Administration

President Obama has an unlikely guest scheduled to join him on Air Force One on Thursday — Tea Party darling Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Paul will be joining Obama on the trip to Northern Kentucky, where the president will likely continue his assault on Republicans in Congress over the American Jobs Act, an aide to Paul said.

Obama and Paul will be visiting a bridge that connects Cincinnati with Northern Kentucky that has been described as "functionally obsolete." Obama will continue to highlight what he says is the need for infrastructure spending contained in his jobs plan.

While it is not unusual for members of the opposition to join a president aboard the presidential plane on trips to their home states, the duo of Paul and Obama at a time of Washington gridlock is sure to raise some eyebrows.

President Obama this week will unveil a new long-term deficit-reduction proposal that touches on the Bush tax cuts and entitlement spending, White House senior adviser David Plouffe said Sunday.

Plouffe blasted the House GOP budget for lowering taxes for the wealthy while making significant reductions in Medicare and Medicaid spending.

“The president believes this has to be a balanced approach,” Plouffe said on Fox News Sunday.

However, Republicans have criticized the White House for punting on Medicare and Medicaid reforms in the 2012 budget it released in February.

Plouffe said the plan will take on the Bush tax cuts, which Congress voted to extend in the December lame-duck session. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who appeared later in the show, said the White House is trying to defend the extension of the tax cuts while paring them back.

“They’re insistent we have to raise taxes again,” Cantor said.

President Barack Obama's official Twitter account tweeted that opponents of healthcare reform legislation are 'playing politics with our lives' this afternoon.

While some politicians (including the White House account, @whitehouse) tweet more than once a day, Obama's account has only tweeted 11 times this month.

The Obama administration has been aggressively enouraging Congress to pass legislation by the August recess and now they have taken their efforts to Twitter:

Health care reform opponents scale up attacks, playing politics w/ our lives & livelihood. Fight back: http://bit.ly/1bciXx

The tweet contains a link to an Organizing for America website that features a video of President Obama countering detractors of the health bill and an online petition form supporting the reform package.

Obama appeared at a Rose Garden news conference this afternoon to tout the healthcare reform legislation and is holding a primetime news conference on the topic at 8pm on Wednesday.

Cross posted to Twitter Room

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who, let's face it, has been everywhere recently, grabbed a hold of the cap-and-trade legislation recently passed by the House and President Obama's energy policy in a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday.

Palin decries that national media's "focus on personality-driven political gossip of the day" over substance. And, "at the risk of disappointing the chattering class," says she is most concerned with President Obama's energy policy.

I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

Palin goes on to say the the legislation will cost the country jobs and says the legislation will cause electricity bills to rise dramatically.

The Republican also criticizes Obama's energy policy for outsourcing energy abroad.

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.

And finally, Palin takes a shot at Obama's campaign slogan. "Yes, we can," Palin wrote. "Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan."

The op-ed is likely designed to serve two purposes. First, the Palin camp probably wants to change the channel from the focus on the coverage of Palin since her resignation announcement which has not been particularly substantive.

And second, it seeks to establish Palin's credentials on an issue - energy - that was touted as her strong suit when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) selected her as his running mate last year. In the campaign, that expertise was rarely highlighted, though.

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Colorado state Sen. Josh Penry (D) makes his gubernatorial campaign official.

Early FEC reports show Senate races in Florida, Kentucky and Connecticut shifting.

A couple exploratory committees to face Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.).

Illinois state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) issues a lengthy list of endorsements this morning for his Senate campaign, including Reps. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) and Phil Hare (D-Ill.) and a bunch of state legislators.

A conservative blog reports Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said he's in the Senate race if Andy McKenna's (R) out, and he's out if McKenna's in.

Democrats have a state House member running for Rep. Todd Tiahrt's (R) open seat.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) continued his assault on President Obama's stimulus package on Sunday, calling the economic legislation a "flop."

Cantor, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said the $787 billion legislation is not working. In particular, he said small businesses aren't hiring.

The Virginia Republican has been a leading critic of Obama and the stimulus package in the last week. He delivered the Republican weekly radio and internet address on Saturday, saying that Obama's economic policies aren't working.

Obama has stepped up his defense of the stimulus and his economic policies. He dedicated his Saturday radio and internet address to the economy and he penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday on the topic as well.

On Sunday, Cantor, who whipped the entire House GOP caucus to vote against the stimulus, said the package didn't focus enough on preserving and creating jobs. He suggested that the GOP alternative provided more incentives for businesses to hire people, such as giving businesses a tax break.

Cantor also said that the economic crisis is providing an opportunity for "the Republican Party to demonstrate that it can and will lead again."

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President Obama closed his trip to Ghana by saying it had been a particularly meaningful trip for him.

At a ceremony at the Accra, Ghana, airport, Obama said he would never forget the image of his two daughters walking through the "doors of no return" at the Cape Coast Castle, a prison thousands of Africans passed through on their way to slavery.

When his daughters did walk through those doors, he said it was a reminder that "while the future is unknown, the winds always blow in the direction of human progress."

Obama boarded a plane after he and Ghana's president both made remarks to a crowd. Obama offered special thanks to a group of Peace Corps volunteers who cheered loudly when he thanked them for attending the event. Ghana was the first country to accept Peace Corps volunteers, Obama said.

- Ian Swanson

In what seems to be significant news that didn't get too much attention on Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shifted the U.S.'s position with regard to the two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea.

Clinton said that the U.S. is now seeking "amnesty" for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two journalists who were arrested in March at the border on North Korea and China.

"The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened," Clinton said Friday morning to State Department employees, according to the New York Times. "What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible."

The administration's response to the conviction has largely taken place behind closed doors. Until these remarks, Clinton had said only they the state department is pursuing "all possible channels" to free the journalists.

Lee and Ling were reporting on refugees along the border when they were arrested. They were working for Current TV, former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco based news organization.

The two journalists were tried in North Korea's highest court in June, meaning there was no possibility of an appeal. They were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison or labor camps.

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In somber remarks, President Obama said visiting a slave trading outpost in Ghana brought him both sadness and hope.

Obama remarks came after a tour of the Cape Coast Castle, which sits on Ghana's coastline with the Atlantic Ocean. The castle is almost 500 years old and served as a slave trading outpost for European nations.

The first African American president said he felt two emotions as he took the tour.

"As African Americans, there is a special sense that on the one hand, this place was a place of profound sadness," Obama said.

The president went on to say that the prison also represents where the African American experience began and a "celebration with the people of Ghana of the extraordinary progress we've made...to abolish slavery and to ultimately win civil rights for all people."

"It is a source of hope," Obama said. "It reminds us that as bad as history can be, it is also possible to overcome."

Obama also drew a parallel between the prison and Buchenald, the Nazi concentration camp he visited in early June, because "it reminds of us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil."

Obama spoke of the African American diaspora and the "portal" through which slaves were shipped around the globe.

In the tour, Obama saw the dark dungeons in the castle where men and woman slaves were held. When slaves were purchased, they were processed and passed through a "door of no return" when they boarded slave ships.

Obama said it was an "extraordinary tour" and, in particular, noted that right above the dungeon where male captives were held was a church.

"That reminds us that sometimes we can tolerate and stand by great evil even as we think we are doing good," Obama said.

Obama was joined by his wife and daughters on the tour and said he felt it was important for his daughters to see that "history can take very cruel turns."

The president also said that the castle was another reminder that the U.S. will fight civil rights abuses.

The castle "teach[es] all of us that we have to do all we can to fight against the kinds of evils that still exist in our world," he said. "Any group of people who are degrading another group of people have to be fought against with whatever tools we have available to us."

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How is President Obama's relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel?

There have been several rumors that the two's relationship isn't quite as chummy and Merkel and President George W. Bush's was. And this weekend Bild Magazine of Gemany, referencing this older story from the Washington Post, provides some evidence that they are not getting along.

To Bush, Merkel was practically a heroine. Her long road from growing up in communist East Germany to Chancellor of a unified country was proof to Bush that freedom always won.

He listened to her with fascination when she told him about her life.

Merkel has struggled to reach this level of closeness to Obama, and is often an awkward ally for him.

*HE wants a large offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan. SHE does not want to send German soldiers to the unstable south and refuses to call the operation a war.

*HE wants to send former Guantanamo Bay inmates to Germany. SHE has not agreed to the plans.

*HE wants to save the world economy with a massive rescue package worth billions of dollars. SHE fears inflation and talks openly about her "great skepticism" of government support for ailing economies.

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