By LARA JAKES and PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes And Pamela Hess, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – Stymied by Congress so far, the White House is considering issuing an executive order to indefinitely imprison a small number of Guantanamo Bay detainees considered too dangerous to prosecute or release, two administration officials said Friday.
No final decisions have been made about the order, which would be the fourth major mandate by President Barack Obama to deal with how the United States treats and prosecutes terror suspects and foreign fighters.

One of the officials said the order, if issued, would not take effect until after the Oct. 1 start of the upcoming 2010 fiscal year. Already, Congress has blocked the administration from spending any money this year to imprison the detainees in the United States — which in turn could slow or even halt Obama's pledge to close the Navy prison in Cuba by Jan. 21.

The administration also is considering asking Congress to pass new laws that would allow the indefinite detentions, the official said.
Both of the officials spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the still-tentative issue publicly. The possibility of an executive order was first reported by ProPublica and The Washington Post.

"A number of options are being considered," said one of the officials.
Asked if the detainees would be indefinitely held overseas or in the United States, the official said: "There's not really a lot of options overseas."
Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union Washington office, says the organization strongly opposes any plans for indefinite detention of prisoners.
"We're saying it shouldn't be done at all," he said Friday.
Without legislative backing, an executive order is the only route Obama has to get the needed authority.

In a statement Friday night, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell cast doubt that Congress would approve funding for transferring or imprisoning detainees in the U.S. without detailed plans on how it would work.

Lawmakers this month blocked $80 million the Obama administration had requested for transferring the detainees. Without the money, Obama's order can't be carried out.
"Bipartisan majorities of Congress and the American people oppose closing Guantanamo without a plan, and several important questions remain unanswered," McConnell said. He said Obama demanded the transfers "before the administration even has a place to put the detainees who are housed there, any plan for military commissions, or any articulated plan for indefinite detention."
McConnell added: "The defense budget request for fiscal year 2010 includes a similar funding request, so the Senate will consider this matter again in the near future."

Obama's order also would only apply to current detainees at Guantanamo — and not ones caught and held in future counterinsurgent battles.
There are 229 detainees currently being held at Guantanamo. So far, 11 are expected to be tried in military tribunals, and at least one — Ahmed Ghailani, a Tanzanian accused in two American embassy bombings a decade ago — has been transferred to United States for prosecution by a civilian federal courts in Manhattan.
Still others, including four Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs who were transferred to Bermuda earlier this month, have been sent to foreign nations. The Obama administration is trying to relocate as many as 100 Yemeni detainees to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation.
Obama said last month he was looking at continued imprisonment for a small number of Guantanamo detainees whom he described as too dangerous to release. He called it "the toughest issue we will face."

"I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people," Obama said during a May 21 speech at the National Archives. "Al-Qaida terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture — like other prisoners of war — must be prevented from attacking us again."

It's not clear how many detainees could fall into that category. Defense and Justice Department officials have privately said at least some could be freed at trial because prosecutors would be reluctant to expose classified evidence against the detainees. Some of that evidence also might be thrown out because of how it was obtained — potentially by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

A Pentagon task force is currently reviewing every case to see which are eligible for transfer or release; which could face trial in civilian U.S. courts; which are best suited to some version of a military commission; and which are believed too dangerous to free.

Underscoring the difficulty of where to send the detainees before Guantanamo closes, a senior Defense official said some detainees who were picked up as enemy combatants cannot be charged with war crimes or terrorism even though they are believed to pose a threat. If no country volunteers to take them, traditional law of war authority allows the United States government to hold them till the end of hostilities, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Civil rights advocates and constitutional scholars accused Obama of parroting the detention policies they used to lambaste former Republican President George W. Bush.

"Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantanamo system that the president promised to shut down," Shayana Kadidal, a senior attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement Friday.
He added: "If the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that executive overreach, left to continue unchecked for many years, has a tendency to harden into precedent."

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By DINA CAPPIELLO and H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writers Dina Cappiello And H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – Sweeping legislation to curb the pollution linked to global warming and create a new energy-efficient economy is headed to an uncertain future in the Senate after squeaking through the House.
The vote was a big win for President Barack Obama, who hailed House passage as a "historic action."

"It's a bold and necessary step that holds the promise of creating new industries and millions of new jobs, decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and strictly limiting the release of pollutants that threaten the health of families and communities and the planet itself," Obama said in a statement.

"Now it's up to the Senate to take the next step."
House Democratic leaders said the bill helped accomplish one of Obama's campaign promises and would make the U.S. a leader in international efforts to address climate change when negotiations take place in Copenhagen later this year.
"We passed transformational legislation, which will take us into the future," Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a news conference.

But she acknowledged it was not easy. "For some it was a very difficult vote because the entrenched agents of the status quo were out there full force jamming the lines in their districts and here, and they withstood that," she said.
The 219-to-212 vote marked the first time either house of Congress has passed legislation to curb global warming gases. The legislation, totaling about 1,200 pages, would require the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by mid-century.

But success will be tougher in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he wants to take up the legislation by the fall and where 60 votes will be needed to overcome any Republican filibuster.
"Today's razor-thin vote in the House spells doom in the Senate," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the top Republican on the Senate's environment panel, said in a statement issued after the vote.

Reid, D-Nev., was more optimistic.

"The bill is not perfect, but it is a good product for the Senate," Reid said. "Working with the president and his team, I am hopeful that the Senate will be able to debate and pass bipartisan and comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation this fall."

Supporters and opponents agreed that the legislation would lead to higher energy costs, but they disagreed vigorously on the impact on consumers.
Democrats pointed to two reports — one from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the other from the Environmental Protection Agency — that suggested average increases would be limited after tax credits and rebates were taken into account. The CBO estimated the bill would cost an average household $175 a year, the EPA $80 to $110 a year, but Republicans and industry groups say the real figure would much higher.

The White House and congressional Democrats argued the bill would create millions of green jobs as the nation shifts to greater reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and development of more fuel-efficient vehicles — and away from use of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

It will "make our nation the world leader on clean energy jobs and technology," declared Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who negotiated deals with dozens of lawmakers in recent weeks to broaden the bill's support.

Republicans saw it differently.

This "amounts to the largest tax increase in American history under the guise of climate change," declared Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

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WASHINGTON – Lamenting his first teenage cigarette, President Barack Obama ruefully admitted on Monday that he's spent his adult life fighting the habit. Then he signed the nation's toughest anti-smoking law, aiming to keep thousands of other teens from getting hooked.

Obama praised the historic legislation, which gives the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented authority to regulate what goes into tobacco products, to make public the ingredients and to prohibit marketing campaigns geared toward children.
But he didn't say how his own struggle was coming since he moved into the White House. And aides were no more forthcoming.

As senator, candidate and now president, Obama has veered between frank and cagey about his personal battle with smoking.
He promised his wife, Michelle, more than two years ago that he would quit if she let him seek the White House.

He has often acknowledged since that he has "fallen off the wagon." But he hardly ever provides specifics. And though White House aides pack nicotine gum in their jackets to help him resist, they also refuse to give a clear answer to the question of whether the president still sneaks a smoke now and again.

"I hate it," Michelle Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" during the presidential campaign's early days. "That's why he doesn't do it anymore, I'm proud to say. I outed him — I'm the one who outed him on the smoking. That was one of my prerequisites for, you know, entering this race is that, you know, he couldn't be a smoking president."
Well, not exactly.

During Obama's two-year White House bid, he was known to occasionally bum a cigarette from a staff member — while also making sure to emphasize his efforts to stop for good and his progress from his onetime five-smoke-a-day average.
During Monday's bill signing, Obama focused on how the new law would help keep future generations of kids away from the dangerous habit. The president mentioned his own experience very briefly — just 30 words.

Almost 90 percent of people who smoke began at 18 or younger, he said.
"I know. I was one of these teenagers," he said. "And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it's been with you for a long time."
And then he went back to the merits of the bill and the shortcomings of the tobacco industry, which he accused of targeting young people. One key provision in the new law bans candy-flavored cigarettes and the use of other flavored smokes that might appeal to teenagers. Ads aimed at young people also are banned.

Aides refused to elaborate on his own situation.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said he hadn't asked Obama about his smoking and made plain that he didn't plan to. The presidential spokesman stuck to vague language that left the impression Obama still occasionally falls off the wagon, but he did not say so directly.

"I don't, honestly, see the need to get a whole lot more specific than the fact that it's a continuing struggle," Gibbs said. "He struggles with it every day."
Still, it's not as if Obama was ever even a pack-a-day puffer.
"I've never been a heavy smoker," Obama told The Chicago Tribune in 2007. "I've quit periodically over the last several years. I've got an ironclad demand from my wife that in the stresses of the campaign I don't succumb. I've been chewing Nicorette strenuously."

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By DAVID ESPO and ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – Key Senate Democrats, bidding for bipartisan support on health care, pared back subsidies designed to make insurance more affordable on Thursday and floated a compromise that rules out direct government competition against private insurers.

Despite the cost-cutting, the proposal backed by Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, requires most individuals to purchase coverage and forbids insurance companies from denying it on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

The brief outline did not specify how the government's costs would be covered, although Baucus and many Republicans favor a tax on certain employer-provided health benefits. The Montana Democrat has said he intends to hold the cost of the legislation to about $1 trillion, well below the $1.6 trillion estimate the Congressional Budget Office made of an earlier set of options.

Across the Capitol, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee privately circulated a list of possible tax increases to pay for expanded health care.
They ranged from raising the Medicare tax, slapping a 10-cents-per-can increase on sweetened drinks, raising the alcohol tax, imposing a new payroll tax on employers equal to 3 percent of their health care expenditures and taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits above certain levels.

Also under consideration was a value added tax, a sort of national sales tax, of up to 1.5 percent or more, with housing, education, financial services and medical care potentially exempt.

House Democrats were expected to unveil an outline of their own to expand health coverage on Friday, although several officials said they did not plan to include mention of the tax increases under consideration.

Taken together, the developments reflected an eagerness by congressional Democrats in both houses to meet a self-imposed deadline of having health care legislation to the floor of both houses of Congress by summer. President Barack Obama has made the issue one of his top priorities.

Neither the Senate Finance Committee outline nor the list of tax options under review by House Democrats was made public. The Associated Press obtained copies of both.

"There's no doubt in my mind we're going to get a bipartisan bill," Baucus told reporters as he emerged from a meeting with a small group of Republicans he referred to as a "coalition of the willing."

The senior Republican on the Finance Committee was not nearly as bullish.
"I'm still at the table. I wouldn't be at the table if I didn't think there was some hope for it," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "But tomorrow it could be an entirely different story."

According to a 10-page outline that described the proposal, federal subsidies would be available to help families up to 300 percent of poverty, or $66,000, purchase insurance. An earlier proposal set the level at 400 percent of poverty, or $88,000.
At the same time, the new outline could require higher out of pocket costs from individuals because companies would be permitted to offer policies that cover less of an insured's anticipated medical costs than was earlier proposed.
Many Democrats want the government to be able to offer insurance in competition with the private industry, a provision they say would hold down costs. But most Republicans are opposed.

The outline presented at meeting with Republicans left the matter open, but suggested creation of nonprofit co-ops to offer insurance, rather than the government. The co-ops could accept federal loans for startup operations, but would have to repay the money.

Similarly, the outline leaves open the question of requiring larger employers to provide insurance.
As an alternative, it suggests requiring companies to pay a portion of the cost of insurance for lower income workers not offered coverage at work.
While Baucus supports a tax on health benefits, Obama opposed it in last year's presidential campaign and attacked his rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for proposing it.

Administration officials have refrained from criticizing it in recent weeks, but organized labor is opposed, fearing it would mean higher taxes for some of its members.

Congressional aides say Democrats are eager to exempt union contracts from the proposed tax, but Republicans want to include them. In its most recent form, the proposal would impose a tax on plans in which the combined employer and employee premiums are above about $17,000.
That would raise an estimated $270 billion over a decade, less if union-negotiated plans were exempt.

(This version CORRECTS that list of possible tax increases includes soda tax of 10 cents per can and employer tax of 3 percent of health care costs.))

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By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's plan to transform the Federal Reserve into a super-regulator ran into skepticism Thursday from lawmakers who worry that the central bank is not the best suited to keep an eye on firms deemed so big and influential that their demise could hurt the economy.

Members of Congress voiced misgivings as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner began a marathon day of selling Obama's financial regulatory plan to give the Fed more authority, create a new consumer protection agency and bring unregulated sectors of the financial markets under government oversight.

"I do not believe that we can reasonably expect the Fed or any other agency to effectively play so many roles," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., noting that it also sets monetary policy, regulates banks and handles an array of other functions.
Some lawmakers have proposed that the job of overseeing large institutions be left to a council of regulators, not a single agency.

Geithner anticipated that point in his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, saying in his opening remarks: "You cannot convene a committee to put out a fire."
Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., also raised questions about the use of the Fed for such an overarching task over the financial system. But he applauded the administration for including a new agency to protect consumers in their banking transactions.

Dodd said regulators must be empowered and that gaps in oversight should be eliminated. Financial institutions that pose a threat to the economy shouldn't go unchecked, he said, and there should be more transparency in certain markets.
But Dodd blamed the Fed for "dropping the ball" on consumer protections.
Geithner said that in creating the consumer protection agency, the administration was taking power away from the Fed even as it was adding to its authority.
"That is a substantial diminishment of authority, preoccupation and distraction," he said.

Geithner also was scheduled to testify before the House Financial Services Committee Thursday afternoon.
Besides empowering the Federal Reserve to oversee the largest and most influential financial firms, Obama wants to create a council of federal regulators, chaired by the treasury secretary, to monitor risk across the broader market but not have authority over large financial institutions. The new consumer protection agency would be created to prevent deceptive practices by such companies as credit card lenders and mortgage brokers.

The plan comes amid public skepticism about the way Obama's handling some aspects of the economic crisis. Sixty percent of Americans don't believe the president has a strategy for dealing with the budget deficit, and almost half disapprove of his handling of problems facing the auto industry, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published Thursday.

Still, 57 percent approve of the president's overall handling of the economy, according to the telephone survey of 895 adults contacted Friday through Tuesday.
Obama's lofty job approval rating slipped a bit in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The poll found 56 percent approved of the job Obama was doing, down from 61 percent in April.
Obama's financial overhaul proposal was well-received among Democrats on Capitol Hill, who said it would prevent another round of bank bailouts and protect consumers from predatory lending practices.

"We regard this as very pro-market," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who chairs the House Financial Services Committee. "Unless you have investors that are well-protected, you don't have a market."
But a swift legislative endorsement of the plan could be difficult. Dodd is leading a major overhaul of the nation's health care system and the Senate also faces a debate on whether to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. In addition to the Senate's packed schedule, several lawmakers, including Dodd, have questioned whether Obama's proposal relies too heavily on the Federal Reserve and expressed concern that the Fed, as an independent agency, doesn't answer to Congress.
"It's certainly worthy of a thorough and full-throated debate and discussion as to whether or not that's a better alternative than vesting the Fed," Dodd told reporters after Obama's speech on Wednesday. "There's not a lot of confidence in the Fed at this point."

Geithner told reporters at a briefing that the administration had looked at a range of alternatives to giving the Fed expanded powers and had come to the conclusion that "we do not believe there is a plausible alternative."
House Republicans said Obama's plan would go too far and bury the market in unnecessary regulation.

Senate Republicans were less dismissive but stopped far short of endorsing the proposal. Shelby and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., questioned aspects of the plan but said they hoped to work with Democrats to make it stronger.

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By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, reversing himself under U.S. pressure but attaching conditions such as having no army that the Palestinians swiftly rejected.

A week after President Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would also have to recognize Israel as the Jewish state — essentially saying Palestinian refugees must give up the goal of returning to Israel.

With those conditions, he said, he could accept "a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state."
The West Bank-based Palestinian government dismissed the proposal.

"Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations," senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. "We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain."

Netanyahu, in an address seen as his response to Obama, refused to heed the U.S. call for an immediate freeze of construction on lands Palestinians claim for their future state. He also said the holy city of Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty.

The White House said Obama welcomed the speech as an "important step forward."
Netanyahu's address was a dramatic transformation for a man who was raised on a fiercely nationalistic ideology and has spent a two-decade political career criticizing peace efforts.

"I call on you, our Palestinian neighbors, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority: Let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions," he said, calling on the wider Arab world to work with him. "Let's make peace. I am willing to meet with you any time any place — in Damascus, Riyadh, Beirut and in Jerusalem."

Since assuming office in March, Netanyahu has been caught between American demands to begin peace talks with the Palestinians and the constraints of a hardline coalition. On Sunday, he appeared to favor Israel's all-important relationship with the U.S. at the risk of destabilizing his government.
But his call for establishing a Palestinian state was greeted with lukewarm applause among the audience at Bar-Ilan University, known as a bastion of the Israeli right-wing establishment.

As Netanyahu spoke, two small groups of protesters demonstrated at the university's entrance.
Several dozen hard-liners held up posters showing Obama wearing an Arab headdress and shouted slogans against giving up West Bank territory. Across from them, a few dozen dovish Israelis and foreign backers chanted slogans including "two states for two peoples" and "stop the occupation."
Police kept the two groups apart.

The Palestinians demand all of the West Bank as part of a future state, with east Jerusalem as their capital. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war.

Netanyahu, leader of the hardline Likud Party, has always resisted withdrawing from these lands, for both security and ideological reasons. In his speech, he repeatedly made references to Judaism's connection to the biblical Land of Israel.

"Our right to form our sovereign state here in the land of Israel stems from one simple fact. The Land of Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people," he said.
But Netanyahu also said that Israel must recognize that millions of Palestinians live in the West Bank, and continued control over these people is undesirable. "In my vision, there are two free peoples living side by side each with each other, each with its own flag and national anthem," he said.

Netanyahu has said he fears the West Bank could follow the path of the Gaza Strip — which the Palestinians also claim for their future state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas militants now control the area, often firing rockets into southern Israel.

"In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel," he said.
"If we get this guarantee for demilitarization and necessary security arrangements for Israel, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, we will be willing in a real peace agreement to reach a solution of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state," he said.
Netanyahu became the latest in a series of Israeli hard-liners to soften their positions after assuming office. Earlier this decade, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led Israel out of Gaza before suffering a debilitating stroke. His successor, Ehud Olmert, spoke eloquently of the need to withdraw from the West Bank, though a corruption scandal a disastrous war in Lebanon prevented him from carrying out that vision.

Netanyahu gave no indication as to how much captured land he would be willing to relinquish. However, he ruled out a division of Jerusalem, saying, "Israel's capital will remain united."

Netanyahu also made no mention of uprooting Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, in addition to 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods built in east Jerusalem. He also said that existing settlements should be allowed to grow — a position opposed by the U.S.

"We have no intention to build new settlements or expropriate land for expanding existing settlements. But there is a need to allow residents to lead a normal life. Settlers are not the enemy of the nation and are not the enemy of peace — they are our brothers and sisters," he said.

Netanyahu also said the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians have refused to do so, fearing it would amount to giving up the rights of millions of refugees and their descendants and discriminate against Israel's own Arab minority.

Although the Palestinians have agreed to demilitarization under past peace proposals, Erekat rejected it, saying it would cement Israeli rule over them.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, another Palestinian official, called on the U.S. to challenge Netanyahu "to prevent more deterioration in the region."

"What he has said today is not enough to start a serious peace process," he added.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called the speech "racist" and called on Arab nations "form stronger opposition" toward Israel. Hamas ideology does not recognize a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East and the group has sent dozens of suicide bombers into Israel.
Netanyahu also came under criticism from within his own government — a coalition of religious and nationalistic parties that oppose Palestinian independence.
Zevulun Orlev, a member of the Jewish Home Party, which represents Jewish settlers and other hard-liners, said Netanyahu's speech violated agreements struck when the government was formed. "I think the coalition needs to hold a serious discussion to see where this is headed," he told Israel Radio.

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By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama assured the nation his recovery plan was on track Monday, scrambling to calm Americans unnerved by unemployment rates still persistently rising nearly four months after he signed the biggest economic stimulus in history.

Obama admitted his own dissatisfaction with the progress but said his administration would ramp up stimulus spending in the coming months. The White House acknowledged it has spent only $44 billion, or 5 percent, of the $787 billion stimulus, but that total has always been expected to rise sharply this summer.
"Now we're in a position to really accelerate," Obama said.
He also repeated an earlier promise to create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer.

Neither the acceleration nor the jobs goal are new. Both represent a White House repackaging of promises and projects to blunt criticism that the effects haven't been worth the historic price tag. And the job estimate is so murky, it can never be verified.

The economy has shed 1.6 million jobs since the stimulus measure was signed in February, far overshadowing White House announcements estimating the effort has saved 150,000 jobs. Public opinion of Obama's handling of the economy has declined along with the jobs data.

For the first time, the administration admitted the economic forecasts it used to sell the stimulus were overly optimistic.

"At the time, our forecast seemed reasonable," Vice President Joe Biden's top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, said Monday, explaining that the White House underestimated the scope of the recession. "Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic."
By now, according to earlier White House economic models, the nation's unemployment rate should be on the decline. The forecasts used to drum up support for the plan projected today's unemployment would be about 8 percent. Instead, it sits at 9.4 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.

Some analysts believe the White House is still not being realistic, that Obama will be lucky if any real job creation from his recovery effort is seen by the end of the year, let alone the employment explosion he predicts.
"I think these estimates are overly optimistic," said Arpitha Bykere, a senior analyst with RGE Monitor.

Obama spoke Monday about "modest progress" in the economy, citing fewer jobs lost last month than expected. He said he hopes to build on that in the months ahead with stimulus programs.

"We've done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again," he said.
But he acknowledged, "I'm not satisfied. We've got more work to do."
Americans apparently agree. Obama's disapproval rating on the economy has risen from 30 percent in February to 42 percent, according to a Gallup poll completed May 31. Sensing weakness on a signature issue of Obama's presidency, congressional Republicans are renewing their criticisms that the stimulus plan has not shown results, only mounting debt.
"This is President Obama's economy, and his administration must provide results and specifics rather than vague descriptions of success that seem to change by the week," House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said. "The administration looks dramatically out of touch as they highlight the creation of temporary summer employment in the face of job losses unseen in decades, record unemployment and massive deficits."

By any measure, spending $44 billion in less than four months — and with unprecedented openness — is an uncharacteristic feat in Washington: The $44 billion amounts to about 9 percent of the stimulus money that is not going to tax cuts. But the expectations have been even higher.
Several economists said Monday the economy is unlikely to see much boost from the stimulus before next year.

"It takes time to organize projects, to get the bids in, the funds out and the work started," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.
Obama answered his critics Monday by announcing a list of stimulus projects, including many already previously outlined, saying the work will have a huge affect on the economy this summer.

There is money for expanded health services in local clinics; improvements in national parks and medical centers for veterans; money for police and school jobs; and more than 1,800 public works projects.

Without naming names, Obama shot back at skeptics during the Cabinet meeting.
"Now, I know that there's some who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don't believe in the necessity and promise of this recovery act."
"And I would suggest to them that they talk to the companies who, because of this plan, scrapped the idea of laying off employees and, in fact, decided to hire employees. Tell that to the Americans who received that unexpected call saying, 'Come back to work.'"
___
Associated Press writers Philip Elliott, Ben Feller and Jeannine Aversa contributed to this story.

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By JOSH GERSTEIN

In a nearly 6,000-word address Thursday extending an olive branch to the Muslim world, President Barack Obama managed never to utter the one word that comes to mind most often when many Americans think about Islam: terrorism.

While both the White House and the Pentagon denied earlier this year that the Obama administration had issued orders to stamp out the phrase “war on terror,” the president’s decision to rely on the word “extremism” throughout his high-profile speech made clear his desire to execute a rhetorical shift.

More than that, Obama sought to decouple Islam entirely from those who perpetrate violence.

“Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace,” Obama said.

It’s just one aspect of his speech that seems sure to draw fire from conservatives, and particularly those who are strong supporters of Israel. Even some in Obama’s own party – already critical of his firmer line against Israel – seem sure to resist some of his harsher language, including comparing the “intolerable” plight of the Palestinians to African slaves in the United States.

"This is another Obama blame-America-first moment," said John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush.

Here’s a look at how various players are likely to react to what Obama had to say during his highly anticipated address, and perhaps more importantly, what he didn’t say:

The Israelis

What he said: Yes, it was a speech to the Muslim world, but no one took it on the chin from Obama more than the Israelis.

His historical comparisons were unmistakable: As the president called on Palestinians to “abandon violence,” he noted that “for centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation.” He also seemed to compare the Palestinian struggle to that of South African blacks against the apartheid regime.

In Israel, Obama’s implicit comparisons are likely to draw ire. Look for people to compare the reference to President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book, “Peace Not Apartheid,” which deeply angered Israelis and many American Jews.

One pro-Israel analyst sought to downplay Obama’s slavery and South Africa references as “dog whistles to the fringe left.” But others are likely to be less forgiving.

And Obama called on those who would seek to deny the Holocaust – a clear reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without naming him – to stop denying it, or Israel’s right to exist. Of the Holocaust, Obama said, "Six million Jews were killed. ... Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful."

What he didn’t say: Obama repeated his call that “it’s time for settlements to stop” – but as before, did not say what would happen if Israel goes ahead with plans to expand them, as Israeli leaders say they’ll do. He also offered few new details of how he would bring the Israelis and Palestinians together for further peace talks.

The Palestinians

What he said: Palestinians will be pleased with much of the same Obama rhetoric that will gall some Israelis – and also seems likely to stoke the debate over whether Obama is as devoted to Israel as past presidents or has more pro-Palestinian sympathies.

Among the Palestinians, Obama also will get points for twice using the word “Palestine” — it gives a concreteness to the prospect of a Palestinian state. While diplomats around the world routinely refer to “Palestine,” American officials have long shied away from the word.

Some militant Palestinians who see themselves at war with Israel may take umbrage at Obama’s suggestion that they do not have a right to defend themselves through the use of force.

“Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed,” he said in Cairo. “It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”

What he didn’t say: Again, Palestinians looking for concrete action by Obama would be disappointed. Obama left out any consequences if Israel goes ahead with the settlements, keeps tight reins on Gaza, or refuses to negotiate towards a two-state solution. Some are sure to portray Obama as all talk, but still ultimately beholden to Israel and American Jews.

Iran

What he said: Iran got off pretty easy in Obama’s speech. Maybe he didn’t want to give Iran’s saber-rattling too much attention, but the nuclear ambitions of the country many national security officials view as the biggest threat to world peace got only a few paragraphs from the U.S. president.

“This is not simply about America’s interests. It is about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path,” Obama said.

Obama alluded to but didn’t dwell on Iran’s misdeeds, such as the country’s support for terrorism. And on the nuclear issue, he made his most explicit statement to date approving of a civilian nuclear energy program for Iran — if the Islamic Republic gives up any aspirations for atomic weapons.

“Any nation – including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it,” the president said.

What he didn’t say: How long he’d wait for Iran to shape up, and what will happen if it doesn’t. Obama has said before he’s willing to wait until the end of the year to see if his diplomatic outreach to the Iranians works – a timetable that Israel views as merely giving Iran more time to develop the bomb.

The “Arab street”

What he said: A lot of Obama’s statements were designed to convey to Arabs and Muslims that he is deeply familiar with their religion, culture and concerns. It’s an obvious and probably essential thing for American leaders to do as they try to build bridges with Islamic followers. However, it’s a tricky thing for Obama because of the trouble he had during the presidential campaign with widespread rumors that he is a Muslim.

“I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims,” Obama told the crowd at Cairo University.

Near the beginning of the Cairo speech, he broke out some Arabic to offered the traditional Muslim greeting of “assalaamu alaykum” or “peace be with you.” Barack Hussein Obama proudly recited his full name, offered a quote from the Quran and spoke of hearing the call to prayer when he lived in Indonesia as a boy.

And he offered some blunt talk to Muslims, saying they shouldn’t be so quick to demonize America – just as he told Americans not to be so quick to demonize Muslims. “That same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire,” Obama said.

What he didn’t say: In saying that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance,” Obama glossed over the fact that religious minorities are treated very poorly, by the public and the government, in most Muslim countries. And as he sought to play up his Muslim roots, Obama made no mention of the Muslim rumors that dogged him in the campaign – or the lengths his campaign went to knock them down, knowing how damaging that perception could have been to Obama the candidate.

U.S. Muslims

Obama repeatedly mentioned Muslims in the U.S. and suggested they could play an important role in improving America’s image in the Arab world, noting that many of them have above-average incomes and education levels.

He also mentioned one of their biggest concerns: the difficulty in finding charities to fulfill the Islamic obligation for Zakat, a form of tithing, and promised to work to clear the way to ease donations.

What he didn’t say: Obama didn’t mention that the contributions problem has arisen because so many of the leading Muslim charities have been accused of, or convicted of giving aid to terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hamas. Under Bush, the federal government refused to tell the Muslim community which charities were considered legit. Obama’s team is taking steps to do that or set up entirely new groups.

The Republicans

Some conservatives are already jumping on Obama’s speech as part of an “apology tour.”

In Cairo, Obama gave the first-ever acknowledgement from a U.S. president for America’s “role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government” – referring to the U.S. support for the coup against Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953.

In comments that will also be portrayed as an apology, Obama told the Cairo audience that the U.S. overreacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals,” he said. “I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.”

What he didn’t say: Obama’s reference to Iraq as a “war of choice” will also be taken as a potshot at Bush, though it implicates a host of American politicians, including a host of Obama’s fellow Democrats, including his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

Jonathan Martin contributed to this report.

[Read More...]

By Ross Colvin Ross Colvin

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday marked the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings on France's Normandy beaches, an important World War Two breakthrough in the battle against Nazi Germany.

Residents in Normandy towns decked their streets in U.S. and French flags in preparation for Obama's visit. Posters welcoming Obama read: "Yes, we ca(e)n," a cross between Obama's election campaign slogan and the city, Caen which British and Canadian troops captured in 1944 after two months of bitter fighting.

Before taking part in the anniversary ceremony, Obama will hold talks in nearby Caen with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Among the issues on the agenda will be Iran's nuclear programme which Sarkozy discussed with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki when they met in Paris this week.

French officials said Mottaki brought a message from Tehran that the Iranians were putting the finishing touches to a counter-proposal to a package of incentives offered by France, Britain, Germany, the United States, Russia and China that seeks to encourage Iran to halt uranium enrichment.

The two leaders will then attend the anniversary event at the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, next to one of the D-Day landing sites, codenamed Omaha beach, where thousands of white stone crosses mark the graves of the U.S. war dead.

Obama has been seeking to repair ties with France and other European states who were alienated by his predecessor George W. Bush's go-it-alone diplomacy, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and his policies on climate change.

Obama will likely use his speech at the ceremony to say the United States and Europe are stalwart allies that need to work together to face global challenges including the financial crisis, terrorism along with the war in Afghanistan.

Obama's presence at the D-Day ceremony has almost overshadowed the event, to the point that Sarkozy's failure to invite Britain's Queen Elizabeth prompted accusations that he was trying to make space for himself next to Obama.

Paris said it had respected protocol. Britain said the queen had expected an invitation but had taken no offence, and London is sending Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Prince Charles.

OMAHA BEACH

It is a tradition for American presidents to visit the landing beaches at Normandy where the June 6, 1944, invasion by British, U.S., Canadian and other troops began a rollback of the Nazi war machine entrenched in Western Europe and helped end World War Two the following year.

Ronald Reagan went to the D-Day beaches the 40th anniversary in 1984, Bill Clinton was there in 1994 for the 50th and George W. Bush was there in 2002, and in 2004 for the 60th anniversary.

Obama's visit to France is the final leg of a brief tour that has taken him to the Middle East and Germany, during which he has spoken about the relations between the Palestinians and Israel as well as his country's ties with the Muslim world.

In a landmark speech in Cairo Thursday Obama called for a "new beginning" in ties, and in Germany he toured the World War Two concentration camp at Buchenwald which he called a "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers.

Obama's great uncle Charles Payne, who was involved in the liberation of Buchenwald as a U.S. soldier but did not visit the camp with Obama, would be among the war veterans at the commemoration, a White House official said.

[Read More...]

By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven, Ap White House Correspondent

CAEN, France – The global recession, Afghanistan, Iran and Mideast peace topped the agenda of talks Saturday between President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy before the leaders commemorated the D-Day invasion that cemented the trans-Atlantic alliance.

France has resisted U.S. appeals for greater efforts to stimulate European economies and more European troops in Afghanistan, where the United States has stepped up its engagement under Obama's administration.

Sarkozy, who met Wednesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, also intends to discuss with Obama a message from Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a senior French official who spoke on condition of anonymity according to presidential protocol.

And, Obama is pressing for the international community to redouble efforts for separate Israeli and Palestinian states to bring peace in the Middle East. German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw her support behind Obama's call on Friday, and Obama is likely to seek Sarkozy's backing as well.

While France and the United States clearly have their differences, the relationship that turned frosty under George W. Bush largely because of the Iraq war has seemed to thaw some with Sarkozy and Obama at the helm of their respective countries. Both have expressed fondness for each other.

The first couples of each country — Obama and his wife Michelle and Sarkozy and model-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy — greeted each other warmly with grins, hugs and, for the women, double kisses on the cheeks outside of the French Prefecture, as several hundred people cheered, shrieked and waved small French and American flags from behind security barriers around the regional headquarters. Police surrounded the crowd from all sides.

Obama and Sarkozy shook a few of the onlookers' hands and listened to each country's national anthem in the gravel palace courtyard before heading down the red carpeted walkway to retreat inside for private talks over lunch.

Their wives — dueling style icons — were to meet separately. They wore competing outfits: Michelle Obama was in a white dress topped by a matching white coat and a wide gold belt, while Carla Bruni-Sarkozy donned a cream dress with a thin brown belt.

The U.S. president is rounding out a Mideast and European swing in Normandy, whose cliffs and coastline are still pocked with gun batteries and other remnants of World War II. He will honor the 65th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, invasion, which was pivotal to the Allied victory against the Nazis.

Some 215,000 Allied soldiers, and roughly as many Germans, were killed or wounded during D-Day and the ensuing nearly three months it took to secure the Allied capture of Normandy, a battle that helped free France from Nazi control.

There's a personal side for Obama. His grandfather, Stanley Dunham, came ashore at Omaha Beach six weeks after D-Day. Dunham's older brother Ralph hit Omaha on D-Day plus four.

Hours before his arrival, farmers and their children stood along the narrow, winding roads toward Omaha Beach, waving at buses bringing veterans to the ceremony.

Obama will speak on what is technically U.S. soil — the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. The leaders of France, Britain and Canada also will attend, and a 12-plane flyover by French, British and American jets also is planned.

American, British and other veterans rode a bus from Caen to Colleville-sur-Mer for the invitation-only afternoon ceremony on Omaha Beach.

"You get an invite like that, you don't turn it down," said Isaac Phillips of Carlton, Georgia. Now 84, he was four days shy of his 20th birthday when he climbed into the Atlantic off Utah Beach with the 22nd Infantry Regiment.

"The water was up to here," he said, waving a steady, wizened hand at shoulder height.

"We didn't know what was going on. There were fellows who hadn't ever seen blood before. You lose your faith, your sense of what's right," he said, his blue-gray eyes clouding over at the memory of the ensuing days of warfare in Normandy's pastoral villages.

Obama arrived in Paris on Friday night from Germany. He previously visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Michelle Obama and her two daughters paid a surprise visit to the Eiffel Tower on Friday night. It is the first excursion abroad as presidential daughters for 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha, expected to stay in France until at least Monday. The president leaves Sunday.

___

Associated Press writers Mark S. Smith, Angela Charlton, Julien Proult, Elaine Ganley and Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.

[Read More...]

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A retired State Department worker and his wife have been arrested on charges of spying for Cuba for three decades, using grocery carts among their array of tools to pass U.S. secrets to the communist government in a security breach one official described as "incredibly serious."

An indictment unsealed Friday said Walter Kendall Myers worked his way into higher and higher U.S. security clearances while secretly partnering with his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, as clandestine agents so valued by the Cuban government that they once had a private four-hour meeting with President Fidel Castro.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said that the arrest culminated a three-year investigation of Myers and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has ordered a "comprehensive damage assessment" to determine what he may have passed to the Cubans.

The Myerses' arrest could affect congressional support for easing tensions with Cuba dating back to the Cold War. Two months ago, the Obama administration took steps to relax a trade embargo imposed on the island nation in 1962.

David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, described the couple's alleged spying for the communist government as "incredibly serious."

Court documents indicate the couple received little money for their efforts, but instead professed a deep love for Cuba, Castro and the country's system of government.

The documents describe the couple's spying methods changing with the times, beginning with old-fashioned tools of Cold War spying: Morse code messages over a short-wave radio and notes taken on water-soluble paper. By the time they retired from the work in 2007, they were reportedly sending encrypted e-mails from Internet cafes.

The criminal complaint says changing technology also persuaded Gwendolyn Myers to abandon what she considered an easy way of passing information, by changing shopping carts in a grocery store. The document quoted her as saying she would no longer use that tactic. "Now they have cameras, but they didn't then."

Authorities say her comments came during a series of meetings this spring with an undercover FBI agent. A law enforcement official said the agent approached Kendall Myers on the street on his birthday, April 15, claiming to be as associate of his Cuban handler. The agent gave him a birthday cigar and proposed they meet later that evening at a Washington hotel. Myers fell for the ruse and said he'd bring his wife along. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation.

The Myerses had been out of touch with their Cuban handlers for some time, according to court documents. The couple said they lived "in fear and anxiety for a long time." Kendall Myers feared his boss had put him on a watch list in 1995. They told the FBI agent that they were not interested in regular spying again but would help where they could.

Authorities said that led to three meetings with the agent, during which they shared their views of Obama administration officials who had recently taken over responsibility for Latin American policy. They also accepted a device to encrypt future e-mail. The undercover agent proposed a fourth meeting for Thursday at a Washington hotel, where the couple was arrested.

The couple pleaded not guilty Friday in U.S. District Court. They were ordered held in jail until a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday. Their attorney, Thomas Green, declined to comment. A call to their home telephone was not answered.

The Myerses live in a luxury co-op complex in Northwest Washington that over the years was home to Cabinet members, judges, congressmen and senators, including the late Barry Goldwater.

W. Russell Pickering, a retired financier who said he has lived next door to the couple for eight to 10 years, called the charges "absurd."

"They're wonderful people," Pickering said, adding that he and Myers traded newspapers and cigars and drank together. "I feel like this is sort of the early stage of 1984," he said, referring to George Orwell's dark novel about government intrusiveness.

The Myerses were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government. Each is also charged with acting as an illegal agent of the Cuban government and with wire fraud.

Kendall Myers, 72, a former professor with a doctorate in international studies from Johns Hopkins University, was known by the Cubans as Agent 202, according to the indictment. His 71-year-old wife, a former bank analyst, reportedly went by both Agent 123 and Agent E-634.

The indictment says Kendall Myers disclosed to the State Department that he traveled to Cuba for two weeks in 1978, saying the trip was for personal and academic purposes. The next year, a Cuban government official visited the couple while they were living in South Dakota and recruited them to be spies, the indictment says. At Cuba's direction, authorities say, Kendall Myers attempted to get jobs that would give him access to classified information.

He applied for a position at the CIA in 1981. He didn't get it but later was able to get work at the State Department, where his security clearance rose over the next two decades.

Kendall Myers first worked as a lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute and later as a European analyst in the department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, from 2000 until his retirement in October 2007.

The indictment says in his last year of employment, Kendall Myers viewed more than 200 intelligence reports related to Cuba. Kendall Myers often took notes or memorized classified material to avoid the risk of removing the documents but concealed some documents he removed in a set of bookends, the court documents said.

During his time at the intelligence bureau, officials there were dealing with the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and response as well assessments in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Court documents say among the information they passed was economic intelligence, which the former intelligence official said makes up much of what information Cuba is interested in from the United States.

The indictment seeks the return of all $1.7 million Kendall Myers earned in his State Department career, along with his $174,867 rollover IRA account. The law enforcement official said all they appear to have gotten from the Cubans was a little expense money and their 1980s-era radio.

Court documents say Castro came to visit the couple in a small house in Cuba where they were staying in 1995, after traveling through Mexico under false names. Kendall Myers reportedly boasted to the undercover FBI agent that they had received "lots of medals" from the Cuban government.

They made other trips to Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina to meet with Cuban agents, the indictment says.

Myers apparently sympathized with the Cuban ideology and revolution that put Castro into power. Court documents say he wrote in a personal journal in 1978: "I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. ... The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit."

He praised Castro as a "brilliant and charismatic leader" who is "one of the great political leaders of our time." And he called the United States "exploiters" who regularly murdered Cuban revolutionary leaders.

One of the most damaging recent spy cases also involved a Cuban agent: Ana Belen Montes. She was a U.S. intelligence analysts who worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency for 16 years. Montes revealed the identities of four undercover agents to Cuban officials during her time as a spy. Like the Myerses, Montes used a short-wave radio to receive her orders.

Joseph Persichini, the FBI's assistant director in charge of the Washington field office that investigated the case, said that even as U.S. relations with foreign countries change, the clandestine hunt for secrets continues.

"When it comes to the intent of other nations pursuing our classified material, our research and development, the Cold War is not over, this activity does continue," Persichini said.

___

Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett, Matthew Lee, Pam Hess and Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

[Read More...]

By MARK S. SMITH, Associated Press Writer

WEIMAR, Germany – President Barack Obama absorbed the stark horrors memorialized at the Buchenwald concentration camp Friday and said the lesson for the modern world is vigilance against evil, against subjugation of the weak and against the "cruelty in ourselves."

Obama honored the 56,000 who died at the Nazi camp and the thousands who survived. He invoked, too, his great-uncle, who helped liberate a Buchenwald satellite prison in 1945 and came back a haunted man.

"More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished." Obama said after witnessing the crematory ovens, barbed-wire fences, guard towers and the clock set at 3:15, marking the moment of the camp's liberation by the U.S. Army in the afternoon of April 11, 1945.

He challenged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has expressed doubts that 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, to visit, too.

"To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened," Obama said. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."

The president said he saw — reflected in the Nazi brutality against Jews and the other impounded outcasts — Israel's capacity to empathize with the suffering of others. He said that gave him more hope Israel and the Palestinians can achieve an equitable and lasting peace.

Toward that elusive goal, Obama is sending special envoy George J. Mitchell back to the Middle East next week. The president's outreach to Islam in his Cairo speech a day earlier was well received in the Muslim world and he is hoping that will make progress more possible in the intractable dispute at the core of Muslim and Arab anger toward the U.S. and the West.

For Obama, the visit on a chilly, overcast day was a touchstone of his ancestry.

Obama's great uncle, Charlie Payne, was among troops of the 89th Infantry Division who liberated a nearby subcamp, Ohrdruf, the same month.

"He returned from his service in a state of shock," Obama said, "saying little and isolating himself for months on end from family and friends." Payne bore "painful memories that would not leave his head."

The president said Buchenwald "teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others' suffering is not our problem, and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests."

He added: "It's also important for us, I think, to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human, as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves."

Obama was the first U.S. president to tour Buchenwald. In 2003, a tearful President George W. Bush visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, which his father saw in 1987 as vice president. Obama noted Dwight D. Eisenhower, then Allied commander and a future president, saw Ohrdruf and demanded everything there be documented lest allied accounts of the atrocities be dismissed as propaganda.

Obama privately met several Buchenwald survivors on the eve of the 65th anniversary of the Allies' landing at Normandy, France, that led to the crushing of Nazi Germany. He toured the remains of the hillside compound with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who was once a starving teenager in the camp.

The victims at Buchenwald included some 11,000 Jews, but also communists, Gypsies and other minorities from across central Europe.

One by one, the president, Merkel, Wiesel and Buchenwald survivor Bertrand Herz placed pale yellow roses on a metal plaque known as the Living Memorial, kept permanently at body temperature as a monument to the victims.

Obama, in a dark suit and red tie, wore a torn red ribbon as a sign of mourning.

Huddled in conversation, he and the others walked between rows of barracks where inmates were worked to exhaustion before dying of starvation or disease, or tortured in grisly experiments, or lined up and shot.

Today, the barracks are just foundation and rubble — preserved as testimony.

Obama remarked on the contrast with the bucolic setting: rolling, wooded hills where power turbines turn gently in the wind.

"If only these trees could talk," Wiesel said to him.

At the base of Buchenwald's hill, the four placed more roses at a monument to victims of Little Camp, Buchenwald's most notorious compound.

After the tour, Obama visited troops being treated at the Landstuhl U.S. military hospital for wounds suffered in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He then flew to Paris to reunite with his family, meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday and commemorate the D-Day anniversary.

___

AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven in Dresden, and Associated Press writers David Rising and Geir Moulson in Berlin, Melissa Eddy in Dresden and Jochen Wiesigel in Ohrdruf contributed to this report.

[Read More...]

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. "I'm sure she would have restated it," Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.

The quote in question from Sotomayor has emerged as a rallying call for conservative critics who fear she will offer opinions from the bench based less on the rule of law and more on her life experience, ethnicity and gender. That issue is likely to play a central role in her Senate confirmation process.

Obama also defended his nominee, saying her message was on target even if her exact wording was not.

"I think that when she's appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is," Obama said in the broadcast interview, clearly aware of how ethnicity and gender issues are taking hold in the debate.

The president's damage control underscored how the White House is eager to stay on message as the battle to publicly define Sotomayor picks up.

Obama's top spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters about Sotomayor: "I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor."

Gibbs, however, said he did not hear that from Sotomayor directly. He said he learned it from people who had talked to her, and he did not identify who those people were. Sotomayor herself has made no public statements since her nomination became official Tuesday and was not reachable for comment.

A veteran federal judge, Sotomayor is poised to be the first Hispanic, and the third woman, to serve on the Supreme Court.

She said in 2001: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." The remark was in the context her saying that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

Sotomayor's comments came in a lecture, titled "A Latina Judge's Voice," that she gave in 2001 at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley.

After three days of suggesting that reporters and critics should not dwell on one sentence from a speech, the White House had a different message Friday.

"If you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through, that will make her a good judge," Obama said in the broadcast interview.

Sotomayor appears headed for confirmation, needing a majority vote in a Senate, where Democrats have 59 votes. But beyond the final vote, White House officials are pushing for a smooth confirmation, not one that bogs down them or their nominee. Plus, Obama wants a strong win, not a slim one.

Obama told NBC that part of the job of a Supreme Court justice is to stand in somebody else's shoes and that Sotomayor will do that. "That breadth of experience, that knowledge of how the world works, is part of what we want for a justice who's going be effective," Obama said.

More than one line in the 2001 speech has helped drive the debate over Sotomayor's judgment.

She also said, for example: "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see."

"My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas in which I am unfamiliar," she said. "I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

At the time Sotomayor gave the speech, she was in the same job she is now, a federal appeals court judge. She said then she was reminded daily that her decisions affect people and that she owes them "complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives."

"I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage," she added, "but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate."

In announcing Sotomayor as his choice, Obama said he wanted a judge who would "approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice." But he also called her life experience essential, saying she had an understanding of "how ordinary people live."

Next week, Sotomayor will begin face-to-face meetings with senators as the confirmation process begins to take shape.

[Read More...]

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Congress on Tuesday sent President Barack Obama a once-bipartisan bill to fund the domestic Cabinet agencies that evolved instead into a symbol of lawmakers' free-spending ways and penchant for back-home pet projects. The Senate approved the measure by voice after it cleared a key procedural hurdle by a 62-35 vote. Sixty votes were required to shut down debate.

Obama is expected to sign the measure Wednesday to avoid a partial shutdown of the government. But the White House has kept the bill at arm's length, calling it last year's business. Obama is also set to announce steps aimed at curbing lawmakers' so-called earmarks.

The $410 billion bill is chock-full of those pet projects and significant increases in food aid for the poor, energy research and other programs. It was supposed to have been completed last fall, but Democrats opted against election-year battles with Republicans and former President George W. Bush.

The measure was a top priority for Democratic leaders, who praised it for numerous increases denied by Bush. It once enjoyed support from Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

But the bill ran into an unexpected political hailstorm in Congress after Obama's spending-heavy economic stimulus bill and his 2010 budget plan forecasting a $1.8 trillion deficit for the current budget year. And Republicans seized on Obama's willingness to sign a bill packed with earmarks after he assailed them as a candidate.

"If it had not been for the stimulus and the budget proposal it might have been ... noncontroversial," said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. "The stimulus bill riled an awful lot of people up. ... And then the budget proposal comes out."

Within Democratic ranks, there was relief, not jubilation.

The 1,132-page spending bill has an extraordinary reach, wrapping together nine spending bills to fund foreign aid and the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except for Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

It also contains numerous policy changes, including shutting down a program allowing Mexican trucking companies to operate beyond U.S.-Mexico border zones, easing rules on Cuban-Americans traveling to the island to visit relatives and allowing quick reversal of Bush administration rules opposed by environmentalists.

Described by lawmakers as a $410 billion measure — but officially tallied by the Congressional Budget Office at $408 billion because of technicalities involving heating subsidies for the poor — the bill was written mostly over the course of last year, with support from key Republicans such as McConnell and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Senate's No. 3 Republican.

They sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee. McConnell is the successful sponsor or co-sponsor of $76 million worth of "earmarks" not requested by Bush when he president, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Alexander obtained a more modest 36 earmarks totaling $32 million.

Alexander supported the measure in the end; McConnell did not, calling it a "missed opportunity" to display fiscal discipline.

In the end, eight Republicans voted with all but three Democrats who were present, to advance the bill.

At issue is the approximately one-third of the budget passed each year by Congress for the operating budgets of Cabinet departments and other agencies. The rest of the budget is comprised of benefits programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — as well as interest payments on the swelling $11 trillion national debt.

Adding in spending bills passed last year for defense, homeland security and the Veterans Administration — as well as $288.7 billion in appropriated money in the stimulus bill — total appropriations so far for 2009 have reached $1.4 trillion. And that's before the Pentagon submits another $75 billion or so request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Appropriated spending for 2008 was $1.2 trillion; Obama's budget for next year calls for $1.3 trillion in appropriations.

To the embarrassment of Obama — who promised during last year's campaign to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel ways — the bill contains 7,991 earmarks totaling $5.5 billion, according to the GOP staff of the House Appropriations Committee. Republicans got about 40 percent of the earmarks.

Among the many earmarks are $485,000 for a boarding school for at-risk native students in western Alaska and $1.2 million for Helen Keller International so the nonprofit can provide eyeglasses to students with poor vision. There's also dozens of projects awarding state and local governments money for police equipment and to combat methamphetamine.

At the same time, the measure chips away at several leftover Bush administration policies. It clears the way for the Obama administration to reverse a rule issued late in the Bush administration that says greenhouse gases may not be restricted to protect polar bears from global warming. Another Bush administration rule that reduced the input of federal scientists in endangered species decisions can also be quickly overturned without a lengthy rulemaking process.

The big increases — among them a 14 percent boost for a popular program that feeds infants and poor women and a 10 percent increase for housing vouchers for the poor — represent a clear win for Democrats who spent most of the past decade battling with Bush over money for domestic programs.

Generous above-inflation increases are spread throughout, including a $2.4 billion, 13 percent increase for the Agriculture Department and a 10 percent increase for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

Congress also awarded itself a 10 percent increase in its own budget, bringing it to $4.4 billion. But the measure contains a provision denying lawmakers the automatic cost-of-living pay increase they are due next Jan. 1.

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On the Net:

Taxpayers for Common Sense: http://www.taxpayer.net

House Appropriations Committee: http://appropriations.house.gov/

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