UPDATE - The President said "[i]n the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury." [He] asked Treasury Secretary . . . Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.” But, "White House officials said that the administration is not looking to take A.I.G. to court to stop the company from paying out the bonuses. But they said the Treasury Department would be trying to figure out what they can do to block A.I.G. from making the payments within the legal confines of A.I.G.’s contractual obligations to the executives."

More . . .

NOTE: My title is facetious - see Jeralyn on the process. In a WaPo article today, there seems to be some controversy about whether the President of the United States gets to decide who will be US Attorneys in his Administration:

One of the better spoils of winning the presidency is the power to appoint nearly 100 top prosecutors across the country. But filling the plum jobs has become a test of competing priorities for President Obama. While he pledged bipartisanship during his campaign, replacing the cadre of mostly conservative U.S. attorneys would signal a new direction. When President Bill Clinton took office, he fired all U.S. attorneys at once, provoking intense criticism in the conservative legal community and among career lawyers at the Justice Department.

President George W. Bush took a different approach, slowly releasing several of the prosecutors but keeping in place Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, while she pursued terrorism cases and a politically sensitive investigation of Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.

(Emphasis supplied.) Is this accurate? Not really, according to this 2007 LATimes article:

The NYTimes today reports on the issue of health insurance for the gay partners of federal employees:

Just seven weeks into office, President Obama is being forced to confront one of the most sensitive social and political issues of the day: whether the government must provide health insurance benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. In separate, strongly worded orders, two judges of the federal appeals court in California said that employees of their court were entitled to health benefits for their same-sex partners under the program that insures millions of federal workers.

But the federal Office of Personnel Management has instructed insurers not to provide the benefits ordered by the judges, citing a 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act.

The Office of Personnel Management's citing of DOMA appears to run contra to the signing statement issued by President Clinton when he signed the DOMA bill in 1996. See also Smelt v. County of Orange, 447 F.3d 673, 683 (9th Cir. 2006) (DOMA on its face "does not purport to preclude Congress or anyone else in the federal system from extending benefits to those who are not included within [its] definition [of marriage][.]") More . . .

We now have a Deputy Attorney General. David Ogden was confirmed by the Senate today. The vote was 65-28. This is the #2 slot at Justice and Ogden will be responsible for the day to day running of the department.

Background materials on Ogden are here. Most recently, he served as Obama's DOJ transition team leader.

The radical right really doesn't like him, believing him to be pro-p*rn, pro-gay rights, pro-affirmative action and pro-abortion. On the other hand, PFAW is pleased.

He's certainly qualified. He served in the Clinton Justice Department, including as head of the Civil Rights Division and chief of staff to the Attorney General. He clerked for two Supreme Court Justices and has military law experience, having served as Deputy General Counsel and the Legal Counsel for the Defense department. A Harvard law grad, he was editor of the Law Review. In 2006, he received the National Law Journal Pro Bono Award.

Since Democrats and others (including me) spent a great deal of time criticizing President Bush for issuing a recordbreaking number of signing statements, it seems necessary to consider President Obama's signing statement issued in relation to the recently enacted Omnibus Spending Bill. TPM has the relevant passage:

Numerous provisions of the legislation purport to condition the authority of officers to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. These are impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement in the execution of the laws other than by enactment of statutes. . . . Yet another provision requires the Secretary of the Treasury to accede to all requests of a Board of Trustees that contains congressional representatives. The Secretary shall treat such requests as nonbinding.

I think the signing statement is defensible in one aspect and indefensible in another. It appears to be asserting that the provisions in question are a form of legislative veto which the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in the case INS v. Chadha. In one aspect, this claim seems well established and moored to clear Supreme Court precedent. In another, I think it is unmoored and indefensible. I'll explain why I think so on the flip.

This seems a very good initiative:

President Obama today signed an Executive Order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. The mission of the Council will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families. The Council will be chaired by Valerie Jarrett, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor, and will include as members cabinet-level federal agencies. The Executive Director of the Council will be Tina Tchen, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Liaison at the White House.

Giving this brief to Jarrett, who is very close to the President, gives this council a heft that it would not have otherwise. Kudos to the President.

Speaking for me only

It's official. President Barack Obama, as reported weeks ago, will name Seattle police chief R. Gil Kerlikowski to the position of Drug Czar. But...

The administration will remove the job's Cabinet designation -- reversing an elevation of the office under President George W. Bush -- although one senior official said that Kerlikowske would have "full access and a direct line to the president and the vice president."

And this should be no surprise:

The source also noted that Vice President Biden was instrumental in the creation of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and would continue to be an outspoken advocate on the issue.

President Barack Obama is getting ready to make some changes in our policy towards Cuba. Among those who will benefit:

US companies are queuing up as the president moves to ease restrictions on travel and trade, raising hopes of warmer relations and an end to the embargo.

...The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation.

The details are in the spending bill: [More...]

It seems apparent that one of the reasons President Obama chose Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State in his Administration was her star power. If this was one of his calculations, it seems to be working:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton electrified a group of young European government workers and activists Friday in an hour-long town-hall-style meeting in which she promised more cooperation with Europe and voiced regret at Bush administration positions on climate change and other issues.

. . . Her appearance before an enthusiastic crowd that spilled out of the auditorium and gave her two standing ovations resembled an event from her presidential campaign, only she was there as a representative of the Obama administration. And she delivered one of its early diplomatic themes: Things between the U.S. and Europe are going to be different.

Of course the President himself is the biggest political star in the world, but his Secretary of State clearly has some wattage of her own.

Speaking for me only

President Obama's choice for Surgeon General, Dr. withdrew his name from consideration today.

CNN cited his desire to continue working instead as a neurosurgeon and CNN medical analyst. His wife is pregnant with their third child.

Chuck Todd said on Nightly News tonight it may have been a financial decision: it would be too big a pay cut.

The NYTimes writes:

We were horrified to be reminded that the nation still has not plumbed the depths of the Bush administration’s abuses. At the same time, it was a relief to see President Obama beginning to make good on his promise of greater transparency.

But what of the Obama Administration's continued assertion of outlandish theories of Executive power regarding the "states secrets" privilege? As Glenn Greenwald wrote about the Obama Administration's brief (PDF) in the al Haramain case:

The brief filed by Obama on Friday afternoon has to be read to believed. It is literally arguing that no court has the power to order that classified documents be used in a judicial proceeding; instead, it is the President -- and the President alone -- who possesses that decision-making power under Article II, and no court order is binding on the President to the extent it purports to direct that such information be made available for use in a judicial proceeding.

More . . .

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will be the new chief of HHS. I think she's a far better choice than Tom Daschle.

Here's some background on her. The announcement will be made Monday.

Update: Sebelius has accepted the nomination.