Emanuel tenders resignation of US House seat
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Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, formally tendered his resignation from his US House seat yesterday.
He told embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich that he will step down on Friday. Blagojevich then has five days to set a special election to fill the seat.
The governor, of course, has sole authority - at least for now - to fill the US Senate seat that President-elect Barack Obama vacated, but has been charged with trying to sell it as part of a wide-ranging corruption case.
In the letter to Blagojevich, first reported by the Chicago press, Emanuel promised to go to work every day in the White House by keeping in mind the "stories of working families and senior citizens" whom he met while a congressman.
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"The baby is fine and Bristol is doing well. Everyone is excited," the magazine quoted Palin's aunt, Colleen Jones, as saying.
The 7-pound-4-ounce child was born Sunday in Palmer, Alaska, and named Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, People said. His father, Levi Johnston, and Bristol Palin, 18, have said they plan to marry.
Her pregnancy became public within days after John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. The disclosure was made on the eve of the Republican convention.
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In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 52 percent said the daughter of President John F. Kennedy is qualified to serve, while 42 percent said she is not qualified. While men were evenly divided, women said she is qualified, by a 57 percent to 37 percent count.
Senator Hillary Clinton is President-elect Barack Obama's choice for secretary of state, and Governor David Paterson gets to appoint her replacement. Caroline Kennedy, who has never run for or held elective office, has worked in education reform, but until campaigning for Obama this year had stayed largely out of the public eye.
The poll was conducted before she did a series of newspaper and TV interviews over the weekend to make her case. But some skeptics noted her frequent use of "you know" during the interviews, more than 140 times during her sit-down with the New York Times, according to one count.
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With 32 percent, he far outpaced President Bush at 5 percent and Republican presidential candidate John McCain at 3 percent. Obama, who also has record-high approval ratings for an incoming president, is the first president-elect to top the list since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and his share of the total is close to the 39 percent that Bush received just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Hillary Clinton, Obama's main rival for the Democratic nomination and soon to be his secretary of state, topped the most admired woman list with 20 percent. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, perhaps somewhat surprisingly given some of the withering criticism directed her way, finished second at 11 percent, ahead of Oprah Winfrey at 8 percent.
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Presidential candidates made 110 appearances on late-night comedy shows, up from 25 in 2004, new research has found. "Candidates have figured out that you can reach voters through entertainment venues even better than news," said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Republican John McCain made 17 such guest shots on venues that relentlessly made him the butt of jokes. President-elect Barack Obama had 15 appearances, third behind Republican Mike Huckabee, who now has a talk show of his own on Fox News Channel.
For the shows, it was a way to tap into a campaign that was a television hit from start to finish. Jay Leno booked 22 candidate appearances, while Jon Stewart had 21, Letterman had 19, and Stephen Colbert had 15.
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