All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Politics Today is CBSNews.com's inside look at the key stories driving the day in politics, written by CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:

** Assessing NOLA's ongoing recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina...

** Will leaders listen to Snowe and ditch the public option in health care reform...

** News from the Palin front...

PRESIDENT OBAMA TODAY: President Obama makes his first trip to New Orleans since taking office to tour the area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He'll visit with students at a charter school in the heavily damaged Lower 9th Ward and will also hold a town meeting at the University of New Orleans. He'll then fly to San Francisco for a fund-raiser, drawing the ire of Mississippians, who are upset that Mr. Obama isn't visiting the areas there that were affected by Katrina.

"President Barack Obama will be in New Orleans on Thursday, making his first post-inauguration visit to a city and region desperate to impress upon him both the long strides made since Hurricane Katrina, and the daunting challenges in housing, education, health care, levee protection and coastal restoration yet ahead," reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune's Jonathan Tilove.

"From wheels-down to wheels-up, the stopover will clock in at three hours and 45 minutes, enough time to visit the only school to reopen in the Lower 9th Ward since Katrina, conduct a town hall at the University of New Orleans, and grab a to-go lunch order from Dooky Chase."

"[P]raise for Mr. Obama’s work has, in recent days, been eclipsed by criticism of his visit," adds the New York Times' Campbell Robertson. "Mr. Obama, who visited the city five times during his presidential campaign and attacked Mr. Bush for his response to Hurricane Katrina, is spending only a few hours here — at the charter school and at a campus of the University of New Orleans, where he is holding a town-hall-style meeting — before flying to San Francisco for a fund-raiser. He is not visiting the storm-ravaged areas in Mississippi.

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The uproar over the $165 million in bonuses that insurance company AIG paid to employees has continued this week -- there have even been protests outside AIG employees’ homes. Certainly, some people are outraged that the bonuses were paid, but how widespread is the anger? Is it shared by most Americans, or just a noisy few? And who is feeling it most?

The most recent CBS News Poll can shed some light on those questions.

Fifty percent of Americans told us they feel angry about the bonuses paid to AIG employees. Another 38 percent say they feel bothered by those bonuses. Just 12 percent are not bothered.

Those who have heard or read a lot about the AIG bonuses are more apt to be angry – 59 percent of them say that’s how they feel. Anger is also more widespread among older Americans – 61 percent of those age 45 and older describe themselves as angry, while among those under 45, just 38 percent are angry.

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In his much-criticized response to President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told a story about an interaction he had with Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, who died in 2007. Here’s what he said:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.

The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

The story quickly drew scrutiny from liberal sites like TPMMuckracker, which questioned its accuracy.

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On his thirty-second day in office, President Obama told a group of mayors that the economic stimulus money must be spent with "unprecedented responsibility and accountability" to avoid "waste, inefficiency, or fraud."

"We will use the new tools that the Recovery Act gives us to watch the taxpayers’ money with more rigor and transparency than ever,” he said. “If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will not hesitate to call them out on it, and put a stop to it."

The president also said that Washington has not done enough to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

"The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who are helping rebuild are heroes who believe in their communities and they are succeeding despite the fact that they have not always received the support they deserve from the federal government," he said in a statement. "We must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated."

And the White House continued to face criticism of the administration’s mortgage bailout plan, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs lashing out at a CNBC host who ranted against the plan.

Watch Chip Reid’s CBS Evening News report about the president’s day below.

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President Bush's legacy has yet to be decided but Bob Schieffer walks us through the ups and downs of the last eight years and the terms of '43.