What You Need to Know: 01.22.09

Obama Orders Secret Prisons and Detention Camps Closed
“Saying that “our ideals give us the strength and moral high ground” to combat terrorism, President Obama signed executive orders Thursday ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret overseas prisons, banning coercive interrogation methods and closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year.”

Committee approves Geithner for Treasury
“The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday cleared the nomination of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary despite unhappiness over his mistakes in paying his taxes.

The committee approved the nomination on an 18-5 vote, sending it to the full Senate for a vote either Friday or next week. President Barack Obama is hoping for quick approval so that the point man for the administration’s economic rescue effort can begin work.”

Housekeeper and Taxes Are Said to Derail Kennedy’s Bid
“Problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during the vetting of Caroline Kennedy and derailed her candidacy for the Senate, a person close to Gov. David A. Paterson said on Thursday, in an account at odds with Ms. Kennedy’s own description of her reasons for withdrawing.

The account emerged 14 hours after Ms. Kennedy announced that she was taking her name out of contention for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, and as Mr. Paterson, according to two well-placed Democrats told of his thinking, was leaning toward selecting Representative Kirsten E. Gillibrand, an upstate lawmaker in her second term in Congress. Mr. Paterson has scheduled a news conference at noon Friday in Albany to announce his choice.”

Clinton takes the reins at State Department
“Hillary Rodham Clinton took charge of the State Department on Thursday, proclaiming the start of a new era of robust U.S. diplomacy to tackle the world’s crises and improve America’s standing abroad.

Before a raucous, cheering crowd of about 1,000 people, the nation’s 67th secretary of state pledged to boost the morale and resources of the diplomatic corps and promised them a difficult but exciting road ahead.”

New staff find White House in tech Dark Ages
“If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.”

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Rock the Vote Bio: Rock the Vote was founded in 1990 to organize artists and fight against censorship of musicians. Since then we've evolved to focus on empowering young people to get involved in the political process. We use pop culture, peer-to-peer organizing, and the latest technology to raise visibility of politics and demystify the process of registering to vote. @rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm and is filed under what you need to know. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.