Clinton's name mentioned for secretary of state post

OFF TO SCHOOL IN STYLE - Sasha (left) and Malia Obama were dropped off at their school in Chicago yesterday while President-elect Barack Obama waited in the car. He spent the day working with the transition team. He also announced his resignation from the Senate. (Amanda Rivkin/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - Senator Hillary Clinton, who lost to Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary, is being considered to serve as secretary of state in the Obama administration, NBC News reported last night.

The report cited two unnamed advisers to President-elect Obama. The report said Clinton's office would only say that any decisions on the appointment would be up to the president-elect.

The former first lady, who was in a drawn-out battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, is in her second term as a senator from New York.

Several other names have been mentioned for the top US diplomatic post, including Senator John F. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee; Sam Nunn, a Democrat and former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman; Senator Chuck Hagel, an outspoken Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who was UN ambassador in President Clinton's administration and also sought the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

REUTERS

Obama resigns from Senate, effective Sunday
Four years after winning election to the US Senate, President-elect Barack Obama announced yesterday that he is formally resigning his seat effective Sunday, which means he will not be on Capitol Hill for key upcoming votes.

Obama will miss the expected vote by Senate Democrats next week on whether Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who broke ranks and campaigned for Senator John McCain this year, should keep his post as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Obama has urged Senate leaders to find a compromise solution and wants Lieberman to continue caucusing with Democrats, The Washington Post reported this week.

Obama's resignation from the Senate also means that he will not be a voting member during its special session next week, when Democrats hope to pass a new economic stimulus package to recharge the ailing economy. Obama has made the passage of a new stimulus bill a high priority, but the measure has been held up by President Bush and Senate Republicans.

In a statement, Obama, who continued meetings with his presidential transition team yesterday in Chicago, said that serving the people of Illinois had been "one of the highest honors and privileges of my life."

"In a state that represents the crossroads of a nation, I have met so many men and women who've taken different journeys, but hold common hopes for their children's future," Obama said. "It is these Illinois families and their stories that will stay with me as I leave the United States Senate and begin the hard task of fulfilling the simple hopes and common dreams of all Americans as our nation's next president."

Obama's election as president has set off furious jockeying among Illinois politicians looking to succeed him as the state's junior senator. Governor Rod Blagojevich will choose Obama's successor, who would serve the remaining two years of Obama's term. US Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. is believed to be among the leading contenders for the job.

SCOTT HELMAN

Ex-Bush aide set to head homeland transition team
WASHINGTON - Rand Beers, the former national security aide in the first Bush administration who later served as a key adviser to Senator John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, is poised to lead President-elect Barack Obama's homeland security transition team, according to one of Obama's key advisers.

"It is great that Rand is playing that role," said the Obama adviser, who asked not to be identified because the announcement, which is slated to come as early as today, has not been announced. "He has the peripheral vision and nobody views him as partisan."

Beers, who founded the progressive National Security Network in June 2006, has a long history of serving presidents of both parties, beginning with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Most recently, from 2002 to 2003, he was senior director for combating terrorism at the National Security Council in the White House.

He left government after the start of the Iraq war, which he opposed, and soon became a senior adviser to Kerry in his failed bid for the White House.

On the Obama transition team, Beers will be responsible for overseeing the first handoff of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in 2003 and combined 22 government agencies.

Specialists, who maintain that the department remains a work in progress at best, say he has his work cut out for him in identifying the most pressing challenges and choosing the right team to take over the agency.

"There are significant and pervasive management challenges that will pervade the next administration at the Department of Homeland Security," said David Heyman, director of the Homeland Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There is still much to be done."

BRYAN BENDER

2 Harvard faculty members joining transition team
WASHINGTON - Two Harvard faculty members are joining President-elect Barack Obama's transition team this week, according to his transition office.

John P. White, chairman of the Middle East Initiative at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, served as deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and will be heading Obama's Pentagon Review Team.

The team will be responsible for providing Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden advice on "key policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions" prior to their inauguration on Jan. 20, according to a statement.

Obama has also tapped Sarah Sewall, another Kennedy School professor who heads the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, to be a member of the transition's Agency Review Working Group. That element is tasked with coordinating and reviewing the work of the various transition teams, and she will be responsible for national security issues. A former foreign policy adviser to then-Senator George Mitchell of Maine, Sewall also served as assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration.

Both the Pentagon team and review group will be in place by the end of the week, according to Obama's transition office.

White and Sewall join several other Obama confidants with Harvard ties who have been enlisted to help manage the transfer of power from the Bush administration.

Three of Obama's Harvard Law School classmates - Michael Froman, Julius Genachowski, and Cassandra Butts - are serving on the transition team. Froman and Genachowski serve on the transition team's advisory board, while Butts is its general counsel.

Former Harvard Law professor and Obama mentor Christopher Edley has also been brought on as a transition team adviser.

BRYAN BENDER