The Presidents As Travelers It would be an exaggeration to say that a great president is by definition a well-traveled one — Abraham Lincoln never left the United States — yet for most, leaving Washington now and then was both edifying and expedient. But if a president spends too much time away from the office, he runs the risk of being dubbed a "Vacation President," as a certain brush-clearing resident of Crawford, TX, has found after spending 469 days at his ranch to date. Check out a slideshow of past presidents on their travels.

President Bush thinks offshore drilling might be the Nicorette gum America needs to kick its oil addiction. Yesterday Bush
lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling imposed by his father,
removing one hurdle for exploration.
Bush explained:"This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the US Congress.

The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco has some big plans to honor outgoing President Bush —
they want to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Plant, the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
The civically savvy satirists have collected more than enough signatures required to put the renaming initiative on November's ballot.

Chin up, Mr. President Bush, sir! It's not all bad!

President Bush may ask Congress to
consider legislation to combat global warming as early as this week. An unmanageable web of US regulatory law, as well as upcoming meetings with world powers, has motivated Bush to take action.
Currently businesses must follow three pieces of complex legislation: the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Air Act.

So by now many of you have heard about evidence that top Bush Administration officials participated in explicit conversations in the White House regarding torture techniques to be used on suspected terrorists. Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sat around — in a series of meetings of potential war-crime defendants — discussing specific methods of harsh interrogation, and issuing their approval.
The Associate Press
reports that CIA officials demonstrated tactics to "make sure the small group of 'principals' fully understood what the al-Qaeda detainees would undergo.

President Bush spoke to the Economic Club of New York, during what he called an "interesting moment." Today the stock market has been extra volatile on news that the Federal Reserve Bank and JP Morgan
bailed out investment bank Bear Stearns with emergency cash. .

Oprah is keen on a woman politician not named Hillary Clinton. The latest issue of O magazine features Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius in a piece about the virtues of female executive know-how. Governor Sebelius, an Obama supporter, gave this year's Democratic response after Bush's State of the Union.