White House
Posted: Friday, October 09, 2009 9:55 AM by firstread
Filed Under:
Barack Obama, Congress, White House
President Obama today became the third sitting president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said today. The Washington Post writes, “The committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.” The award had previously been awarded to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Jimmy Carter in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore, along with the U.N. panel on climate change, won it in 2007.
The White House will propose new policies that would expand the roles of state and local governments, which could produce heated debate in Congress. "The administration is only eight months old and many of the policies will evolve in heady congressional debates, fierce lobbying battles and deep in the recesses of the government’s regulatory agencies. But the new tone itself may go a long way toward reorienting the relationship between state and federal powers."
Of yesterday’s White House basketball game with Cabinet members and Congressmen, Representative Michael Arcuri (D-NY) “Arcuri said the lawmakers got ready for Team White House by beating up on a team of lobbyists last week. But he complained about Obama's home court advantage. ‘It's his court. He wouldn't come play in our gym,’ Arcuri teased,” writes the New York Daily News.
It looks like the White House wishes it had included a few women in last night's presidential pickup game.
