White House

Apparently even the law is no obstacle when the Reagan administration wants to help the Teamsters Union - the only major labor union to support Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1980 and again in 1984. Federal law requires the government to remain neutral in contests between unions for the right to represent workers. That, however, didn't stop the White House last fall from helping the Teamsters win a close election to represent civilian employees at Fort Sill, Okla. Mitchell Daniels, political director for the White House, personally arranged for the Army to help the Teamsters.

Tourist alert: If you're planning to say "cheese" in front of the White House this summer, forget it. Not only is the presidential mansion draped in plastic cloth, suggesting a creation by wrap-artist Christo, but also an 8-foot-high gray plywood fence obscures much of what is left of the view from Pennsylvania Avenue. Contractors are stripping the White House of 30-odd coats of paint it has accumulated since 1797. The porous Aquia Creek sandstone has been painted periodically since it was initially whitewashed, each coat on top of the other.

The Phillies will get one last chance to bask in the afterglow of their World Series victory on Tuesday, when the team makes the traditional visit to the White House. President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will be in attendance, as will Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill. The team's entire traveling party, including players, spouses, executives, broadcasters and other personnel, are invited to make the trip. Shortstop Jimmy Rollins, who visited the White House in 1991 after his Babe Ruth team won the World Series, was an ardent supporter of Obama during his run for presidency and was in attendance at the inauguration in January.

Hot! Hot! Hot! there's more to running for president then just debating policy - you even have to do some very silly things. In the first installment of our weekly series, we find Al "What's it going to take to make me an Alpha Male?" Gore contributing to an Iowa potluck supper.

One of the most romanticized jobs in news photography is the assignment to cover the White House. As is sometimes the case, however, the romance differs from the reality. For reasons of security and politics, few unguarded moments of a President or his family are ever recorded on film. Almost all the pictures result from situations that are stage-managed and stopwatch-timed. Photographers have never had unlimited access to the President, but in recent years the proliferation of White House photographers, representing newspapers, magazines, television networks and independent stations as well as the photographers on the White House staff, has made shooting more difficult, even when the White House cooperates with a few minutes of the President's time.

President Clinton and his family celebrated Christmas in the White House yesterday, with the President giving his wife a book that takes a nostalgic look at baseball, a spokesman said yesterday. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a longtime Chicago Cubs fan, received the gift of Mudville Diaries, a book of baseball memories collected by Mike Schacht, said the spokesman, Josh Silverman. Details of other gifts were not immediately available so as not to intrude on the Clintons' privacy, Silverman said.

Three things to keep in mind should I ever be invited back to a White House holiday party: Uttering "Salahi" in line is like saying "bomb" on an airplane; know how to address the first lady before you're in the room with her; and don't blink - you won't get a second picture for a Christmas photo with the commander in chief. Last week, my wife and I arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. about 15 minutes before a party's scheduled 7 p.m. start time. That commencement hour was the first difference we noted when comparing the current occupants to their predecessors - the Bushes' started, and ended earlier.

The mint will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the completion of the White House with a medal to be issued this winter. It will depict the building within a wreath topped by a banner with the dates 1800-2000. The reverse will carry portraits of John and Abigail Adams, the first presidential couple to live in the building. Their cameo portraits, with more garlands under them, will give the medal an old-fashioned charm. With the date 1800 prominently placed on the reverse, it will make it essential for the medal to appear before the end of December.

If Vice President Biden continues to appear in public during this campaign, White House press secretary Jay Carney should be offered a membership in the janitors' union. As things stand, the spokesman does not have the supplies to clean up the mess Biden made Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. Biden gave his full support to same-sex marriage, a position conspicuously at odds with the public stance of President Obama, who is widely assumed to share Biden's view but says his thinking is "evolving.

The e-mail arrived in the late afternoon of March 30. The subject line read: INVITATION. It looked like spam and I was about to delete it, but something caught my eye in the preview window. A seal of some sort. The White House. Like any registered voter, I receive e-mails all the time from Barack, Michelle, Joe, and Jill. This was different. I wasn't being asked to donate or host a gathering in my home. I was invited to their home, for a signing of the JOBS Act. I reacted in a manner consistent with the maturity and grace I have cultivated in my 43 years of life.

WASHINGTON - It isn't Mitt Romney who's giving President Obama fits as he pivots to reelection mode. It's those federal bureaucrats carousing in Las Vegas, the Secret Service consorting with Colombian prostitutes, and U.S. soldiers posing with bloody enemy corpses. The scandals are taking a toll. They are distracting embarrassments that are dominating public attention while Obama seeks to focus on difficulties abroad and jobs at home. And they are giving Republicans an opportunity to question his competence and leadership, an opening for Romney in a race so close that any advantage might make a difference.

ARMANDO IANNUCCI wasn't looking to make a political statement when he made the title character of his HBO comedy "Veep" a woman. "I thought female vice president simply because I didn't want people to say, ‘Oh, it's a take on Cheney' or … ‘This is Joe Biden,' " the producer told reporters in January. "And I also thought that I want it to feel like we're speculating on where politics might go. I think it's now perfectly natural to assume that in the next five or 10 years, there will be a female vice president, maybe even president.

Two Philadelphians were among nine people and organizations honored Thursday at the White House for making a difference in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Harry Leong, president of the Philadelphia Suns, a volunteer-led youth organization, and Rebecca Chin, a member of the Suns, were selected as part of a video challenge to tell compelling personal stories related to their communities. The White House received more than 200 videos and 35 essays. The nine were selected as part of a White House program called Champions of Change.

Last summer, a group of students at Stetser Elementary School in the Chester Upland School District planted and tended two schoolyard gardens as part of a healthy-eating initiative promoted by first lady Michelle Obama. The vegetables they grew were later prepared and served in the school cafeteria. Earlier that year, some students helped prepare the weekly menu for the meals served in all the district's elementary schools. The menus included stories of how the food related to the lives of famous African Americans or to historical events like the 1960 Greensboro, N.C., lunch-counter sit-ins.

Usually they post warnings of floods, tornados and assorted mayhem, but now government meteorologists are issuing warnings of another kind. They say that the White House's proposed cuts to the National Weather Service budget and the plans to implement them are dangerous. 'We're putting people's lives at risk," said David A. Solano, a hydrologist at the Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center in State College, which monitors flood threats in seven states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Khadijah White is a doctoral candidate in communications at University of Pennsylvania, has taught school in Brooklyn, been a White House intern in the Obama administration, and a journalist for PBS who once interviewed the president of Senegal. That resumé, however, apparently did not prepare her for what could happen at a public hearing in the City of Philadelphia. White, 28, spent about 19 hours in police custody. She was charged with resisting arrest, harassment, and disorderly conduct after a confrontation with police doing crowd control at Thursday's meeting on the Department of Public Health's proposal to regulate the feeding of homeless people outdoors.