Sudan’s Future Is Now, U.S. Envoy Says A day after Sudan’s leader coasted to victory in a fraud-tainted election, a senior Obama administration official defended the vote, and said the United States should turn its attention to getting southern Sudan  ready for its likely future as an independent state. “If we don’t redouble our efforts, and work so hard, we know what the predicted outcome will be: it will be violence,” Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, the administration’s special envoy to Sudan, said ...

White House Defends NASA Plans Today President Obama Will Announce Two Major Space Program Developments President Obama is expected to announce two major developments today at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that could take the nation's space program to another level. The first is the development of a new "heavy lift rocket" that will be used to lift future deep-space craft and is supposed to "push the boundaries" of U.S. exploration in space with the ultimate goal of sending American astronauts to ...

Handicapping Obama's Supreme Court Picks Sources numerous and equally dismissable report that President Obama has a op Tenlist of potential SCOTUS candidates to replace the outgoing John Paul Stevens. Since no one can honestly claim to know what the president is thinking, here my stab at his top ten (after conferring with a few TNL friends) as potential choices, with pluses and minuses for each. Trust me - youl want to stick around for the 10th. 1. Elena Kagan (49), Solicitor General ...

Supreme Court Battle Quietly Brews Over Possible Future Nominations There is a Supreme Court battle brewing on Capitol Hill -- despite the fact that there are currently no vacancies on the high court. On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings to consider the nomination of Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The hearing is expected to be contentious, showcasing the differences in judicial philosophy between the parties, with conservative senators arguing that Liu's record on ...

Palin: Health Care Vote a "Clarion Call" to Action Calling yesterday's health care vote a "clarion call and a spur to action," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin urged conservative citizens today to make the Democrats' health reform package a top issue in this fall's midterm elections. "In the weeks to come, we can expect [Congress] to try to change the subject, but we won't forget," Palin wrote in a Facebook note. "Don't let them move on to further 'transformational' steps while forgetting ...

The latest U.S. nuclear showdown doesn't involve a foreign enemy. Instead it pits President Barack Obama against his Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and concerns the question of whether America needs a new generation of nuclear warheads. While serving under former President George W. Bush, Gates had repeatedly called for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program to be put into operation, because the nation's current nukes — mostly produced in the 1970s and '80s — are growing so old that ...

President Barack Obama's year of outreach to Iran has succeeded in putting it on the diplomatic defensive: that much was clear from Friday's blunt reproach of Tehran by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board. But it's less clear that Obama can convert that diplomatic advantage into sanctions that will curtail Iran's nuclear program. "The question is," says one senior Democratic aide in Congress, "Can Obama pivot [from engagement to sanctions] and succeed in changing conditions on the ground?" Iran ...

While much of the focus on Tuesday's unveiling of President Obama's revamped Afghanistan strategy will be on the number of U.S. troops he's expected to send, that decision is really a sideshow to the critical battle now under way on the ground. Far more important to prospects of victory in Afghanistan is jump-starting a moribund effort to woo nonideological Taliban fighters to switch sides in exchange for paying jobs. Pentagon officials are hoping to repeat the success of similar ...

Miami's poorer residents have long complained that the city's meager public-transit system makes it harder for them to get to work. So when the Obama Administration announced the $787 billion stimulus plan earlier this year, many hoped some of that money would help fund plans like an expansion of Miami's undersized Metrorail system — especially a 10-mile northern extension that would reach into predominantly African-American and other minority communities largely cut off from downtown and other employment centers. But ...

The pomp and ceremony with which President Barack Obama will host India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a White House state dinner on Tuesday won't alter a perception in India that it has lost ground to China in the new Administration's Asia policy. Many in New Delhi saw President Obama's performance last week in Beijing as acquiescent toward an emboldened Beijing, New Delhi's longtime regional rival. And they see India having a diminished role in the economic and ...