President Obama came out swinging against Republicans in a fiery campaign-season speech to black lawmakers Saturday night, making an urgent appeal for the kind of grass-roots organizing that propelled the civil rights movement.
The co-author of a new book about French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy defended his sources Friday amid a media buzz over a passage that cites Michelle Obama as calling life in the White House "hell."
A spokeswoman for Michelle Obama has disputed a claim by French first lady Carla Bruni that Mrs. Obama told her that being first lady of the United States is "hell."
President Obama's glittering campaign for the White House two years ago is a hard act to follow.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's marriage to Carla Bruni, an Italian-born heiress and ex-supermodel long considered among the world's most desirable women, was touted as a coup for the French leader.
The Obama administration is seeking a go-ahead from Congress to sell up to $60 billion worth of sophisticated warplanes to Saudi Arabia and could add another $30 billion worth of naval arms in a deal designed to counter the rise of Iran as a regional power.
Congress returns this week with embattled Democrats torn between trying to show they have the answers to the nation's economic woes and fearing their solutions will further incur the wrath of voters angry about new government programs.
Rites of remembrance and loss marked the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, familiar in their sorrow but observed for the first time Saturday in a nation torn over the prospect of a mosque near ground zero and the role of Islam in society.
At Fashion Week as in life, opposites attract.
