by Julie Pace

WASHINGTON (AP)—President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration withdrew his name Jan. 20, a setback for an administration still trying to explain how a man could attempt to blow up a commercial airliner on Christmas Day.

POLITICAL CASUALTY—Erroll Southers, the Obama administration’s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration, issued a statement Jan. 20 announcing the withdrawal of his nomination.

Erroll Southers said he was pulling out because his nomination had become a lightning rod for those with a political agenda. Obama had tapped Southers, a top official with the Los Angeles Airport Police Department, to lead the TSA in September but his confirmation has been blocked by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who says he was worried that Southers would allow TSA employees to have collective bargaining rights.

CHARLOTTE (NNPA)—Flanked by dozens of Black newspaper publishers from across the country, National Newspaper Publishers Association Chairman Danny Bakewell is demanding that the U.S. Census Bureau allocate more funding in advertising for Black newspapers throughout America in order to conduct an accurate count in the 2010 U.S. Census.

The current allocation both disrespects the Black Press’s ability to influence African-Americans to respond to the census and woefully inadequate to properly inform Black communities about the importance of being counted, he said.

CALLING CENSUS TO TASK—NNPA publishers, led by Chairman Danny Bakewell, held a press conference during the organization’s winter conference to decry the piddly advertising dollars that the Census Bureau is spending with Black newspapers.

WASHINGTON (NNPA)—Despite grave concerns that President Obama’s plans for health care might have been killed by the election of Republican Scott Brown to fill the former Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy, leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus say the bill is still very much alive.

“No it’s not dead. It’s not dead at all,” said U.S. Rep. Donna Christensen, D-V.I. in an interview with the NNPA News Service. Christensen, a medical doctor, is chair of the CBC Health Braintrust and has been among the leading voices on health care.

Donna Christensen, James Clyburn

by Nancy Benac

WASHINGTON (AP)—At 8:35 a.m. Jan. 21, Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office for the first time as president, the hopes of Americans on his shoulders. He spent 10 minutes alone, soaking in the moment, then set about trying to deliver on the bold promises he had laid out in his inaugural address a day earlier.

BACK ON THE STUMP—President Barack Obama takes questions during a town hall-style meeting at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, Jan. 22.

In a cruel fluke of the calendar, at precisely the one-year mark in his presidency, Obama awoke last Wednesday to headlines shouting about the Republican takeover of a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts, an election that represented far more than a shift of a legislator from one side of the aisle to the other.