WASHINGTON - Don’t rub your eyes. Despite the early hour, you weren’t seeing things when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs somehow managed to be in two places at once.

He showed up on ABC and NBC morning television shows at the same time to talk about how President Barack Obama has no hard feelings toward Republicans who refused to vote for the economic stimulus, and in fact had them over to the White House last night for a cocktail party among other guests.

It was a neat trick, Gibbs being questioned on different channels by different TV personalities about the same issue at the same time.

The party must have made for some interesting conversation over drinks, or perhaps it was all smiles since Obama got the bill passed and Republicans had their (no) say.

More bad economic news. U.S. weekly jobless claims rose by 3,000 to 588,000 and U.S.  durable goods orders posted another decline in December, falling 2.6 percent.

Obama to meet with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this afternoon. Economic concerns dominate the Washington landscape. The Federal Reserve can’t cut interest rates much more or it would have to pay banks to take money.

 And one word on the health front from the FDA - Peanuts. Throw out anything made with peanuts processed by Peanut Corporation of America in Georgia over the last two years.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama walks with Gibbs between meetings with Republicans on Capitol Hill)

President Barack Obama, steeled by Chicago’s harsh winters, had some unsolicited advice for shivering Washingtonians on Wednesday — toughen up.
 
Obama took a joking dig at residents of Washington, his new adopted home, after his daughters’ school was closed because of icy streets and sidewalks in the nation’s capital.
 
“My children’s school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice,” he said to laughter as he spoke to reporters while sitting down with corporate executives to discuss his economic recovery plan.
 
As one of his girls, who both attend the private Sidwell Friends school, pointed out, Obama added, “in Chicago, school is never canceled. … You’d go outside for recess. You wouldn’t even stay indoors.”
 
“We’re going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness,” he said in an amused tone.
 
Asked whether was calling Washingtonians wimps, Obama — who moved his family from Chicago before his presidential inauguration last week — said, “I’m saying when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don’t seem to be able to handle things.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama meets business leaders)

President Barack Obama faces his first big political challenge as the House of Representatives is due to vote on a $825 billion package to stem the U.S. recession. 

Despite a trip to Capitol HIll to woo Republicans on Tuesday, most House Republicans are expected to oppose the proposal. But Democrats were confident they had enough votes to get the package approved as they seek a final bill for Obama to sign into law by mid-February.

The Federal Reserve meets to review options on how to restore U.S. growth, with a statement by the Federal Open Market Committee around 2:15 p.m. EST (1915 GMT). The Fed is discussing how to revive the economy now that traditional interest-rate cutting tools have been exhausted. Fed officials are expected to discuss uncoventional measures to improve financial market operations.

At the White House, Obama will meet with a group of business leaders from across the country in a mid-morning meeting to discuss the impact of the weakening economy on businesses and workers.  He will make remarks on the economy after the meeting, at 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT).

He then turns his focus to national security issues, traveling to the Pentagon with Vice President Biden for a meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other senior officials to discuss the situation

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (U.S. Capitol)

If you thought Sarah Palin was going to just fade away, you clearly weren’t listening when she said the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was lipstick. 
 
The Alaska governor, who was the Republican nominee for vice president in the race that John McCain lost to Democrat Barack Obama last year, is already laying the groundwork for another run at something.
 
She has started her own political action committee, SarahPAC, complete with a website. And she’s learned a trick from Obama — the site’s main feature is a page where you can put down your name and donate $25 or $5,000 or more. 
 
“Welcome to SarahPAC, Sarah Palin’s official PAC,” the site says. “Dedicated to building America’s future, supporting fresh ideas and candidates who share our vision for reform and innovation.”
 
“SarahPAC believes the Republican Party is at the threshold of an historic renaissance that will build a better future for all,” the site says. “Health care, education and reform of government are among our key goals.”
 
The site’s home page shows Palin against a backdrop of Alaska’s sweeping mountain vistas.
 
While declaring it is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee, SarahPAC has a full biography of the former vice presidential candidate.
 
It notes she made history by becoming the first woman governor of Alaska and the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket.
 
“Gov. Palin has a long record of achievement and experience in public office,” it says, including her service as governor, her time as mayor of the town of Wasilla and her stint on the Wasilla City Council.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Tami Chappell (Palin campaigns for Senator Saxby Chambliss in Georgia in December)

Beware any Republican who might fall for President Barack Obama’s sales pitch Tuesday for his $825 billion economic stimulus plan. A vote for the legislation will disqualify you from receiving the Club for Growth’s “Defender of Economic Freedom” award. 

The conservative economic advocacy group issued the warning just hours before Obama was to meet with Republican members of the House of Representatives and the Senate in hopes of drumming up more support for his economic recovery plan. 

“No congressman can vote for the stimulus bill and claim to be a defender of economic freedom,” Club for Growth President Pat Toomey said in a statement. “In fact, the Democrats’ package is the antithesis of economic freedom. The bill is a paragon of government run amok, a ballooning deficit, fiscal irresponsibility, and political greed.” 

So far congressional Republicans have been cool to the Democratic-backed legislation, arguing it spends too much and gives too little in tax cuts. But with U.S. job losses mounting and consumer confidence crumbling, it may be difficult for many lawmakers to vote against the legislation Obama says is urgently needed to keep the economy from falling deeper into recession. 

The Club for Growth keeps a voting scorecard of up to 100 points. Every year its economic freedom trophy goes to those who earn a score of 90 or better. The group advocates conservative economic policies that include making President George W. Bush’s tax cuts permanent, limiting government and cutting spending.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Snow cleared from Capitol grounds ahead of visit from President Barack Obama)

For the second Tuesday in a row, President Barack Obama heads up to Capitol Hill. Last week it was to be inaugurated. Today it’s to woo Republican lawmakers and try to build momentum for the $825 stimulus package.

Faced with growing economic problems, as more big companies lay off workers and troubles mount in the housing and financial sectors, Obama will meet with House and Senate lawmakers to build support before debate begins on Capitol Hill on the stimulus package.

He will have separate meetings with the House Republicans and Senate Republicans in the early afternoon. The White House says the meetings are to “seek input” on the stimulus plan. The House and Senate are expected to approve the package by the middle of next month regardless of whether Republicans embrace it.

The Congressional Budget Office issued a report late on Monday saying the stimulus package falls billions of dollars short of Obama’s goal to pump most of the money into the economy quickly.

Timothy Geithner, who was approved by the Senate as Treasury Secretary, was sworn in on Monday night and he vowed quick action to help fix the economy.

On the morning talk shows: A California woman will now have to feed and dress one extra baby. She shocked doctors — who had expected her to have seven babies – by giving birth to octuplets.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Geithner’s wife Carole watches as he is sworn in as Treasury Secretary)

WASHINGTON - U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold intends to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to end the practice of governors filling vacant Senate seats.

With the Illinois governor charged with having tried to sell President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat — and New York’s governor accused by critics of having held a circus-like review to fill the one formerly held by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Feingold says voters — not governors — should make the call in special elections. 

“The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end,” Feingold said.

Feingold said he will introduce this week what would be just the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the framework for American democracy that has been in effect since 1789.

His proposed amendment would require that all senators, just like all members of the House of Representatives, be elected.

Initially, senators were elected by state legislatures. But the 17th amendment, adopted in 1913, made them elected instead by voters.

A third of the Senate is routinely elected ever two years. But in case of a death or a resignation, governors in most states are empowered to appoint a replacement.

Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, said that as chairman of the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on the Constitution, he plans to soon hold a hearing on his proposed amendment.

Untold hundreds of amendments to the Constitution have been proposed. But there’s a reason why just 27 have been approved. To become law, it has to be passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate, and then within a set time period, three-quarters of the states.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Segar - A worker changes a flag at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., which houses the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, during the January 20 inauguration of President Barack Obama.

After Republican leaders expressed doubts about the stimulus package over the weekend, President Barack Obama pushes forward this week with efforts to build public support for his $825 billion economic recovery plan.

The push comes as more bad news is expected on the economic front with many U.S. companies expected to report earnings this week.

Obama outlined his stimulus plan in his radio address on Saturday and he is due to talk about jobs, energy independence and climate change at the White House at 10:30 a.m. (1530 GMT).

The White House event should result in more Bush reversals. Administration officials said Obama will direct the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a request by California — which was denied under the Bush administration — to impose its own strict limits on automobile carbon dioxide emissions.

If the EPA reverses the previous ruling, more than 12 U.S. states could proceed with plans to impose strict CO2 limits. California wants to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2016.

For fans of Illinois politics: The morning TV talk shows featured interviews with Gov. Rod Blagojevich who is skipping the start of his impeachment trial to take to the airwaves. After comparing himself on Sunday to human rights heros Nelson Mandela, Dr Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, Blagojevich said he had done nothing wrong and the allegations against him were “completely untrue.”

Blagojevich also said he had considered Oprah Winfrey to fill Obama’s vacant Senate seat, though he didn’t think she would take it.

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Earlier this month, I wrote that the brief given to a South Asian envoy by President Barack Obama could prove to be the first test of the success of Indian diplomacy after the Mumbai attacks. At issue was whether the envoy would be asked to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan or whether the brief would be extended to India, reflecting comments made by Obama during his election campaign that a resolution of the Kashmir dispute would ease tensions across the region.

That question has been resolved - publicly at least -- with the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. No mention of India or Kashmir.

India has long resisted overt outside interference in Kashmir and argued - with great vehemence since the Mumbai attacks - that tensions in South Asia were caused by Pakistan's support for, or tolerance of, Islamist militants rather than the Kashmir dispute.  For India, a public reference to Kashmir following Mumbai would amount to endorsing what it calls cross-border terrorism.

So does that mean the end of the road for efforts to ease tensions in Kashmir? Analysts think not. Unlike British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who riled India this month by linking security in South Asia to Kashmir, the United States appears to have decided that by keeping quiet in public, it can achieve more in private.

In The Cable, Washington reporter Laura Rozen - who says India's U.S. lobby worked hard to make sure there was no reference to India in Holbrooke's brief - quotes Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as saying the omission might make things easier. "Leaving India out of the title actually opens up (Holbrooke's) freedom to talk to them," Zelikow says. In Pakistan's Daily Times, columnist Ejaz Haider writes that "Obama will not overtly offend India by putting in place a special envoy for Afghanistan-Pakistan-India. But discerning analysts in New Delhi know the fine print." Indian analyst Raja Mohan made a similar point when he wrote before Holbrooke's appointment that, "although in deference to New Delhi’s objections, Obama might not name Kashmir as part of the special envoy’s mandate, reworking the India-Pakistan relationship will be an inevitable and important component of his initiative."

And India may actually be less defensive about U.S. involvement in Kashmir than it was when Obama first raised the idea. It has since concluded elections in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, conducted in conditions of relative peace that many reckon would not have been possible without the active cooperation of Pakistan in restraining militants from disrupting the polls. 

There's a window of opportunity there that Raja Mohan says should persuade India to embrace U.S. involvement in the region, but on its own terms. "India has no reason to deny that during the Kargil war with Pakistan in the summer of 1999, the military confrontation with Islamabad during 2001-02, and in the effort to pressure Pakistan after the Mumbai terror attacks, the US role has been a positive one."

India's terms, especially with a parliamentary election coming up in India, are likely to include a requirement that the United States avoids public involvement in Kashmir. Instead, Raja Mohan is quoted as saying in this article, it should help create the conditions in Pakistan for a resumption of back-channel diplomacy between India and Pakistan that before Mumbai was beginning to bear fruit.

The United States appears to have conceded the first point by quietly dropping public references to Kashmir following the Mumbai attacks. Can Holbrooke now pull off the much trickier task of working behind the scenes to reach private understandings to ease tensions in the region?

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the State Department in Washington January 22, 2009. From left are Richard Holbrooke, envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Vice President Joe Biden, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mideast envoy George Mitchell/Kevin Lamarque)

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama’s $825 billion plan to boost the recession-bound U.S. economy has some elements that, well, aren’t the sort of stimulus that House Minority Leader John Boehner says he can believe in.
 
“I’m concerned about the size of the package, and I’m concerned about some of the spending that’s in there,” Boehner complained Friday after a meeting at White House.
 
“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?”
 
Hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?
 
The Ohio congressman’s office explains. One proposal included in the stimulus package would expand Medicaid family planning services to all 50 states.
 
The proposal would enable people who don’t qualify for Medicaid to receive the family planning services, including contraceptives.
 
“Whether or not you think that is good public policy, it has nothing to do with an economic stimulus,” a spokesman for Boehner said.
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Boehner watches Obama speak to press)