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I came across an Associated Press headline that left me racing to the toilet to hurl: Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisive standsLet me play the first few bars of this article for you, so I can explain what is so profoundly wrong with it: WASHINGTON – Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government. "What an opportunity we have to change this country," the Democrat told his senior...

Four years ago, the Associated Press and others in the press suggested it was in poor taste for Republicans to spend $40 million on President Bush’s inauguration. AP writer Will Lester calculated the impact that kind of money would have on armoring Humvees in Iraq, helping victims of the tsunami, or paying down the deficit. Lester thought the party should be cancelled: “The questions have come from Bush supporters and opponents: Do we need to spend this money on what seems so extravagant?” Fast forward to 2009. The nation is at war (two wars, in fact), and now also faces...

An aide to Sarah Palin is disclosing as gifts more than $13,000 in airfare and lodging from the John McCain campaign, logged while helping the Alaska governor with state business during her bid as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

When community groups and the Board of Education were caught in an acrimonious dispute over an arts program, education officials brought in a fixer: Caroline Kennedy. The daughter of a president and niece of two senators listened attentively, asked probing questions and proposed various scenarios to resolve the dispute. Under her prompting, a compromise was reached. "People were pushing themselves back from the table and folding their arms," recalled Stephanie Dua, chief executive officer of the Fund for Public Schools. "She was very good at defusing the situation. ... She has a very easy style about her but she's very...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says CBS News anchor Katie Couric and comic actress Tina Fey have been "exploiting" her.</p> <p>Palin also is questioning whether Caroline Kennedy is getting better treatment from the news media in her quest for a Senate seat than Palin herself received as Republican John McCain's running mate.</p>

Pointing with concern to "red ink as far as the eye can see," President-elect Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to tackle out-of-control Social Security and Medicare spending and named a special watchdog to clamp down on other federal programs — even as he campaigned anew to spend the largest pile of taxpayer money in history to revive the sinking economy. The steepness of the fiscal mountain he'll face beginning Jan. 20 was underscored by stunning new figures: an estimate that the federal budget deficit will reach $1.2 trillion this year, by far the biggest ever, even without the new stimulus spending....

Tina Fey is the entertainer of the year? You betcha. Fey was voted The Associated Press' Entertainer of the Year, an annual honor chosen by newspaper editors and broadcast producers across the country. Fey was selected by AP members as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008. The 38-year-old comedian bested runner-up Robert Downey Jr., whose comeback was capped with the blockbuster smash "Iron Man," and the third-place vote-getter, Heath Ledger, who posthumously wowed audiences as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." But it was Fey who most impressed voters largely with her indelible...

WASHINGTON (Dec. 24) - President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team was involved in any eye-popping dealmaking over filling his vacated Senate seat. Obama's hand-picked investigator agreed. "Everybody behaved appropriately," declared Greg Craig, Obama's incoming White House counsel and the person asked to conduct the internal inquiry into contacts between the transition team and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team were involved in any dealmaking with the governor of Illinois over filling his vacated Senate seat. On Tuesday, Obama's hand-picked investigator agreed. "Everybody behaved appropriately," declared Greg Craig, Obama's incoming White House counsel and the person asked to conduct the internal inquiry into contacts between the transition team and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Prosecutors have said Obama is not implicated in the case against Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. But the corruption scandal has drained precious energy from...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska officials are investigating racist jokes about President-elect Barack Obama that have been circulating on state government e-mail accounts. One of the five e-mails obtained by the Associated Press asks what was the outcome of the Democrat’s victory after all the time and money spent, and concludes: “Another black family living in government housing!” State officials were unaware of the e-mails until asked about them by the AP. Three of the racist messages were confirmed by the state’s information technology division after an electronic search of the government’s e-mail system, Administration Commissioner Annette Kreitzer said Wednesday. “It’s...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) The Minnesota Supreme Court is getting involved in the state's unsettled U.S. Senate race. The court said Monday it will weigh whether to stop the sorting and counting of wrongly rejected absentee ballots until clear instructions are handed down. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman petitioned the court to step in after the state board overseeing the recount recommended those ballots be considered last week. Coleman maintains there aren't clear guidelines for the recommendation and could lead to disarray among the 87 counties.

CHICAGO — When President-elect Barack Obama heads home for a break from the White House, he won’t go to a sprawling ranch or private seaside compound. Obama will come back to a crowded city neighborhood, creating different security challenges for the Secret Service and perhaps headaches for his neighbors. No other recent first family has lived in a city neighborhood like the Obamas. The $1.6 million mansion he and his wife, Michelle, share with their two young daughters sits just off a busy street — a stretch of which has been closed to traffic — and his closest neighbors are...

WASHINGTON – When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid. *Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.* *Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.* Since Clinton's inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton's second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama...

WASHINGTON – When the Washington Nationals played their first-ever baseball game in the nation's capital in April 2005, two congressmen who oversaw mortgage giant Freddie Mac had choice seats — courtesy of the very company they were supposed to be keeping an eye on. Efforts to tighten government regulation were gaining support on Capitol Hill, and Freddie Mac was fighting back. The baseball tickets for home opener were means of influence. According to confidential company documents obtained by The Associated Press, Reps. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., spent the evening in hard-to-obtain seats near the Nationals dugout with...

CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama announced support Sunday for a short-term government bailout of the nation's carmakers that is tied to industry restructuring. He also accused auto executives of a persistent "head-in-the sand approach" to long-festering problems. Obama said Congress was doing "the exact right thing" in drafting legislation that "holds the auto industry's feet to the fire" at the same time it tries to prevent its demise. In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" and later at a news conference, Obama at one point suggested some executives should lose their jobs.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Gov. Sarah Palin has added to her financial disclosure forms two free trips that she took nearly two years ago but failed to report. Palin, who was Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, made the disclosures last month, but after Election Day when she and McCain lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The trips were first revealed in a story by The Associated Press in October.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents. "Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job. Bowing to aggressive lobbying -- along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK -- regulators delayed...

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents. "Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job. Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action...

NEW YORK – Zenas Ackah has heard it all his life: What kind of name is that? You must not be from here. You must be foreign. Actually, no. Born in the United States, the 22-year-old college senior with the Greek first name and the Ghanian last name grew up in Philadelphia. But Ackah is hopeful that change is coming, that the idea of an "American" name will expand beyond monikers like Tom and Harry and Sally and Jane and Smith and Jones. He figures he's got a strong weapon on his side — for at least the next four...

CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama pledged on Wednesday to have an economic plan ready for action on the nation's financial crisis on his first day in office. "Help is on the way," he declared. He also said his Cabinet would "combine experience with fresh thinking" and pushed back against criticism that he was recycling former Clinton administration officials as he builds his new economic team. In his third news conference on the economy in as many days, Obama announced he had chosen former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head a new White House panel to help create jobs and...