CQ Politics' Web Picks

New York Times: Sparring Starts as Republicans Ponder Future

One week after the Republicans were routed in the presidential election, the fight is on over who will be the new leaders of the party. Republicans are debating how to position themselves ideologically and how aggressively to take on President-elect Barack Obama.

Wall Street Journal: McCain Owes Sarah Some Straight Talk

Where's John McCain's honor when we need it? We'll find out tonight, when the Arizona Republican appears on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. In the week since the election, Mr. McCain's campaign team has leaked some nasty stuff about Sarah Palin. So it will be telling if Mr. McCain stands up for his partner and says how offended he has been by what some of his staffers have done to her.

New Yorker: The New Liberalism

Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression. But what philosophy of government will characterize it? The answer was given three days before the election by a soldier and memoirist of the Reagan revolution, Peggy Noonan, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "Something new is happening in America. It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal moment."

Slate: Barack to Reality

Cristopher Hitchins writes that "those who think that they have just voted to legalize Utopia are preparing for a disillusionment that I very much doubt they will blame on themselves. The national Treasury is an echoing, empty vault; our Russian and Iranian enemies are acting even more wolfishly even as they sense a repudiation of Bush-Cheney; the lines of jobless and evicted are going to lengthen, and I don't think a diet of hope is going to cover it.

The Daily Beast: The New Civility

Bush adviser Mark McKinnon says the president is making an exceptionally graceful exit--and was actually excited to spend time yesterday with the man taking his job.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The Count Goes on in Missouri

Republican John McCain's statewide lead has shrunk to fewer than 5,000 votes, as various counties have recounted and revised their totals from last Tuesday's election. Yet to be counted: an estimated 7,000 provisional ballots -- most cast in Obama-leaning areas -- that are just now being examined to determine which ones were cast by properly registered voters in the correct polling place. Counties have another week to verify and certify their official counts.

Los Angeles Times: Obama Urged to Overhaul Health Care

Four leading advocacy groups representing business, labor and retirees are starting a campaign today to press Barack Obama to enact comprehensive healthcare reform, upping the pressure on the president-elect to tackle the issue quickly after he takes office.

Boston Globe: Archbishop Heartened by Election but Worried by Obama on Abortion

As much of the nation celebrates the first election of an African-American as president, Cardinal-Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston is visibly moved by the moment, but also horrified by what he sees as Barack Obama's "deplorable" record on abortion rights.

New York Review of Books: The Co-President at Work

Cheney's ruling passion appears to be a love of presidential power. Go under the surface a little and this reveals itself as something more mysterious: a ceaseless desire of power after power. It is a quality of the will that seems accidentally tied to an office, a country, or a given system of political arrangements.

Foreign Policy: The Obama Fantasy

On November 4 in Kenya, one might mistakenly conclude that Obama was running for president here and not in the United States. There is undeniably an over-the-top quality about Kenya's embrace of Obama. The government declared a national holiday to celebrate the Illinois senator's victory over John McCain. The National Theater is staging "Obama: The Musical."

Wall Street Journal Law Blog: Executive Orders 101

All weekend long, we read and heard references to "executive orders" -- chiefly, that through the use of such mechanisms, President-elect Obama planned to overturn Bush Administration policies. Just what types of things can a president "order"? Why don't they need to be approved by Congress? How and why are they constitutional?