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Dinner for 171! The Queen Treats The Obamas To A State Banquet... and Invites A Few Of Their Hollywood Friends By JESSICA SATHERLEY 25th May 2011 After a long day of public appearances, President Obama and US First Lady Michelle were treated to a state banquet at Buckingham Palace, hosted by the Queen tonight. The star-studded banquet saw 171 guests arrive, including Tom Hanks, Kevin Spacey and Tim Burton, who dined on lamb, roast potatoes and vanilla Charlotte. Also at Her Majesty’s banquet in honour of the Obamas were David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Boris Johnson. Cheers! The Queen toasts...

From the State Dinner menu:Main Dry Aged Rib Eye with Buttermilk Crisp Onions Double Stuffed Potatoes and Creamed Spinach Wine: Quilceda Creek Cabernet "Columbia Valley" 2005 (Washington State) $399.99 at Raeder's Wine store.

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrive to greet Chinese President Hu Jintao upon his arrival on the North Portico of the White House in Washington, DC. Action star Jackie Chan and pop diva Barbra Streisand topped a guest list including three presidents and political and media elites at a US state dinner for Hu Wednesday. (AFP/Saul Loeb)

WASHINGTON — The brazen reality TV hopefuls who managed to crash the White House state dinner earlier this week may face criminal charges, the Secret Service said today. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin says the agency is moving closer to beginning a criminal investigation. He says that’s one reason the Secret Service hasn’t yet explained what happened when Michaele and Tareq Salahi arrived at the security checkpoint Tuesday for the dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Mackin says there’s less the Secret Service can say as the probe moves closer to a criminal investigation. He says the agency isn’t...

Ostensibly, White House party crashers Tareq Salahi and his wife could facilely be dismissed as another pair of publicity infatuated cretins. Commentators have been quick to compare them to the deranged Balloon Boy parents, desperate for fame at any price. Obamanutz devotes an entire chapter to the putrification of our pop culture that has spawned and enabled this kind of narcissism. Two strangers getting access to the President of the United States is disturbing enough by itself. We were told early on that Salahi is “half Palestinian.” That’s not the half of it. The Salahi’s are deeply in debt as...

(CNN) -- Former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers told CNN's Don Lemon on Saturday that she is excited about her new position as chief executive officer of a publishing company and that she has put the state dinner crasher scandal behind her. Rogers declined to comment about the Salahis, the couple whose party-crashing ways may have cost her the White House position. Nor did she want to discuss a reality show that features the Salahis and that recently showed footage of the couple with a police escort. Those images have sparked an investigation by police in Washington D.C., an...

White House gatecrashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi are penning a book about the security breach that sparked a national furor. They've teamed up with investigative reporter Diane Dimond for a tome they say will lay out "behind-the-scenes" details of the November 2009 night when they bamboozled the Secret Service and got into a state dinner for India's prime minister. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/dc_crashers_to_reveal_all_mpcRtHTX5842mKxpPc9YzI#ixzz0ro0kBSEI

You know the basics. The unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. Jobs are still being lost. Worries about the global economy are causing breathtaking volatility on Wall Street. And millions of Americans who still have jobs are worrying more than ever about the safety of their retirement savings. What you may not know is that, during this moment of terrible economic anxiety, the Obama White House found the time -- and the money -- to turn itself, at least for a night, into a showcase of glitzy extravagance. On May 19, the White House held a state dinner for Mexican President...

...In Obama’s world up is down and bad is good. Countries who encourage their citizens to illegally enter the United States (in fact, whose governments publish handbooks on how to do so), who chastize us on state laws that are none of their business and accuse us of racism–why they’re welcomed with open arms and feted with state dinners...

The White House Chief of Protocol - Capricia Penavic Marshall - had "one of those moments" tonight just as the President of Mexico was arriving at the White House for a State Dinner. President and Mrs. Obama were taking their places at the top of the stairs on the red carpet. As Marshall got to the steps, she slipped as she tried to step down. She quickly recovered, and said to reporters, "Don't print that." She went ahead and welcomed the arriving Calderons. Why would she think that anyone would ever print something like that?

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama Wednesday deployed the full pomp of a White House state dinner for only the second time, honoring Mexico's President Felipe Calderon with a sumptuous menu and elaborate decor. The White House was also road testing unspecified extra security measures, after the inaugural Obama state dinner last year for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was marred when a socialite couple gatecrashed the festivities. Key members of the US-Mexico community were expected among 200 guests at the glamorous black-tie gala evening at the White House, as well as actresses Whoopi Goldberg and Eva Longoria, and Mexican...

UPDATED FROM TUESDAY VERSION ABOUT RICK BAYLESS GUEST CHEFFING AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH CLARIFICATION.... Clarification: Bayless at Gapers Block said he did not send his tweets from the White House kitchen. Bayless also sent a tweet out about my post. To clarify: Bayless tweeted about the upcoming dinner and about the White House kitchen, but not from the White House kitchen. My apology. The lede below is what appeared in the print editions. WASHINGTON -- Rick Bayless, the Chicago superstar chef, was tweeting from the White House kitchen about today's Obama White House state dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe...

One goal of President Barack Obama's state dinner Wednesday will be to make Mexican President Felipe Calderon feel like the man of the hour. Another will be to keep uninvited guests from crashing the party. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama weren't as lucky with their first dinner last November, for India's prime minister, when more than 300 guests dined and danced in a pavillion-like tent on the South Lawn. Only after the last song had been sung did the White House learn of an embarrassing breach in presidential security that allowed a husband-and-wife duo to crash the party and...

Obamas Prepping For Second State Dinner The soiree honoring Mexico's president comes after three uninvited guests crashed the first state dinner. A new social secretary will be running the affair, and the Secret Service will be on guard. By Katherine Skiba May 16, 2010 When the Obamas host their second state dinner Wednesday, expect the event to be splashy, star-studded — and heavily guarded. The black-tie dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe Calderon comes after three uninvited guests crashed the Obamas' first state dinner in November. That night India was being feted, and after an otherwise spectacular evening, the gate crashers...

Here’s what we know about how Carlos Allen, the latest White House party crasher, wound up at Barack Obama’s first state dinner: Five days before the event, Allen told a friend that he’d received an invitation from the White House to dine with the prime minister of India. In retrospect, it was an odd claim. Allen wasn’t famous, a big political donor, or Indian. He wasn’t even, it seemed, fully employed. Yet he gave no hint that he was surprised to have been invited. Nor was Allen’s friend surprised to hear it. Allen, she later said, seemed like the kind...

A third uninvited guest made his way into the White House state dinner for India's prime minister in November, the Secret Service said Monday.

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO WAS A GUEST AT OBAMA’s FIRST STATE DINNER….. Mr. Ratan Tata [The chairman of the Tata Group - India's biggest conglomerate] A story emerging out of Britain suggests “follow the money” may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis. A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House gate-crashers plan to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to testify if they are subpoenaed to appear on Capitol Hill about the security breach. Reality TV hopefuls Michaele and Tareq Salahi said through their lawyer on Tuesday that the House Homeland Security Committee has drawn premature conclusions about the Nov. 24 incident, when they were able to get into the state dinner without being on an approved guest list.

Desirée Glapion Rogers is the descendant of a Creole voodoo priestess named Marie Laveau Glapion. The first time I meet her, she welcomes me into her East Wing lair—a rhythm and blues tune plays on a white iPod, a potted white orchid perches between two windows, fresh flowers sit on a heavy wooden desk. This is a woman who never sees a wilted bloom. The 49-year-old turns on just enough Southern charm to camouflage an aura of self-assuredness typically reserved for runway models or first ladies. Wearing a crisp white shirt, black patent flats and high-waisted navy slacks that would...

WASHINGTON -- Sidney Blumenthal, the Clinton Administration's famed servitor, saw it all coming. He predicted the Obama Administration's Carousel of Incompetence, as I like to call it. He was not thinking about the serious botches, the healthcare monstrosity, the spending spree, the criminal trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned for New York, the cap and trade extravagance. He probably agrees with these policy lurches. What he probably had in mind were the lesser bungles, the Administration's bizarre appointees (Van Jones, Anita Dunn), their embarrassing departures, and now the two imposters, who gate-crashed a state dinner for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh...