WASHINGTON - Thanksgiving is over, President Barack Obama has pardoned one turkey (and eaten another), and now a giant Christmas tree has arrived at the White House.

Like it or not, Christmas is here.

First Lady Michelle Obama — with daughters Sasha and Malia — kicked off her traditional almost-December duties on Friday by accepting delivery of a 18 1/2 foot tall, 12 foot wide tree, which will be displayed in the White House Blue Room.

Reporters and a small group of guests gathered to watch the tree be pulled on a horse-drawn carriage down a White House driveway to the strains of ”Oh Christmas Tree” being played by a military band.

Except for exchanging a few pleasantries, Mrs. Obama did not speak to the press. Would she comment on the couple who apparently crashed her big state dinner on Wednesday? Not so much.

The huge tree, a Douglas fir, came from a Christmas tree farm run by an elderly West Virgina couple who won the “National Christmas Tree Contest” for a record fourth time, the White House said.

Lest environmentalists be concerned, the White House put out a statement with some heartening details: “Real Christmas Trees are a renewable, recyclable agricultural product.”

That’s a relief. So … what about turkeys?

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Photo credits: The 2009 White House Christmas Tree arrives by horse-drawn cart at the White House in Washington and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is pictured with her daughters Malia (R) and Sasha as she is presented with the 2009 White House Christmas Tree at the White House in Washington, November 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jason Reed

She’s blond and beautiful. He’s debonair. Together, with irresistible charm and a voracious appetite for self-promotion, they penetrated White House security to attend this week’s state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and got close enough to kiss Vice President Joe Biden.

That’s the current media image of Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who could be the world’s most celebrated gate crashers since the British comedian who attended Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle in 2003 while dressed as Osama bin Laden in drag.
    
But is there more to the story?
    
The Salahis’ lawyer, Paul Gardner, suggests there is. “My clients were cleared, by the White House, to be there. More information is forthcoming,” he says in a statement published by the Washington Post.
    
The now-famous couple also plans to appear Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.
    
Paul Wharton, a friend of the Salahis, tells ABC’s Good Morning America that the couple has had lots of contact lately with Indian officials and has spent a fair amount of time in India. Could that explain why they were at a dinner honoring the Indian PM? 
         
News accounts cast the Salahis as determined publicity seekers who posted their wedding on YouTube and boast an online photo gallery of themselves with loads of celebrities including Britain’s Prince Charles.
    
Michaele, a former Washington Redskins cheerleader, is being considered for cable TV channel Bravo’s upcoming reality series, The Real Housewives of Washington. In fact, the Post reports that she spent seven hours at a posh salon, TV production crew in tow, getting ready for the big night.
    
The camera crew followed Michaele and Tareq to the White House but couldn’t get in. The Salahis did and wound up being snapped for photos with Biden and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
    
The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting President Barack Obama and other high-level officials, says the Salahis were not invited to the dinner. The agency is conducting a comprehensive review to get to the bottom of one of the most embarrassing security breaches in the history of White House dinners.
    
It’s not clear what could happen to the Salahis if they really did crash the party. But another friend of the couple, Casey Margenau, doesn’t sound too worried. “Whatever they do, they’ll land on their feet,” he tells ABC. “Promotion and parties are part of their life.”

Photo credits: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Michaele and Tareq Salahi); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Biden)

Is she running for president? Seeking a coffee summit with Hillary Clinton? Or just selling her book?

The only clear answer about Sarah Palin’s intentions is that the questions are drawing lots and lots of U.S. media attention. 
  
This week, the former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor is on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She’s also going on-air for separate interviews with TV’s Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters of ABC News.
    
It’s all about promoting her new memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” which goes on sale Tuesday. But the notion that she also might be testing the waters for a 2012 presidential run is what’s drawing the serious attention.
    
Supporters liken her to a populist 21st century Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. But not all the coverage is as she’d like it.
    
Newsweek, which pictures her on its cover as an attractive young woman in running shorts, scoffs at the idea of a Palin 2012 presidential campaign.
    
“Her brand of take-no-prisoners partisanship is not good for the Republicans in the long run and not good for the country,” Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham told MSNBC.
    
“When you have a kind of ‘death panel’ ideology, where you make pronouncements that are factually untenable and tend to inflame the conversation … that’s not good for governance.”
 
She got a warmer reception from another woman of the campaign trail, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom Palin thinks she might like to meet over coffee.
 
“I absolutely would look forward to having coffee. I’ve never met her. And I think it would be, you know, very interesting to sit down and talk with her,” Clinton, now U.S. secretary of state, said over the weekend.
    
But the last word is likely to be Palin’s. Her book promotion is expected to draw huge crowds across the country. And while a Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 60 percent of Americans don’t think she’s qualified to be president, a similar percentage of Republicans say she is.
  

Photo Credits: Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin); Reuters/Jason Reed (White House); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clinton)

Conservative politicians and commentators got up in arms this week after the Pentagon said it would send doses of hard-to-get H1N1 swine flu vaccine to terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.

The White House denied it on Tuesday, emphatically, but also carefully — saying there is no vaccine at the U.S. military prison, or going there … now.

“There is no vaccine in Guantanamo and there’s no vaccine on the way to Guantanamo,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said when queried about the burgeoning controversy.

“I don’t know what the Pentagon said.  I know in asking yesterday whether or not there was any vaccine there or whether there was any vaccine that was on its way, the answer to both those questions was no,” he said.

The H1N1 swine flu virus has killed at least 1,000 Americans and infected an estimated 5 million.
Many U.S. states and cities say they have received about one-tenth as much H1N1 vaccine as they had expected to get by now. Given the shortage, the vaccine is being saved for high-risk groups, such as very young children and people with underlying health conditions. In many areas even they have been turned away as clinics have run short of the flu jab.

After Gibbs’ remarks, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said H1N1 vaccines would go to Guantanamo detainees, but only after they’d been offered to every active-duty soldier, deployed U.S. contractors and civilians, and civilians working for the Department of Defense.

“Because there are limitations on supplies of H1N1 vaccine, we’ve established priorities… But we do have an obligation to provide appropriate medical care to everyone in our custody,” he said.

Prison populations are considered at high risk for flu. What do you think of the controversy?

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Photo credit: Nurse vaccinates clinic employee with Pandemrix, a vaccine against H1N1 influenza at  UKE clinic in Hamburg Oct. 26, REUTERS/Christian Charisius; and A view of a common area inside Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Aug. 4, REUTERS/Deborah Gembara.

We saw a lot of photos over the weekend of President Obama and his wife, Michelle “Catwoman” Obama, handing out Halloween treats at the White House on Saturday night.

But we didn’t see one of the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who had dressed up as Darth Vader to join in the festivities.

So check out the photo. He is without his glasses, so he probably couldn’t see a thing. We imagine it would be tempting for him to bring the light saber to his daily news briefing and zap offending questioners.

Politico.com has video of Robert “Darth Vader” Gibbs putting on the mask — scary!

Of course it wasn’t that long ago when another White House denizen had been called Darth Vader. “I’ve been asked if that nickname bothers me, and the answer is, no. After all, Darth Vader is one of the nicer things I’ve been called recently.”

Remember who said that? None other than Dick Cheney.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Gibbs and his son Ethan dressed as Star Wars characters for White House Halloween)

The White House glowed pumpkin orange on Saturday when the Obama family turned 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into Halloween central, complete with a giant stuffed spider dangling from a web above its front door.

More than 2,000 local area children and their families were invited for the traditional trick-or-treat event.  

The Obamas spent about 30 minutes handing out cellophane bagfulls of boxed red, white and blue M&M’s. The boxes bore the presidential seal. Also tucked in was a home-baked orange-glazed cookie and, in a nod to Michelle Obama’s efforts to promote healthy food, dried apricots and cranberries.

The president didn’t wear a costume for his first Halloween in the White House. Michelle Obama went as a cat woman, complete with leopard-print top and furry ears on a headband. Daughters Malia and Sasha were there for the fun, but were not stuck with any candy line duties. 

The scene was worthy of a Hollywood extravaganza. Bubble machines blanketed the North Portico, the ceremonial entrance to the White House. Pumpkins, some carved and candle lighted, lined the marble steps. Behind Obama stood a white-helmeted storm trooper character from “Star Wars,” along with the film’s Chewbacca, the hairy, apelike “wookie.”  

 Entertainers from the Chicago-based Redmoon Theater and other companies wove their own thrills and chills for those in line. A brass band clad in skeleton suits belted out a free jazz-style funeral stomp. Outsized figures on stilts simulated moving trees. Women in butterfly suits maneuvered inflatable, 10-foot (3-meter) snow-globe-like spheres on the White House lawn.

To heighten the Halloween effect, the White House was flood-lit through orange filters. Giant pumpkins weighing as much as 1,000 pounds (450-kg) dotted the 18-acre (7-hectare) grounds.  And the big, black spider hung hauntingly between the tall white columns framing the front door.

After handing out the treats, the president welcomed the children of military families chosen by the armed services along with the kids of White House staff in the East Room.

Then Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, caught his eye. She was decked out as the Disney character Goofy. “Can people please not take a picture of my ambassador to the United Nations,” Obama joshed photographers gathered to one side. He fretted aloud that U.S. diplomatic efforts might be spooked by the sight of her.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Halloween at the White House)

Iowa Republicans have differences over the propriety of a conservative group’s effort to raise a $100,000 fee for former Alaska governor Sarah Palin to speak at a banquet next month,  according to Politico.com.

Whether Palin requested a fee (and there’s no indication that she did says Politico) or whether she should be paid may be a moot point — but, more about that later.

First — It’s not the amount of the fee that has some Iowans bothered — it’s that a fee is even being considered at all.

Iowa is sacred ground for presidential aspirants (is she or isn’t she?) and folks there tend to feel that people with presidential ambitions should be grateful for any opportunity to visit the state.

According to Politico.com, some Republicans see the Iowa Family Policy Center’s effort to cobble together the speaking fee for Palin as a striking departure from customary practice of White House hopefuls paying their own way in that state to advance political ambitions.

Other Iowa-based political advocacy groups say they would never consider paying for what many politicians see as a privilege, Politico said. “I found it really, really odd,” one influential Iowa Republican insider was quoted as saying.

Palin’s spokeswoman Meg Stapleton says the Nov. 21 event in Iowa is just one in 1,000 requests for Palin’s presence and the former Republican vice presidential candidate may not be able to work it into her schedule.

“This particular invitation arrived late last week. It is under consideration, as so many are, but will be incredibly difficult to attend with her tightly-scheduled book tour underway at that point,” Stapleton said.   Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue,” is scheduled to be released on Nov. 17th.

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Photo credit:Reuters/John Gress (Palin campaigning in Missiouri in August 2008)

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger swears that the profanity spelled out when looking at his veto letter a certain way was pure coincidence.

The Republican governor was in Washington for an event with Vice President Joe Biden to praise the economic stimulus package as having successfully created jobs. He spoke afterward with reporters in front of the White House West Wing to tout it some more.

One question was about the veto letter he sent to members of the California State Assembly. Upon closer inspection, the first letters on each line in the second and third paragraphs spell out an epithet using the four-letter F-word that is usually hurled in anger.

“That was a total coincidence. It was a wild coincidence,” Schwarzenegger said without a smile.

Newspapers and blogs have made a lot of fun, calling it the “F-Bomb Letter,” and the governor the “Swearminator” in a reference to his former acting role as the “Terminator.”

Many were incredulous about the chances that the placement of the letters were pure happenstance.

But we heard from the governor himself today — it was a coincidence…

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Schwarzenegger and Biden discussing economic stimulus)

“Are you ready to work really hard?”

“Are you ready to get dirty?”

That was the rallying cry from first lady Michelle Obama Thursday as she invited local school children to help her pick crops from the White House garden.

The crops are the bounty from the garden that Obama started in the spring to promote healthy eating .

And it’s frugal eating too.

“Do you know how much food has come out of this garden so far? Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land,” Obama told the kids.  The whole thing — from start to harvest — came in under $200, she added.

Some of the youngsters at the harvest had been helping with the garden as it grew — along with Jim Adams, the chief horticulturist at the White House and the chefs at the executive mansion.

Everything harvested Thursday, including some gigantic sweet potatoes, was being donated to charity.

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Photo credit:Reuters/Larry Downing (Michelle Obama in the White House garden on the South Lawn)

Kind of a quiet day at the White House today. Hey, why not plant a tree?

President Obama was on hand for a commemorative tree planting on the White House front lawn.

There’s always a good tale behind these things and here’s this one: Benjamin Harrison planted a Scarlet Oak tree in the same spot in 1889. There it stood through good times and bad, triumph and tragedy, rain and shine, and, well, you get the idea.

Then it rotted straight through and tumped over in a 2007 rainstorm. George W. Bush planted a Scarlet Oak in the same spot as a replacement in 2008, but it didn’t take hold.

Thus came Obama with a Little Leaf Linden tree donated from Halka Nurseries Millstone Township, New Jersey.

It’s supposed to be a sturdier tree so maybe this one will take root. We hope so, because in Washington, if you want a friend, get a tree. Wait a second, that doesn’t sound right.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama plants commemorative tree at White House)