All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

At the end of his interview with President Obama that aired Sunday, "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft asked about Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the so-called "White House gatecrashers" whose unauthorized entry into the Obama administration's first state dinner prompted a Congressional investigation and media frenzy.

"It's really a shame that I had to go through a whole 60 Minutes interview without talking about the gate crashers," the president quipped, laughing, when Kroft raised the issue as the interview wrapped up. "Good catch."

The president said the Salahis "should not have gotten through the gate."

"A mistake was made at the checkpoint to let them through," he said. "That mistake was not corrected through the process. I think the Secret Service has already taken responsibility for it. I think there's been an acknowledgement on the part of the White House that there should've been better coordination between Secret Service and the Social Secretary's office. And it won't happen again."

Read full post…

In a White House interview to air as a primetime special, talk show host Oprah Winfrey asked President and Mrs. Obama about Christmas at the White House -- where even Bo the dog gets a stocking.

"Bo has a stocking. Of course he does," Michelle Obama told Winfrey. "Santa loves Bo too."

According to excerpts from the interview, Mr. Obama said his general rule for gift giving is, "I give nicer stuff than I get."

The first lady teased, "No way, I gave you good gifts last year."

The president reminisced about some of his favorite Christmas gifts from his childhood, like a 10-speed bike and a basketball from his brief meeting with his father.

"I do remember the one time I met my father, he was visiting during Christmas," Mr. Obama said. "And he gave me a basketball and -- the degree to which I came to love basketball -- it wasn't until much later in life that I realized, 'Actually, he gave me that basketball.' I think there was some cause and effect there, in terms of the degree to which I just ended up taking up the sport as a kid who didn't know his dad."

Mrs. Obama said her favorite gift was a dollhouse.

Read full post…

President Obama released his Hanukkah statement Friday, offering up a message of faith and strength amid adversity.

"The Maccabees and the miracles they witnessed reminds us that faith and perseverance are powerful forces that can sustain us in difficult times and help us overcome even the greatest odds," said Mr. Obama.

The message was released both in English and Hebrew.

Read full post…

UPDATED

At the White House, as the Obama administration is learning all too well, a party is never a simple affair. (Just ask the Salahi-stricken Secret Service.)

The latest kerfuffle, the New York Times reports, involves the Obama administration's first Hanukkah party, to be held Wednesday.

One bone of contention has been the guest list: Administration officials told the Times they are inviting 550 people, just 50 less than President Bush invited to his White House Hanukkah parties. But the Israeli press reported that the Obama White House was only inviting 400 people (they may have expanded the guest list since those reports) – and Bush White House officials told reporters they had actually invited twice that number.

It was, some suggested, a snub – and one that critics said should not come as a surprise.

The rumors appear to have been touched off in part by an opinion piece by Tevi Troy, who was a liaison to Jewish groups in the Bush administration. As the Times reports, Troy suggested the Obama administration was taking Jewish votes for granted, citing as evidence the administration's call for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The guest list issue, Troy said, created "a nagging sense that there may be a studied callousness at work here."

Read full post…

President Obama plans to pressure top bankers next Monday to increase lending to the nation's small businesses.

A White House official confirms the president has summoned bankers and other financial industry CEOs to meet with him early next week to discuss his efforts to grow the economy and create an environment for more hiring in the private sector.

The meeting will follow yesterday's speech in which he announced a number of proposals to create jobs in the face of government numbers showing 15.4-million unemployed nationwide. Half that number lost their jobs since the recession began two years ago.

One proposal would use some of the $200-billion in unspent money from the TARP bank bailout fund as loans to small businesses, to help them expand and hire new employees.

Mr. Obama will also use Monday's meeting to push for more support of his proposal to create a new regulatory system for the financial industry – which opposes the idea. The plan has so far made little progress in Congress.

---

Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House correspondent. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow him on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/markknoller.

Michaele and Tareq Salahi's intrusion into the White House state dinner was more than an affront to White House protocol, according to CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer -- it was an affront to the American people, for which they must be punished.

"I think the government ought to prosecute these people," Schieffer said today on the CBS Early Show. "If that means sending them to jail, so be it."

The Salahis managed to attend portions of the White House's first state dinner last month, even though they had not been invited. The Northern Virginia couple's entry into the party was the subject of scrutiny at a congressional hearing yesterday. They were asked to testify before Congress but refused. The Secret Service took full responsibility for the security breach and has placed three officers in leave in wake of the incident.

"This is not only a security issue," Schieffer said. "People being able to get into the White House and get up close to the president -- and who knows where that kind of thing goes, but this is also sort of an insult to the American people."

The Salahis were filmed by the television network Bravo in their preparations for the White House dinner, apparently for the upcoming television show "The Real Housewives of D.C." A state dinner, however, is more serious than a fancy party for socialites, Schieffer said on the Early Show.

"State dinners are part of the symbols of our democracy, like the White House itself, like the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem," he said. "And when people are making fun of those things, when they're doing what these people did, that's an insult to all of us. And if these people go to jail, that will be just fine with me."

Read full post…

The Secret Service has admitted making a mistake in letting Tareq and Michaele Salahi into last month's White House state dinner without an invitation, but President Obama is still 100 percent confident in his security.

"I could not have more confidence in the Secret Service," Mr. Obama told USA Today and the Detroit Free Press in a joint interview. "They do an outstanding job. They have been with me since I was a candidate. I trust them 100 percent, not just with me but with my wife and my children."

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told Congress today that the Secret Service took responsibility for the security breach and that three officers involved in the incident are currently suspended. He also said, however, that recent claims about higher threat levels against the president have been inaccurate and Mr. Obama was not at risk the night of the state dinner.

Mr. Obama acknowledged in the interview that "the system didn't work the way it was supposed to."

The White House has resisted sending White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers to testify before Congress about the incident, citing the separation of powers.

Democrats are insisting that the alleged "White House crashers," Tareq and Michaele Salahi, testify before a congressional panel this morning, but one Republican on the panel says the White House social secretary should have to answer questions about the security breach as well.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie Thompson said he could subpoena the Salahis if they are not interested in voluntarily attending today's hearing regarding their ability to gain entry into the White House state dinner without any sort of invitation.

"The Salahis' testimony is important to explain how a couple circumvented layers of security at the White House on the evening of a State Dinner without causing alarm," Thompson said in a statement.

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan agreed to testify this morning, but along with the Salahis, White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers declined to appear. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday that White House staff does not testify before Congress, based on the separation of powers.

An aide for Thompson said this morning that no decisions have been made on whether to subpoena Rogers, reports CBS News Capitol Hill Producer Jill Jackson.

Ranking Republican Peter King said Rogers' testimony is more important than the Salahis'.

"The White House should not be allowed to stonewall by refusing the Committee's request that Ms. Rogers testify," he said in a statement. "What is the White House trying to hide?"

If the committee does decide to subpoena Rogers or the Salahis, there could be another hearing on the matter.

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:

** The White House faces limitations in what it can do for the job market...

** Congress questions Obama's Afghanistan plan...

** White House crashers may be forced to testify before Congress...

JOBS SUMMIT: Today, President Obama hosts the "Jobs and Economic Growth Forum" where he'll speak then hear from CEOs, small business owners and labor leaders, along with the heads of a number of nonprofit organizations.

"The forum will assemble economists, union heads and business leaders such as Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Mountain View, California-based Google Inc., and Fred Smith of Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx Corp.," writes Bloomberg News' Nicholas Johnston. "With the nation’s unemployment rate at a 23-year high of 10.2 percent, Obama will solicit feedback on job-creation proposals such as incentives to make homes more energy efficient, increased access to financing for small business and tax credits for companies…

"The companies that will be represented at the White House, including Dallas-based AT&T Inc., Chicago-based Boeing Co. and New York-based Pfizer Inc., provide a snapshot of the nation’s employment woes, having cut more than 36,000 jobs this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

"Obama convenes a summit here on jobs, then flies Friday to Allentown, Pa., for the first in what will be periodic listening tours on the economy," adds USA Today's Richard Wolf. "The goal is to develop new spending and tax proposals to help many of the nation's nearly 16 million unemployed people find work in 2010...

Read full post…

The White House has announced new rules on guests (PDF) in the wake of revelations that Tareq and Michaele Salahi gained entry to the White House during the Obama administration's first state dinner despite not having been invited.

In a memo, Jim Messina, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, writes that "it is clear that the White House did not do everything we could have done to assist the United States Secret Service in ensuring that only invited guests enter the complex."

"White House staff were walking back and forth outside between the check points helping guests and were available to the Secret Service throughout the evening, but clearly we can do more, and we will do more," writes Messina.

He laid out the following new procedures for official White House events in the future:

Read full post…