Coordinates	50°5′″N21°27′″N
Name	Elena Kagan
Office	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Nominator	Barack Obama
Term start	August 7, 2010
Predecessor	John Paul Stevens
Office2	45th Solicitor General of the United States
President2	Barack Obama
Deputy2	Neal Katyal
Term start2	March 19, 2009
Term end2	May 17, 2010
Predecessor2	Edwin Kneedler (Acting)
Successor2	Neal Katyal (Acting)
Office3	11th Dean of Harvard Law School
Term start3	July 1, 2003
Term end3	March 19, 2009
Predecessor3	Robert Clark
Successor3	Martha Minow
Birth date	April 28, 1960
Birth place
Alma mater	Princeton UniversityWorcester College, OxfordHarvard Law School
Religion	Conservative Judaism }}

Elena Kagan (pronounced ; born April 28, 1960) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 7, 2010. Kagan is the Court's 112th justice and fourth female justice.

Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After attending Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she completed federal Court of Appeals and Supreme Court clerkships. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel, and later as policy adviser, under President Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its first female dean.

President Obama appointed her Solicitor General on January 26, 2009. On May 10, 2010, Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. After Senate confirmation, Kagan was sworn in on August 7, 2010, by Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Kagan's formal investiture ceremony before a special sitting of the United States Supreme Court took place on October 1, 2010.

Personal life and education

Kagan was born in New York City, the middle of three children, on the city's Upper West Side. Her mother, Gloria Gittelman Kagan, taught fifth and sixth grade at Hunter College Elementary School, and her father, Robert Kagan, was an attorney. Kagan's two brothers are public school teachers.

Kagan and her family lived in a third-floor apartment at West End Avenue and 75th Street and attended Lincoln Square Synagogue.

Childhood friend Margaret Raymond recalled that Kagan was a teenage smoker but not a partier. On Saturday nights, she and Kagan "were more apt to sit on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and talk."

Next to her photo was a quote from former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: "Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of arts." After graduating from high school, Kagan attended Princeton University, where she earned an A.B., ''summa cum laude'' in history in 1981. Among the subjects she studied was the socialist movement in New York City in the early 20th century. She wrote a senior thesis under historian Sean Wilentz titled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900–1933". In it she wrote, "Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP exhausted itself forever. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America." Wilentz insists that she did not mean to defend socialism, noting that, "She was interested in it. To study something is not to endorse it." Wilentz called Kagan "one of the foremost legal minds in the country, she is still the witty, engaging, down-to-earth person I proudly remember from her undergraduate days."

As an undergraduate, Kagan also served as editorial chair of the ''Daily Princetonian''. Along with eight other students (including Eliot Spitzer, who was student body president at the time), Kagan penned the Declaration of the Campaign for a Democratic University, which called for "a fundamental restructuring of university governance" and condemned Princeton's administration for making decisions "behind closed doors".

She received Princeton's Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship, one of the highest general awards conferred by the university, which enabled her to study at Worcester College, Oxford. She earned a Master of Philosophy at Oxford in 1983. She received a Juris Doctor, ''magna cum laude'', at Harvard Law School in 1986, where she was supervisory editor of the ''Harvard Law Review''. Friend Jeffrey Toobin recalled Kagan "stood out from the start as one with a formidable mind. She's good with people. At the time, the law school was a politically charged and divided place. She navigated the factions with ease, and won the respect of everyone."

Kagan has never married and has no children.

Early legal and academic career

Kagan was a law clerk for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1987 and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. Marshall nicknamed the 5 foot 3 inch Kagan "Shorty". While at the University of Chicago, she published a law review article on the regulation of First Amendment hate speech in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in ''R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul''; an article discussing the significance of governmental motive in regulating speech; and a review of a book by Stephen L. Carter discussing the judicial confirmation process.

According to her colleagues, Kagan's students complimented and admired her from the beginning, and she was granted tenure "despite the reservations of some colleagues who thought she had not published enough."

White House and judicial nomination

From 1995 to 1999, Kagan served as President Bill Clinton's Associate White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council. While serving in that position, Kagan co-authored a May 13, 1997, memo to the President urging him to support a ban on late-term abortions stating that, "We recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 and prevent Congress from overriding your veto."

In a 1996 White House document, Kagan grouped the National Rifle Association together with the Ku Klux Klan as "bad guy" organizations.

In 1996 she wrote an article in the ''University of Chicago Law Review'' entitled, "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine." Kagan argued that the Supreme Court should examine governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases. She analyzed historic draft-card burning and flag burning cases in light of free speech arguments.

On June 17, 1999, Clinton nominated Kagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace James L. Buckley, who had taken senior status in 1996. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican Chairman Orrin Hatch scheduled no hearing, effectively ending her nomination. When Clinton's term ended, her nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court lapsed, as did the nomination of fellow Clinton nominee Allen Snyder.

Return to academia

After her service in the White House and her lapsed judicial nomination, Kagan returned to academia in 1999. She initially sought to return to the University of Chicago Law School, but having given up her tenured position as a result of her extended stint in the Clinton Administration, she needed to be rehired and the school chose not to do so, reportedly because of doubts as to her commitment to academia. Kagan quickly found a position as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, she authored a law review article on United States administrative law, including the role of aiding the President of the United States in formulating and influencing federal administrative and regulatory law, which was honored as the year's top scholarly article by the American Bar Association's Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, and is being developed into a book to be published by Harvard University Press.

In 2001, she was named a full professor and in 2003 was named Dean of the Law School by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. She succeeded Robert C. Clark, who had served as dean for over a decade. The focus of her tenure was on improving student satisfaction. Efforts included constructing new facilities and reforming the first-year curriculum as well as aesthetic changes and creature comforts, such as free morning coffee. She has been credited for employing a consensus-building leadership style, which surmounted the school's previous ideological discord. In her capacity as dean, Kagan inherited a capital campaign, "Setting the Standard", in 2003. It ended in 2008 with a record breaking raised, 19% more than the original goal. Kagan made a number of prominent new hires, increasing the size of the faculty considerably. Her coups included hiring legal scholar Cass Sunstein away from the University of Chicago and Lawrence Lessig away from Stanford. She also broke a logjam on conservative hires by bringing in scholars such as Jack Goldsmith, who had been serving in the Bush administration.

During her deanship, Kagan upheld a decades old policy barring military recruiters from the Office of Career Services because she felt that the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy discriminated against gays and lesbians. According to Campus Progress, }}

In October 2003, Kagan transmitted an e-mail to students and faculty deploring that military recruiters had shown up on campus in violation of the school's anti-discrimination policy. It read, "This action causes me deep distress. I abhor the military's discriminatory recruitment policy." She also wrote that it was "a profound wrong--a moral injustice of the first order."

From 2005 through 2008, Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute and received a $10,000 stipend for her service in 2008.

Solicitor General

On January 5, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced he would nominate Kagan to be Solicitor General. Before this appointment she had never argued a case before any court, including the Supreme Court of the United States. At least two previous solicitors general, Robert Bork and Kenneth Starr, also had no previous Supreme Court appearances, though Starr was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit before becoming Solicitor General.

Kagan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 2009, by a vote of 61 to 31, becoming the first woman to hold the position. She made her first appearance before the Supreme Court on September 9, 2009, in ''Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission''.

The First Amendment Center and the Cato Institute later expressed concern over arguments Kagan advanced as a part of her role as Solicitor General. For example, during her time as Solicitor General, Kagan prepared a brief defending a law later ruled unconstitutional that criminalized depictions of animal cruelty. During her confirmation hearing, she said that "there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage." Also during her confirmation hearing, she was asked about the Defense of Marriage Act, pursuant to which states cannot recognize same-sex marriages originating in other states. Kagan indicated that she would defend the act if "there was any reasonable basis to do so."

Supreme Court

Prior to the election of President Barack Obama, Kagan was the subject of media speculation regarding her potential to be nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States if a Democratic president were elected in 2008. This speculation increased after the retirement announcement of Associate Justice David H. Souter, effective at the start of the Court's summer 2009 recess.

It was speculated that her position as Solicitor General would increase Kagan's chances for nomination, since Solicitors General have been considered potential nominees to the Supreme Court in the past. On May 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Obama was considering Kagan, among others, for possible appointment to the United States Supreme Court. On May 26, 2009, however, Obama announced that he was nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the post.

On April 9, 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he would retire at the start of the Court's summer 2010 recess, triggering new speculation about Kagan's potential nomination to the bench. In a ''Fresh Dialogues'' interview, Jeffrey Toobin, a Supreme Court analyst and Kagan's friend and law school classmate, speculated that Kagan would likely be President Obama's nominee, describing her as "very much an Obama type person, a moderate Democrat, a consensus builder." This possibility has alarmed many liberals and progressives, who worried that "replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the right, perhaps substantially to the right."

While Kagan's name was mentioned as a possible replacement for Justice Stevens, the ''New York Times'' noted that she "has supported assertions of executive power." This view of vast executive power has caused some commentators to fear that she would reverse the majority in favor of protecting civil liberties on the Supreme Court were she to replace Stevens.

The deans of over one-third of the country's law schools, sixty-nine people in total, endorsed Kagan's nomination in an open letter in early June. It lauded what it considered her coalition-building skills and "understanding of both doctrine and policy" as well as her written record of legal analysis.

The confirmation hearings began June 28. Kagan's testimony and her answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questions on July 20 were uneventful, containing no new revelations about her character or background. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania cited an article Kagan had published in the ''Chicago Law Review'' in 1995, criticizing the evasiveness of Supreme Court nominees in their hearings. Kagan, noted Specter, was now practicing that very evasiveness. On July 20, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13–6 to recommend Kagan's confirmation to the full Senate. On August 5 the full Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 63–37. The voting was largely on party lines, with five Republicans (Richard Lugar, Judd Gregg, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe) supporting her and one Democrat (Ben Nelson) opposing. The Senate's two independents voted in favor of confirmation. She was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts on Saturday August 7, in a private ceremony.

Kagan is the first justice appointed without any prior experience as a judge since William Rehnquist in 1972. She is the fourth female justice in the Court's history (and, for the first time, part of a Court with three female justices) and the eighth Jewish justice, making three of the nine current justices Jewish.

Kagan's first opinion, ''Ransom v. FIA Card Services'', was filed on January 11, 2011. In an 8–1 decision, Kagan found that an individual declaring bankruptcy could not count expenses for a car he had paid off in his "applicable monthly expenses".

Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen praised Kagan's "eloquent voice," which he characterized as unusual for a relative newcomer to the Court, and noted her "ability to puncture her colleagues’ bloodless abstractions and tendentious arguments, and to explain the constitutional stakes in plain language that all citizens can understand." He said Kagan's writing was giving Justice Scalia "a run for his money."

See also

Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates

Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States

List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

References

Further reading

Lichtblau, Eric (2009-05-15) Potential Justice's Appeal May Be Too Bipartisan, ''New York Times''

Greenwald, Glenn (2010-04-13) The case against Elena Kagan, ''Salon.com''

The Progressive Case For Elena Kagan ''Thinkprogress.com'' (2010-05-10)

External links

Elena Kagan Through the Years – slideshow by ''ABC News''

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Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford Category:American female lawyers Category:American women judges Category:American Jews Category:Clinton Administration personnel Category:Deans of Harvard Law School Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Harvard Law School faculty Category:Hunter College High School alumni Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Category:New York lawyers Category:Nominations to the United States Supreme Court Category:Obama Administration personnel Category:People from New York City Category:Princeton University alumni Category:United States federal judges appointed by Barack Obama Category:United States Solicitors General Category:United States Supreme Court justices Category:University of Chicago faculty

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Coordinates	50°5′″N21°27′″N
order	44th
office	President of the United States
term start	January 20, 2009
vicepresident	Joe Biden
predecessor	George W. Bush
birth date	August 04, 1961
birth place	Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
birthname	Barack Hussein Obama II
nationality	American
party	Democratic
spouse	Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
children	Malia (b.1998) Sasha (b.2001)
residence	The White House
alma mater	Occidental CollegeColumbia University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)
profession	Community organizerAttorneyAuthorConstitutional law professorUnited States SenatorPresident of the United States
religion	Christian, former member of United Church of Christ
signature	Barack Obama signature.svg
website	WhiteHouse.gov
footnotes	}}

The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, as well as the first born in Hawaii.

His policy decisions have addressed a global financial crisis and have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives and the phasing out of detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He attended the G-20 London summit and later visited U.S. troops in Iraq. On the tour of various European countries following the G-20 summit, he announced in Prague that he intended to negotiate substantial reduction in the world's nuclear arsenals, en route to their eventual extinction. In October 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Transition period

The presidential transition period began following Obama's election to the presidency on November 4, 2008. The Obama-Biden Transition Project was co-chaired by John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse. During the transition period, Obama announced his nominations for his Cabinet and administration. Shortly after the election on November 4, Obama chose Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois as White House Chief of Staff.

Cabinet nominations included former Democratic primary opponents Hillary Rodham Clinton for Secretary of State and Bill Richardson for Secretary of Commerce (although the latter withdrew on January 4, 2009). Obama appointed Eric Holder as his Attorney General, the first African-American appointed to that position. He also nominated Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. On December 1, Obama announced that he had asked Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense, making Gates the first Defense head to carry over from a president of a different party. He nominated former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, which he restored to a Cabinet-level position.

During his transition, he maintained a website Change.gov, on which he wrote blogs to readers and uploaded video addresses by many of the members of his new cabinet. He announced strict rules for federal lobbyists, restricting them from financially contributing to his administration and forcing them to stop lobbying while working for him. The website also allowed individuals to share stories and visions with each other and the transition team in what was called the Citizen's Briefing Book, which was given to Obama shortly after his inauguration. Most of the information from Change.gov was transferred to the official White House website whitehouse.gov just after Obama's inauguration.

Inauguration

Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. He officially assumed the presidency at 12:00 noon, EST, and completed the oath of office at 12:05 PM, EST. He delivered his inaugural address immediately following his oath. After his speech, he went to the President's Room in the House Wing of the Capitol and signed three documents: a commemorative proclamation, a list of Cabinet appointments, and a list of sub-Cabinet appointments, before attending a luncheon with congressional and administration leaders and invited guests. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of former President Abraham Lincoln, the same Bible that was used for Lincoln's inauguration was used in Obama's inauguration.

In administering the oath, Chief Justice John G. Roberts misplaced the word "faithfully" and erroneously replaced the phrase "President of the United States" with "President to the United States" before restating the phrase correctly; since Obama initially repeated the incorrect form, some scholars argued the President should take the oath again. On January 21, Roberts readministered the oath to Obama in a private ceremony in the White House Map Room, making him the seventh U.S. president to retake the oath; White House Counsel Greg Craig said Obama took the oath from Roberts a second time out of an "abundance of caution".

First 100 days

Expectations

Obama's 100th day in office was April 29, 2009. In his first post-election interview with ''60 Minutes'', Obama said that he has been studying Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days, while adding, "The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference."

Obama's first 100 days were highly anticipated ever since he became the presumptive nominee. Several news outlets created web pages dedicated to covering the subject. Commentators weighed in on challenges and priorities within domestic, foreign, economic, and environmental policy. CNN lists a number of economic issues that "Obama and his team will have to tackle in their first 100 days", foremost among which is passing and implementing a recovery package to deal with the financial crisis. Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer, expressed hopes that the new president will close Guantanamo Bay detention camp in his first 100 days in office. After aides of the president announced his intention to give a major foreign policy speech in the capital of an Islamic country, there were speculations in Jakarta that he might return to his former home city within the first 100 days.

''The New York Times'' devoted a five-part series, which was spread out over two weeks, to anticipatory analysis of Obama's first hundred days. Each day, the analysis of a political expert was followed by freely edited blog postings from readers. The writers compared Obama's prospects with the situations of Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 16, Jean Edward Smith), John F. Kennedy (January 19, Richard Reeves), Lyndon B. Johnson (January 23, Robert Dallek), Ronald Reagan (January 27, Lou Cannon), and Richard Nixon.

Legislation and executive orders

Within minutes of taking the Oath of Office on January 20, Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, issued an order suspending last-minute federal regulations pushed through by outgoing President George W. Bush, planning to review everything still pending. Due to the economic crisis, the President enacted a pay freeze for Senior White House Staff making more than $100,000 per year, as well as announcing stricter guidelines regarding lobbyists in an effort to raise the ethical standards of the White House. He asked for a waiver to his own new rules, however, for the appointments of William Lynn to the position of Deputy Defense Secretary, Jocelyn Frye to the position of director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, and Cecilia Muñoz to the position of director of intergovernmental affairs in the executive office of the president, leading to some criticism of hypocrisy and violation of his pledge for governmental openness.

In his first week in office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492 suspending all the ongoing proceedings of Guantanamo military commission and ordering the detention facility to be shut down within the year. He also signed Executive Order 13491 - Ensuring Lawful Interrogations requiring the Army Field Manual to be used as a guide for terror interrogations, banning torture and other coercive techniques, such as waterboarding. Obama also issued an executive order entitled "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel", setting stricter limitations on incoming executive branch employees and placing tighter restrictions on lobbying in the White House. Obama signed two Presidential Memoranda concerning energy independence, ordering the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards before 2011 models are released and allowing states to raise their emissions standards above the national standard. He also ended the Mexico City Policy, which banned federal grants to international groups that provide abortion services or counseling.

In his first week he also established a policy of producing a weekly Saturday morning video address available on whitehouse.gov and YouTube, much like those released during his transition period. The first address had been viewed by 600,000 YouTube viewers by the next afternoon.

The first piece of legislation Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 on January 29, which revised the statute of limitations for filing pay discrimination lawsuits. Lilly Ledbetter joined Obama and his wife, Michelle, as he signed the bill, fulfilling his campaign pledge to nullify ''Ledbetter v. Goodyear''. On February 3, he signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIP), expanding health care from 7 million children under the plan to 11 million.

| format = Ogg | type = speech }} After much debate, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed by both the House and Senate on February 13, 2009. Originally intended to be a bipartisan bill, the passage of the bill was largely along party lines. No Republicans voted for it in the House, and three moderate Republicans voted for it in the Senate (Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania). The bill combined tax breaks with spending on infrastructure projects, extension of welfare benefits, and education. The final cost of the bill was $787 billion, and almost $1.2 trillion with debt service included. Obama signed the Act into law on February 17, 2009, in Denver, Colorado.

On March 9, 2009, Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and in doing so, called into question some of George W. Bush's signing statements. Obama stated that he too would employ signing statements if he deems upon review that a portion of a bill is unconstitutional, and he has issued several signing statements.

Early in his presidency, Obama signed a law raising the tobacco tax 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes. The tax is to be "used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children", and "help some [smokers] to quit and persuade young people not to start".

In October 2011, Obama instituted the We Can't Wait program, which involved using executive orders, administrative rulemaking, and recess appointments to institute policies without the support of Congress. The initiative was developed in response to Congress's unwillingness to pass economic legislation proposed by Obama, and conflicts in Congress during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis.

Approval ratings and opinion

2009

After his transition period, Obama entered office with an approval rating of 82%. At the end of his first week, 68% of respondents in a Gallup poll approved of how Obama was handling his job, matching the early approval ratings of Dwight D. Eisenhower and trailing only John F. Kennedy in post-World War II presidents.

Throughout early February polls showed scattered approval ratings: 62% (CBS News), 64% (USA Today/Gallup), 66% (Gallup), and 76% in an outlier poll (CNN/Opinion Research). Gallup reported the congressional address in late February boosted his approval from a term-low of 59% to 67%.

Throughout autumn 2009, Rasmussen estimated Obama's approval as fluctuating between 45% and 52% and his disapproval between 48% and 54%; as of November 11, Pew Research estimated Obama's approval between 51% and 55% and his disapproval between 33% and 37% since July.

Handling of the economy

Rasmussen reported in mid-February 2009, that 55% of voters gave Obama good or excellent marks on his handling of the economy. In early March, a ''The Wall Street Journal'' survey of 49 economists gave Obama an average grade of 59 out of 100, with 42% of the respondents surveyed giving the administration's economic policies a grade below 60 percent. In comparison, only 30% of those same economists considered the response of governments around the world to the global recession to have been adequate. In April, a Gallup poll showed trust in Obama's economic policy with 71% saying they had "a fair amount" or "a great deal" of confidence in Obama's handling of the economy, higher than for Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, or leaders of Congress. Another Gallup poll in June showed 55% of Americans approved Obama's overall handling of the economy, but 48% and 51% disapproved of his handling of the federal budget deficit and controlling federal spending, respectively. A CBS News poll taken August 27–31 showed 53% of those polled approved of his handling of the economy. A Rasmussen poll taken on November 12 found 45% of Americans rating Obama's handling of the economy as poor and 39% rating him as doing a good or excellent job. They found 72% of Democrats rated his handling of the economy as good or excellent, while only 10% of Republicans and 27% of voters not affiliated with either party agreed.

2010

On March 25, 2010, following his signing of landmark health care reform legislation into law, Obama's polling was revealed by Bloomberg to be 50%, with higher marks for relations with other countries (58%) and his running of the war in Afghanistan (54%). "Obama's approval rating is roughly equal to what Bill Clinton had at this point in his presidency, according to data maintained by Gallup (and) higher than the 45 percent Ronald Reagan recorded in April 1982" and more favorable than Democrats or Republicans office in 2010. They found Obama's approval rating was at 85% among Democrats, compared with 46% among independents and 11% among Republicans.

Fox News released the results of two polls on April 8–9, 2010. The first showed a drop in Obama's approval rating to 43%, with 48% disapproving. In that poll, Democrats approved of Obama's performance 80–12%, while independents disapproved 49–38%. The other poll, which concentrated on the economy, showed disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy by a 53–42% margin, with 62% saying they were dissatisfied with the handling of the federal deficit. According to a Gallup Poll released April 10, 2010, President Obama had a 45% approval rating, with 48% disapproving. In a poll from Rasmussen Reports, released April 10, 2010, 47% approved of the President's performance, while 53% disapproved.

2011

Obama's approval rating jumped to a high following the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. A GfK poll conducted May 5, 2011 found his approval rating to be 60%. During the debt ceiling debate in August 2011, Obama's approval rating dropped to the low-40s.

Major legislation

2009

January 29: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

February 4: Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act

February 11: DTV Delay Act

February 17: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

March 30: Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009

April 21: Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

May 20: Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

May 20: Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009

May 22: Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009

June 22: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

August 6: Cash For Clunkers Extension Act

October 22: Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act

October 28: Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

October 28: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010

October 30: Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act

November 6: Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009

2010

January 27: Emergency Aid to American Survivors of Haiti Earthquake Act

March 4: Travel Promotion Act

March 18: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE Act)

March 23: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

March 30: Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

May 5: Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010

May 17: Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act

July 1: Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act

July 21: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

July 22: Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010

July 22: Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010

August 10: SPEECH Act of 2010

September 27: Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010

December 9: Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010

December 13: Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

December 17: Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010

December 22: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

2011

January 2: James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 () January 4: Food Safety and Modernization Act, ,

January 7: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011

August 2: Budget Control Act of 2011

December 31: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Personnel

Cabinet appointees

Twenty-two members of the Obama administration are either in the United States Cabinet (15) or are in positions considered to be Cabinet-level (7). The members of the Cabinet are the heads of the fifteen major departments (State, Defense, Justice, etc.), and the seven cabinet-level positions are the Vice President, White House Chief of Staff, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador to the United Nations, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Since Robert Gates was a member of the previous administration, his letter of resignation (a formality at the end of a President's term) was simply not accepted, and he did not need confirmation. On January 19, 2009, Senate Democratic leaders requested fifteen of the twenty positions to be ratified by unanimous consent, and seven gained unanimous confirmation by voice vote the next day: Ken Salazar, Steven Chu, Arne Duncan, Peter Orszag, Eric Shinseki, Tom Vilsack, and Janet Napolitano. On January 21, Obama presided over the swearing in of the seven unanimous nominees. Later that day, the Senate confirmed Hillary Clinton by a 94–2 vote. On January 22, several more confirmations were approved unanimously: Susan E. Rice, Ray LaHood, Lisa P. Jackson, and Shaun Donovan. On January 26, the Senate confirmed Geithner by a 60–34 margin.

At the conclusion of Obama's first week as President, Hilda Solis, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, and Eric Holder had yet to be confirmed, and there had been no second appointment for Secretary of Commerce. Holder was confirmed by a vote of 75–21 on February 2, and on February 3, Obama announced Senator Judd Gregg as his second nomination for Secretary of Commerce. Daschle withdrew later that day amid controversy over his failure to pay income taxes and potential conflicts of interest related to the speaking fees he accepted from health care interests. Solis was later confirmed by a vote of 80-17 on February 24, and Ron Kirk was confirmed on March 18 by a 92-5 vote in the Senate.

Gregg, who was the leading Republican negotiator and author of the TARP program in the Senate, after publication that he had a multi-million dollar investment in the Bank of America, on February 12, withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Commerce, citing "irresolvable conflicts" with President Obama and his staff over how to conduct the 2010 census and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Former Washington governor Gary Locke was nominated on February 26 as Obama's third choice for Commerce Secretary and confirmed on March 24 by voice vote.

On March 2, Obama introduced Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as his second choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He also introduced Nancy-Ann DeParle as head of the new White House Office of Health Reform, which he suggested would work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services. At the end of March, Sebelius was the only remaining Cabinet member yet to be confirmed.

Six high-ranking cabinet nominees in the Obama administration had their confirmations delayed or rejected among reports that they did not pay all of their taxes, including Tom Daschle, Obama's original nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Though Geithner was confirmed, and Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, thought Daschle would have been confirmed, Daschle withdrew his nomination on February 3. Obama had nominated Nancy Killefer for the position of Chief Performance Officer, but Killefer also withdrew on February 3, citing unspecified problems with District of Columbia unemployment tax. A senior administration official said that Killefer's tax issues dealt with household help. Hilda Solis, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor, faced delayed confirmation hearings due to tax lien concerns pertaining to her husband's auto repair business, but she was later confirmed on February 24. While pundits puzzled over U.S. Trade Representative-designate Ron Kirk's failure to be confirmed by March 2009, it was reported on March 2 that Kirk owed over $10,000 in back taxes. Kirk agreed to pay them in exchange for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's aid in speeding up the confirmation process; he was later confirmed on March 18. On March 31, Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, revealed in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that her Certified Public Accountant found errors in her tax returns for years 2005-2007. She, along with her husband, paid more than $7,000 in back taxes, along with $878 in interest.

Notable non-Cabinet positions

Appointees serve at the pleasure of the President and were nominated by Barack Obama except as noted.

Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

*Sheila Bair¹ (2009–2011)

Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

*Richard Holbrooke (2009–2010)

*Marc Grossman (2011–present)

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

* Retired General James L. Jones (2009–2011)

* Thomas E. Donilon (2011–present)

Special envoy to the Middle East

* George J. Mitchell (2009–2011)

* David Hale (2011–present)

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

* Robert Mueller² (2009–present)

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

* Leon Panetta (2009–2011)

* Michael Morell (Acting-2011)

* David Petraeus (2011–present)

Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

* Christina Romer (2009–2010)

* Austan Goolsbee (2010–2011)

* Alan Krueger (2011–present)

Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission

* Mary Schapiro (2009–present)

Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of National Economic Council

* Lawrence Summers (2009–2010)

* Gene Sperling (2011–present)

Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board

* Paul Volcker (2009–2011)

* ''Replaced by Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in 2011''

Chairperson of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

* Jeffrey R. Immelt (2011–present)

¹Appointed by George W. Bush in 2006 to a five-year term ²Appointed by George W. Bush in 2001 to a ten-year term

Judicial nominees

United States Supreme Court

Obama appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Sonia Sotomayor 2009 Elena Kagan 2010

Other courts

Outside of the Supreme Court, by October 2009, Obama had nominated fewer than two dozen judges to fill judicial vacancies, of which there were close to 100. This has prompted some Democrats to criticize the pace of Obama's judicial appointments as too slow. In December 2009, Senator Patrick Leahy criticized Republicans for stalling those judicial nominations that had been made, noting that the Senate confirmed more district and circuit court nominees during the first year of the George W. Bush administration than it had approved by that point during the Barack Obama presidency.

As of July 2010, Obama's nominees to the district and circuit courts had been confirmed at a rate of only 43.5 percent, compared to 87.2 percent during Bill Clinton's administration and 91.3 percent for George W. Bush. The Center for American Progress, which compiled the data, commented:

Judicial confirmations slowed to a trickle on the day President Barack Obama took office. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule. Uncontroversial nominees wait months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees—low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past—are routinely filibustered into oblivion. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee.

Policies

Economy

Upon entering office, Obama planned to center his attention on handling the global financial crisis. Even before his inauguration he lobbied Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, which became the top priority during his first month in office. As President, Obama made a high profile trip to Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. to dialog with Congressional Republicans and advocate for the bill. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion plan that included spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. The tax provisions of the law reduced taxes for 98 per cent of taxpayers, bringing tax rates to their lowest levels in 60 years.

As part of the 2010 budget proposal, the Obama administration has proposed additional measures to attempt to stabilize the economy, including a $2–3 trillion measure aimed at stabilizing the financial system and freeing up credit. The program includes up to $1 trillion to buy toxic bank assets, an additional $1 trillion to expand a federal consumer loan program, and the $350 billion left in the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The plan also includes $50 billion intended to slow the wave of mortgage foreclosures. The 2011 budget includes a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, proposes several program cancellations, and raises taxes on high income earners to bring down deficits during the economic recovery.

In a July 2009 interview with ABC News, Biden was asked about the sustained increase of the U.S. unemployment rate from May 2007 to October 2009 despite the administration's multi-year economic stimulus package passed five months earlier. He responded "The truth is, we and everyone else, misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there ... the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited." The White House indicates that 2 million jobs were created or saved due to the stimulus package in 2009 and self reporting by recipients of the grants, loans, and contracts portion of the package report that the package saved or created 608,317 jobs in the final three months of 2009.

The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.1% and averaging 10.0% in the fourth quarter. Following a decrease to 9.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6% in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year. Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8%, which was less than the average of 1.9% experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries. GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a 1.6% pace, followed by a 5.0% increase in the fourth quarter. Growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7% in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year. Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9% in 2010.

During November–December 2010, Obama and a lame duck session of the 111th Congress focused on a dispute about the temporary Bush tax cuts, which were due to expire at the end of the year. Obama wanted to extend the tax cuts for taxpayers making less than $250,000 a year. Congressional Republicans agreed but also wanted to extend the tax cuts for those making over that amount, and refused to support any bill that did not do so. All the Republicans in the Senate also joined in saying that, until the tax dispute was resolved, they would filibuster to prevent consideration of any other legislation, except for bills to fund the U.S. government. On 7 December, Obama strongly defended a compromise agreement he had reached with the Republican congressional leadership that included a two-year extension of all the tax cuts, a 13-month extension of unemployment insurance, a one-year reduction in the FICA payroll tax, and other measures. On December 10, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a filibuster against the compromise tax proposal, which lasted over eight hours. Obama persuaded many wary Democrats to support the bill, but not all; of the 148 votes against the bill in the House, 112 were cast by Democrats and only 36 by Republicans. The $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which ''The Washington Post'' called "the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade", passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and was signed into law by Obama on December 17, 2010.

Ethics

Lobbying reform

Early in his presidential campaign, Obama stated that "they [lobbyists] won't find a job in my White House", but softened his stance later in the campaign. On January 21, 2009, Obama issued an executive order for all future appointees to his administration, which stated, no appointee who was a registered lobbyist within the two years before his appointment could participate on matters in which he lobbied for a period of two years after the date of appointment. Three formal waivers were initially issued in early 2009, out of 800 executive appointments: to William J. Lynn III, a lobbyist for Raytheon, to hold the position of Deputy Secretary of Defense; to Jocelyn Frye, former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families, to serve as Director of Policy and Projects in the Office of the First Lady; and to Cecilia Muñoz, former senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, to serve as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Executive Office of the President. As of March 21, 2009, at least thirty officials appointed by Obama had been lobbyists in the past five years. Ten additional waivers were announced in September 2009.

Not all recent former lobbyists require waivers; those without waivers write letters of recusal stating issues from which they must refrain because of their previous jobs. ''USA Today'' reported that 21 members of the Obama administration have at some time been registered as federal lobbyists, although most have not within the previous two years. Lobbyists in the administration include William Corr, an anti-tobacco lobbyist, as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tom Vilsack, who lobbied in 2007, for a national teachers union, as Secretary of Agriculture. Also, the Secretary of Labor nominee, Hilda Solis, formerly served as a board member of American Rights at Work, which lobbied Congress on two bills Solis co-sponsored, and Mark Patterson, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have criticized the administration, claiming that Obama is retreating from his own ethics rules barring lobbyists from working on the issues about which they lobbied during the previous two years by issuing waivers. According to Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, "It makes it appear that they are saying one thing and doing another."

Transparency

The Obama administration has said that all executive orders, non-emergency legislation, and proclamations will be posted to the official White House website, whitehouse.gov, allowing the public to review and comment for five days before the President signs the legislation. The pledge was twice broken during Obama's first month in office when he signed SCHIP legislation and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act with less than the full five days of "sunlight before signing". The administration has said that they are still "working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar".

During his first week in office, Obama announced plans to post a video address each week on the site, and on YouTube, informing the public of government actions each week. During his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama stated, "I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy."

On January 21, 2009, by executive order, Obama revoked Executive Order 13233, which had limited access to the records of former United States Presidents. Obama issued instructions to all agencies and departments in his administration to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests. In April 2009, the United States Department of Justice released four legal memos from the Bush administration to comply voluntarily with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The memos were written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, then Principal Assistant Attorneys General to the Department of Justice, and addressed to John A. Rizzo, general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The memos describe in detail controversial interrogation methods the CIA used on prisoners suspected of terrorism. Obama became personally involved in the decision to release the memos, which was opposed by former CIA directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch. Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized Obama for not releasing more memos; Cheney claimed that unreleased memos detail successes of CIA interrogations.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requires all recipients of the funds provided by the act to publish a plan for using the funds, along with purpose, cost, rationale, net job creation, and contact information about the plan to a website Recovery.gov so that the public can review and comment. Inspectors General from each department or executive agency will then review, as appropriate, any concerns raised by the public. Any findings of an Inspector General must be relayed immediately to the head of each department and published on Recovery.gov.

On June 16, 2009, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration in order to get information about the visits of coal company executives. Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for CREW, stated "The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration... I don't see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency." On June 16, MSNBC reported that its more comprehensive request for visitor logs since Obama's January 20 inauguration had been denied. The administration announced that White House visitor logs will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis, with certain limitations, for visits occurring after September 15, 2009. Beginning on January 29, 2010, the White House did begin to release the names of its visitor records. Since that time, names of visitors (which includes not only tourists, but also names of union leaders, Wall Street executives, lobbyists, party chairs, philanthropists and celebrities), have been released. The names are released in huge batches up to 75,000 names at a time. Names are released 90–120 days after having visited the White House. The complete list of names is available online by accessing the official White House website.

Obama stated during the 2008 Presidential campaign that he would have negotiations for health care reform televised on C-SPAN, citing transparency as being the leverage needed to ensure that people stay involved in the process taking place in Washington. This did not fully happen and Politifact gives President Obama a "Promise Broken" rating on this issue. After White House press secretary Robert Gibbs initially avoided addressing the issue, President Obama himself acknowledged that he met with Democratic leaders behind closed doors to discuss how best to garner enough votes in order to merge the two (House and Senate) passed versions of the health care bill. Doing this violated the letter of the pledge, although Obama maintains that negotiations in several congressional committees were open, televised hearings. Obama also cited an independent ethics watchdog group describe his administration as the most transparent in recent history.

The Obama administration has been characterized as much more aggressive than the Bush and other previous administrations in their response to whistleblowing and leaks to the press. Three people have been prosecuted under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. They include Thomas Andrews Drake, a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee who was critical of the NSA's Trailblazer Project, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor who allegedly had a conversation about North Korea with James Rosen of Fox News, and Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly was a source for James Risen's book State of War. Risen has also been subpoenaed to reveal his sources, another rare action by the government.

Foreign policy

In his inaugural address, Obama suggested that he plans to begin the process of withdrawing from Iraq and continuing to focus on the war in Afghanistan. He also mentioned lessening the nuclear threat through "working tirelessly with old friends and former foes". He spoke about America's determination to combat terrorism, proclaiming America's spirit is "stronger and cannot be broken — you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." To the Muslim world, Obama extended an invite to "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect". He also said the USA would "extend a hand" to those "who cling to power through corruption and deceit" if they "are willing to unclench" their fists. Shortly after his inauguration President Obama first called President Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Calls were also made to President Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East peace and Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan on January 23, 2009. At the same time, Obama called on Israel to open the borders of Gaza, detailing early plans on his administration's peace plans for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On February 18, 2009, Obama announced that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan would be bolstered by 17,000 new troops by summer. The announcement followed the recommendation of several experts including Defense Secretary Robert Gates that additional troops be deployed to the war-torn nation.

Obama declared his plan for ending the Iraq War on February 27, 2009, in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, before an audience of Marines stationed there. According to the president, combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, leaving a contingent of up to 50,000 servicemen and servicewomen to continue training, advisory, and counterterrorism operations until as late as the end of 2011.

Other characteristics of the Obama administration on foreign policy include a tough stance on tax havens, continuing military operation in Pakistan, and avowed focus on diplomacy to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.

On April 1, 2009, Obama and China's President, Hu Jintao, announced the establishment of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century.

In that same month, Obama requested that Congress approve $83.4 billion of supplemental military funding, mostly for the war in Iraq and to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The request also includes $2.2 billion to increase the size of the US military, $350 million to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border, and $400 million in counterinsurgency aid for Pakistan.

In May 2009, it was reported that Obama plans to expand the military by 20,000 employees.

On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt. The wide ranging speech called for a "new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States. The speech received both praise and criticism from leaders in the region. In March 2010, Secretary of State Clinton criticized the Israeli government for approving expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem.

On April 8, 2010, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a "major" nuclear arms control agreement that reduces the nuclear weapons stockpiles of both countries.

In March 2011, international reaction to Muammar Gaddafi's military crackdown on rebel forces and civilians in Libya culminated in a United Nations resolution to enforce a no fly zone in Libya. Obama authorized U.S. forces to participate in international air attacks on Libyan air defenses using Tomahawk cruise missiles to establish the protective zone.

Guantánamo Bay detention camp

On his first day in office, Obama requested a 120-day suspension of all trials for alleged terrorists held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, so the new administration could "review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases pending before military commissions , specifically". Another order established a task force to lead a review of detention policies, procedures and individual cases. Obama addressed the State Department that "the United States will not torture" and drafted an executive order to close Guantánamo within a year. On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order ensuring safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals detained in armed conflicts. This order restricts interrogators to methods listed and authorized by an Army Field Manual. A detainee released since Obama took office claimed in an interview with Agence France-Presse that conditions at Guantánamo had worsened, stating guards wanted to "take their last revenge" before the facility is closed. On March 13, 2009, the administration announced that it would no longer refer to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay as enemy combatants, but it also asserted that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges.

The case review of detainee files by administration officials and prosecutors was made more difficult than expected as the Bush administration had failed to establish a coherent repository of the evidence and intelligence on each prisoner. By September 2009, prosecutors recommended to the Justice Department which detainees are eligible for trial, and the Justice Department and the Pentagon worked together to determine which of several now-scheduled trials will go forward in military tribunals and which in civilian courts. While 216 international terrorists are already held in maximum security prisons in the U.S., Congress was denying the administration funds to shut down the camp and adapt existing facilities elsewhere, arguing that the decision was "too dangerous to rush". In November, Obama stated that the U.S. would miss the January 2010 date for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison as he had ordered, acknowledging that he "knew this was going to be hard". Obama did not set a specific new deadline for closing the camp, citing that the delay was due to politics and lack of congressional cooperation. The state of Illinois has offered to sell to the federal government the Thomson Correctional Center, a new but largely unused prison, for the purpose of housing detainees. Federal officials testified at a December 23 hearing that if the state commission approves the sale for that purpose, it could take more than six months to ready the facility.

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Starting with information received in July 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to Obama in March 2011. Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on May 1, 2011, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers and computer drives and disks from the compound. Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing, and buried at sea several hours later. Within minutes of Obama's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on May 1, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square. Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and from many countries around the world.

Overseas Contingency Operation

Obama discontinued use of the term "War on Terror" and instead uses the term "Overseas Contingency Operation". However, Obama has stated that the U.S. is at war with Al-Qaeda, saying "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."

In April 2010, the Obama administration took the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

Gun control

During the presidential campaign, Obama announced that he favors measures that respect Second Amendment rights, while at the same time keeping guns away from children and criminals. On February 25, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would seek a new assault weapons ban across the United States, saying that it would have a positive impact on the drug-related violence in Mexico. After the statement drew criticism from the NRA and some House Democrats, the Administration reportedly ordered the Justice Department to end public discussion of the issue. Obama has signed into law two bills containing amendments reducing restrictions on gun owners, one which permits guns to be transported in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and another which allows carrying loaded firearms in national parks located in states allowing concealed carry.

Science and technology

Cybersecurity

Obama initiated a 60-day review of cybersecurity by Melissa Hathaway, a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, appointed Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace.

''The New York Times'' reported in 2009, that the NSA is intercepting communications of American citizens including a Congressman, although the Justice Department believed that the NSA had corrected its errors. United States Attorney General Eric Holder resumed the wiretapping according to his understanding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 that Congress passed in July 2008, but without explaining what had occurred.

Environment

On January 27, 2009, Obama issued two presidential memoranda concerning energy policy. One directed the Department of Transportation to raise fuel efficiency standards incrementally to by 2020, and the other directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow individual states to set stricter tailpipe emissions regulations than the federal standard.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $54 billion in funds to double domestic renewable energy production, renovate federal buildings making them more energy-efficient, improve the nation's electricity grid, repair public housing, and weatherize modest-income homes.

On February 10, 2009, Obama overturned a Bush administration policy that had opened up a five-year period of offshore drilling for oil and gas near both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been quoted as saying, "To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside" the plan "and create our own timeline".

On May 19, 2009, Obama announced a plan to increase the CAFE national standards for gasoline mileage, by creating a single new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016, than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon. Environmental advocates and industry officials welcomed the new program, but for different reasons. Environmentalists called it a long-overdue tightening of emissions and fuel economy standards after decades of government delay and industry opposition. Auto industry officials said it would provide the single national efficiency standard they have long desired, a reasonable timetable to meet it and the certainty they need to proceed with product development plans.

On March 30, 2010, Obama partially reinstated Bush administration proposals to open certain offshore areas along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling. The proposals had earlier been set aside by President Obama after they were challenged in court on environmental grounds.

On May 27, 2010, Obama extended a moratorium on offshore drilling permits after the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill which is considered to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Although BP took responsibility for the disaster and its ongoing after effects, Obama began a federal investigation along with forming a bipartisan commission to review the incident and methods to avoid it in the future. Obama visited the Gulf Coast on May 2 and May 28 and expressed his frustration on the June 8 ''NBC Today Show'', by saying "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick." Obama's response to the disaster has drawn confusion and criticism within segments of the media and public.

NASA

Obama set up the Augustine panel to review the Constellation program in 2009, and announced in February 2010, that he was cutting the program from the 2011 United States federal budget, describing it as "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." After the decision drew criticism in the United States, a new "Flexible path to Mars" plan was unveiled at a space conference in April 2010. It included new technology programs, increased R&D; spending, a focus on the International Space Station and contracting out flying crew to space to commercial providers. The new plan also increased NASA's 2011 budget to $19 billion from $18.3 billion in 2010.

In July 2009, Obama appointed Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to be administrator of NASA.

Stem cell research

On March 9, 2009, Obama repealed a Bush-era policy that prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund research on new lines of embryonic stem cells. Such research has been a matter of debate between those who emphasize the therapeutic potential of such research and those who suggest that elements of this research breach ethical limitations. Obama stated that "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values...In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research — and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

Social policy

On January 23, 2009, Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, a measure from the Reagan and Bush eras that required any non-governmental organization receiving U.S. Government funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries.

On June 17, 2009, Obama authorized the extension of some benefits (but not health insurance or pension benefits) to same-sex partners of federal employees. Obama has chosen to leave larger changes, such as the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, to Congress.

On October 19, 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a directive to federal prosecutors in states with medical marijuana laws not to investigate or prosecute cases of marijuana use or production done in compliance with those laws.

On December 16, 2009, President Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, which repealed a 21-year-old ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs.

On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, a bill that provides for repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993, that has prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces. Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" had been a key campaign promise that Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Health care reform

Once the stimulus bill was enacted, health care reform became Obama's top domestic priority. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,000 page plan for overhauling the US health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of the year.

The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the ten-year cost to the federal government of the major insurance-related provisions of the bill at approximately $1.0 trillion. In mid-July 2009, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the CBO, testified that the proposals under consideration would significantly increase federal spending and did not include the "fundamental changes" needed to control the rapid growth in health care spending. However after reviewing the final version of the bill introduced after 14 months of debate the CBO estimated that it would reduce federal budget deficits by $143 billion over 10 years and by more than a trillion in the next decade.

After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over his administration's proposals. In March 2010, Obama gave several speeches across the country to argue for the passage of health care reform. On March 21, 2010, after Obama announced an executive order reinforcing the current law against spending federal funds for elective abortion services, the House, by a vote of 219 to 212, passed the version of the bill previously passed on December 24, 2009, by a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. The bill, which includes over 200 Republican amendments, was passed without a single Republican vote. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law. Immediately following the bill's passage, the House voted in favor of a reconciliation measure to make significant changes and corrections to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by both houses with two minor alterations on March 25, 2010, and signed into law on March 30, 2010.

Education reform

On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which ended the role of private banks in lending out federally-insured student loans. By directly lending to students, the government is projected to save taxpayers $68 billion dollars over the next several years. Federally-insured student loans will instead be distributed by the Department of Education. The law also increased the amount of Pell Grant awards given each year, doubling its current funding. Starting in 2014, the law permits borrowers to cap the amount they spend on student loans each year to ten percent of their discretionary income and have their balance forgiven if they have faithfully paid the balance of their loan over 20 years. Additionally, the law seeks to make it easier for parents to qualify for Grad PLUS loans, and spends billions on poor and minority schools and $2 billion for community colleges.

Gates arrest controversy

On July 16, 2009, prominent African American Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home by a local white police officer, Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, for disorderly conduct. Gates, who was locked out of his house, had attempted to break into his own property, thus causing the initial alarm from a neighbor who called 9-1-1. The incident sparked national controversy over whether Gates's civil rights had been violated by Crowley. On July 21, the Cambridge Police Department dropped charges against Gates. On July 22, President Barack Obama, commented on the incident over national and international television, criticized the arrest, and stated the police acted "stupidly" in handling the incident. National law enforcement organizations and members objected to Obama's comments and criticized his handling of the issue. In the aftermath, Obama stated that he regretted his comments exacerbating the situation, and hoped that the situation could become a "teachable moment". To reduce tensions, on July 24, Obama invited both parties to the White House to discuss the issue over beers, and on July 30, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden joined Crowley and Gates in a private, cordial meeting in a courtyard near the White House Rose Garden; this became known colloquially as the "Beer Summit".

Wall Street reform

On July 21, 2010, Obama signed Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, considered to be the largest financial system overhaul since the New Deal. The law recognizes complex financial derivatives and makes rules to protect consumers from unfair practices in loans and credit cards by establishing a new consumer protection agency. At the signing ceremony in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. Obama proclaimed, "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period." Obama also mentioned that "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history." At the ceremony were Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the two committee chairmen who sponsored the bill.

2010 midterm elections

Due in large part to voter frustration over high unemployment and a stalled economy, Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. On reflection after the election, Obama blamed himself, in part, for the many Democrats who went down to defeat knowing that they had risked their careers to support his agenda of economic stimulus legislation and a landmark health care bill. Democrats narrowly retained the Senate majority and will continue to control it through the 112th Congress.

Obama called the elections "humbling" and a "shellacking". He said that the results came because not enough Americans had felt the effects of the economic recovery.

2012 re-election campaign

On April 4, 2011, President Obama announced that he would seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election. The campaign will be based in Chicago and is being run by many former members of the White House staff and members of the successful 2008 campaign.

References

External links

"Obama's People" (photography: Nadav Kander)

The Official White House YouTube page

"President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address". The White House.

"Wrapping Up Open for Questions". The White House.

"President Obama's State of the Union Address" C-SPAN.

Obama, Barack

cs:Vláda Baracka Obamy es:Administración Obama fr:Présidence de Barack Obama ko:버락 오바마 행정부 sw:Urais wa Barack Obama no:Barack Obamas regjering ru:Президентство Барака Обамы sv:Obamas kabinett th:การดำรงตำแหน่งประธานาธิบดีของบารัก โอบามา

Coordinates	50°5′″N21°27′″N
{{infobox senator | name	Lindsey Graham
jr/sr	Senior Senator
state	South Carolina
party	Republican
term start	January 3, 2003
alongside	Jim DeMint
preceded	Strom Thurmond
succeeded	Incumbent
state2	South Carolina
district2	3rd
term start2	January 3, 1995
term end2	January 3, 2003
preceded2	Butler Derrick
succeeded2	J. Gresham Barrett
birth date	July 09, 1955
birth place	Central, South Carolina
occupation	Attorney
residence	Seneca, South Carolina
alma mater	University of South Carolina (B.A., J.D.)
religion	Southern Baptist
website	Senator Lindsey Graham
Branch	United States Air Force
Serviceyears	1982 – 1988 (active)1988 – present (reserve)
Rank	Colonel
Unit	Judge Advocate General's Corps
Battles	Gulf WarIraq WarWar in Afghanistan
Awards	}}

Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is the senior U.S. Senator from South Carolina and a member of the Republican Party. Previously he served as the U.S. Representative for .

Early life, education and career

Graham was born in Central, South Carolina, where his parents, Millie and Florence James Graham, ran a liquor store, the Sanitary Cafe. After graduating from D. W. Daniel High School, Graham became the first member of his family to attend college and joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. When he was 21 his mother died, and his father died 15 months later. Because his sister was left orphaned, the service allowed Graham to attend University of South Carolina in Columbia so he could be near home and care for his sister, whom he adopted. During his studies, he became a member of the fraternity Pi Kappa Phi.

Graham graduated from the University of South Carolina with a B.A. in Psychology in 1977 and from the University of South Carolina School of Law with a J.D. in 1981. Upon graduating, Graham was sent to Europe as a military prosecutor, and eventually entered private practice as a lawyer.

Military service

Graham decided to join the United States Air Force in 1982, and served on active duty until 1988. Following his departure he stayed in the military, joining the South Carolina Air National Guard and the U.S. Air Force Reserve. During the Gulf War, he was recalled to active duty, serving as a Judge Advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Station in Eastover, South Carolina, where he helped brief departing pilots on the laws of war.

In 2004, Graham received a promotion to Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves at a White House ceremony officiated by President George W. Bush.

Graham served in Iraq as a reservist on active duty for short periods during April and two weeks in August 2007, where he worked on detainee and rule-of-law issues. He also served in Afghanistan during the August 2009 Senate recess.

Through 2010, Graham served as a senior instructor for the Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Air Force.

South Carolina House of Representatives

In 1992, Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from a district in Oconee County, and served one term.

U.S. House of Representatives

Committee assignments

During his service in the House, Graham served on the following committees:

Committee on International Relations, 1995–1998

Committee on Education and the Workforce, 1995–2002

Committee on the Judiciary, 1997–2002

Committee on Armed Services, 1999–2002

In Congress, Graham became a member of the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Graham opposed some articles, but vigorously supported others. In January and February 1999, after two impeachment articles had been passed by the full House, he was one of the managers who brought the House's case to Clinton's trial in the Senate which did not convict Clinton.

U.S. Senate

Committee assignments

Committee on Armed Services

*Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities

*Subcommittee on Personnel (Ranking Member)

*Subcommittee on Strategic Forces

Committee on the Budget

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

*Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia

*Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration

*Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery (Ranking Member)

*Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight

Committee on the Judiciary

*Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts

*Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs (Ranking Member)

*Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law

*Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights

Committee on Veterans' Affairs

Special Committee on Aging

Previous assignments

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, 2003–2005

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, 2007–2009

Select Committee on Intelligence, 2007–2009

Caucus memberships

International Conservation Caucus

Senate National Guard Caucus (Co-Chair)

Sportsmen's Caucus

Graham is a member of the board of directors of the International Republican Institute.

Alito confirmation hearings

During the Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court, a question arose concerning Alito's membership in a Princeton University organization which some said was sexist and racist. Alito "deplored" racist comments made by the organization's founder. While Graham said that Alito may be saying this because he wanted the nomination, he concluded that he had no reason to believe that because "you seem to be a decent, honorable man." Alito's wife and sister characterized Graham's statements as supportive.

Political positions

Though Graham's stances are often politically conservative, he has gained a reputation for sometimes speaking out against or criticizing the party line, as well as being open to making economical decisions, such as was demonstrated with his support for bank bailouts. Graham notably supported John McCain's presidential bid in 2000, and served as national co-chairman of McCain's 2008 presidential bid.

Free speech

During an appearance on ''Face the Nation'' on April 3, 2011, Graham "suggested that Congress take unspecified though formal action against the Koran-burning by Florida preacher Terry Jones," in light of an attack on United Nations personnel triggered by Jones' actions. In asserting that "Congress might need to explore the need to limit some forms of freedom of speech," Graham argued that "Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war," and claimed that "during World War II, we had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy."

Gang of 14

On May 23, 2005, Graham was one of the Gang of 14 senators to forge a compromise that brought a halt to the continued blockage of an up or down vote on judicial nominees. This compromise negated both the Democrats' use of a filibuster and the Republican "nuclear option" as described in the media. Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and three conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate.

Detainee interrogations

In July 2005, Graham secured the declassification and release of memoranda outlining concerns made by senior military lawyers as early as 2003 about the legality of the interrogations of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

In response to this and a June 2004 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing detainees to file habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detentions, Graham authored an amendment to a Department of Defense Authorization Act attempting to clarify the authority of American courts which passed in November 2005 by a vote of 49-42 in the Senate despite opposition from human rights groups and legal scholars because of the lack of rights it provides detainees.

Graham has said he amended the Department of Defense Authorization Act in order to give military lawyers, as opposed to politically appointed lawyers, a more independent role in the oversight of military commanders. He has argued that two of the largest problems leading to the detainee abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were this lack of oversight and troops' confusion over legal boundaries.

Graham further explains that military lawyers had long observed the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention, but that those provisions had not been considered by the Bush administration in decisions regarding the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. He has claimed that better legal oversight within the military’s chain of command will prevent future detainee abuse.

The Graham amendment was itself amended by Democratic Senator Carl Levin so that it would not strip the courts of their jurisdiction in cases like ''Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'' that had already been granted cert; this compromise version passed by a vote of 84-14, though it did little to satisfy many critics of the original language. The Graham-Levin amendment, combined with Republican Senator John McCain's amendment banning torture, became known as the Detainee Treatment Act and attempted to limit interrogation techniques to those in the U.S. Army Field Manual of Interrogation. Verbal statements by Senators at the time of the amendment's passage indicated that Congress believed that Levin's changes would protect the courts' jurisdiction over cases like ''Hamdan'', though Levin and his cosponsor Kyl placed in the Congressional Record a statement indicating that there would be no change.

In February 2006, Graham joined Senator Jon Kyl in filing an amicus brief in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case that argued "Congress was aware" that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear "pending cases, including this case" brought by the Guantanamo detainees.

In a May 2009 CNN interview, Graham referred to the domestic internment of German and Japanese prisoners of war and US Citizens as a model for domestic detention of Guantanamo detainees by saying, "We had 450,000 Japanese and German prisoners housed in the United States during World War II. As a nation, we can deal with this."

Immigration reform

Graham has been a supporter of "comprehensive immigration reform" and of S. 2611, the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Bill of 2006 as well as S. 1348 of 2007, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.

His positions on immigration, and in particular collaborating with Senator Ted Kennedy, earned Graham the ire of conservative activists. Graham responded by saying, "We are going to solve this problem. We're not going to run people down. We're not going to scapegoat people. We're going to tell the bigots to shut up, and we're going to get this right." The controversy prompted conservative activists to support a primary challenge in 2008 by longtime Republican national committeeman Buddy Witherspoon, but Graham won the nomination by a large margin.

On July 28, 2010, however, Graham seemed to offer multiple concessions to the more conservative wing of his party when, during an interview on the Fox News Channel program ''On The Record With Greta Van Susteren'', he suggested that U.S. citizenship as an automatic birthright — guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — was "a mistake", that the Constitution should be amended to reflect this view, and that any child born of illegal immigrants inside the borders of the United States should themselves be considered illegal immigrants. "Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake," explained Graham. "We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child's automatically not a citizen." He did not suggest, however, what his alternate criteria would be - if any - for gaining citizenship by birth. He continued to suggest that all immigrants should be compelled by law to learn English, another new position for Graham.

Second Amendment

Graham has been given an A rating by the NRA and a B rating by the Gun Owners of America.

Health care

Graham opposed President Barack Obama's health reform legislation; he voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and he voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

Graham is a cosponsor of the Healthy Americans Act.

Same-sex marriage

As a member of the House of Representatives, in 1996 Graham voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. As a Senator, in 2004 he voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment. He received a rating of 0% from the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign in each reporting period from 1995-2008, with the exception of 1999, when he received a rating of 9%.

Climate change

On December 10, 2009, Graham co-sponsored a letter to President Barack Obama along with Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman announcing their commitment to passing a climate change bill and outlining its framework. Graham has been identified as a leading supporter of passing a climate change bill and was thought to be a likely sponsor for the final bill. The Senators have identified a green economy, clean air, energy independence, consumer protection, increasing nuclear power and regulating the world's carbon market as the key features to a successful climate change bill. In response to Senate Democrats shifting their priorities to immigration issues, a reaction to Arizona's passage of an anti-undocumented immigrant law, Senator Graham withdrew his support for the climate bill, leaving its passage in doubt.

In June 2010, however, Graham told reporters that "The science about global warming has changed. I think they've oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they've been alarmist and the science is in question. The whole movement has taken a giant step backward." He also stated that he planned to vote against the climate bill that he had originally co-sponsored, citing further restriction of offshore drilling added to the bill and the bill's impact on transportation.

Foreign policy

Graham has supported an interventionist foreign policy. On November 6, 2010 at the Halifax International Security Forum, he called for a pre-emptive military strike to "neuter" the Iranian regime. He has also argued that "the U.S. needs to keep at least 10,000 troops in Iraq into 2012," saying that "If we're not smart enough to work with the Iraqis to have 10,000 to 15,000 American troops in Iraq in 2012, Iraq could go to hell."

In August 2011, Graham co-sponsored with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen Senate Resolution 175, wherewith he contended that "Russia's invasion of Georgian land in 2008 was an act of aggression, not only to Georgia but to all new democracies." The claim that Russia instigated the aggression in South Ossetia, however, has been contradicted by many observers, including a European Union investigation. The resolution passed unanimously.

He is an advisor to the Atlantic Bridge.

Political campaigns

In 1994, Graham was elected to the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina's 3rd congressional district in the northwestern part of the state after 20-year incumbent Butler Derrick retired. With U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond campaigning on his behalf, Graham won by a large margin, becoming the first Republican to represent this district since 1877. The margin came as something of a surprise; none of the 3rd's living residents had ever been represented by a Republican before. In his first reelection bid, in 1996, Debbie Dorn, daughter of longtime 3rd District congressman W.J. Bryan Dorn and Derrick's niece, challenged Graham. However, Graham turned back this challenge fairly easily, winning by almost 20 points. He was unopposed for reelection in 1998 and handily defeated an underfunded Democrat in 2000.

In 2002, upon Thurmond's retirement, Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Alex Sanders, the former president of the College of Charleston. Graham became South Carolina's first new Senator since 1965, and the state's first freshman Republican Senator since Reconstruction when sanctions were imposed on South Carolina by Radical Republicans. Graham served as Junior Senator for only two years, serving with U.S. Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings. Graham became Senior Senator in 2005 when Jim DeMint won election to Hollings's seat. In 2008, Graham was easily reelected against North Myrtle Beach native Bob Conley.

Electoral history

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:0.5em ; font-size:95%" |+ : Results 1994–2000 !|Year ! !|Democrat !|Votes !|Pct ! !|Republican !|Votes !|Pct ! !|3rd Party !|Party !|Votes !|Pct ! |- |1994 | | | | align="right" |59,932 | |40% | | | | align="right" |90,123 | |60% | | | | | | |* |- |1996 | | |Debbie Dorn | align="right" |73,417 | |39% | | |Lindsey Graham | align="right" |114,273 | |60% | | |Lindal Pennington | |Natural Law | align="right" |1,835 | align="right" |1% | |- |1998 | | |''(no candidate)'' | align="right" | | | | | |Lindsey Graham | align="right" |129,047 | |100% | | |Write-ins | | | align="right" |402 | align="right" |<1% | |- |2000 | | |(On United Citizens line)(Total) | align="right" |64,9172,25367,170 | |29% 1%30% | | |Lindsey Graham | align="right" |150,180 | |68% | | |Adrian Banks | |Libertarian | align="right" |3,116 | align="right" |1% | |*

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:0.5em ; font-size:95%" |+ Senate elections in South Carolina (Class II): Results 2002–2008 !|Year ! !|Democrat !|Votes !|Pct ! !|Republican !|Votes !|Pct ! !|3rd Party !|Party !|Votes !|Pct ! !|3rd Party !|Party !|Votes !|Pct ! |- |2002 | | | | align="right" |487,359 | |44% | | | | align="right" |600,010 | |54% | | |Ted Adams | |Constitution | align="right" |8,228 | align="right" |1% | | |Victor Kocher | |Libertarian | align="right" |6,648 | align="right" |1% | |* |- |2008 | | | | align="right" |785,559 | |42% | | |Lindsey Graham | align="right" |1,069,137 | |58% | | |Write-ins | | | align="right" |608 | align="right" |<1% | | | | | |

Personal life

Graham has never been married and, when questioned by Robert Draper of the ''New York Times'', said, "I know it's really going to upset a lot of gay men—I'm sure hundreds of them are going to be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge—but I ain't available; I ain't gay. Sorry."

References

External links

United States Senator Lindsey Graham ''official U.S. Senate site''

Lindsey Graham for U.S. Senate ''official campaign site''

Profile from the ''Senate Republican Caucus''

Profile at SourceWatch

"Swing Conservative: The perilous bipartisanship of Lindsey Graham." ''Washington Monthly'', April 2005

"The American Ghosts of Abu Ghraib", Sam Provance, ''Consortium News'', March 27.2007

{{U.S. Senator box | before=Strom Thurmond | after= Incumbent | state=South Carolina | class=2 | years=2003–present | alongside=Ernest Hollings, Jim DeMint}}

Category:1955 births Category:American military personnel of the Iraq War Category:American prosecutors Category:Living people Category:International Republican Institute Category:Members of the South Carolina House of Representatives Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina Category:People from Pickens County, South Carolina Category:South Carolina lawyers Category:South Carolina Republicans Category:Southern Baptists Category:United States Air Force officers Category:United States Senators from South Carolina Category:University of South Carolina alumni Category:Republican Party United States Senators

de:Lindsey Graham fr:Lindsey Graham la:Lindsey Graham nl:Lindsey Graham no:Lindsey Graham pl:Lindsey Graham pt:Lindsey Graham ru:Грэм, Линдси sh:Lindsey Graham fi:Lindsey Graham sv:Lindsey Graham

Coordinates	50°5′″N21°27′″N
name	Amy Klobuchar
jr/sr	Senior Senator
state	Minnesota
party	Democratic-Farmer-Labor
term start	January 3, 2007
alongside	Al Franken
preceded	Mark Dayton
title2	Hennepin County Attorney
term start2	1999
term end2	2007
preceded2	Michael O. Freeman
succeeded2	Michael O. Freeman
birth date	May 25, 1960
birth place	Plymouth, Minnesota
birth name	Amy Jean Klobuchar
residence	Minneapolis, Minnesota
occupation	Attorney
spouse	John Bessler
children	Abigail Klobuchar Bessler
Alma mater	Yale University (B.A.)University of Chicago (J.D.)
religion	Congregationalism
website	Senator Amy Klobuchar
footnotes	}}

Amy Jean Klobuchar (, born May 25, 1960) is the senior United States Senator from Minnesota. She is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party. She is the first elected female senator from Minnesota and is one of seventeen female senators serving in the 112th United States Congress.

Formerly county attorney of Hennepin County, Klobuchar was the chief prosecutor for the most populous county in Minnesota. She was a legal adviser to former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale and partner in two prominent law firms. She has been cited by the ''New York Times'' as one of the seventeen women most likely to become the first female President of the United States and by MSNBC as a possible nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Klobuchar served as Minnesota's only senator between January 3, 2009 and July 7, 2009, due to the contested results of Minnesota's senatorial election held the previous year.

Family and education

Born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar is the daughter of Jim Klobuchar, an author and retired sportswriter and columnist for the ''Star Tribune'', and Rose Katherine Heuberger, who retired at age 70 from teaching second grade. Jim Klobuchar's grandparents were Slovene immigrants to the U.S. and his father was a miner on the Iron Range; Klobuchar's maternal grandparents were from Switzerland. Her husband, John Bessler, is an attorney in private practice and a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. A native of Mankato, Bessler attended Loyola High School, and is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Klobuchar and Bessler were married in 1993, and have a daughter, Abigail Klobuchar Bessler, who was born in 1995.

Klobuchar attended public schools in Plymouth and was valedictorian at Wayzata High School. She received her bachelor's degree ''magna cum laude'' in political science from Yale University in 1982, where she was a member of the Yale College Democrats and the Feminist Caucus. Her senior thesis was published as ''Uncovering the Dome'',, a 150-page history describing the ten years of politics surrounding the building of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. Klobuchar served as an associate editor of the ''Law Review'' and received her J.D. in 1985 at the University of Chicago Law School.

Career

Klobuchar was elected Hennepin County county attorney in 1998 and re-elected in 2002 with no opposition. In 2001 ''Minnesota Lawyer'' named her "Attorney of the Year". Klobuchar was president of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association from November 2002 to November 2003. Besides working as a prosecutor, Klobuchar was a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, where former Vice President Walter Mondale also works, and a partner at another top Minnesota law firm Gray Plant Mooty before seeking public office.

2006 Senate election

In early 2005 Mark Dayton announced that he would not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate seat he had won in 2000. Klobuchar was recognized early as a favorite for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nomination for the 2006 election. EMILY's List endorsed Klobuchar on September 29, 2005. Klobuchar won the DFL's endorsement on June 9, 2006.

Klobuchar gained the support of the majority of DFL state legislators in Minnesota during the primaries. A poll taken of DFL state delegates showed Klobuchar beating her then closest opponent, Patty Wetterling, 66% to 15%. In January, Wetterling dropped out of the race and endorsed Klobuchar. Former Senate candidate and prominent lawyer Mike Ciresi, who was widely seen as a serious potential DFL candidate, indicated in early February that he would not enter the race; that removal of her most significant potential competitor for the DFL nomination was viewed as an important boost for Klobuchar. The only other serious candidate for the DFL endorsement was veterinarian Ford Bell, who dropped out of the race in July and also endorsed Klobuchar.

In the general election, she faced Republican candidate Mark Kennedy, Independence Party candidate Robert Fitzgerald, Constitution candidate Ben Powers, and Green Party candidate Michael Cavlan. Klobuchar consistently led Kennedy in the polls throughout the campaign. She won with 58% of the vote to Kennedy's 38% and Fitzgerald's 3%, carrying all but eight of Minnesota's 87 counties. This landslide victory was the widest U.S. Senate election margin in Minnesota since the 1978 special election.

Klobuchar became the first elected female Senator from Minnesota. (Muriel Humphrey, the state's first female senator and former Second Lady of the United States, was appointed to fill her husband's unexpired term and not elected.)

Committee assignments

For the 111th Congress, Amy Klobuchar is assigned to the following committees:

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry

*Subcommittee on Energy, Science and Technology

*Subcommittee on Domestic and Foreign Marketing, Inspection, and Plant and Animal Health

*Subcommittee on Hunger, Nutrition and Family Farms

Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

*Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security

*Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet

*Subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion (Chairwoman)

*Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance

Committee on the Judiciary

*Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights

*Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs

Joint Economic Committee

Impeachment Trial Committee on the Articles against Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr.

U.S. Senate

In March 2007, Klobuchar went on an official trip to Iraq with Senate colleagues Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), John Sununu (R-NH), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Klobuchar noted that U.S. troops were completing their job and working arduously to train the Iraqis, but voiced her frustration with Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki.

Within days after the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge, Klobuchar introduced and succeeded in passing legislation to appropriate $250 million to Mn/DOT to quickly build a replacement bridge.

As of September 2009, 58% of Minnesotans approved of the job she was doing, with 36% disapproving.

From January to July 2009, Klobuchar was the only senator from Minnesota, until the resolution of the disputed 2008 Senate election in favor of Al Franken.

On March 12, 2010, a Rasmussen poll indicated 67% of Minnesotans approved of the job she was doing.

Political positions

As a Democrat, Klobuchar's political positions have generally been in line with modern liberalism in the United States. She is pro-choice, supports LGBT rights, favors federal social services such as Social Security and universal health care, and is critical of the Iraq War.

Klobuchar opposed President Bush's plan to increase troop levels in Iraq in January 2007. In May 2007, after president Bush vetoed a bill (which Klobuchar voted for) that would fund the troops but would impose time limits on the Iraq War, and supporters failed to garner enough congressional votes to override his veto, Klobuchar voted for additional funding for Iraq without such time limits, saying she "simply could not stomach the idea of using our soldiers as bargaining chips".

Klobuchar opposes free trade agreements that some perceive to cause a loss of jobs in the U.S. However, she has wavered on her opposition to such trade agreements since her election. A current trade agreement with Peru may achieve her support on grounds of expanded labor and environmental protections, even though they contain the same language as past trade agreements.

In August 2007, Klobuchar was one of only 16 Democratic Senators and 41 Democratic House members to vote in favor of the "Protect America Act", which was widely seen as eroding the civil liberty protections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and posing difficult questions relative to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. She did, however, vote against granting legal immunity to telecom corporations that cooperated with the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

Klobuchar voted in favor of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008, which included a provision to ban the use of waterboarding by the United States.

During the hearing of Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan, Klobuchar sparred with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) when he questioned the nominee about his perception that Americans were "losing freedom." Klobuchar argued that the "free society" the senator favored was one in which women were underrepresented in government, including no representation on the Supreme Court or the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Klobuchar supported President Barack Obama's health reform legislation; she voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and she voted for the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

2008 Presidential election

On March 30, 2008, Senator Klobuchar announced her endorsement of Senator Barack Obama in the Democratic Party presidential primary, promising her unpledged superdelegate vote for him. She cited Obama's performance in the Minnesota caucuses, where he won with 66% of the popular vote, as well as her own "independent judgment."

Electoral history

Note: The ±% column reflects the change in total number of votes won by each party from the previous election.

Footnotes

External links

United States Senator Amy Klobuchar ''official U.S. Senate site''

Amy Klobuchar for United States Senate ''official campaign site''

Minnesota Public Radio — Campaign 2006: Amy Klobuchar collected news coverage and commentary

{{U.S. Senator box | before=Mark Dayton | state=Minnesota | class=1 | start=2007 | alongside=Norm Coleman, Al Franken}}

Category:United States Senators from Minnesota Category:Minnesota lawyers Category:American prosecutors Category:University of Chicago Law School alumni Category:Yale University alumni Category:American Congregationalists Category:Minnesota Democrats Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:People from Hennepin County, Minnesota Category:People from Plymouth, Minnesota Category:Female United States Senators Category:Women in Minnesota politics Category:American female lawyers Category:American people of Slovenian descent Category:American people of Swiss descent Category:Democratic Party United States Senators

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Coordinates	50°5′″N21°27′″N
Name	Norman Finkelstein
Birth date	December 08, 1953
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.)Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Parents	Mother: Maryla Husyt Finkelstein Father: Zacharias Finkelstein
Nationality	American
Influences	Mohandas Gandhi, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill
Website	normanfinkelstein.com }}

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Personal background and education

Finkelstein has written of his parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, as she realized that she was alone, her parents and siblings gone. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. After immigrating to the United States, his father became a factory worker, while his mother was a homemaker. Finkelstein's mother was an ardent pacifist. Both his parents died in 1995.

Finkelstein grew up in New York City, where he attended James Madison High School and was a childhood friend of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was two years ahead of him. In his forthcoming memoir, Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother, witness to the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam. One childhood friend recalls his mother's "emotional investment in left-wing humanitarian causes as bordering on hysteria." He had 'internalized (her) indignation', a trait which he admits rendered him 'insufferable' when talking of the Vietnam War, and which imbued him with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude at the time which he now regrets. But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one's life — as a virtue. Subsequently, his reading of Noam Chomsky played a seminal role in tailoring the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor in the pursuit of the truth.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago. According to ''The New York Times'' he left Hunter College in 2001 "after his teaching load and salary were reduced" by the college administration.

Beginning with his doctoral thesis at Princeton, Finkelstein's career has been marked by controversy. A self-described "forensic scholar," he has written sharply critical academic reviews of several prominent writers and scholars whom he accuses of misrepresenting the documentary record in order to defend Israel's policies and practices. His writings, noted for their support of the Palestinian cause, have dealt with politically charged topics such as Zionism, the demographic history of Palestine and his allegations of the existence of a "Holocaust Industry" that exploits the memory of the Holocaust to further Israeli and financial interests. Citing linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky as an example, Finkelstein notes that it is "possible to unite exacting scholarly rigor with scathing moral outrage," and supporters and detractors alike have remarked on the polemical style of Finkelstein's work. Its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim, as well as Chomsky.

Finkelstein has described himself as "an old-fashioned communist," in the sense that he "see(s) no value whatsoever in states."

Academic career

On ''From Time Immemorial''

In Finkelstein's doctoral thesis, he examined the claims made in Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', a best-selling book at the time.

Peters's "history and defense" of Israel deals with the demographic history of Palestine. Demographic studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a 94% majority at the turn of the century, had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration. Peters radically challenged this picture by arguing that a substantial part of the Palestinian people were descended from emigrants from other Arab countries from the early 19th century onwards. It followed, for Peters and many of her readers, that the picture of a native Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigration was little more than propaganda, and that in actuality two almost simultaneous waves of immigration met in what had been a relatively unpopulated land.

''From Time Immemorial'' had been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources by figures as varied as Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz. Saul Bellow, for one, wrote in a jacket endorsement that: :"Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians."

Finkelstein asserted that the book was nothing more than what he now calls a "monumental hoax". He later opined that, while Peters's book received widespread interest and approval in the United States, a scholarly demonstration of its fraudulence and unreliability aroused little attention:

:"By the end of 1984, ''From Time Immemorial'' had...received some two hundred [favorable] notices ... in the United States. The only 'false' notes in this crescendoing chorus of praise were the ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', which ran a highly critical review by Bill Farrell; the small Chicago-based newsweekly ''In These Times'', which published a condensed version of this writer's findings; and Alexander Cockburn, who devoted a series of columns in ''The Nation'' exposing the hoax. ... The periodicals in which ''From Time Immemorial'' had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. ''The New Republic'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''Commentary''). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. ''The Village Voice'', ''Dissent'', ''The New York Review of Books''). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax."

Noam Chomsky later reminisced:

:"I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you."

In 1986, the ''New York Review of Books'' published Yehoshua Porath's review and an exchange with critics of the review in which he criticized the assumptions and evidence on which Peters's thesis relied, thus lending independent support from an expert in Palestinian demographics to Finkelstein's doctoral critique. In the house journal of the American Council on Foreign Relations, ''Foreign Affairs'', William B. Quandt, the Edward Stettinius professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and authority on Middle Eastern politics, later described Finkelstein's critique of ''From Time Immemorial'' as a "landmark essay" and a "victory to his credit", in its "demonstration" of the "shoddy scholarship" of Peters's book.

According to Noam Chomsky, the controversy that surrounded Finkelstein's research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Chomsky wrote in ''Understanding Power'' that Finkelstein "literally could not get the faculty to read [his dissertation]" and that Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only "out of embarrassment [for Princeton]" but refused to give him any further professional backing.

Finkelstein published portions of his thesis in the following publications:

"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial''." Chapter 2 of ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (1988); and

"A Land Without a People (Joan Peters' "Wilderness" Image)." Chapter 2 of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' (1995).

''The Holocaust Industry''

''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'' was published in 2000. Here, Finkelstein argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon." This is so the state of Israel, "one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state" in order to garner "immunity to criticism." He also alleges what he calls a "double shakedown" by "a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums and hucksters" seeking enormous legal damages and financial settlements from Germany and Switzerland, moneys which then go to the lawyers and institutional actors involved in procuring them, rather than actual Holocaust survivors.

The book met with a hostile reception in some quarters, with critics charging that it was poorly researched and/or allowed others to exploit it for antisemitic purposes. For example, German historian Hans Mommsen disparaged the first edition as "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices." Israeli holocaust historian Israel Gutman called the book "a lampoon," stating "this is not research; it isn't even political literature... I don't even think it should be reviewed or critiqued as a legitimate book." The book was also harshly criticized by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov and University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick.

Finkelstein also had his supporters however. Raul Hilberg, widely regarded as the founder of Holocaust studies, said the book expressed views Hilberg himself subscribed to in substance, in that he too found the exploitation of the Holocaust, in the manner Finkelstein describes, 'detestable.' Asked on another occasion if Finkelstein's analysis might play into the hands of neo-Nazis for antisemitic purposes, Hilberg replied: 'Well, even if they do use it in that fashion, I'm afraid that when it comes to the truth, it has to be said openly, without regard to any consequences that would be undesirable, embarrassing.'

Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's ''The Case for Israel''

Shortly after the publication of the book ''The Case for Israel'' by Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein derided it as "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". During a debate on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein asserted that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book, Finkelstein also claimed that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it. Finkelstein noted 20 instances, in as many pages, where Dershowitz's book cites the same sources and passages used by Joan Peters in her book, in largely the same sequence, with ellipses in the same places. In two instances, Dershowitz reproduces Peters's errors (see below). From this Finkelstein concluded that Dershowitz had not checked the original sources himself, contrary to the latter's claims. Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas. Examining a copy of a proof of Dershowitz's book he managed to obtain, he found evidence that Dershowitz had his secretarial assistant, Holly Beth Billington, check in the Harvard library the sources he had read in Peters's book. Dershowitz answered the charge in a letter to the University of California's Press Director Lynne Withey, arguing that Finkelstein had made up the ''smoking gun'' quotation, in that he had changed its wording (from 'cite' to 'copy') in his book. In public debate he has stated that if "somebody borrowed the quote without going to check back on whether Mark Twain had said that, obviously that would be a serious charge"; however, he insisted emphatically that he himself did not do that, that he had indeed checked the original source by Twain.

Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, and, consequently, Finkelstein deleted the word "plagiarism" from the text before publication. Finkelstein also removed the charge that Dershowitz was not the true author of ''The Case for Israel'' because, as the publisher said, "he couldn't document that."

Asserting that he did consult the original sources, Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of initially from Peters's book. Dershowitz denies that he used any of Peters's ideas without citation. "Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and claiming they're your own. There are no borrowed words from anybody. There are no borrowed ideas from anybody because I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions of Peters's book." In a footnote in ''The Case for Israel'' which cites Peters's book, Dershowitz explicitly denies that he "relies" on Peters for "conclusions or data".

In their joint interview on ''Democracy Now'', however, Finkelstein cited specific passages in Dershowitz's book in which a phrase that he says Peters coined was incorrectly attributed to George Orwell:

"[Peters] coins the phrase, 'turnspeak', she says she's using it as a play off of George Orwell which as all listeners know used the phrase 'Newspeak.' She coined her own phrase, 'turnspeak.' You go to Mr. Dershowitz's book, he got so confused in his massive borrowings from Joan Peters that on two occasions, I'll cite them for those who have a copy of the book, on page 57 and on page 153 he uses the phrase, quote, George Orwell's 'turnspeak.' 'Turnspeak' is not Orwell, Mr. Dershowitz, you're the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard, you must know that Orwell would never use such a clunky phrase as 'turnspeak'."

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz:

I do not understand [Finkelstein's] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources (Mark Twain, Palestine Royal Commission, etc.) [Finkelstein's] complaint is that instead he should have cited them to the secondary source, in which Dershowitz may have come upon them. But as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: 'Importance of attribution. With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claims of fair use, it also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism.' This is precisely what Dershowitz did.

Responding to an article in ''The Nation'' by Alexander Cockburn, Dershowitz also cited ''The Chicago Manual of Style'':

Cockburn's claim is that some of the quotes should not have been cited to their original sources but rather to a secondary source, where he believes I stumbled upon them. Even if he were correct that I found all these quotations in Peters's book, the preferred method of citation is to the original source, as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This...helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism...To cite a source from a secondary source ('quoted in...') is generally to be discouraged...."

...to which Cockburn responded:

Quoting ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', Dershowitz artfully implies that he followed the rules by citing "the original" as opposed to the secondary source, Peters. He misrepresents Chicago here, where "the original" means merely the origin of the borrowed material, which is, in this instance, Peters.

Now look at the second bit of the quote from Chicago, chastely separated from the preceding sentence by a demure three-point ellipsis. As my associate Kate Levin has discovered, this passage ("To cite a source from a secondary source...") occurs on page 727, which is no less than 590 pages later than the material before the ellipsis, in a section titled "Citations Taken from Secondary Sources." Here's the full quote, with what Dershowitz left out set in bold: "'Quoted in.' To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed."

So Chicago is clearly insisting that unless Dershowitz went to the originals, he was obliged to cite Peters. Finkelstein has conclusively demonstrated that he didn't go to the originals. Plagiarism, QED, plus added time for willful distortion of the language of Chicago's guidelines, cobbling together two separate discussions.

On behalf of Dershowitz, Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan asked former Harvard president Derek Bok to investigate the assertion of plagiarism; Bok exonerated Dershowitz of the charge.

Although the plagiarism allegations by Finkelstein received the most attention and attracted a lot of controversy, Finkelstein has maintained that "the real issue is Israel's human rights record." His book ''Beyond Chutzpah'' counters Dershowitz's claim that Israel's human rights record is "generally superb."

In an April 3, 2007 interview with the ''Harvard Crimson'', "Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent a letter last September to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure."

In April 2007, Dr. Frank Menetrez, a former Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review, published an analysis of the charges made against Finkelstein by Alan Dershowitz, finding no merit in any single charge, and that, on the contrary, "Dershowitz is deliberately misrepresenting what Finkelstein wrote". In a follow-up analysis he concluded that he could find 'no way of avoiding the inference that Dershowitz copied the quotation from Twain from Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', and not from the original source', as Dershowitz claimed.

Controversies

Tenure denial and resignation

In early 2007 the DePaul University Political Science department voted nine to three, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee five to zero, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Elie Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. Amidst considerable public debate, Alan Dershowitz actively campaigned to block Finkelstein's tenure bid. In June 2007, a 4-3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university's president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure.

The university denied that Dershowitz, who had been criticized for his campaign against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision. At the same time, the university denied tenure to international studies assistant professor Mehrene Larudee, a strong supporter of Finkelstein, despite unanimous support from her department, the Personnel Committee and the Dean. Finkelstein stated that he would engage in civil disobedience if attempts were made to bar him from teaching his students.

The Faculty Council later affirmed the right of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal, which a university lawyer said was not possible. Council President Anne Bartlett said she was "'terribly concerned' correct procedure was not followed". DePaul's faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials. In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Dershowitz expressed outrage at the compromise and this statement in particular, saying that the university had "traded truth for peace."

In June 2007, after two weeks of protests, DePaul students staged a sit-in and hunger strike in support of both professors denied tenure. The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors also sent a letter to the university’s president stating: "It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research … might hurt a college’s reputation" and that the association has "explicitly rejected collegiality as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members".

Denied entry to Israel in 2008

On May 23, 2008 Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel, according to unnamed Shin Bet security officials, because "of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon" and that he "did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions." Finkelstein had previously visited south Lebanon and met with Lebanese families during the 2006 Lebanon War. He was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein was questioned after his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and detained for 24 hours in a holding cell. After speaking to Israeli attorney Michael Sfard he was placed on a flight back to Amsterdam, his point of origin. In an interview with ''Haaretz'', Finkelstein stated "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide... no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations." He had been travelling to visit friends in the West Bank and stated he had no interest in visiting Israel. Sfard said banning Finkelstein from entering the country "recalls the behavior of the Soviet bloc countries."

Reception

Finkelstein's books are an attempt to examine the works of mainstream scholarship. The authors whose work he has thus targeted, including Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz, along with others such as Benny Morris whose work Finkelstein has also cited approvingly, have in turn accused Finkelstein of grossly misrepresenting their work, and selectively quoting from their books.

Finkelstein's work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors across the political spectrum. Notable supporters include Noam Chomsky, prominent intellectual and political critic; Raul Hilberg, Holocaust historian; Avi Shlaim, New Historian; and Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian jurist and analyst. According to Hilberg, Finkelstein displays "academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him... I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."

Criticism

Criticism has been leveled against Finkelstein from several angles. The first sources are responses from those whose work Finkelstein has discussed. Daniel Goldhagen, whose book ''Hitler's Willing Executioners'' Finkelstein criticized, claimed his scholarship has "everything to do with his burning political agenda." Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticized the latter's work, describing it as "trash." Similarly, Alan Dershowitz, whose book ''The Case for Israel'' and Finkelstein's response ''Beyond Chutzpah'' sparked an ongoing feud between the two, has claimed Finkelstein's complicity in a conspiracy against pro-Israel scholars: "The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn't actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud," arguing that Finkelstein has leveled charges against many academics, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters', 'hoaxters' (''sic''), 'thieves,' 'extortionists', and worse."

Israeli historian Omer Bartov, writing for ''The New York Times Book Review'', judged ''The Holocaust Industry'' to be marred by the same errors he denounces in those who exploit the Holocaust for profit or politics:

'It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority... Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.'

In 2003, Finkelstein published a considerably expanded second edition of this book, focusing especially on the Swiss Banks case. He identifies areas where people have attacked the book, but claims that none of them question his actual findings.

Finkelstein has accused Jeffrey Goldberg of "torturing" Palestinian prisoners during his IDF service in the First Intifada. Goldberg referred to the allegation as "ridiculous" and he had "never laid a hand on anybody." Goldberg said his "principal role" was "making sure prisoners had fresh fruit." He characterized Finkelstein as a "ridiculous figure" and accused him of "lying and purposely misreading my book."

2009 film about Finkelstein

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' is an award-winning documentary film about the life and career of Norman Finkelstein, released in 2009 and directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. It has been screened in Amsterdam IDFA, in Toronto Hot Docs and in more than 40 other national and international venues, it received 100% freshness ratings on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Statements on Israel and Israelis

Finkelstein is a sharp critic of Israel. In a telephone interview with ''Today's Zaman'', in 2009, Finkelstein stated:

I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.

When asked how he, as the son of Holocaust survivors, felt about Israel’s operation in Gaza, Finkelstein replied:

It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state

The Anti-Defamation League has described Finkelstein as an "obsessive anti-Zionist" filled with "vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel." On being called an anti-Zionist Finkelstein has said: "It's a superficial term. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel."

Hezbollah and Hamas

Finkelstein has expressed solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas with respect to defensive actions, alleging that Israel had invaded Lebanon as a signal of rejection when Hamas was seeking a diplomatic settlement with Israel. He also condemned Israel's refusal "to abide by international law (and) to abide by the opinion of the international community" to settle the conflict".

"I don’t care about Hizbullah as a political organization. I don’t know much about their politics, and anyhow, it’s irrelevant. I don’t live in Lebanon. It’s a choice that the Lebanese have to make: Who they want to be their leaders, who they want to represent them. But there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question."

While condemning the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal, Finkelstein has stated he believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians if Israel targets civilians.

During the Second Intifada, Finkelstein stated a moral equivalence exists between Hamas and the state of Israel in regards to the military policy of targeted killings. Finkelstein argued one of Israel’s primary motivation for launching the 2008 offensive in Gaza was that Hamas was “signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border.” Finkelstein believes Hamas had joined the international community in “seeking a diplomatic settlement” and describes Hamas's stance towards Israel prior to the war as a “peace offensive.”

Bibliography

Books

2010: ''This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion''. OR Books, New York: 2010.

2005: ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History''. U of California P, ISBN 0-520-24598-9. 2nd updated edition, U of Cal. P. June 2008, ISBN 0-520-24989-5, contains an appendix written by Frank J. Menetrez, ''Dershowitz vs Finkelstein. Who's Right and Who's Wrong?, p. 363-394,

2000: ''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-488-X.

1998: ''A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth'' (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn) Henry Holt and Co., ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.

1996: ''The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years''. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.

1995: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-442-1

1987: ''From the Jewish Question to the Jewish State: An Essay on the Theory of Zionism'', thesis, Princeton University.

Articles and chapters

”Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peter's 'From Time Immemorial.'“ in ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''. Ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens. Verso Press, 1988. ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Chapter Two, Part One:

”Peace process or peace panic? - The scourge of Palestinian moderation”, ''Middle East Report'', 19 (1989) 3/158, pp. 25–26,28-30,42

”Zionist orientations”, ''Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives'' 9 (March 1990) 1. p. 41-69

”Bayt Sahur in year II of the intifada. - A personal account”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 19 (Winter 1990) 2/74.p. 62-74

”Israel and Iraq. - A double standard”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 20 (1991) 2/78. p. 43-56

"Reflections on Palestinian attitudes during the Gulf war", '' Journal of Palestine Studies'', 21 (1992) 3/83, p. 54-70

”Réflexions sur la responsabilité de l´État et du citoyen dans le conflit arabo-israélien” (Reflections on the responsibility of state and citizen in the Arab-Israeli conflict), in ''L' homme et la société'', L'Harmattan 1994, 114, S. 37-50

”Whither the `peace process'?”, ''New Left Review'', (1996) 218, p. 138

”Securing occupation: The real meaning of the Wye River Memorandum”, ''New Left Review'', (1998) 232, p. 128-139

Contributor to ''The Politics of Anti-Semitism''. Ed. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. AK Press, 2001. ISBN 1-902593-77-4.

”Lessons of Holocaust compensation”, in ''Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return''. Ed. Naseer Aruri. Pluto Press, 2001, S. 272-275. ISBN 0-7453-1776-6.

”Abba Eban with Footnotes”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'',, vol 32. (2003), p. 74-89

”Prospects for Ending the Occupation”, ''Antipode'', 35 (2003) 5, p. 839-845

Contributor to ''Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel'', by Seth Farber. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-326-3.

”The Camp David II negotiations. - how Dennis Ross proved the Palestinians aborted the peace process”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', vol. 36 (2007), p. 39-53

”Dennis Ross and the peace process: subordinating Palestinian rights to Israeli ‘needs’” Institute for Palestine Studies, 2007 ISBN 0-88728-308-X

Others on Finkelstein and his works

Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein

Massad, Joseph. "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness," Review Essay, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 78–89.

Cole, Tim. the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?," ''The Public Historian'', Vol. 24, No. 4. (Fall, 2002), pp. 127–131

Hooglund, Eric. Reviewed work: and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 3, Special Issue in Honor of Edward W. Said. (Spring, 2004), pp. 123–124.

Pelham, Nicolas. Reviewed Work: and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''International Affairs'', Vol. 72, No. 3, Ethnicity and International Relations. (July 1996), pp. 627–628.

Pappe, Ilan. "Valuable New Perspectives," Reviewed Work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 26, No. 4. (Summer, 1997), pp. 113–115.

Beinin, Joel. "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict after Oslo," Reviewed work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''Middle East Report'', No. 201, Israel and Palestine: Two States, Bantustans or Binationalism?. (Oct. - Dec., 1996), pp. 45–47.

Reviews of books by Finkelstein

Blokker, Bas. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''NRC Handelsblad'' 24 February 2006.

Pappe, Ilan. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''BOOKFORUM'' Feb./March 2006.

De Zayas, Alfred. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' 3 February 2006.

Merkley, Paul Charles. These Pigs on the Face of the Earth: Israel's most relentless critic. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Christianity Today'' January/February 2006.

Desch, Michael C.. The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''The American Conservative'' 5 Dec. 2005

Goldberger, Ernest. English translation of German review Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' 10 Dec. 2005

Marqusee, Mike. Israel, fraud and chutzpah Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Red Pepper (magazine)'' Jan. 2006

Prashad, Vijay. Z magazine reviews Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Z Magazine'' November 2005 Volume 18 Number 11

McCarthy, Conor. The case against Israel Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Village Magazine, Ireland'' 17 Nov. 2005

Gordon, Neve. Neve Gordon: Review of Norman Finkelstein's, Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''History News Network'' 12 Oct. 2005

Nicolás, Rubén. El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos sólo empeorará. Review of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''El Mundo'' 23 Oct. 2003

Bogdanor, Paul. The Finkelstein Phenomenon. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''Judaism'', Fall, 2002.

Abse, Tobias. Finkelstein's Follies: The Dangers of Vulgar Anti-Zionism Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New Interventions'', vol. 10, no. 2, 2000.

Bartov, Omer. A Tale of Two Holocausts. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New York Times Book Review'' 6 Aug. 2000.

Profiles of Finkelstein

Garner, Mandy. "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle." ''Times Higher Education Supplement'' 16 December 2005.

Naparstek, Ben. "His Own Worst Enemy." ''The Jerusalem Post'' 12 December 2005.

Rayner, Jay. "Finkelstein's List." ''The Observer'' 16 July 2000.

Sheleg, Yair. "The Finkelstein Polemic." ''Ha'aretz'' 30 March 2001.

Critics of Finkelstein and replies

Daniel Goldhagen, The New Discourse of Avoidance

* Norman Finkelstein, Response to Goldhagen

William Rubinstein et al., Uses of Holocaust, letters to the ''London Review of Books''

Alex Callinicos, Finkelstein and the Holocaust, criticism in ''Socialist Worker''

David Friedman, Anti-Defamation League letter, calling Finkelstein a Holocaust denier

* How the ADL Fights Anti-Semitism

* The Washington Post Publishes a Retraction, Marc Fisher, WP columnist, publishes a retraction of his charge of "holocaust revisionism

References

External links

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - official website of the documentary film on Norman Finkelstein (for a shortened online copy see the video section)

Official website of Norman G. Finkelstein, featuring biography, works by Finkelstein, past and upcoming speaking engagements, and other links to information about him and controversies in which he is involved.

Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign Website Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign - Supporters of Norman Finkelstein

"Depaul University -- Against" bibliography at "Norman G. Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign"

'An Interview with Norman Finkelstein' State of Nature interview with Norman Finkelstein (2008)

Video

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - Al Jazeera English broadcast of the documentary in two parts (2 video2, each ca 46 mins)

Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Jan 21, 2009.

Interview in Aljazeera English: Tear down the walls

Interview Broadcasted on Lebanese TV January 20, 2008

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - Israel and Palestine: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace, presentation in Seattle, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - The Coming Breakup of American Zionism, presentation in Olympia, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein at Brown University, April 15, 2008

Finkelstein in a dual interview with former US-Israel ambassador Martin Indyk, discussing the US Role in Israel’s 2008-09 Assault on Gaza on Democracy Now, January 8, 2009.

Doha Debate at the Oxford Union Video of debate on whether the "pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions" with Andrew Cockburn, Martin Indyk, and David Aaronovitch, May 1, 2007

Debate with Shlomo Ben-Ami on Democracy Now!, February 14, 2006

Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments March 23, 2010

Category:1953 births Category:American political scientists Category:American political writers Category:Binghamton University alumni Category:DePaul University faculty Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American historians Category:Historians of Jews and Judaism Category:Historians of the Holocaust Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Jewish anti-Zionism Category:Living people Category:New York University faculty Category:Personae non gratae Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:Writers on Zionism Category:Jewish peace activists

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