The “change” that President-elect Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail
will likely include overturning President George W. Bush’s 2001 executive order
to prohibit the use of federal tax dollars for performing or advocating abortion
as a means of family planning in foreign countries, Obama’s transition team has
said.
 
“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive
authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we’ll see the
president do that,” John Podesta, head of Obama’s transition team, said when he
appeared on “Fox News Sunday.”

A media analyst says MSNBC host Chris Matthews effectively admitted yesterday he was an unpaid member of Barack Obama's press office.

Matthews appeared Thursday on MSNBC's Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and was asked for his opinion about Congressman Rahm Emanuel's initial public reluctance to accept the position as chief of staff for President-elect Obama. Emanuel has since accepted the post.

During the MSNBC interview, a suggestion was made that there might be turmoil within the new Obama administration, but Matthews refused to get drawn into the conversation, instead saying that as a reporter he was unwilling to "question motives"...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is advising President-elect Barack Obama
that he should move forward with "fundamental change" – not just in foreign
policy, but in U.S. domestic policy as well.
 
Friday’s Washington
Post reprinted the letter, in which Ahmadinejad congratulates Obama on
winning the Nov. 4 election...

Two months after expelling the American ambassador as diplomatic ties reached rock-bottom, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has expressed a desire for “new relations” with the United States under an Obama administration.

The leftist former paratrooper commander, who has developed close ties with Iran and Russia while using oil revenues to shore up allies across the region, is among the most vocal critics of President Bush and what he calls the U.S. “empire”...

Just hours after U.S. President-elect Barack Obama delivered his victory speech, Russia's leader delivered a scathing rebuke of U.S. policy and reminded Obama of some of the major foreign policy challenges he will face in office.

In his first state-of-the-nation speech since taking office earlier this year, President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russian missiles will be deployed against the planned U.S. missile shield in eastern Europe...

President-elect Barack Obama has tapped some of the same big-time fundraisers who helped him collect more than a half-billion dollars for his presidential campaign to a new panel that will form the face of his administration.

Donald Gips, a former top aide to Vice President Al Gore who helped the Obama campaign raise at least $500,000, will serve on an advisory board overseeing the Obama transition, aides said Wednesday. He'll be joined by Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who raised at least $200,000 for the campaign, according to data compiled by Public Citizen, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks political fundraising and its influence on government policy...

As they enter their final day of campaigning before Election Day, Sen. John
McCain is trying to swing undecided voters in key battleground states, while
Sen. Barack Obama is staying on the offensive by campaigning in territory that
is usually safely Republican.

In addition, both campaigns are ratcheting up their
get-out-the-vote efforts, as election officials predict record turnouts -- and
long lines -- on Tuesday.

McCain on Monday hopes he can shift enough voters in a
handful of critical states to give him enough votes to pull a come-from-behind
victory...

FOX News/Rasmussen Reports battleground polling this week shows some improvements for John McCain but the overall results still leave Barack Obama in a better position on the eve of the election.

Obama now leads in two of the battleground states while the candidates are tied or within a point of each other in four. At one level, that's an improvement for McCain. Last week, he was even in just two states while trailing in four.

But while it's an improvement for the GOP candidate, this week's results don't alter the underlying dynamic of the race. All six of these battleground states were Republican states in 2004 and McCain probably needs to win all six to capture the White House...

While the differences between John McCain and Barack Obama blur on some issues,
there is no mistaking the gap between them on the subject of the Federal courts.

McCain has stressed his preference for judges and justices who defer to
the elected branches of the government. Obama has stressed just the opposite, a
preference for appointees who check “majoritarian impulses"...

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is reportedly cleansing his campaign plane of reporters in the mainstream news media that work for newspapers that endorsed his opponent John McCain.

The Drudge Report is reporting that the Obama campaign has decided to dump three newspapers from its plane for the remainder of the campaign...