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As his top national security advisors gathered for an urgent Saturday meeting to discuss the terrorist threat that has forced the United States to close embassies overseas, President Obama was at Camp David celebrating his birthday with friends. Sixteen senior officials participated in the unusual gathering, according to the White House. Among them were National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who chaired the session, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa...

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Key figures in the Obama administration met on the current al-Qaeda threat on Saturday while the president conducted an intensive golf fiesta at Andrews Air Force Base. President Obama set off for the golf course at about 8 a.m., hoping to squeeze in as much play as possible before a scheduled departure to Camp David at 2:30 p.m. Three all-male teams hit the golf course to mark the day before Obama’s 52nd birthday, including regulars Reggie Love and Marvin Nicholson, White House chef Sam Kass and college friend Wahid Hamid. “Before departing this morning, the president was updated on a...

The White House said top administration officials gathered late Saturday over a terror threat that provoked the State Department to close more than 20 diplomatic posts and issue a worldwide travel alert. National Security Adviser Susan Rice chaired a meeting with 12 administration officials including the secretaries of State, Defense and Homeland Security and the directors of the FBI, CIA and NSA

President Barack Obama will host Cabinet members and their families on Friday for a rare retreat at Camp David, a White House official said. Obama uses the facility far less often than many of his predecessors have, only occasionally holding meetings there or heading there for a weekend of rest and relaxation. The president has hosted Cabinet members and their families there just once before, weeks before Democrats' big losses in the 2010 midterm elections.

It won’t be for a while, as this session of the Supreme Court will come to an end this week with the release of its most controversial decisions of the term. However, next year, the court will hear arguments on what constitutes a recess, and how much power the President has to make appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate: President Obama’s recess appointments to a federal agency– made without Senate confirmation– will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, a major constitutional test of executive power. …The case sets up a high-stakes Supreme Court fight between the other...

President Barack Obama is nominating Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx, a rising star in Democratic politics, to run the Transportation Department, a White House official said... Foxx will be the first black nominee among Obama’s picks for open spots in his second-term Cabinet. The president has faced questions, including from the Congressional Black Caucus, about a lack of diversity in his first round of nominations after winning re-election. If confirmed by the Senate, Foxx would take over a department that has been at the center of Washington’s debate over the impact of the so-called sequester cuts. The automatic cuts resulted...

The chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus said she is concerned that President Obama has not yet appointed African-Americans to his second-term Cabinet. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) said Obama's appointees do not reflect the nation's diverse population — at least, so far. “I am concerned that you have moved forward with new cabinet appointments and yet, to date, none of them have been African American,” her letter to Obama states. “You have publicly expressed your commitment to retaining diversity within your cabinet. However, the people you have chosen to appoint in this new term have hardly been reflective of this...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced his nominees to lead a new U.S. push to tackle climate change on Monday, choosing an air quality expert to run the Environmental Protection Agency and a nuclear physicist to head the Department of Energy. In a widely expected move, Obama selected agency veteran Gina McCarthy to replace Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator and scientist Ernest Moniz from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take over for Steven Chu as Energy secretary. Obama also announced his choice to lead the White House budget office - Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Walmart Foundation,...

There were two extraordinary disclosures in Thursday's testimony of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey before the Senate Armed Services Committee. One is that there was no communication between them and Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the seven hours of Sept. 11, 2012, when Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were attacked and murdered in Benghazi. This is a vivid contrast with those photos we've seen of the president and his leading advisers watching the video of the attack on Osama bin Laden. At a 5 p.m. meeting, when...

Probably the most random thought I've had since I've started doing Photoshops. If you don't know the pop singer this is referencing find out here.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the only Republican still left in President Barack Obama's first-term Cabinet, says he plans to leave the Obama administration. The former congressman from Illinois says in an interview with The Associated Press that he intends to remain at the department until his successor is confirmed.

Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett on Sunday predicted more minorities and women would be tapped for positions in the president’s Cabinet. “His cabinet, when he's finished -- and he's far from finished -- will have diversity, including women, including people of color,” said Jarrett in an interview with CNN. “He believes he makes his best decisions when he is surrounded by people who have different perspectives and give him their best ideas,” she continued. “And so, one picture does not speak a thousand words in this instance. I spent a lot of time in the Oval Office, and I'm in...

President Obama is tripling the number of Cabinet agencies with gun control law enforcement responsibilities in his new bid to track guns, adding six agencies to the three typically included--Justice, Homeland Security and Defense. Section 1.e of his executive order released Wednesday adds State, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Energy, and Veterans Affairs. It reads: "For purposes of this memorandum, 'Federal law enforcement agencies' means the Departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, the Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security, and such other agencies and offices that regularly recover firearms in the course of their criminal investigations as the President...

The White House is poised this week to announce a handful of Cabinet nominees, most of whom have a few things in common: they all seem like perfectly qualified, distinguished folks. . . and they’re all white men. President Obama’s picks, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for secretary of state, former senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) for secretary of defense and John Brennan for CIA director, mean that the number of positions that could be filled by women or minorities is dwindling. That’s causing some concern among those who’d hoped to see diversity in the cabinet remain at its historic levels or even...

As President Barack Obama finalizes his second-term cabinet picks, the nation’s leading feminist group is pushing for more female appointments. Currently, the president, who garnered 55 percent of the women’s vote on Election Day, has eight females in his 23-member cabinet. According the National Organization for Women, that number isn’t nearly high enough. NOW president Terry O’Neill, in an interview with The Daily Caller, explained that she would like to see complete gender parity in Obama’s second-term cabinet. “I think that if half of the cabinet were women and half of the Supreme Court and half of Congress were women,...

ATKINS, Va. - Cabinet maker Merillat is laying off 280 employees at two manufacturing plants in southwest Virginia. Officials for parent company Masco Cabinetry confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to close two facilities that make doors and panels for cabinets in Atkins in mid-January...

John Kerry as Secretary of Defense. Susan Rice as Secretary of State. How much loonier can it get? Who says Obama has no sense of humor? Here's your chance to weigh in, FReepers. Post your own nominees for the New And Improved Obama 2013 Cabinet here. I'll get the ball rolling: Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: Michael Moore CIA Director: Van Jones Secretary of the Treasury: Jon Corzine et cetera. Have at it, comrades!

President Obama’s post-election offer to sit down with vanquished GOP rival Mitt Romney has spurred talk of a possible White House role for Romney, a move that could help calm jitters on Wall Street and warm the partisan chill on Capitol Hill. Romney is still licking his wounds from the devastating loss, and supporters say he’s more concerned now with being with family than working with Obama.

When he was a governor, Mitt Romney prided himself on bringing in the best and the brightest. As president, he would be under pressure to tend to Republican Party interests in stocking the government with loyalists. The day after his election as governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Mitt Romney welcomed reporters to his transition headquarters in the PeopleÂ’s Republic of Cambridge, informed his new constituents that managing the stateÂ’s pressing budget crisis would be his top priority, and began fleshing out the top posts within his pending administration.A decade later, a President Romney would again face immediate fiscal problems. But...