Swamp resolution: Staying under the top

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Swamp resolution: Staying under the top

by Mark Silva

2010.

The mere mention of it causes pause for anyone who has been around the better part of six decades.

The Swamp is a young one, by comparison -- turning four years old during the first week of the new decade.

Like any four-year-old, The Swamp has learned some lessons the hard way. We have opened the door to literally hundreds of thousands of comments from readers these four years, and we haven't always been thrilled by what has crossed the threshhold.

We think we know obscenity when we see it, and the posting rules say that comments will be screened for it. We certainly know racism and religious prejudice, sexism, too. Obscenities, in their own way.

Sometimes we have been accused of censorship -- but trust us, you're happier for what you haven't had to read behind the delete button. If you want to play dirty, you can always find a soapbox.

There remains this one other tabu: "Over-the-top personal attacks.'' The rules forbid them. It's a lot more difficult, however, to draw a hard line between expression and outrage. We really are interested in a robust debate, and we invite criticism. But we've grown weary, near the end of these four years, of commentary worthy of four-year-olds.

So be it resolved, here in the Swamp, at the dawn of this new year of 2010, that commentary published here will land somewhere under the top of personal assault. We don't excise words -- in other words, we're not going to clean you up. That will be up to you. But when commentary veers into personal assault, we will be pressing the delete button a little more often. We hope you will appreciate the result.

We again wish all who pass through these e-pages a happy and civil New Year.

Obama Charts Subtler Course On Homeland Security

Before the failed Christmas Day airliner attack, President Obama hadn't spent much time talking about homeland security. That's quickly changing, but his reserved approach is based on a philosophy of managing risk and an aversion to what he has called the scare tactics of his predecessor.

U.S. Places New Duties on Steel From China

U.S. Places New Duties on Steel From China
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Barack Obama: Graying of a president

by Mark Silva

It could be the light.

There have been flecks of gray in the hair of the president since Inauguration Day, when the new chief executive's public-approval rating stood near 70 percent.

But it's the black hair that appears more scarce lately, as President Barack Obama nears the end of his first year in office with approval ratings hovering around 50 percent.

The year started with Obama promising "a new era of responsibility'' in an inaugural address that challenged Americans to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.''

The year ends with Obama acknowledging "human and systemic'' failures in U.S. intelligence that led to a near-"catastrophic" breakdown in security with an attempted bomb-attack on a U.S.-bound airlinerexposing the fact that picking up and dusting off the weaknesses of the government revealed on Sept. 11, 2001, remains a work in progress.

Yet, the year also ends with both the House and Senate having acted on the president's call for health-care reform, albeit with sharply conflicting measures that must still be reconciled before the president can sign a bill into law.

This hasn't come easily. The president himself acknowledged in late September, when he undertook a five-network blitz of the Sunday morning news shows, that "there have been times where I have said, 'I've got to step up my game in terms of talking to the American people about issues like health care.'''

The year started with a massive economic stimulus for an economy in recession which the president won just one month into officea $787-billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act that has brought a modicum of payroll tax relief and pumped federal money into road and bridge work but not produced as many jobs as many believed might flow from all this spending.

The year ends with signs the recession has ended, Gross Domestic Product growing again. Yet the year ends with unemployment at 10 percent -- a "lagging indicator," as millions of Americans out of work can testify.

As the president's overall job-approval ratings have slid from a high of 69 percent in the Gallup Poll in the days following his inauguration to a low of 48 percent in recent weeksand as it hovers just above 50 percent in the most recent daily trackingObama has seen highs and lows on other fronts as well:

Obama came home from Copenhagen without the 2016 summer Olympic Games that his hometown Chicago had fought so hard to secure. But he also came home from Oslo with a Nobel Prize for Peace, something which he hadn't sought at all and indeed accepted with an avowed humility about others being more deserving of such an honor.

The president has begun to draw down troops from Iraq, fulfilling one campaign promise, while ramping up the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. And now, with the threat that terrorists based in Yemen have made to U.S. security in the Christmas Day assault on a Detroit-bound airliner, yet a third front of foreign wars is emerging.

Obama has won an energy bill in the House, but not in the Senate, and his hopes of pressing immigration reform have been pushed into his second year.

He offered, at the start, hope of healing the partisan rifts that have rendered Washington inert for so long. Yet the partisanship of Washington appears as poisonous these days as everwith the president's party scoring its big gains without much, if any help from Republicans: The stimulus bill was a largely Democratic initiative, clearing the Senate with just three Republicans on board, the energy bill cleared the House with the help of a handful of Republicans, the health-care bill cleared the House with just one Republican vote and the Senate passed its health-care measure over the objections of the GOP.

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility,'' Obama said at his inauguration on a cold day in January, "a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

"This is the price and the promise of citizenship,'' the newly inaugurated president said under sunny skies, with more than one million people packing the national mall from the White House to the Washington Monument to see a historic event, the swearing in of the first African American president in a nation once saddled with slavery.

"On this day,'' Obama said then, "we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.''

On this cold December day, with the president away for a holiday vacation in his birth state of Hawaii, those gray hairs are shining brighter in the portrait of a commander-in-chief fighting two wars abroad and a president fighting one with the GOP at home.

It's probably not just the light.

(Above: President Barack Obama is pictured at the top on vacation in Hawaii this week after acknowledging intelligence failures in the aftermath of an attempted airliner downing in a photo by by Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images. Obama and wife Michelle Obama are pictured dancing at the President's Home States Ball on the eve of his inauguration as president in a photo by Corey Lowenstein / Raleigh News & Observer / MCT. Obama is pictured greeting his gray-haired predecessor, former President George W. Bush, at the inaugural ceremony on Jan. 20 in a photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are pictured at the inauguration in a photo by Brian Baer / Sacramento Bee / MCT. Obama is pictured delivering his inaugural address at the Capitol in a photo by Harry E. Walker / MCT and taking the oath of office in a photo by Chuck Kennedy / MCT)

Obama's Orders Declassification Of Documents

President Obama has issued an executive order allowing for the declassification of millions of documents going back to the Cold War and World War II. It was the most decisive move made yet by a president who campaigned on promises he would bring a new era of openness and transparency to the White House.

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Nancy Pelosi: 'Don't care how popular'

by Mark Silva

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, says this to the question of her being perceived as a "far-out liberal:''

"I don't choose to spend my time countering mischaracterizations that the other side puts out there. Because we are effective, I continue to be the target.''

She says so in an interview with Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, one of many interviews featured in an end-of-the-year "Interview Issue" of the magazine that attempts to answer a simple question that President John F. Kennedy once posited as the biggest challenge of any journalistic or biographical portrait: "What's he like?''

"We have a big tent in our party,'' Pelosi says to the question of discontent among liberal factions of her party these days, with some disappointed that the president they helped elect is now ramping up another war and the health-care overhaul that emerges may lack the most important element, a "public option.''

Obama, the speaker from San Francisco suggests, is a "president with a nation in crisis''an economic crisis, a budget crisis, climate crisis and two wars.

"People want change,'' Pelosi tells Newsweek, "but they are menaced by it, they are cautious about it.''

With the speaker's own public approval ratings running low lately , Pelosi is reminded that Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state and former first lady who challenged Obama for the party's presidential nomination, has gone through her own cycles of popularity and unpopularityriding high again in opinion polls.

"Well, I don't care how popular I am,'' Pelosi says. "I'm not putting myself out there to run for higher office.''

Maintaining that the Democratic Party "will be fine'' in the 2010 midterm congressional elections, Pelosi notes that she is "constantly raising money... I actually take some level of pride in the opponents I have gathered,'' Pelosi tells Clift. "It helps with my fundraising.''

Now we know a little more about "what she's like.''

(House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pictured above at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. Photo by Kay Nietfeld / . Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are pictured at a news conferece at the summit below. Photos by Olivier Morina / AFP / Getty Images)

'Franklin Delano Roosevelt' Distilled

In historian Alan Brinkley's biography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he calls the former president the most important individual of the 20th century. Roosevelt presented national concerns to the public with his Fireside Chats.

Video: Obama: Stop Iran Violence
President Obama addresses the public on the recent events that have taken place in Iran. Obama comments that the U.S. strongly condemns violent suppression of innocent Iranian Citizens.
Obama on terror threat: 'We will not rest'

by Alana Semuels

HONOLULU --- President Barack Obama, taking time out from his Hawaiian vacation today to address the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day, said he is pressing officials to determine how a man managed to board an airliner with an incendiary device.

"We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable," Obama said.

In his first public comment on the episode, the president spoke from the Kaneohe Marine base just five minutes from his vacation home in Kailua, Hawaii. He said he has asked his advisors to look into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might have gotten an explosive aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bound for Detroit on Friday.

The president said he also has instructed the government to look into current terrorism watch list policies. Abdulmutallab was on a general counter-terrorism watch list that contains about 550,000 names, which is shared with airlines and foreign security agencies, but not on any sort of no-fly list.

"This was a serious reminder of the dangers we face and of the nature of those who threaten our homeland," Obama said just after 10 am Hawaii time.

Obama said that upon being informed of the attempted terror attack he directed that immediate steps be taken to ensure the safety of the traveling public, enhance airport security and adding federal air marshals to flights leaving and arriving in the country.

He also ordered a review of the government's watch list system and of all technologies and procedures related to air travel. The president also directed his national security team to keep pressuring would-be attackers, he said.

"Those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the U.S. will do more than to simply strengthen our defenses," he said.

It was Obama's first public statement since arriving in Hawaii on Christmas Eve.

He has spent the first few days of his vacation playing tennis, golfing, working out before dawn, and receiving constant updates on the security situation.

Obama took a few minutes at the end of his short speech to address the situation in Iran, where bloody clashes with government forces have killed at least eight people.

"We call upon the Iranian government to abide by international obligations that it has to respect rights of own people," he said.

1 Year Later: Has America Been Remade?

It's been almost one year since President Obama took office. On his 100th day in office the president said the work of remaking America had begun. How has 2009 treated the administration? What are the turning points, highlights and troubles for the Obama administration?

Expert: Yemen Ties Could Be "Game Changer"

Expert: Yemen Ties Could Be "Game Changer"
CBS News National Security Analyst Juan Zarate Says Attempted Attack Could Change How the Administration Views Yemen
Christmas terrorism: Presidents at war

by Mark Silva

Nearly eight months into George W. Bush's presidency, with an administration intent on pursuing a decidedly domestic agendaprimarily education, immigration and tax reforma deadly act of terrorism turned the course of not only a new president, but also American history.

A little after 11 months into Barack Obama's presidency, with an administration intent on fulfilling far-reaching domestic promiseshealth-care and immigration reform among them, as well as the revival of a recession-riddled economyanother shocking, apparent attempt at terrorism on Christmas Day has reminded a nation turned inward on its own problems about the threats outside.

It did not take long for the United States to respond to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that claimed nearly 3,000 lives at the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York, at the Pentagon outside Washington and in a random field in Pennsylvania: With a congressional authorization of force, American military forces invaded Afghanistan and toppled a militant Taliban regime that had sponsored the al Qaeda operatives who plotted the attacks of 9/11. The al Qaeda-trained team paid cash for tickets, hijacked four airliners, deployed three as missiles and lost one in a remote field to a passenger revolt.

Eight years later, with an alleged terrorist accused of trying to bomb an airliner bound for Detroit, the elaborate fortress of security-screening that the Bush administration built around the nation's airports has been penetrated by another man who apparently paid cash for his ticket and boarded an airliner in Amsterdam armed with incendiaries, allegedly intent on taking down another plane.

And eight years later, American forces still are engaged in Afghanistanindeed Obama is escalating the U.S. military force to nearly 100,000 troops by next summerwith the president explaining the expanded mission there as a matter of disabling the al Qaeda forces that have taken root in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan with the help of a resurgent Taliban .

It was the son of a wealthy Saudi family, Osama bin Laden, whose own nation had disowned him, who authorized the attacks of 9/11. Now it is the son of a wealthy Nigerian family, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabwhose own father reportedly had alerted the American embassy there that his son was taking a worrisome, radicalized pathwho is accused of a botched terrorist attack. He reportedly has claimed connections to al Qaeda.

Bush maintained, as he campaigned for the White House, that he had no interest in "nation-building.'' But the events of 9/11 quickly thrust the United States into a nation-rebuilding mission in Afghanistan, and Bush volunteered the U.S. for a nation-rebuilding mission in Iraq. Obama maintains that the U.S. will withdraw from Afghanistan once it is enabled the nation's own forces to provide its own security, yet the relenting threat of terrorism continually raises new questions about what it will take for the U.S. to ever declare safety.

One president confronted a stunning terrorist threat at the start of the 21st Century, another confronts a similar, perhaps diminished ,threat at the end of the first decadewhile worrying that the enemy is stronger than suspected.

One decade in, the most powerful nation in the world is reminded of the risks which apparently no amount of military force and no amount of domestic security is able to avert. A couple of wealthy men with the enmity of an army have attacked a nation-building power. One tragically succeeded. Another has failed. Others, too, have tried. So, once again, all eyes turn to averting the next assault.

Obama's First Year: Has He Fallen Short?

Is the health care bill a victory for President Obama, or is the bill too watered down for his constituency to consider it a winner? How has the rest of the administration's agenda fared in Obama's first year? Host Scott Simon speaks with NPR news analyst Juan Williams for reaction, as well as an assessment of how President Obama has fared in his first year in office.

Video: Captured U.S. Soldier on Tape

Video: Captured U.S. Soldier on Tape
A video recorded by the Taliban has surfaced which features U.S. Army Private First Class Bo Berg, who has been missing since June of 2009 and believed to be held hostage. Kimberly Dozier reports.

Merry Swamp Christmas: Ho, Ho, Ho

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Merry Swamp Christmas: Ho, Ho, Ho

The Tour de Jakarta below featured a team of Santas pedalling through the capital of the world's most populous Muslim nation today. ( Photo/Tatan Syuflana):

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Santa Claus was feeding the fish on Christmas Day, the photo below taken by Lai Seing Sin for the at Aquaria, an underwater park:

Obama And Black America

Nearly a year after taking office, the president still enjoys a high approval rating among blacks despite soaring unemployment and a recent mini-revolt by the Congressional Black Caucus. Renee Montagne talks to Juan Williams about the impact of the Obama presidency on African Americans.