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White House won’t show bin Laden photo, do you agree?

President Barack Obama said in a television interview on Wednesday he decided not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s body because it could incite violence and be used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.

“There is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden,” President Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney. “You will not see bin Laden walking on this Earth again.”

The Obama administration had been wrestling with whether to release photos of a dead bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani compound on Monday, and the president said he and his advisers agreed the images should not be made public.

Do you agree with President Obama's decision not to release photos of dead al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided

Can Obama win re-election?

While Republicans and Democrats pick up the pieces from the congressional elections, the 2012 White House race is already off to a vigorous start with President Barack Obama facing potential challenges from more than a dozen would-be Republican opponents.

Obama faces a bleak political landscape after voters punished Democrats for the sluggish economic recovery and handed control of the House of Representatives to Republicans.

Obama now faces two big challenges — to get newly empowered Republicans to work with him on measures to revive economic growth, and to find ways to connect with middle-class Americans, many of whom view him as aloof and cerebral.

His predicament is difficult but not impossible.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both had approval ratings close to — and even lower than — the 45 percent level where Obama’s popularity now stands and both suffered big midterm setbacks in congressional elections.

But both presidents went on to win reelection.

Has the Obama administration’s response to the oil spill been enough?

As one of the country’s worst environmental catastrophes unfolds on his watch, President Barack Obama is under increasing pressure from lawmakers and residents of the fouled Gulf coast to take over the oil disaster response.

The word at the White House is that Obama is frustrated at the delays BP has encountered in stopping the leak. “Plug the damn hole,” he has told senior government officials.

The most immediate concern is stopping the leak. The problem for the White House is that it has no real alternative except to rely on BP’s technology and expertise to do it.

That means Obama is forced into an uneasy alliance with BP — outraged that the leak took place but hopeful that the energy giant can stop it.

Has the Obama administrations’ response to the Gulf oil spill been enough? Take our poll and share your thoughts below.

Do you approve of President Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill?

Is Elena Kagan qualified to serve as a Supreme Court justice?

President Barack Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan as successor to the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

If confirmed, Kagan would become the first justice in nearly 40 years who has never served as a judge . The former Harvard Law School dean has served only one year as solicitor general, a post in which she argues cases on behalf of the government before the Supreme Court.

The last two justices who had not been judges, William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell, joined the Supreme Court in 1972.

While no nomination is guaranteed to be approved by the Senate, Kagan is seen as having a good chance for confirmation.

But Republicans made clear they will not give her rubber-stamp approval. They called attention to her limited judicial experience and said she lacks real-world experience.

At her Senate confirmation hearing, Kagan could face vigorous questioning on hot-button issues such as her opposition to on-campus military recruiting at Harvard because of U.S. policy barring gays from serving openly in the armed forces.

Violent video games, protests at funerals for U.S. military members, a Swiss watch copyright dispute and vaccine-maker liability are among the cases that Solicitor General Elena Kagan would confront if approved for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Is it still “drill baby drill” in light of the spill?

“Drill baby, drill” was an enduring rally cry from Republicans in the 2008 presidential election. This past March, President Obama unveiled plans for a limited expansion of offshore oil drilling, in part to try to win GOP support for climate change legislation.

Then an undersea oil well ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil spill that is threatening the coast of Louisiana has provided ammunition to critics of Obama’s proposal, and the White House sought to make clear there would be no new drilling authorized until the cause of the spill had been reviewed.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he no longer will support a plan to expand drilling off California’s coast. Schwarzenegger said televised images of the oil slick moving toward the Gulf Coast prompted his change of heart.

Should plans by President Obama to expand oil drilling off the eastern coast be scrubbed?

Bailout bonuses: Does the public have a right to know?

Is it anybody’s business how much money you make?

When it comes to Wall Street and the meltdown that whacked financial markets and emptied investors’ pockets, the normal rules of etiquette don’t seem to apply.

Wall Street salaries seem to be everybody’s business lately. Nevertheless, the Obama administration’s pay czar may try to keep a large portion of the compensation plans he is reviewing under wraps.

It’s Kenneth Feinberg‘s job to review salaries at the biggest corporate recipients of government bailout funds.

How much of his report will become public is the multimillion dollar question.

Privacy laws and fears that highly compensated executives will become targets for an angry public argue for limiting disclosure.

Your take on Obama’s address to Congress

Is housing rescue plan enough?

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated plan to deal with the U.S. housing crisis aims to help as many as 9 million families avoid foreclosure on their homes, one of the root causes of the global financial meltdown.

The Obama plan will involve government subsidies to mortgage servicers and lenders to encourage them to lower payments for borrowers in distress.

The aim is to bring mortgage payments to a more affordable range of around 31 percent of borrowers’ incomes.

At the end of last year, just over 9 percent of all home loans in the United States were in arrears or already in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association has said.

A total of 8.1 million U.S. homes, or 16 percent of all households with mortgages, could fall into foreclosure by 2012, according to a report by Credit Suisse.

Is Obama’s rescue plan enough to curb the tide of soaring foreclosures? Share your thoughts.

Withdraw or stand their ground?

Tom Daschle doesn’t want to be a distraction. Nancy Killefer doesn’t want to be a distraction. Timothy Geithner has already been a distraction.

What these three high-profile nominees to President Obama’s White House have in common, besides not wanting to be distractions, is that they apparently don’t know how to do their taxes. Daschle, the former senator and Obama’s choice for health secretary, and Killefer, a former assistant Treasury secretary and nominee to oversee the government’s budget, have withdrawn their nominations because of tax indiscretions. Geithner has been confirmed but his path to the top of Treasury was also marred by tax troubles that some fear may come back to haunt him.

Besides begging the question why do smart people not know how to do their taxes, it also throws a shadow over Obama’s quest to have a fast, smooth transition to power.

The real question is whether nominees should withdraw their nominations when tax troubles surface. If the transgression isn’t enough to throw them in jail, why should they lose the opportunity to serve in the White House?

Hillary Clinton for secretary of state?

Sen. Hillary Clinton has emerged as a candidate to be U.S. secretary of state for Barack Obama, months after he defeated her in an intense contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

NBC News and The Washington Post reported that Clinton was under consideration for the top U.S. diplomatic position.

Clinton was described by her office as having flown to Chicago on Thursday on personal business.

Should Obama select his former rival for the top U.S. envoy post?