Politics

Benjamin Netanyahu, taking office as Israeli prime minister amid heckling by leftist and Arab lawmakers, offered Tuesday to seek a "permanent arrangement" for limited Palestinian self-rule. "We do not wish to rule another people," the conservative leader declared in a speech to the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

The spoils go to the victors in politics, and usually a candidate's campaign advisors are generously rewarded with top jobs in the government when an election is won. The exception has been President Obama's team of campaign foreign policy advisors, who have fared poorly in the new administration's frantic job competition. The president, who ran as a liberal, has filled out his government with appointees more in the political center.

Upending Washington's entrenched ways of doing business is proving tougher than President Obama may have assumed. The nearly $800-billion stimulus bill served as a test case. During the campaign, Obama released a position paper stating his commitment to open government. As president, he said, he would not only insist on transparency in his own administration, he would press Congress to revamp its practices as well.

As Washington struggles to find ways to fund highway improvements, a congressionally created commission on Thursday called for a 10-cent-a-gallon increase in the federal gas tax, while proposing that the country move to a system of charging motorists for how much they drive. The idea of a tax increase would probably face strong resistance from lawmakers seeking reelection and consumers already reeling in a tough economy.

On the cusp of a new era in stem cell science, Democratic heavyweights are pushing to install the outgoing California Democratic Party chief in a leadership post at the state's $3-billion research program. Art Torres, who served two decades as a state lawmaker before assuming the party chairmanship a dozen years ago, is being backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, among others.

The road to reforming financial regulations winds through the cornfields, hog farms and cattle ranches of America's heartland, and that complicates the Obama administration's already arduous effort to revamp oversight of Wall Street. Lawmakers from Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma and other farm-belt states who sit on the congressional agriculture committees have a surprisingly influential role in the administration's proposed overhaul, which Congress resumes debating Tuesday after its summer recess.

Wrestling with how to fund a massive overhaul of the nation's healthcare system, congressional Democrats began to acknowledge Wednesday that their ambitious schedule for sending President Obama legislation by October may be slipping. The Senate Finance Committee, which Democrats had hoped would begin public debate of a healthcare bill this month, appears likely to delay that until July, congressional aides said.

After a summer of healthcare battles and sliding approval ratings for President Obama, the White House is facing a troubling new trend: The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked hardest to attract. New surveys show steep declines in Obama's approval ratings among whites -- including Democrats and independents -- who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country's first black president. Among white Democrats, Obama's job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

He keeps coming back, as if magnetically drawn to some ore of truth here. For the fourth time in 15 months, President Obama will arrive in this blue-collar manufacturing area to sample the mood of the heartland and bring a message of change. He returns today to a community that has been hit as hard as any in this recession.

Small cities in California are facing high unemployment, drained treasuries and now what some residents see as an assault on the only sacred moment in municipal affairs: the invocation at the start of city council meetings. Turlock, Tracy, Tehachapi, Lancaster -- all have been threatened in the last few months with lawsuits claiming that prayer at meetings breaches the wall between church and state. Nowhere has the ensuing debate played out more dramatically than in Lodi, where, after a tumultuous five-hour meeting this week, the City Council voted not only to continue invocations but also to allow phrases such as "in Jesus' name."