Nominee

Nominations are being accepted for deserving high school football players for the Leonard Weaver/Daily News award. If you are a high school coach and wish to have a player considered, please send an e-mail to Daily News assistant sports editor Chuck Bausman at bausmac@phillynews.com . Please include information about the players' academic and athletic achievement, and contact information for us to reach him. Nominations will only be accepted from coaches.  

President Obama intends to nominate Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Vice Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg to succeed Sheila Bair as chairman, according to a White House statement issued Friday night. Gruenberg has been the agency's vice chairman since 2005 and was acting chairman for six months in 2005 and 2006. He would replace Bair, who was appointed by President George W. Bush and took office in June 2006. She led the agency through the worst wave of banking failures since the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.

Gov. Christie's nominee to head the state Department of Children and Families withdrew from consideration for the post on Friday. In a letter to the governor, Janet Rosenzweig said the confirmation process was "distracting from the important work of this department. " She did not offer further explanation. Last month, Rosenzweig faced tough questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, in particular about her past work for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

Jasmine Silva may be only 5 1/2, but she continues to make her small voice heard. The first-grader from North Philadelphia is best known as probably the youngest member of the press corps ever to interview President Reagan. Jasmine, representing the Children's Free Press, met Reagan at a fund-raiser in Philadelphia for U.S. Sen. John Heinz last month during the Constitution bicentennial. She asked Reagan, she said afterward, "if Judge (Robert) Bork would be good for the future, and he said 'yes.

Ihave a confession to make. I was brainwashed by conservatives. I know, I know - next to telling the National Enquirer you've been kidnapped by alien creatures, it's the most embarrassing admission you can make, but there it is. I'm not sure how it happened. One minute, I was keeping my guard up against right-wing blather; the next, I'd fallen victim to a sucker punch, from Robert Bork, of all people. You remember Bork. After playing a Rosencrantz/Guildenstern role in the Watergate Follies, he hit big time when nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan.

For most college-bound high school seniors, the last few months of the school year are a time of nervous waiting - waiting to find out what university sweat shirt they will don come August. But some Bucks County students who have been nominated to one or several military academies by U.S. Rep. Peter Kostmayer are especially anxious to find out their fate. They want to serve their country, and the war in the Persian Gulf has fueled their desire. "It's made me pursue this even more," said Timothy Komada, a senior at Holy Ghost Preparatory School in Holland and nominee for the Air Force and Naval Academies as well as West Point.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is preparing to conduct one of the most important job interviews in decades. The senators shouldn't beat around the bush with the applicant. Even before President Bush nominates a candidate for the Supreme Court, partisans on both sides are trying to manipulate the ground rules. Some who want the court to outlaw abortion, for example, argue that it's inappropriate for lawmakers to press a nominee on his/her views about the subject. By trying to limit this line of inquiry, they hope to enable a conservative justice who's hostile to Roe v. Wade to be confirmed with a minimum of probing questions.

Once again, most of the attention in the capital this week will focus on the Senate and its confirmation process of Gov. Casey's nominees for state treasurer and Cabinet positions. The House of Representatives, while in session, is not expected to consider any major legislation on the floor. So far this session, 232 bills have been referred to House committees, where they will be discussed first. Stephen C. MacNett, top aide to Senate Majority Leader John Stauffer (R., Chester)

For the first time in memory, the Senate has spurned a presidential nomination to the largest advisory panel of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In a 9-8 vote yesterday, the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee rejected the appointment of Carol Iannone, a professor in the Gallatin Division of New York University, to the 26-member National Council on the Humanities. The largely partisan vote climaxed a bitter and lengthy controversy pitting Lynne V. Cheney, head of the endowment, against many of the nation's largest scholarly groups, led by the 29,000-member Modern Language Association (MLA)

WEST MONROE, La. - Facing heightened pressure to revive his presidential bid, Rick Santorum was forced to explain another apparent misstep as he courted Louisiana voters Friday, the eve of a critical contest in a Republican nomination battle that increasingly favors Mitt Romney. Santorum said he would support the eventual GOP nominee if it isn't him despite what he insisted were similarities between front-runner Romney and President Obama that make them indistinguishable on some issues.

WASHINGTON - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday approved President Obama's nominee for U.S. ambassador to Libya, a post that has been vacant since insurgents attacked the diplomatic mission in Benghazi in September, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. With little discussion, the panel on a voice vote approved Deborah Kay Jones, a career diplomat who has served in Kuwait, Argentina, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.)

NASCAR CHAMPION Dale Jarrett headlined the 25 nominees announced Wednesday for next year's Hall of Fame class - a list that finally includes track magnate Bruton Smith . Only five nominees are new to the list, with the other 20 carrying over from last year. Joining Jarrett and Smith as the new nominees were engine builder Maurice Petty , five-time NASCAR weekly series national champion Larry Phillips and 1960 NASCAR champion Rex White . Five people will be selected for induction into the fifth Hall of Fame Class in May 22 voting by a 54-member panel.

A senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School is one of three nominations made Tuesday by President Obama for appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Philip A. Miscimarra, a Penn law school graduate, serves as managing director of the Wharton Center for Human Resources Research Advisory Group and is the employment law adviser to Wharton's Financial Services Group. Miscimarra is a partner in Morgan Lewis's labor and employment practice in Chicago, a cochair of the firm's Workforce Change practice and is one of two Republican nominees to the five-member board.

WASHINGTON - Richard Cordray received polite questions - and even a few compliments - from a panel of U.S. senators at his nomination hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill. After two hours of testimony, however, his chances for being confirmed as director of Washington's newest consumer watchdog agency looked grim. Members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee did not dispute the former Ohio attorney general's background or his qualifications to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Monday nominated MIT professor Ernest Moniz as energy secretary, Environmental Protection Agency official Gina McCarthy as EPA administrator, and Wal-Mart executive Sylvia Mathews Burwell as White House budget director. In a ceremony at the White House with all three nominees, Obama hailed their predecessors and said he was confident that their successors would pursue his administration's goals of achieving energy independence, creating more clean-energy jobs, fighting climate change and reigniting economic growth.

Want to get the most out of Sunday's Academy Awards? Take time out to watch some top nominees on disc. Many already are out on DVD and Blu-ray. Some are due in the next few weeks. Argo. Ben Affleck's third film as a director is an intense drama about a 1979 CIA operation to rescue six Americans who escaped the embassy in Tehran before militants stormed it, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. It has picked up seven Oscar nods, including best picture and best supporting actor for Alan Arkin.

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat: Craig LaBan: First, a big congrats goes out to all the local chefs and restaurateurs who were nominated as national semifinalists for James Beard Foundation Awards: Vernick Food and Drink (best new restaurant); Marc Vetri (outstanding chef); Vetri (oustanding service); Fountain Restaurant (outstanding service); Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. (outstanding bar program); Andre Chin and Amanda Eap, Artisan Boulanger Patissier (outstanding pastry chef)

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat: Craig LaBan: First, a big congrats goes out to all the local chefs and restaurateurs who were nominated as national semifinalists for James Beard Foundation Awards: Vernick Food and Drink (best new restaurant); Marc Vetri (outstanding chef); Vetri (oustanding service); Fountain Restaurant (outstanding service); Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. (outstanding bar program); Andre Chin and Amanda Eap, Artisan Boulanger Patissier (outstanding pastry chef)

I know from watching the recent Senate confirmation hearing what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) thinks of Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for defense secretary, for once having used the words "Jewish lobby" in an interview. (Hagel has since said he regrets his word choice.) But Graham's testy questioning of Hagel made me wonder about someone else's reaction - the Middle East negotiator to whom Hagel had made the comment. So I asked Aaron David Miller, a distinguished scholar and vice president for new initiatives at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

WASHINGTON - John Brennan strongly defended antiterror attacks by unmanned drones Thursday under close questioning at a protest-disrupted confirmation hearing on his nomination to head the CIA. Despite what he called a public misimpression, Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee that drone strikes are used only against targets planning to carry out attacks to hurt the United States, never as retribution for an earlier one. "Nothing could...