Top Items:
New York Post:
CAROLINE KENNEDY ENDS SENATE SEAT BID — By FREDRIC U. DICKER IN ALBANY and MAGGIE HABERMAN IN N.Y. — Caroline Kennedy has told Gov. David Paterson that she is withdrawing her name from consideration to replace outgoing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate, The Post has learned.
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New York Times:
Kennedy Is Said to Withdraw Senate Bid — Caroline Kennedy has withdrawn from consideration for the vacant Senate seat in New York, according to a person told of her decision. — Ms. Kennedy on Wednesday called Gov. David A. Paterson, who will choose a successor to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton …
Discussion:
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Associated Press:
Reports: Kennedy to end Senate bid — Source tells NBC News that she plans to withdraw her name — msnbc.com staff and news service reports — ALBANY, New York - Caroline Kennedy has decided to withdraw her name from consideration for the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton, according to NBC News' Mark Murray.
Associated Press:
Obama takes presidential oath again after stumble — Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition — WASHINGTON - After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama …
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Julian Borger / Guardian:
President Barack Obama willing to negotiate with Iran ‘without preconditions’
President Barack Obama willing to negotiate with Iran ‘without preconditions’
David Stout / New York Times:
Clinton Is Approved, but Vote on Holder Is Delayed — WASHINGTON — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate as President Obama's secretary of state on Wednesday, but the new president will have to wait at least a week for a vote on his choice to lead the Justice Department.
Discussion:
Glenn Thrush's Blogs, The Hill, Washington Monthly, Buck Naked Politics, Gothamist and The Swamp
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Washington Wire:
McCain Lends Hillary Clinton a Helping Hand — Patrick Yoest reports on Congress. — Sen. John McCain unexpectedly lent a hand to Sen. Hillary Clinton on the Senate floor today, calling for her quick confirmation as secretary of State without a lengthy roll-call vote.
John Bresnahan / The Politico:
Holder confirmation delayed — Eric Holder's confirmation vote before the Judiciary Committee will be delayed for up to a week as Republican senators continue to press him on his views about interrogation and other Bush administration intelligence methods. — The Judiciary Committee …
Discussion:
TPMDC, CNN, National Review, The Swamp, Salon, Commentary, TPMMuckraker, Runnin' Scared and The Washington Independent
Chad Pergram / Fox News:
Murtha Says He'd Take Guantanamo Prisoners in His District — Rep. Jack Murtha volunteers to house prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in his Pennsylvania district, as President Obama prepares to order the shut-down of the facility. — FOXNews.com — Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa. …
Discussion:
Sister Toldjah
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New York Times:
Obama to Close Foreign Prisons and Guantánamo — WASHINGTON — President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.
Jonn Lilyea / This ain't Hell …:
Obama blows off Medal of Honor recipients — According to TSO who was at the “Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball”, this newly sworn-in President for the first time in 56 years blew off the ball (that's 14 Inaugurations). — Some background on the ball;
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James D. Besser / The Jewish Week:
Mitchell As Envoy Could Split Center … The expected appointment of a special envoy to breathe new life into Israeli-Palestinian negotiations could split the pro-Israel center while pleasing the Jewish left and outraging the right. The schism could be particularly deep if …
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Faiz Shakir / Think Progress:
Foxman: George Mitchell is too ‘fair’ and ‘even-handed’ to serve as Middle East envoy.» — The media is reporting that former Sen. George Mitchell, who handled the Northern Ireland peace process, is being eyed by the Obama administration to be a top diplomatic envoy to the Middle East.
Discussion:
American Thinker, Guardian, Blogs and Stories, D-Day, Israpundit, KansasCity.com Prime Buzz, Liberty Street and Washington Monthly
Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
Settlement Freeze — In the very early days of the Bush …
Settlement Freeze — In the very early days of the Bush …
Discussion:
Megan McArdle
CNN:
A major Bush rule gets scrapped by Obama — (CNN) — It's the same Oval Office. The same desk. Even the same curtains. But President Obama has already made one major change: Go through eight years of White House photos, and you won't find one of former President Bush in the Oval Office without his jacket on.
Discussion:
AMERICAblog News, Outside The Beltway, The Moderate Voice, TBogg, No More Mister Nice Blog and The Impolitic
Tom Gralish / Scene on the Road:
Found - AGAIN - the Poster Source Photo — The photographer is MANNIE GARCIA, a Washington DC freelancer for the Associated Press. — Driving home from Washington after the inauguration, cruising on adrenalin from covering the historic event and then stopping two or three times for coffee …
Sean Meade / Thomas P.M. Barnett:
Deleted scenes: Chapter 1 — A grand strategy grading sheet — On articulation, President Bush gets a “T” for “trying”—as in, too hard. As Jacob Weisberg argues in his 2008 book, The Bush Tragedy, George W. Bush was determined to succeed where his father had failed in articulating …
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Nathan Gardels / The Huffington Post:
Obama Should Quit War on Terror, Talk to Hamas and Taliban
Obama Should Quit War on Terror, Talk to Hamas and Taliban
Discussion:
DownWithTyranny!
David Remnick / New Yorker:
GOING, GOING, GONE — The mood at the Inauguration was so joyful, so filled with unalloyed expectation and—there's that word again—hope, that it seems almost peevish (and historically repetitive) to sound a sour note, but here it unavoidably is: the hostility among some in the vast crowd toward …
Discussion:
The Fix
Marc Ambinder:
Obama Will Get His Blackberry — President Barack Obama is going to get his blackberry. — On Monday, a government agency that the Obama administration — but that is probably the National Security Agency — added to a standard blackberry a super-encryption package. …
USA Today:
On the new whitehouse.gov: ‘Pool’ reports to be public? — But a quick tour around its features indicates it will have some interesting features, along with the usual pages about the president's agenda, the White House and the federal government: — • Pool reports.
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MsUnderestimated:
Daily Show - What Differences Between Bush & Obama? (VIDEO) — Tonight Jon Stewart rightly pointed out that there really are no differences when it comes to philosophy about national security, and he demonstrates it with sequential video clips, comparing Barack's speech with past Bush speeches.
Discussion:
Lean Left
Daniel W. Drezner:
Have you met the French, Mr. Obama? — God bless France. You knew, once Obama was sworn in, that Paris would welcome the new president with open arms and not get all passive-aggressive-y ike they [always] [frequently] occasionally do. — What's that? There's a Reuters story about this?
Discussion:
Democracy in America
David A Nakamura / Inauguration Watch:
Inaugural Committee Apologizes for Ticket Fiasco — The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which was responsible for planning and executing Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony yesterday, apologized today for keeping thousands of ticket-holders outside the security gates, causing them to miss the ceremony.
Discussion:
Open Left, Washington Post, Political Machine, Alex Spillius's blog listings, Jules Crittenden, DCist and Culture Monster
The Campaign Spot:
TurboTax Doesn't Prompt Users to Pay Self-Employment Taxes? Or Just Geithner's Copy of the Software? — In today's confirmation hearing, Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner said he used TurboTax to prepare his returns for the years in question where he failed to pay self-employment taxes …
Ian Sparks / Daily Mail:
Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle … Former French president Jacques Chirac was rushed to hospital after being mauled by his own ‘clinically depressed’ pet dog. — The 76-year-old statesman was savaged by his white Maltese dog …
Jill Serjeant / Reuters:
Obama inauguration got unprecedented news coverage — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's inauguration generated an unprecedented 35,000 stories in the world's major newspapers, television and radio broadcasts over the past day — about 35 times more than the last presidential swearing-in …
Andy Levy / Big Hollywood:
My “To Don't” List for the Right — The only thing worse than bad winners are sore losers, and we've had enough of them for the past eight years. So with that in mind, in the wake of today's historic inauguration, here's my Handbook For The Loyal Opposition, 2009 edition - a “To Don't List,” if you will.
Richard Jeffrey Newman / Alas, a blog:
Maybe We Should Share Our Stories of antisemitism — Reading through the comments generated by my two posts (here and here) on antisemitism so far has gotten me thinking about how many of us-Jewish or not, but especially Jewish-ever really talk about our experiences with antisemitism …
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice