Tip for London Police: Booze and Secrets Don?t Mix

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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Wednesday, January 04, 2012
A report, commissioned in response to the phone-hacking scandal and released Wednesday, offered a window into the relationship between the news media and the Metropolitan Police Service. ...

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/world/europe/report-tells-of-cozy-relationship-between-british-news-media-and-london-police-surrounding-phone-hacking-scandal.html

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La. inmate pleads guilty to threatening president (AP)

LAKE CHARLES, La. ? A 25-year-old inmate at a federal prison in Louisiana has entered a guilty plea to making threats against President Barack Obama and his family.

U.S. Attorney Stephanie A. Finley said Thursday that Carlton Norah entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi to one count of making a threat against the president. A sentencing date has not been set. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Norah was indicted in June 2010. Finley says Norah tried to mail a letter he had written that contained a threat to kill or harm the president. It was addressed to the president at the White House. Prison officials discovered the letter before it was mailed.

Norah said Thursday he intended for the letter to be taken seriously.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120106/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_threat_inmate

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Beyond Iowa, Santorum faces a daunting challenge

Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum shakes hands during a meet and greet campaign stop at Pizza Ranch, Monday, Jan. 2, 2012, in Altoona, Iowa. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum shakes hands during a meet and greet campaign stop at Pizza Ranch, Monday, Jan. 2, 2012, in Altoona, Iowa. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum uses a bull horn as he stands on a chair to make comments during a meet and greet campaign stop at Pizza Ranch, Monday, Jan. 2, 2012, in Altoona, Iowa. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks at a campaign stop at Pizza Ranch in Boone, Iowa, Monday, Jan. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

(AP) ? Regardless of how strong he finishes in Tuesday's caucuses, Rick Santorum will emerge from Iowa with very little money, virtually no national infrastructure and no clear path to his party's presidential nomination.

The former Pennsylvania senator, who is surging in pre-caucus Iowa surveys, cannot easily afford a rental car, never mind pollsters or television advertising. And Republicans in New Hampshire and beyond suggest there's simply not enough time for Santorum to mobilize the organization needed to become a major factor in the race for the White House.

Still, Santorum is commanding attention ? and hoping to ride a wave of momentum from Iowa.

"He's showing he can live off the ground, so to speak, and make a real competitive go of it," said Jamie Burnett, an unaligned, New Hampshire-based GOP strategist who said Santorum could fare well in New Hampshire's Jan. 10 primary. "A top-three finish in New Hampshire is a big deal. But I don't know that moral victories ? and that would be a moral victory ? would be enough at this point."

Looking past Iowa, a cash-strapped Santorum has a barebones staff in New Hampshire and South Carolina. And the campaign has given little thought to how it would compete in Florida, a big state in which candidates typically rely on television advertising to connect with voters.

The situation Santorum finds himself in today is reminiscent of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He won the Iowa caucus in 2008 with a similar appeal to religious conservatives only to run out of money and energy for the subsequent state contests.

Four years later, Santorum has been an afterthought in the GOP nomination contest for months. Until last week, he was stuck in the low single digits in most polls. But in a campaign that's seen several Mitt Romney alternatives rise and fall, Santorum appears to be rising in Iowa, an apparent beneficiary of Newt Gingrich's decline after his brief turn with front-runner status.

An outspoken social conservative, Santorum has been out of politics since losing his Senate seat from Pennsylvania in 2006. And while he was a frequent New Hampshire visitor early in the year, he's recently been camped out in Iowa, where social conservatives wield significant influence over the Republican caucus.

But campaign manager Mike Biundo says Santorum will compete aggressively in New Hampshire and the subsequent early-voting states. Other presidential contenders ? namely Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Gov. Rick Perry ? are bypassing the more moderate New Hampshire and heading straight to South Carolina.

"I'm from New Hampshire," Biundo said Monday. "A former senator from Pennsylvania can play very well with his manufacturing plan and his northeast roots in the Northeast."

Beating Barack Obama may be wishful thinking for Santorum unless he reverses his fundraising struggles in a hurry. Some sort of fundraising bump is likely after a strong performance in Iowa. The question is how much will he get and how soon.

Because of a compressed voting schedule, Santorum's window is limited to capitalize on any Iowa success before the New Hampshire primary, which is just a week later. South Carolina follows on Jan. 21 and the expensive Florida contest is Jan. 31.

Santorum raised just $700,000 between July and September, the most recent figures available. He reported less than $200,000 in his campaign account at the end of the quarter. Romney, by contrast, raised $14.2 million and finished the quarter with $14.7 million on hand.

Santorum's campaign poverty is on display in Iowa this week, where he's relying on a supporter's pickup truck for transportation. And campaign officials concede they can't afford the standard tools of other campaigns, such as their own pollsters.

Republican strategist Phil Musser notes that Santorum has virtually nothing in the way of a national fundraising apparatus. To capitalize on any momentum out of Iowa, he'd probably need significant outside help from a super PAC. There's simply not enough time to raise the money to compete with Romney and others while depending on individual $2,500 contributions, the legal limit for campaigns.

"Could they put together $10 million in five days?" Musser asked. "It's an open question."

Without that unlikely scenario, Santorum probably will bet his candidacy on a "slingshot" strategy out of Iowa, hoping that an aggressive retail campaign helps him catch fire with voters in other early-voting states. That's a risky strategy at best.

"It could work, but it will be severely tested by lack of money and down-calendar organization, Mitt's New Hampshire firewall and a very compressed timeline through Florida," Musser said.

Four years ago, Huckabee won Iowa but finished a distant third in New Hampshire.

Santorum has a lot of ground to make up if he even hopes to match Huckabee's New Hampshire showing. He was stuck in the single digits near the bottom of the pack, according to a Suffolk University poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters released Sunday.

"There just isn't a lot of time to recover from single-digit polling here," New Hampshire GOP operative Alicia Preston said. "Romney is safe for first here. It's a race for second and if Santorum wants that spot he needs to move here Wednesday. But it's a long shot at best."

___

Associated Press writer Holly Ramer contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-01-03-Santorum-Post%20Iowa/id-e7ad98a16f7f4ae29ef05d1136f0dcde

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Analysis: U.S. hopes new Iran sanctions more scalpel than axe (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The United States has armed itself with some of the toughest sanctions yet targeting Iran but must carefully assess how to avoid catching energy-importing allies such as Japan, South Korea and India in the crossfire.

President Barack Obama signed the law on Saturday imposing sanctions on financial institutions that deal with Iran's central bank, the main clearinghouse through which OPEC's No. 2 oil exporter deals with clients around the world.

The new U.S. sanctions were pushed through Congress despite misgivings among administration officials, who now must consider how to implement the law without roiling global energy markets or upsetting friendly governments that depend in part on Iranian crude oil imports.

Political analysts said Washington hopes the new sanctions will spur foreign banks to change their behavior before the United States is required to begin freezing them out of U.S. financial markets.

"The sanctions will force a choice between buying Iranian oil or engaging in the U.S. financial system, the largest in the world. That is going to change the risk calculus for a lot of folks," said Brian Katulis, a security expert at the Center for American Progress.

"They are going to wait to see how this signal is received before they take any further steps."

MORE SCALPEL THAN AXE

The new U.S. measures target both private and government-controlled banks, including central banks, and would take hold after a two- to six-month warning period depending on the transactions.

U.S. officials acknowledge that allies such as Japan have concerns, and have built in several provisions designed to make the new law more of a scalpel than an axe.

The law allows Obama to exempt institutions in a country that has significantly reduced its dealings with Iran. He may also grant waivers deemed to be in the U.S. national security interest or otherwise necessary for energy market stability.

Obama would need to notify Congress and waivers would be temporary but they could be extended.

White House officials declined to say which countries have sought waivers or how they expect the sanctions to impact U.S. relations with Iran's oil customers.

China, the No. 1 customer for Iran's oil, and Russia have both resisted additional sanctions on Tehran and are unlikely to be swayed by the new U.S. law, analysts said.

But for countries such as Turkey, which gets about 30 percent of its oil from Iran, or India, which gets 11 percent, the prospect of a U.S. waiver could reduce anxieties over the sanctions and consolidate support for Washington's aggressive stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"There is increased frustration from many of these nations when they see that previous rounds of sanctions haven't done what they were intended to do," said Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and head of the National Iranian American Council.

"Part of the administration argument going into an election against a Republican candidate is that Obama has been able to create a much stronger international coalition against Iran. You can't make that argument if you end up in a conflict with some of those allies."

Waivers also could be selectively granted for humanitarian reasons or for institutions that have forward contracts with Iranian companies - blunting the immediate impact of the new law, while retaining the threat of full implementation.

TENSIONS AND TALKS

The new U.S. sanctions came at a moment of increasing tension with Tehran, which in recent days Iran has tested long-range missiles and staged 10 days of naval exercises in the Gulf. Iran also warned it could shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of world oil is shipped, if sanctions were imposed on its crude exports.

Tehran already is subject to four rounds of U.N. sanctions because of its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activities and faces more pain if the European Union follows the United States and bans imports of Iranian crude oil.

Tehran signaled during the weekend that it was ready to resume talks on its nuclear program with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany that stalled in January.

Western officials have said repeatedly they still want to talk to Tehran but only if it is ready to discuss the core concerns about its nuclear program. Tehran says the nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes but the United States and others fear it is aimed at producing atomic weapons.

George Lopez, a sanctions expert at the University of Notre Dame, said the new U.S. sanctions could strengthen Washington's hand going into any new talks with Iran after a year of steadily increasing economic pressure.

"This is the book-end to a series of measure that began late last spring in coordination with the EU," Lopez said.

"It sends a strong message to (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and also to domestic constituents that we're not backing off. But it is also a strong message that they should come back to the table."

(Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120102/wl_nm/us_iran_usa_sanctions

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Breaking Bad - Dos Hermanos Batter Bucket

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Undecided Iowans weighing who to back (AP)

DES MOINES, Iowa ? For Republicans here, the ideal presidential candidate would blend Ron Paul's ideological passion with Mitt Romney's electability. Newt Gingrich's intelligence with Rick Perry's evangelical appeal. Add a dash of social conservatism from Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum ? and stir.

Yet, as Lila Reynolds, one of many undecided Iowa Republicans, laments: "There is no Prince Charming."

"What am I looking for?" Reynolds, 44, said, as she crammed into LJs Neighborhood Bar and Grill in Waterloo to see Gingrich ahead of Tuesday's caucuses. "It's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it."

The "it' factor was large in people's minds as they sifted through their choices in the final hours before Iowa becomes the first state in the nation to have a formal say in picking a Republican challenger to face President Barack Obama next fall.

Interviews with more than three dozen Iowa voters in recent days found a restless GOP electorate, with many still up for grabs. A bunch seemed to be struggling with exactly what they wanted, not just from a particular candidate but from the heart and soul of a Republican Party fractured between tea party activists, evangelical Christians and mainline fiscal conservatives.

No single candidate has brought those threads together in voters' minds.

"They're all a little wobbly on the issues," says Clara McKee, a 69-year-old from Emerson who plans to attend her first Republican caucuses. "None of them are perfect. None of them are exactly what I'm looking for."

Her solution: "Go with the candidate who is the best package and will do the best job given the situation." But she added: "I'm just not sure which of these candidates that is, though."

For many people, no one seems quite right. And for a bunch, the process boils down to a hard choice between the safe, pragmatic candidate who stands the best chance of trouncing Obama or the fervent, ideological purist who sets the heart racing but is a far riskier bet in a general election.

They're mulling these questions: Do they value electability more than anything else and buy Romney's argument that he alone stands the best chance of defeating Obama? Or do they vote with their emotions and side with a candidate like Santorum considered a Republican who more closely advocates on their behalf on social issues? There's a third option: stay home, frustrated at the prospect of nominating someone who doesn't entirely fit the bill.

Just the other day, Grant Allen was struggling as he left a rally for Gingrich in Atlantic. He clutched a "Newt 2012" yard sign and mused: "Maybe I'll actually put this one up."

He said he was attracted to the former House speaker's intelligence and bold ideas but not enough to sign on with him yet, saying: "I worry about the baggage but he gave me some confidence today."

"I'm almost there with him but need to listen to one more."

Asked who, Allen grimaced: "Romney."

The reluctance to back the former Massachusetts governor ? and the search among conservative voters for someone other than him ? is one of the defining themes of this Republican race. Romney, who lost the 2008 nomination to John McCain, doesn't stoke the passions of conservatives who are skeptical about his Mormon faith and reversals on some social issues.

For months, Republicans here and nationally have rallied behind one alternative to him only to turn away and move on to another. Their flirtations have been brief in a race has seen no less than a half-dozen candidates at the front of the pack.

Muddling matters further has been a lack of consensus within the GOP about attributes the nominee must have.

Many tea party activists have tended to seek out tough-talking Republicans who will take it to Obama. Many cultural and religious conservatives crave a candidate who adheres strongly to their top issues, like opposition to abortion and gay rights. And a slew of establishment Republicans has hungered for a fiscal conservative who will reverse the bloat of the George W. Bush years.

"As a conservative, I'm afraid," said Tom McCartney, of Dubuque. "We keep talking about the general election and who is best, and that seems to be Mitt Romney."

"But I'm worried we're going to pick a moderate like Romney and we're still going to lose. We held our nose with McCain and still lost. I don't want another McCain. I hope we don't do that again."

Curtis Smith, of Cedar Rapids, was considering Santorum, after developing doubts about Bachmann's chances.

"She has all the right answers but I'm scared she won't win," Smith said. As for Santorum, he added: "I don't really know what to think about him."

The inability of many Republicans to find a Mr. or Mrs. Right who makes every segment of the GOP happy is reflected in the large number of undecided voters in Iowa. A Des Moines Register poll released Saturday found 41 percent of likely caucus-goers could be persuaded to change their minds, while another 7 percent had no first choice candidate. One percent said they were not sure who to support.

Mary Ann Anderson, of Atlantic, says she has "to pray on it." Bill Brauer, of Polk City, vows: "I'm going to make up my mind tonight." And Janeane Wilson, who lives in Waukee, calls herself "one those people who will probably make up my mind as I'm walking up to the caucuses."

The race here is likely to come down to which way this crop of fickle Republicans breaks.

With the economy still struggling, voters seem to be looking less at the nuts and bolts of the candidates' economic policies, than at someone with the leadership and vision to pull the country up by its bootstraps. They draw parallels to Ronald Reagan coming in after Jimmy Carter, bringing with him a new tone to a country in malaise.

"Anyone could win this," said Ray Starks, a 17-year-old from Dyersville who is participating in his first caucuses. "People still haven't made up their minds. We're still looking for Ronald Reagan ? someone who has a message, someone you want to follow."

In Iowa ? known for its love of grassroots, retail politics ? personal contact is often helping seal the deal ? and that could bode well for Santorum, who is surging, based on the polls, after working the state one voter at a time for the past few years.

It also could benefit lower-tier candidates like Bachmann and Perry, who spent the past month canvassing small towns in hopes of rallying last-minute support.

Robert Byrne, a retail manager for the Black Bear Diner in Sioux City, has winnowed his choices down to those two. He likes Perry's record on jobs back in Texas. Bachmann earned his consideration after she talked to him about her plan to cut corporate taxes and ease other burdens on small businesses.

"She looked me right in the eye and said `We're small-business people too,' and that helps a lot," Byrne said. "It's important that I got to look at her and shake her hand."

Julie Collins had pretty much written off Perry, until she heard him speak at a corner coffee shop in Pella.

"Now I'm not so sure," she said. "He's talking about issues that matter to us: faith, values, pro-life, traditional marriage. He is everything we need to get this country turned around."

If there's anything certain in this woefully unpredictable race it's this: voters are still listening in these final hours.

___

Associated Press writers Charles Babington, Brian Bakst, Philip Elliott, Beth Fouhy and Mike Glover in Iowa contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120103/ap_on_el_pr/us_iowa_what_voters_want

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Iowa race shifts from persuasion to mobilization (AP)

DES MOINES, Iowa ? In the race for Iowa, Republican presidential candidates are shifting from persuading people to mobilizing them to attend Tuesday's caucuses.

None of the candidates has the extensive get-out-the-vote network that helped former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee win in 2008. But Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have strengthened the organizations they had in place for their failed bids four years ago. The cash-strapped others, including Rick Santorum, have more modest efforts and are mostly relying on momentum to carry their supporters to the caucuses on what could be a chilly night.

"This isn't the Huckabee year," said Susan Geddes, a socially conservative Iowa activist and top staffer on that Republican's campaign.

With the race fluid, all the campaigns are working to ensure their backers vote at the caucuses, where turnout of 120,000 would break the record set in 2008. Volunteer armies already are knocking on countless doors and making countless phone calls to get Iowans to the community meetings where they will take the first step toward picking a president.

The candidates, themselves, are making final appeals as they canvass the state.

"If you can get out here in this cold and this wind and a little bit of rain coming down, then you can sure get out on Tuesday night and you can sure find a few people to bring with you," Romney told a crowd on a dreary Friday morning in West Des Moines.

Hours later in Waterloo, Rick Perry implored: "I need you to brave the weather. I need you to come out and support us. If you have my back on Tuesday, January the third, then I will have your back in Washington for the next four years."

It's about this time every four years that scores of Christian home-school activists, pastors and other cultural conservatives fan out across the state to corral people to caucus on behalf of their chosen candidate. This year, that coalition ? which lifted the late-charging outsider Huckabee to victory four years ago ? is dividing its support among many candidates, including Santorum, Perry, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. None of them have had the time or money necessary to build strong operations.

That leaves the two Republicans, Romney and Paul, who are leading in polls but aren't favorites of devout social conservatives, as the candidates in the best position to get their backers to the caucuses in the traditional way ? by relying on their grass-roots supporters and precinct captains. If either triumphs here, organization will be partly the reason.

Romney's Iowa headquarters, a former Blockbuster Video store near downtown, was abuzz Friday.

By noon, Jason Russett, of Des Moines, a Romney supporter from 2008, said he had called 60 people who have agreed to represent Romney in their precinct "in some fashion" to make sure they had packets that include a Romney campaign T-shirt and caucus-night talking points. About a dozen other volunteers were using laptops to auto-dial numbers in some of the state's 1,774 precincts.

Although he has a much smaller paid staff in Iowa than four years ago, Romney has relied heavily on volunteer assistance from top-level 2008 supporters. With a focus on retaining old supporters rather than recruiting new ones, Romney has spent the year quietly reconnecting with many of the roughly 30,000 Republicans who voted for him before. And he's armed with a voter database leftover from his last $10 million Iowa campaign, while all opponents but Paul have had to hurry to build theirs from scratch.

Romney stepped up his outreach to past supporters in recent days as polls showed him in contention.

He spent the week campaigning primarily in the eastern Iowa areas he won four years ago. Huge crowds turned out.

"If his turnout here this week is any indication, he's in very good shape here," Muscatine County GOP Chairman Mark LeRette, who supports Santorum, said of Romney. "He's the defending champ here. I expect him to win Muscatine County."

In more conservative parts of the state, Romney dispatched surrogates like South Dakota Sen. John Thune and had former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, 88, dialing key activists in eastern Iowa. By video on Friday, Romney implored Iowans to show up Tuesday and vote for him.

Paul, for his part, has methodically built local support networks across the state and has hundreds of precinct-level leaders prepared to stand up and speak Tuesday on the Texas congressman's behalf. His team, which includes members of local and state GOP committees, has been executing a far more robust effort than when his small organization helped him finish fifth in 2008.

Polls show more likely Iowa caucus-goers have been contacted by Paul's campaign than any other.

And the outreach is only just beginning.

In recent days, an influx of out-of-state volunteers, mainly college-age supporters, descended on the state to help as Paul's team dispatches local supporters to knock on doors and convene local meetings to encourage turnout. It's unclear whether Paul's popularity among younger voters will translate into votes. In 2004, Democrat Howard Dean attracted younger supporters, who ultimately failed to deliver for Dean on caucus night.

"Now, the key is personal touch," said Drew Ivers, Paul's Iowa campaign director. "Email is pretty lame, so are automated calls. What really counts is neighbor-to-neighbor contact."

But don't count on the candidate himself to do that. At events, Paul never asks for anyone's vote.

Santorum, meanwhile, could end up being the surprise.

The former Pennsylvania senator scoured Iowa for the past two years, testing the notion that building personal bonds with voters is the key to victory Tuesday ? even if there's little organization to back it up. He's begun to emerge in recent days as the preferred social conservative and, if evangelical backers and home-school activists spontaneously coalesce behind him in the coming days, strategists say he could win, even without much of an organization.

Perry, the Texas governor, is viewed by strategists as having an aggressive ground operation with the most staff. He's advertised most aggressively, spending more than $3 million on 12 TV ads since November. He's also advertising on Pandora, a popular Internet radio station in a show of his campaign's new-media savvy.

But Perry's late entry into the race in August has forced him to raise money and travel to other early states, slowing his ability to build grass-roots support in Iowa.

Gingrich, the former House speaker, always had a skeleton campaign in Iowa and struggled to build upon it when his support rose in November and early December. He had said he was hoping to mobilize supporters in part through online turnout efforts. But that never really materialized, and Gingrich has lost momentum after a barrage of attacks from Paul's campaign and Romney allies.

Still, more than 68 percent of likely caucus-goers in an NBC/Marist Poll this week say they have been contacted by Gingrich's campaign ? the same total as Romney's. Perry and Paul have higher contact rates.

Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman, is hardly a factor. She struggled to retain the support of the evangelical base that helped her win the August presidential straw poll in Iowa. Yet, she raced through Iowa's 99 counties in two weeks, making quick stops in order to shoot video being distributed by email to local activists this weekend.

___

Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in West Des Moines, Philip Elliott in Waterloo and Beth Fouhy in Council Bluffs contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111230/ap_on_el_pr/us_iowa_ground_game

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Domestic policy chief starts, leaves amid crises (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Melody Barnes is leaving as White House chief domestic policy adviser at a time when President Barack Obama's administration is getting little notice for its work on the home front to fix the struggling economy.

Barnes, who will be gone by Tuesday, is quick to point out that there have been many domestic achievements, even though the public is dissatisfied.

"I completely understand what the American public is feeling," she said in an interview in her tidy West Wing office. "Real people are hurting in a significant way. ... At the same time, I'm proud of the things we've been able to accomplish over the last few years."

Her office is wrestling with multiple thorny issues now just as it was when Barnes started as Obama's domestic policy team director in 2009.

Back then, the economy plunged into free-fall and the country was in its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Jobs were being lost at a rate of about 750,000 a month ? a number Barnes still finds so staggering she said she has to double-check it every time she says it.

Homes were being foreclosed, unemployment was skyrocketing and reaching double the national average in the black community. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, an outbreak of H1N1flu virus became a pandemic, and a tsunami that hit Japan crippled a nuclear plant near Tokyo, to name some of the highlights.

Even her chance to play golf with the president, the first time a woman joined him, came at a time of a public image crisis for Obama. The president was getting flak for playing basketball with men, fostering complaints about a boys' club in the White House.

Just before Christmas, the president and Congress wrangled over a two-month extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. Obama won a victory when the proposal won bipartisan support in the Senate and finally was accepted by House Republicans under extreme pressure.

Barnes, a Richmond, Va., native with a career in government and private sector work, is bowing out of the political arena as Obama struggles with low approval ratings on his handling of the economy.

A majority of Americans do not think the president deserves a second term, according to the most recent Associated Press-GfK poll. But at the same time, the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6 percent, the lowest level since March 2009. The president's overall approval rating stands at 44 percent, the lowest of his term in AP-GfK surveys.

His strong stance against House Republicans in the payroll tax standoff has caused an uptick in approval ratings in subsequent polls.

Barnes expects the list of legislative victories that she and others pulled off amid the hemorrhaging economy will become more clear in the coming year as the dark clouds of the economy disperse.

She tops that list with the early work to stabilize the economy, 21 months of consistent job growth and the president's long-term investments in education overhaul, an area that became her specialty.

"Our work on education reform, it'll be part of this president's legacy," she said.

Barnes said that with a fraction of what the federal government spends annually on education, about $100 billion, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the administration tapped into an education reform movement taking place at the grass roots among governors and local communities frustrated with the prescriptive, one-size-fits-all mandates of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's education cornerstone.

Congress has yet to approve revisions to No Child Left Behind, states are using up the stimulus money, and Obama's Race to the Top grant program faces spending cuts. But Barnes said Obama has given a boost to education law changes that now allow such things as connecting student performance and teacher evaluations.

Barnes, chief counsel to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Obama also deserves credit for passage of a health care overhaul, legislation that she had worked on for eight years with Kennedy. The Massachusetts senator spent his career trying to restructure health care.

There's also the auto industry bailout, expansion of Pell grants to help fund college education, the end of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and work to advance civil rights, she said.

"When you are worried about day to day, it's hard to step back and to take all those other things in," Barnes said. "Although at the same time, I'm literally in the grocery store and people come up to me and say, `Hey, you work for the president. You keep on doing what you are doing.' "

Married a few months into the president's first year, Barnes plans to spend more time with family. She is considering offers in the private sector but hasn't disclosed what those are.

___

Online:

White House Domestic Policy Council: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/dpc

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111231/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_white_house_adviser

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