Senior Advisor

WASHINGTON - Wednesday's "photo of the day" on the White House website showed an unusual sight in Oval Office history - the president surrounded by top advisors, only half of whom are white men. The picture seemed calculated to counter criticism that President Obama's new set of Cabinet appointees so far all are white and male. Obama is expected to name his chief of staff, Jacob Lew, to lead the Treasury Department. Further compounding the diversity problem, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to leave the administration soon, and Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis announced Wednesday that she was resigning.

Tiger Woods is returning to Torrey Pines in La Jolla to start his PGA Tour season. Woods is a seven-time winner at Torrey Pines as a pro, including the U.S. Open in 2008, his last major title. He skipped the Farmers Insurance Open last year to play in the United Arab Emirates. He again will make his 2013 debut in Abu Dhabi next week, but that tournament is a week earlier this year. That enables Woods to get back to La Jolla for the Farmers Insurance Open on Jan. 24-27. The field at Torrey Pines already includes Phil Mickelson, Masters champion Bubba Watson and defending champion Brandt Snedeker.

Re "A welcome mat at All Saints," Editorial, Dec. 13 I would like to applaud All Saints Church, an Episcopal congregation in Pasadena, for hosting the Muslim Public Affairs Council's annual convention. However, I am very surprised at the criticism hurled at Maher Hathout, MPAC's senior advisor. As the former ecumenical officer of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I co-chaired Catholic-Muslim Dialogue with Hathout for many years. Hathout, a devout Muslim, has always stood up for justice and peace and has condemned terrorism wherever it has arisen.

BOSTON -- Mitt Romney voted near his Belmont home Tuesday morning before heading to Ohio and Pennsylvania for last-minute appearances to court voters as they head to the polls in those battleground states. Romney said he feels “very, very good” about his prospects against President Obama. When asked by reporters whom he voted for, he said, "I think you know. " Romney, wearing a dark suit, and his wife Ann, wearing a long sapphire jacket, arrived at the Beech Street Center at 8:41 a.m. and were greeted by a large crowd of cheering supporters and pro-Obama demonstrators.

MORRISVILLE, Pa. - Trying to quilt together a patchwork of states that would give him the White House, Mitt Romney ricocheted around the country Sunday, arguing that he represented true change and that reelecting the president would mean a continuation of the status quo: chronic unemployment, high energy prices and increased dependence on government. Romney said Obama had promised much but had fallen "so very short. " "Talk is cheap, but a record is real and it's measured in achievements," the Republican nominee said, bundled against the cold at his rally in a farm field.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has signed on for another four years. The new employment agreement, announced Friday by parent company News Corp., will keep Ailes at the controls of one of the television's company's most successful divisions through the 2016 presidential election.  In addition to serving as chairman and chief executive of the top-rated Fox News, Ailes also oversees the company's 27 television stations, Twentieth Television syndication,...

Can you have too much of a good thing? Oh, how we'd all like to find out. The Dodgers, though, seem bent on testing the theory, and I'm not talking just on the field. On Thursday they added highly respected front-office executive Gerry Hunsicker. Hunsicker was most recently Tampa Bay's senior vice president of baseball operations, a title he's held the past seven years, where he helped a young general manager (Andrew Friedman) build the Rays into an expected annual contender.

It's a good thing the Commission on Presidential Debates has not entirely embraced the agreement between President Obama and Mitt Romney about the rules governing Tuesday night's “town hall” debate. Otherwise, the voters who are getting their one direct shot at the candidate and the veteran moderator hired to keep the debate running would be pushed almost entirely to the sidelines. The debate will be better if someone has the power to keep the president and the challenger on point.

SATURDAY Good Morning America (N) 7 a.m. KABC The Chris Matthews Show Romney's debate victory; President Obama's challenges. (N) 3 p.m. KNBC McLaughlin Group 6:30 p.m. KCET SUNDAY Today 2012 election; 25th anniversary of "The Princess Bride"; the reality series "Big Ang. " (N) 6 a.m. KNBC Good Morning America (N) 6 a.m. KABC State of the Union With Candy Crowley 2012 election, battleground states: State Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio)

DENVER - There is perhaps no greater opportunity to get a group of adults into one room who have witnessed the same event, and hear such diametrically different interpretations of it, than the spin room after a presidential debate. Advisors and supporters of President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney made their traditional appearances late Wednesday night before banks of cameras, each side to argue that their candidate clearly won the night, and how poorly their rival had fared.