Obama's 'czars:' Halls of fame

by Mike Dorning

Kenneth Feinberg, the latest Obama administration official the news media have anointed "czar," hardly has the kind of power that would impress Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great.

Feinberg, widely described as the White House's "pay czar," will have real control over compensation of executives at exactly seven companies that have been large recipients of government bailout money. And he has discretion over only the top five executives and 20 most highly paid employees in those companies. At most, that's 175 people.

But czars are proliferating in Washington with a White House that has demonstrated a clear inclination to concentrate broad authority in its top officials by crossing traditional bureaucratic boundaries and a 24-hour cable news culture that has discovered that the appointment of a czar is more exciting than, say, an adviser on urban issues.

There's health reform czar, a drug czar, a border czar, a regulatory czar, an info-tech czar -- everything, it sometimes seems, but a Russian czar.

In fact, Republican Sen. John McCain has joked that President Barack Obama has "more czars than the Romanovs," the dynasty of czars that ruled Russia for three centuries.

Since czar isn't an official job title, the number is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. The magazine Foreign Policy's blog back in April counted 18, though the author included diplomatic "special envoys," which have been used by previous presidents and have not widely been called czars before. Either way, Feinberg didn't make the cut.

Reuters this month counted "as many as 21" czars but didn't provide a list.

It's too many czars, grumble some members of the Senate. They might fear that the real power will flow toward czars, most of whom are not subject to Senate confirmation. It's a matter of accountability, they say.

An argument, perhaps, for expanding the jurisdiction of the accountability czar, Earl Devaney, now charged with monitoring spending under the economic stimulus program.

See the hall of Obama czars below, here in the Swamp:

Executive pay (appointed Wednesday): Kenneth Feinberg

Regulatory czar: Cass Sunstein

Health-care reform: Nancy-Ann DeParle

Efficiency: Jeffrey Zients

Southwest border czar: Alan Bersin

Energy: Carol Browner

Urban affairs: Adolfo Carrion

Economics: Paul Volcker AND/OR??? Lawrence Summers

Government performance: Unfilled

Drug: Gil Kerlikowske

Car czar: Steve Rattner

Bank bailout: Herb Allison

Iran: Dennis Ross

Mideast: George Mitchell

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Richard Holbrooke

Cyber security: To be named.

Distressed auto communities: Ed Montgomery

Climate change: Todd Stern

A Check Up For The Health Care Bill

Host Liane Hansen speaks with NPR's Julie Rovner about the healthcare reform bill making its way through a Senate committee this week. They also look ahead to alternate bills that could have more bipartisan support.

Obama: Save $1T By Cutting Fed Med Costs
The critics said it couldn't be done, but President Barack Obama said he's come up with almost a trillion dollars in savings to provide for 45 million uninsured Americans, reports CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier.
University of Chicago: Class of 2009

by Mark Silva

"Obama eats here,'' read the printed words on the backs of the T-shirts at the University Market on South 57th Street in Chicago, home of the Arrabiata, capocolla, pepperoni, soppressata and provolone on a roll that will make the forehead sweat.

When's the last time the president of the United States actually ate here? "I believe it's when he was five,'' jokes the sandwich maker behind the counter in the back of the market.

An exaggeration, certainly, for here in Hyde Park, next door to the Medici Bakery and around the corner from the University of Chicago lab school where Obama's girls started, the president has had plenty to eat on the leafy streets that ring the university. His house is just up the street.

But we are not here today for Obama.

We are here for a commencement. The 498th Convocation of the University of Chicago is playing out this weekend.

We already have sat through part of it, on Friday, when our son, Dylan Michael Silva, walked for his Master of Arts degree in International Relations. It was sunny in the quadrangle, and we got burned a little. But we aren't complaining. This morning, it is raining, and we will return to the quadrangle to see our son walk for his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. That's right, two in four years. So let it rain. We're sitting in the clouds.

The commencement speaker, a noted research biologist who has found a link between genetics and breast cancer and received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant for her work, is telling these graduates this weekend about the importance of service to one's community. She also is dispensing a joke here and there, such as the one about this being the neighborhood of "one of the most dangerous domestic terrorists.'' We assume that would be Bill Ayers, neighbor of Obama and radical Weatherman from the 1960s turned professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The joke rolls off her lips, and across the ears of a crowd that is hearing really only one thing today: The name of the son or the daughter crossing the stage at the 498th Convocation of one of the greatest universities in the world.

Ours is walking twiceso you'll forgive us if we haven't been posting much in these e-pages or slow in moving comments about all that controversy about the president and his rivals, the weatherman and all other matters political. Today, we aren't complaining.. We don't need a weatherman to know which we our flag is flying.

Some Guantanamo Detainees Headed For Palau

The tiny island nation of Palau (pop. 21,000) has agreed to take in Uighur detainees from Guantanamo. The Uighurs, Muslim separatists from western China, have been judged not to be enemy combatants — i.e., they are not a threat to the United States — but Congress won't allow them to settle here and most other countries won't accept them for fear of angering China, which regards them as terrorists and demands their repatriation for trial. NPR's Michael Sullivan talks with NPR's Scott Simon about what awaits the Uighurs in Palau.

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Tobacco regulation: 'It's the smoke'

by Mark Silva

It's been said -- though we'd never suggest such a thing -- that the debate on Capitol Hill sometimes begs the question of what these guys are smoking.

This morning, the answer appears to be lettuce.

The House, debating a tobacco-regulation bill that the Senate has adopted, is poised to give the government the power to regulate tobacco like the drug that it is. President Barack Obama is ready to sign it into law.

But Rep. Steve Buyer, a Republican from Indiana, told his colleagues on the floor this morning that it's not tobacco which is to blame for millions of Americans dying, but rather the smoke they inhale at the filter end of their smokes. (See the argument above, courtesy of C-SPAN.)

""Too often we should be careful about being cute here on the House floor,'' Byyer said today. "So cute means the reference with regard to lettuce. So I'll follow your logic.

"Do you realize if you were to take that lettuce, dry it, and roll it, and smoke it. And you go ahead and you smoke your lettuce. Do you realize that you are going to end up with similar problems than if you were smoking tobaccco. It's not the nicotine that kills. It's the smoke that kills. So It's the inhalation of the smoke.

:That's what causes and is responsible for the pandemic of cancers, of heart disease, respiratory disease, and other disease. It's the smoke."

Justices May Strike Down Part Of Voting Rights Act

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Obama may relent on some Utah drilling

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Obama may relent on some Utah drilling

By Jim Tankersley

Under intense pressure from Republicans on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration may reinstate more than a third of the 77 controversial oil and gas drilling leases, issued under President George W. Bush, that it blocked near national parks in the Mountain West.

In a report set to be released this morning, Obama's Interior Department sharply criticizes the process by which those leases, included tracts near Arches and Canyonlands national parks in Utah, were auctioned in the waning days of the Bush administration.

The auction "deviated in important respects from the normal leasing process," the report declares, including the Bureau of Land Management's failure to notify the National Park Service about tracts that were a late addition to the sale, and the Bureau's refusal to adequately consider the air quality impacts of the leases.

But the report, which stemmed in part from negotiations that cleared the way for Senate confirmation of the Interior Department's top deputy, also opens the door for the Department to reinstate or re-auction 30 leases on parcels that either lie in existing oil and gas development areas or "not near particularly sensitive landscapes". It instructs the BLM to conduct a more thorough review of those parcels to see if leasing them would be appropriate.

"The BLM team should do its work expeditiously," the report concludes. "Companies who successfully bid on specific parcels should receive timely feedback on whether they will be able to develop those parcels."

The report is not likely to win approval from environmentalists, who have challenged the lease auction in court.

The auction was held in December, barely a month before the Obama administration took office. Conservation groups protested, and incoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quickly ordered the 77 most controversial lease sales vacated while a special review could be conducted.

Western Republicans in the Senate, led by Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, retaliated by stalling the confirmation of David Hayes, Salazar's choice to be his chief deputy. The Republicans relented after Hayes promised to personally conduct an expedited review of the leases, a process that included a tongue-lashing from oil and gas workers at a field hearing in Vernal, Utah.

"This report helps us unwind the problems that landed these 77 parcels in court with a temporary injunction," Salazar said in a press release this morning. "It is clear that in the rush to sell the leases, the previous Administration bypassed normal reviews and consultations with the National Park Service. Only when the light of public scrutiny was shed on the situation did they reconsider some of the most problematic leases, but many of the 77 parcels that were auctioned off are close to National Park units and even closer to other sensitive, world-class landscapes including Desolation Canyon and Nine Mile Canyon."

Fame: A Cautionary Tale

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Contessa Brewer v. John Ziegler: Mic cut

by Mark Silva

It could have been filmmaker and radio host John Ziegler's description of MSNBC as "Barack Obama's official network.''

It could have been Ziegler's objection to the David Letterman bit poking fun at Sarah Pain: No 1 highlight of Palin's trip to New York: "Not appearing on Letterman.'' No. 2: That 'sllutty flight attendant look.''

It could have been Contessa Brewer's notice of the Gallup Poll survey that found few Republicans identifying any one as a strong spokesman for the GOP -- Palin least among the better-known party faces.

L.A.'s Ziegler -- producer of Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected -- handed MSNBC some of the blame for that public perception of the GOP: "You find this surprising or shocking that because you and the media portray Republicans as old white men, that the public perceives Republicans as old white men?"

Whatever it was, Brewer asked to cut his mic.

Read more about the battle of Contessa Brewer and John Ziegler and see thagt battle in the video above, courtesy of MSNBC.

Sometimes It Pays To Skip The Detour

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Bush's big jump: 85 and counting

by Mark Silva and updated

The big news from Kennebunkport today is about Former President George H.W. Bush''s next big jump -- a tandem parachute drop Friday to celebrate his 85th birthday.

Bush, who keeps a summer home on Walker's Point, will jump with a member of the Army Golden Knights parachute team, landing at a church in Kennebunkport, Me.

Robin Meade, anchor of Morning Express on HLN, will take part in a tandem jump with the Bush team. "It's not every day one gets the chance to tandem jump alongside a former president, with the Army's Golden Knights -- it is both a thrill and an honor," said Meade -- which, of course means that CNN, HLN and CNN.com will be covering the sky-diving. Meade will get an interview before the jump.

Bush has celebrated his 75th and 80th birthdays this way, and also jumped in November 2007 at the reopening of his presidential library at Texas A&M University in College Station.

He also jumped in the Navy, when his plane was shot down over the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

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Sotomayor hoping, hopping for support

by Michael Muskal

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor found something she could really lean on today as she met with more senators who will consider her nomination.

Sotomayor was forced to rely on crutches as she moved from from meeting to meeting, her ankle in a cast, after she broke it this morning. According to the White House, the federal appellate judge tripped at New York's LaGuardia Airport before boarding a flight to Washington and sustained a small fracture to her right ankle.

The injury may have slowed her down, but didn't politically hobble her as she hopped, er, hoped, to talk to about one-third of the Senate by evening. Today was her fourth day of talks with senators.

Sotomayor even stopped.at the White House after her arrival in Washington -- before heading to the hospital for an X-ray. The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates treated and released her, according to a White House statement.

With thanks to Top of the Ticket for the medical report on Sotomayor.

Should HIV Be Criminalized?

Johnson Aziga is a Canadian man who was diagnosed with HIV. He had unprotected sex without telling his partners he was HIV positive. In April, a court found Aziga guilty of murder for transmitting the disease to two female partners who later died.