WASHINGTON--A day after the Senate ethics committee handed him a stinging rebuke, Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) on Saturday voted to advance the Democratic health care bill to the Senate floor and then departed for an official visit to Iraq.
Burris--on his first official overseas trip as senator--is traveling with Democrats [...]
By Lynn Sweet
Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON -- A White House analysis of a federal purchase of the nearly vacant northwestern Illinois prison to house Guantanamo detainees and other federal prisoners, obtained by the Sun-Times on Saturday, concludes that in the first year 2,290 to 2,960 jobs [...]
by Mark Silva
With the Senate's 60-39 vote to proceed to debate, after Thanksgiving, on a health-care bill that the president is seeking by year's end, the debate of the 2010 midterm elections has been joined:
For the Democrats, in control of the White House and Congress, the congressional elections will [...]
excerpt from the pool report...
Pool Report Three
11-21-09
Dinner at Valerie Jarrett's place
After apparently making a quick change out of his golf garb, POTUS departed White House at 6 p.m. to attend dinner at senior adviser Valerie Jarrett's condo in Georgetown. Motorcade arrived [...]
Andrews AFB to White House
POTUS departed Andrews at 4:40 p.m. en route to the White House. Motorcade arrived back at 5:05 p.m. It was an uneventful ride at sunset back to the palace (beautiful big sky tonight, folks).
Your pooler has been informed that POTUS golfed [...]
WASHINGTON--Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) just announced from the Senate floor--in a rare Saturday session--that she will vote to allow the Democratic championed health care legislation to proceed. Democratic Senate leaders needed a supermajority, 60 votes, to avoid a filibuster and proceed to the underlying legislation. The vote on the [...]
WASHINGTON--As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Saturday leads a tour of the nearly vacant Thomson Correctional Center--a top Obama White House contender to house Guantanamo detainees--the White House released its first detailed economic impact statement on the jobs and money that will be channeled to northwestern Illinois if the [...]
WASHINGTON--As the Senate debates health care on Saturday, Democrats Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa are making a quick daytrip to the Illinois prison the Obama White House is targeting for Guantanamo detainees. The senators, flying on an Air Force jet, expect to be [...]
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Roland Burris was reprimanded Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics for his "inconsistent, incomplete and misleading" testimony before Springfield lawmakers about his appointment by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to the seat once held by President Obama.
The Senate panel issued a "public letter of" [...]
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2009
WEEKEND GUIDANCE AND PRESS SCHEDULE FOR
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, AND SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009
The President will spend the weekend in Washington, DC. He has no scheduled public events.
Saturday's In-Town Travel Pool
Wires: AP, Reuters, Bloomberg
Wire Photos: [...]
President Barack Obama's public approval stood at 69 percent in the days after his inauguration in January, shown above, and reached a new low of 49 percent this week in the Gallup Poll's daily tracking surveys.
by Mark Silva
Public approval of the job that President Barack Obama is [...]
by Mark Silva
As the Senate nears a vote on advancing to debate over health-care, Republicans are holding ground against a bill which they insist will only grow the government and raise taxes.
They don't accept the $848-billion price tag that the Congressional Budget Office has placed on Senate' [...]
by Mark Silva
As the Senate nears a vote on advancing to debate over health-care, Republicans are holding ground against a bill which they insist will only grow the government and raise taxes.
They don't accept the $848-billion price tag that the Congressional Budget Office has placed on Senate' [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, returned from a weeklong tour of Asia where he is promoting "a new era of American engagement," says the continent holds promise for Americn exports that can spur new jobs at home.
"Asia is a region where we now buy more goods and" [...]
Below, release from six Illinois GOP House members.....
All: Today, members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation joined Congressman Peter Roskam in sending a letter to
President Barack Obama requesting a National Security Council (NSC) briefing, after one of the five Democrat Senate candidates, Alexi Giannoulias, disclosed that he received [...]
WASHINGTON-- Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) was admonished today by the U.S. Senate ethics committee over his testimony in Springfield concerning how he got appointed to Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.
But his actions following his appointment by then Gov.-Rod Blagojevich did not rise to level of pursuing ethics charges against [...]
The Dan Hynes for Illinois campaign likes this clip....posted on YouTube....of rival Gov. Quinn dozing during a health care forum with WTTW's Elizabeth Brackett.
[...]WASHINGTON--No sleeping in after returning yesterday from an eight day trip to China, South Korea and Japan, President Obama on Friday morning with First Lady Michelle went to an event at daughter Sasha's school. Here's the pool report from Newsday's Tom Brune, a former Chicago Sun-Times reporter.
Pool report...
President, [...]
WASHINGTON--After a stall, the Senate voted 59-39 Thursday to confirm U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton--who now presides in an Indiana courtroom--to the Chicago based 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 19, 2009
DAILY GUIDANCE AND PRESS SCHEDULE FOR
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2009
The President has no scheduled public events.
In-Town Travel Pool
Wires: AP, Reuters, Bloomberg
Wire [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama is home.
Home, where the hard work is.
With stops in 20 nations behind him, said to be the most ambitious international itinerary of any first-year president, Obama faces the closing innings of a domestic policy year in which he insisted upon a sweeping health-care reform [...]
One day in 2006, Chicago School Board president Michael Scott sat down for breakfast with CPS chief Arne Duncan, Congressman Danny Davis, and state senator Rickey Hendon in the back room of a soul food restaurant on the west side. They must have expected a quiet discussion in the [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin was box office on FOX News this week - handing Sean Hannity one of his highest-rated shows.
Someone else drew a crowd at FOX this week, too: President Barack Obama.
While Hannity's audience of more than 4 million viewers with the author of Going Rogue aboard at [...]
Oprah Winfrey, fresh from a ratings hit with Sara Palin, will end her television show in September, 2011, ABC News is reporting.
Winfrey, one of the most influential and richest women in the world has her Harpo Production Company based in Chicago.
[...]WASHINGTON--President Obama is back in the U.S. after a swing through Japan, China and South Korea. Air Force One touched down at Andrews Air Force Base at 3:48 p.m. eastern on Thursday afternoon; by 4:01 p.m. est Obama was bounding down the stairs to the tarmac. He motorcaded from [...]
WASHINGTON--Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, fresh from winning governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, hits Chicago on Friday for meetings in the Loop with Illinois GOP leadership to map strategy on Illinois contests for governor and Senate and House seats.
Steele will huddle with state Rep. Beth Coulson (R-Glenview), [...]
WASHINGTON--Illinois State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) briefed me Thursday on what is involved on the state end in selling Thomson Correctional Center in northwest Illinois to the federal government.
The Obama administration is considering asking Illinois Gov. Quinn to sell the nearly vacant Thomson to the federal Bureau of [...]
WASHINGTON--Illinois Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) met with members of the Illinois congressional delegation on Thurday on a trip here that included a fund-raiser Wednesday night for the state senate political committee.
I caught up with Cullerton, his wife Pam, state Sen. Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge) and [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama says he "probably won't'' be reading Sarah Palin's Going Rogue, so radio's Mark Levin asked Palin: Has she considered sending him the TelePrompTer edition?
"You know what,'' Palin replied, laughing, "when I heard that, though, I thought, good, at a moment like this in'" [...]
Earlier this week Cook County sheriff Tom Dart and several of the top corrections officials at the Cook County Jail were sued in federal court by an inmate named Kenneth Simmons Mays. In a handwritten complaint he filed on his own, Mays alleges that on [...]
by Mark Silva
The White House is pushing back on the alleged "fiction'' of jobs created or saved under the $787-billion federal timulus bill - particularly what it views as the fiction surrounding reports that Recovery.gov, the official online accounting of where all the money is going, listed all sorts" [...]
by Mark Silva
The House's health care bill, we were reminded, weighed in at over 20 pounds. The Senate's bill, we're told, is bigger than War and Peace.
Both of them also offer health care for millions of Americans uninsured.
And Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has a prescription for' [...]
Dear EarthTalk: Can you enlighten on the environmental impact of the fashion industry? As I understand it, the industry overall is no friend to the environment. -- Tan Cheng Li, Malaysia
According to the non-profit Earth Pledge, today some 8,000 synthetic chemicals are [...]
Below, release and detailed poll data....
AMERICAN VOTERS LIKE OBAMA, BUT NOT HIS POLICIES,
QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY NATIONAL POLL FINDS;
SUPPORT FOR PUBLIC OPTION, BUT NOT OVERALL HEALTH PLAN
Three-quarters of American voters - 74 percent - like President Barack Obama as a person, but only 47 percent like [...]
EST
4:00PM In-Town Travel Pool Call Time
6:05PM THE PRESIDENT arrives at Andrews Air Force Base
Out-of-Town Travel Pool Coverage
6:25PM THE PRESIDENT departs Fort McNair en route The White House
In-Town Travel Pool Coverage (Gather Time 4:45PM - Stakeout Location)
[...]
by Mark Silva and updated with FOX apology
FOX has done it again, and this time, once again, FOX says its misplay of the wrong crowd video was another regrettable mistake.
Today, FOX News host Gregg Jarrett was talking about Republican Sarah Palin's book tour and the crowd she is drawing' [...]
WASHINGTON--Here's the lighter side of President Obama, about five pounds worth.
Two male network correspondents asked Obama about his weight, after a serious discussion about other issues during one and one interviews in Bejing, China.
Obama told NBC's Chuck Todd, "My weight fluctuates about five pounds. It has for the" [...]
WASHINGTON--The price tag on the Senate Democrats health reform bill was put at $849 billion late Wednesday afternoon by the Congressional Budget Office, less than the amount in the bill the House passed but within President Obama's target.
Here's a top line comparison, according to Senate sources
Cost
Senate $849 [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, with 20 nations in his passport this year, stepped on to the Great Wall of China this week.
"It gives you a perspective on a lot of day to day things that don't amount to much...It's majestic,'' the president said. "It reminds you of' [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin, author of Going Rogue, says the Army psychiatrist, a Muslim, accused of killing 13 and wounding 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, should have been "profiled'' before the shootings.
" I certainly do,'' Palin says in an interview that will air on FOX News' Hannity this evening,' [...]
by Michael Muskal and Mark Silva
Sen. Robert C. Byrd's tenure as the longest-serving lawmaker in congressional history was marked today with praise but also questions about the senator's health.
"I look forward to serving you for the next 56 years and 320 days," the ninth-term Democratic senator from West [...]
by Michael Muskal
Atty. Gen. Eric Holder today defended the Obama administration's decision to try professed terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court and denied the move would give Mohammed a propaganda forum.
"At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, who made closing of the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within one year a priority on Day One of his presidency, allows that January's deadline for closure of the controversial facility will come and go.
"We are on a path and a process" [...]
by Mark Silva
As people line up around the block in Grand Rapids for the debut of Sarah Palin's national book tour, the popular author will probably have to count one reader out:
President Barack Obama.
"Obviously, Sarah Palin has attracted a lot of attention,'' Obama said of the" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, "very close'' to a decision about deploying troops in Afghanistan - a strategy that must provide for an "endgame'' as well as a way forward - maintains that he is "absolutely confident'' about getting a health-care bill, calls the planned trial of 9/11 plotters" [...]
WASHINGTON--Senate Democrats defeated Tuesday a bid by Republicans to bar money being spent for prisons--that would include a proposed Gitmo North in Illinois--to take detainees from Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. This is only the first skirmish. Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee [...]
by Mark Silva
A lot of questions have been posed in the health-care debate, with a lot of nuance: Americans have been asked if they approve of the president's handling of the issue, or congressional handling of the issue, if they think reform will make things better, make things [...]
Below, from CNN...
Interviews with 1,014 adult Americans, including 928 registered voters, conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on November 13-15, 2009. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points and for registered voters is plus [...]
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 17, 2009
DAILY GUIDANCE AND PRESS SCHEDULE FOR
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2009
On Wednesday morning, the President and Premier Wen Jiabao of China will hold a bilateral meeting in the interview [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin, embarking on a natonal book tour with her Going Rogue memoirs, has one word for the way that President Barack Obama is handling the economy:
"Backassward.''
That's how the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice" [...]
Below, release from Illinois GOP survey....
Survey Shows Only 32% of Illinois Voters Support Quinn/Durbin Plan to Move Gitmo to Illinois, 57% Oppose
60% of women, 58% of independents and plurality of Democrats call plan a "bad idea"
CHICAGO - Less than one-third [...]
by Richard Simon
The Democratic-controlled Senate today thwarted an effort to block spending for upgrading facilities in the United States for housing prisoners transferred from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a move that Illinois officials feared could have complicated efforts to place detainees at a prison in their state.
The measure was defeated [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
The Obama administration promised "transparency'' in the accounting of that $787 billion in economic stimulus spending.
Jonathan Karl and his eagle-eyed colleagues at ABC News saw right through it: In the case of those 30 jobs created or saved and $761,420 spent in Arizona's'" [...]
by Mark Silva
In New York, which suffered the most shocking brunt of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, there is a certain division of opinion over playing host to a criminal trial for the mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and some accomplices.
Forty-five percent [...]
by Mark Silva
The president of the United States is a long way from home, but there's nothing like a state dinner in the Great Hall of the People to lift one's spirits.
There was [...]
Not all Republicans have lined up in opposition to the federal government buying Thomson state prison and using it as a federal maximum security prison with a separate wing for Taliban and Al Qaida terrorists currently housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Obama has pledged to close the U.S. [...]
by Mark Silva
FOX News had to go to China to get President Barack Obama.
When the traveling president sits for a round robin of television news interviews in Beijing, FOX's Major Garrett says he'll be in the loop of five that get 10 minutes apiece with the president.
Garrett "tweeted'' this'" [...]
WASHINGTON--The Obama White House faced resistance this summer over the potential of sending Guantanamo Bay military prison detainees to Standish, Mich. or Leavenworth, Ks. That's a reason they turned to the more receptive Illinois, the adopted home state of President Obama. Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Roland Burris and Gov.' [...]
by Mark Silva
The new American diplomat to China had some fairly undiplomatic things to say about expertise in the field of Chinese relations with the United States.
"Don't mistake me for being an expert, because I've been here for three months,'' said U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, the former Republican governor" [...]
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
[...]by Mark Silva
Lou Dobbs, who helped build CNN, says there was no room left for his "advocacy'' journalism at a network seeking "neutrality.''
"CNN decided to go one way, and ultimately it became clear to CNN management and myself, that we were going to go different directions,'' Dobbs, who" [...]
by Jim Puzzanghera
For more than 15.4 million people, the "Making Work Pay'' tax credit enacted as part of the $787-billion economic stimulus package could turn out to be a Making You Pay Back tax credit.
That's the finding of a government watchdog report about the tax credit, which provides" [...]
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 16, 2009
DAILY GUIDANCE AND PRESS SCHEDULE FOR
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2009
On Tuesday morning, the President will participate in a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People. The [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
"Our life has become kind of a reality show,'' says Sarah Palin, author of Going Rogue, who suggests that in the last couple of months she has fielded all sorts of offers "coming our way, some bizarre things.''
In the context of a moose-eating family from [...]
Mick Dumke talks TIFs and more politics with Nick Digilio
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[...]Todd Stroger's inadequacies weren't the only topics of discussion at yesterday's forum for the Democrats vying for Cook County Board president. Two of Stroger's rivals also weighed in against one of Mayor Daley's: his resistance to full disclosure of how hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money [...]
