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"Scour this report, identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization and just get it done," President Obama said today to a "Jobs Council" meeting.

Gov. Rick Perry’s inner circle has evolved significantly since he was first elected to the Texas House in 1984. He changed parties, for one thing, becoming a Republican and shucking one political infrastructure for another. And he changed offices, moving from the House to the Texas Department of Agriculture, from there to the lieutenant governorship and from there, with the election of George W. Bush to the presidency in 2000, into the office he holds today. His closest advisers are a mix of family, longtime friends and close aides. They know his politics, his history, his strengths and weaknesses, what...

Earlier this year, Barack Obama formed a new presidential advisory committee on jobs and competitiveness that the White House hoped would alleviate at least two critical problems for the administration. First, after spending a year shoving ObamaCare down the throats of voters who clearly didn’t want it, Obama needed to re-establish that jobs had become a priority again. Second, and only slightly less important, Obama had to bolster the private-sector bona fides for his administration, which almost entirely lacked any such experience.Obama invited the heads of several American companies to join his panel, and they’re probably delighted with the access....

So three or four of Obama's advisers, all women, wanted war against Libya.   We'd like to think that women in power would somehow be less prowar, but in the Obama administration at least it appears that the bellicosity is worst among Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. All three are liberal interventionists, and all three seem to believe that when the United States exercises military force it has some profound, moral, life-saving character to it. Far from it.

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate, has paid tens of thousands of dollars for foreign policy advice to a U.S. firm that represents three overseas governments, campaign finance documents show. While legal, the adviser’s work as an agent for other countries raises questions about whether Palin is receiving impartial information about foreign relations and could be become a subject of debate if she runs for president or another elected office. Financial reports filed by the former Alaska governor’s fundraising committee known as SarahPAC, show that between December 2009 and the end of May 2010, it...

When the Commerce Department reported Friday that the economy had grown at a humble 2.4 percent in the second quarter, even the liberal Washington Post suggested President Barack Obama’s policies were not leading to the sort of economic growth necessary to reduce unemployment, which has risen from 7.7 percent to 9.5 percent since Obama took office. “The recovery is fading, and a troubling pattern is setting in: economic growth that is too slow to put Americans back to work,” said the first paragraph in the Post’s report on the new GDP numbers. But in the worldview presented in an early...

Note: The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-presidents-council-advisors-science-and-technology Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Executive Orders The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release April 21, 2010 Executive Order -- President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish an advisory council on science, technology, and innovation, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Establishment. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is hereby established. The PCAST...

It is expected to announce plans Monday to speed up the release of remaining stimulus funds over the next 100 days by targeting the best places to spend the cash. To the naysayers, White House advisers are urging patience and asking them to look on the bright side of the stats. "It's a substantial improvement from what the job losses have been," White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, told "FOX News Sunday," noting that the 345,000 jobs lost in May was far less than in prior months. "That's the smallest job loss since September of last year." Senior White House...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Over 70 American military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its military units conduct operations against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in western tribal areas, The New York Times reported. Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said the advisers mostly include US Army Special Forces soldiers. Overseen by the US Central Command and Special Operations Command, the advisers provide the Pakistani army with training and intelligence, the report said. But they do not get involved in combat operations. The advisers form part of a secret task force that was started last summer with the...

WASHINGTON - Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years. Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain's campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain's national finance chairman. EADS is the parent company of Airbus, which teamed up with U.S.-based Northrop Grumman Corp. to...

Hillary Clinton's most senior advisers are in a state of "panic" about her presidential prospects and are plotting to enlist Democrat leaders in Congress to thwart her rival Barack Obama's ambitions. The Clinton camp is braced for Mr Obama to win a series of primary elections over the next three weeks, which they fear could hand the Illinois senator unstoppable momentum in the race for the White House. Mr Obama has begun calling those "super delegates" - 795 congressmen and senior party officials who could break a dead heat - who are committed to Mrs Clinton, asking them to change...

Which spectre haunts financial advisers the most? Terrorism? Global unrest? Not even close. According to a survey of over 200 financial advisers taken in December, their biggest worry is that Hillary Clinton will win the presidential election in November: Nothing worries financial advisers more than the prospect of a Democrat's being elected president in November, according to a quarterly poll by Brinker Capital Inc. The fourth-quarter edition of the Brinker Barometer, which polled 236 advisers in December, found that 22% indicated that a "Democrat in the White House" worried them more than all other economic or geopolitical concerns. Rounding out...

SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday handed out hefty pay raises to 11 of his closest advisers, including a $32,000 boost to Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy. Kennedy remains the highest paid member of the governor's inner circle, although some of his cabinet secretaries make more. With the latest raise, Kennedy's taxpayer-funded salary will be $175,000 a year. The other 10, including Deputy Chief of Staff Adam Mendelsohn and Daniel Zingale, chief of staff to first lady Maria Shriver, will see their salaries increase 11 percent to $147,900. The pay raises come a week after Schwarzenegger signed a $145.5 billion...

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals in a last-ditch effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war. They include a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general, and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders. Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys" — smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: Military officers...

White House advisers ready to back Iraq withdrawal By Richard Alleyne (Filed: 17/10/2006) A panel of White House advisers, which includes a former US secretary of state, is ready to recommend large troop withdrawals from Iraq, it emerged today. In what would be a major shift in policy, the experts are said to be ready to suggest the “Redeploy and Contain” option which would mean withdrawing American troops to bases outside Iraq where they could be used against terrorist organisations anywhere in the region. The report is being prepared by a 10-member commission called the Iraq Study Group, headed by...

SACRAMENTO - Two top campaign consultants who helped Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor by casting him as a political reformer are taking new steps to profit from their ties to the administration. One year after the Republican governor sought to create a firewall between his administration and his political team, Schwarzenegger advisers George Gorton and Bob White have launched new Sacramento lobbying operations designed to influence state policy. The moves have critics calling on Schwarzenegger, who vowed to set a high ethical standard in Sacramento, to distance himself from anyone who offers him private political advice and then tries to sway...

Bush Advisers OK Social Security Plan Fri Jan 28, 3:08 AM ET By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush's advisers have settled on a proposal for structuring the personal accounts they hope to create in Social Security, while on Capitol Hill Senate Democrats were launching an effort to defeat the plan altogether. Under a plan recommended to Bush, the private accounts would resemble many company-sponsored retirement plans, with just a handful of investment options. By default, workers would be enrolled in a "life cycle" account, in which investments become more conservative as investors age, if they do...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named a 16-member Council of Economic Advisers on Friday that leans heavily on Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution and includes major Republican establishment thinkers on supply-side economics and reducing government regulations and taxes. Schwarzenegger named former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz to chair the group of Nobel Prize winners, California economics professors and former advisers to Republican presidents Bush, Reagan and Nixon. Shultz, the former Reagan Administration secretary of state who also headed Schwarzenegger's 18-member Economic Recovery Team during last year's recall campaign, similarly advised former two-term Republican Gov. Pete Wilson during the...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - The idea of a United States independent of Middle East oil is a touchstone of Senator John Kerry's campaign and a huge crowd pleaser, but has divided and exasperated many of his most experienced energy advisers. Some advisers say they worry that Mr. Kerry's focus on freeing the United States from reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf, the linchpin of the energy plan he released on Thursday, is unrealistic and misleading and that hammering away at it would erode Mr. Kerry's credibility with business, the news media and other countries. The advisers, who include independent...

SACRAMENTO - Arnold Schwarzenegger's political career has proved to be more than just a boon for the new Republican governor. It has also turned into a lucrative business for the close-knit group of advisers that has helped transform the former actor into a fast-rising political star. Over the past year, campaign records show, Schwarzenegger's seven top political consultants have earned more than $2.2 million -- and perhaps as much as $3.7 million -- working for the governor. Since making his surprise campaign announcement one year ago today on ``The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,'' Schwarzenegger has enlisted some of the...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld joined other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration March 22 in disputing claims made by a former White House counterterrorism official. Former antiterrorism chief Richard Clarke alleges in a new book and has said in interviews that President Bush and his advisers were slow to recognize the threat posed by al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and were too preoccupied with attacking Iraq to respond appropriately after the attacks. "The (National Security Council) began the process of working through a plan to deal with al Qaeda from the early days of the administration,"...

<p>JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security team has recommended that Israel withdraw from virtually all of the Gaza Strip and up to 24 West Bank settlements, a government official said Thursday.</p> <p>Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said earlier he would welcome a Gaza withdrawal, but he insisted it would have to be accompanied by a simultaneous pullback from the West Bank.</p>

Republicans gather this weekend in Los Angeles for the country club coronation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Will any notice that the former Mr. Universe emperor still has no clothes on? The more one examines the Schwarzenegger campaign, the more nakedly liberal it appears. It appears that the circle of liberal advisers around Schwarzenegger is not contracting but growing wider by the day. Robert Kennedy Jr., a wild-eyed left-wing environmentalist, is "advising him on strategy," reported the Los Angeles Times this week in a piece entitled "Schwarzenegger is the GOP's Green Candidate." Even the Times can put two and two together, observing...

Republicans gather this weekend in Los Angeles for the country club coronation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Will any notice that the former Mr. Universe emperor still has no clothes on? The more one examines the Schwarzenegger campaign, the more nakedly liberal it appears. It appears that the circle of liberal advisers around Schwarzenegger is not contracting but growing wider by the day. Robert Kennedy Jr., a wild-eyed left-wing environmentalist, is "advising him on strategy," reported the Los Angeles Times this week in a piece entitled "Schwarzenegger is the GOP's Green Candidate." Even the Times can put two and two together, observing...

The Associated Press PRETORIA, South Africa July 9 — President Bush suggested Wednesday that any U.S. military help in ending brutal civil unrest in Liberia might consist mostly of advisers and trainers to avoid stretching American forces too thinly around the globe."We won't overextend our troops, period," Bush said at a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who had pressed him on what role the United States would play in the crisis. African nations want the United States to do more to end the bloodshed in the western Africa nation. But U.S. lawmakers, including some leading...

PRETORIA, South Africa - President Bush (news - web sites) suggested Wednesday that any U.S. military help in ending brutal civil unrest in Liberia might consist mostly of advisers and trainers to avoid stretching American forces too thinly around the globe. "We won't overextend our troops, period," Bush said at a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who had pressed him on what role the United States would play in the crisis. African nations want the United States to do more to end the bloodshed in the western Africa nation. But U.S. lawmakers, including some leading Republicans,...

<p>Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson pulled the plug Friday on contracts with friends, associates and former colleagues who were receiving up to $8,470 per month to provide consulting services to his office.</p> <p>Wesson's decision ended weeks of simmering controversy, inside and outside the Legislature, over open-ended contracts that did not stipulate what work must be done or set deadlines.</p>

An internal White House document outlining President Bush's re-election agenda starts with "War on terrorism (Con't)" and homeland security. It's the latest sign, critics say, that presidential advisers are seeking political gain from the Sept. 11 attacks. The single-page, sparsely worded document titled "Possible '04 Signature Issues" was discussed this month in a White House meeting chaired by chief of staff Andrew Card to fine tune Bush's 2003 legislative agenda, several senior White House officials told The Associated Press. White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the "Signature Issues" list does not portend efforts to make terrorism a political centerpiece...