Massachusetts: Obama Transition

After emerging last week as a frontrunner for the job, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to be his solicitor general, according to an email Kagan sent to Harvard Law students and obtained by PolitickerMA.com.

"I am writing to all of you - the community of students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Harvard Law School - to let you know that today President-elect Barack Obama will announce his intention to nominate me to serve as solicitor general of the United States," Kagan wrote in the email.

A month after Election Day, a political contest may be raging unbeknownst to most political observers for the New England regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Jack Clarke, the director of public policy and government relations for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, told PolitickerMA.com that the post can be highly political and candidates who want the job are likely to already be maneuvering behind the scenes.

Nearly 80 percent of Massachusetts voters approve of Barack Obama's performance as president-elect, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.

Fifty-five percent of respondents of the poll, which was conducted on Dec. 9, said they "strongly approve" of Obama's performance.

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy applauded President-elect Barack Obama's appointment of former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday.

Kennedy, a Hyannis Port Democrat, has made reforming health care to provide universal health insurance among his top priorities in the next Congress, stepping down from his post on the Judiciary Committee to focus on that goal.