Ticket Notice: Sunday Shows -- Cantor, Orszag, Gates, Mullen

ABC's This Week: OMB Director Peter Orszag, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and a round table with Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, Karl Rove, The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel and ABC's George Will.

CBS' Face the Nation: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

CNN's State of the Union: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, CNBC's Suze Orman and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii).

Fox News Sunday: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Plus the roundtable with Chris Wallace.

NBC's Meet the Press: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and a round table with former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Tenn.), GOP strategist Mike Murphy, Vanity Fair's Dee Dee Myers and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Office of Rep. Eric Cantor

Obama stimulus money for the arts? How to use it?

In case you're one of those simpy people who think a society and its members gain value and insight from frothy expensive things like the arts, instead of big, strong lasting stuff like steel bridges and concrete, the folks over at Culture Monster have something just for you.

The sometimes controversial National Endowment for the Arts got about $50 million -- a mere pittance in the ginormous numbers that President Obama and the rest of the crazy Capitol are tossing around now like peanut M&Ms -- in the $787-billion stimulus package.

So our blogging buddy Lisa Fung asked a bunch of people: If you were running the National Endowment for the Arts, what would you be doing with it or to it these days? The answers are over here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: PopLicks.com

First basketball fan Obama visits NBA game but leaves early

As part of the sacrifice that all Americans are being asked to make in these difficult times, President Obama went to an NBA game last night in Washington's Verizon Center and got a courtside seat.

The Wizards were playing some team called the Bulls from a windy city somewhere.

It was a guy's night out. First Lady Michelle Obama, not wearing another sleeveless sheath, did not accompany her husband. But political strategist David Axelrod, speechwriter Jon Favreau and friend Reggie Love sat nearby.

The president spent part of the day making a quick trip to Camp Lejeune to tell the Marines we're leaving Iraq soon. But Friday evening the casually-dressed Obama, a workout fanatic-smoker, was energetically working the (Nicorette?) gum through much of the game. (See video below.)

He spent halftime in the team owners box. Three minutes into the second half Obama returned to his courtside seat. Many people applauded. He made no speeches.

With a few minutes left in the game, however, Obama, apparently bored or to avoid the traffic stopped for his motorcade, decided to leave. The Wizards won 113-90. It took the president four minutes to get home.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Conservative evangelical James Dobson retires from Focus on the Family

Dr. James Dobson, the conservative evangelical leader who founded Focus on the Family 32 years ago and turned it into a major political and media force with millions of followers across the country, suddenly resigned as chairman today.

The Colorado Springs group framed the resignation as part of an ongoing turnover of ministry leadership to the next generation. The 72-year-old Dobson's wife, Shirley, who is chairman of the National Day of Prayer, also left the Focus board.

A story on the organization's website said Dr. Dobson would continue his regular radio broadcasts from the Focus studios that are carried daily by hundreds of radio stations. He will continue to write for the Focus newsletter, which has 1.6 million monthly subscribers. And the couple said they wanted to spend more time grandparenting.

A statement attributed to the board said:

"One of Dr. Dobson's objectives during the last decade has been to help identify the next generation of leadership for the ministry, and to see it established securely before he stepped away from administrative oversight. That purpose has now been fulfilled, and we applaud Dr. Dobson for this concern for the future of the ministry."

Jim Daly, who's been Focus' chief executive since 2005, will continue in that role. Retired Air Force Gen. Patrick Caruana becomes the new board chairman.

While Dobson routinely sought to keep his conservative political views separate from his nonprofit organization's, he made little secret last year of his disdain for both Republicans Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, primarily over the Arizona's campaign finance work that put added political restrictions on public outreach by nonprofit groups like Focus. At one point he suggested he might not vote at all.

When it became clear that McCain would win the GOP nomination, Dobson endorsed former Baptist preacher and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He later said that, given the candidate put forth by the Democrats and his abortion stance, he had a moral obligation to vote, presumably for McCain.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Jeff Fusco / Getty Images

Official White House photo of First Lady Michelle Obama

The White House published the official photo today of First Lady Michelle Obama, in a black sleeveless dress. That apparently is scandalizing some people who don't realize how hot the Hawaiian-born new president keeps the Oval Office.

Since they're married, we're also re-publishing the official White House photo of her husband from a January Ticket item. Scroll down or click on the "Read more" line below.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Joyce N. Boghosian / The White House (Michelle Obama); Pete Souza / The White House (President Obama, below).

How Obama's team gets his messages out while you're not looking

Here's how President Obama's team is using his vast donor e-mailing list to circumvent any intermediaries and get his pure political message out to millions of supporters to marshal support for whatever he wants, in this case support for his budget:

They send out an e-mail to an estimated 12 million or 13 million names with a short text message from David Plouffe, the political campaign's manager and now the campaign manager for "Obama for America." He says something like:

With this budget, President Obama is asking Washington to do something it rarely does -- look beyond the next election and take the long-term steps to ensure America's future strength and prosperity.

It will involve sacrifices and difficult decisions. But it will also boldly invest in the three areas most critical to our economic future: energy, healthcare, and education.

Washington doesn't work. Maybe you recall Obama mentioning that a few thousand times during the two-year presidential campaign. Here's how The Ticket explained that ongoing predicament recently.

So Plouffe, in a message that just went out today, urges Obama fans to watch this video about his boss's ideas for change -- see below. The Boss's key words delivered directly and without diluted interpretation. Same sort of thing he did by taking the economic stimulus package bill signing outside the Beltway to Denver recently; The Ticket dissected that strategy here.

Pretty effective and straightforward and going on while no one in the old-fashioned media is really watching.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Obama tells Marines why we're leaving Iraq -- with text/video

Making good on his campaign pledge to end U.S. combat missions in Iraq, President Obama came to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina today to explain his decision to withdraw 100,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by August 2010.

To a crowd of 3,000 Marines, convened almost two years to the day he announced his candidacy for president, Obama explained why he will likely leave a force of some combat troops in Iraq for another 15 months but bring the bulk of the soldiers home. As he said in the prepared text of speech:

The draw down of our military should send a clear signal that Iraq’s future is now its own responsibility. The long-term success of the Iraqi nation will depend upon decisions made by Iraq’s leaders and the fortitude of the Iraqi people. Iraq is a sovereign country with legitimate institutions; America cannot -– and should not -– take their place.

Ironically, the new Obama policy has won praise from his Republican rival for the presidency, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who during the campaign accused Obama of being an antiwar candidate who "would rather lose a war than lose a campaign."

Meanwhile, Obama's two great Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, criticized the plan, arguing that leaving up to 50,000 troops in Iraq is too much, especially at a time when the Obama administration is also sending 17,000 U.S. trrops to Afghanistan.

Here's a video of the president telling the troops what they can't do in Iraq:

Now, read the president's full remarks below:

Obama assault on assault weapons worries Nancy Pelosi

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco looked stricken when reporters asked at her weekly news conference if the Obama administration had conferred with her on a decision to reinstate a ban on assault weapons.

"No," she said, adding, "On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now. I think it's clear the Bush administration didn't do that."

In political terms, that's code for What the Heck was Eric Holder Thinking when the attorney general announced earlier this week that the administration would seek to make permanent the ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration.

As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to re-institute the ban on the sale of assault weapons.

As soon as Holder issued the first salvo, the National Rifle Assn., a powerhouse lobbying group, laid down its own marker.

"We're going to fight the ban," said Chris W. Cox, the NRA's chief lobbyist. "President Obama spent tens of millions of dollars campaigning as a pro-2nd Amendment candidate. So maybe he thinks he has enough political capital to do this. But I'm sure there are some Democrats at the White House and Capitol Hill who are cringing right now."

Democrats from rural or conservative districts are among those cringing. Pelosi, with one eye on the need to keep a Democratic majority in the 2010 elections, was likely protecting those Blue Dog Democrats.

One Democrat who said she was "thrilled" at the news was Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), whose husband was killed and son paralyzed by a shooter who boarded a Long Island Railroad commuter train in 1993. As she told The Hill, she understands Pelosi's concerns, but "I'm hoping President Obama can convince her otherwise."

-- Johanna Neuman

Correction: an earlier version of this post included a photo of assault weapons in Iraq. Since this post is about assault weapons in the U.S., we have changed the photo accordingly.

Photo: California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr. in downtown Los Angeles with rifles and assault weapons bought legally but subsequently seized due to criminal offenses or mental health issues. Credit: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times

Obama's no longer the most liberal senator. So who is she?

Well, the always-controversial and brand-new ideological rankings are out this morning from the National Journal, and Barack Obama is no longer the most liberal member of the United States Senate.

That distinction falls to a Western Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington -- shown here on the left, strangely enough. She holds that distinction all by her lonesome with a 92.7 composite liberal score (meaning she voted more liberally on the Journal's key votes than 92.7% of her colleagues).

Rhode Island's Jack Reed was second with a 91.5 score and California's Barbara Boxer third with a puny 90.2 liberal ranking. (California's other female senator, Dianne Feinstein, was 18th-most liberal with 81).

And who's the most conservative member in one of the world's most exclusive clubs?

Actually, it's a tie -- four Republicans, also Westerners and three of them named John/Jon -- Dr.John Barrasso and Michael Enzi, both of Wyoming, John Ensign of Nevada (symbolically on the right here pointing to our right) and Jon Kyl of Arizona, shown above overcome with joy at news of his conservative ranking. (Not really; the photographer just caught him rubbing his face.)

Each of the four had a 93.2 conservative rating from the Journal, meaning they were slightly more conservative conservatives than liberal Murray was liberal.

Over on the House side, well, who cares?

There's way too many of them to bother. Suffice it to say, 12 Democrats -- seven of them women and five of the 12 from California -- tied for most liberal with 93.2 ratings.

Three Republicans tied for most conservative -- an  Arizonan, a Texan and a Georgian, none of them named John -- each with a 97.3 conservative rating.

You can access a fascinating National Journal interactive graphic here for both the House rankings and the Senate with all kinds of ways to manipulate the data. They also have information showing rankings from previous years.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credits: Associated Press (Sen. Jon Kyl-top), Sen. Patty Murray (left), Sen. John Ensign (right).

More entertaining Sen. Burris news, this time on son Burris II

Not an all-around awful day for Democratic Sen. Roland Burris of Illinois.

Just terrible this time.

As you may have heard, the legally embattled junior Illinois senator replacement for Barack Obama, who was maneuvered into that job by the wily but also legally embattled now ex-Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, has refused to resign after an unfolding series of revelations about his relationship, fundraising and contacts with/for the impeached governor and his staff.

Now comes one more revelation, the kind of news that causes immune Illinois voters to say, "So?"

It seems, according to an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times, that Blagojevich's state government hired the son of Roland Burris last fall as the senior counsel for the Illinois Housing Development Authority.

It's a $75,000-a-year job that oversees the authority's foreclosure actions. His name, appropriately enough, is Roland Burris II.

The son got the state job Sept. 10, right around the time his father says he contacted Blagojevich to express an interest in the anticipated vacant Senate seat.

But there's another problem. Actually two. Burris II started the foreclosure enforcement job three weeks after his own mortgage company started foreclosure against him. And, the newspaper reports, a couple of weeks before that, the Internal Revenue Service placed a $34,163 tax lien on Burris II's house for back taxes from 2004 to 2007.

Illinois' new governor, Pat Quinn, also a Democrat, of course said Thursday that there's no proof of wrongdoing. He's right, of course. There are an amazing number of coincidences like that in Illinois.

And in the Illinois machine's culture, who wouldn't hire the financially troubled son of a fellow Democrat whom you want to raise campaign funds for you? It's the least a governor could do to benefit the veteran Burris -- and himself. Win-win.

But Gov. Quinn thinks he'll have someone investigate the situation anyway. Which means he intends to run for governor next year.

Good thing the Internal Revenue Service is now overseen by Timothy Geithner, who now works for Obama and understands inadvertent tax mistakes that last for years. Otherwise, the son of the Democratic senator could be in real tax trouble.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo:  Now ousted Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich with now-Sen. Roland Burris. Credit: Tannen Maury / EPA