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)

Maybe it was a sign that someone wanted to put the press corps — or possibly the White House staff — in their place.

Who knows, but at the beginning of the daily White House press briefing on Wednesday, a disembodied voice sounded in the briefing room, saying: “THE PRESIDENT IS POWERFUL.”

Reporters and White House staffers in the room laughed, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs joked about it, to more laughter. But no one offered an explanation for the pronouncement.

“Was that happening just in my head, or did you all — did you all hear that, too?” Gibbs asked.

“We didn’t hear anything,” someone answered.

“Wow. Wow. That’s — that was interesting, if inexplicable,” Gibbs said.

And then, apologizing “for not having an equally grand introduction by which to call on the first reporter,” he plunged into the usual routine of responding to, if not answering, questions on Afghanistan, healthcare reform and a news report that Democratic donors were being given special access to the White House.

So, did Halloween come early to the White House? Or is it some new get-out-the-message mechanism?

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Gibbs at daily White House press briefing on Sept. 28)

On Monday, the State Department sent out its no. 2 official to tout how it was managing to get U.S. civilians out into the field in Afghanistan, with nearly 1,000 expected to be in place by year-end.

A day later, it was in damage control mode after the resignation of one of its star employees was plastered on the front page of The Washington Post and on the Internet.

In an emotionally-charged four-page letter dated September 10, Matthew Hoh said he was quitting because he had lost confidence in the war effort and whether it was worth the blood spilled there.

Hoh’s letter is notable  because he was seen as just the kind of person the State Department wants in Afghanistan. A former Marine and then Department of Defense civilian, he served in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. On a one-year contract with the State Department, he was serving as the senior civilian representative in Afghanistan’s Zabul province.

Just as President Barack Obama is reviewing his approach in Afghanistan, Hoh said he had “doubts and reservations” not only about the current but also future strategy in the eight-year war.

“I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war,” said Hoh in his resignation letter to the State Department’s human resources director.

In language that must make the State Department cringe, Hoh said the United States was no more than a “supporting actor” in a tragedy and that the U.S. presence had only served to further destabilize the country as well as its neighbor Pakistan.

“I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan,” he said.

Excusing the “tone” of his letter, he argued that the United States was mortgaging its economy on a war which would drag on for years.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Hoh had been a “valued member” of the team in Afghanistan and that the department respected his opinion.

“We take his opinion seriously but we continue to believe that we are on track to achieve the goals that have been laid out for us. Those are to improve Afghan governance and provide security for the people of Afghanistan and help to rebuild their country and have a future which presents an alternative to the negative vision of the Taliban,” said Kelly.

The White House was noncommittal in its response to the letter. “I think the president has seen the story. I don’t believe the president has seen the letter,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

State Department officials said there had been a lot of arm-twisting to try and get Hoh to stay and that the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, had also appealed to him not to quit.

Asked whether there could now be a rush of other resignations — as happened during the Iraq war when disaffected State Department officials quit in protest of U.S. strategy — U.S. officials said they did not think that would happen.

“There is a tendency to conflate this with the resignations during the Iraq invasion, but this is really not the case. Not to diminish this guy’s views, but…I don’t sense a groundswell of resignations. The response to serve in Afghanistan is so much bigger than it was in Iraq,” said one official.

This was certainly the message from Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew on Monday who said there were more applications than jobs for posts in Afghanistan.

Well now there is an opening in Zabul province to fill….

UPDATE: A State Department official called to make clear that Hoh was not a career foreign service officer, but was on a limited contract for the department when he resigned.

Photo credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic (Afghan policeman patrols village in Zabul province in 2008), Reuters/Jim Young (State Department building in Washington)

The official portrait of the first family is in.

There’s Sasha, the youngest at 8 years old, casually draping her arm over the shoulder of the president of the United States.

Older sister Malia embraces her mom, first lady Michelle Obama, as they all sit for their first official first family portrait in the Green Room at the White House on Sept. 1.

It is the work of portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, known for some of the most famous celebrity photographs of our time — Demi Moore pregnant and nude on the cover of Vanity Fair, and a nude John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono for the cover of Rolling Stone taken on the day of Lennon’s death.

But back to the first family’s portrait. Hold on, isn’t someone missing? Where’s Bo, the first dog? Is he already in the dog house?

“Bo didn’t make the cut,” the first lady’s spokeswoman tells us with a laugh. “He was upstairs at home.”

Maybe he hasn’t learned to say cheese yet…

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Photo credit: White House photo of first family portrait, Reuters/Larry Downing photo of Bo