chief of staff

And the election year shuffles start:

William Daley is stepping down as White House chief of staff and budget director Jack Lew is taking over the President Obama’s team as it heads into a tough election year, senior administration officials say.

Daley gave his letter of resignation to the president in a private meeting in the Oval Office last week, recounting the administration's successes of his one year on the job and saying it was time for him to return to his hometown of Chicago.

Obama plans to announce the change in leadership in a public event Monday afternoon. The official shift will take place at the end of the month, giving Lew time to complete the administration’s budget proposal while Daley leads the team through the crafting of the State of the Union address due in two weeks.

This will be the start of many changes to come as Obama tries to get things ready for a second term. Any bets on who might be next?

There is still a lot of debate over Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map and if it should be relevant to the tragedy this weekend. This article tells us why it is very relative:

For Arizona Congressman Harry Mitchell, the threats were verbal, conveyed in messages left at his office. "I cannot tell you how much I wish a panty bomber would come in and just fucking blow your place up," one hissed. Another promised to "disembowel him with a rusty pitchfork."

For his colleague in the Arizona delegation, Ann Kirkpatrick, besides emails calling her a "whore," the threats got physical: A sewer cap was thrown through her office window. "Everybody in the back of their minds, everybody feared this, everybody put this into their calculations," says Kirkpatrick's former chief of staff, Michael Frias, "but nobody thought it would happen."

Frias was reflecting on Saturday's assassination attempt against Gabrielle Giffords, who, like Mitchell and Kirkpatrick, was an Arizona Democrat who supported health-care reform, and felt the fury that came with that. Most notoriously, Mitchell, Kirkpatrick, and Giffords were all among the 20 Democrats nationwide whose district showed up last March on the "crosshairs" map on Sarah Palin's Facebook page. Mitchell and Kirkpatrick lost their reelection campaigns in 2010. Giffords, fatefully, won.

Tomorrow the man who defines everything against progressiveness is set to leave the White House:

President Obama will give his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a send-off Friday as Mr. Emanuel officially announces his departure from the West Wing to run for mayor of Chicago, officials familiar with the decision said.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, at his daily briefing on Thursday afternoon said that the president will give two personnel announcements on Friday morning from the East Room of the White House. Mr. Gibbs, admitting that he was being purposely “oblique,” would not confirm whether the announcements would concern Mr. Emanuel.

Tata Rahm. You won’t be missed.

CBS is reporting that David Axelrod will leave the White House in the Spring to take up his old mantle of campaign manager for the President’s 2012 run. The news doesn’t stop there though:

The dominoes don't stop there. Rahm Emanuel, the president's Chief of Staff, may leave the White House as soon as next month.

Emanuel has told colleagues that he's very likely to run for mayor of Chicago, and that could see him depart the White House in October.

A shuffle in the White House is a really good thing. We need better ideas and new advice hitting the President’s ear. Hopefully we will see that in the coming months.

Republicans be warned:

The man recently hired by Michael Steele as a Republican National Committee fundraiser was accused in 2005 by a political action committee he chaired of improperly using PAC money on personal nightclub bills, according to a copy of the complaint filed against him.

The revelation about Neil Alpert, who began working as Steele's "special assistant for finance" last month, comes as the RNC has been under fire for another nightclub scandal: the now-notorious use of party funds at a bondage-themed club in West Hollywood, California. In the fallout from that scandal, the RNC's chief of staff resigned today.

Alpert was previously the chair of the D.C. Baseball PAC, a group created to encourage the return of Major League Baseball to Washington. But as we noted earlier, PAC officials filed a complaint against Alpert with the Washington Office of Campaign Finance in 2005, accusing him of using committee money for unauthorized personal expenses and filing expense reports that contained "numerous inaccuracies and omissions."

The detail of Sanford’s little lover’s rendezvous in Argentina keep emerging. The latest round shows that Sanford’s office truly didn’t know where he was and couldn’t contact him:

Gov. Mark Sanford’s chief of staff, Scott English, called the governor’s cell phones 15 times during the governor’s secret trip to Argentina to visit his lover last month. But the governor never picked up.

Meanwhile Sanford’s communications director, Joel Sawyer, worked to minimize the fact the governor had been out of touch with his staff for about four days.

Records released Monday show Sawyer juggled e-mails and media calls from around the nation, giving a consistent message that was later proven to be untrue.

One phrase comes to mind – dereliction of duty. How can anyone trust their leader who takes the job so lightly to just leave? Here’s an example of what this dereliction caused:

Those records also show Sanford declined a dinner invitation from a company looking to expand its business in South Carolina because Sanford planned to be in Argentina that day.

So with South Carolina in economic hell, Sanford misses an opportunity to bring in business and jobs. He sure didn’t go into hiding when it came to turning down stimulus money, but when actual economic growth potentials emerge he is AWOL.

South Carolinians and their state assembly need to get rid of this disgrace. This isn’t a situation of partisanship, but rather a question of leadership. Sanford just lost the state business opportunity because of his poor judgment. What next? Will his state suffer in a disaster while he is off on some secret little booty call?

Chris Matthews just can’t help himself when it comes to some good old Hillary bashing:

An avowed Clinton lover who was sitting next to Matthews reports: "He was in business class wearing a red baseball hat that said Penn on the back, and the fat [bleep] fell asleep on the train and snored with his mouth open."

During the ride to DC, Matthews awoke from his nap. A fellow passenger asked him, "What's the news tomorrow?" - to which Matthews loudly started talking about President-elect Barack Obama possibly picking Hillary as his secretary of state.

"I don't understand it," Matthews bellowed. "Why would he pick her? I thought we were done with the Clintons. She'll just use it to build her power base. It's Machiavellian. And then we'll have Bill Clinton, too. I thought Obama didn't want drama. He's already got [chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel and [transition team leader John] Podesta. He'll have even more drama with her.</p>

"She's just a soap opera. If he doesn't pick her, everyone will say she's been dissed again, we'll have to live through that again."

At the beginning of this year, old Chris ended up having to do an on air apology to Hillary for bashing her. Maybe it’s time for an intervention.

(h/t HuffPo)

Tonight 60 Minutes gives us the Obama interview, which contains this:

In a wide-ranging interview that will air Sunday night on the CBS program, “60 Minutes,” President-elect Barack Obama said he would choose at least one Republican for a position in his cabinet but declined to hint at who he had in mind.

“Will there be Republicans?” asked Steve Kroft, the “60 Minutes” interviewer. “Yes,” Mr. Obama replied. But when pressed, the president-elect would not name the G.O.P leaders he is considering nor did he tip his cards about which cabinet office he saw as a good fit for a member of the opposing party.

I have heard so much chatter from the right about how Obama isn’t being bi-partisan, especially after he picked Rahm as his chief of staff. It looks like Obama is out to prove them wrong again.