.R.''' RNC Chairman Michael Steele says in his own issued statement just now.

"One hundred days after spending $787 billion of the taxpayers' money, President Obama is touting a second progress 'report' on the stimulus bill to convince voters his reckless spending plan is working,'' Steele said. "Let's be clear: 100 projects, nearly $1 trillion spent, and 1 million jobs lost doesn't sound like progress to me. The Obama administration may believe its own spin, but American families want jobs and to keep more of what they earn, not another 'report.'''

Here's the White House's accounting of the money:

by Mark Silva

The debate over law and empathy is underway.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, says it's unlikely that Republicans will attempt to filibuster the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

President Barack Obama's nominee will get a thorough grilling, however, and her record lends itself to that, Sessions says in this debate that aired on NBC's Today show.

"She has a good resume, the kind of resume I like to see in a nominee... That gives her a record that can be examined, and we can see how well she has performed, whethere she has been faithful to the law or not, or whether she has a tendency to be aggressive from the bench.''

Asked if this nomination is "about ethnicity or qualifications,'' Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) calls the question "not fair at all... She is a top-notch lawyer.''

Asked about Sotomayor's recorded and widely reported statement that the federal appellate courts are where "policy is made,'' Sessions said: "On its face, it's very troubling. A judge must submit themselves to the law... i think it's further exacerbated by President Clinton's (he meant Obama's) promise to find someone who will use empathy in making decisions... i think that is a non-legal standard.''

NBC's Matt Lauer suggested that Sotomayor was "caught on tape'' with that policy-making comment about the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on which she serves. Schumer suggested that it has been lifted out of context. "She clearly puts rule of law first,'' Schumer said of Sotomayor. "As is characteristic of our politics these days, they left out the second part... 'I don't advocate that.'''

Schumer on the confirmation vote: "I think the vote will be overwhelming.'' ...

by Mark Silva

The counter-attack on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court centers on some of the same material which makes her a strong candidate, in the eyes of the president who nominated her and those who support her:

The uniqueness of perspective that comes from the life of a child of Puerto Ricans raised in a Bronx housing project and educated at Princeton and Yale Law.

It's part of what recommends her for the Supreme Court, according to President Barack Obama, offering his first nominee for the court. But what Sotomayor has had to say about the impact of her heritage and upbringing on her appraoch to the bench is part -- actually the central part -- of what works against her, according to some opponents.

The Judicial Confirmation Network has prepared a Web-video challenging the appointment of the federal judge from New York. "America deserves better,'' the narrator warns, in a video quoting some of Sotomayor's own words:

"Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions... I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasnt lived that life... Whether born from experience, or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may, and will, make a difference in our judging... Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.''

The interesting thing about this: The first statement is true, on the face of it. The second certainly lends itself to some debate. The third would seem true as well. The fourth invites some fairly robust discussion. But the question is whether any of these snippets, lifted from the context of a life's work and nearly two decades on federal benches, are meaningful in the debate over Sotomayor's confirmation for a seat on the nation's highest court.

We tend to steer away from Web ads here, for the limited impact that Internet-only messages have -- though the sponsors say this one will reach more than 6 million conservative activists nationally on their Web-sites -- and we did take note of the president's own email video message on Sotomayor. And in the interest of airing the other side of the debate on a day when supporters of Sotomayor have launched a broacast and cable network TV ad , we're playing the Judicial Confirmation Network's video above.

And, as always, we invite you to weigh in.

by Mark Silva

"It is good to be back in Vegas.''

Neil Diamond?

No, Barack Obama - uttering the words that a certain city wanted to hear, if not an apology, an affirmation.

"I was telling people, I am back in Caesar's,'' the president said last night, at a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at Caesar's Palace. "That was the hotel where we stayed at when we were campaigning here in Nevada.

"I thought I had a pretty nice room,'' Obama told the crowd last night in a key state that he carried last year. "But now that I'm president, they upgraded me. I got the upgrade. And it's a really nice room now. Man.''

The president "didn't meet with the unhappy governor,'' our correspondent, Mark Z. Barabak reports. "He didn't hit the slots or cruise the Strip. Still, locals were counting on President Obama to assume the role of Las Vegas' promoter in chief, touting the virtues of Sin City in an effort to ease the hard feelings he caused months ago with a slap at corporate excess.''

They didn't quite get that.

All the anxiety stemmed from the president's remarks earlier in the year, when he criticized the lavish use of federal bailout funds by high-rolling executives. "You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime," Obama said in Indiana.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman had demanded an apology, worried about the impact of the remark on Nevada's No. 1 industry - no, not prostitution. Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons renewed the state's protest, passing up an airport greeting of the arriving president - "I am not interested in a handshake and a hello from President Obama," Gibbons said Monday. "I am interested in an apology and plan to undo the damage the president did.''

But the mayor was there for the arrival.(pictured in the warm embrace with Obama above in a photo by Charles Dharapak of the AP). Goodman received a telephone call from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "who reportedly assured his fellow Democrat that the president would make amends,' Barabak reports."Once that happens, everything is great," said Jace Radke, a spokesman for Goodman.

Obama, for his part, was enjoying the stage: "How about Bette Midler? Right?'' he asked of the entertainment. "Sheryl Crow... Rachael Yamagata... Rita Rudner and Clint Holmes. Give it up for our outstanding performers.''

But this visit was all about Reid, not Vegas. The majority leader is amassing a $25 million campaign chest to fend off any challengers in a state where recent polling has pegged his own support at about 35 percent.

For Obama, who recited the achievements of his first few months in office, reelecting Reid next year is a matter of keeping his team together. "All in all, we're making progress on the important issues of the day -- the issues that are going to matter not just for this generation but for the next generation,'' the president said. But "I can't bring the change I promised all by myself....''

"The last few years, Harry has done an extraordinary job as the leader of the U.S. Senate,'' Obama told the crowd at a fundraiser aiming at $2 million for the leader.

by Mark Silva

The selling continues.

It took an interest group, the Coalition for Constitutional Values -- a coalition of People for the American Way, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Alliance for Justice -- little time to rally for President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

They say they are putting "six figures'' behind a TV ad campaign, starting today on national netowrks, both cable and broadcast, "introducing'' the appellate judge from New York to the nation as the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings.

"This spot introduces the American people to Judge Sonia Sotomayor,'' says Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and co-chair of the Coaliton for Constitutional Values. "Every aspect of American life is affected by our justice system. It's important that they understand her fair-minded approach to the law which is grounded both in her eminent legal qualifications and her life experiences."

"In selecting Judge Sotomayor, the president has nominated a candidate of sterling credentials who will uphold the Constitution and the law,'' says Nan Aron, co-chair of the Coalition for Constitutional Values and president of Alliance for Justice.

"President Obama used this opportunity to do exactly what he promised in last year's election--to select a person who has demonstrated an abiding commitment to core constitutional values of justice, opportunity, and equality under the law,'' says Michael B. Keegan, co-chair of the Coalition for Constitutional Values and president of People for the American Way "He has named someone who understands the impact that the law has on the everyday lives of ordinary Americans."

The ad, entitled "Justice,'' features the voice of the president explaining his search for "somebody with a sharp and independent mind.''

It spells out Sotomayor's academic CV -- Princeton and Yale law -- the fact that President George H.W. Bush first appointed her to a federal court in 1991, and the fact that she lost her father when she was nine and was raised in public housing -- "someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory - it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of peoples' lives,'' the president says..'' The ad calls her "principled, fair-minded and independent.''

The White House has rolled out its own email ad-campaign for Sotomayor, featuring the president. It will be telling, and a measure of what sort of opposition the president's nominee really faces, to see if any counter ad-campaign materializes.

by Mark Silva

With just 35-percent support back home in Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might have a reelection problem.

If he only had an opponent.

Hoping to keep the opposition at bay and avert the home-state implosion that ended former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's reign, Reid hopes to raise $25 million for his reelection

And tonight, in the Colloseum at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, with a little help from singers Sheryl Crow and Bette Midler and President Barack Obama, making his first fundraising appearance as president for an individual senator, Reid hopes to raise a couple million.

This is after Obama's famous dissing of Vegas, insisting at a "town hall'' styled appearance in Indiana in February that all those companies collecting federal bailouts should reconsider their Vegas junket plans: "You can't take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime," the president said then.

The mayor of Vegas cried foul, complaining that the president was killing tourism. And the governor, Republican Jim Gibbons, suggested he'd have nothing to do with the Democratic president during this Vegas appearance -- indeed the White House today found itself explaining why the governor wasn't receiving the president at the airport in Vegas.

(Wonder if he's ever paid close attention to what Sheryl Crow once sang about Leaving Las Vegas: "These days it seems, nowhere is far enough away.'')

"I haven't seen many politicians meet anybody anywhere and not find it a convenient opportunity to press whatever case it is they're trying to make,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today. "I would suggest that if the government has a specific point that he'd like to make to the president of the United States, he's landing in a few hours in Las Vegas, and apparently has been invited to make that case.''

Mayor Oscar Goodman was making the case in the hometown press, as mayors will do: ""He's the most important person in the world, and people listen to what he has to say,'' Goodman said of Obama. "When the president indicates that there is something inappropriate and unseemly about businesses coming to Las Vegas, that doesn't do us any good, and I think that's going to be straightened out (today)."

Obama stays in Vegas tonight, reportedly at Caesar's Palace.

Yet, it wasn't so much Vegas' reputation (there's a great phrase) that was at stake during tonight's stop as it was Reid's future. Obama won the state's five electoral votes in November. Reid hopes to hold on to the state's popular vote next year.

(Harry Reid's power to the leader, at the Las Vegas airport, photo by Charles Dharapak / AP. Singer Sheryl Crow at the Midwestern Ball at the Convention Center in Washington, photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP)

by Mark Silva

Now the sale begins.

President Barack Obama, who nominated federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court today, is calling on that email community that he amassed in his campaign for the White House to support his first candidate for the court in the hearings ahead.

In an email this evening, the preisdent delivers a video address about the appointment of the first Hispanic justice to the nation's highest court.

"This decision affects us all -- and so it must involve us all,'' says the president, enlisting his allies for the Senate confirmation process ahead.

It's the same appeal that he made today from the East Room of the White House, calling Sotomayor "the right choice.'' The longtime federal jurist has the ability "to hone in on the key issues,'' the president says. A long day for the speechwriters, perhaps.

by Mark Silva

Add Alberto Gonzales, attorney general under President George W. Bush and the first Hispanic attorney general of the United States, to the lineup praising the cultural significance of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination for the Supreme Court.

Gonzales, who had been considered as a possible appointee for the high court when Bush was making his picks, wasn't saying much about that today in an appearance on CNN, but he had pointed words for President Barack Obama's nomination of the first Hispanic for the Supreme Court today"

"I think it's a proud day for the Sotomayor family,'' Gonzales told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "It's a historic day for the Hispanic community.

"I don't think that any gender group or ethnic group is entitled to representation on our courts,'' Gonzales said. "I don't think that the outcome of a case should depend upon the ethnicity or gender of the judge, any more than the outcome of a case should depend on the ethnicity or gender of the prosecutor or defendant.

"But, having said that, Wolf, this is a powerful message, a powerful message of hope and opportunity through this appointment,'' Gonzales said, "just like there's a powerful message sent when an African-American is elected president or an African-American or a Hispanic is appointed as attorney general of the United States. It's a powerful message that a president listens to. And this president obviously did.''

See, courtesy of CNN, Blitzer's interview with Gonzales:

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama is adding a stop in Saudi Arabia next week to his travels through Egypt and Europe, as part of an appeal for renewed Middle East peace talks.

Obama will meet with Saudi's King Abdullah in Riyadh on June 3 to discuss an array of issues, including the pursuit of peace in the Middle East, Iran's nuclear ambitions and the threat of terrorism, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today.

The president will not make any public appearances there, saving that for his stop in Cairo the next day, with a public address to the Muslim world -- an address that he promised to make within a few months of entering office.

Following the speech in speech in Egypt on U.S. relations with the Muslim world, Obama plans a stop at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, before heading to Normandy, France, to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day.

The last presidential visit to Riyadh, former President George W. Bush's last stop there, focused primarily on convincing the Saudis to loosen the spigot of oil production -- which yielded only a slight concession from the world's largest oil producer. Since then, world oil prices have fallen to a fraction of what they were on Bush's watch.

by Mark Silva and updated.

The White House is seeking swift Senate confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, as Republican congressional leaders suggest they may be in no rush.

While critics challenge what they view as the "judicial activism'' which Sotomayor has demonstrated on the federal bench for two decades, Republican congressional leaders today are taking a more cautious approach to the Democratic president's first Supreme Court nominee, positioned to become the first Hispanic and only the third woman on the nation's highest court.

Yet the GOP also is signaling that any confirmation of Obama's candidate for the court may not follow as swiftly as the president hopes, with the White House seeking confirmation of the federal judge from New York before the Senate's August recess and in time for the start of the court's fall term in October.

"'Senate Republicans will treat Judge Sotomayor fairly,'' Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said today. "But we will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences.

"Our Democratic colleagues have often remarked that the Senate is not a 'rubber stamp.''' McConnell said. "Accordingly, we trust they will ensure there is adequate time to prepare for this nomination, and a full and fair opportunity to question the nominee and debate her qualifications."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke today of his vote against Sotomayor in 1998 in her confirmation for the apellate court in Manhattan.

"We felt like...she had a history of activism,'' Sessions said, speaking on FOX News Channel's Happening Now. "She is entitled to a full and fair new evaluation... We'll give her time to respond... The president has said he wants to nominate someone who will use empathy...its certainly not law, it's not judicial.

"The court could be at the fork in the road,'' Sessions said. "President Obama has set forth a new standard for nominees."

by Mark Silva

Sen. Patrick Leahy, now chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, once warned that Latino candidates for the federal courts were being held up by a Republican-run Senate.

In particular: Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a federal judge first appointed to the District Court for Southern New York by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991 whom President Bill Clinton was elevating to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.

"How disturbing, how petty and how shameful,'' Leahy said of an anonymous hold that had been placed on Sotomayor's confirmation in '98 -- with thanks to C-SPAN for this clip from the video archives.

"Judge Sonia Sotomayor is just such a qualified nominee, and she is one being held up by the Republican majority'' Leahy said back then, "apparently because some on the other side of the aisle believe she might one day be considered by President Clinton for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, should a vacancy arise.''

As it turns out, it wasn't Clinton who advanced Sotomayor to the highest court, but the next Democratic president down the line, Barack Obama. And Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate committee that will consider her confirmation, will be having a lot more to say about the nominee in the weeks ahead.

by Mark Silva and updated

President Barack Obama, elected to the White House with two-thirds of the votes cast by Hispanic Americans, has made some history of his own -- first African-American elected president -- and now has nominated the first Latina for the nation's highest court.

This wasn't a major concern for most Americans, the nomination of a Hispanic justice, the Gallup Poll had recently found.

"There is simply no large groundswell,'' reported Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, noting that nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed said it "doesn't matter" to them if the president appoints a woman - 64 percent - and slightly more -- 68 percent -- saying it didn't matter if Obama names a Hispanic justice.

Yet, on a court with just one woman, one African-American and no Hispanics, the elevation of a federal jurist whose parents came from Puerto Rico to the Supreme Court certainly is significant to the fastest growing populace and a growing voting bloc in the United States.

The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce had voiced great disappointment over former President George W. Bush's failure to appoint a Hispanic justice, after courting the Hispanic vote with great success since his elections as governor of Texas. And today, the chamber's ship has come in.

"The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is thrilled by the historic nomination of Judge Sotomayor," said David C. Lizárraga, chairman of the board. "Her independent outlook, record of excellence, and strong integrity are what our nation needs in a Supreme Court Justice. She is a role model of strength, focus, and discipline and exemplifies the American ethos, proving that anyone in this nation can fulfill their dreams, matching their potential with opportunity."

"President Obama's pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court is an acknowledgement and affirmation of the great demographic changes taking place in America today,'' says Simon Rosenberg, president of New Democrat Network.

"Driven by years of immigration, our nation is going through profound change,'' he suggests today. "The percentage of people of color in the United States has tripled in just the past 45 years, and America is now on track become a majority-minority nation in the next 30-40 years.

by Mark Silva

Rush Limbaugh doesn't only want President Barack Obama to fail.

He also wants the president's first nominee to the Supreme Court to fail.

"Do I want her to fail? Yeah.' '' Limbaugh said of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor on his radio show today. "Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes! She'd be a disaster on the court.

And for those who have suggested that Limbaugh never really meant what he said about the president, Limbaugh said this today: "Do I still want Obama to fail as president? Yeah.

"AP, you getting this?'' Limbaugh asked on-air. "He's gonna fail anyway, but the sooner the better, so as little damage can be done to the country.''

Then again, radio's Rush may be out there on a limb today. For all the 12 million listeners that the man with the "golden mic'' has on daytime radio, the results of a survey by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. show that most people dont think much of him:

Only 30 percent of those surveyed voiced a favorable opinion of Limbaugh -- even lower than Dick Cheney's 37 percent in that survey -- and 53 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion of Limbaugh in the May 14-17 survey of 1,010 adults.

Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under two Bush presidencies who endorsed Obama for the White House and has been a arget of Limbaugh's and Cheney's criticism lately, comes out a lot stronger in this survey: With a 70 percent favorable rating. The margin of error is 3 points.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama already knew one of the finalists for the Supreme Court whom he was considering: federal Judge Diane Wood of Chicago, a fellow teacher of constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

But the president had met another appellate judge, Sonio Sotomayor of New York, for the first time when the two sat down to talk on Thursday. They met for an hour.

Clearly, not only the record of the longtime federal trial and appellate judge, but also the person made a deep impression on the president, who, like Sotomayor, was raised by a single mother, grew up in a home of modest means and graduated from some of the nation's finest, Ivy League universities and their law schools. Obama is Harvard law, Sotomayor is Yale Law.

And clearly, he took into account the historic nature of her nomination: She stands to become just the third woman on the nation's highest court, subject to the Senate's confirmation, and the sole Hispanic.

The president made his choice on Monday, a Memorial Day holiday that started with ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and included four and a half hours of golf in the afternoon at Fort Belvoir, Va., south of Washington.

He called her from the White House.

Sotomayor, who is divorced and has no children of her own, brought her mother, and her step-father, her brother, a physician in Syracuse, N.Y., her sister in law and a niece and twin nephews to the East Room ceremony where the president presented his first nominee for the court.

.Vice President Joe Biden whispered in her ear before she spoke. "I was just counseled not to be nervous,'' Sotomayor said. "That's almost impossible.''

"Piece of cake,'' Biden could be heard telling her after the announcement (see the video clip above). The White House can only hope the same of the Senate confirmation process that its first nominee for the Supreme Court faces this summer. Reaction from interest groups, as well as readers, some praising the historic nature of the nomination, some questioning it as another measure of ethnic, preferential politics, is pouring in today, and the White House offered up this background supporting the president's nomination of Sotomayor::

by Mark Silva and updated at 10:50 am EDT

President Barack Obama today nominated federal judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York for the Supreme Court, positioning the longtime federal jurist to become the first Hispanic member of the nation's highest court.

Sotomayor, first appointed to the federal district court for the Southern District of New York by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991, sits on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She was elevated to the circuit court, one of the nation's most prestigious, by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Obama, who has said that he wants a new justice with "a common touch'' and a measure of "empathy,'' also is offering a measure of ethnic diversity to a court dominated by white men in his replacement of the retiring Justice David Souter. The nine-member court includes just one female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and one black justice, Clarence Thomas.

"I have decided to nominate an inspiring woman, who I believe will make a great justice,'' said Obama, standing with Sotomayor by his side in the East Room of the White House.

The president said he had considered many factors.

"First and foremost is a rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law, an ability to hone in on key issues... Second is a recognition of the limits of the judicial role... that a judge's job is to interpret, not make law,'' he said. "Yet these qualities alone are insufficient. We need something more.''

What's also needed on the high court, the president said, is "experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion, an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.''

Sotomayor, who was raised in a Bronx housing project and attended some of the nation's most prominent universities, spoke of the inspiration that her family and the law alike have provided.

"I chose to be a lawyer and ultimately a judge because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law,'' she said. "For as long as I can remember, I have been inspired by the achievement of our founding fathers. They set forward principles that have endured for more than two centuries...

"It would be a profound privilege for me to play a role in applying those principles in the... controversies we face today,'' the president's nominee said. "I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.''

by Mark Silva and updated

The president's decks are cleared for his Supreme Court nomination today, following a Memorial Day weekend that included a retreat with his family at Camp David and four-and-a-half hours of golf at Fort Belvoir on Monday afternoon - a lot of time to think, between telephone calls with the leaders of South Korea, Japan and others involved in the newest crisis surrounding North Korea's apparent nuclear test and repeated launches of missiles that carried into today.

The AP and CNN are reporting that Obama wll name Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appellate judge in New York who could become the first Hispanic justice on the high court.

The president leaves for Las Vegas this evening, to headline a fundraiser that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is staging at the Colloseum, so this is a great day for news -- though heavy rain besieging Washington today puts the Rose Garden out of commission.

. And watch for a judge who, as Obama said in an interview aired over the weekend, has "a common touch.''

"I want somebody who, obviously, has a clear sense of our Constitution and its history and is committed to fidelity to the law... is going to make their decisions based on the law that's in front of them,'' Obama said in his interview with C-SPAN aired several times over the weekend. "But as I've said before, I think it's also important that this is somebody who has common sense and somebody who has a sense of how American society works and how the American people live. And you know, I said earlier that I thought empathy wasn't important quality and I continue to believe that.

"You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you,'' the president said. "But you have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living.''

The final four were said to be Diane Wood, a member of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Sonia Sotomayor, member of the Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, Elena Kagan, the president's own solicitor general, and Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona. Sotomayor could fit two bills: Not only a woman, for a court of nine that includes only one woman today, but also a Hispanic, for a court that lacks one. Kagan has the advantage of already having cleared one confirmation by the Senate, as does Napolitano, though she, like Sotomayor, is likely to draw a greater measure of political controversy than the others.

by Mark Silva

In this season of controversial honorary college degrees, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton collected one today that few could dispute:

From Yale University, which conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on the woman who graduated from Yale's Law School 36 years ago.

She met her husband, former President Bill Clinton, there in 1970.

Unlike President Barack Obama, who was denied an honorary degree at Arizona State University this year because the commencement speaker's "body of work'' had not been fulfilled, and whose honorary degree at Notre Dame was disputed because he advocates abortion rights, Clinton's degree -- which came as a surprise to the public at a school that saves its honorary degrees for last-minute notice, and which also honored the writer, John McPhee, today -- was Yale squared, Yale honoring Yale's own.

(Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is pictured receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at the Yale University commencement today. Photo by Douglas Healey / AP)

by Mark Silva

Today, there were wreaths to go around.

Several dozen professors had called upon the first African-American president to forgo a Memorial Day tradition of laying a wreath at a monument to Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, the grand hillside preserve across the Potomac River from the Capitol on the onetime estate of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Instead, the White House sent wreaths to both the Confederate memorial at Arlington and to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington's historically black U Street neighborhood north of the Capitol.

Presidents traditionally visit Arlington to personally leave a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, bearing the remains of unidentified U.S. military members who died at war. And President Barack Obama did that today, during his first Memorial Day ceremony as president. They have aides deliver wreaths to other memorials - including, today, at the mast of the USS Maine and at the Spanish American War Memorial.

About five dozen professors had petitioned the White House last week to omit the Confederate memorial.

"The Arlington Confederate Monument is a denial of the wrong committed against African-Americans by slave owners, Confederates and neo-Confederates, through the monument's denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes," they wrote. "This implies that the humanity of Africans and African-Americans is of no significance."

Among the petitions, Unversity of Illinois at Chicago education professor William Ayers, who helped found the radical Weather Underground in the 1960s and who had supported Obama's early campaign for the state legislature. Republicans had attempted to link Obama with Ayers during the 2008 presidential campaign, with Republican Sarah Palin accusing Obama of "pallin' around with terrorists.''

"President Obama, why not send two wreaths?" Kirk Savage, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in The Washington Post. "One to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery and another to the African American Civil War Memorial in the District, which commemorates the 200,000 black soldiers who fought for liberation from slavery in the Union armed forces."

Obama and wife Michelle joined military leaders at Arlington today. Beforehand, they had breakfast with a group that had lost family members at war.

"As a nation, we have gathered here to repeat this ritual in moments of peace, when we pay our respects to the fallen and give thanks for their sacrifice,'' the president said at Arlington. "And we've gathered here in moments of war, when the somber notes of Taps echo through the trees, and fresh grief lingers in the air.''

The Associated Press contributed to this report. In observance of Memorial Day, see the rest of the president's remarks at Arlington National Cemetery today, courtesy of the White House, below the photo by Mandel Ngan / AFP:

by Mark Silva

On his way to Arlington National Cemetery today, President Barack Obama paused to address the nuclear test that North Korea has carried out, to say that the international community must "stand up'' and "take action'' on North Korea's affront.

Both the underground test and the second test of a missile since April suggest that "North Korea's nuclear ballistic missile programs pose a great threat to the peace and security of the world, and I strongly condemn their reckless action,'' Obama said.

"North Korea's actions endanger the people of Northeast Asia, they are a blatant violation of international law, and they contradict North Korea's own prior commitments,'' he said. "The United States and the international community must take action in response.

"The record is clear: North Korea has previously committed to abandoning its nuclear program,'' the president said. "Instead of following through on that commitment it has chosen to ignore that commitment.

"These actions have also flown in the face of United Nations resolutions,'' he said. "As a result North Korea is not only deepening its own isolation, it's also inviting stronger international pressure -- that's evident overnight, as Russia and China, as well a our traditional allies of South Korea and Japan, have all come to the same conclusion: North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons.

"We will work with our friends and our allies to stand up to this behavior and we will redouble our efforts toward a more robust international nonproliferation regime that all countries have responsibilities to meet,'' the president said. "In this effort the United States will never waiver from our determination to protect our people and the peace and security of the world.''

by Mark Silva

Finally, a television reality show in which members of Congress can compete.

It may not sound like much of a plot: Watching people text-message one another. But then, one gets to answer the brief text-queries Webcast for all to see, which apparently is why a lot of people are Tweeting these days on Twitter, including congressmen and women.

Twitter -- the Web-site that poses the eternal question: "What are you doing?" - has plans for a TV series. The AP reports that the social-networking service is teaming with Reveille productions and Brillsteen Entertainment to create an unscripted series based on the site, which invited 140-character postings from all.

The idea is to put Twitter on the trail of celebrities in a competitive situation.