Swamp plays Hardball: Party matters

by Mark Silva

Laura Bush, the former first lady, didn't realize how stressful Washington was until she left it -- residing now in Dallas with the retired President George W. Bush, she writes about this and more in a memoir that will be released next week.

"I didn't realize how stressed I was until I wasn't,'' she says in an interview that appears in Ladies' Home Journal, featuring the former first lady and her twin daughters on the June cover. "At the end of the book I write about the buoyancy of freedom I felt [when we left Washington]. It was literally almost physical. I felt like I could stand up straighter. I didn't have any idea I was that stressed."

Laura Bush, who will launch a two-month book tour in the Virginia suburbs of Washington and in Washington next week for the release of Spoken From the Heart, writes about being an only child raised in Midland, Texas.

"It was very lonely being an only child,'' she tells the magazine, according to excerpts released today. "I think it was mainly because I was so aware of how my parents wanted other children, and how disappointed they were. And so I was disappointed. I wanted to have those brothers and sisters, too. "

She says this about the criticism that her husband, the 43rd president of the United States and son of the 41st, fielded during two terms in office -- particularly during the second term: "The criticism of political figures is so extreme, that they end up being characterized in a way that they're not at all. And we knew that. When George's dad was president, it was very hard for us to tolerate. We hated that. It's too bad because I think it discourages people from even considering public office."

The two share "many of the same friends'' from Texas, "and that's particularly comforting when you're in political life,'' she tells the magazine. "It was a great comfort to George and me to have our old friends from Midland visit us in Washington, especially at stressful times. They didn't try to talk about issues; they came to just be there for us.

"George loves to tell the story of how all his Midland friends would come to the Oval Office and say, 'I can't believe I'm here.' And then they looked at him. Couldn't believe he was there either."

The retired president, who is building a presidential library at the first lady's alma mater in Dallas, Southern Methodist University, is enjoying his own freedom these days.

"George reads with a Kindle, but I don't have one yet,'' his wife, a former school librarian, says. "I should get on because I really could enjoy the large type. That'd be great for me."

by Mark Silva and updated

There could be, in the defection of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist from the party in which he made his career, a message about more than the ambition of one politician.

From the start, this was one Republican who looked out for his own fortunes: "Chain-Gang Charlie,'' they called him in the state Legislature, for his promotion of harder work and longer prison-time for inmates in overcrowded, underfinanced prisons. "Charlie Crist, Superstar, who the hell do you think you are?'' asked the state capital press corps in a Gridiron-styled parody of the rising star of the Republican Party.

Now, out on his own, Crist told supporters this evening: "I don't have either party helping me. But I need you. I need you more than ever.''

The governor made his announcement at the top of the evening news in his hometown St. Petersburg, which also puts him in the Tampa Bay media market, the biggest TV audience in a state where campaigns are driven by TV. The governor was surrounded by cheering supporters carrying signs that included: "Democrats for Crist."

If this is a huge leap of faith for the Floriidian, he already has made one Quixotic quest for the Senate, challenging a highly popular Democrat, then-Sen. and former Gov. Bob Graham, in 1998. Graham won reelecton to the Senate by 25 points.

But that didn't stop Crist from winning an elected state Cabinet post -- education commissioner -- in 2000, going on to election as attorney general in 2002 and then as governor in 2006, with comfortable winning margins all along the way.

Early at the start of the 2010 election cycle -- when Crist was riding a wave of popularity that emboldened him to embrace the Democratic president, Barack Obama, who had carried Florida by 2.8 percentage points in 2008 -- his bid for Florida's coming-open Senate seat this fall seemed unstoppable.

Then a TEA Party happened, a grassroot political revolt powered by economic frustration and anger at incumbents presiding over perceived runaway spending at a time of widespread suffering -- spending like that economic stimulus bill that Obama signed and Crist embraced. And before long, a little-known former state House speaker from Miami, Marco Rubio, was crushing Crist in the pre-election polls of Republican voters in the Sunshine State. Suddenly, Crist's race as a Republican appears so hopeless that he is setting out as an independent candidate for Senate.

Rubio's campaign has dismissed Crist's tactic as hopeless.

"Assume nothing,'' the late political powerbroker in Tallahasee, Democrat Sen. Dempsey Barron of Panama City, liked to say. The plaque on his desk warned all visitors.

The governor's campaign tactic may speak volumes about Crist's unrelenting personal ambition. But it also speaks to a political divide that has opened nationwide, unrest so serious that it has split one of the great major political parties down the middle -- or at least far right of center.

The conservative uprising that has catapulted a conservative Rubio and ejected a more moderate Crist will not be unique to Florida -- ask Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who, ironically, won Crist's endorsement on the eve of McCain's own bid for the party's presidential nomination in the 2008 Florida primaries. McCain and Crist won that won, but they appear to be losing the base of their own party in states long loyal to them. Or is Crist, perchance, defining some new lines of his own -- 38 percent will suffice in a three-way race, and polls have suggested that the new field divides in rough thirds.

Is it his to lose? No longer. Is there a way he still can win?

Someone we know and trust says there is. See that analysis above, courtesy of MSNBC's The Daily Rundown today. And see the Rubio campaign's take on Crist below:

by Jim Tankersley

The growing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was designated a spill of national significance and three top Cabinet officials will tour the site, the federal government said today as it stepped up efforts to deal with the environmental disaster.

President Barack Obama is prepared to use "all available options" at his disposal, including the deployment of Defense Department technology, to try to stop the oil leak, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at a briefing with several top administration officials.

Officials said they expect oil from the spill from an oil-rig explosion off Louisiana to reach land in the Mississippi Delta by the end of the day Friday or early Saturday. They also said the government would open a federal command center in Mobile, Ala., joining one center already open in Robert, La., to oversee the response to the spill.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is already in Houston at the command center operated by BP, the owner of the leaking well. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson will also head to the Gulf Coast on Friday.

Gibbs and other administration officials, including top energy and climate advisor Carol Browner, conceded that the spill could affect the administration's recently announced plans to explore additional oil drilling in the Gulf and off the East Coast and Alaska, which is entering a public comment phase before being finalized.

The same applies to the floundering Senate climate bill, which, as drafted, would expand drilling. "This will become part of the debate," Browner said. "That goes without saying."

The "national significance" designation opens up new federal resources to respond to the spill, and officials said it represented the seriousness of the threat. But officials hesitated to make comparisons to the massive Alaskan oil spill from the Exxon tanker Valdez, which remains etched in the American consciousness.

by Kim Geiger and Clement Tan

A group of Democratic senators today proposed a legislative solution to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that allows unlimited corporate spending on advertising and other efforts to influence election campaigns.

The bill is aimed at curbing any uncontrolled role that corporations could play in financing elections following the high court's ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission earlier this year. That ruling struck down federal limits on corporate spending in elections as a violation of freedom of speech.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the bill would "shine a light on the flood of spending unleashed by the Citizens United decision." The influential senator hopes to win passage of the bill by July 4, in time to curb any flow of corporate money into the 2010 midterm congressional elections. Sponsors have dubbed the bill the "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act'' - for "DISCLOSE.''

The bill would require the CEO or head of an organization that is the primary financial sponsor of a political ad to claim responsibility for the ad by appearing on camera. Corporations and advocacy groups would be required to create traceable campaign accounts and disclose within 24 hours the source of donations that exceed $1,000.

The bill also would ban expenditures by any corporation with at least 20 percent of its stock owned by foreign nationals, or if foreign nationals play a dominant role in the corporation's leadership.

"I welcome the introduction of this strong bipartisan legislation to control the flood of special interest money into America's elections,'' President Barack Obama said today. "Powerful special interests and their lobbyists should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people.''

Schumer was joined in his announcement - staged at the steps of the Supreme Court -- by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).

"No longer will groups be able to live and spend in the shadows," Schumer said, adding that the bill "levels the playing field so that special interests do not drown out the voice of the average voter."

Democrats have been concerned that the Citizens United ruling could give the Republican Party an unfair advantage, as major corporations tend to support Republicans over Democrats. Republicans counter that Democrats enjoy the favor of powerful labor unions -- also big political spenders .

Schumer said the bill had been drafted to "fastidiously" avoid an advantage for either political party.

Schumer said "a good number'' of Republicans "have told us that they are very favorably disposed to the legislation." Yet, Republicans were noticeably absent from the morning announcement.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ky.) called the announcement "beyond suspicious," and charged that the bill is "about election advantage plain and simple."

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, who has returned to Washington from a couple of days on the road to find Republicans ready to start debating financinal regulation, says that tours like the one he made of Iowa, Missouri and Illinois this week take him "back to my start in politics'' -- indeed, as he told an audience in Iowa, he wouldn't be president without them.

"it was a reminder that sometimes there's a mismatch between the way politics are portrayed in Washington and how people are feeling,'' Obama told reporters during a brief, and unusual, talk aboard Air Force One on the way home to Washington. The "town hall'' styled meeting he had held in Quincy, for example, was open to all.

"I think it's a less toxic atmosphere, where people are genuinely concerned about jobs, or they've got serious questions about how the new health care bill is going to work or what's happening with immigration or other issues,''' Obama said. "But generally I think what people are looking for is that their elected officials think about them first and foremost and are working hard.

"And they realize that some of these problems are hard, that they're not going to be solved overnight,'' he said. "They just want to make sure that we're working on their behalf and not on behalf of either some ideological agenda or special interest in Washington. So I really enjoyed it. It took me back to my start in politics.''

It was only 11-minutes long, the president's talk aboard the aircraft, but it's rare that presidents do this. And the words, for sure, are chosen for effect.

It's noteworthy, too, that this talk came on the day that Politico.com reported on "why reporters are down on President Obama'' -- suggesting that the administration is thin-skinned with the press and that day-to-day contact with the president is "almost non-existent.'' (We seem to remember little of that with the former president, and walks like this to the back of the plane where the press rides? Almost non-existent.)

This is what Obama had to say about financial regulation: "It is the right thing to do.... This shouldn't have to be a partisan issue. Republicans, Democrats, independents -- everybody was hurt by the crisis on Wall Street. It is something that we can prevent with some better rules of the road, and I hope that we can get this done quickly, reconcile it with the work that was done over on the House side, and that I can sign this bill into law very soon.''

On the government's accusations against Goldman Sachs -- while declining to comment a case in court directly: "I think most Americans would say that some of the behavior generally on Wall Street, even if it's legal, doesn't seem to serve much of an economic purpose and puts, as we've discovered, the entire economy at risk, and that the more that we get -- make sure there's transparency, openness, clarity about how the financial system is working;''

On the new law in Arizona calling for police checks of suspected illegal immigrants: "I think is a mistake is when we start having local law enforcement officials empowered to stop people on the suspicion that they may be undocumented workers, because that carries a great amount of risk that core values that we all care about are breached.''

On passage of immigration reform: "it's a matter of political will. Now, look, we've gone through a very tough year, and I've been working Congress pretty hard. So I know there may not be an appetite immediately to dive into another controversial issue. There's still work that has to be done on energy.

"Midterms are coming up. So I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem. I want us to get together, get the best ideas on both sides, work this through, and when it's ready to go, let's move. But I think we need to start a process at least to open up a smarter, better discussion than the one that is raging right now.''

On the question of activist judges that has come up during his discussions with senators about the choice he now faces for a new Supreme Court Justice:

"It used to be that the notion of an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically. And in the '60s and '70s, the feeling was, is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach.

"What you're now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error,'' he said. "And I think rather than a notion of judicial restraint we should apply both to liberals and conservative jurists, what you're seeing is arguments about original intent and other legal theories that end up giving judges an awful lot of power; in fact, sometimes more power than duly-elected representatives.''

See the entire transcript here in the Swamp:

by Mark Silva and updated

President Barack Obama, returning to Washington tonight amid signs that Republicans are ready to deal on "Wall Street reform,'' suggested that there may "not be an appetite' in Congress for also dealing with immigration after an already tough legislative year.

Obama told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One home from Quincy, Ill., where he was stumping for financial regulation and congratulating Republicans for demonstrating a readiness to debate the issue, that Congress has been consumed with hard work this year and may not be ready to immediately tackle another controversial issue.

"It's a matter of political will,'' Obama said. "We've gone through a very tough year and I've been driving Congress pretty hard.''

After three days of solid party opposition to the financial regulation bill, Republicans agreed late today to allow the bill to move to the full Senate, following an agreement by Democrats to change some provisions related to the potential for future bailouts of failing institutions. With promises of some concessions from Democrats, Republicans said they now would work on amendments in a possible two-week floor debate.

"I'm very pleased. This shouldn't have to be a partisan issue,'' Obama told reporters at the back of Air Force One on the way home today -- the president going back to talk with the traveling pool.

"I'm very pleased that after a few days of delay, it appears an agreement may be at hand to allow (the financial regulation) debate to move forward on the Senate floor on this critical issue,'' Obama had said at his last stop of the day today, in Quincy, before leaving for Washington. "I'm very pleased by that.''

There is work to do on energy, Obama said in his talk with reporters aboard Air Force One -- with the White House noting that work is much farther along on that front; the House already has passed a bill, and the Senate has one of its own. Midterm elections also are nearing, and with immigration reform certain to spark a political powder-keg, the president says he doesn't want to do something "just for the sake of politics.''

"I understand people's frustration about the border,'' the president said.

The last time immigration reform failed in the Senate, in 2007, both Republicans and Democrats voted against advancing it to debate -- and members of both parties voted to advance it. This time, only one Republican has stepped forward in the Senate to work on a compromise. ""I've made calls to Republicans,'' Obama said. "This is a difficult issue... I think I can get a majority of Democrats, but I need some help from Republicans. We had some help two years ago. "

It will take some work, he said, to find some solutions for the problem of an estimated 12 million people already living in the United States illegally, controlling the border against further illegal immigration and other issues involved -- solutions that might find broad public support.

Wire services and the traveling press pool contributed to this report.

by Jim Stratton and Aaron Deslatte of the Orlando Sentinel

Gov. Charlie Crist will turn Florida's U.S. Senate race on its head Thursday by formally announcing he will run as an independent and walk away from the party that has helped make him one of the most recognizable politicians in the state.

Two sources close to Crist say the governor will launch his independent bid in his hometown of St. Petersburg portraying himself as a candidate more interested in serving "the people" than partisan politics. e will begin campaigning almost immediately, having already scheduled a weekend fundraiser in Miami-Dade County.

Crist's long-rumored break from the GOP will turn Florida's Senate race into (one of) the hottest political tickets in the country - a three-way scrum pitting Crist against Marco Rubio, the charismatic pin-up boy of conservatives and Tea Party activists, and likely Democratic nominee U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami.

"It'll be the number one headline race in the country," said University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato. "It's going to capture the national imagination, because there's nothing out there comparable."

Crist is trailing Rubio badly in primary polls and many analysts and supporters think his only shot at winning is running outside the GOP structure. The governor has fueled that speculation by acting like a candidate intent on burning political bridges.

He vetoed legislation important to GOP lawmakers - most notably a teacher merit-pay bill - and said he might call a special session of the Legislature to focus on ethics in government. He suggested that just as the Republican Party of Florida slogs through a credit-card scandal that's attracted the attention of law enforcement.

Added Swamp note:

What makes this contest particularly volatile is the fact that nearly one in five Florida voters have registered without any affiliation for any party -- 2.1 million registered without party for the last presidential election, about half the number, 4 million, who registered Republican. (Democrats counted 4.7 million.) And Florida has long been a swing state which has one Republican senator and one Democratic senator, a solidly Republican Legislature and voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and has voted for Southern Democrats for president since the 1960s.

The trouble, for Crist, is that running without party support means that he cannot count on the formidable fundraising power that the parties have, or the get-out-the-vote organization which former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush built for the GOP or which the Obama campaign organized among Democrats in 2008.

Florida voted much like the rest of the nation when Ross Perot appeared on the ballot as a third-party candidate for president, in 1992 and 1996, and the modern high-water mark for any third-party candidacy there came in 1968, when 28.5 percent of the voters sided with George Wallace in the presidential contest (30.9 percent for Hubert Humphrey and 40.5 percent for Richard Nixon.)

Yet, Florida politics often are as unpredictable as the hurricanes that plague the state, making Crist's bet a calculation worthy, at the very least, as watching as The Weather Channel.

"This is going to be a tough race,'' Republican Marco Rubio's campaign advisers say in a memo circulated for supporters today. But in the end, they say, people will be looking at all of the candidates' reasons for running, and Crist still may be figuring out which his is. Today, they say, "may be the best day'' of Crist's independent campaign.

-- Mark Silva

See the Rubio campaign memo below:

by Mark Silva

Every photo-opp has its purpose.

Today, President Barack Obama, out on his "White House to Main Street tour,'' made an impromptu stop at Peggy Sue's Cafe on North Main Street in Monroe City, Mo.

"How's everybody doing today?" the president asked aloud as he walked into Peggy Sue's.

A waitress named Jodie handing him a menu was unfazed.

"I don't think you just have cheeseburgers?" Obama asked.

"Yes we do,'' the waitress said.

"Let me get that to take out,'' said Obama, asking for lettuce, tomato and mustard, and fries for the road.

As the president carried on some conversation with other customers, the waitress was asked what it was like taking the president's order.

"I take orders every day,'' she said. "He ordered like a normal person."

Cha-ching.

(Second photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)

by Mark Silva

The American public remains "doggedly downbeat about the condition of the national economy,'' despite any signs of recovery emerging, a new Pew Research Center poll finds.

About nine in 10 of those surveyed -- 88 percent -- rate national economic conditions as only fair or poor. That's the way people have seen it for two years now. And over the past year, Pew reports today, there has been no decline in the percentage saying the economy will stay the same (36 percent) or get worse (19 percent) a year from now.

Only one third say the economic stimulus enacted by Congress last year has helped the job situation, and few more (42 percent) say the loans that the federal government gave to troubled financial institutions averted a more severe financial crisis.

In the survey of 1,546 adults conducted by the Pew Research Center April 21-26 , President Barack Obama's overall job rating also is unmoved -- at 47 percent, this is the fifth month in Pew surveys in which Obama has polled below 50 percent.

Only 38 percent of those surveyed approve of the president's handling of the economy. As the debate in Washington turns to other matters, such as immigration reform, only 29 percent say they approve of Obama's handling of immigration policy.

As Obama considers his second nominee for the Supreme Court, public perceptions of the court have shifted. Today, as many Americans think the current court is liberal as say it is conservative (24 percent hold both views). Three years ago, 36 percent said the court was conservative and just 14 percent saw it as liberal.

See the full Pew report.

by Mark Silva

It's been a year now since we first heard of the publication of the comic-book series, Barack the Barbarian, a Chicago production.

But it appears the Secret Service has done a fairly poor job of purging any copies from the trail that President Barack Obama follows on his daily rounds.

As the president went through his morning workout today at the AspenActive gym near his hotel in Des Moines -- a Hampton Inn (Hilton bonus points) -- the reporting pool following him cooled its heels in a nearby coffee shop.

There sat the comic book, the third in a series.

The people at Devil's Due are Obama fans.

Devil's Due founder and President Josh Blaylock has explained that the company drew its inspiration for the series from a half-dozen other Obama comics, including the president's appearance in Spider-Man, as well as from the president's own fondness for collecting "Conan the Barbarian" comics.

"Everyone's doing just these little cameos and stuff," Blaylock told the Tribune last year. "I said, let's just go do something nuts. I want people to look at this and say 'What the hell is this?' "

"Barack the Barbarian" also includes a sword-carrying vixen bearing an uncanny resemblance to a certain Alaskan. The Sarah Palinesque heroine wears a chain-mail bikini, bookish eyeglasses and a dead-wolf for a drape.

"I have seen that comic book,'' Bill Burton, deputy White House press secretary, said en route to Missouri following the morning workout and spotting of the comic book in Des Moines. "I liked it because it had few words and lots of pictures -- made it easy to understand... But when you come to Iowa you see all sorts of fun things, and it's nice to see the manifestation of somebody's creative energy in the president slaying a large elephant.''

Was he referring to "Sarah the Red?''

"No, the big elephant,'' Burton said.

The third edition on display at the coffee shop in Des Moines this morning -- featuring the muscle-clad Barack the Barbarian pushing some recalcitrant stimuli up the stairs -- also contained a decidedly Hillary Clintonesque character.

After his workout, the real Obama boarded "Baby Air Force One,'' the Boeing 757-based model that the White House has been using on recent short runway trips, for his appearance today in Missouri and in Quincy, Ill., where the president late this afternoon will be pressing for "Wall Street reform.'' Facing down those "Barbarians at the Gate'' from LBO days gone by.

by Jim Tankersley and updated at 12:30 pm EDT

The Obama administration has approved a long-delayed, highly controversial offshore wind project off Cape Cod, Mass.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is set to announce the decision, to grant federal permits to the Cape Wind project, in Boston this afternoon.

"After careful consideration of all the concerns expressed during the lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved, I find that the public benefits weigh in favor of approving" the project, Salazar said today. "With this decision we are beginning a new direction in our nation's energy future, ushering in America's first offshore wind energy facility and opening a new chapter in the history of this region."

Cape Wind proposes to string 130 turbines in Massachusetts' scenic Nantucket Sound and supply the majority of the power on Cape Cod and nearby islands. In a decade-long fight, the project has divided Massachusetts politicians, earned objections from the Kennedy family and most recently drawn opposition from local Native American tribes.

But Obama administration officials - and Salazar in particular - have made offshore wind-power a cornerstone of their push to boost so-called "clean energy" in the United States, and thus were widely expected to approve the project, which has the support of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

by David Savage and updated at 12:40 pm EDT

The Supreme Court gave its approval Wednesday to displaying a Christian cross on public land to honor fallen soldiers, saying the Constitution "does not require the eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm."

Speaking for a divided court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the 1st Amendment calls for a middle-ground "policy of accommodation" toward religious displays on public land, not a strict separation of church and state.

Kennedy disagreed with judges in California who said U.S. Park Service officials must remove a small Latin cross from the Mojave National Forest which has stood since 1934 to honor soldiers who died in World War I. The judges said the display of the cross on public land amounted to a government endorsement of religion.

"A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs," he wrote. "Here, a Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

The 5-4 decision told the lower court judges to reconsider the matter and presumably uphold the display of a cross. Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Kennedy's opinion, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed separately that the cross can remain on display.

Retiring Justice John Paul Stevens spoke for the dissenters. The government has good reason for "honoring all those who have rendered heroic public service regardless of creed, but it should "avoid endorsement of a particular religious view" in doing so, he said.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor agreed.

The Mojave cross has been tied in litigation of years. The case has been closely watched because it was the first church-state separation dispute to come before the Supreme Court since Roberts became chief justice.

by Mark Silva

"Take it back, take it back'' - take that cash right out of here.

It was inevitable, in the midst of all the exposure that Goldman Sachs' most controversial investment strategies have been getting lately, that politicians might start giving back or giving away some of the more than $31 million that the investment banker's PACs and employees have given to political campaigns in the last 20 years.

Most of that money is long gone, however, spent on campaigns past won and lost.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat facing a reelection fight back home, is giving $7,500 that her campaign collected from Goldman Sachs' political action committee to charity - the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, Lincoln's leading rival for the Democratic nomination, has criticized Lincoln for accepting money from the bank.

There's a lot more money still out there, in the election cycle underway. According to the review that the Center for Responsive Politics has made of all contributions of $200 or more reported to the Federal Election Commission, Goldman Sachs and its employees have put at least $694,000 into the campaigns of federal candidates in the 2010 election cycle - that money flowing by a better than two-to-one margin to the Democratic Party, the one in control of Congress.

Candidates - including President Barack Obama - collected $5.9 million from the firm's PAC and employees in the 2008 election cycle (Obama's campaign close to $1 million.)

The Democratic National Committee already has said that it is not refunding any money from a company that has not been accused of any criminal activity. The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued the firm in court, accusing it of making money at the expense of its own clients by, on the one hand, selling derivatives to investors, and, on the other hand, selling bets against those investments.

The company, whose executives have testified on Capitol Hill this week, maintains that it was doing nothing wrong in both selling securities-based derivatives and hedging bets against them, but simply managing its own risks during turbulent times.

It remains to be seen how many more candidates come to view Goldman Sachs' campaign cash as a risk as well and decide to cut their own losses.

As Jack Bruce once put it: "Got this great need, the need to stay alive. Not ashamed of my creed, I've got to survive. So come on baby, don't go away, just let them save me for a rainy day. Take it back, take it back, take that thing right out of here.''

by Mark Silva

Add to the public bookshelf another new memoir:

Laura Bush's Spoken From the Heart

The former first lady's memoir will be available early next week, on sale May 4 with the start of a book-tour in McLean and Arlington, Va. and Washington.

The tale of the onetime school librarian from Midland, Texas, who married the town's "most eligible bachelor,'' and became the first lady of Texas and then the nation should be a wide-ranging account -- arriving in Washington as one who first shunned the limelight, Bush, during her husband's two terms, gradually assumed a greater role as an ambassador at home and abroad, traveling from Afghanistan to Africa.

With "a captivating and compelling voice that ranks with many of our greatest memoirists,'' as the reviewer at the Bush-Cheney Alumni Association explains it this morning, "Mrs. Bush tells the story of her unique path from Midland, Texas, to the world stage and the White House. Laura Bush's compassion, sense of humor, grace, and uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this book deeply revealing, surprisingly candid, and beautifully rendered.

"Spoken from the Heart is unlike any other First Lady's memoir ever written.''

The publisher, Scribner, says:

"Born in the boom-and-bust oil town of Midland, Texas, Laura Welch grew up as an only child in a family that lost three babies to miscarriage or infant death. She vividly evokes Midland's brash, rugged culture, her close relationship with her father, and the bonds of early friendships that sustain her to this day. For the first time, in heart-wrenching detail, she writes about the devastating high school car accident that left her friend Mike Douglas dead and about her decades of unspoken grief.

"When Laura Welch left West Texas in 1964, she never imagined that her journey would lead her to the world stage and the White House. She began as an elementary school teacher, working in inner-city schools, then trained to be a librarian. At age thirty, she met George W. Bush, whom she had last passed in the hallway in seventh grade. Three months later, the old maid of Midland married Midland's most eligible bachelor."

The former first lady's book tour starts May 4 in McLean, Va., moves to Arlington, Va., and Washington during the week and then back to Dallas, out to California and Arizona, through the South and into South Florida and ends toward the end of June in Waco, Texas, the town where the Bushes were double-handedly responsible for a brief economic revival during the years they flew in and out from the White House to their ranch outside of Crawford.

(This remains, of course, the home of the Dr. Pepper Museum, the Texas Rangers museum, Baylor University -- which vied for the Bush '43 presidential library that landed at Laura Bush's alma mater, Southern Methodist University -- and, well, the Branch Davidian compound, where a stone memorial stands atop a windswept hill. Our own favorite walk above the Brazos River: "Lovers' Leap.'')

by Mark Silva

Slowly, but surely, the change agenda has given way to a reform era.

Barack Obama campaigned with a promise of change. He is presiding with a commitment to reform. And he is chiding anyone who wants to stand in the way.

"Year after year, Washington focuses on the next election instead of the next generation,'' the president said this evening at a town hall-styled meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa, the state that launched his candidacy with a caucus victory a little more than three years ago. The president drew his biggest standing ovation from a crowd of about 2,100 when he declared: "That's why we finally passed health reform in America.''

Now it's "Wall Street reform.''

"Today, for the second time in 24 hours, Senate republicans unanimously blocked efforts to even begin debating reform,'' Obama said of the fight over financial regulation

"I'm not even asking them to vote for the bill,'' he said of the fight over advancing the bill to debate. "It's one thing to oppose reform, but opposing even talking about reform in front of the American people and having a legitimate debate, that's not right.

"The American people deserve a honest debate on this bill,'' he said.

A question from the audience at Indian Hills Community College quickly turned the talk to the next reform on the agenda of a lot of leaders: Immigration reform.

Obama, who has called federal inaction a sure path to "misguided'' actions such as Arizona's law handing police the power to question people suspected of being illegal immigrants, said in response to a question that Arizona's law is "poorly conceived... That's not the way to go.''

(President Obama is pictured above during a town hall meeting at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa, today. Photo by Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images.)

by Mark Silva

Sen. Carl Levin, pressing a Goldman Sachs trader about the sale of $600 million in questionable securities before the collapse of the nation's financial markets, asked how long he was engaged in pitching a product that a superior called, well...

"''Boy, that Timberwolf was one s----y deal.' They sold that s---y deal,'' Levin said today, reading from an internal Goldman Sachs memo.

The email was from the head of a division in late June 2007 to Daniel Sparks, the salesman on the hot-seat in the Senate's committee hearing on Goldman Sachs.

"How much of that 's----y deal' did you sell to your clients after June 22, 2007?,'' Levin (D-Mich.) asked Sparks.

"I don't know the answer to that, but the price would have reflected levels that they wanted to invest in at the time,'' the Goldman Sachs employee testifying said. "I don't recall selling hundreds of millions of that deal after that.''

The message he drew from the remark of the division chief, he said, was that his performance on the Timberwolf deal wasn't good.

"I didnt use that term with respect to this deal,'' Sparks said.

by Mark Silva and updated at 1:30 pm EDT

"We don't have 12 million pairs of handcuffs in this country,'' Sen. John McCain of Arizona once said, during a debate over immigration reform that ultimately collapsed in the Senate in the summer of 2007.

The Arizona Republican, the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and others were sponsoring a bipartisan effort to fix the nation's broken borders, institute a new guest-worker program and offer a path toward citizenship for an estimated 12 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

"It's a matter of national security. You can't have 12 million people washing around," McCain had said, speaking of the problem also as a humanitarian issue, with many of the undocumented workers in the U.S. subject to easy exploitation.

Today, as McCain faces a tough fight for reelection in a state where illegal immigration has become an explosive political issue -- a state where the governor has signed a law requiring police to stop and question people suspected of being there illegally -- he speaks of the necessity of rounding up some of those 12 million.

"This law is a response to the president's and the administration's failure to secure our borders,'' McCain said of the Arizona legislation, in an appearance on CBS News' The Early Show today. "Our borders are broken. It's worse than I've ever seen it.''

The law is a result of federal "inaction'', President Barack Obama agrees, calling the state effort "misguided'' and likely to inspire many more like it.

McCain maintained that the law can be enforced without racial profiling. "I do not want any discriminatory behavior,'' said the senator, who has spoken with sheriffs and other authorities. "They think they can implement this law without racial profiling.''

When the Immigration Reform Act of 2007 fell short of the votes needed for debate in the Senate in June 2007 -- with senators of both parties balking -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said: "Immigration is going to have to wait until we get a new president and a new Congress.''

They got a new president -- with the Democrat, Obama, as committed to the idea of "comprehensive immigration reform'' as Republican President George W. Bush was. Bush's bid for immigration reform was waylaid by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, forcing the president to push the matter into his second term. Obama's interest was outweighed by both an economic crisis and his intention to enact healthcare reforms in his first year.

Now, the White House says, the Senate should be able to tackle both immigration and energy. But energy is more ripe for action, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said today: "It's pretty clear where the president is, what he thinks is the most appropriate action to take.If you look at the substance of energy, there is bipartisan agreement on some of the solutions we need to undertake....

"We're closer to an energy bill than we've been in a very long time,'' Burton said en route to Iowa today with Obama, "and the president feels like the progress we've made is very good... In terms of process, when you look at immigration, Republicans and Democrats agree that there is a real problem with immigration as it currently stands. ''

Yet Reid, motivated by his own reelection problem back home, is attempting to put immigration reform back on the table. At the same time, Reid has alienated the one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- one of McCain's best friends in the Senate -- who was working with Democratic counterparts on a new immigration plan, because Reid is trying to put immigration ahead of an energy bill.

Graham has told The New York Times that he had received assurances from Reid that energy would come first and "accuses him of making a sudden push for immigration -- an effort Mr. Graham says will only divide the country -- to appease Hispanic voters in an election year. "I was mad, because they brought immigration up in the 11th hour," the senator said, adding, "If you're going to do business with people, they've got to understand that you can push back."

Back in the summer of 2007, when a bid to move the immigration bill to debate failed, 33 Democrats, 12 Republicans and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted to advance it. Opposing them: 37 Republicans, 15 Democrats and independent Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

All of the potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate at the time voted to advance the bill. Among the Republican candidates, only McCain voted to keep it alive.

Less than three years later, the notion of those sorts of alliances in the Senate on a contentious issue seem like some sort of political science fiction.

So does the idea of reviving immigration reform in this midterm election year in which McCain is struggling to hold his own party's nomination, Reid is fighting for his own political life and the president's party is struggling to hold on to Congress.

by Mark Silva

As a bipartisan commission assigned with finding solutions for the nation's spiraling budget deficits convened at the White House today, President Barack Obama maintained that all possible fixes will be on the table and that "a day of reckoning'' is near.

"I'm not going to say what's in. I'm not going to say what's out,'' Obama said this morning. "I want this commission to do its work.''

Obama stood with the co-chairmen of the Fiscal Commission that he appointed flanking him in the Rose Garden: Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson.

""It's a lot easier to spend a dollar than to save one,'' said Obama, who has presided over a runaway record in the federal budget deficit during his first year in office, in the aftermath of a government bailout of the financial industry and with an economic stimulus intended to spur new job growth. "That's what, at root, led to these exploding deficits. That's what has led to this day of reckoning.''

The healthcare legislation that Obama signed into law this year is expected to ease the budget defict over the coming decade, according to independent projections. But the president has maintained that he will not raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year -- potentially one of the areas which the commission assigned with recommending a way out of debt for the nation will explore.

"As a nation, we continue to experience the consequences of three distinct but closely related challenges,'' Obama said today. "One is a financial crisis, born of reckless speculation that threatened to choke off lending to families and businesses.

"This crisis led, in turn, to the deepest recession we've known in generations - costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes, closing thousands of businesses, and devastating Main Streets across our country. And over the past two years, this downturn has aggravated an already severe fiscal crisis, brought on by decades of bad habits in Washington.

"As a result, the day I walked in the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next 10 years,'' he said. "Partly, this was caused by the recession, which meant the government was taking in less while the demand for assistance for those who lost their jobs was far greater. Another contributor to our deficits has been the rising cost of health care. Each year, more tax dollars are devoted to Medicare and Medicaid.

"But what also made these large deficits possible was that, for years, folks in Washington deferred politically difficult decisions and avoided telling hard truths about the nature of the problem. The fact is, it's always easier, when you're in public life, to share good news - to tell people want they want to hear instead of what they need to know. And, as the gentlemen behind me can attest, this has been the norm around Washington for a very long time when it comes to the state of our finances. ''

by Andrew Zajac

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek makes an official visit to the United States this week, looking to capitalize on "the 'Obama moment" in meetings with key administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and congressional leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, among others.

Buzek's trip comes ahead of Biden's planned address to the European Parliament on May 6. The E.U. leader's main goal is to increase cooperation between the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress on a range of issues, including climate change, energy security, trade and global governance.

"We have many ideas for revitalizing our relations," Buzek, a former prime minister of Poland, said in a statement. "The European Parliament would like to see a Transatlantic single market in a defined timescale. We favour upgrading our institutional relations, by creating a Transatlantic Parliamentary Assembly. We want to use the 'Obama moment' to build a vibrant partnership that offers hope and leadership in an uncertain world."

Buzek's statement didn't define what an Obama moment is, and whatever it is, it doesn't involve fact time with Obama, at least not on this trip.

But it's probably safe to assume that it refers to the aura of good feeling that still surrounds the president in many capitals, particularly since his predecessor, President George W. Bush, rankled some foreign leaders with a penchant for what they regarded as go-it-alone foreign policy initiatives.

Buzek's Washington schedule includes formally opening the European Parliament's new liaison office with Congress on Thursday.

On Friday, Buzek heads to New York for a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

Wearing his E.U. hat, Buzek represents Poland's future as a member of Europe's family of most economically advanced nations. But he's also a symbol of a proud recent past.
A member of the Solidarity trade union/political movement that brought the Communist regime to its knees in 1989, Buzek was elected prime minister in 1997. He served for four years, during which he helped negotiate Poland's entry into NATO and the terms of its membership in the E/U.

His itinerary, alas, does not include Chicago, home to one the largest populations of Poles outside Warsaw.

by Andrew Zajac

In a bid to at least occasionally get out ahead of the flood of imports streaming in, Consumer Product Safety Commission Chair Inez Tenenbaum today signed an agreement with Customs and Border Protection giving her agency access to CBP's database of cargo manifests of ships, trucks and planes headed into the country.

Prior to the agreement, CPSC could only query the database through its Customs minders, a cumbersome, inefficient process. Direct access will allow the commission to better identify - before arrival in the U.S. -- products deserving of inspection.

"Once we have the data, we can create our own risk management assessment," said Tenenbaum, who inked the memorandum of understanding this morning at a press event with CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin.

One of the CPSC's long-standing weaknesses is that it hasn't known what's coming into the country until shipments were off the docks and headed for store shelves.

Now, CPSC should know ahead of time when goods which it has an inordinate interest in, such as hoodies with drawstrings (can be a strangulation hazard); Christmas lights (fire and shock hazards) and fireworks (duh) - are due in to port.

Access to the manifests database is part of a broader effort to cooperate among key regulatory agencies. Fourteen CPSC employees now staff the 10 largest ports of entry with their CBP counterparts.

by Mark Silva

Who knew the national security advisor is a comedian?

The White House, insisting today that peace talks in the Middle East are moving forward, said the president had not asked his national security advisor, retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones, to apologize for his joke about a Jewish merchant and Taliban fighter.

Jones took care of that on his own, saying he regretted telling a joke that ultimately detracted from the message he was delivering at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy over the weekend.

While it drew a good laugh from the audience, the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman told ABC News that the joke was "inappropriate" and "stereotypic."

"Some people believe they need to start a speech with a joke; this was about the worst kind of joke the head of the National Security Council could have told," Foxman said.

Relations between Israel and the United States lately have grown strained under the Israeli government's insistence on the expansion of settlements. The U.S. envoy to the region, retired Sen. George Mitchell, has returned on a diplomatic mission which the White House insisted today is moving forward.

"I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by it," Jones said afterward in an issued statement. "It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: that the United States commitment to Israel's security is sacrosanct."

The president himself dropped by a meeting between Gen. Jones and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak this morning, a White House spokesman said.

"The president reaffirmmed our unshakable commitment to Israel's security and our determination to achieve comprehensive peace in the Middle East,'' Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "including a two-state solution with a secure Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with a viable and independent Palestinian state.''

This is the general's joke, as seen above:

by Mark Silva

With the Senate's Democratic leader talking about tackling both immigration reform and energy legislation this year -- and Majority Leader Harry Reid putting immigration first -- the White House suggested today that there is "room for both.''

"Obviously, there is a crowded calendar,'' White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today.

The nation's dependence on foreign oil makes the energy bill "a priority,'' he said -- the House has passed one, the Senate is weighing a tougher one.

And if anyone looks at what's happening in Arizona, where the governor has signed a law requiring police to stop and question people suspected of being illegal immigrant, he said, "that could drive each state to pass its own immigration law... That's because the federal government has failed to act.''

"I think there's room for both,'' Gibbs said at today's press briefing. "I think we can make progress on more than one issue... You all see this as an either-or, but this administration does not.''

by Mark Silva

David Axelrod, the president's senior political advisor, admits to a lifelong appetite for politics, but no real talent for basketball.

Have he and President Barack Obama seen the new action film, Kickass?

"No, but in my business,'' Axelrod told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, "we get our asses kicked every day.''

Axelrod, who grew up on the lower East Side of Manhattan, his father an immigrant, mother from an immigrant family, got an early case of the political bug.

"There's a moment ... when I was five years old, John F. Kennedy came to my little community in New York,'' Axelrod said. He was hoisted up on a mail box to see Kennedy. "I looked all around and I watched him and said this seems really important.''

He was not a good student -- "I was a little hyperactive.''

And his high school yearbook photo features some long, stringy hair: "I should be glad,'' Axelrod told Leno, "because I had hair back then.''

The president is better on the basketball court, Axelrod allowed, recalling one bad game. "Back during the campaign... it was a few hours before one of our debates... as usual he got by me and as usual I was lunging to stop him and I rapped him right across the bridge of his nose.... those were anxious moments,'' he said. "I thought, what if we had to scrap the debate because his adviser broke his nose.''

The president works late, Axelrod says, and is prone to calling on him near midnight. They have a staff meeting that starts at 7:30 in the morning.

Leno asked about Vice President Joe Biden, he of the 'big f'n deal' on healthcare reform. "His strength is that he is plain-spoken, straightforward guy,'' Axelrod said, with a recollection about the day Obama selected Biden for a running mate and what campaign manager David Plouffe said: "Plouffe did turn to me and say, 'Fasten your seatbelt.'''

Axelrod, who made his career in Chicago, has known Obama for 18 years. He recallls a mutual friend, Betty Lou Saltzman, calling him one day to say that she had met a remarkable young man. She told Axelrod at the time, "I just have a feeling this guy could be the first black president of the United States.''

"Now, whenever I go to the track, I take Betty Lou with me.''

(See the second part of the interview below:)

by Michael Muskal

As the Senate prepares for its first key vote on financial regulation, Democrats today warned Republicans they had better get on board or face the political consequences of being branded pro-Wall Street.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has scheduled a cloture vote on a Democrat bill, the first step in bringing the bill to the floor where it can be debated, amended and face a final vote. The House has already passed a different bill.

In the opening salvo of today's action, Reid's office this morning issued a statement goading Republicans to back moving the bill the to the floor.

"We remain eager to work with Republicans who are sincere about reforming Wall Street, and we are hopeful for bipartisan agreement on this important effort. But there are no two ways about it: a vote against even opening debate on holding Wall Street accountable is a vote to protect Wall Street," said Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman.

Polls show that American voters in this midterm election year overwhelmingly mistrust Wall Street and blame bankers and traders for causing the economic collapse that has sent unemployment soaring to just under 10 percent.

But today's battle is also a classic political fork.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, who won election to the White House with the help of a wave of younger voters, including some who had never voted before, is issuing a rallying call for those forces as his party prepares for bruising midterm elections this year.

Three years ago, Obama says in the video appeal to supporters today, "We set out on an incredible journey to change this country for the better.... Because of you, we are making the change that our nation so desperately needs.''

This includes the "historic' healthcare legislation, the economic stimulus bill and putting the nation's economy "back on the path to prosperity.''

"Despite everything we've done, our work isn't finished,'' he says, maintaining that Wall Street and other special interests "already are focused'' on November's elections.

With polling showing that voters have become essentially divided in their loyalty to the two major political parties, and with polling showing that Republicans appear much more motivated than Democrats to vote this year, the president's party is fighting to stave off a midterm revolt that could undermine, if not revoke, its control of the House.

"If you help make sure that first-time voters in 2008 make their voices heard again in November," Obama says in a YouTube clip that the Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America is circulating by email, "then together we will deliver on the promise of change, hope and prosperity for generations to come."

The president delivers a specific appeal to black voters, Hispanics, women and independent voters who buoyed his own bid fro the White House in 2008, calling on them to "stand together once again...

"This year,'' the president says in the video, "the stakes are higher than ever.''

by Mark Silva at 9:40 am, updated 2:05 pm EDT

President Barack Obama, on vacation this weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, made a house call.

The president went to vist the Rev. Billy Graham at his North Carolna home, a mountaintop log cabin, this afternoon before leaving for a memorial service for the coal miners killed in the recent West Virginia mining disaster.

Obama and Graham had never met in person before. The White House says the two have long tried to get together, and when they last spoke on the telephone -- when the president called the famed evangelist on his 91st birthday lin November -- they agreed to do so as soon as possible.

The president left the Grove Park Inn, where he and his family had spent a brief weekend vacation -- the president played golf Saturday morning, and he and First Lady Michelle Obama played tennis this morning -- at 12:16 pm EDT and headed for Graham's house on a beautiful day in the high 60s, a blue sky hoisting fluffy white clouds.

"Rev. Graham has obviously been an important spiritual leader for past presidents and for the American people for decades," said Bill Burton, a White House spokesman. "He's a real treasure for our country. The president apprecites the opportunity to visit him at his home... ounds like (Graham's health is) pretty good. Sounds like he's got some of the creaks that come with advancing age bu the's still as sharp as he ever was...

"If's a fair guess that they'll pray together,'' Burton said before the meeting. And pray, they did, Burton said after the meeting, reporting that Obama was extraordinarily gratified to have had the chance for their meeting. It lasted about a half-hour.

The visit follows close on the heels of the Army last week rescinding an invitation to Graham's son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, to appear at an upcoming National Day of Prayer at the Pentagon because of comments that he has made about Islam.

"True Islam cannot be practiced in this country," Franklin Graham told CNN's Campbell Brown in December. "You can't beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries."

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he had called Islam a "very evil and wicked religion."

Graham, who said a prayer at the inauguration of President George W. Bush, has said he regrets the Army's decision but stands by his comments.

"I don't like the way they treat women, the way they treat minorities. I just find it horrific. But I love the people of Islam," he said, adding that some of his work has been in Muslim nations. For instance, Samaritan's Purse, the international charity that he heads, works with Iraqi refugees in Jordan. "It's a part of the world I love very much," Graham said. "And I understand it. But I certainly disagree with their teaching."

by Mark Silva

With his "White House to Main Street Tour'' this week -- at a time when the debate over Wall Street reform is heating up in Washington -- President Barack Obama will hold an open house for all-comers Wednesday at the civic center in Quincy, Ill.

Tickets will be distributed on a first come, first served basis on Tuesday, sttarting at 11:30 AM CDT, according to the White House. Tickets will be disbursed at the York Street etrance to the Oakley Lindsay Civic Center. On Wednesday, doors for the president's appearance, tor those holding tickets will open at 1 pm -- the president's address there is scheduled to start after 4 pm..

It's part of a tour of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri by a president attempting to focus on street-level concerns while debates unfold in Washington over financial regulation, job creation, immigration reform and energy conservation in a roiling midterm election year.

In the early afternoon on Wednesday, Obama plans a tour of Poet Biorefining in Macon, Mo., where he will speak with workers "about what they are experiencing during these tough economic times and share ideas for rebuilding our economy in the long term,'' accoding to the White House. He also plans to tour a local farm and visit with the family who operates it.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, who will deliver the eulogy today for 29 miners killed in the explosion at a West Virginia mine -- the worst U.S. mine disaster in four decades -- will not only call for greater mine safety, but also summon a spirit of American "family.''

"All the hard work. All the hardship,'' Obama plans to say, according to excerpts of his planned address today released by the White House.

"All the time spent underground. "It was all for their families,'' the president will say. "For a car in the driveway. For a roof overhead. For a chance to give their kids opportunities they never knew, and enjoy retirement with their wives. It was all in the hopes of something better. These miners lived - as they died - in pursuit of the American dream.''

In the days following the explosion a the Upper Big Branch mine. the president will say, "emaiils and letters poured into the White House. Postmarked from different places, they often begin the same way: "I am proud to be from a family of miners," "I am the son of a coal miner," "I am proud to be a coal miner's daughter." They ask me to keep our miners in my thoughts. Never forget, they say, miners keep America's lights on. Then, they make a simple plea: don't let this happen again.

"We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost,'' Obama plans tp say. "They are with the Lord now. Our task, here on Earth, is to save lives from being lost in another such tragedy. To do what must be done, individually and collectively, to assure safe conditions underground. To treat our miners the way they treat each other - like family. For we are all family. We are Americans.''

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama set out for a round of golf this morning at the Grove Park Inn in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, a top-rated course, one of the nation's best older courses, billed as a test of accuracy over power.

The president, spending a weekend's vacation at the Asheville, N.C., resort where 10 presidents before him have found rest, teed off at 7:30 am with a party of old friends from Chicago -- Marty Nesbitt and Eric Whitaker -- and White House Trip Director Marvin Nicholson. It was overcast, with thundershowers predicted in the mountains today.

The play itself was private, though several photographs were permitted.

Obama's predecessor, who once boasted of and demonstrated the power of his own golf swing during comments about combatting terrorism -- "now, watch this drive'' (video below) -- later gave up the game. President George W. Bush ultimately concluded that he didn't want the nation to see the Commander-in-Chief golfing while young men and women were dying at war.

Bush gave up golf in October of 2003, and running as well, thanks to nagging knees (he had been joggng around a golf course on Longboat Key, Florida, before dawn on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001; we were performing pool duty that day). Instead, he took up some of the most aggressive power mountain-biking in Washington. His bike rides were generally private, with few photo opportunities involved in those weekend jaunts.

Bush played 24 rounds of golf during his presidency, according to the count of Mark Knoller, the seasoned CBS News White House correspondent who is the expert on these matters. "In May 2008, Bush explained in an interview, that he quit golf out of respect for the families of Americans killed in the war in Iraq,'' Knoller reminds us today, citing an interview that Bush gave to Yahoo and Politico.com: ""I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf.''

Two presidential terms later, the wars go on, soldiers still are fighting and dyiing. And Obama has outplayed Bush on the golf course. Counting Obama's round on the links at the Grove Park Inn this morning, Knoller reports today, Obama has played 34 rounds of golf since taking office. Obama also plays basketball with good friends, also in private.

On Friday, when Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrived at the mountain resort, they went for a hike.in the mountains. The first couple chatted with a ranger at the top of the trail, the rainger handed the president a blue hat, and they posed for a photo.

An acquaintance of ours, a talented graphic artist in Florida named Logan Zawacki, has composed a composite photo of his own which he calls "President Bubama.''

"When I was creating the President Bubama series, I was focusing on the idea that despite all of Obama's guarantees for 'Change,' he is still carrying out some of the same policies as Bush,'' Zawacki explains. One of his photos is shown above, with permission of the artist, and more of his spirited work is on display at loganzawacki.com.

Golf, biking, basketball -- it's all sport, really.

As is political satire.

And the one thing that both of these presidents share -- along with their predecessors in moderntimes -- is an urgent need for occasional privacy, the comfort that comes with solitude, the camraderie that comes from playing with old friends, and the release found in one good, probably powerful and perhaps accurate swing.

by Mark Silva

The cable chatter has been ablaze today with a scandalous report of people at the Securities and Exchange Commission paying more attention to pornography than the financial industry.

Yet there's nothing new about a problem that the SEC's own inspector general exposed some time ago -- and which has been reported on widely in the past.

What's new is the SEC's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, at a time when the Obama administration is trying to gain new regulatory power over the financial industry -- and a certain publicity-seeking Republican has been peddling the porn story pretty hard.

So notes ProPublica, which points to its own reporting -- in 2008 -- on the SEC's porn problem . Someone was doing a lot more than looking at the time -- the IG had found an employee running a porn-operation with the agency's computers.

"So yes, it's true that while the nation's financial system teetered near collapse, senior staffers at a major financial regulatory agency spent hours surfing pornographic websites on the taxpayers' dime,'' ProPublica's Marian Wang reports today. "And it's true that the agency's watchdog found 31 serious offenders in the past two and a half years, 17 of whom were senior officials [5] whose salaries ranged from $100,000 to $222,000...

"The results of those investigations were routinely reported to Congress, and they've been publicly available all this time on the inspector general's website.''

SEC spokesman John Nester said in a statement today that each of the offending employees has been disciplined or is in the process of being disciplined, and some have already been suspended or dismissed. "We will not tolerate the transgressions of the very few who bring discredit to their thousands of hardworking colleagues," said Nester, adding the agency has lately increased penalties.

by Mark Silva

A naturalization ceremony is a sight to behold - we have seen President George W. Bush oversee one at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall in Washington, and today we saw President Barack Obama oversee one on the sun-splashed South Lawn at the White House.

But there was a certain poignancy to today's ceremony.

The newest Americans - 24 of them from 16 other nations - already are members of the U.S. Armed Services. In other words, they have been serving their adopted nation in uniform. People from Brazil to China, Mexico to Kenya, Peru to the Philippines, Poland to Trinidad and Tobago.

And for Obama, there was a certain timing to this event as well.

The president is attempting to renew the debate over immigration reform in Congress, with a goal of not only strengthening the borders, but also addressing the fate of the many millions of immigrants who already have arrived in the U.S. illegally.

"Surely we can all agree that when 11 million people are living here illegally, that's unacceptable,'' Obama said at the naturalization ceremony today. "The American people deserve a solution.''

He denounced as "misguided'' efforts around the nation to crack down on illegal immigrants -- pointing to Arizona, where protests and counter-protests are mounting amid local crackdowns and new state legislation allowing police to check the documents of people suspected of being illegal immigrants.

"If we continue to fail to act at a federal level, we will continue to see misguided efforts opening up around the country,'' the president said. "That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona.''' Efforts there, he said, "threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.''

The president said he had instructed his administration "to closely monitor the situation'' in Arizona and "examine the civil rights and other implications'' of the Arizona legislation. It points to the need for federal legislation, the president said.

"But if we continue to fail to act at a federal level, we will continue to see misguided efforts opening up around the country,'' Obama said.

Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary from Arizona, swore in the newest American citizens on the South Lawn. "It takes a very special individual to serve and defend a nation that is not yet fully your own,'' Napolitano told them. "Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. ... has naturalized over 58,000 members of our Armed Services.''

Obama opened by thanking Napolitano for her efforts in eeking "comprehensive immigration reform.'' As commander-in-chief, he said, he was honored to welcome the new citizens to the White House.

"Some of you came to America as children... some of you came as adults,'' he said. All of them, he said, embody the dream that many immigrants before them have sought. "We celebrate the spirit of possibility,'' Obama said. "If you believe in yourself and you play by the rules, then there is a place for you in the United States of America... We celebrate the true meaning of patriotism.''

Today, he said, "we celebrate the very essence of the country we love... an America where so many of our forbearers came from someplace else... ''

"We are also reminded of how we must remain both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws,'' he said. "This means fixing our broken immigration laws.''

(President Barack Obama is pictured above at a ceremony for a military naturalization oath in the Rose Garden of the White House Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images.)

by Mark Silva and updated at noon

President Barack Obama and his family headed out today for a weekend vacation in the mountains of North Carolina, swinging some golf clubs in a state which narrowly swung the Democrats' way in 2008 and helped elect the president.

Stormy weather could put a damper on the weekend, however.

The last time the president stopped in the Blue Ridge Mountain resort of Asheville, N.C., in October of 2008, he was preparing for the final debate and closing month of his campaign. The last time, he lamented passing up the golf course there.

"What a spectacular place," Obama said during that campaign stop in Asheville. "The only thing I don't like about it is that I had to drive by the golf course, and it looks really nice. And my staff won't let me play. I'm going to have to come back."

This time, the historic Grove Park Inn will provide some down-time -- and presumably tee times, although no public schedule has been released -- for the first family. The golf course at the inn has been rated by Golf Digest as one of the top 10 courses 100 years old or older, and the best in North Carolina.

The inn says the 6,720-yard, par 70 course ibeneath the crest of Sunset Mountain is a "shot-maker's course,'' where accuracy plays a stronger hand than power.

Forecast thundershowers Saturday and Sunday could get in the way of the first golfer's plans. The Obamas took off at noontime today using a smaller-scale Air Force One because of the limited landing field at Asheville, where they plan to meet up with their friends from Chicago, the Whittakers and Nesbitts.

It won't be a long break.

The president will travel Sunday to Beckley, W. Va., for a memorial service for the 29 miners killed in the Big Upper Branch Mine, the worst U.S. mine disaster in 40 years.

If Obama has a certain fondness for North Carolna, it's understandable: The state hadn't voted for a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter, in 1976. Obama only narrowly defeated Republican John McCain there, but that was a significant victory in a state that had given former President George W. Bush a comfortable margin of support.

Asheville, Pop. 73,000, is known for the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore Estate, art galleries and restaurants. The Grove Park Inn claims that 10 previous presidents have vacationed there. This weekend, the inn notes, it will be operating at a "heightened state of security,'' with searches of everyone entering -- they apologize for the inconvenience. But then, the guests will get to see a first family on spring break.

by Mark Silva

Does First Lady Michelle Obama like living in the White House?

One of the children of staffers who brought their children to work today, on bring the children to work day, wanted to know.

"Yes, it's fun living in the White House,'' she said.

At which point, the first dog barked.

"Bo likes it, too.,'' the first lady said. "Bo likes living in the White House, too.''

How does it feel being the First Lady?

"I think it feels like being me, you know? You don't change as a person just because you have a different job, you know? ''

What are you doing for Earth Day?

"I think we're having a reception this evening,'' she replied. "Sometimes it's hard for me to keep up with all the things that we're doing. There's a reception here this evening for Earth Day. And Sasha brought home some energy-efficient bulbs that we have to put in the house. So we're going to do some bulb replacement. ''

Do you miss Chicago?

"Yeah, there are some things that I miss about Chicago,'' she said. "But I think the things that I miss about Chicago are the things that I would miss anywhere.

"And one of the things that the president and I can't do is sort of just walk down the street by ourselves, you know? We can't just leave the house and walk by ourselves because we always have security and we have to make sure that we got a lot of people with us. And I think that the thing I miss in Chicago is like being able to walk out of my house and go down on the lake and ride my bike -- but I can't do that here, either.''

As many questions as she faced in this session, she was interrupted often by the barking Bo, the Portuguese water dog who was a gift to the Obamas from the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts -- a pooch who has celebrated his first year at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and will turn two in October.

"I'll let him get his energy out with you guys,'' the first lady said of the first dog, leading to some play time. "All right, he's in play mode. So we're going to -- I'm going to take him out, and then we're going to -- I'm going to let him come back in.''

by Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook, updated at 1:50 pm EDT

NEW YORK -- President Barack Obama made a case for tougher regulation of the nation's large banks today while dismissing Republican charges that he is creating conditions for unending taxpayer bailouts.

In remarks released by the White House before the president's speech at Cooper Union, Obama tied the nation's severe recession and job losses to loose oversight of Wall Street.

"It is essential that we learn the lessons from this crisis so we don't doom ourselves to repeat it,'' Obama said. "And make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if we allow this moment to pass -- and that's an outcome that is unacceptable to me and it's unacceptable to you, the American people.

``That's really what this debate is about: It's about proving to my constituents and to the rest of the country that we actually do what we say we're going to do around here,'' McConnell said, ``because if you haven't notices, there's a serious trust deficit out there.''

Obama spoke as the Senate moved closer to passing a bill meant to subject financial firms to tighter scrutiny and empower regulators to seize control of struggling financial institutions whose failure would jeopardize the economy.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats and Republicans said they are near agreement on enough elements of the legislation that they could bring the bill to the floor next week. Whether or not a compromise is struck, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) expected to force a test vote as soon as Monday.

Even as bipartisan talks progressed behind the scenes, rhetorical jockeying continued among party leaders. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said his criticisms have been intended to point to loopholes in the Democratic leadership's bill that undercut their claim to be ending government bailouts of institutions considered too big to fail.

``That's really what this debate is about: It's about proving to my constituents and to the rest of the country that we actually do what we say we're going to do around here,'' McConnell said, ``because if you haven't noticed, there's a serious trust deficit out there.''

Following the completion of a healthcare overhaul, financial regulation has emerged as Obama's top domestic goal.

Obama chose for the location the same Cooper Union campus where, as a presidential candidate in March 2008, he condemned risky financial practices and a government mentality that was "scornful ... toward oversight and enforcement.''

Obama spoke to an audience of about 700. Guests included New York Gov. David Paterson, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman.

Obama singled out Volcker in his speech - "the tall guy sitting in the front row" -- and voiced support for a provision in the bill known as the "Volcker Rule,'' aimed at limiting the size of banks and the kinds of risks they can take.

"This will not only safeguard our system against crises, this will also make our system stronger and more competitive by instilling confidence here at home and across the globe,'' the president said.

Obama addressed the audience as if it were stocked with Wall Street executives and lobbyists. But he was appearing before a friendly crowd. When he mentioned Wall Street at one point, some in the audience booed.

by Mark Silva

Now that the $100 bill is getting a facelift to make it more impervious to counterfeiters, the future of the $50 note comes around again.

The bill bearing the visage of Ulysses S. Grant already has gotten its official security-minded overhaul -- all but the $1 bill are going through the security wash -- but there is that Republican lawmaker from North Carolina who wants to replace Grant with another former president on the $50: Ronald Reagan.

The idea is overhwhelmingly unpopular.

Most Americans surveyed by the Marist Poll -- 79 percent-- call the change a bad idea. Only 12 percent say, go for the Gipper. Nine percent are unsure.

What's interesting is that this question has managed to bridge that yawning partisan divide the characterizes so money polls. For all Reagan's standing as the embodiment of modern Republican ideals, 71 percent of the Republicans surveyed call the congressman's idea of replacing Grant with Reagan a bad idea. Eighty-three percent of Democrats agree, and so do 79 percent of independents.

Sorry, congressman, that settles it.

The Marist survey of 956 Americans was conducted on March 25, 26 and 29 and carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

by Mark Silva and updated

The White House, pressing today for "Wall Street reform,'' says it is attempting to corral "the excessive risks'' of a very few banks that contributed to an economic collapse in the fall of 2008 from which the nation still is recovering.

"What we're trying to do right now is look at the excessive risks that were taken by a very few number of banks, and that's what we believed led to the financial meltdown,'' said Valerie Jarrett, one of President Barack Obama's most senior and closest advisers, appearing this morning on FOX & Friends.

Yet, as Obama prepares to deliver a speech about reform today, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said en route to New York: "This was never scheduled for or intended to be a speech for five or six 6 CEOs. There are messages in there for Wall Street, there are messages in there for Main Street."

The president and senior advisers boarded Air Force One this morning, bound for New York, where Obama will dellver a speech on financial regulation at Cooper Union -- the site of his campaign address on the subject in September of 2007. Jarrett was among the traveling party for a speech set for just before noon EDT today.

"He is going to reach out and ask those on Wall Street to join with us on our effort for financial reform,'' Jarrett said, suggesting that, while Congress is now getting to the details of financial regulation -- with Republican leaders in the Senate balking at the plan that Democratic leaders want to take to the floor -- Obama has been working on the problem for some time now.

"The president called for reform back in 2007,'' Jarrett said on FOX, before leaving for New York. "We have been working with Congress ever since.''

In addition, the White House was not involved in the decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission to sue one of those investment banks, Goldman Sachs, for alleged mishandling of one of those riskier investments. "We don't have anything to do with an independent authority that makes a decision that was made by the SEC."

As time has passed, Jarrett suggested, the nature of the bigger problem on Wall Street has grown clearer. "Now, with the rear-view mirror, we're able to point most specifically to what happened,'' she said today.

The immediate problem, she said, is political resistance to reform.

"There is a lot of money being spent on lobbyists here in Washington fighting against financial reform,'' she said. "And the case the pPresident will make is: Look, join with us. Many of them have admitted that excesses were taken, and we want to work with them to push through financial reform. Right now, every day that goes by, where we don't have the rules of the road in place, we run the risk of repeating the excesses that have resulted in the worst financial nightmare since the Great Depression."

by Jim Tankersley

When millions of environmental activists gathered on college campuses and in major cities 40 years ago for the first Earth Day, the rallies, teach-ins and organizing helped galvanize action on a historic scale -- including passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

But even the most optimistic organizers of today's anniversary celebrations in Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities -- and the major rally scheduled in Washington on Sunday -- might concede that there's little immediate prospect of matching such watershed achievements.

The political climate has changed, with a battered economy making it harder to build support for policies that could raise prices, cost jobs or slow growth. Today's issues -- global warming, ocean pollution, carbon-based energy systems -- are more abstruse and remote. And environmentalists' opponents are far better organized than in the past.

In 1970, says Denis Hayes, who left graduate school to coordinate the first Earth Day and who is now engaged in planning the event's 40th anniversary celebration, many business leaders and others who squared off against environmentalists "were caught a little off guard."

Now, with the focus shifting to global warming, the opposing sides are so evenly matched that it's unclear whether climate legislation has a realistic chance of passing Congress, even with President Obama's support.

This week, Hayes answered questions about the Earth Day movement over the last four decades, as well as what he hopes will be its legacy: action on climate change, which he calls "the most important issue facing humanity."

See the Earth Day questions, and the answers, from the Tribune Washington Bureau, today in Tribune newspapers and here in the Swamp:

by Mark Silva

George W. Bush is to blame.

That's what three-quarters of all Americans surveyed about the state of the economy today say.

Only one in two blame President Barack Obama - though his ownership of the nation's economic troubles appears to be growing: The 50 percent who say they blame Obama, a few months into his second year as president, is up from 32 percent last year.

Like everything else, the Gallup Poll's measure of blame for the nation's current economic problems depends on who's talking: 90 percent of Democrats blame Bush, 76 percent of Republicans blame Obama for the effects of a recession that officially started in December 2007 and which may not be officially finished, despite two reported periods of economic growth.

"Obama's current job approval rating -- recently bobbing just below 50 percent, and low by historical standards -- may partly reflect Americans' general economic discontent,'' Gallup's Lydia Saad reports. " Indeed, against the backdrop of broadly low economic confidence, Obama's approval rating on the economy is now 37 percent, with 61 percent disapproving. The "blame" data suggest that these job ratings could be even lower were Obama more widely perceived as directly responsible for the economy's problems....'

"Theoretically, Obama accumulates more responsibility for the nation's economy every day he's in office,'' Saad writes. "That could bear down increasingly hard on his approval rating if unemployment continues to hold at or near 10 percent and consumer attitudes remain negative. However, the big upside is that should the economy rebound on his watch -- and recent Gallup tracking has some signs of a "nascent" recovery -- Obama is poised to receive much of the credit.''

The survey of 1,033 adults was conducted March 26-28 and carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

by Michael Muskal

President Barack Obama said today that the Securities Exchange Commission never discussed civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs with the White House before they were publicly announced.

In an interview with CNBC, Obama was adamant that no conversations had taken place, trying to lay to rest efforts to raise another issue among critics in his administration's drive to toughen Wall Street rules.

"They've never discussed with us anything with respect to the charges that will be brought," Obama said in the televised interview.

The SEC has accused Goldman Sachs of fraud by creating an investment vehicle that included mortgages expected to fail. A hedge fund, which the SEC says was involved in picking the mortgages, made $1 billion betting against the investment vehicle which Goldman sold to clients who lost the same amount.

Democrats have seized on the Goldman case as an example of the type of Wall Street excess that their financial overhaul bill is designed to prevent. That bill is being negotiated by Democrats seeking Republican help to bring it to the Senate floor, possibly by next week.

Republicans have tried to link Obama to Goldman, citing campaign contributions to the president from members of the firm and the recent appointment of former White House counsel Gregory Craig as an advisor to the firm on the SEC charges.

In the CNBC interview, Obama was asked directly about the $1 million in campaign contributions from Goldman and the naming of Craig. The president insisted that neither would have any impact on his efforts to push for an overhaul of financial regulations.

"First of all, I got a lot of money from a lot of people," Obama said, "the vast majority of the money was from small donors all across the country.

"Anybody who gave me money during the course of my campaign knew that I was on record -- again in 2007 and 2008 -- pushing very strongly that we needed to reform how Wall Street did business. Nobody should be surprised in the position that I am taking now," he said.

Obama defended his former counsel and denied that Craig would have any influence with the White House on the probe. "He is one of the top lawyers in the country," Obama said, citing what he called the toughest ethics rules on how former employees can act.

"He cannot lobby the White House," Obama said. "Once he left, he cannot in any way use his former position to have any influence on us."

by Christi Parsons

President Barack Obama is casting a wide net in his search for a new Supreme Court nominee, with the White House adding a federal judge from Chicago to its working list and soliciting suggestions from lawmakers in a closed-door session today.

Judge Ann Claire Williams, who became the first African-American appellate judge in the federal Seventh Circuit, has joined a working list of about 10 other candidates, the White House confirmed today.

The president said today that he will announce a nominee soon. But aides say that Obama - who was a constitutional law lecturer in Chicago - is nowhere near winnowing his list of candidates. Senior administration officials call it a luxury of time that Obama can look off the beaten path for candidates.

Noting that his nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor was sent to the Senate in May of last year, the president said after a meeting with Senate leaders in the Oval office today: "We are certainly going to meet that deadline, and we hope maybe we can accelerate it a little bit so that we have some additional time'' for confirmation hearings before the start of the court's next term.

Obama wants to look outside the traditional judicial monastery for candidates, and also outside of law school classrooms, his press secretary said today. In a bipartisan meeting with Senate leaders and Judiciary Committee members today, Obama told the lawmakers that they should "feel free to submit" the names of judges who want considered, according to one administration official.

Even so, the president and the lawmakers did not discuss any potential nominees by name.

There's no rush to do so, Obama's advisors believe. They say the president is well ahead of schedule, compared with how his successful nomination of Sotomayor for the high court unfolded last year.

President Ronald Reagan first appointed Williams to the federal bench in 1985, making her the first African-American woman to serve as a district judge in the Seventh Circuit.

She was elevated to the appellate court under President Clinton, becoming the first black judge to serve on that court and the third African-American woman appointed to any federal appellate court in the nation.

Prior to joining the bench, Williams was an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Before attending law school, according to her resume, she taught third grade in the Detroit public schools.

A fellow judge on Chicago's federal appeals court, Diane Wood, is among the candidates for the Supreme Court whom the president is considering. So are Elena Kagan, the solictor general, and Washington, D.C.-based appellate judge Merrick Garland. The president also is said to be considering others who are not judges.

by Mark Silva

A $100 bill saved is a $100 bill earned.

But every bill is ready for a makeover once in a while.

Benjamin Franklin hasn't lost his seat on the C-note. But, in the age of higher-tech currency, a disappearing Liberty Bell in an inkwell and a bright blue security ribbon of thousands of tiny lenses that magnify objects in mysterious ways have joined him. This bill is a show in itself, with images moving as the note moves.

You will have until Feb. 10 to spend your existing pile of 100's -- though they will still work. That's when the new $100 bill, the last of the nation's paper currency in general circulation to undergo an overhaul, will make its debut.

"We estimate that as many as two-thirds of all $100 notes circulate outside the United States," says Federal Reserve Chairman BenBernanke, whonotes that the $6.5 billion in $100 bills already in circulation will remain legal tender.

The changes are aimed at thwarting counterfeiters -- the $100 bill being the most frequent target of counterfeiters operating outside of the United States. The $20 bill is the choice target at home. It, too, has been redesigned.

All but the dollar bill have been remodeled.

Apparently counterfeiters don't spend much time on the buck.

The Associated Press contributed to this report, really.

by Mark Silva and updated

President Barack Obama said today that he will recommend an appointee for the Supreme Court soon.

Obama, weighing a field of as many as 10 potential candidates -- with most observers believing the real search is focusing on only a few -- has a number of women in his sights: Including Elena Kagan, the solicitor general, and Diane Wood, a federal judge in Chicago.

The president has started personally telephoning some of the candidates.

"Last time the nomination went up at the end of May,'' Obama said of his nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year. "We are certainly going to meet that deadline and we hope maybe we can accelerate it a little bit so that we have some additional time.''

The president -- fielding one question from reporters after a meeting with Senate leaders at the White House this morning -- was asked about the issue of abortion rights.

"I don't have litmus tests around any of these issues,'' Obama replied. "But I want somebody who will be interrpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women's rights... Part of what our core Constitution -- constitutional values -- promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that.''

The president met today with leaders of both parties -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- as well as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, and ranking Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions.

"I'm confident that we can come up with a nominee who will gain the confidence of the Senate and the confidence of the country, and the confidence of individuals who look to the court to provide evenhanded justice to all Americans,'' Obama said after their meeting in the Oval Office.

by Mark Silva

Charlie Crist, governor of Florida, has quite a problem on his hands.

Our friend Peter Brown, who has spent some time in the journalistic trenches of Florida politics and serves now as an online columnist for the Wall Street Journal and associate director of The Quinnipiac University Poll, sums up the tale of "Chain Gang Charlie's'' rise to power and sudden collapse of his own party's base well today.

The success or failure of the Republican's potential next move -- abandoning his party to seek election to the Senate as an independent -- could be among the biggest political stories of the year. Brown, writing for the Journal's Capitol Journal blog, starts out this way:

"No matter how the strange tale of Charlie Crist turns out, his rise and what now appears to be his fall from grace offer some overarching lessons for those aspiring to political office.

"Politicians need to know who they are, what they are for and what they are against. In this age when the public assumes politicians will say or do almost anything to win election, consistency matters.

"Most of all, they must understand which voters they need to win election and which voters aren't needed. And, it helps to understand the rules of the game.

"Florida Gov. Crist, who has enjoyed a 70%- plus job approval rating for much of his term in Tallahassee, made the potentially politically fatal mistake of forgetting those rules. He forgot that an ignored base is a vengeful base.

"In the next 10 days, Mr. Crist must decide whether to make an independent run for the state's open U.S. Senate seat. Last June, he led former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio 54%-23% in the race for the Republican nomination and now trails 56%-33%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll earlier this month.

"He has all but said he will not stay in the primary race, which not even he thinks he can win. The only other alternative to an independent candidacy is not running for anything at all, and that seems unlikely for a man whose picture could be in the dictionary across the from the listing "career politicians."

"It is certainly possible Mr. Crist could win a three-way race in November against Mr. Rubio and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek; a Quinnipiac poll this month showed he was narrowly ahead. But the obstacles in running as an independent are more than considerable. It is not clear where Mr. Crist would get money and an organization.

"Despite the poll, many see the three-way as an uphill climb that could end Mr. Crist's political career.''

See the rest of the story at Capitol Journal.

by Mark Silva

If the world is flat, President Barack Obama's chances as a world leader would have been even flatter had his healthcare legislation failed.

Yet in the shifting stage known as the global economy, a successful American leader is not enough to offset the economic competition of nations such as China.

So say the repeat Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, who calls the passage of healthcare reform, for President Barack Obama, "the biggest foreign policy achievement, so far, of this administration,'' and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, one of Obama's political mentors.

"Mostly in the negative,'' Friedman said today of his assessment of the healthcare fight and Obama's standing as president. "Had it not passed,'' Friedman said on MSNBC's Morning Joe, "I think the entire Obama agenda would have stalled... He would have been perceived as a lame duck president in his first year...

"And in a world where people are measuring you all the time, particularly our enemies -- 'What we can get away with' -- I think there would have been a perception that, 'we can push this guy''' Friedman said. "I don't think passage somehow was a power surge... but failure would have had implications.''

Friedman and Durbin also addressed the challenge that China poses in its ambitious drive toward world economic dominance -- "it is not a shooting star,'' Friedman noted.

"I think we've got to acknowledge the problem,'' said Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat and senior senator from Illinois, joining Friedman on the show. Durbin, citing a recent trip to Ethiopia, where the president thanked him for U.S. aid that has saved people's lives, said that all the real investment in the nation is coming from China.

"We start with the premise, governments cannot pick winners and losers in a market economy,'' Durbin said. "What they're doing is creating a global economic plan to become a global economic force, and we're sitting back and saying it will evolve.''

Half of the world's steel is made in China, Durbin said. "You think to yourself, 'When did that happen?.... I didn't see the press release.''

by Mark Silva

As President Barack Obama sets out to nominate his second member of the Supreme Court, he will meet today with leaders of both parties in the Senate who will be instrumental in confirming -- or resisting -- that recommendation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will join Obama at the White House today to discuss his appointment of a successor for the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. So will Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judicary Committee, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the committee.

It's hard to imagine that they won't also talk about what the White House wants to call "Wall Street reform,'' with the president bound for New York on Thursday to deliver an address about the new regulatory powers he is seeking and the Senate's Republicans locked down against taking the bill to the floor this week.

Obama, who campaigned with pledges to bridge the partisan divide in Washington, finds his own influence diminished at a time of ebbing public confidence in the job that he is doing as president. His winning of healthcare legislation hasn't immediately boosted that confidence. Now, he has turned to aggressive fundraising for his own party to raise the money needed to fight a Republican tide in the 2010 midterm elections.

Most voters -- 55 percent -- say they disapprove of Obama's handling of both healthcare and the economy, with just 40 percent approving, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of 1,930 registered voters surveyed April 14-19. The poll released today has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

And by a margin of just 46-43 percent, those surveyed say they trust Obama more than they trust Republicans in the Senate to make the right decision about who should be seated on the Supreme Court. There's not a lot of room for a partisan fight on this selection, the second after Obama's appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Obama's own approval rating slipped to its lowest level in this poll, with 44 percent voicing approval for the job Obama is peforming as president --and 46 percent voicing disapproval. The highest approval rating that Quinnipiac had found for Obama was 59 percent last year.

The healthcare bill, holding the approval of fewer than four in 10 of those surveyed, "remains decidedly unpopular," Quinnipiac's Peter Brown says in a statement. "The White House had predicted passage of the health-care overhaul would boost his fortunes, but that has not been the case."

About 15 percent of voters surveyed in this poll consider themselves part of the TEA Party movement. Among them, only one in 10 approve of Obama's performance.

Wire servces contributed to this report.

by Mark Silva

Rahm Emanuel's dream of being the mayor of Chicago is "just an ambition,'' the White House suggests, and not necessarily a sign that the chief of staff is leaving soon.

"Rahm very much enjoys the work that he does as chief of staff,'' Bill Burton, a White House spokesman, said aboard Air Force One en route home from California today.

The question involved Emanuel's comment on The Charlie Rose Show last night that he would like to run for mayor of Chicago -- but certainly will not so long as Mayor Richard Daley seeks reelection. The mayor, set to be Chicago's longest-seated, is up next year.

"He was talking about a scenario where if Mayor Daley doesn't run for reelection, but we all know that Mayor Daley is running for reelection,'' Burton said aboard the presidential aircraft on the way home from fundraisers for the Democratic Party in Los Angeles.

"It's something that many kids in Chicago dream of growing up to be a mayor, so it's one of the great jobs in American politics.'' Burton noted. "But it's just an ambition -- when I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. (Press Secretary Robert) Gibbs probably wants to ride in the Tour de France. That doesn't mean we're all leaving the White House to go and do...''

Does President Barack Obama think that the former congressman from Chicago would be a good mayor for the president's hometown?

"II think the president thinks that Rahm Emanuel is a great chief of staff and enjoys having him in that job right now,'' Burton said, allowing: "Maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word.''

by Mark Silva

The turning points in American history "remind us that our American story has never been inevitable,'' President Barack Obama suggests.

He says so in the introduction to a 12-hour television series starting Sunday on HISTORY channel, America, The Story of Us.

The president's remarks open the premier episode at 9 pm EDT.

The nation's history "was made possible by ordinary people who kept their moral compass pointed straight and true when the way seemed treacherous, when the climb seemed steep and when the future seemed uncertain,'' Obama says in the opener. "People who recognized a fundamental part of our American character: that we can remake ourselves - and our nation - to fit our larger dreams."

(See a clip here:) Obama_Story_of Us__Web.mp4

As Nancy Dubuc, president and general manager of HISTORY, notes, Obama's "own path marks an important chapter in our nation's ongoing story.''

The series represents the largest programming event that the network has undertaken, it says, billing the series as a "story of how America was invented, looking at the moments where Americans harnessed technology to advance human progress-- from the rigors of linking the continent by transcontinental railroad, the internet of its day, to triumphing over vertical space through construction of steel structured buildings.

"The series is also a story of conflict - with Native American peoples, slavery, the revolutionary war that birthed the nation, the Civil War that divided it and the great world war that shaped its future,'' the network notes of a series opening with the first African American president, a politician whose wife traces her ancestry to Southern slaves.

The series was produced by Nutopia, a production company started by Jane Root, former president of Discovery Channel.

by Mark Silva and updated

On this 20th of April, which some appear to revere as a certain significant date relating to the consumption of marijuana, a friend has passed along one of those Top 50 lists:

The nation's "highest cities.''

We weren't surprised to see Eureka, Calif., at the top of The Daily Beast's list. "Pot is big business in Humboldt County,'' The Beast explains. "Recently, Eureka police entered a family's home and found 12-1/2 pounds of marijuana and eight pounds of hashish. ''

But Tallahassee?

No. 2?

The explanation seems to have something to do with the "Psychedelic funk master George Clinton,'' an aging Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (pictured here) who lives in Florida's forested capital, our beloved old home town. The Beast says one in 10 of all Tallahasseeans are regular marijuana users. The Beast should see the drive-through at Mike's Beer Barn on a game day.

It appears that The Big Apple stands right behind Tallahassee: "New York is the marijuana arrest capital of the world, with more than 400,000 arrests on minor possession charges from 1997 to 2007,'' The Beast explains of Manhattan's ranking.

Boston and San Francisco round out the Top Five -- which seems fitting, because apparently this whole "4-20" thing is traceable to The Grateful Dead, half of whom are, what, not stoned, but dead or gone.

As far as the rest of the nation is concerned, however, a slight majority of Americans surveyed still oppose the legalization of marijuana: 44 percent of Americans support the idea of making marijuana use legal, 51 percent oppose it, according to a CBS News poll conducted March 29 - April 1.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama will be talking to Wall Street this week, with a planned address on financial regulation at Cooper Union on Thursday.

And he will return to "Main Street'' next week, with a tour of Iowa, Missouri and Illinois on April 27 and 28.

The president plans meetings with workers, farmers, small business owners and local leaders on the questiong of "continuing to grow the economy,'' the White House says. He will be focusing on "the challenges rural Americans face,''' the White House says, and will "listen to their ideas for working together to turn the economy around.''

Details to follow, as they say.

The president started this "White House to Main Street Tour in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania in December and has traveled to Lorain County, Ohio and Savannah, Ga., "in an effort to spend some time outside of Washington and talk to American families about what they are experiencing during these tough economic times.''

by David G. Savage

The Supreme Court struck down on free-speech grounds tiday a federal law that makes it a crime to sell videos or photos of animals being illegally killed or tortured.

In a 8-1 ruling, the justices overturned the conviction of a Virginia man who sold dog-fighting videos.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., speaking for the court, said the First Amendment does not allow the government to criminalize whole categories of speech and expression that are deemed undesirable.

Roberts also said the law was too broad and could allow prosecutions for selling photos of out-of-season hunting, for example.

Only Justice Samuel Alito dissented.

Congress passed the law a decade ago to halt the practice of selling videos that depicted tiny animals being crushed to death. It had been rarely used, however, and came under challenge when prosecutors used it against the dog-fighting industry.

This is the high court's second controversial free-speech ruling this year. In January, the court struck down the laws that prohibited corporations from spending money on election races.

by Michael Muskal

Senate leaders today began sparring over the financial reform bill, setting the tone for what is expected to be weeks of debate on the lawmakers' next pitched battle.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, urged Republicans to allow the financial reform bill to come to the Senate floor, where both parties can offer amendments. He spoke after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, said he was pleased that bipartisan talks have resumed over some of the bill's contested provisions.

The leaders' exchange was indicative of the political problems surrounding the bill.

Democrats need at least one Republican vote to bring the bill to the floor and to ensure that a GOP filibuster can be broken. In this midterm election year, neither party wants to be on the wrong side of a populist issue which provides more fuel for some sort of bipartisan approach.

Speaking at the start of the morning Senate sessions, Reid urged Republicans to return to the days when legislation was debated on the floor and whoever had the most votes would carry the issue. Then, in a plea for any Republican to split off and help bring the bill to the floor, Reid insisted that Democrats were open to change.

"The bill we'll bring to the floor is the result of months of bipartisan meetings, investigations, negotiations and consensus. But our Republican colleagues insist on pretending this is a partisan effort," Reid said.

"We need to make everyone understand that this is not a final product," Reid said. "Let's bring this matter to the floor and offer amendments, the way it used to be. Whoever gets the most votes wins."

by Mark Silva

What's in a name?

About 14 points, when it comes to the question of regulating the financial markets that collapsed so spectacularly.

Americans, when asked if they favor new regulation over banks and financial institutions, are divided on the question -- 46 to 43 percent in favor of it, within the margin of error in the Gallup Poll.

Asked about regulating Wall Street, the scale tips: 50 to 36.

As the Senate fights over whether to take the Democratic leadership's financial regulations to a floor debate, they may consider the semantics of the debate. The White House already is calling it "Wall Street reform'' -- the billng for the president's planned address at the Cooper Union in New York on Thursday.

Maybe if they had called that other bill wealth care....

by Mark Silva

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and former congressman from Chicago, has made it clear to friends that he'd like to run for mayor of Chicago. But tonight, he made it really clear, publicly, that when Mayor Richard Daley is finished, he'd like that chance.

"I hope Mayor Daley seeks reelection,'' Emanuel said in an interview with Charlie Rose airing tonight on PBS and which will air Tuesday on Bloomberg TV. " I will work and support him if he seeks reelection. But if Mayor Daley doesn't, one day I would like to run for mayor of the City of Chicago. That's always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives.''

"Mayor of Chicago," Rose replied.

"Yeah, fact I said the one thing if you ask me what I miss, I miss the contact with constituents,'' Emannuel said of his current job as chief adviser to President Barack Obama. "You know, I miss being in the -- when you were running the office, that touch with people.... I miss that...

"I mean, I love what I'm doing,'' Emanuel said. "I find great passion in it because I work for a great president with a breadth of issues that has -- if you're in public policy at a period of time in history that's important, one day I'll go back to elected office and say I've enjoyed it, I enjoyed that process....

"Right now, I'm a chief of staff -- I'm in the Cabinet, president put the chief of staff in the Cabinet, but one day I want to run again for office,'' Emanuel said. "Again, I want to repeat, because the ,ayor's a dear friend of mine, and I support him, I hope he seeks reelection as you know.... but if he doesn't at some point, that will be something I'll do.''

There was a time, when Emanuel was a member of Congress and chairman of his party's election campaigns -- indeed the architect of the 2006 midterm electons in which the Democrats gave the Republicans a "thumpin''' in the House races -- that the congressman wanted to be speaker of the House. No more.

In a recent report by Christi Parsons and Peter Nicholas of the Tribune Washington Bureau, Emanuel said that his "intention is to stay next year'' as chief of staff. But any idea of returning to the House and becoming speaker is "done.''

"I left Congress," he said in that interview with the Tribune bureau. "Things happen; there'll be new classes. . . . You move on to other aspirations."

"Friends believe he is most interested in running for mayor of Chicago, though none seem to think he would ever consider running against the incumbent.,'' Parsons and Nicholas reported. "Daley's running," Emanuel recently told one friend, "so I'm not."

Here, courtesy of The Charlie Rose Show, is a transcript of the interview with the White House Chief of Staff airing tonight on PBS and which will air Tuesday on Bloomberg TV.

by Tom Hamburger

Presiident Barack Obama has taken off today for California, where he is expected to raise nearly $3.5 million this evening at events honoring California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is looking at a tough re-election battle this year.

The Los Angeles events are the latest in a rapidly accelerating fundraising schedule for the president, who is attending such affairs at a pace that has already exceeded that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was criticized by Democrats for the amount of time he spent on campaign fundraising.

Air Force One rolled out of Andrews Air Force Base this afternoon and is expect to touch down at Los Angeles International Airport late afternoon. Obama will be whisked to Exposition Park, where he will speak at receptions at the California Science Center - and then to a high-price dinner at the Museum of Natural History. The president will not have any public official business in Los Angeles.

Obama has been traveling lately to help vulnerable Democrats. He spoke recently at an event on behalf of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in Boston; he raised money for Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and now for Boxer.

At the Science Center, donors will pay between $100 and $2,400 to attend one of two receptions at which Obama will speak. The low ticket prices are available to young party activists who participate in a program called Gen44, which targets college students and young professionals. Others must purchase a reception ticket for $2,400, which will be divided between Boxer's reelection committee and the Democratic National Committee.

Those who can afford it will have dinner with the president at the Natural History Museum, where tickets are priced at $35,200 per couple, with $4,800 going to Boxer's campaign fund and the rest to the DNC.

All the events have sold out, which is good news to the dinner co-chairs. One of them, John Emerson, a former staffer in the Clinton White House who is now a Los Angeles business executive, said tickets began moving at a fast clip after the passage of health insurance legislation.

"The success of this event is in large part due to the success the president has been having in recent weeks -- health care, the nuclear summit, revamping student loans. He is on a roll and people are excited," Emerson said.

While Boxer is close to her leading GOP opponents in public opinion polls, she has surpassed them in fundraising. Boxer reported raising $2.4 million during the first three months of the year. She now has $8.7 million on hand, according to Federal Election Commission records. Her closest rival in fundraising, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, took in just $1.7 million in the first quarter, with $2.8 million cash on hand.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama, engaged in a fight for financial regulatory reform embodying many of the dynamics of the healthcare debate, will return to New York City's Cooper Union this week for another address on "Wall Street reform.''

This is the place where candidate Obama rolled out a regulatory reform platform in his campaign for president, in March of 2008.

''Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices,'' Obama said at that Cooper Union appearance in early 2008 (a speech pictured here). "The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady sustainable growth, a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street but ends up hurting both.''

Now, the Senate's Republicans have lined up against the Democratic leadership's plan to take a financial regulation bill to the floor this week. All 41 senators have signed on to GOP leader Mitch McConnell's blockade - with McConnell reprising a stance taken in the healthcare debate, calling on the Democrats to start from scratch and develop a truly bipartisan bill.

Whether that GOP blockade holds remains to be seen - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who voiced confidence over the weekend that a bill will pass, is meeting today with Maine's Sen. Susan Collins, the last Republican to sign on to McConnell's letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with a show of unanimity in the GOP's ranks.

And the White House announced this morning that Obama will return to Cooper Union on Thursday to pick up the torch.

"Almost two years after the (financial market) crisis hit and almost one year after the administration first laid out a detailed plan for holding Wall Street accountable and protecting consumers, he will call for swift Senate action,'' Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement about the president's plans.

"The crisis has already wiped out trillions of dollars in family wealth and cost over 8 million jobs,'' his spokesman said. "The president will also remind Americans what is at stake if we do not move forward with changing the rules of the road as a part of a strong Wall Street reform package.''

Candidate Obama also had said this in September of 2008, near the eve of the vote in which a Democrat's apparent readiness to cope with the unfolding economic crisis and his Republican rival's meandering helped clinch his election as president:

(Then-Sen. Barack Obama is pictured above speaking in the Great Hall of New York's Cooper Union on March 27, 2008, where he vowed to clean up a "distorted" financial system, accusing Wall Street of manipulating markets to generate swift profits instead of lasting growth. Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images.)

by Mark Silva

Sen. John McCain, who got a lot of mileage as a "maverick,'' suggests that now what people are seeing is "a partisan.''

Others suggest that what people really are seeing is a four-term senator from Arizona suddenly facing a fight for his own political life in a tough Republican primary contest back home -- "I've never considered myself a maverick,'' McCain, the senior senator from Arizona and 2008 Republican nominee for president, said in a recent interview with Newsweek.

Which prompted FOX News Channel's Chris Wallace to press McCain, retired maverick, for an explanation.

"Look, when I was fighting against my own president, whether we needed more troops in Iraq or whether spending was completely out of control, then I was a maverick,'' McCain said on FOX News Sunday. "Now that I'm fighting against this spending administration and this out-of-control and reckless healthcare plan, then I'm a partisan...

"I have considered myself a person who is a fighter,'' McCain said. "I fight for the things I believe in, and sometimes that's called a maverick. Sometimes that's a partisan. And people can draw their own conclusions. I prefer 'great American,' myself.'' -- with a flourish of that one sense which the senator still has not lost, a sense of humor.

John Harwood of CNBC said this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe: "I think he took a step toward being not too clever by half with that response... Every politician... as you know, has got a bit of a shape-shifter about Barack Obama... John McCain's shape-shifting in this campaign... is pretty conspicuous.''

Newsweek Editor John Meacham, on Morning Joe, put it this way: "Maverick is a synonym for growing in office -- evolving.''

by Mark Silva

Public confidence in President Barack Obama to recommend or do what's right for the economy (54 percent) isn't what it was a year ago (71 percent), but it runs stronger than confidence in other public officials.

The presdient ties with business leaders in overall public confidence on this question, in a Gallup Poll that was conducted April 8-11. Yet more people surveyed place "great confidence'' in Obama to do what's right on the economy than they do in business leaders (25 percent versus 11 percent), though Obama has slipped in this as well.
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At this time of widespread mistrust in government -- the Pew Research Center is reporting that only 22 percent of all Americans surveyed trust the government to do what's right -- 54 percent on the economic front may not look so bad.

Obama's score stands 10 points higher than that of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in the Gallup survey, 11 points higher than the ratings for either Democratic or Republican leaders of Congress, And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and "TEA Party leaders'' share the same level of public confidence for their handling of the economy -- 39 percent -- though we thought the movement had no leaders.

Labor union leaders trail, at 38 percent.

See the full Gallup report today.