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Michelle Obama's White House is 'not Camelot' By: Amie Parnes and Kendra Marr November 24, 2010 04:28 AM EST She has glamorized kitchen gardening, spotlighted childhood obesity and invited thousands of students, many of them minorities, to official White House events. Expectations were high for a different kind of first lady, and in many ways Michelle Obama has lived up to them, maintaining the kind of high public profile that was widely anticipated when she and her husband came to Washington. At the same time she has been a victim of those expectations, disappointing some in Washington who hoped she...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a bold goal for the next decade: Overhaul the country's immigration system so that every worker in the United States is legal. "We are not going to deport 11 million people," Gingrich said Thursday as he kicked off his first forum on Latino issues. "There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty." A possible presidential candidate, Gingrich stressed that his target of establishing an entirely legal work force is "not a call for amnesty." Rather, he said, it's about applying common sense to the immigration debacle. "Dos y dos son cuatro" (two...

Michele Bachmann won a straw poll held at a conservative conference this weekend. | AP photo Michele Bachmann scored a victory in a straw poll held at a conservative conference over the weekend. The Minnesota congresswoman won 23 percent of the vote from attendees of The Awakening 2011, a gathering at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Though she was scheduled to address attendees, Bachmann sent a video message instead while she remained in Washington because of the potential government shutdown. Mike Huckabee came in a close second place, taking 23 percent. Newt Gingrich, who actually spoke to the conference’s...

The general is getting more specific. For more than a year, President Barack Obama set a broad, ambitious legislative agenda, and, for the most part, allowed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to let Congress to “work its will,” as Pelosi likes to say. Those days are fast coming to an end. After watching congressional Hill Democrats squander months — and perhaps their majorities — on health reform and a grab-bag stimulus package, the White House is taking a more hands-on approach with its highest priority bills before this fall’s midterm elections. “The clock...

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her first swing through the Granite State with an unfortunate gaffe. "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord," she said Saturday morning at an event organized by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. "And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors. Good, patriotic stuff … only the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” was fired about 70 miles to the south in Concord, Massachusetts. For a candidate already known for her gaffes in public remarks,...

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s suggestion Saturday that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs. Making her first trek to New Hampshire as a 2012 prospect, Bachmann told a GOP crowd in Concord: “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.” (snip) “She makes Sarah Palin look like Count Metternich,” groaned longtime GOP consultant Mike Murphy on Twitter after reading about the Concord confusion.

Looks like Donald Trump is taking his birtherism to the next level -- by soliciting advice from birther czar Joseph Farah. Kendra Marr of Politico reports that Farah says he and Trump talked every day this week, and he has been advising Trump on the basics of birtherism. "We've have been speaking quite a bit," Farah said. Since he started maybe-running for president, Trump has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of President Obama's U.S. birth. Conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate have been repeatedly debunked, but that hasn't stopped Trump from speculating that the President's grandparents planted a birth announcement in...

DURHAM, N.H. — Rick Santorum on Friday asserted that Sharia law has no place in America. “Jihadism is evil and we need to say what it is,” he said at the Strafford County Lincoln-Reagan dinner, remarks that show how the former Pennsylvania senator continues to establish himself as the candidate most-aligned with the Republican Party’s conservative base. “We need to define it and say what it is. And it is evil. Sharia law is incompatible with American jurisprudence and our Constitution.” Santorum, invoking New York Rep. Peter King’s hearing this week on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims, said that...

Well, that’s awkward. News that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is considering a presidential bid has not only sparked a mini media frenzy, but it’s rained on the parade of her home state colleague, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. On the eve of the release of Pawlenty’s memoir, “Courage to Stand” — the subject of an upcoming media blitz that has the all but announced a White House candidate booked on a number of national shows including “Good Morning America,” “The View” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”— the Bachmann trial balloon has the GOP governor and his backers gamely...

The first reception, hosted by fashion designer Donna Karan, will raise $800,000, according to a Democratic National Committee official. Eighty-five guests were invited to buy $10,000-a-person tickets to the Greenwich Village reception.

"I don't dispute for a second that happened," Protess, who founded the Medill Innocence Project, said in a recent interview..... "It is a technique we will use infrequently." The behavior is acceptable..."if there is no other way to get the story and there is a higher social purpose, a higher social good." Questions about journalistic ethics add another layer of controversy for a professor who is both ostracized by his university and lauded in student evaluations... last week more than 30 journalists and professors from around the country came to Protess' defense by asking for an "independent investigation" of the...

A wounded survivor of the Tucson shooting that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is blaming Sarah Palin, House Speaker John Boehner, Fox TV host Glenn Beck, and former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle for the tragedy. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW. “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of Christina...

Tim Pawlenty implied Tuesday that there are some less-than-serious presidential hopefuls eyeing the race, with a quip that seemed to lump Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump together with wrestling icon Hulk Hogan. "You're going to have, you know, Mitt Romney who will start out as the front-runner with the most name-ID and money..." Pawlenty told CNN’s Piers Morgan in handicapping the race. "And on the other end of the continuum, you'll have perhaps Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, or I don't know, maybe Hulk Hogan will get in the race too. Who knows? But I think in...

Lawmakers Chide Automakers Over Dealership Cuts GM Issues State-by-State Closings List By Dan Eggen and Kendra Marr Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, June 13, 2009 Out of the 1,323 General Motors dealers targeted for elimination, the most will come from Pennsylvania. Ninety dealerships will be forced to wind down in the state. Pennsylvania is followed by Ohio with 79, Illinois with 66, California with 65 and New York with 60. GM, which has declined to name individual dealers, released the state-by-state list for the first time yesterday to a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. And lawmakers vented their frustration, demanding...

Santorum is going to get a lot of heat for this. When the Islamic supremacist tools in the mainstream media challenge him on it, he should ask them if they think the death penalty for apostates, stoning for adultery, amputation of the hand for theft, the denial of the freedom of speech, and institutionalized second-class status for women and non-Muslims is not evil. They will then, following some smooth Islamic supremacist deceiver, claim that those things are not part of Sharia; Santorum should then challenge them to name one Muslim country that has ever implemented Sharia without implementing those measures,...

A wounded survivor of the Tucson shooting that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is blaming Sarah Palin, House Speaker John Boehner, Fox TV host Glenn Beck, and former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle for the tragedy. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW. “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of Christina...

President Barack Obama turned his attention from the BP oil spill Friday to talk about another concern: economic recovery. But not for long — 58 minutes to be exact. In fact, he spent less time on the ground in Columbus, Ohio, than it took to fly there and back. The president revved up Air Force One, flew to Ohio, motorcaded to a road construction site, gave a speech on the Recovery Act and flew back to Washington all in the span of three hours. Less than an hour of that was on the ground. The president has had a chaotic...

MACON, Ga. — It had all the trappings of a homecoming. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who helped Republicans rise to power in this once-solid Democratic state, returned Friday deliver his first speech as a presidential candidate before thousands of state GOP delegates. But ahead of Gingrich’s scheduled address Friday evening, party activists were buzzing about another favorite son — Herman Cain. “He doesn’t talk political,” said Jeanette Bean, a Gwinnett County delegate who was passing out Draft Cain stickers. “He talks straight. He doesn’t mince his words and says it how it is. It’s so refreshing,” Plenty of...

Tim Pawlenty implied Tuesday that there are some less-than-serious presidential hopefuls eyeing the race, with a quip that seemed to lump Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump together with wrestling icon Hulk Hogan. "You're going to have, you know, Mitt Romney who will start out as the front-runner with the most name-ID and money..." Pawlenty told CNN’s Piers Morgan in handicapping the race. "And on the other end of the continuum, you'll have perhaps Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, or I don't know, maybe Hulk Hogan will get in the race too. Who knows? But I think in...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s suggestion Saturday that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs. Making her first trek to New Hampshire as a 2012 prospect, Bachmann told a GOP crowd in Manchester: “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.” The Revolutionary War began, not in New Hampshire’s capital, but in the famous two towns more than 50 miles away in...