While it's lights out on the 43rd presidential administration, we'll be back soon after the new administration unpacks its bags with a new blog called "Balance of Power" that chronicles the yin and yang between the executive and legislative branches.

Look for it soon.

(Getty Photo)

He also had this to say about his onetime rival for the presidency: "We will not always agree on everything in the months to come. We will have our share of arguments and debates. John is not known to bite his tongue. And if I'm screwing up, he's going to let me know."

Barack Obama has not given up the fight - to keep his Blackberry.

Incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on NBC's "Today Show" that Obama is "fighting with the lawyers and such to make sure that that happens. He finds it a real way of being able to keep in touch with family and friends."

"You know, you get very serious work-related e-mails from him and you get some funny e-mails from him, too," Gibbs said. "So, it's almost hard to imagine him not being able to do that."

You know the transition’s just about finished when the Bush White House puts out a schedule referring to the current commander-in-chief as “The Former President.”

Yes, the peaceful handoff of power that’s awed generations and stoked countless political science treatises will go ahead as planned at noon on Jan. 20, making Bush’s first official event with that new appellation an address to his White House staff at Andrews Air Force Base at 1:25 p.m., just before he and Laura Bush leave for their new life in Texas.

The farewell address, which is closed to the press, is part of a busy official day for the soon-to-be-former president, according to the last daily schedule put out by his administration.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that the Senate would begin confirming President-elect Barack Obama’s nominees to various executive posts as soon as Obama is sworn in next week.

Reid, D-Nev., said the Senate planned to confirm “a number” of non-controversial nominations that won’t require a roll call in the hours immediately following Obama’s inauguration at noon Jan. 20 as the nation’s 44th president.

“Any nominations that require votes, we will schedule them for the next day,” Reid said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to approve the nomination of Eric H. Holder Jr. to be the next Attorney General on Jan. 21. Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., announced Friday that the panel would vote on the nomination on that day. Ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he was not inclined to try to postpone the committee’s action, as he is entitled to do under its rules. Holder is expected to be approved by the committee and quickly confirmed by the Senate.

— Keith Perine

Just call him Obama the Uniter.

Even before he's sworn in, President-elect Obama appears to be inspiring public confidence, with about seven in ten Americans predicting he'll do the right thing when it comes to addressing the economic crisis, fighting terrorism and managing the war in Iraq, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press.

What is more, the poll shows a sharp decline in the proportion of Americans who believe the country if fractured by partisanship.

The survey of 1,503 adults, conducted on cell phones and landlines from Jan. 7 to 11, reflects the optimism Americans generally show toward new administrations.

National Zoo director John Berry is expected to be named to head the Office of Personnel Management in the Obama administration.

Berry, a former long-time aide to House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, held a long list of top jobs in the Clinton administration’s Interior Department, the Smithsonian Institution and at the congressionally chartered National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Hoyer said today his former aide, who worked for the Maryland Democrat for more than a decade, is an excellent choice to head OPM.

“John Berry comes to the job with almost three decades of dealing with federal employee issues,” said Hoyer, who has been a leader in legislation concerning the vast federal workforce. “I think federal employees should be very glad and positive” about Berry’s nomination, which Hoyer indicated would soon be announced by the Obama transition team.

— Edward Epstein

Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary, is facing questions about his personal tax history and the immigration status of a housekeeper, a development that could complicate the confirmation of one of the incoming administration's most important posts at a time of economic turmoil.

Geithner, whose confirmation hearing with the Senate Finance Committee hearing has not yet been scheduled, met behind closed doors with members of the panel Tuesday afternoon and answered questions.

The economic crisis will probably discourage President-elect Barack Obama’s administration from cancelling or paring back some big-ticket defense projects that have been deemed superfluous or wasteful, a former Obama campaign adviser said on Tuesday.

Paul G. Kaminski, who served as undersecretary of defense for acquisition in the Clinton administration and was an informal adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, said the need to maintain high-paying defense jobs in a worsening recession will likely trump bottom-line budgetary considerations as the administration begins to assess some high-profile projects.

“There are some fairly critical decisions that have to be made in the first few months,” Kaminski told a group of defense reporters. “The economy will factor … it pushes things into go-forward mode.”

One item on the ACLU's agenda for the 111th Congress, unveiled to reporters Tuesday: Taking a little power away from incoming President-elect Obama.

It's not that Caroline Fredrickson, the director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, had bad things to say about Obama; in fact, she said she was hopeful he'd "turn the tide" on a great many issues on which the ACLU spends its time. But the relationship between the executive branch and Congress has gotten "out of whack," with Congress "withering" in the Bush years, she said.

"We need to restore checks and balances," she said.

The people President-elect Barack Obama wants to put in his Cabinent won't be nominated until after he takes office next week. But the Democrats who run Senate are going to be ready for quick action so their party's president can get his team to work right after the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Just look at Tuesday's lineup.

Four Senate committees will hold hearings into the not-yet nominations of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to become Secretary of State, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu to be Secretary of Energy, Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education, and Peter R. Orszag as White House budget director.

After some initial resistance, President-elect Barack Obama's picks for his intelligence team appear likely to win Senate confirmation, but a possible plan to merge two White House security councils might not prove as popular.

Obama on Jan. 9 tapped retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair (r.) to serve as director of national intelligence and named former lawmaker and White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta (l.) to head the CIA. He also announced that John Brennan would serve as his top adviser for both homeland security and counterterrorism, which could signal that the Homeland Security Council will be merged with the National Security ­Council.

Obama said Brennan will serve as his homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism, White House staff posts that will not require Senate confirmation.

Brennan, a former CIA official and interim head of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Bush, had been a candidate for director of the CIA. But his potential selection aroused resistance from some liberals who criticized his past remarks on Bush administration surveillance and interrogation policies.

Aside from weighing in on the front-and-center issues - like the economy and national security - Barack Obama provided some personal insights on ABC's "This Week" on the influence Abraham Lincoln has had on him and his Inaugural preparation - and an update on choosing the dog he promised his daughters.

Obama has already decided to do a version of Lincoln's train ride from Illinois to the capitol for his Inauguration and to use the Lincoln Bible for his swearing-in.

The Senate Armed Services committee is making good on its promise to enable the new Pentagon staff to hit the ground running. Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., will call four top nominees to testify next week, in what committee aides say should be a relatively smooth confirmation process for the officials selected by President-elect Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The session will also mark the return to the committee of ranking Republican and former presidential nominee John McCain of Arizona, who missed most of the committee's hearings last year while campaigning. New senators Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Mark Begich, D-Alaska, will make their committee debuts at the hearing.

The committee will hear from four former Clinton-era defense officials on January 15th at 9:30 in the Senate Dirksen Office Building, Room 106. They are:

• William J. Lynn III to be deputy secretary of Defense.

• Robert F. Hale to be undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller).

• Michèle Flourney to be ujndersecretary of Defense for policy.

• Jeh Charles Johnson to be general counsel, Department of Defense.

Vice President-elect Joseph Biden's official letter of resignation from the Senate was read into the record this afternoon on the Senate floor. Majority Leader Harry Reid said, 'What a sad but happy say it is to have this letter read."

Biden's Delaware seat is being taken by his long-time advisor Ted Kaufman. The 69-year-old Kaufman does not, however, plan to run in 2010, when Delaware will hold a special election to fill the remaining four years of the six-year term that Biden won Nov. 4, when he was simultaneously elected vice president. Delaware is one of several states that allows a candidate on the national ticket to run for another office at the same time.

Kaufman's willingness to serve a foreshortened tenure could pave the way for Beau Biden, the eldest son of the six-term senator, to seek the Senate seat in 2010 after he completes his current tour of duty in Iraq with the Delaware Army National Guard. Biden, who will turn 40 years old in February, was elected in 2006 to a four-year term as state Attorney General.

-- Kate Hunter

Talk about regime change.

When President-elect Obama formally introduced the new Democratic party chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, at Democratic National Committee headquarters on Thursday, outgoing chairman Howard Dean was nowhere to be found. Perhaps for good reason.

Dean clashed with members of Obama's team throughout the recently completed campaign cycle and was frequently at odds with Democratic congressional leaders -- including Obama's incoming chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel when Emanuel headed House Democrats' 2006 campaign effort -- over how to spend campaign funds.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a potential damper on Leon Panetta's potential nomination as CIA director, said Wednesday that "all systems are go" now.

The California Democrat, who has been friends for decades with the former home-state congressman and White House aide, had been irked at not being consulted earlier as chairman of the Intelligence Committee about his possible selection.

Panetta's presumed nomination has been criticized for his lack of background in intelligence gathering.

But Feinstein said that, after speaking Tuesday with President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, who each called her, that they agreed on the goal for unvarnished intelligence.

For the month of January, Vermont-based ice cream gurus Ben & Jerry’s have renamed boring old butter pecan ice cream.

Instead, in honor of the campaign slogan of the winning presidential candidate, they’re selling “Yes Pecan.” Get it?

The company says it plans to donate some of the proceeds from all cones sold to the nonprofi group Common Cause.

Ben and Jerry are no strangers to politics. During the primary, the company’s founders endorsed Barack Obama and began to sell cones of a “Cherries for Change” flavor. In 2007, the pair also created “Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream,” vanilla ice cream with caramel and chocolate waffle cone, the proceeds from which go toward a Steven Colbert’s charity.

— Leah Nylen

Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry today announced that confirmation hearings for Senator Hillary Clinton, President-Elect Barack Obama's designee to be Secretary of State, will be held Jan. 13, and the session to consider Susan Rice's nomination as United Nations ambassador will be held Jan. 15.

Senate Judiciary Democrats and the leaders of several civil rights groups defended attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr.'s political independence and character Wednesday one day after the panel's ranking Republican sharply critiqued his record in a floor speech.

Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, raised concerns in a floor speech about Holder's ability to be political independent based on some of his decisions as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration.

President-elect Barack Obama has told Congressional leaders he plans to nominate William Lynn to be deputy secretary of Defense, the House's top defense appropriator said Tuesday.

John P. Murtha , D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he had been briefed on the selection by Obama's transition staff and that he wholly endorsed Lynn to take over as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon. A Congressional aide said the formal announcement was expected later this week.

Former Iowa Gov. Thomas J. Vilsack, Barack Obama's choice to be Agriculture Secretary, got a warm (Republican) welcome today from fellow Iowan, Sen. Charles E. Grassley when the two met this week.

"We in Iowa and agriculture throughout the entire country is fortunate to have somebody like Governor Vilsack appointed to be secretary of Agriculture because, coming from Iowa, he's got a great understanding of agriculture -- most importantly -- the family farm as an institution within agriculture," Grassley said.

The meeting occurred Monday but Grassley put the spotlight on the get-together through audio comments posted on his web site, an e-mail memo to reporters and his weekly conference call with Iowa reporters today.

President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden met with congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle this afternoon, and Obama said, "The main purpose of today's meeting is to emphasize that whereas in the past sometimes we have thought about issues in terms of Republican and Democrat, we are at one of those periods in American history where we don't have Republican or Democratic problems. We've got American problems, creating jobs chief among them."

"My commitment as the incoming president is going to be to reach out across the aisle to both chambers to listen and not just talk and not just try to dictate but to try to create a genuine partnership," he added.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was sitting to Obama's right, Majority Leader Harry Reid to his left when reporters were briefly allowed into the room.

House Minority Leader John Boehner said "I think the tone of the meeting went well - and I look forward to working with the new president and his team."

-- Kate Hunter

President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden announced the following White House staff: Don Gips, White House Director of Presidential Personnel, Bradley J. Kiley, Director of the Office of Management and Administration, Susan Sher, Associate Counsel to the President, Brian McKeon, Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President, Courtney O'Donnell, Communications Director for Dr. Jill Biden, Carlos E. Elizondo, Residence Manager and Social Secretary for the Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden and Pete Souza, Chief White House Photographer.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is tentatively scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing Jan. 15 for Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's choice to head the Homeland Security Department.

Napolitano has been praised for her executive experience and her record as a border-state governor by the committee's chairman, Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., and ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine. She has received similar praise from the current and former secretaries of the Homeland Security Department, Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge.

-- Matthew M. Johnson

Democratic leaders are expanding their tax cut plans for a planned economic stimulus package -- and slowing their timetable -- as they prepare to usher in the 111th Congress on Tuesday.

Both moves may attract more Republican support for the measure as President-elect Barack Obama makes the rounds on Capitol Hill Monday and meets with leaders of both parties.

Obama will meet first with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and then with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., before sitting down with them, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, in a bipartisan meeting Monday afternoon.

Obama and Democratic leaders have been discussing a stimulus package totaling $700 billion to $1 trillion that would include individual and business tax cuts, funding for infrastructure projects and aid to states for Medicaid cost.

But Democratic leaders are retreating from their earlier vows to have the economic package ready for Obama to sign shortly after he is sworn in Jan. 20. Republican leaders in both chambers had repeatedly protested that timetable, saying it did not allow sufficient time for public hearings and committee consideration of the giant package.

-- Joseph Schatz and David Clarke