Administration

As Director of Party Affairs and Delegate Selection, angry Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters directed their rage at Phil McNamara during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Now, McNamara -- a decade-long Democratic National Committee veteran -- will serve a different constituency as executive secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

Appointed in June, McNamara will oversee correspondence and briefings flowing to and from Secretary Janet Napolitano's office. It would be a daunting task for anyone, but perhaps less so for McNamara.

A long-time party rules expert, McNamara was a driving force behind the 2008 delegate selection plan that added Nevada and South Carolina to the early primary roster occupied by Iowa and New Hamshire. Since coming to the DNC in 1998, McNamara has overseen delegate selection twice and coordinated key committees at national conventions in 2000, 2004 and 2008.

During his time coordinating one of those committees, last year's platform committee, he worked with then-Arizona Gov. Napolitano, who headed the body.

His new job promises a lot of interaction with bureaucrats and time sentenced to endless meetings. Perhaps most impressive about his resume, McNamara was perhaps the only person to sit through every minute of every Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting during the 2008 primary.

This writer sat through most of them, and we can attest that McNamara's endurance is a thing of wonder.

-Reid Wilson

President Obama will face tough but respectful questions in Montana today, the state's Democratic governor predicted Friday.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) said he expects citizens to air their opinions at a town hall meeting with the president this afternoon, but do so in a civil way.

"People in Montana are going to be respectful," he said in an interview on CNN radio. "One of the things you can be sure of is that people in Montana have opinions, and they're going to air them."

Many lawmakers have faced angry confrontations with constituents at their own town halls, while Obama received a warmer audience during a town hall in New Hampshire this week.

Many political observers are looking forward to Obama's Montana town hall today, where the distribution of tickets could lead to a more raucous confrontation with the president.

The White House said Friday that it'd distributed the 1,300 tickets for the town hall to people on a first come, first served bases, with the remainder given to elected officials and community leaders.

President Obama's town hall meetings have been "manufactured" with more favorable audiences, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele suggested Friday.

"Despite what is seen at the president's manufactured town halls, fewer and fewer Americans are supporting government control of health care," Steele said in advance of Obama's town hall meeting in Montana today. "Like Old Faithful, the president's performances simply make for a good show."

While many lawmakers have faced angry confrontations with constituents at their own town halls, Obama received a warmer audience during a town hall in New Hampshire this week.

While the RNC doesn't believe the president has "stacked the deck" with a friendly audience, one official said Friday, the GOP doesn't necessarily feel the president's audience was representative of many citizens' dyspepsia over healthcare.

Many political observers are looking forward to Obama's Montana town hall today, where the distribution of tickets -- first come, first served -- could lead to a more raucous confrontation with the president.

"As President Obama takes his traveling road show to Montana, Colorado, and Arizona, Americans simply aren't buying his efforts to repackage his government-run experiment," Steele said.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) praised a Senate committee's decision to drop an end-of-life provision from its healthcare reform bill, but continued to pound away at the overall bill -- especially a proposal by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.

"It's gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress," Palin said in a new note on her Facebook page posted early Friday morning of the Senate Finance Committee's decision to drop end-of-life consultations from its health bill. (The Alaska politician had derided those consultations as "death panels" seeking to aid the euthanasia of the elderly.)

"However, that provision was not the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones," Palin added.

Palin alleged that Emanuel, a White House healthcare adviser and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, would advocate a "Complete Lives System," which "if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential."

President Obama's silence on the Complete Lives System is troubling, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate asserted, and called on the president to answer questions about the theory.

"Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the 'Complete Lives System'?" Palin asked. "If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on?"

The note marks the latest in a series of attacks Palin has launched on the president's heatlhcare reform proposals, and signals that while the conservative Republican had managed a small political victory over end-of-life care, she would continue to hammer away against Obama.

"We must stop and think or we may find ourselves losing even more of our freedoms," she wrote.

President Obama looks to abandon his usual games of golf or pick-up basketball -- at least temporarily -- later this week in favor of fishing.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina told the New York Times Thursday that the president would try his hand at fishing during a trip to Montana.

"I am going to have the great opportunity later this week," Messina said. "I'm going to take the leader of the free world fishing. And I plan to talk a little bit about public access."

Messina is a former chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D), another Montanan.

Obama has attracted some attention for golfing more consistently throughout the spring and summer on military bases here in D.C.

The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.

The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after being derided as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia by conservatives.

"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."

The Finance Committee is the only congressional committee to not report out a preliminary healthcare bill before the August congressional recess, but is expected to unveil its proposal shortly after Labor Day.

Grassley said that bill would hold up better compared to proposals crafted in the House, which he asserted were "poorly cobbled together."

"The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies for illegal immigrants," Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to "advise patients about end of life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care."

"Maybe others can defend a bill like the Pelosi bill that leaves major issues open to interpretation, but I can't," Grassley added.

The Obama administration may be willing to sacrifice some of its allies in Congress in order to force through healthcare reform, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele suggested Thursday.

"There may be a sense of sacrificing some seats in Congress...to push through the nuclear option," Steele said during an interview on Fox News Radio this afternoon.

Steele was speaking about the possibility of using budget reconciliation to force through healthcare reform on a more strictly party lines vote, especially in the Senate, where only a simple majority would be required to pass the bill.

The RNC chairman suggested that President Obama, knowing how unpopular forcing through healthcare could be, would be willing to endure Democratic losses in Congress.

"They operate at that arrogant level, where they really believe we need to put in a system that will upend 1/6th of the economy," Steele said.

It's far from outrageous to suggest that the elderly would face end-of-life decisions mandated by the government, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Thursday.

In an interview with an Oklahoma television affiliate said that he disagreed that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's (R) claims about a so-called "death panel" in healthcare reform legislation were ridiculous.

Coburn said that he'd offered three amendments seeking an "absolute prohibition" on rationing based on comparative effectiveness research into treatments.

"Why would you not want an absolute prohibition? Because you ultimately plan to ration care," Coburn said. "Their plan is to control costs by limiting options."

The conservative Oklahoman also slammed Obama, a friend of Coburn's, for having a poor understanding of the healthcare system, and letting the Congress drive the legislation forward as a result.

"He doesn't have a plan," Coburn asserted. "His plan is what has been written in the House, and that's the reason why he's in trouble on healthcare -- because he doesn't know the issue well enough to put out his plan."

Watch the interview below:

President Obama would have residents of Michigan turn their state into a "federal penal colony" in their time of economic desperation, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) accused Thursday.

Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and candidate for governor of Michigan, accused the president of trying to play off the state's economic hardships in order to convince them to take detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for placement in a Standish, Mich. federal detention facility.

"They're trying to play off an administration in Michigan that clearly is hurting," Hoekstra said of the Obama administration's consideration of Standish to relocate terrorist suspects.

"They think that in Michigan's desperation, we will just latch onto it and say, wow, we're going to turn Michigan into a federal penal colony," Hoekstra added, appearing on a conservative news radio syndicate.

Hoekstra explained that while he thought prison officials could handle the detainees, local officials should be given access to classified information Hoekstra is privy to as a member of the Intelligence committee about the detainees.

"The bigger answer is what happens in the community," he said. "And for this, I think the president needs to release the classified information about the threats these people have posed and the problems that we have had detaining them in Guantanamo."

Still, the Michigan Republican said he preferred that the president would leave the Guantanamo Bay facility in place.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said on Sunday that "I don't know if we'll ever know for sure" if an unmanned drone actually killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud on Wednesday.

"But like I said, we're pretty sure, and obviously that's a victory for safety and security in the region," he added. Burton spoke during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One as President Obama travels to Mexico for the North American Summit.

National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones (Ret.) put the odds that the drone killed Mehsud at "90 percent" on NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning.

Government officials in Pakistan said Friday they were still waiting for results of DNA analysis to ensure that the man killed Wednesday in an unmanned aerial vehicle strike is indeed Mehsud. Taliban officials have denied the death of the man targeted at the home of Mehsud's father-in-law.