NEW YORK TIMES: President Obama on Monday will direct federal regulators to move swiftly to grant California and 13 other states the right to set strict automobile emissions and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday evening. The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and marks a sharp reversal from Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions is one of the most dramatic actions Mr. Obama can take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy. The presidential orders will require automobile manufacturers to begin producing and selling cars […]

NEW YORK TIMES: Saying that “our ideals give us the strength and moral high ground” to combat terrorism, President Obama signed executive orders Thursday effectively ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program, directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year and setting up a sweeping, high-level review of the best way to hold and question terrorist suspects in the future. “We intend to win this fight,” Mr. Obama said, “We are going to win it on our own terms.” As he signed three orders, 16 retired generals and admirals who have fought for months for […]

NEW YORK POST: ALBANY — The search to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate was thrown into chaos Wednesday night after sources said Caroline Kennedy had withdrawn her name from consideration. The startling news came just as Gov. Paterson was set to choose Clinton’s successor — with Kennedy considered to be the front-runner. Even as some sources said Kennedy had told Paterson she was pulling out, there was confusion among her closest confidantes. A family source said cousin Kerry Kennedy spoke with both Paterson and Caroline Kennedy’s political consultant, Josh Isay, and neither was aware she was bowing out. […]

[Illustration by DREW FRIEDMAN] WASHINGTON POST: GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Jan. 21 — A U.S. military judge Wednesday suspended the trial of five detainees accused of involvement in plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, acceding to a request from military prosecutors in accordance with a directive from the new Obama administration late Tuesday. The suspension halts until late May the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the avowed mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot, and four other accused al-Qaeda members, even though Mohammed and three of the four objected to the delay. In Washington, meanwhile, aides to President Obama were preparing […]

[Photo by ANTOINE MCGRATH] “In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: “Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed […]

FRESH AIR Shepard Fairey‘s illustration of Barack Obama was one of the most iconic images of the campaign — Obama’s face and the word “hope” rendered in red, white, and blue. Fairey says he made the image to spur voters’ belief in Obama as a leader. The image was never officially adopted by the campaign, however, because of legal issues related to the original photograph he used. The iconic poster differed from Fairey’s previous work. The image was unusual, Fairey says, because his political art is usually negative. “I felt that Barack Obama was an unusual candidate, a special candidate, […]

» 8:25 a.m.: Obamas leave Blair House for prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church » 8:35 a.m. Prayer service » 9:45 a.m. Church service ends; Obamas depart for the White House » 10:05 a.m. Obamas arrive at White House for coffee with the Bushes » 11 a.m. Motorcade departs for the Capitol » 11:30 a.m. Bushes and Obamas proceed to platform on the West Front; California Senator Dianne Feinstein will issue the call to order and deliver brief welcoming remarks, followed by an invocation from Dr. Rick Warren and a performance from Aretha Franklin (who also sang at Bill […]

ERIC SUNQUIST: After King finished, reported Lerone Bennett, Jr., grown men and women “wept unashamedly.” No doubt Time magazine could have chosen a more appropriate metaphor in reporting that King “enslaved his audience,” but this was true even of those who feared his message. Because of its power to influence the masses, concluded the head of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, King’s “demagogic speech” made him the nation’s “most dangerous Negro.” MORE FRESH AIR Historian Howard Zinn wrote: “At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), John Lewis, speaking to the same […]

NOBELPRIZE.ORG: Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from […]