In the gauzy days of bipartisan good feeling before his Inauguration, there was talk of President Barack Obama linking arms with Republicans to pass a massive stimulus bill, with a big bipartisan Senate majority as proof the parties could come together in a time of national distress.

So much for that.

Now Obama and the Democrats are poised to push through an $827 billion package Tuesday with as few as three Republican votes in the Senate, after notching zero on the House side.

The risks for Obama are considerable. He and the Democrats will have no one else to blame if the package fails to boost the economy. Obama himself has said his first term can be judged on whether it succeeds, whether it creates or saves the 3 million to 4 million jobs he promises.

And if the economy fails to show marked signs of improvement — a possibility indeed — Republicans will have a megabillion-dollar “I told you so” in their pockets, just in time for the 2010 midterm elections and Obama’s own reelection bid in 2012.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the fallout from a Democrat-only bill will be “squarely in the president and the Democratic leadership’s lap.”

If Obama signs a stimulus bill that has been approved on a party-line vote, “which I have no confidence will work, then I think this is very serious blow early on to his presidency,” Cornyn said.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) acknowledged the lack of bipartisan support “weakens the bill” and said voters should try to withhold judgment until a final product emerges from conference. But he warned that the GOP would suffer from withholding support.

Yet Republicans are gambling themselves — and perhaps with even higher stakes.

Still seeking a way forward from their Election Day thumping, they risk appearing out of touch as the unemployment rate jumps to 7.6 percent and a popular new president is appearing to seek their support to address the crisis. By turning their backs on him and opposing action at a time when millions of Americans are in need, they may invite a “party of no” bull’s-eye on their backs.

Polls show the public is giving Obama good grades and a 65 percent approval rating for trying to do something to stem the recession and for reaching across the aisle. And there’s the chance it just might work.

“I think they are stunned by their defeat and their minority status, and, sadly, some of them are not willing to cooperate,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the Republicans are “helping dig their own grave.”

Both sides spent Sunday previewing these battle lines. Obama’s chief economic adviser Larry Summers blasted the Republican contention that the Democratic stimulus bill was just a return to big-government days.

“Those who presided over the last eight years — the eight years that brought us to the point where we inherited trillions of dollars of deficit an economy that’s collapsing more rapidly than at any time in the last 50 years — don’t seem to be in a strong position to lecture about the lessons of history,” Summers said on ABC News.

But Obama’s presidential rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the bill itself amounts to a repudiation of Obama’s campaign call for a new day in Washington, because it was constructed with little or no Republican input.

“I thought we were going to have change,” he said in a shot at Obama’s campaign slogan, “and that change meant we work together. This is a setback. This is a setback to all Americans because you promised Americans we’d work in a more bipartisan fashion, and that certainly is not the case in this bill.”.

“I know we’re in trouble. I know America needs a stimulus, we need tax cuts, we need to spend money on infrastructure and other programs that will put people to work. But this is not it,” McCain said.

As of Sunday, there was no sign of a groundswell of Republican support beyond what Obama seems to have in hand — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

That’s enough to squeak over the goal line with 60 votes — but far from the 80 votes once floated by some Democratic strategists.

“That was never realistic,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs in an interview about the prospect of assembling as many as 80 votes for the stimulus package. “It was never something we talked about.”

Now, Gibbs said, “The number that matters is the number of jobs you create.”

Obama had spent weeks courting congressional Republicans — over lunch, over cocktails, at his place and theirs — but mustered no GOP votes from the House. His efforts to woo Senate Republicans also met stiff resistance.

So he changed course dramatically Thursday — when the president gave a stemwinder of a political speech to House Democrats at their retreat, all but mocking George W. Bush’s economic policy that left him with a doubled national debt “wrapped in a bow” when he walked into the Oval Office.

He also made clear that he believed his own economic philosophy, and the need for a big stimulus plan, were on the ballot with him in November — and reminded Republicans that he emerged victorious.
Still, Obama will be judged on this bill as much, if not more than, the lesser-known members of the legislative branch.

His handling of the stimulus represents the first test of his ability to keep the Democratic-controlled Congress in line, and to bring Republicans across the aisle.

Unlike George W. Bush, who often tried to force Congress to bend to his will, or Bill Clinton, who did the same on health care, Obama has shown deference to congressional leaders — laying out a vision for his stimulus but not writing the legislative details.

Some Democrats suggested that Obama erred by giving lawmakers too much leeway, resulting in extraneous provisions in the bill that gave the GOP fresh ammunition to argue that the bill lacks focus and that what was at one point a $900-billion-plus price tag was unwarranted.

“My advice would be next time the administration should write the bill, and not leave it to all the disparate odds and ends of the Congress,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “It’s kind of an institutional problem because everybody has worked for years and has certain things that they really want to get in a bill.”

Gibbs tried to remain philosophical, insisting the stimulus fight carried no “downside or long-term effect” in their relationship with Republicans.

‚ÄúI mean, look, this is a place … where old habits die hard, and it‚Äôs going to take a little while to trust each other and work together,‚Äù he said.

WASHINGTON ‚Äì President Barack Obama’s ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn’t mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won’t be able to funnel money to pet projects.

They’re just working around it ‚Äî and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.

The projects run the gamut: a Metrolink station that needs building in Placentia, Calif.; a stretch of beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., that could really use some more sand; a water park in Miami.

There are thousands of projects like those that once would have been gotten money upfront but now are left to scramble for dollars at the back end of the process as “ready to go” jobs eligible for the stimulus plan.

The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.

“‘No earmarks’ isn’t a game-ender,” said Peter Buffa, former mayor of Costa Mesa, Calif. “It just means there’s a different way of going about making sure the funding is there.”

It won’t be in legislative language that overtly sets aside money for them. That’s the infamous practice known as earmarking, which Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have agreed to nix for the massive stimulus package, expected to come up for a House vote this week.

Instead, the money will be doled out according to arcane formulas spelled out in the bill and in some cases based on the decisions of Obama administration officials, governors and state and local agencies that will choose the projects.

“Somebody’s going to earmark it somewhere,” said Howard Marlowe, a consultant for a coalition working to preserve beaches.

Lobbyists are hard at work figuring out ways to grab a share of the money for their clients, but the new rules mean they’re doing so indirectly ‚Äî and sometimes in ways that are impossible to track.

Congressional earmarks have had a bad name since the 2004 scandal that sent superlobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison and earned the congressional spending committees a new nickname: “The Favor Factory.”

Obama, who campaigned promising a more transparent and accountable government, is advocating a system that will eventually let the public track exactly where stimulus money goes through an Internet-powered search engine. In addition, Democratic lawmakers have devised an elaborate oversight system, including a new board to review how the money is spent.

But none of that will happen until after the bill becomes law. Even critics of the earmarks system acknowledge that specifying projects upfront offers some measure of transparency.

“We hate earmarks, but at least it’s a way of tracking where influence is had,” said Keith Ashdown of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “There is a challenge now that projects will be added behind closed doors without a paper trail.”

Indeed, some lawmakers hearing from local groups say they’re doing their own lobbying of governors and state and local officials who could have say-so over the funds.

“I’ve talked to my governor and suggested some things I think are important in our area,” said Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young, who represents St. Petersburg, Fla. “He knows what the needs are.”

Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor of Arizona suggested it’s not entirely accurate to say there will be no earmarks in the measure. “There are and there aren’t,” Pastor said. “A lot of it depends on what the formula looks like.”

For instance, the House measure, which includes $358 billion for road, water and energy programs among others, gives priority to transportation projects in high-unemployment areas that could be begun and completed quickly and that state and metropolitan transportation authorities have included in their long-term plans.

In California, Buffa, now board chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, said he’s changed his strategy from asking for specific projects to pleading for more favorable general guidelines, including more money for infrastructure projects overall and a formula that lets cities ‚Äî not states ‚Äî decide how to spend it.

His organization has enlisted Potomac Partners, a large firm that specializes in lobbying for project spending, to help.

In most cases, lawmakers know exactly which projects in their districts can benefit from the money, even though the legislation won’t spell them out. State and local officials have released lists of projects that could start quickly and be completed within a few years.

In Orange County, they include freeway improvements and the Placentia Metrolink station. The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, which is pushing for more water projects to be funded, wants repair and restoration of beaches from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Newport Beach, Calif.

Members of Congress are privately outlining their priorities, too.

“Everybody’s making their list and checking it twice,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. “You are inevitably going to have a lot of projects that are not going to pass the smell test.”

Some groups are careful not to get too specific, fearing that public scrutiny could draw unwelcome attention to projects easily caricatured as special-interest goodies, such as a 2007 earmark for spinach growers that found its way into an Iraq war spending bill or the now-infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska.

The United States Conference of Mayors released a 300-plus-page list of some $150 billion in “ready-to-go” projects that quickly became fodder for criticism. It included money for the Miami water park, which McConnell has ridiculed publicly, and a skate park in Portland, Maine.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials was more guarded about its list of 5,000 projects totaling $64 billion. No specific projects were mentioned — just the number in each state and an overall dollar amount — making it impossible for lawmakers, advocacy groups or members of the public to criticize any one item.

Peter J. “Jack” Basso, an association executive, said it’s up to states to decide what goes on their “ready-to-go” wish lists, but that the projects must meet rigorous tests including clearing environmental reviews.

“We really rely on them to pick things that, frankly, are not bridges to nowhere,” Basso said.

The Defense Department recently estimated that more than 60 terrorists released from Guantanamo may have returned to the battlefield.

According to the counterterrorism official, freed detainee Ali al-Shiri traveled to Yemen after being released to Saudi Arabia and may have been involved in recent al Qaeda attacks in Yemen, including a car bombing outside the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa last year that killed nearly a dozen people.

“He is one of a handful of al Qaeda deputies in Yemen,” the official said. “He is one of the top terrorists.”

His title is deputy and senior operations commander, the source said.

According to the magazine Sada al-Malahem, or The Echo of the Epics, published by al Qaeda in Yemen, al-Shiri attended a media session in which Yemen commander Abu Baseer was interviewed.

The magazine identified al-Shiri as Baseer’s deputy commander and quoted Baseer as announcing that al Qaeda’s operations in Yemen and Saudi Arabia have been combined to become al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.

The magazine noted that al-Shiri was released from Guantanamo more than 10 months ago.

He fled a Saudi jihadi re-education program, where he went after his release, a Saudi source told CNN’s Nic Robertson.

President Obama on Thursday signed an order mandating that the Guantanamo Bay prison be closed within the year. What to do with the detainees has been a hotly debated topic.

The issue of freed detainees engaging in terrorism is one concern. Another is housing them in prisons inside the United States. VideoWatch experts debate the Guantanamo dilemma »

Rep. Bill Young, R-Florida, said he has “quite a bit of anxiety” about the possibility of transferring detainees to U.S. facilities.

“Number one, they’re dangerous,” Young said. “Secondly, once they become present in the United States, what is their legal status? What is their constitutional status? I worry about that, because I don’t want them to have the same constitutional rights that you and I have. They’re our enemy.”

Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo facility received immediate backing from his general election opponent, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

McCain, in a joint statement with South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, said he supported Obama’s decision to “begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees.”

But Thursday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” McCain said the new president may have been hasty in the decision and should have taken the time to consider everything associated with closing the camp before forcing himself into a timetable.

Specifically, McCain said he thought Obama needed to consider what would happen to the prisoners held at Guantanamo before ordering the facility to be closed.

“So, the easy part, in all due respect, is to say we’re going to close Guantanamo,” McCain said. “Then I think I would have said where they were going to be taken. Because you’re going to run into a NIMBY [not in my backyard] problem here in the United States of America.” VideoWatch what may happen to Guantanamo’s inmates ¬ª

Asked about that issue Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “We have developed some options in terms of how many we think could be returned to other countries to take them. That diplomatic initiative has not started. That will await work in carrying out the executive order.”

“We have identified a number of possible prisons here in the United States” that could take the detainees. However, Gates added, “I’ve heard from members of Congress [representing] where all those prisons are located. Their enthusiasm is limited.”

A growing media frustration with Barack Obama’s team spilled into the open at Thursday’s briefing, with reporters accusing the White House of stifling access to his oath re-do and giving Obama’s first interview as president to a multi-million dollar inauguration sponsor.

Veteran CBS newsman Bill Plante was one of the most vocal critics, questioning the White House’s handling of Wednesday night’s second swearing in – which was covered by just a four-reporter print pool that didn’t include a news photographer or TV correspondent.

He also asked new press secretary Robert Gibbs why ABC, which paid millions to host the DC Neighborhood Ball, was granted the only inauguration day interview with President Obama – a move he equated to “pay to play.”

“We have a tradition here of covering the president,” said Plante, who is covering his fourth administration.

Gibbs defended the White House’s moves, insisting aides acted in a “way that was upfront and transparent” in allowing the standard pool into the swearing-in. And Obama himself seemed mindful of making a good impression, paying a surprise visit to the White House pressroom a few hours after the briefing.

It’s been a bumpy 24 hours for Gibbs and company, as members of the White House press corps have publicly expressed frustration with an administration promising openness and transparency.

At the same time, some members of the Obama administration’s press team have signaled that they plan to shake up some of the old traditions of White House coverage, some of the longest-standing – and most jealously guarded – in town.

In recent weeks, New York Times editors complained that its White House team hadn’t gotten a sit-down with Obama during the transition, breaking an unofficial tradition whereby recent president-elects have free-wheeling exchanges with the Gray Lady before the inauguration.
In the case of the second swearing-in, however, it seemed to give reporters a chance to lay down an early marker on questioning whether Obama would live up to one of his key campaign pledges, at least when it comes to the media.

“It is ironic, the same day that the president is talking about transparency, we were not let in,” CNN’s Ed Henry said on the air Wednesday night after news of the second swearing-in broke.

Henry’s main gripe was that television reporters weren’t permitted to cover a historic moment, when Obama once again raised his right hand and took the oath before Justice John Roberts. The only images came from White House photographer Pete Souza.

Three wire services — The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse – refused to move those images, in protest of the White House’s handling of the event.

The wire services’ photographers were also denied access to photograph Obama sitting in the Oval Office on the first day, and similarly refused to move the White House approved photos.

Michael Oreskes, the AP’s managing editor for U.S. news, told his own news outlet that “we are not distributing what are, in effect, visual press releases.”

Later, in a statement to Politico, Oreskes said that the AP believes “access for news photographers has been a time-honored tradition at the White House through many administrations and needs to be continued.”

“We are working diligently with the White House staff to ensure this access,” he added.

Jennifer Loven, the AP‚Äôs White House correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said she and the group’s board “are addressing this aggressively with the White House‚Äîour strong objections to both the issue of them releasing photo handouts from events that the press should be able to cover, and the issue of how the pool was structured last night.”

Providing access is probably the easiest ways to appease the White House press corps, which feeds on it. So by not allowing the three wire services in the Oval Office for day one—a ritual that typically yields flattering shots of a new president writing at his desk or chatting with aides—the press team picked a fight that could have been avoided.

But those weren’t the only issues of access to come up in Thursday’s roughly 50-minute briefing.

Before Gibbs took the podium, reporters were given a background briefing under an agreement to only attribute information to “senior administration officials”—a policy some news organizations object to as a matter of policy.

But when Gibbs let slip the name of one briefer, Greg Craig, a couple times, The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Weisman asked, “Are we allowed to repeat that name?”

During the earliest days of the Clinton administration, such abrupt changes in the traditional press access were often met with harsh criticism from the briefing room pack, most notably, the blocking off of access to the office of then press secretary George Stephanopoulos.

Former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, who succeeded Stephanopoulos, said in PBS’s “The Clinton Years” that the move “made the press very angry because they lost access to a part of the building that they had had access to.”

‚ÄúAnd it didn’t serve us,‚Äù she continued. ‚ÄúAnd it was stupid and didn’t last very long. I can’t remember when the decision was made and the door was finally reopened but it was a complete waste of energy. It alienated people for no purpose. It served nothing. It served no one. And it was a rookie, rookie mistake.‚Äù

Myers said Thursday that the Obama team’s decision to bar widespread access to the re-do of the oath wasn’t in the same category as shutting access to the press office, but wouldn’t help in relations with the media.

“I think not letting video, that’s a bit of a rookie mistake,” Myers said, adding that “when you can, it’s better to err on the side of inclusiveness with the press.”

On balance however, she said of Obama’s press team, “I think generally speaking they’re doing very well so far,” said Myers.

There have been a handful of rocky moments so far. Some press staffers found their name cards misspelled on Wednesday and phone lines weren’t properly hooked up. Reporters trying to reach the press staff got emails bounced back.

Also, press aides informed reporters that the doors of the lower press office will be locked until 8:30 am, an inconvenience for those on the early shift. Following a USA Today blog item, there was confusion about whether the Whitehouse.gov site would regularly publish pool reports since there was a “pool report” link on the site. And in the hours before Gibbs’ briefing, the northwest gate of the White House started running out of temporary passes.

Now, given the expected learning curve, most of these wrinkles should be ironed out in time. But on broader issues of access, it remains to be seen if the Obama press team is making rookie mistakes, or simply asserting a new protocol, not bound to past traditions that White House reporters have grown accustomed to. While the press corps balks at changes in access, these rules aren’t written in stone. It may chafe veterans of the briefing room, but it’s the administration’s prerogative on such matters.

Of course, the media landscape has changed significantly over the 16 years, and getting one’s message across through establishment media isn’t the only option for the new administration.

The Obama campaign proved that one could skirt around the mainstream media at times, whether by blasting out text messages to millions of supporters (the Biden pick), or leaking to select news outlets and blogs as a means of getting out the day’s talking points out.

But even if the press team is keeping reporters and photographers at bay, perhaps the President will draw them a bit closer.

After Obama signed an executive order Thursday morning to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year, “press office staffers began to shoo the pool out the door, and the camera lights were dimmed,” wrote Scripps Howard’s Bartholomew Sullivan in a pool report.

However, Obama stopped the reporter from being ushered out, saying, “there are three of these.” The lights came back on.

There may be less than meets the eye to the executive orders President Obama issued yesterday to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and prohibit the torture of prisoners in American custody. Those pronouncements may sound dramatic and unequivocal, but experts predict that American policy towards detainees could remain for months or even years pretty close to what it was as President Bush left office.

“I think the administration’s commitment to close Guantanamo is heartening; the fact they want to give themselves a year to do it, not so much,”, said Ramzi Kassem, a Yale Law School lecturer who represents prisoners like inmate Ahmed Zuhair, who was captured in Pakistan in 2001. “That would bring men like my client to eight years imprisonment for no apparent reason.”

Here are a few of the delays, caveats and loopholes that could limit the impact of Obama’s orders:

1. Everyone has to follow the Army Field Manual—for now…

Obama’s executive order on interrogations says all agencies of the government have to follow the Army Field Manual when interrogating detainees, meaning the CIA can no longer used so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which have included waterboarding, the use of dogs in questioning, and stripping prisoners.

However, the order also created an interagency commission which will have six months to examine whether to create “additional or different guidance” for non-military agencies such as the CIA. One group that represents detainees, the Center for Constitutional Rights, deemed that an “escape hatch” to potentially allow enhanced interrogations in the future.

White House counsel Greg Craig told reporters such fears are misplaced. ‚ÄúThis is not an invitation to bring back different techniques than those that are approved inside the Army Field Manual, but an invitation to this task force to make recommendations as to whether or not there should be a separate protocol that’s more appropriate to the intelligence community,‚Äù he said.

The distinction Craig made between “protocols” and “techniques,” though, seems less than clear.

“For now, they’re punting, saying they’ll comply with what’s in the Army manual…but at some point in the future this commission may revert to the executive” to recommend harsher techniques, said Kassem, adding that he was concerned about how transparent the commission’s recommendations would be.

“I’m happy to postpone that discussion [on “enhanced interrogation”]… on the condition that [it] happens transparently,” he said.

A Columbia law professor who worked on detention issues at the State Department under President Bush, Matthew Waxman, said Obama is wise to leave open the possibility of different guidance for the CIA’s experienced interrogators. “I’ve worked on drafts of the Army Field Manual,” Waxman said. “It’s designed to be in the hands of tens of thousands of people who may not have a lot of training or supervision.”

2. Obama ordered a 30-day review of Guantanamo conditions—by the man currently responsible for Guantanamo.

A section of Obama’s order on Guantanamo entitled “Humane Standards of Confinement” orders Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to spend the next thirty days reviewing the current conditions at the Caribbean prison to make sure they’re legal and follow the Geneva Convention. It seems doubtful that Gates, who has been atop the chain of command for Guantanamo for more than two years, will suddenly find conditions that were just fine on Monday of this week are now flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention.

“He’s not exactly impartial,” Kassem said.

Waxman pointed out that adhering to the Geneva Condition is “already the law,” and deemed that section of the order “bizarre.”

3. Obama vowed no torture on his watch, but force-feeding and solitary confinement apparently continue at Guantanamo for now.

It’s possible that the 30-day referral to Gates is simply an effort to buy the Obama team time to deal with two Guantanamo practices that some consider torture, or at least inhumane: force feeding and isolation of prisoners. According to detainee lawyers, about two dozen inmates who refuse to eat as a form of protest are currently being force fed, and about 140 are in some form of solitary confinement.

The Bush administration has argued that the feeding is humane and that the solitary, at least as practiced now, is not the kind of total isolation that amounts to torture. “There’s an important distinction to be made between isolation and separation” from other prisoners,” Waxman said.

As far as we know, the force feeding and solitary practices continued onto Obama‚Äôs watch. Craig dodged a question about the new president‚Äôs views on those issues. ‚ÄúI’m not going to get into the details,‚Äù Craig said.

4. The vast majority of detainees in American custody may see no benefit from Obama’s orders

While Obama ordered a case-by-case review of the 245 prisoners held at Guantanamo, the 600 prisoners held in indefinite American custody in Afghanistan and roughly 20,000 in Iraq won’t get such attention. The general policy review might aid them, eventually, but unless someone was about to torture them it’s unclear how they are better off.

“I think there’s a fairly good chance that on the whole from the perspective of my clients at Guantanamo and Bagram [the site of an American air base and prison in Afghanistan], their lives will be the same until those facilities are shut down, unfortunately,” Kassem said.

Asked why the reviews are limited to prisoners at Guantanamo, and those at Bagram or Abu Ghraib, Craig said, ‚ÄúThe president asked us to look at Guantanamo. That’s the answer.‚Äù

5. The orders downplay the possibility that some prisoners might be set free in America.

Obama ordered that when Guantanamo closes, any remaining inmates “be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.” But Obama’s wordsmiths seem to have deliberately trimmed out any explicit mention of the explosive possibility of freeing prisoners on American soil.

While Obama’s aides seem to prefer trying prisoners in civil courts or freeing them abroad, there are no obvious charges to be filed against some of the detainees. Once Guantanamo closes, letting them loose in the U.S. may be the only option if other countries won’t take them.

Craig said he was “hopeful” that other governments will take many of the detainees, but some nations may not step up until the U.S. does. “One question a lot of countries keep asking is, ‘How many are you going to take?” Waxman said. “There may be some countries that want to earn some credit [with the] new administration…but I don’t expect this problem to go away.”

6. Military commissions are shut down…. for now

One of the attention grabbing provisions of Obama’s orders calls for military tribunals at Guantanamo to be “halted.” But the Obama administration is not ruling out returning to some sort of military forum to deal with some of the prisoners.

“This order does not eliminate or extinguish the military commissions, it just stays all proceedings in connection with the ongoing proceedings in Guantanamo,” Craig said, making clear that “improved military commissions” were still on the table.

That suggestion exasperates detainee lawyers like Kassem. “That would be a huge mistake, “ he said. “That system [is] set up to launder statements obtained through torture… What’s the point of getting rid of our offshore, improvised, sham, military tribunals in Cuba, only to recreate it here in the United States?”

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

“We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said.

The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.

AQIM, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, maintains about a dozen bases in Algeria, where the group has waged a terrorist campaign against government forces and civilians. In 2006, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on foreign contractors. In 2007, the group said it bombed U.N. headquarters in Algiers, an attack that killed 41 people.

Al Qaeda is believed by U.S. and Western experts to have been pursuing biological weapons since at least the late 1990s. A 2005 report on unconventional weapons drafted by a commission led by former Sen. Charles Robb, Virginia Democrat, and federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman concluded that al Qaeda’s biological weapons program “was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11″ terror attacks in the U.S.

Another report from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, released in December, warned that “terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon.”

British authorities in January 2003 arrested seven men they accused of producing a poison from castor beans known as ricin. British officials said one of the suspects had visited an al Qaeda training camp. In the investigation into the case, British authorities found an undated al Qaeda manual on assassinations with a recipe for making the poison.

The late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was suspected of developing ricin in northern Iraq. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to the poison in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that sought to lay the groundwork for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Roger Cressey, a former senior counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told The Washington Times that al Qaeda has had an interest in acquiring a poisons capability since the late 1990s.

“This is something that al Qaeda still aspires to do, and the infrastructure to develop it does not have to be that sophisticated,” he said.

Mr. Cressey added that he also is concerned about al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb, which refers to the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

“Al Qaeda in the Maghreb is probably the most operationally capable affiliate in the organization right now,” he said.

Top Obama advisers met late Wednesday with Senate Republicans in hopes of defusing a messy fight over bank bailout funds — a first test of strength for the new president and his ability to deliver on his larger economic recovery plan.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) remains confident that Obama can win the crucial vote, which could come as early as late Thursday or Friday. But Republican support for the Treasury program has plummeted, and Democratic freshmen — who campaigned against the rescue effort in the fall — could be required to step in to help Obama.

“Circumstances have changed,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) told Politico.

At issue is the release of $350 billion, the second half of the $700 billion Treasury rescue fund enacted in October to help stabilize credit markets. But more is at stake than just dollars.

Obama already has his eye on a much larger economic recovery plan approaching $850 billion. Anxious Democrats have warned labor allies that if the incoming president loses on this round, it will endanger both the stimulus bill and separate legislation making it easier for unions to organize workers.

The president-elect is slated to tour an Ohio manufacturing company and speak on his recovery plan on Friday, by which point Democrats hope to have completed a draft of their two-year package to go before House and Senate committees next week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) still hopes to uphold a cap in the vicinity of $850 billion or slightly lower, and the tax cuts included will probably be somewhat less than the 40 percent share envisioned by the Obama team. After a leadership meeting Wednesday, it appeared less likely that the bill will include a costly $70 billion provision related to the alternative minimum tax. But Democrats predicted that an Obama-backed business tax break allowing an accelerated write-off of a company’s net operating losses will survive, despite criticism from some liberals.

“We have to make choices as to what creates the most jobs. That’s the standard: Create jobs, grow the economy,” Pelosi told Politico. “We have to go with our first priorities, which are investments and those tax credits and tax cuts that help middle-income people and stay within our cap.”

“If we do all of that, then we can decide what else we can do,” she added.

State aid commands an ever-increasing share of the package, which will use health care and education programs to pump tens of billions of dollars to governors struggling with their own deficits and layoffs.

An estimated $90 billion would help reduce the cost of Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care program for the poor and disabled. And another $80 billion in funds would be channeled to states and localities with the requirement that at least 60 percent goes for education.

The massive government intervention bets heavily on the economic theory that by pumping up demand, Washington can create jobs to stave off rising unemployment. But given the economy’s condition, Obama has warned that the jobless rate will still grow in the coming months, and a big part of the package includes new health and unemployment benefits for those thrown out of work.

The current program of extended unemployment benefits will be authorized through the end of 2009, and Pelosi is pressing for what could be up to a $50 increase in the weekly benefit. An estimated $20 billion is budgeted for increased food stamp and nutrition spending, and about $35 billion is allocated to preserve some health insurance coverage for those who have lost their jobs.

Many of these expenditures are unprecedented in scale. It’s estimated that total federal aid to education could increase by as much as $140 billion over two years, virtually doubling the annual rate today.

But the same investments could help Obama navigate between the Wall Street vs. Main Street politics that so dominated last fall’s debate over the financial rescue package. Congress was urged then by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to make the $700 billion commitment to avert a credit meltdown, but voters were angered by the cost and the failure to do more to help homeowners deal with the threat of foreclosure.

Thirty-four Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, were pivotal to passing the bailout bill in October, but the mood has soured dramatically since November’s elections.

After a tough campaign in Kentucky, McConnell returned to Washington in a much more skeptical frame of mind. In a speech Wednesday on the Senate floor, he warned he would “find it exceedingly difficult to support additional taxpayer funds without serious assurances from the incoming administration that the taxpayers will be protected.”

Those remarks set the stage for Obama to send his senior economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, as well as the incoming White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to meet with Senate Republicans in the late afternoon. In the time remaining before the floor vote, a key issue will be how far Obama will go to assure Republicans that he won’t use the Treasury funds as a tool for industrial policy.

Many, like McConnell, were upset when the outgoing Bush administration reversed itself and tapped Treasury funds to help Detroit automakers facing bankruptcy. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said Bush’s decision opened a Pandora’s box for conservatives. Prodded by Gregg, Summers and Emanuel emphasized that Obama had no desire to expand Treasury’s commitment to new industries.

“It hopefully gave people some comfort,” said Gregg, who has been a valuable ally for Obama given his standing on fiscal issues. “They made very clear that they aren’t going to use [the Treasury] money outside the financial industry except for what’s committed to auto and maybe something additional under a major reorganization plan for auto.”

Summers and Emanuel left without comment, but McConnell said he would also want something beyond closed-door assurances from the administration. And a second decisive vote could come from Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, Obama’s defeated presidential rival.

Much as this is a first test for Obama, it could also be a first test of that relationship with McCain. The Arizonan’s office refused to comment on his stand, but Gregg said hopefully of McCain: “When I last asked him, he said he was still listening.”

Vice President-elect Joe Biden is worried about the “exceedingly high expectations” the world community has for Barack Obama’s presidency.

He believes he and Obama must follow through with action to show how they’re different than George W. Bush, Biden told CNN’s Larry King Monday.

“I have been contacted by so many world leaders. Their expectation for Barack’s presidency is overwhelming,” Biden said. “They are so hungry to have an American leader who they think has a policy that reflects our stated values as well as one they can talk to.”

At the same time, Biden expressed sympathy for Bush over the Baghdad shoe-throwing incident – a day after Biden and Vice President Dick Cheney traded shots on the Sunday shows. “I feel somewhat badly for him,” Biden said. “I think the incident in Iraq was – was unfortunate, that guy throwing the shoes. It was just uncalled for . . .and I think that President Bush and, unlike Vice President Cheney, is, upon reflection beginning to acknowledge some of the serious, if not mistakes, misjudgments that he made.”

Still, Biden made clear Obama must make a clean break with Bush polices past, starting with shutting down the U.S. terror prison at Guantanamo Bay, Biden said. He said Greg Craig, Obama’s incoming White House counsel, and other members of Obama’s team are working on a strategy for closing Gitmo.

“We’re in the process of drawing up plans right now,” Biden said. “It’s going to be complicated to do it. It’s going to take more than a few months. But close it we must.”

But Biden also signaled that there might be some flexibility in another key Obama campaign promise that world leaders are watching closely, bringing home troops from Iraq. Biden said troops would be out “within the next two years” — longer than President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign promise of within 16 months but “in the same ballpark,” Biden said.

He said Obama would have troops out more quickly than the Bush administration’s agreement with the Iraqi government, which calls for troop withdrawal by 2011.

One of the reasons for troop withdrawal in Iraq is because more combat forces are needed in Afghanistan, Biden said.

In the Middle East, Biden said an Obama administration is “going to invest every bit of capital we have in trying to bring about peace.”

Biden also discussed a range of topics:

• He said Illinois Gov. Rod Blagoyevich seems pretty guilty and should go. ‚ÄúI know in our system you are innocent until proven guilty, but those tapes that were released by the special prosecutor, excuse me, by the U.S. attorney seem incredibly, incredibly incriminating,‚Äù Biden said. ‚ÄúIt‚Äôs a decision for the people of Illinois to make the legislature of Illinois to make, but from where I sit he looks like a guy who is not capable of governing.‚Äù
• Biden said he and Sen. John McCain are ‚Äústill close.‚Äù ‚ÄúJohn has been incredibly graceful,‚Äù Biden said. ‚ÄúHe is my friend.‚Äù
• Obama is committed to equality for gays and lesbians, despite his selection of Rick Warren to give the inaugural convocation, Biden said.
• Of Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden said when he met her earlier this month at the meeting of the nation‚Äôs governors he found ‚Äúshe‚Äôs a really likeable person.‚Äù ‚ÄúI‚Äôm confident that she has a future,‚Äù he said.
• Biden said he was one of two running mates Obama had narrowed down to before the formal announcement in August, but declined to disclose who he thinks the other person was.
• Michelle Obama might beg to differ, but Biden said the vice presidential residence ‚Äúis very unlike the White House in the sense that it‚Äôs a very livable residence.‚Äù He said he and his wife, Jill, are looking forward to using it ‚Äúas a place to try to bring people together.‚Äù

President-elect Barack Obama has shown almost perfect pitch in crafting his new administration, aptly choosing old hands instead of fresh faces and bringing in the experience he lacks.

But there is one glaring void. Obama has yet to name key intelligence officials to manage the war against terrorism.

And one of the central reasons he hasn’t come forward with a pick for one of the top jobs is because he’s running into pressure from an unexpected source — left-wing bloggers.

John Brennan, Obama’s chief intelligence adviser and anticipated CIA chief, was recently forced to withdraw his name. There was no drumbeat of opposition to Brennan from the front pages or on cable. Rather, the pick was torpedoed by the blogosphere.

“Apparently there is a lot of pressure on the Obama team from a blog saying that Brennan couldn’t be made the director of the CIA because he was involved in torture and renditions, which he wasn’t,” said Mark Lowenthal, former assistant CIA director.

The turn of events only emphasizes the influence of the Internet on the operation of a president-elect whose campaign was powered in large part by the Web.

“Blogs do have significant influence,” said blogger Glenn Greenwald, one of those critical of Brennan. “I think the Obama team would be foolish if they just ignored what happened on blogs, and I know for a fact that there are people high up in the Obama campaign and now the transition team who read blogs regularly.”

As a result, say knowledgeable sources, the Obama transition team pushed Brennan to withdraw his name. “Their knees buckled,” one intelligence veteran said.

Brennan once served as George Tenet’s chief of staff and later took an administrative role at the CIA, before moving on to what became the National Counterterrorism Center.

Greenwald and other bloggers blamed Brennan, though, for condoning harsh interrogation methods, as well as rendition — the practice of capturing terrorists, like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and taking them to the U.S. or other countries for interrogation and imprisonment.

But many say Brennan had no control over those policies.

“This is one of those Washington drive-by shootings that we have from time to time where someone is near a policy issue that’s controversial and is dragged down by the conventional wisdom,” said Douglas Paal, former CIA senior analyst.

Brennan did say rendition was a vital tool — after all, without it, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others might still be free.

But when he withdrew his name from consideration, he wrote a letter to the president-elect, obtained by FOX News, in which he described himself as a Bush critic on many fronts.

“It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding,” Brennan wrote in the Nov. 25 missive.

And Brennan said that as a result of his opposition to Bush policies, he was “twice considered for more senior-level positions in the current administration only to be rebuffed by the White House.”

In that sense, it would seem Brennan was the perfect man for a job with Obama — but not good enough for the critics.

Greenwald said Brennan’s support for rendition and “all of the other enhanced interrogation techniques beyond waterboarding” makes him “unqualified” for the job.

Intelligence veterans, however, say that sets an impossible standard.

“If you were involved in a senior position in the intelligence community during the war on terror, you can’t be nominated for another senior position,” Lowenthal said.

Barack Obama’s choice of a prominent evangelical minister to perform the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November, but it is drawing fierce challenges from a gay rights movement that – in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California – is looking for a fight.

Rick Warren, the senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, opposes abortion rights but has taken more liberal stances on the government role in fighting poverty, and backed away from other evangelicals’ staunch support for economic conservatism. But it’s his support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that drew the most heated criticism from Democrats Wednesday.

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

The rapid, angry reaction from a range of gay activists comes as the gay rights movement looks for an opportunity to flex its political muscle. Last summer gay groups complained, but were rebuffed by Obama, when an “ex-gay” singer led Obama’s rallies in South Carolina. And many were shocked last month when voters approved the California ban.

“There is a lot of energy and there’s a lot of anger and I think people are wanting to direct it somewhere,” Solomonese told Politico.

The selection of Warren to preside at the inauguration is not a surprise move, but it is a mirror image of President Bill Clinton’s early struggles with issues of gay rights. Obama has worked, and at times succeeded, to bridge the gap between Democrats and evangelical Christians, who form a solid section of the Republican base.
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Obama opposes same-sex marriage, but also opposed the California constitutional amendment Warren backed. In selecting Warren, he is choosing to reach out to conservatives on a hot-button social issue, at the cost of antagonizing gay voters who overwhelmingly supported him.

Clinton, by contrast, drew early praise from gay rights activists by pressing to allow openly gay soldiers to serve, only to retreat into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise that pleased few.

The reaction Wednesday in gay rights circles was universally negative.

“It’s a huge mistake,” said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who chairs the state’s Courage Campaign. “He’s really the wrong person to lead the president into office.

“Can you imagine if he had a man of God doing the invocation who had deliberately said that Jews are not going to be saved and therefore should be excluded from what’s going on in America? People would be up in arms,” he said.

The editor of the Washington Blade, Kevin Naff, called the choice “Obama’s first big mistake.”

“His presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him,” Naff wrote, referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. “This tone-deafness to our concerns must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”

Other liberal groups chimed in.

“Rick Warren gets plenty of attention through his books and media appearances. He doesn’t need or deserve this position of honor,” said the president of People for the American Way, Kathryn Kolbert, who described Warren as “someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.”

Warren’s spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment, but he has tried to blend personal tolerance with doctrinal disapproval of homosexuality.

“I have many gay friends, I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church,” he said in a recent interview with BeliefNet.

In the same interview, he compared the “redefiniton of a marrige” to include gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse, and polygamy.

Obama’s move may deepen some apparent distance between him among gays and lesbians, one of the very few core Democratic groups among whom his performance was worse than John Kerry’s in 2004. Exit polls suggested that John McCain won 27% of the gay vote in November, up four points from Bush’s 2004 tally – even as almost all other voters slid toward Obama.

But despite the symbolism of picking Warren, Obama is likely to shift several substantive policy areas in directions that will please gay voters and their political leaders, including a pledge to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” in military service.

And some gay activists were holding out hope that they would either persuade Obama to dump Warren or Warren to change his mind.

“Rick Warren did a real disservice to gay families in California and across the country by casually supporting our continued exclusion from marriage,” said the founder of the pro-same sex marriage Freedom to Marry, Evan Wolfson. “I hope in the spirit of the new era that’s dawning, he will open his heart and speak to all Americans about inclusion and our country’s commitment to equality.”