ProgressOhio

Activists will rally this Tuesday at the State House in Columbus in support of Barack Obama's economic plan, urging Ohio's congressional delegation to support it as well.

An "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" was the focus of President-elect Obama's weekly address Saturday:

"We must make strategic investments that will serve as a down payment on our long-term economic future. We must demand vigorous oversight and strict accountability for achieving results. And we must restore fiscal responsibility and make the tough choices so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down."

Tuesday's rally is organized by ACORN and MoveOn.org. Details:

What: Rally to support Obama's economic recovery plan
Where: State House (Broad and High Sts. in Columbus)
When: Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, at 12:00 PM

RSVP here

Democrats took control of the Ohio House for the first time in 14 years today.

Democrats control the House 53-46 while Republicans maintain control of the Senate, 21-12. Members of both chambers were sworn in today.

Rep. Armond Budish, a Democrat from Beechwood, a Cleveland suburb, was elected Speaker.

“While we may face a budget deficit, there is no deficit in the spirit and creativity of Ohioans. It is that indomitable spirit I hope to engage,” Budish told the House and visitors in the gallery.

In a bipartisan move, Republicans joined Democrats in voting for Budish for Speaker.

Watch It:

Today, the Obama transition team sent out a release announcing several key Justice Department positions, including Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan as Solicitor General.

Kagan will be the first woman to serve permanently in this important post, which is tasked with conducting “all litigation on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court, and to supervise the handling of litigation in the federal appellate courts.

Kagan previously served in the White House during the Clinton administration, as Associate Counsel to the President, Deputy Assistant the the President for Domestic Policy, and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Full Story at Think Progress

Earlier this morning, President-elect Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama helped their two daughters, Malia (10) and Sasha (7), get ready for their first day of school.

They follow in the footsteps of another First Daughter -- Chelsea Clinton -- who attended the private Quaker school.

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Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter announced Saturday that he is appointing Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael F. Bennet to represent Colorado in the U.S. Senate, praising Bennet as a proven 21st century leader and problem-solver in both the public and private sectors.

"Michael is an accomplished and highly competent leader," Gov. Ritter said. "What impresses me most are his energy, strength of character, temperament and innovative thinking. Michael is the right choice for Colorado's kids, Colorado's families and Colorado's future."

"In Colorado we have been blessed, and we can show the nation how to lead on issues like a New Energy Economy and education reform," Bennet said. "But, we are not isolated and we face our own set of challenges with the economy and protecting our land and water. Through the work of leaders like Gov. Ritter, Sen. Salazar and Mayor Hickenlooper I have seen their efforts to keep Colorado a special place, and that will be my mission every day in the U.S. Senate."

Bennet's first job in politics was as Personal Assistant to Ohio Gov. Dick Celeste from 1988 to 1990.

Duped employees and clients of alleged scammer Bernard Madoff are bitterly selling off the swag they received from his company on eBay.

It's a whole new category of collectibles, with more than 100 promotional trinkets bearing the name or symbol of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. They were given to clients and employees over the years as tokens of appreciation, even as Madoff was allegedly stealing billions from investors.

"Emom1013" is selling a pair of $20 T-shirts given out at the 2006 company picnic at the Madoff family's Long Island, N.Y., estate.

The seller writes: "The proceeds from this auction go directly to a family whose husband/father is facing being out of a job and health insurance thanks to good old Bernie."

Other items include humidors, binoculars, beach towels, coolers, mousepads, shirts and jackets. The most expensive doodads so far include a Madoff flashlight that sold for $387 and a fleece sweater that went for $455.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475684,00.html

"No! You can go back to your, what do you call it, your Google, and you figure out all that."

-- Former President George H.W. Bush, in a Fox News interview, when asked if he would elaborate on some of his son's failures as president.

He's good enough, he's smart enough, and, gosh darn it, he's a U.S. senator?

Franken Prevails in Recount

Sen. Norm Coleman's (R-MN) "term as a U.S. Senator ended at noon Washington time today, and by evening his hopes of winning a second term had been dealt an expected but serious setback as state officials counted previously rejected absentee ballots in St. Paul," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

With the recount complete, Al Franken (D) has an unofficial lead of 225 votes over Coleman. Franken had led unofficially by 49 votes going into the day and gained a net 176 votes from the new absentee ballots counted today.

Coleman's hopes now focus on the Minnesota Supreme Court, "which continued to consider a request from the Coleman campaign to alter the process and add more absentee ballots to be reconsidered. But by early evening there there was no word from the state's highest court as to when it would rule or hear arguments."

In this week’s weekly address, President-elect Barack Obama lays out the challenges that face us in the new year, and his plan for taking them on.

“We need an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that not only creates jobs in the short-term but spurs economic growth and competitiveness in the long-term,” he says. “And this plan must be designed in a new way—we can’t just fall into the old Washington habit of throwing money at the problem. We must make strategic investments that will serve as a down payment on our long-term economic future. We must demand vigorous oversight and strict accountability for achieving results. And we must restore fiscal responsibility and make the tough choices so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down. That is how we will achieve the number one goal of my plan—which is to create three million new jobs, more than eighty percent of them in the private sector.”

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Full Text below:

 Now that the 2008 elections are over . . .

Judicial candidates in Ohio now will be permitted to advertise their political party during general election campaigns.

The Ohio Supreme Court made the change Tuesday in adopting a new code of conduct for Ohio judges, which takes effect March 1.

Since 1995, judicial candidates have been prohibited from directly promoting their party affiliation in general elections. But the court hasn't enforced the rule since 2004 because of a challenge from a Supreme Court candidate.

Ohio Supreme Court assistant administrator Rick Dove says the rule is being changed because candidates were finding ways around it. Plus, he says the court wanted to make the relationship between judicial candidates and political parties more transparent.

The price didn't soar immediately, according to the sources, because Sarah Palin stories just didn’t sell all that well for the weeklies on newsstands.

“Sarah was on the cover of People, Us Weekly, and OK! the same week, and really only People saw a bump in sales," says a source.

The drug-related arrest of Johnston's mother, however, caused the price tag for the photos to go up.

“The bidding started well before the baby was born, but once Levi’s mom was arrested — well, then you had a story,” says one editor.

As for how much teen parents Bristol and Levi made from the deal — most estimates hover around the $300,000 range.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An Ohio state employee whose job is to prevent discrimination repeatedly sent racist and sexist e-mails from his government account, an investigation found, but kept his job.

The same man was reprimanded a year ago for sending an e-mail joking about giving jobs to women with large breasts.

Jokes about men kissing and a woman's genitalia, as well as a racial joke and a caricature of President-elect Barack Obama, were in the latest e-mails sent by the Transportation Department worker, according to an agency report obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

Robert Habern, 55, is the department's equal employment opportunity contracts coordinator in the Lima office. His job is to ensure that vendors with agency contracts comply with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

In related news:

People magazine reports that Bristol Palin, daughter of the Alaska governor, has given birth to a baby son:

Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, gave birth on Sunday to a healthy 7 lb., 4 oz., baby boy in Palmer, Alaska.

The baby's father, Levi Johnston, is training to be an electrician. Bristol is taking correspondence courses to obtain her high school diploma.

Johnston's mother was recently arrested on drug charges.

The Republican Party is starting to react to the recent actions of Chip Saltsman, a candidate for the RNC chairmanship who sent a gift bag to committee members that included a CD with a satirical song called "Barack The Magic Negro." Not surprisingly the reaction has been mostly negative -- but not entirely:

The current RNC chairman Mike Duncan, who is seeking re-election against a wide field of challengers, was quick to condemn Saltsman. Duncan declared that the 2008 election was a "wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party," and that he was "shocked and appalled" that anyone would think this was appropriate.

However, former Ohio Scretary of State Ken Blackwell an African-American who is also running for RNC chair, said:

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president. I don't think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them. When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people."

Why would Blackwell's defense of Saltsman help Blackwell and hurt Duncan?

It is important to note that only 168 RNC Members get to cast votes, and presumably, many of them are conservatives who will view Duncan's statement as political pandering.

Second a number of these RNC Members have just been reminded, who better to defend racist statements than a black man?

And make no mistake just as it was during the campaign, the RNC intends to make race an issue over the first term of the Obama administration.

Front page story in the Washington Post this morning covering Ohio and Columbus' budget challenges:

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As the economy sputters and tax revenue plummets, governors and mayors across the United States are lining up to ask President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to plug holes in their budgets, arguing that services will suffer and joblessness will rise if Washington does not come to the rescue.

In Ohio, which has shed 100,000 jobs in the past year, Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and his budget team spend a lot of time delivering bad news to constituents and plotting ways to wring money from the federal government. He announced $640 million in cuts for the budget year ending June 30, for a total of $1.9 billion since the economic crisis began.

"We're not crying wolf. This is real," Strickland said in an interview in his statehouse office, pointing to charts that project the most serious erosion of state income in 40 years and a two-year budget deficit of $7.3 billion. Revenue shortfalls in the upcoming two-year budget could amount to about 25 percent of the state's discretionary spending.

Read The Full Story At The Washington Post

USAToday

WASHINGTON — A month before his inauguration, Americans choose Barack Obama as the man they admire most in the world, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. It's the first time a president-elect has topped the annual survey in more than a half-century.

President Bush falls to a distant second after seven years as the most-admired man.

Hillary Rodham Clinton leads the list of most-admired woman, a spot she's held for 13 of the past 16 years — as first lady, then New York senator and now Obama's designate for secretary of State. A newcomer is second: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who wasn't well-known nationally until Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose her as his running mate in August.

The findings, a snapshot of public opinion at the end of a tumultuous year, reflect soaring expectations for an incoming president who will take over daunting economic challenges on Jan. 20.

Sixty-third General Assembly
Third Committee

Vote on Right to Food

The draft resolution on the right to food (document A/C.3/63/L.42/Rev.1) was approved by a recorded vote of 180 in favour to 1 against, with no abstentions, as follows:

In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: United States.