White House

In general, presidents should appoint whomever they want to serve in their cabinets. But that doesn't mean that re-elected President Barack Obama will - or even should - appoint U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace the soon-departing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. It sounds cliché, but the only reason President Obama should choose Ambassador Rice is if he truly believes she's the best person to serve in that office. He shouldn't appoint her for the sake of setting up a showdown with his (and her)

President Barack Obama signaled on election night that he's willing to work with leaders in both parties on deficit reduction and tax reform. And House Speaker John A. Boehner said a day later that Republicans were open to new revenue. Is compromise possible? It's definitely needed. The country is headed for the so-called fiscal cliff because of steep spending cuts that automatically kick in next year on top of huge tax increases from the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts next month.

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to build on their success in Maryland, about 200 immigration advocates rallied in front of the White House on Thursday in support of a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. The effort to revive a national conversation about immigration follows an election in which Latino voters helped pushed Obama to victory in battleground states like Colorado and Nevada. Exit polling shows Hispanics were the only large demographic group to back President Obama with bigger numbers in 2012 than they did in 2008.

From Liz Atwood:No matter who wins the presidential election, one thing is clear: We won't have the same thrill we had four years ago of watching young children move into the White House. Remember the commentary on the clothes Sasha and Malia wore on Inauguration Day? And then there was the speculation over what schools the girls would attend.  We waited anxiously to see what kind of dog the family would choose. When, after months of speculation and secrecy, the Obamas selected a Portuguese Water Dog, the photographers were there to snap pictures of him romping on the lawn.

In form, President Barack Obama came back strongly in Tuesday's debate with Mitt Romney, but substantively he continues to lag behind the Republican candidate. That's because the president has a record to defend, and it isn't a good one. Television being what it is, the president looked and sounded good, but the air seems to have gone out of his messianic balloon as voters focus more on facts and less on spin. If promises mean anything -- and they don't to most politicians -- Mr. Romney hit the president where it hurts: on his failure to live up to most of his promises.

Appearing at a Paul Reed Smith Guitars benefit for the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Journey guitarist Neal Schon surprised the audience by getting down on one knee and proposing -- on stage -- to Michaele Salahi. She accepted, and the couple cried and kissed. UPDATE : According to TMZ, Schon proposed with a million-dollar rock. He was so scared it would get stolen, TMZ reported, Schon had the dazzler, all 11.42 carats of it, driven to Baltimore in an armored vehicle.

The recent House oversight hearing showed, among other things, that notwithstanding White House assertions to the contrary for almost two weeks, there was no public demonstration whatsoever outside the Benghazi Consulate on the night of the Sept. 11 attack and that within 24 hours of the attack, it was recognized by some in the White House to have been a terrorist inspired and executed attack ("Testimony: Calls for aid were denied," Oct. 11). It was also revealed at the hearing that the U.S. State Department denied repeated requests to improve the security of our diplomatic stations in Libya.

Take away the glamour, the TV cameras and the tabloid headlines, and Michaele Salahi's latest drama could almost be an Anne Tyler plot: Disaffected housewife risks it all to walk away from a stale marriage and into an entirely new life. But, hey - without the glamour, cameras and tabloids, Michaele would hardly be Michaele. When the one-time White House party crasher and reality TV star walked away from her husband last year, he whipped the celebrity media into a frenzy by claiming she was kidnapped, only to realize soon after that she was perfectly fine - purring most contentedly in the very open arms of rock star Neal Schon of Journey.

Even when Jeffrey Toobin is absolutely, positively, flat-out wrong, it's worth listening to what he has to say about the U.S. Supreme Court. Toobin, an Emmy Award-winning senior analyst for CNN and a staff writer for The New Yorker not only is smart, he also has a background as a practicing attorney. A few years after graduating from Harvard Law School, he was part of the prosecutorial team that tried Oliver North. For his new book, "The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court," Toobin has his usual impeccable sources.

Letter writer Wayne Brown epitomizes the problem in our political system with his polarizing and uninformed comments ("Choice is clear: Obama has to go," Sept. 7). With thoughtless generalizations such as his view that the headline "Clinton sees clear choice" is "comic relief to most of us out here who view the Democrats as the party that obviously lives on another planet," people like Mr. Brown contribute little to the political discourse in our country. I have to wonder if Mr. Brown has ever had a basic economics class?