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WASHINGTON -- Sen. John McCain intends to try to hold up two Obama administration nominees because of a dispute over land-swap legislation intended to pave the way for an Arizona copper mine, his spokeswoman said Friday. McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan confirmed the Arizona senator will oppose the nominations of Bob Abbey as director of the Bureau of Land Management and Wilma Lewis as Interior assistant secretary for land and minerals management when they are voted on by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. She said he intends after that to place holds on the nominations when they come before the...

President Barack Obama on Friday will name Dr. Thomas Frieden as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, administration officials told The New York Times. Frieden has served as New York City's health commissioner for the past seven years. In that time, he spearheaded a campaign to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, boosted the number of New Yorkers getting HIV tests and helped to distribute millions of free condoms. He will inherit a looming decision on how best to manage a swine flu outbreak, including whether or how to produce a swine flu vaccine. The virus...

A pro-life Congressman is pressing further with his request for President Barack Obama to withdraw his nomination of Dawn Johnsen. She is a former NARAL legal director Obama appointed to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the president. Johnsen has drawn strong opposition not only for her ties to the pro-abortion group but for filing a legal paper on its behalf with the Supreme Court equating pregnancy with slavery. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, was part of a group of 63 lawmakers to previously ask Obama to withdraw the nomination and he sent his...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The Obama administration's pick to be the new undersecretary of Agriculture in charge of the U.S. Forest Service has surprised conservation groups. The White House announced late Tuesday that Mississippi state conservationist Homer Lee Wilkes, a 28-year veteran of the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service, is being nominated as the new undersecretary of Agriculture for natural resources and environment. Andy Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics says Wilkes is the first person in at least 30 years to be tapped for the job without any background in forest policy, indicating the Obama administration has...

President Obama's choice for the government's No. 2 housing job is embroiled in the largest fine in U.S. history for "blatant violations" of open records laws after the Washington State Supreme Court chastised his office for withholding documents detailing taxpayer costs for a new professional football stadium in Seattle.

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday formally nominated Ellen Tauscher, a seven-term member of Congress who is considered an expert on defense, as his top arms control official. Tauscher, who represents a California district, has a record of introducing arms control and counter proliferation legislation and has campaigned for greater oversight of the US Missile Defense Agency. She said in a statement in March, after details of her impending appointment emerged, that she

President Obama's troubling nominee to head the National Highway Traffic Safety AdministrationEarlier this month, President Barack Obama nominated Mothers Against Drunk Driving CEO Chuck Hurley to head up the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).Hurley's pending appointment is bad news for social drinkers, motorists, and anyone interested in freedom of movement and less hassle on the roadways. Hurley is an anti-alcohol zealot, and a longtime proponent of just about any highway regulation that's sold under the guise of public safety. He's a supporter of primary seat belt laws, which allow police to pull motorists over solely for seat belt infractions....

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish. If Canada, the...

Denver, Colo., Apr 29, 2009 / 09:44 am (CNA).- After the U.S. Senate voted 65-31 to confirm Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic who strongly supports legal abortion, as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, pro-Obama and pro-life Catholics collided over the consequences of the appointment. Pro-lifers are promising to battle against the pro-abortion Dawn Johnsen, who awaits confirmation for the Office of Legal Counsel. “Catholics United,” a group that has so far justified all of President Obama’s pro-abortion decisions, issued a statement congratulating Sebelius and applauding the U.S. Senate “for today's decisive action.” Catholics United executive director Chris Korzen, who...

The 65-31 vote came after Democrats urged quick action so that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius could get to work leading the federal response to the flu outbreak.

The Senate began debate this morning on the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services, with Democrats urging a quick vote on the Kansas governor as Congress and the Obama administration move ahead on health-care reform and seek to address the swine flu outbreak. "It is essential for the health of the nation that President Obama has in place, and the nation has in place, a strong secretary of HHS to make sure our federal efforts on this potential pandemic are able to coordinate," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. Sebelius is the final member...

This afternoon, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will have an opportunity to demonstrate why the Framers gave the Senate the constitutional power to confirm presidential appointees. If they fail to exercise that power vigorously with respect to the nomination of Harold Koh to be the top State Department lawyer, they will not only have been derelict. They will be accomplices to an assault on our Constitution that ultimately will result in an unprecedented, and likely permanent, derogation of the Senate's vital role and responsibilities. After all, Mr. Koh is one of the nation's most prominent - and aggressive...

Barack Obama has been notoriously tough in hiring lobbyists in Washington and therefore, headhunters have been retained to search for hard to fill positions. Obama's administrators have reportedly interviewed large search firms Korn/Ferry International, Russell Reynolds Associates and Heidrick & Struggles. (snip) Obama said, “A lot of people who we think are about to serve in the administration and Treasury suddenly say, ‘Well, you know what? I don’t want to go through some of the scrutiny, embarrassment, in addition to taking huge cuts in pay.’ ”

Tensions are rising in the Senate over President Obama’s nominees, as Republicans delay picks ranging from a Cabinet post to a U.S. Circuit Court judgeship, and Democrats complain that the disputes are slowing important legislation. Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., has raised concerns about burning time filing procedural motions to limit debate on a handful of nominees. The most notable, recent example: Obama’s nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be Health and Human Services secretary. Although still expected to win confirmation in a vote scheduled for April 28, Sebelius, a Democrat, has been challenged by Republicans over her...

We have gone from a very smart administrator--Michael Chertoff--to a woman who doesn't have the first clue as to what security means and she's in charge of our national defense essentially. What qualification does she have? Answer: none. So now we have a DHS secretary who is absolutely unqualified for the position at a time that Obama is cutting our intel-gathering abilities and al-Qaeda is ramping back up to take us out. I feel really good about our national security right about now.

Zero proposes a 3.6 trillion dollar budget, and hopes to pass another 700+ billion dollar 'stimulus' - and asks for a 100 million dollar spending 'trim'...... WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama told agency heads to trim spending by $100 million, a largely symbolic effort that foreshadows bigger budget fights down the road. Responding to Republican lawmakers -- and some ordinary voters -- who complained that his policy proposals are too costly, Mr. Obama told cabinet chiefs to find the savings in current operations and report back within 90 days. The president acknowledged at his first cabinet meeting that the new...

Washington, DC -- A Senate panel today approved the nomination of pro-abortion Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to become President Barack Obama's health secretary. The Senate Finance Committee voted 15-8 for her nomination and now it heads to the full Senate for a debate and vote. There is no timetable on when the Senate will vote to confirm Sebelius, but political observers expect the Democratic-controlled chamber to approve her.

For someone in Obama’s cabinet to warn the nation about decent God and country loving people as being “extreme” is like Rosie criticizing chunky and obnoxious middle-aged white lesbian comics for being unfunny. Behold, the Audacity of Irony. Or hypocrisy. Both work for me. You choose. Uh, hello, Ms. Napolitano, you work for the Czar of the Extreme, Barack Hussein Obama. By the way, what’s up with all this Czar crap? What’s next, leopard skin fezzes? Eye patches? Geez, we have more czars in Barack’s Bizarroland administration than Russia had during the entire Romanov Dynasty. We’re not Russians yet, so...

President Obama said Saturday that he will soon announce “the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective,” and used his weekly radio address to name two new high-level officials to assist him in that effort. The president said he would use his Cabinet meeting on Monday — the first time the full Cabinet will meet — to ask department and agency heads to come up with specific proposals for cutting their budgets by eliminating inefficient programs. [Snip] “If we’re going to rebuild our economy on a solid foundation, we need to change the way we...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1239207536374.shtm President Obama Announces His Intent to Nominate Rand Beers as Homeland Security Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Directorate President Barack Obama announced today his intent to nominate Rand Beers as U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Under Secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), the Department’s primary risk-reducing division. Beers will oversee five major offices in this role, including Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C), Infrastructure Protection (IP), Intergovernmental Programs (IGP), Risk Management and Analysis (RMA) and US-VISIT. “More than anyone I know, Rand Beers can be trusted with protecting...