Washington: Barack Obama

This morning President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden joined Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to disclose the release of nearly $30 billion in recovery funds to state and local Departments of Transportation for the repair and construction of highways, roads, and bridges.

The Obama administration also rolled out the new emblem that projects funded by ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) will bear. Take a look:

It's not quite as groundbreaking and recognizable as the Obama campaign logo, but it'll do the job. It's a nice representation of two important and connected priorities: environmental protection and economic security for all.

The President stressed in his remarks this morning that federal employees have an important job in scrutinizing how funds are spent:
Having inherited a trillion-dollar deficit that we're working to cut in half, we also need to ensure that tax dollars aren't wasted on projects that don't deliver results.

At some point, the honeymoon has to be over. The low point during the Clinton administration, to me, came when Clinton and his deputies joined with Republicans and tried to enact what they called "welfare reform".

What worries us is the prospect of the new administration following the same harmful "triangulation" tack. Is President Obama going to be backtracking on any of the progressive ideals that he says are the points on his moral compass?

It's still too early too tell, but The Independent is reporting that basic due process rights are still being denied to alleged "enemy combatants".
Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo".

In a little over an hour, Barack Obama will deliver his first official Address to Congress as President of the United States. It's not being called a "State of the Union", but for all practical purposes, that's what it is.

The White House has released an excerpt from Obama's prepared remarks to highlight what the President plans to emphasize tonight. It's a pretty stirring message, and it'll probably sound even better than it reads when Obama says it.
But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.

Here's the story. President Barack Obama is likely to announce former Washington Gov. Gary Locke as his choice for Commerce Secretary this week a senior administration official said.  Locke was the first Chinese-American governor in U.S. history. Locke seems more...