George W Bush

With barely 11 months left in office, President Bush plans to make a new push to win Senate confirmation of nearly 200 nominees to federal judgeships and other government positions. Seeking to put his stamp on federal courts and to demonstrate to conservatives his readiness to take on the Democratic congressional majority, Bush is expected to demand today that the Senate act on his nominations.

President Bush offered no explicit endorsement Friday of John McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, but he began to prepare the battlefield for the eventual nominee, calling on conservatives to put the primary campaign's feuds behind them.

President Bush pledged Sunday to assist Sen. John McCain's campaign for the presidency assuming he wins the Republican Party nomination -- but acknowledged that the Arizona senator has "got some convincing to do" among the party's conservatives. In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" at his retreat at Camp David, Md., Bush was careful to note that two Republicans are still competing for the nomination, and he did not express a preference.

Responding to a rash of racial incidents in the last year, President Bush on Tuesday denounced displays of nooses and jokes about lynching, and said that as past racial injustice fades in memory, the nation risked forgetting the suffering it brought. The president's remarks, at a White House program marking African American History Month, were among his most pointed in recent years on the subject of racial tensions.

With old and young providing testament to the success of a U.S.-funded effort to fight AIDS, President Bush on Sunday called for Congress to renew the program quickly and said that helping Africa was in the national and moral interests of the United States. The program provides readier access to antiretroviral drugs, easing the impact of the disease. But it also puts a strong focus on premarital sexual abstinence, drawing criticism in the U.S.

President Bush, in public settings, regularly refuses to discuss the 2008 presidential campaign. But would the same hold true for Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, the president of Tanzania, when asked at a joint news conference Sunday what Barack Obama's political progress said about America? Before the African leader could respond, Bush, who is on a five-nation trip to the continent, suggested that Kikwete might want to temper his remarks.

President Bush, expressing frustration that the United Nations has had a difficult time raising and deploying a sufficient peacekeeping force in Darfur, said Tuesday that the 1994 Rwandan genocide should have taught the world not to ignore signs of budding brutality. Bush said Rwanda would receive $12 million of the $100-million contribution the U.S. is making this year to U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.

After crossing Africa from west to east and back, the central issues that followed President Bush on his tour all came together Wednesday in the white stucco Osu Castle here on the Atlantic shoreline. With gusto, the president declared "that's baloney" to the notion that the United States was preparing to establish military bases in Africa. "Or, as we say in Texas, that's bull," Bush said at a news conference with Ghanaian President John Kufuor.

Thirty years ago, as President Carter was preparing to visit West Africa, a Nigerian government official asked a member of Carter's advance team whether the president would like to attend a public execution on a Lagos beach. It is safe to say that no government official made such an inquiry of President Bush's staff as it prepared the agenda for the six-day, five-nation African trip he completed Thursday.

The Bush administration said Friday that it plans to significantly raise fines for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, part of a broader effort that includes improved border security after Congress failed to pass immigration-related legislation in 2007. The hikes in employer fines will be the first since 1999. The new policy is the latest aimed at the most sensitive pressure point in illegal immigration: businesses that employ the workers. The U.S.