CQ Politics' Web Picks

New York Times: A Handpicked Obama Team for a Shift in Foreign Policy

President-elect Barack Obama's national security team will include two veteran cold warriors and a political rival whose records are all more hawkish than that of the new president who will face them in the White House Situation Room. Yet all three of his choices -- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary -- have embraced a sweeping shift of priorities and resources in the national security arena.

Boston Globe: Activists Expect Clinton to Propel Women's Rights

President-elect Barack Obama's expected nomination today of Hillary Clinton as the next secretary of state has energized human rights and women's rights activists, who expect the former first lady to bring a dramatic new focus to the plight of women around the globe.

Daily Beast: Why Republicans Are Gushing About Obama

It appears the political classes have briefly sobered up and decided to act responsibly, selflessly and in the best interest of the country. The times are simply so serious, so dangerous, so calamitous that we can't afford politics as usual. And for once, politicians seem to get it. We all wish President-elect Obama success. Because there's a good chance that if he fails, we all go down together. Way down.

New Yorker: Enter, Pursued by a Bear

No Treasury Secretary has ever entered office with as much responsibility as Timothy Geithner will have. That's partly because the crisis is so huge, but it's also the result of an evolution in the role that we expect government to play in the economy. For much of American history, Treasury Secretaries were nondescript, and their powers circumscribed. In recent years, as the frequency and the severity of financial crises have increased, so, too, has the prominence of the Treasury Secretary's role.

Washington Post: Senate Could Give New President Early Legislative Victories

Though they are two votes short of their quest for 60 votes -- with two races still undecided -- Democrats say that regular support from a few Republican moderates will allow them to pass bills that were halted in the current Congress by GOP parliamentary roadblocks. These include health-care programs, immigration revisions and presidential nominations.

Columbia Journalism Review: Air Apparent

The Big Three cable news networks set records for viewership; their ratings success, you have to think, signals that the news programs have been doing something right. In some ways, they have. To the extent that TV news succeeded in covering 2008's campaign, it did so in doing what it's always done: very broadly, putting the news in a human context. Live TV depicts public figures in a manner much more essential than print or even blogs, at this point, can do; the filter of text is at once much higher and much wider than the filter of the screen.

Chicago Tribune: Michelle Obama's Family Tree Has Roots in a Slave Plantation

Five cabins remain today of the row of shacks that lined the dirt road once known as Slave Street on a South Carolina plantation. Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather, who was born around 1850, lived as a slave, at least until the Civil War, on the sprawling rice plantation.