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.

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.

WASHINGTON - The White House and the nation's most prominent charities are embroiled in a tense, behind-the-scenes debate over President Obama's push to scale back the nearly century-old tax deduction on donations that the charities say is crucial for their financial health. In a series of recent meetings and calls, top White House aides have pressed nonprofit groups to line up behind the president's plan for reducing the federal deficit and averting the year-end fiscal cliff, according to people familiar with the talks.

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.

WASHINGTON - Republicans are "in a demographic death spiral" and will fail in their effort to win the presidency if the party blocks an immigration overhaul, a leading GOP senator said Sunday. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who helped write a bipartisan immigration bill under debate in the Senate, said conservatives who are trying to block the measure will doom the party and all but guarantee a Democrat will remain in the White House after 2016's election. A Democrat involved in developing the proposal, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, went further, predicting "there'll never be a road to the White House for the Republican Party" if immigration overhaul fails to pass.

WASHINGTON - The House overwhelmingly passed a sweeping, $638 billion defense bill on Friday that imposes new punishments on members of the armed services found guilty of rape or sexual assault as outrage over the crisis in the military has galvanized Congress. Ignoring a White House veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted 315-108 for the legislation, which would block President Obama from closing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and limit his efforts to reduce nuclear weapons.

WASHINGTON - The House approved a measure Friday that would require all branches of the U.S. military to share the same camouflage uniforms - instead of the 10 different camouflage patterns in use today. The measure, written by freshman Rep. William Enyart (D., Ill.), was passed as part of the broader National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the Pentagon's budget. The measure passed by a vote of 315-108. That idea needs the approval of the Senate, which is crafting its own version of the defense authorization bill.

Don't rush to the drugstore quite yet if you are a female under 17, need emergency contraception, and have no prescription. "I don't expect to see it at neighborhood pharmacies instantly," said Susannah Baruch of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, which has been part of the decadelong legal fight to make such approved medicine available to females of any age, without a prescription, at the lowest possible cost. While Baruch said Tuesday it was "fantastic" that the Obama administration indicated Monday night it would tentatively comply with parts of federal Judge Edward B. Korman's recent orders regarding access, Baruch and colleagues did not like important details in a Justice Department letter that spelled out the government's plan.

WASHINGTON - CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who managed the resignation of CIA chief David Petraeus over an extramarital affair and defended the agency's performance over the attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, retired Wednesday. "While I have given everything I have to the Central Intelligence Agency and its vital mission for a third of a century, it is now time for me to give everything I have to my family," Morell said in a statement the agency released. Morell retired after 33 years at the CIA, including two stints as acting director and one as deputy director.

WASHINGTON - The Republican-controlled House voted yesterday to resume the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, a largely symbolic move in the first immigration-related vote in either chamber of Congress this year and a measure of the daunting challenge facing supporters of a sweeping overhaul of existing law on the subject. The party-line vote of 224-201 was aimed at blocking implementation of President Barack Obama's 2012 election-year order to stop deportations of many so-called DREAM Act individuals.

On a mobile device? Click here to view the video. WASHINGTON - Michelle Obama experienced a rare face-to-face encounter with a protester late Tuesday - approaching the activist and threatening to leave a fund-raiser if the person did not stop interrupting her speech. Obama was addressing a Democratic Party fund-raiser in a private home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Northwest Washington when Ellen Sturtz, 56, a lesbian activist, interrupted her remarks to demand that President Obama sign an antidiscrimination executive order.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Friday urged Congress to prevent student loan rates from doubling in a month, prompting a fight with House Republicans who accused him of playing politics instead of sitting down to work out small differences and avoid an increase. Interest rates on new subsidized Stafford loans are set to go from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. Lawmakers from both parties say they want to avoid the increase but are divided over how to do so. Obama said that if Congress doesn't act to stop loan rates from rising, students would rack up an additional $1,000 annually in debt.

WASHINGTON - The FBI has intercepted a letter addressed to President Obama that may contain the poisonous substance ricin. A spokesman in the FBI's Washington Field Office said that a "suspicious letter" sent to Obama was intercepted at a White House mail facility on Thursday morning. The FBI is investigating the letter and does not yet know whether the letter tested positive or negative for ricin. The Secret Service confirms that the letter appears similar to a ricin-laced letter addressed to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

OKLAHOMA CITY - At least two tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma and another hit Arkansas yesterday as a powerful storm system moved through the middle of the country. At least one injury was reported when a home was hit in rural western Arkansas. The National Weather Service reported two tornadoes on the ground near Perkins and Ripley in north central Oklahoma and another west of Oden, Ark. Arkansas Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said first responders were having trouble reaching the destroyed home because a number of trees were blocking the road.