A globe is a three-dimensional scale model of Earth (terrestrial globe) or other spheroid celestial body such as a planet, star, or moon. It may also refer to a spherical representation of the celestial sphere, showing the apparent positions of the stars and constellations in the sky (celestial globe). The word "globe" comes from the Latin word ''globus'', meaning round mass or sphere.

Terrestrial and planetary

A globe is the only representation of the earth that does not distort either the shape or the size of large features; flat maps are created using a map projection that inevitably introduces an increasing amount of distortion the larger the area that the map shows. A typical scale for a terrestrial globe is roughly 1:40 million.

Sometimes a globe has surface texture showing topography; in these, elevations are exaggerated, otherwise they would be hardly visible. Most modern globes are also imprinted with parallels and meridians so that one can tell the approximate coordinates of a specific place. Globes provide the best view of Earth today.

Celestial

Celestial globes show the apparent positions of the stars in the sky. They omit the Sun, Moon and planets because the positions of these bodies vary relative to those of the stars, but the ecliptic, along which the Sun moves, is indicated.

A potential issue arises regarding the "handedness" of celestial globes. If the globe is constructed so that the stars are in the positions they actually occupy on the imaginary celestial sphere, then the star field will appear back-to-front on the surface of the globe (all the constellations will appear as their mirror images). This is because the view from Earth, positioned at the centre of the celestial sphere, is of the ''inside'' of the celestial sphere, whereas the celestial globe is viewed from the ''outside''. For this reason, celestial globes may be produced in mirror image, so that at least the constellations appear the "right way round". Some modern celestial globes address this problem by making the surface of the globe transparent. The stars can then be placed in their proper positions and viewed ''through'' the globe, so that the view is of the inside of the celestial sphere, as it is from Earth.

History

The sphericity of the Earth was established by Hellenistic astronomy in the 3rd century BC, and the earliest terrestrial globe appeared from that period. The earliest known example is the one constructed by Crates of Mallus in Cilicia (now Çukurova in modern-day Turkey), in the mid-2nd century BC.

No terrestrial globes from Antiquity or the Middle Ages have survived. An example of a surviving celestial globe is part of a Hellenistic sculpture, called the Farnese Atlas, surviving in a 2nd century AD Roman copy in the Naples Museum, Italy.

Early terrestrial globes depicting the entirety of the Old World were constructed in the Islamic Golden Age. One such example was constructed in the 9th century by Muslim geographers and cartographers working under the Abbasid caliph, Al-Ma'mun. Another example was the terrestrial globe introduced to Beijing by the Persian astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, in 1267.

The oldest surviving terrestrial globe is credited to Martin Behaim in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1492. A facsimile globe showing America was made by Martin Waldseemueller in 1507. Another early globe, the Hunt-Lenox Globe, ca. 1507, is thought to be the source of the phrase "Here be dragons". Another "remarkably modern-looking" terrestrial globe of the Earth was constructed by Taqi al-Din at the Istanbul observatory of Taqi al-Din during the 1570s.

An unusually high proportion of vintage 20th century world globes feature the Australian town of Birdum, which no longer exists but once held an important position at the end of the Northern Australian Railway.

Manufacture

Mass-produced globes are typically covered by a printed paper map. The most common type has long, thin gores (strips) of paper that narrow to a point at the North Pole and the South Pole. Then a small disk is used to paper over the inevitable irregularities at the poles. The more gores there are, the less stretching and crumpling is required to make the paper map fit the sphere. From a geometric point of view, all points on a sphere are equivalent – one could select any arbitrary point on the Earth, and create a paper map that covers the Earth with strips that come together at that point and the antipodal point.

A globe is usually mounted at a 23.5° angle on bearings. In addition to making it easy to use this mounting also represents the angle of the planet in relation to its sun and the spin of the planet. This makes it easy to visualize how days and seasons change.

Notable examples

The Unisphere in Queens, New York, at 120 feet (36.6 m) in diameter, is the world's largest global structure.

Eartha, currently the world's largest rotating globe ( in diameter), at the Delorme headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine The Mapparium, three-story, stained glass globe at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, which visitors walk through via a glass bridge. The Babson globe in Wellesley, Massachusetts, a globe which originally rotated on its axis and on its base to simulate day and night and the seasons

The giant globe in the lobby of The News Building in New York City.

The Hitler Globe, also known as the Führer globe, was formally named the Columbus Globe for State and Industry Leaders. Two editions existed during Hitler's lifetime, created during the mid-1930s on his orders. (The second edition changed the name of Abyssinia to Italian East Africa). These globes were "enormous" and very costly. According to the New York Times, "the real Columbus globe was nearly the size of a Volkswagen and, at the time, more expensive." Several still exist, including three in Berlin: one at a geographical institute, one at the Märkisches Museum, and another at the Deutsches Historisches Museum. The latter has a Soviet bullet hole through Germany. One of the two in public collections in Munich has an American bullet hole through Germany. There are several in private hands inside and out of Germany. A much smaller version of Hitler's globe was mocked by Charlie Chaplin in ''The Great Dictator'', a film released in 1940.

Gallery

See also

Armillary sphere

Cartography

Dymaxion map

Emery Molyneux

Google Earth

NASA World Wind

Johannes Schöner globe

Virtual globe

References

External links

ppmglobe - generate strips to glue onto a sphere

3D VRML globe

3D Java Globe with coastlines, parallels, meridians, etc.

Category:Map types

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order	44th
office	President of the United States
term start	January 20, 2009
vicepresident	Joe Biden
predecessor	George W. Bush
birth date	August 04, 1961
birth place	Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
birthname	Barack Hussein Obama II
nationality	American
party	Democratic
spouse	Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
children	Malia (b.1998) Sasha (b.2001)
residence	The White House
alma mater	Occidental CollegeColumbia University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)
profession	Community organizerAttorneyAuthorConstitutional law professorUnited States SenatorPresident of the United States
religion	Christian, former member of United Church of Christ
signature	Barack Obama signature.svg
website	WhiteHouse.gov
footnotes	}}

The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, as well as the first born in Hawaii.

His policy decisions have addressed a global financial crisis and have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives and the phasing out of detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He attended the G-20 London summit and later visited U.S. troops in Iraq. On the tour of various European countries following the G-20 summit, he announced in Prague that he intended to negotiate substantial reduction in the world's nuclear arsenals, en route to their eventual extinction. In October 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Transition period

The presidential transition period began following Obama's election to the presidency on November 4, 2008. The Obama-Biden Transition Project was co-chaired by John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse. During the transition period, Obama announced his nominations for his Cabinet and administration. Shortly after the election on November 4, Obama chose Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois as White House Chief of Staff.

Cabinet nominations included former Democratic primary opponents Hillary Rodham Clinton for Secretary of State and Bill Richardson for Secretary of Commerce (although the latter withdrew on January 4, 2009). Obama appointed Eric Holder as his Attorney General, the first African-American appointed to that position. He also nominated Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. On December 1, Obama announced that he had asked Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense, making Gates the first Defense head to carry over from a president of a different party. He nominated former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, which he restored to a Cabinet-level position.

During his transition, he maintained a website Change.gov, on which he wrote blogs to readers and uploaded video addresses by many of the members of his new cabinet. He announced strict rules for federal lobbyists, restricting them from financially contributing to his administration and forcing them to stop lobbying while working for him. The website also allowed individuals to share stories and visions with each other and the transition team in what was called the Citizen's Briefing Book, which was given to Obama shortly after his inauguration. Most of the information from Change.gov was transferred to the official White House website whitehouse.gov just after Obama's inauguration.

Inauguration

Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. He officially assumed the presidency at 12:00 noon, EST, and completed the oath of office at 12:05 PM, EST. He delivered his inaugural address immediately following his oath. After his speech, he went to the President's Room in the House Wing of the Capitol and signed three documents: a commemorative proclamation, a list of Cabinet appointments, and a list of sub-Cabinet appointments, before attending a luncheon with congressional and administration leaders and invited guests. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of former President Abraham Lincoln, the same Bible that was used for Lincoln's inauguration was used in Obama's inauguration.

In administering the oath, Chief Justice John G. Roberts misplaced the word "faithfully" and erroneously replaced the phrase "President of the United States" with "President to the United States" before restating the phrase correctly; since Obama initially repeated the incorrect form, some scholars argued the President should take the oath again. On January 21, Roberts readministered the oath to Obama in a private ceremony in the White House Map Room, making him the seventh U.S. president to retake the oath; White House Counsel Greg Craig said Obama took the oath from Roberts a second time out of an "abundance of caution".

First 100 days

Expectations

Obama's 100th day in office was April 29, 2009. In his first post-election interview with ''60 Minutes'', Obama said that he has been studying Roosevelt's first 100 days, while adding, "The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference."

Obama's first 100 days were highly anticipated ever since he became the presumptive nominee. Several news outlets created web pages dedicated to covering the subject. Commentators weighed in on challenges and priorities within domestic, foreign, economic, and environmental policy. CNN lists a number of economic issues that "Obama and his team will have to tackle in their first 100 days", foremost among which is passing and implementing a recovery package to deal with the financial crisis. Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer, expressed hopes that the new president will close Guantanamo Bay detention camp in his first 100 days in office. After aides of the president announced his intention to give a major foreign policy speech in the capital of an Islamic country, there were speculations in Jakarta that he might return to his former home city within the first 100 days.

''The New York Times'' devoted a five-part series, which was spread out over two weeks, to anticipatory analysis of Obama's first hundred days. Each day, the analysis of a political expert was followed by freely edited blog postings from readers. The writers compared Obama's prospects with the situations of Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 16, Jean Edward Smith), John F. Kennedy (January 19, Richard Reeves), Lyndon B. Johnson (January 23, Robert Dallek), Ronald Reagan (January 27, Lou Cannon), and Richard Nixon.

Legislation and executive orders

Within minutes of taking the Oath of Office on January 20, Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, issued an order suspending last-minute federal regulations pushed through by outgoing President George W. Bush, planning to review everything still pending. Due to the economic crisis, the President enacted a pay freeze for Senior White House Staff making more than $100,000 per year, as well as announcing stricter guidelines regarding lobbyists in an effort to raise the ethical standards of the White House. He asked for a waiver to his own new rules, however, for the appointments of William Lynn to the position of Deputy Defense Secretary, Jocelyn Frye to the position of director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, and Cecilia Muñoz to the position of director of intergovernmental affairs in the executive office of the president, leading to some criticism of hypocrisy and violation of his pledge for governmental openness.

In his first week in office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492 suspending all the ongoing proceedings of Guantanamo military commission and ordering the detention facility to be shut down within the year. He also signed Executive Order 13491 - Ensuring Lawful Interrogations requiring the Army Field Manual to be used as a guide for terror interrogations, banning torture and other coercive techniques, such as waterboarding. Obama also issued an executive order entitled "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel", setting stricter limitations on incoming executive branch employees and placing tighter restrictions on lobbying in the White House. Obama signed two Presidential Memoranda concerning energy independence, ordering the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards before 2011 models are released and allowing states to raise their emissions standards above the national standard. He also ended the Mexico City Policy, which banned federal grants to international groups that provide abortion services or counseling.

In his first week he also established a policy of producing a weekly Saturday morning video address available on whitehouse.gov and YouTube, much like those released during his transition period. The first address had been viewed by 600,000 YouTube viewers by the next afternoon.

The first piece of legislation Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 on January 29, which revised the statute of limitations for filing pay discrimination lawsuits. Lilly Ledbetter joined Obama and his wife, Michelle, as he signed the bill, fulfilling his campaign pledge to nullify ''Ledbetter v. Goodyear''. On February 3, he signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIP), expanding health care from 7 million children under the plan to 11 million.

| format = Ogg | type = speech }} After much debate, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed by both the House and Senate on February 13, 2009. Originally intended to be a bipartisan bill, the passage of the bill was largely along party lines. No Republicans voted for it in the House, and three moderate Republicans voted for it in the Senate (Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania). The bill combined tax breaks with spending on infrastructure projects, extension of welfare benefits, and education. The final cost of the bill was $787 billion, and almost $1.2 trillion with debt service included. Obama signed the Act into law on February 17, 2009, in Denver, Colorado.

On March 9, 2009, Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and in doing so, called into question some of George W. Bush's signing statements. Obama stated that he too would employ signing statements if he deems upon review that a portion of a bill is unconstitutional, and he has issued several signing statements.

Early in his presidency, Obama signed a law raising the tobacco tax 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes. The tax is to be "used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children", and "help some [smokers] to quit and persuade young people not to start".

In October 2011, Obama instituted the We Can't Wait program, which involved using executive orders, administrative rulemaking, and recess appointments to institute policies without the support of Congress. The initiative was developed in response to Congress's unwillingness to pass economic legislation proposed by Obama, and conflicts in Congress during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis.

Approval ratings and opinion

2009

After his transition period, Obama entered office with an approval rating of 82%. At the end of his first week, 68% of respondents in a Gallup poll approved of how Obama was handling his job, matching the early approval ratings of Dwight D. Eisenhower and trailing only John F. Kennedy in post-World War II presidents.

Throughout early February polls showed scattered approval ratings: 62% (CBS News), 64% (USA Today/Gallup), 66% (Gallup), and 76% in an outlier poll (CNN/Opinion Research). Gallup reported the congressional address in late February boosted his approval from a term-low of 59% to 67%.

Throughout autumn 2009, Rasmussen estimated Obama's approval as fluctuating between 45% and 52% and his disapproval between 48% and 54%; as of November 11, Pew Research estimated Obama's approval between 51% and 55% and his disapproval between 33% and 37% since July.

Handling of the economy

Rasmussen reported in mid-February 2009, that 55% of voters gave Obama good or excellent marks on his handling of the economy. In early March, a ''The Wall Street Journal'' survey of 49 economists gave Obama an average grade of 59 out of 100, with 42% of the respondents surveyed giving the administration's economic policies a grade below 60 percent. In comparison, only 30% of those same economists considered the response of governments around the world to the global recession to have been adequate. In April, a Gallup poll showed trust in Obama's economic policy with 71% saying they had "a fair amount" or "a great deal" of confidence in Obama's handling of the economy, higher than for Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, or leaders of Congress. Another Gallup poll in June showed 55% of Americans approved Obama's overall handling of the economy, but 48% and 51% disapproved of his handling of the federal budget deficit and controlling federal spending, respectively. A CBS News poll taken August 27–31 showed 53% of those polled approved of his handling of the economy. A Rasmussen poll taken on November 12 found 45% of Americans rating Obama's handling of the economy as poor and 39% rating him as doing a good or excellent job. They found 72% of Democrats rated his handling of the economy as good or excellent, while only 10% of Republicans and 27% of voters not affiliated with either party agreed.

2010

On March 25, 2010, following his signing of landmark health care reform legislation into law, Obama's polling was revealed by Bloomberg to be 50%, with higher marks for relations with other countries (58%) and his running of the war in Afghanistan (54%). "Obama's approval rating is roughly equal to what Bill Clinton had at this point in his presidency, according to data maintained by Gallup (and) higher than the 45 percent Ronald Reagan recorded in April 1982" and more favorable than Democrats or Republicans office in 2010. They found Obama's approval rating was at 85% among Democrats, compared with 46% among independents and 11% among Republicans.

Fox News released the results of two polls on April 8–9, 2010. The first showed a drop in Obama's approval rating to 43%, with 48% disapproving. In that poll, Democrats approved of Obama's performance 80–12%, while independents disapproved 49–38%. The other poll, which concentrated on the economy, showed disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy by a 53–42% margin, with 62% saying they were dissatisfied with the handling of the federal deficit. According to a Gallup Poll released April 10, 2010, President Obama had a 45% approval rating, with 48% disapproving. In a poll from Rasmussen Reports, released April 10, 2010, 47% approved of the President's performance, while 53% disapproved.

2011

Obama's approval rating jumped to a high following the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. A GfK poll conducted May 5, 2011 found his approval rating to be 60%. During the debt ceiling debate in August 2011, Obama's approval rating dropped to the low-40s.

Major legislation

2009

January 29: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

February 4: Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act

February 11: DTV Delay Act

February 17: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

March 30: Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009

April 21: Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

May 20: Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

May 20: Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009

May 22: Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009

June 22: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

August 6: Cash For Clunkers Extension Act

October 22: Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act

October 28: Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

October 28: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010

October 30: Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act

November 6: Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009

2010

January 27: Emergency Aid to American Survivors of Haiti Earthquake Act

March 4: Travel Promotion Act

March 18: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE Act)

March 23: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

March 30: Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

May 5: Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010

May 17: Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act

July 1: Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act

July 21: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

July 22: Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010

July 22: Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010

August 10: SPEECH Act of 2010

September 27: Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010

December 9: Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010

December 13: Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

December 17: Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010

December 22: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

2011

January 2: James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 () January 4: Food Safety and Modernization Act, ,

January 7: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011

August 2: Budget Control Act of 2011

December 31: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Personnel

Cabinet appointees

Twenty-two members of the Obama administration are either in the United States Cabinet (15) or are in positions considered to be Cabinet-level (7). The members of the Cabinet are the heads of the fifteen major departments (State, Defense, Justice, etc.), and the seven cabinet-level positions are the Vice President, White House Chief of Staff, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador to the United Nations, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Since Robert Gates was a member of the previous administration, his letter of resignation (a formality at the end of a President's term) was simply not accepted, and he did not need confirmation. On January 19, 2009, Senate Democratic leaders requested fifteen of the twenty positions to be ratified by unanimous consent, and seven gained unanimous confirmation by voice vote the next day: Ken Salazar, Steven Chu, Arne Duncan, Peter Orszag, Eric Shinseki, Tom Vilsack, and Janet Napolitano. On January 21, Obama presided over the swearing in of the seven unanimous nominees. Later that day, the Senate confirmed Hillary Clinton by a 94–2 vote. On January 22, several more confirmations were approved unanimously: Susan E. Rice, Ray LaHood, Lisa P. Jackson, and Shaun Donovan. On January 26, the Senate confirmed Geithner by a 60–34 margin.

At the conclusion of Obama's first week as President, Hilda Solis, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, and Eric Holder had yet to be confirmed, and there had been no second appointment for Secretary of Commerce. Holder was confirmed by a vote of 75–21 on February 2, and on February 3, Obama announced Senator Judd Gregg as his second nomination for Secretary of Commerce. Daschle withdrew later that day amid controversy over his failure to pay income taxes and potential conflicts of interest related to the speaking fees he accepted from health care interests. Solis was later confirmed by a vote of 80-17 on February 24, and Ron Kirk was confirmed on March 18 by a 92-5 vote in the Senate.

Gregg, who was the leading Republican negotiator and author of the TARP program in the Senate, after publication that he had a multi-million dollar investment in the Bank of America, on February 12, withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Commerce, citing "irresolvable conflicts" with President Obama and his staff over how to conduct the 2010 census and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Former Washington governor Gary Locke was nominated on February 26 as Obama's third choice for Commerce Secretary and confirmed on March 24 by voice vote.

On March 2, Obama introduced Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as his second choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He also introduced Nancy-Ann DeParle as head of the new White House Office of Health Reform, which he suggested would work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services. At the end of March, Sebelius was the only remaining Cabinet member yet to be confirmed.

Six high-ranking cabinet nominees in the Obama administration had their confirmations delayed or rejected among reports that they did not pay all of their taxes, including Tom Daschle, Obama's original nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Though Geithner was confirmed, and Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, thought Daschle would have been confirmed, Daschle withdrew his nomination on February 3. Obama had nominated Nancy Killefer for the position of Chief Performance Officer, but Killefer also withdrew on February 3, citing unspecified problems with District of Columbia unemployment tax. A senior administration official said that Killefer's tax issues dealt with household help. Hilda Solis, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor, faced delayed confirmation hearings due to tax lien concerns pertaining to her husband's auto repair business, but she was later confirmed on February 24. While pundits puzzled over U.S. Trade Representative-designate Ron Kirk's failure to be confirmed by March 2009, it was reported on March 2 that Kirk owed over $10,000 in back taxes. Kirk agreed to pay them in exchange for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's aid in speeding up the confirmation process; he was later confirmed on March 18. On March 31, Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, revealed in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that her Certified Public Accountant found errors in her tax returns for years 2005-2007. She, along with her husband, paid more than $7,000 in back taxes, along with $878 in interest.

Notable non-Cabinet positions

Appointees serve at the pleasure of the President and were nominated by Barack Obama except as noted.

Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

*Sheila Bair¹ (2009–2011)

Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

*Richard Holbrooke (2009–2010)

*Marc Grossman (2011–present)

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

* Retired General James L. Jones (2009–2011)

* Thomas E. Donilon (2011–present)

Special envoy to the Middle East

* George J. Mitchell (2009–2011)

* David Hale (2011–present)

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

* Robert Mueller² (2009–present)

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

* Leon Panetta (2009–2011)

* Michael Morell (Acting-2011)

* David Petraeus (2011–present)

Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

* Christina Romer (2009–2010)

* Austan Goolsbee (2010–2011)

* Alan Krueger (2011–present)

Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission

* Mary Schapiro (2009–present)

Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of National Economic Council

* Lawrence Summers (2009–2010)

* Gene Sperling (2011–present)

Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board

* Paul Volcker (2009–2011)

* ''Replaced by Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in 2011''

Chairperson of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

* Jeffrey R. Immelt (2011–present)

¹Appointed by George W. Bush in 2006 to a five-year term ²Appointed by George W. Bush in 2001 to a ten-year term

Judicial nominees

United States Supreme Court

Obama appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Sonia Sotomayor 2009 Elena Kagan 2010

Other courts

Outside of the Supreme Court, by October 2009, Obama had nominated fewer than two dozen judges to fill judicial vacancies, of which there were close to 100. This has prompted some Democrats to criticize the pace of Obama's judicial appointments as too slow. In December 2009, Senator Patrick Leahy criticized Republicans for stalling those judicial nominations that had been made, noting that the Senate confirmed more district and circuit court nominees during the first year of the George W. Bush administration than it had approved by that point during the Barack Obama presidency.

As of July 2010, Obama's nominees to the district and circuit courts had been confirmed at a rate of only 43.5 percent, compared to 87.2 percent during Bill Clinton's administration and 91.3 percent for George W. Bush. The Center for American Progress, which compiled the data, commented:

Judicial confirmations slowed to a trickle on the day President Barack Obama took office. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule. Uncontroversial nominees wait months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees—low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past—are routinely filibustered into oblivion. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee.

Policies

Economy

Upon entering office, Obama planned to center his attention on handling the global financial crisis. Even before his inauguration he lobbied Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, which became the top priority during his first month in office. As President, Obama made a high profile trip to Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. to dialog with Congressional Republicans and advocate for the bill. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion plan that included spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. The tax provisions of the law reduced taxes for 98 per cent of taxpayers, bringing tax rates to their lowest levels in 60 years.

As part of the 2010 budget proposal, the Obama administration has proposed additional measures to attempt to stabilize the economy, including a $2–3 trillion measure aimed at stabilizing the financial system and freeing up credit. The program includes up to $1 trillion to buy toxic bank assets, an additional $1 trillion to expand a federal consumer loan program, and the $350 billion left in the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The plan also includes $50 billion intended to slow the wave of mortgage foreclosures. The 2011 budget includes a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, proposes several program cancellations, and raises taxes on high income earners to bring down deficits during the economic recovery.

In a July 2009 interview with ABC News, Biden was asked about the sustained increase of the U.S. unemployment rate from May 2007 to October 2009 despite the administration's multi-year economic stimulus package passed five months earlier. He responded "The truth is, we and everyone else, misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there ... the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited." The White House indicates that 2 million jobs were created or saved due to the stimulus package in 2009 and self reporting by recipients of the grants, loans, and contracts portion of the package report that the package saved or created 608,317 jobs in the final three months of 2009.

The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.1% and averaging 10.0% in the fourth quarter. Following a decrease to 9.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6% in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year. Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8%, which was less than the average of 1.9% experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries. GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a 1.6% pace, followed by a 5.0% increase in the fourth quarter. Growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7% in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year. Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9% in 2010.

During November–December 2010, Obama and a lame duck session of the 111th Congress focused on a dispute about the temporary Bush tax cuts, which were due to expire at the end of the year. Obama wanted to extend the tax cuts for taxpayers making less than $250,000 a year. Congressional Republicans agreed but also wanted to extend the tax cuts for those making over that amount, and refused to support any bill that did not do so. All the Republicans in the Senate also joined in saying that, until the tax dispute was resolved, they would filibuster to prevent consideration of any other legislation, except for bills to fund the U.S. government. On 7 December, Obama strongly defended a compromise agreement he had reached with the Republican congressional leadership that included a two-year extension of all the tax cuts, a 13-month extension of unemployment insurance, a one-year reduction in the FICA payroll tax, and other measures. On December 10, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a filibuster against the compromise tax proposal, which lasted over eight hours. Obama persuaded many wary Democrats to support the bill, but not all; of the 148 votes against the bill in the House, 112 were cast by Democrats and only 36 by Republicans. The $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which ''The Washington Post'' called "the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade", passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and was signed into law by Obama on December 17, 2010.

Ethics

Lobbying reform

Early in his presidential campaign, Obama stated that "they [lobbyists] won't find a job in my White House", but softened his stance later in the campaign. On January 21, 2009, Obama issued an executive order for all future appointees to his administration, which stated, no appointee who was a registered lobbyist within the two years before his appointment could participate on matters in which he lobbied for a period of two years after the date of appointment. Three formal waivers were initially issued in early 2009, out of 800 executive appointments: to William J. Lynn III, a lobbyist for Raytheon, to hold the position of Deputy Secretary of Defense; to Jocelyn Frye, former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families, to serve as Director of Policy and Projects in the Office of the First Lady; and to Cecilia Muñoz, former senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, to serve as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Executive Office of the President. As of March 21, 2009, at least thirty officials appointed by Obama had been lobbyists in the past five years. Ten additional waivers were announced in September 2009.

Not all recent former lobbyists require waivers; those without waivers write letters of recusal stating issues from which they must refrain because of their previous jobs. ''USA Today'' reported that 21 members of the Obama administration have at some time been registered as federal lobbyists, although most have not within the previous two years. Lobbyists in the administration include William Corr, an anti-tobacco lobbyist, as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tom Vilsack, who lobbied in 2007, for a national teachers union, as Secretary of Agriculture. Also, the Secretary of Labor nominee, Hilda Solis, formerly served as a board member of American Rights at Work, which lobbied Congress on two bills Solis co-sponsored, and Mark Patterson, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have criticized the administration, claiming that Obama is retreating from his own ethics rules barring lobbyists from working on the issues about which they lobbied during the previous two years by issuing waivers. According to Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, "It makes it appear that they are saying one thing and doing another."

Transparency

The Obama administration has said that all executive orders, non-emergency legislation, and proclamations will be posted to the official White House website, whitehouse.gov, allowing the public to review and comment for five days before the President signs the legislation. The pledge was twice broken during Obama's first month in office when he signed SCHIP legislation and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act with less than the full five days of "sunlight before signing". The administration has said that they are still "working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar".

During his first week in office, Obama announced plans to post a video address each week on the site, and on YouTube, informing the public of government actions each week. During his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama stated, "I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy."

On January 21, 2009, by executive order, Obama revoked Executive Order 13233, which had limited access to the records of former United States Presidents. Obama issued instructions to all agencies and departments in his administration to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests. In April 2009, the United States Department of Justice released four legal memos from the Bush administration to comply voluntarily with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The memos were written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, then Principal Assistant Attorneys General to the Department of Justice, and addressed to John A. Rizzo, general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The memos describe in detail controversial interrogation methods the CIA used on prisoners suspected of terrorism. Obama became personally involved in the decision to release the memos, which was opposed by former CIA directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch. Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized Obama for not releasing more memos; Cheney claimed that unreleased memos detail successes of CIA interrogations.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requires all recipients of the funds provided by the act to publish a plan for using the funds, along with purpose, cost, rationale, net job creation, and contact information about the plan to a website Recovery.gov so that the public can review and comment. Inspectors General from each department or executive agency will then review, as appropriate, any concerns raised by the public. Any findings of an Inspector General must be relayed immediately to the head of each department and published on Recovery.gov.

On June 16, 2009, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration in order to get information about the visits of coal company executives. Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for CREW, stated "The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration... I don't see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency." On June 16, MSNBC reported that its more comprehensive request for visitor logs since Obama's January 20 inauguration had been denied. The administration announced that White House visitor logs will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis, with certain limitations, for visits occurring after September 15, 2009. Beginning on January 29, 2010, the White House did begin to release the names of its visitor records. Since that time, names of visitors (which includes not only tourists, but also names of union leaders, Wall Street executives, lobbyists, party chairs, philanthropists and celebrities), have been released. The names are released in huge batches up to 75,000 names at a time. Names are released 90–120 days after having visited the White House. The complete list of names is available online by accessing the official White House website.

Obama stated during the 2008 Presidential campaign that he would have negotiations for health care reform televised on C-SPAN, citing transparency as being the leverage needed to ensure that people stay involved in the process taking place in Washington. This did not fully happen and Politifact gives President Obama a "Promise Broken" rating on this issue. After White House press secretary Robert Gibbs initially avoided addressing the issue, President Obama himself acknowledged that he met with Democratic leaders behind closed doors to discuss how best to garner enough votes in order to merge the two (House and Senate) passed versions of the health care bill. Doing this violated the letter of the pledge, although Obama maintains that negotiations in several congressional committees were open, televised hearings. Obama also cited an independent ethics watchdog group describe his administration as the most transparent in recent history.

The Obama administration has been characterized as much more aggressive than the Bush and other previous administrations in their response to whistleblowing and leaks to the press. Three people have been prosecuted under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. They include Thomas Andrews Drake, a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee who was critical of the NSA's Trailblazer Project, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor who allegedly had a conversation about North Korea with James Rosen of Fox News, and Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly was a source for James Risen's book State of War. Risen has also been subpoenaed to reveal his sources, another rare action by the government.

Foreign policy

In his inaugural address, Obama suggested that he plans to begin the process of withdrawing from Iraq and continuing to focus on the war in Afghanistan. He also mentioned lessening the nuclear threat through "working tirelessly with old friends and former foes". He spoke about America's determination to combat terrorism, proclaiming America's spirit is "stronger and cannot be broken — you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." To the Muslim world, Obama extended an invite to "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect". He also said the USA would "extend a hand" to those "who cling to power through corruption and deceit" if they "are willing to unclench" their fists. Shortly after his inauguration President Obama first called President Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Calls were also made to President Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East peace and Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan on January 23, 2009. At the same time, Obama called on Israel to open the borders of Gaza, detailing early plans on his administration's peace plans for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On February 18, 2009, Obama announced that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan would be bolstered by 17,000 new troops by summer. The announcement followed the recommendation of several experts including Defense Secretary Robert Gates that additional troops be deployed to the war-torn nation.

Obama declared his plan for ending the Iraq War on February 27, 2009, in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, before an audience of Marines stationed there. According to the president, combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, leaving a contingent of up to 50,000 servicemen and servicewomen to continue training, advisory, and counterterrorism operations until as late as the end of 2011.

Other characteristics of the Obama administration on foreign policy include a tough stance on tax havens, continuing military operation in Pakistan, and avowed focus on diplomacy to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.

On April 1, 2009, Obama and China's President, Hu Jintao, announced the establishment of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century.

In that same month, Obama requested that Congress approve $83.4 billion of supplemental military funding, mostly for the war in Iraq and to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The request also includes $2.2 billion to increase the size of the US military, $350 million to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border, and $400 million in counterinsurgency aid for Pakistan.

In May 2009, it was reported that Obama plans to expand the military by 20,000 employees.

On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt. The wide ranging speech called for a "new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States. The speech received both praise and criticism from leaders in the region. In March 2010, Secretary of State Clinton criticized the Israeli government for approving expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem.

On April 8, 2010, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a "major" nuclear arms control agreement that reduces the nuclear weapons stockpiles of both countries.

In March 2011, international reaction to Muammar Gaddafi's military crackdown on rebel forces and civilians in Libya culminated in a United Nations resolution to enforce a no fly zone in Libya. Obama authorized U.S. forces to participate in international air attacks on Libyan air defenses using Tomahawk cruise missiles to establish the protective zone.

Guantánamo Bay detention camp

On his first day in office, Obama requested a 120-day suspension of all trials for alleged terrorists held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, so the new administration could "review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases pending before military commissions , specifically". Another order established a task force to lead a review of detention policies, procedures and individual cases. Obama addressed the State Department that "the United States will not torture" and drafted an executive order to close Guantánamo within a year. On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order ensuring safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals detained in armed conflicts. This order restricts interrogators to methods listed and authorized by an Army Field Manual. A detainee released since Obama took office claimed in an interview with Agence France-Presse that conditions at Guantánamo had worsened, stating guards wanted to "take their last revenge" before the facility is closed. On March 13, 2009, the administration announced that it would no longer refer to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay as enemy combatants, but it also asserted that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges.

The case review of detainee files by administration officials and prosecutors was made more difficult than expected as the Bush administration had failed to establish a coherent repository of the evidence and intelligence on each prisoner. By September 2009, prosecutors recommended to the Justice Department which detainees are eligible for trial, and the Justice Department and the Pentagon worked together to determine which of several now-scheduled trials will go forward in military tribunals and which in civilian courts. While 216 international terrorists are already held in maximum security prisons in the U.S., Congress was denying the administration funds to shut down the camp and adapt existing facilities elsewhere, arguing that the decision was "too dangerous to rush". In November, Obama stated that the U.S. would miss the January 2010 date for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison as he had ordered, acknowledging that he "knew this was going to be hard". Obama did not set a specific new deadline for closing the camp, citing that the delay was due to politics and lack of congressional cooperation. The state of Illinois has offered to sell to the federal government the Thomson Correctional Center, a new but largely unused prison, for the purpose of housing detainees. Federal officials testified at a December 23 hearing that if the state commission approves the sale for that purpose, it could take more than six months to ready the facility.

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Starting with information received in July 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to Obama in March 2011. Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on May 1, 2011, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers and computer drives and disks from the compound. Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing, and buried at sea several hours later. Within minutes of Obama's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on May 1, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square. Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and from many countries around the world.

Overseas Contingency Operation

Obama discontinued use of the term "War on Terror" and instead uses the term "Overseas Contingency Operation". However, Obama has stated that the U.S. is at war with Al-Qaeda, saying "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."

In April 2010, the Obama administration took the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

Gun control

During the presidential campaign, Obama announced that he favors measures that respect Second Amendment rights, while at the same time keeping guns away from children and criminals. On February 25, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would seek a new assault weapons ban across the United States, saying that it would have a positive impact on the drug-related violence in Mexico. After the statement drew criticism from the NRA and some House Democrats, the Administration reportedly ordered the Justice Department to end public discussion of the issue. Obama has signed into law two bills containing amendments reducing restrictions on gun owners, one which permits guns to be transported in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and another which allows carrying loaded firearms in national parks located in states allowing concealed carry.

Science and technology

Cybersecurity

Obama initiated a 60-day review of cybersecurity by Melissa Hathaway, a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, appointed Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace.

''The New York Times'' reported in 2009, that the NSA is intercepting communications of American citizens including a Congressman, although the Justice Department believed that the NSA had corrected its errors. United States Attorney General Eric Holder resumed the wiretapping according to his understanding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 that Congress passed in July 2008, but without explaining what had occurred.

Environment

On January 27, 2009, Obama issued two presidential memoranda concerning energy policy. One directed the Department of Transportation to raise fuel efficiency standards incrementally to by 2020, and the other directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow individual states to set stricter tailpipe emissions regulations than the federal standard.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $54 billion in funds to double domestic renewable energy production, renovate federal buildings making them more energy-efficient, improve the nation's electricity grid, repair public housing, and weatherize modest-income homes.

On February 10, 2009, Obama overturned a Bush administration policy that had opened up a five-year period of offshore drilling for oil and gas near both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been quoted as saying, "To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside" the plan "and create our own timeline".

On May 19, 2009, Obama announced a plan to increase the CAFE national standards for gasoline mileage, by creating a single new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016, than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon. Environmental advocates and industry officials welcomed the new program, but for different reasons. Environmentalists called it a long-overdue tightening of emissions and fuel economy standards after decades of government delay and industry opposition. Auto industry officials said it would provide the single national efficiency standard they have long desired, a reasonable timetable to meet it and the certainty they need to proceed with product development plans.

On March 30, 2010, Obama partially reinstated Bush administration proposals to open certain offshore areas along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling. The proposals had earlier been set aside by President Obama after they were challenged in court on environmental grounds.

On May 27, 2010, Obama extended a moratorium on offshore drilling permits after the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill which is considered to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Although BP took responsibility for the disaster and its ongoing after effects, Obama began a federal investigation along with forming a bipartisan commission to review the incident and methods to avoid it in the future. Obama visited the Gulf Coast on May 2 and May 28 and expressed his frustration on the June 8 ''NBC Today Show'', by saying "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick." Obama's response to the disaster has drawn confusion and criticism within segments of the media and public.

NASA

Obama set up the Augustine panel to review the Constellation program in 2009, and announced in February 2010, that he was cutting the program from the 2011 United States federal budget, describing it as "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." After the decision drew criticism in the United States, a new "Flexible path to Mars" plan was unveiled at a space conference in April 2010. It included new technology programs, increased R&D spending, a focus on the International Space Station and contracting out flying crew to space to commercial providers. The new plan also increased NASA's 2011 budget to $19 billion from $18.3 billion in 2010.

In July 2009, Obama appointed Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to be administrator of NASA.

Stem cell research

On March 9, 2009, Obama repealed a Bush-era policy that prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund research on new lines of embryonic stem cells. Such research has been a matter of debate between those who emphasize the therapeutic potential of such research and those who suggest that elements of this research breach ethical limitations. Obama stated that "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values...In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research — and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

Social policy

On January 23, 2009, Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, a measure from the Reagan and Bush eras that required any non-governmental organization receiving U.S. Government funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries.

On June 17, 2009, Obama authorized the extension of some benefits (but not health insurance or pension benefits) to same-sex partners of federal employees. Obama has chosen to leave larger changes, such as the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, to Congress.

On October 19, 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a directive to federal prosecutors in states with medical marijuana laws not to investigate or prosecute cases of marijuana use or production done in compliance with those laws.

On December 16, 2009, President Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, which repealed a 21-year-old ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs.

On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, a bill that provides for repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993, that has prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces. Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" had been a key campaign promise that Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Health care reform

Once the stimulus bill was enacted, health care reform became Obama's top domestic priority. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,000 page plan for overhauling the US health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of the year.

The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the ten-year cost to the federal government of the major insurance-related provisions of the bill at approximately $1.0 trillion. In mid-July 2009, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the CBO, testified that the proposals under consideration would significantly increase federal spending and did not include the "fundamental changes" needed to control the rapid growth in health care spending. However after reviewing the final version of the bill introduced after 14 months of debate the CBO estimated that it would reduce federal budget deficits by $143 billion over 10 years and by more than a trillion in the next decade.

After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over his administration's proposals. In March 2010, Obama gave several speeches across the country to argue for the passage of health care reform. On March 21, 2010, after Obama announced an executive order reinforcing the current law against spending federal funds for elective abortion services, the House, by a vote of 219 to 212, passed the version of the bill previously passed on December 24, 2009, by a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. The bill, which includes over 200 Republican amendments, was passed without a single Republican vote. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law. Immediately following the bill's passage, the House voted in favor of a reconciliation measure to make significant changes and corrections to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by both houses with two minor alterations on March 25, 2010, and signed into law on March 30, 2010.

Education reform

On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which ended the role of private banks in lending out federally-insured student loans. By directly lending to students, the government is projected to save taxpayers $68 billion dollars over the next several years. Federally-insured student loans will instead be distributed by the Department of Education. The law also increased the amount of Pell Grant awards given each year, doubling its current funding. Starting in 2014, the law permits borrowers to cap the amount they spend on student loans each year to ten percent of their discretionary income and have their balance forgiven if they have faithfully paid the balance of their loan over 20 years. Additionally, the law seeks to make it easier for parents to qualify for Grad PLUS loans, and spends billions on poor and minority schools and $2 billion for community colleges.

Gates arrest controversy

On July 16, 2009, prominent African American Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home by a local white police officer, Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, for disorderly conduct. Gates, who was locked out of his house, had attempted to break into his own property, thus causing the initial alarm from a neighbor who called 9-1-1. The incident sparked national controversy over whether Gates's civil rights had been violated by Crowley. On July 21, the Cambridge Police Department dropped charges against Gates. On July 22, President Barack Obama, commented on the incident over national and international television, criticized the arrest, and stated the police acted "stupidly" in handling the incident. National law enforcement organizations and members objected to Obama's comments and criticized his handling of the issue. In the aftermath, Obama stated that he regretted his comments exacerbating the situation, and hoped that the situation could become a "teachable moment". To reduce tensions, on July 24, Obama invited both parties to the White House to discuss the issue over beers, and on July 30, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden joined Crowley and Gates in a private, cordial meeting in a courtyard near the White House Rose Garden; this became known colloquially as the "Beer Summit".

Wall Street reform

On July 21, 2010, Obama signed Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, considered to be the largest financial system overhaul since the New Deal. The law recognizes complex financial derivatives and makes rules to protect consumers from unfair practices in loans and credit cards by establishing a new consumer protection agency. At the signing ceremony in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. Obama proclaimed, "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period." Obama also mentioned that "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history." At the ceremony were Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the two committee chairmen who sponsored the bill.

2010 midterm elections

Due in large part to voter frustration over high unemployment and a stalled economy, Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. On reflection after the election, Obama blamed himself, in part, for the many Democrats who went down to defeat knowing that they had risked their careers to support his agenda of economic stimulus legislation and a landmark health care bill. Democrats narrowly retained the Senate majority and will continue to control it through the 112th Congress.

Obama called the elections "humbling" and a "shellacking". He said that the results came because not enough Americans had felt the effects of the economic recovery.

2012 re-election campaign

On April 4, 2011, President Obama announced that he would seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election. The campaign will be based in Chicago and is being run by many former members of the White House staff and members of the successful 2008 campaign.

References

External links

"Obama's People" (photography: Nadav Kander)

The Official White House YouTube page

"President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address". The White House.

"Wrapping Up Open for Questions". The White House.

"President Obama's State of the Union Address" C-SPAN.

Obama, Barack

cs:Vláda Baracka Obamy es:Administración Obama fr:Présidence de Barack Obama ko:버락 오바마 행정부 sw:Urais wa Barack Obama no:Barack Obamas regjering ru:Президентство Барака Обамы sv:Obamas kabinett th:การดำรงตำแหน่งประธานาธิบดีของบารัก โอบามา

name	Angelina Jolie
birth name	Angelina Jolie Voight
birth date	June 04, 1965
birth place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation	Actress, director, humanitarian
years active	1982; 1991–present
spouse	Jonny Lee Miller (1996–1999)Billy Bob Thornton (2000–2003)
partner	Brad Pitt (2005–present)
children	6
parents	Jon Voight
relatives	James Haven (brother)Chip Taylor (uncle) }}

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Datastyle	background:#DCDCDC;
Header1	Film awards
data2	{{Infobox | child yes | title Academy Awards | label1 | data1 | label2 2000 | data2 Best Supporting Actress }}

| data3 =

{{infobox | child	yes | title Golden Globe Awards | label1 1998 | data1 Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Movie | label2 1999 | data2 Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Movie | label3 2000 | data3 Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture }}

| data4 =

{{infobox | child	yes | title Screen Actors Guild Awards | label1 1999 | data1 Outstanding Female Actor – Miniseries or Television Movie | label2 2000 | data2 Outstanding Supporting Female Actor }}

}}

Angelina Jolie ( , born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1965) is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by ''Forbes'' in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has been cited as the world's "most beautiful" woman, a title for which she has received substantial media attention.—and received further critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas ''A Mighty Heart'' (2007) and ''Changeling'' (2008), which earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie now lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, and three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.

Early life and family

Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the sister of actor James Haven, niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor, and goddaughter of actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of German and Slovak descent, and on her mother's side, she is of French Canadian, Dutch, and German ancestry. She has also claimed to be part Iroquois through her mother, although Voight has said that Bertrand was "not seriously Iroquois."

After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother lived with their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions to focus on raising her children. As a child, Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting; she had not been influenced by her father. When she was six years old, her mother and stepfather, filmmaker Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, New York; they returned to Los Angeles five years later. She then decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions.

At the age of 14, Jolie dropped out of her acting classes and aspired to become a funeral director. She began working as a fashion model, modeling mainly in Los Angeles, New York, and London. During this period, she wore black clothing, experimented with knife play, and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend. Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother's home.

Jolie suffered episodes of suicidal depression throughout her teens and early twenties. She also began experimenting with drugs; by the age of 20, she had tried "just about every drug possible," including heroin.

Jolie has had a difficult relationship with her father. Due to Voight's marital infidelity and the resulting breakup of her parents' marriage, she was estranged from her father for many years. They reconciled and he appeared with her in ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'' (2001), but their relationship again deteriorated. In August of that year, Voight claimed that his daughter had "serious mental problems" on ''Access Hollywood''. In response, Jolie released a statement in which she indicated that she no longer wished to pursue a relationship with her father. She stated that she did not want to publicize her reasons for their estrangement, but because she had adopted her son Maddox, she did not think it was healthy for her to associate with Voight. In 2009, Jolie again reconciled with her father after a seven-year estrangement.

Career

Early work: 1982; 1991–1997

When she was seven years old, Jolie had a small part in ''Lookin' to Get Out'' (1982), a movie co-written by and starring her father, Jon Voight. She committed to acting at the age of 16, but initially found it difficult to pass auditions, often being told that she was "too dark." The movie failed to make a profit at the box office, but developed a cult following after its video release.

She next appeared in the 1996 comedy ''Love Is All There Is'', a modern-day loose adaptation of ''Romeo and Juliet'' set among two rival Italian family restaurant owners in The Bronx, New York. In the road movie ''Mojave Moon'' (1996) she played a young woman who falls for Danny Aiello's middle-aged character, while he develops feelings for her mother, played by Anne Archer. That same year, Jolie also portrayed Margret "Legs" Sadovsky, one of five teenage girls who form an unlikely bond in the film ''Foxfire'' after they beat up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. The ''Los Angeles Times'' wrote about her performance, "It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight's knockout daughter, has the presence to overcome the stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs is the subject and the catalyst."

In 1997, Jolie starred with David Duchovny in the thriller ''Playing God'', set in the Los Angeles underworld. The movie was not received well by critics; Roger Ebert noted that "Angelina Jolie finds a certain warmth in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to be [a criminal's] girlfriend, and maybe she is." She then appeared in the television film ''True Women'' (1997), a historical romantic drama set in the American West and based on the book by Janice Woods Windle. That year, she also appeared as a stripper in the music video for "Anybody Seen My Baby?" by the Rolling Stones.

Breakthrough: 1998–2000

Jolie's career prospects began to improve after she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in TNT's ''George Wallace'' (1997). She portrayed Cornelia Wallace, the second wife of Alabama Governor George Wallace, played by Gary Sinise. The film was very well-received by critics and won, among other awards, the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film. Jolie also received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance.

In 1998, Jolie starred in HBO's ''Gia'', portraying supermodel Gia Carangi. The film chronicled the destruction of Carangi's life and career as a result of her addiction to heroin, and her decline and death from AIDS in the mid-1980s. Vanessa Vance from Reel.com noted, "Angelina Jolie gained wide recognition for her role as the titular Gia, and it's easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal—filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperation—and her role in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful train wreck ever filmed." For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also won her first Screen Actors Guild Award.

In accordance with Lee Strasberg's method acting, Jolie preferred to stay in character in between scenes during many of her early films, and as a result had gained a reputation for being difficult to deal with. While shooting ''Gia'', she told her then-husband Jonny Lee Miller that she would not be able to phone him: "I'd tell him: 'I'm alone; I'm dying; I'm gay; I'm not going to see you for weeks.'" After ''Gia'' wrapped in 1997, Jolie announced that she had given up acting for good, because she felt that she had "nothing else to give." She separated from Miller and moved to New York, where she enrolled at New York University to study filmmaking and attend writing classes; she later described it as "just good for me to collect myself." Encouraged by her Golden Globe Award win for ''George Wallace'' and the positive critical reception of ''Gia'', she resumed her career. Jolie won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

In 1999, she starred in the comedy-drama ''Pushing Tin'', alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. The film received a mixed reception from critics, and Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized. ''The Washington Post'' wrote, "Mary (Angelina Jolie) [is] a completely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of turquoise rings and gets real lonely when Russell spends entire nights away from home." She then co-starred with Denzel Washington in ''The Bone Collector'' (1999), an adaptation of a crime novel by Jeffery Deaver. Jolie played a police officer haunted by her cop father's suicide, who reluctantly helps Washington track down a serial killer. The movie grossed $151 million worldwide, but was a critical failure. The ''Detroit Free Press'' concluded, "Jolie, while always delicious to look at, is simply and woefully miscast."

Jolie next took the supporting role of the sociopathic Lisa Rowe in ''Girl, Interrupted'' (1999), an adaptation of former mental patient Susanna Kaysen's memoir of the same name. While Winona Ryder played the main character in what was hoped to be a comeback for her, the film instead marked Jolie's final breakthrough in Hollywood. She won her third Golden Globe Award, her second Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. ''Variety'' noted, "Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna's rehabilitation".

In 2000, Jolie appeared in her first summer blockbuster, ''Gone In 60 Seconds'', in which she played Sarah "Sway" Wayland, the ex-girlfriend of car thief Nicolas Cage. The role was small, and ''The Washington Post'' criticized that "all she does in this movie is stand around, cooling down, modeling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest so provocatively around her teeth." She later explained that the film had been a welcome relief after the emotionally heavy role of Lisa Rowe. It became her highest grossing movie up until then, earning $237 million internationally.

International success: 2001–present

Although highly regarded for her acting abilities, Jolie's films to date had often not appealed to a wide audience, but ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'' (2001) made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular ''Tomb Raider'' videogame, Jolie was required to learn a British accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the title role of Lara Croft. She was generally praised for her physical performance, but the movie generated mostly negative reviews. ''Slant'' commented, "Angelina Jolie was born to play Lara Croft but [director] Simon West makes her journey into a game of Frogger." The movie was an international success nonetheless, earning $275 million worldwide, and launched her global reputation as a female action star.

Jolie then starred opposite Antonio Banderas as his mail-order bride in ''Original Sin'' (2001), a thriller based on the novel ''Waltz into Darkness'' by Cornell Woolrich. The film was a major critical failure, with ''The New York Times'' noting, "The story plunges more precipitously than Ms. Jolie's neckline." In 2002, she starred in ''Life or Something Like It'' as an ambitious television reporter who is told that she will die in a week. The film was poorly received by critics, though Jolie's performance received positive reviews. CNN's Paul Clinton wrote, "Jolie is excellent in her role. Despite some of the ludicrous plot points in the middle of the film, this Academy Award-winning actress is exceedingly believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of fulfilling life."

Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in ''Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life'' (2003), which established her among Hollywood's highest-paid actresses. The sequel was not as lucrative as the original, earning $156 million at the international box office. She appeared in the music video for Korn's "Did My Time," which was used to promote the film. She next starred in ''Beyond Borders'' (2003), as a socialite who joins aid workers in Africa and Asia. The film reflected Jolie's real-life interest in promoting humanitarian relief, but it was critically and financially unsuccessful. The ''Los Angeles Times'' wrote, "Jolie, as she did in her Oscar-winning role in ''Girl, Interrupted'', can bring electricity and believability to roles that have a reality she can understand. She can also, witness the ''Lara Croft'' films, do acknowledged cartoons. But the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, completely defeats her."

In 2004, Jolie starred alongside Ethan Hawke in the thriller ''Taking Lives''. She portrayed an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a serial killer. The movie received mixed reviews and ''The Hollywood Reporter'' concluded, "Angelina Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour." She also provided the voice of the angelfish Lola in the DreamWorks animated movie ''Shark Tale'' (2004), and had a brief appearance in ''Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow'' (2004), a science fiction adventure film shot entirely with actors in front of a bluescreen. That same year, Jolie played Olympias in ''Alexander'', about the life of Alexander the Great. The film failed domestically, which director Oliver Stone attributed to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's bisexuality, but it succeeded internationally, with revenue of $139 million outside the United States.

Jolie then starred opposite Brad Pitt in the 2005 action-comedy ''Mr. & Mrs. Smith'', which tells the story of a bored married couple, John and Jane Smith, who find out that they are both secret assassins. The film received mixed reviews, but was generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads. The ''Star Tribune'' noted, "While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry." The movie earned $478 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest hits of 2005.

Jolie next appeared in Robert De Niro's ''The Good Shepherd'' (2006), a film about the early history of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson, an officer based on James Jesus Angleton and played by Matt Damon. Jolie played the supporting role of Margaret "Clover" Russell, Wilson's neglected wife. According to the ''Chicago Tribune'', "Jolie ages convincingly throughout, and is blithely unconcerned with how her brittle character is coming off in terms of audience sympathy."

In 2007, Jolie made her directorial debut with the documentary ''A Place in Time'', which captures daily life in 27 locations around the world during a single week. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and was intended for distribution to high schools through the National Education Association. Jolie then starred as Mariane Pearl in the documentary-style drama ''A Mighty Heart'' (2007). Based on Pearl's memoir of the same name, the film chronicles the kidnapping and murder of her husband, ''The Wall Street Journal'' reporter Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. ''The Hollywood Reporter'' described Jolie's performance as "well-measured and moving," played "with respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent." Jolie was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance. She also played Grendel's mother in the animated epic ''Beowulf'' (2007), which was created through the motion capture technique.

Jolie co-starred alongside James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in the 2008 action movie ''Wanted'', an adaptation of Mark Millar's graphic novel of the same name. The film received predominately favorable reviews and proved an international success, earning $342 million worldwide. She also provided the voice of Master Tigress in the DreamWorks animated movie ''Kung Fu Panda'' (2008). With revenue of $632 million internationally, it became her highest grossing film to date. That same year, Jolie took on the lead role in Clint Eastwood's drama ''Changeling'', which had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Based in part on the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, the film stars Jolie as Christine Collins, who is reunited with her kidnapped son in 1928 Los Angeles—only to realize the boy is an impostor. The ''Chicago Tribune'' noted, "Jolie really shines in the calm before the storm, the scenes [...] when one patronizing male authority figure after another belittles her at their peril." Jolie received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award.

Jolie next starred in the 2010 thriller ''Salt'', her first film in two years. She starred alongside Liev Schreiber as CIA agent Evelyn Salt, who goes on the run after she is accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. Originally written as male, the character Salt underwent a gender change after a Colombia Pictures executive suggested Jolie for the role to director Phillip Noyce. The film was an international success with revenue of $294 million. It received mixed to positive reviews, with Jolie's performance earning praise; ''Empire'' remarked, "When it comes to selling incredible, crazy, death-defying antics, Jolie has few peers in the action business." She also starred opposite Johnny Depp in ''The Tourist'' (2010), which was a major critical failure. Peter Travers wrote, "Depp and Jolie hit career lows, producing the chemistry of high-fashion zombies." After a slow start at the domestic box office, the film went on to gross $278 million worldwide. Jolie received a controversial Golden Globe Award nomination, which was speculated to have been given merely to ensure her high-profile presence at the awards ceremony.

In 2011, Jolie reprised her voice role as Master Tigress in the animated DreamWorks sequel ''Kung Fu Panda 2''. It surpassed the original as her highest grossing film to date, earning $663 million at the international box office. She will also make her directorial feature debut with ''In the Land of Blood and Honey'' (2011), a love story set during the Bosnian War. The film was shot in October 2010 using local actors and is scheduled for release in December.

Humanitarian work

Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while filming ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'' (2001) in Cambodia. She contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots. To learn more about the conditions in these areas, Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, she went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed. In the following months, she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan. She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits. Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on August 27, 2001.

Since then, Jolie has been on field missions around the world and met with refugees and internally displaced persons in more than 30 countries. Asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon." Jolie aims to visit what she terms "forgotten emergencies," crises that media attention has shifted away from. She is noted for not shying away from traveling to areas that are at war: she visited the Darfur region of Sudan during the Darfur conflict in 2004; Chad during its civil war in 2007; Iraq during the Second Gulf War in 2007 and 2009; Afghanistan during the ongoing war in 2008 and 2011; and Libya during the Libyan revolution in 2011.

In addition to her field missions, Jolie uses her public profile to promote humanitarian causes through the mass media. Her early field visits were chronicled in her book ''Notes from My Travels'', which was published in conjunction with the release of her film ''Beyond Borders'' (2003). She filmed a 2005 MTV special, ''The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa'', portraying her and noted economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on a trip to a remote group of villages in Western Kenya. Jolie has also regularly released public service announcements promoting World Refugee Day and other causes.

Over time, Jolie became more involved in promoting humanitarian causes on a political level. She has regularly attended World Refugee Day in Washington, D.C., and she was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005 and 2006. She also began lobbying humanitarian interests in the U.S. capital, where she met with members of Congress at least 20 times between 2003 and 2006, during which she pushed for several bills to aid refugees and vulnerable children in the Third World and the United States. She explained in 2006, "As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that's the way to move the ball." In 2007, she became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jolie has established several charitable organizations. In 2003, she founded the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation—named the Maddox Jolie Project until 2007—which is dedicated to community development and environmental conservation in Cambodia's northwestern province Battambang. In 2006, she partnered with the Global Health Committee to establish the Maddox Chivan Children's Center, a daycare facility for children afflicted and affected by HIV in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. That same year, she and her partner Brad Pitt founded the Jolie-Pitt Foundation to aid humanitarian causes worldwide. In 2007, Jolie and noted economist Dr. Gene Sperling founded the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which funds education programs for children affected by man-made or natural disasters. In 2008, she collaborated with the Microsoft Corporation to establish Kids in Need of Defense, which provides free legal counsel to unaccompanied immigrant children in the U.S.

Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In 2003, she was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2005, she was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA. King Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie Cambodian citizenship for her conservation work in the country on July 31, 2005. In 2007, Jolie received the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee.

Personal life

Relationships

Jolie had a serious boyfriend for two years from the age of 14. They lived together in her mother's home, of which she has said, "He was my first boyfriend at a time when I wanted to be promiscuous and was starting to be sexual. We were in my bedroom, in my environment, where I was most comfortable and I wasn't in danger." She later compared the relationship to a marriage in its emotional intensity, and said that the breakup compelled her to dedicate herself to her acting career at the age of 16.

During filming of ''Hackers'' (1995), Jolie had a romance with British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her first lover since the relationship in her early teens. Jolie and Miller separated in September 1997 and divorced on February 3, 1999. They remained on good terms, and Jolie later explained, "It comes down to timing. I think he's the greatest husband a girl could ask for. I'll always love him, we were simply too young."

Jolie had a brief relationship with model-actress Jenny Shimizu on the set of ''Foxfire'' (1996). She later said, "I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn't married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her." Shimizu claimed in 2005 that her relationship with Jolie had lasted many years and continued even while Jolie was romantically involved with other people. In 2003, asked if she was bisexual, Jolie responded, "Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!"

After a two-month courtship, Jolie married actor Billy Bob Thornton on May 5, 2000 in Las Vegas. They met on the set of ''Pushing Tin'' (1999), but did not pursue a relationship at that time as Thornton was engaged to actress Laura Dern. As a result of their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love—most famously wearing one another's blood in vials around their necks—their marriage became a favorite topic of the entertainment media. Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption of a son from Cambodia in March 2002, but abruptly separated three months later. Their divorce was finalized on May 27, 2003. Asked about the sudden dissolution of their marriage, Jolie stated, "It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it's scary but... I think it can happen when you get involved and you don't know yourself yet."

In early 2005, Jolie was involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal when she was accused of being the reason for the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. She and Pitt were alleged to have started an affair during filming of ''Mr. & Mrs. Smith'' (2005). She denied this on several occasions, but later admitted that they "fell in love" on the set. She explained in 2005, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife." The couple—dubbed "Brangelina" by the entertainment media—are the subject of worldwide media coverage.

Children

On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox Chivan, from an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was born as Rath Vibol on August 5, 2001 in a local village. Jolie applied for adoption after she had visited Cambodia twice, while filming ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'' (2001) and on a UNHCR field mission. The adoption process was halted in December 2001 when the U.S. government banned adoptions from Cambodia amid allegations of child trafficking. Once the adoption was finalized, she took custody of Maddox in Namibia, where she was filming ''Beyond Borders'' (2003). Although Jolie and her then-husband Billy Bob Thornton announced the adoption together, she in fact adopted Maddox as a single parent.

Jolie adopted a daughter, six-month-old Zahara Marley, from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on July 6, 2005. Zahara was born as Yemsrach on January 8, 2005 in Awasa. At the time of the adoption, Zahara was wrongly believed to be an AIDS orphan and it was unknown whether she herself was HIV positive, but she later tested negative. Shortly after they returned to the United States, Zahara was hospitalized for dehydration and malnutrition. In November 2007, media outlets reported that Zahara's biological mother wanted her daughter back, but she denied these reports, saying she thought Zahara was "very fortunate" to have been adopted by Jolie.

Jolie was accompanied by her partner Brad Pitt when she traveled to Ethiopia to collect Zahara. She later indicated that she and Pitt had made the decision to adopt from Ethiopia together. In December 2005, Pitt's publicist announced that Pitt was seeking to adopt Maddox and Zahara. To reflect this, Jolie filed a request to legally change her children's surnames from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was granted on January 19, 2006. The adoptions were finalized soon after.

In an attempt to avoid the media frenzy surrounding their relationship, Jolie and Pitt went to Namibia for the birth of their first biological child. On May 27, 2006, Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund. Pitt confirmed that their newborn daughter would have a Namibian passport. The couple decided to sell the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images themselves, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these valuable photographs. ''People'' paid a reported $4.1 million for the North American rights, while ''Hello!'' obtained the British rights for a reported $3.5 million. All profits were donated to charities serving African children.

On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted a son, three-year-old Pax Thien, from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Jolie adopted Pax as a single parent, because Vietnam's adoption regulations do not allow unmarried couples to co-adopt. The rights for the first post-adoption images of Pax were sold to ''People'' for a reported $2 million, as well as to ''Hello!'' for an undisclosed amount. In April, Jolie filed a request to legally change her son's surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was approved on May 31, 2007. Pitt's adoption of Pax was finalized in the United States on February 21, 2008.

At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Jolie confirmed that she was expecting twins. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, France, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade. She gave birth to a son, Knox Léon, and a daughter, Vivienne Marcheline, on July 12, 2008. The rights for the first images of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to ''People'' and ''Hello!'' for a reported $14 million—the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken. The proceeds were donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

In the media

During the first decade of her career, Jolie—who does not employ a publicist or an agent—maintained a "wild child" persona in her communication with the media. She openly discussed her love life, including her bisexuality and her interest in BDSM. After she kissed her brother during the Academy Awards in 2000, their close relationship became the subject of tabloid media speculation, which she dismissed. She spoke about her experiences with drugs and depression, and recalled the time, in 1997, when she almost hired a hitman to kill her, as well as the three days, just before her marriage to Billy Bob Thornton, that she was sectioned at UCLA's psychiatric ward. ''Esquire'' in 2004, American ''FHM'' and British ''Harper's Bazaar'' in 2005, ''People'' and ''Hello!'' in 2006, ''Empire'' in 2007, and ''Vanity Fair'' in 2009. Jolie's extensive collection of tattoos has often been addressed by interviewers. She has fourteen known tattoos, among which the Latin proverb "quod me nutrit me destruit" (what nourishes me destroys me), the Tennessee Williams quote "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages," two sak yant designs featuring a prayer of protection and a twelve-inch-by-eight-inch tiger, and six sets of geographical coordinates indicating the origins of her children. Over time, she has covered or lasered several of her tattoos, including the name of her second husband, "Billy Bob", and the Chinese characters "死" (death) and "勇" (courage).

Today, Jolie is one of the best-known celebrities around the world. According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31% of respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them; by 2006 she was familiar to 81% of Americans. In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets, Jolie, together with her partner Brad Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide. She was the face of St. John and Shiseido from 2006 to 2008, and in 2011 had an endorsement deal with Louis Vuitton reportedly worth $10 million—a record for a single advertising campaign. She was among the ''Time'' 100, a list of the most influential people in the world as assembled by ''Time'', in 2006 and 2008. ''Forbes'' named her Hollywood's highest-paid actress in 2009 and 2011, with estimated annual earnings of $27 million and $30 million respectively, and she topped the magazine's Celebrity 100, a ranking of the world's most powerful celebrities, in 2009.

Filmography

+ Actor
Title	Year	Role	Notes
''Lookin' to Get Out''	1982	Tosh	As Angelina Jolie Voight
''Cyborg 2''	1993	Casella "Cash" Reese
''Without Evidence''	1995	Jodie Swearingen
! scope="row"	1995	Kate "Acid Burn" Libby
''Love Is All There Is''	1996	Gina Malacici
''Mojave Moon''	1996	Eleanor "Elie" Rigby
! scope="row"	1996	Margret "Legs" Sadovsky
''True Women''	1997	Georgia Virginia Lawshe Woods	TV film
! scope="row"	1997	Cornelia Wallace	TV film	1997	Claire
''[[Gia">Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film
! scope="row"	1997	Claire
''[[Gia''	1998		TV film	1998	Gloria McNeary
''[[Playing by Heart">Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film
! scope="row"	1998	Gloria McNeary
''[[Playing by Heart''	1998	Joan
''Pushing Tin''	1999	Mary Bell
''''	1999	Amelia Donaghy
! scope="row"	1999	Lisa Rowe		2000	Sara "Sway" Wayland
''[[Lara Croft: Tomb Raider">Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
! scope="row"	2000	Sara "Sway" Wayland
''[[Lara Croft: Tomb Raider''	2001	Lara Croft
! scope="row"	2001	Julia "Bonny Castle" Russell
''Life or Something Like It''	2002	Lanie Kerrigan
''Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life''	2003	Lara Croft
''Beyond Borders''	2003	Sarah Jordan
! scope="row"	2004	Illeana Scott
''Shark Tale''	2004	Lola	Voice
''Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow''	2004	Francesca "Franky" Cook
! scope="row"	2004	Olympias
! scope="row"	2005	Jane Smith	MTV Movie Award for Best FightNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best KissNominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Action StarNominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Movie StarNominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite On-Screen Match-Up
''''	2006	Margaret "Clover" Russell
''''	2007	Mariane Pearl		2007	[[Grendel's mother">Santa Barbara International Film Festival
! scope="row"	2007	[[Grendel's mother	Nominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Villain
''Kung Fu Panda''	2008		Voice
! scope="row"	2008	Fox	People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Action StarNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Female PerformanceNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best KissNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best WTF MomentNominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Movie Star
! scope="row"	2008	Christine Collins	Saturn Award for Best ActressNominated—	2010	Evelyn Salt	Nominated—[[37th People's Choice Awards
''''	2010	Elise Clifton-Ward
''[[Kung Fu Panda 2">Academy Award for Best Actress
! scope="row"	2010	Evelyn Salt	Nominated—[[37th People's Choice Awards
''''	2010	Elise Clifton-Ward
''[[Kung Fu Panda 2''	2011	Master Tigress	Voice

+ Director, producer, writer
Title	Year	Role	Notes
''Lovesick''	2005	Producer
''Trudell''	2005	Executive producer	Documentary
''A Place in Time''	2007	Director	Documentary
''In the Land of Blood and Honey''	2011	Director, writer	Post-production

Selected awards

Year	Award	Category	Film	Result
1998	Emmy Award
1998	Golden Globe Award		''George Wallace''
1998		Breakthrough Performance	''Playing by Heart''
1998	Emmy Award		''Gia''
1999	Golden Globe Award		''Gia''
1999	Screen Actors Guild Award		''Gia''
2000	Academy Award
2000	Golden Globe Award		''Girl, Interrupted''
2000	Screen Actors Guild Award		''Girl, Interrupted''
2008	Golden Globe Award		''''
2008	Screen Actors Guild Award		''''
2009	Academy Award
2009	BAFTA Award		''Changeling''
2009	Golden Globe Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama	''Changeling''
2009	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role	''Changeling''
2011	Golden Globe Award

Bibliography

''Notes from My Travels''. Pocket Books. 2003. ISBN 0-7434-7023-0.

"Justice for Darfur". ''The Washington Post''. February 28, 2007.

"A Year for Accountability". ''The Economist''. November 15, 2007.

"The 2009 TIME 100: Somaly Mam". ''Time''. April 30, 2009.

"The Case Against Omar al-Bashir". ''Time''. June 5, 2009.

"Justice Delayed Is Not Justice Denied". ''Newsweek''. December 10, 2009

References

Further reading

McFay, Edgar. ''Angelina Jolie: Angel in Disguise''. Icon Press, 2005. ISBN 1-894864-25-5.

Wolf, Naomi. "The Power of Angelina". ''Harper's Bazaar''. June 8, 2009.

External links

UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie, official homepage at UNHCR.org

Journey Through Eastern Congo, multimedia journal narrated by Jolie

Interviews with Angelina Jolie by Charlie Rose

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name	Peter Hitchens
birth name	Peter Jonathan Hitchens
birth date	October 28, 1951
birth place	Sliema, Malta
occupation	Author, journalist
nationality	United Kingdom
Alma mater	University of York
religion	Anglican Christian
notableworks	''The Abolition of Britain'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Rage Against God''
relatives	Christopher Hitchens (brother)
website	http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk }}

Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an award-winning British columnist and author. He has published five books, including ''The Abolition of Britain'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' and most recently ''The Rage Against God''. Hitchens writes for Britain's ''The Mail on Sunday'' newspaper. A former resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington, Hitchens continues to work as an occasional foreign reporter, and appears frequently in the British broadcast media. He is the younger brother of the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Michael Gove, writing in ''The Times'', has asserted that, for Hitchens, what is more important than the split between the Left and the Right is "the deeper gulf between the restless progressive and the Christian pessimist", and in 2010 Hitchens himself wrote "in all my experience in life, I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man, and his inability to achieve perfection, than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the State".

Early life

Peter Hitchens was born in 1951 in Malta, where his father was stationed with the Royal Navy. He was educated at The Leys School, which he left at 15, completing his secondary education at the Oxford College of Further Education before entering the University of York, where he attained a BA in Politics, and is said to have replied 'I was too busy starting a revolution' when asked why he was late for a lecture. He married Eve Ross, the daughter of left-wing journalist David Ross, in 1983.

Career in journalism

Hitchens worked for the ''Daily Express'' between 1977 and December 2000, initially as a reporter specialising in education and industrial and labour affairs, then as a political reporter, and subsequently as Deputy Political Editor. While working for the newspaper in 1992 he broke the story concerning Jennifer's Ear.

Leaving parliamentary journalism to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, he reported on the decline and ultimate collapse of the communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries, an assignment which culminated in a stint as Moscow Correspondent, where he witnessed and reported on the final months of the Soviet Union in 1990/91. He became the ''Daily Express'' Washington correspondent soon afterwards. Returning to London in 1995, he became a commentator and, eventually, a regular columnist. Hitchens continued to espouse a conservative viewpoint despite the publication's general move towards the political centre in the mid-nineties, and its decision to support the Labour Party under Tony Blair in the months approaching the 1997 general election. In December 2000, Hitchens announced his departure from the ''Daily Express'' in response to the title's acquisition by Richard Desmond; Hitchens felt that his own moral and religious conservatism was incompatible with Desmond's publishing a string of sex magazines. He joined ''The Mail on Sunday'', where he has a weekly column and weblog in which he debates directly with readers and produces occasional reportage from the UK.

Hitchens has also written for ''The Spectator'', a conservative British magazine, and sporadically for more left-leaning publications such as ''The Guardian'', ''Prospect'', and the ''New Statesman''. He is also an occasional contributor to ''The American Conservative'' magazine.

In 2007 and 2009 Hitchens was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Journalism. He won the prize in 2010 for his foreign reporting.

Foreign reporting

In 2010 Hitchens was described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as "a forceful, tenacious, eloquent and brave journalist. Readers with long memories may remember his extraordinary coverage of the revolution in Romania in 1989, or more recently his intrepid travels to places such as North Korea. He lambasts woolly thinking and crooked behaviour at home and abroad".

Hitchens first became a roving foreign reporter in the early 1990s while working for the ''Daily Express'', when he reported from South Africa during the last days of apartheid, and from Somalia at the time of the US-led military intervention in the country. He continued his foreign reporting after joining ''The Mail on Sunday'', for which he has written several foreign reports, including from Russia (including Moscow) and the US, Western and Eastern Europe, many of the former Soviet Republics (including a 2008 visit to Minsk in Belarus, and a 2010 report from Sevastopol in Ukraine described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as a "dismaying lapse"), Astana in Kazakhstan, the Middle East (including Israel, Gaza, a 2003 visit to Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion, and an undercover report from Iran, which was described by Iain Dale as "a quite brilliant account"), Africa (including a trip to the Congo in 2008, during which he narrowly avoided being lynched) Cuba, Venezuela, China, Japan, North Korea, Burma and Istanbul. In 2009, Hitchens was shortlisted for Foreign Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards.

In 2010, Hitchens was awarded the Orwell Prize in recognition of his foreign reporting.

Appearances in the British broadcast media

Hitchens speaks frequently on British radio and television, often debating (typically left-wing) opponents on a variety of social and political topics. He is a regular panellist on ''Question Time'' and ''Any Questions?'' and has been a frequent guest on ''This Week'' with Andrew Neil, ''The Daily Politics'' and ''The Big Questions''. In 2011, Hitchens wrote of his relationship with the broadcast media that "People like me – though still allowed to speak – are allowed on to mainstream national broadcasting only under strict conditions: that we are 'balanced' by at least three other people who disagree with us so that our views, actually held by millions, are made to look like an eccentric minority opinion".

Hitchens has authored and presented several documentaries on Channel 4 and BBC Four, in which he examined Britain's entry into the Common Market, discussed the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, and critically examined the political achievements of Nelson Mandela, and later the career of David Cameron (see ''On the Conservative Party''). In the late 1990s, he co-presented a programme on Talk Radio UK with Labour Party stalwarts Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell. Hitchens was offered the chance to present a programme on his own by the station's then boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, but preferred and suggested an adversarial format with a left-wing co-presenter, believing this to be the best way of achieving broadcast fairness and balance.

June 2011 ''Question Time'' appearance

In June 2011, Hitchens was booed and heckled at length by a ''Question Time'' audience for expressing a socially conservative position on the sexualisation of children, and was the only panel member to adopt this position. During the same programme, chairman and presenter David Dimbleby put to Hitchens that the paper he worked for was "a bigoted, sexist, homophobic comic strip". Shortly after his appearance, Hitchens wrote "Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think? Sometimes I wonder".

Personal political history

Hitchens studied politics at the University of York from 1970 to 1973. He was a Trotskyist member of the International Socialists from 1969 to 1975, and joined the British Labour Party in 1977, campaigning for Ken Livingstone's unsuccessful candidature for Hampstead in the 1979 general election. Hitchens left the Labour Party in 1983 when he became a political reporter at the ''Daily Express'', thinking it wrong to carry a party card when directly reporting politics. The period also coincided with a culmination of growing personal disillusionment with the Labour movement. In 2010, Hitchens dismissed the "cruel revolutionary rubbish" he promoted as a Trotskyist as "poison".

He joined the Conservative Party in 1997, but left in 2003. Hitchens challenged Michael Portillo for the Conservative Party nomination in the Kensington and Chelsea seat in 1999.

Hitchens believes that no party he could support will be created until the Conservative Party disintegrates, an event he first began calling for in 2006. From 2008, he began frequently advocating in his writing that what would facilitate such a collapse would be for the Conservative Party to lose the 2010 general election: "If they fail to win an election against this awful government, then it is my belief and hope that they will collapse. Many of their MPs and supporters will leave politics altogether, others will go to the Liberal Democrats or Labour, where they belong. Some will be interested in an entirely new party, which will not be the Conservatives and so will be able to appeal to the many patriotic, law-abiding people abandoned by Labour".

Public image

In ''The Guardian'', James Silver describes Hitchens as "the Mail on Sunday's fulminator-in-chief" and his columns as "molten Old Testament fury shot through with visceral wit". Hitchens has said of his reputation: "I know a lot of people consider me to be disreputable or foaming at the mouth, but you have to learn not to care, or at least not to mind. I don't like being called 'bonkers' and I think to some extent it demeans people who use phrases like that. But I take comfort from the fact that most totalitarian regimes tend to classify their opponents as mentally disordered."

Core beliefs

Morality and religion

Hitchens, a former atheist, is a confirmed and communicant member of the Church of England and an advocate of moral virtues founded on religious (particularly Christian) faith. He argues that these have been undermined and eroded by social liberals, and by those he calls cultural Marxists, since the 1960s—a theory he explores in his book ''The Abolition of Britain''.

In support of this thesis, Hitchens cites, among other things, what he describes as serial attacks on marriage by the State. He identifies these attacks as the introduction of no-fault divorce, the removal or redistribution of what were formerly the exclusive privileges of marriage (and the resultant decline in status of the matrimonial state), the abolition of the Christian Sunday, and the growing economic and cultural pressure on wives and mothers to go out to work. He believes that without faith and without strong families, the development of conscience is stunted, private life is diminished and the power of the state increased.

He believes that many of the measures which created the "permissive society" were mistaken or excessive and need to be reexamined, and posits that homosexual relationships should not be granted legal parity with heterosexual marriage.

Hitchens believes that abortion should be illegal at any stage of pregnancy.

Hitchens defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 ''Book of Common Prayer'' and the Authorised (or King James) version of the Bible. Of the latter, he has written "it is not simply a translation, but a poetic translation, written to be read out loud to country people in large buildings without loudspeakers, to be remembered, to lodge in the mind and to disturb the temporal with the haunting sound of the eternal". Hitchens feels that both books are indispensable foundations of Anglicanism's "powerful combination of scripture, tradition and reason", and that they have been undermined as a result of "senior figures [within the Church of England] wishing to dump what they regard as the baggage of a penitential and gloomy past".

Hitchens has often spoken out against the liberal positions of the current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Hitchens does not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. In a review of his brother's work ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', he stated that, "many decades have passed since I fancied the story of Adam and Eve was literal truth, if I ever did.

Liberty, security and crime

Hitchens advocates a society governed by conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. He believes that capital punishment is a key element of a strong justice system.

He warns that the decline of conscience and morality will inevitably lead to a strong state. He is especially critical of the use of "security" as a pretext for diluting and eroding individual liberty. He argues that increased "security" destroys freedom without necessarily increasing safety, and says that there is no contradiction between maintaining liberty and protecting the realm.

Hitchens is critical of moves towards authoritarian government and the erosion of civil liberties, whether they come from the Right or the Left of the political spectrum. Accordingly, he has been highly critical of the British government's desire for identity cards, its attempts to abolish jury trial, to centralise the police, and its creation of a national law enforcement body in the form of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). He describes these developments as facets of governmental desire for permanent, irreversible constitutional revolution, and an attack on English liberty in general.

Hitchens is opposed to the relaxation of laws against the possession of illegal recreational drugs. He argues that the law's active disapproval of drug taking is an essential counterweight to the "pro-drug propaganda" of popular culture. He has said that attempts to combat drug use by restricting supply and persecuting drug dealers are invariably futile, unless possession and use are punished as well. He counters claims that the "War on Drugs" has failed by suggesting that the state has made no serious efforts to reduce or eliminate illegal drug consumption for many years. Hitchens has said that the prevailing approach, known as "Harm reduction", is defeatist and counter-productive. He was among the earliest commentators to argue that cannabis presents a major mental health risk to users.

Foreign policy

Hitchens opposed the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq Wars on the grounds that neither was in the interests of either Britain or the United States. He has not, however, associated himself with the Left-dominated anti-war campaigns, not least as he remains a strong supporter of the State of Israel. He also opposes the British military presence in Afghanistan, arguing that it is destined to fail and has no achievable aim. Hitchens made a live appearance on BBC News in November 2009 during which he stated, in a response to Gordon Brown's announcement that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan, that a ridiculous position had been reached in which none of the front bench politicians of any of the three main British parties were prepared to say that the British mission to the country had failed.

On Europe, Hitchens argues that the United Kingdom should negotiate an amicable departure from the European Union, whose laws and traditions he regards as incompatible with the laws and liberties of England, and with the national independence of the United Kingdom as a whole. He also believes that the interests of the European Union are often different from—and in many cases hostile to—those of the UK. Devolution of governmental powers to Scotland and Wales in 1998 was, for Hitchens, not a step towards true independence for those countries, but rather part of an EU-inspired strategy to dissolve the UK into statelets and regions, as a preliminary step to its complete absorption into a European superstate. For the same reason, he has opposed attempts to divide England into regions.

World War II

For most of his career, Hitchens took the view that World War II was "the part of British history which provides the ultimate justification and vindication of this country's existence, its heroic and solitary battle against Nazi tyranny". However, in 2008 he publicly reversed this view, referring in particular to the declaration of war made against Nazi Germany (after the invasion of Poland) which had, in his opinion, disastrous consequences for Britain. A subsequent analysis that Hitchens made of this issue in one of his columns was described by Michael White of ''The Guardian'' as being "as melancholy a cry of pain about the modern world as I have recently encountered". Hitchens has also written critically about the Allied policy of strategic bombing of German cities during the second world war, citing in particular the A.C. Grayling book ''Among the Dead Cities'', which in Hitchens's view makes "the case against the bombing of German civilians unanswerable".

Northern Ireland

Hitchens condemned the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a surrender to the Provisional IRA and a "collapse and a surrender to lawlessness". He believes that the best approach to solving Northern Ireland's problems would have been the full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, arguing that creating a Northern Irish Parliament at Stormont impeded this. He believes that the achievements of direct rule over Northern Ireland, not least in removing discrimination against Roman Catholics, have been greatly underestimated. He maintains that Northern Ireland is now only a provisional part of the UK since, under the terms of the agreement, it can be transferred to Irish sovereignty by a single, irreversible referendum.

Education

Hitchens condemns comprehensive education, the Plowden reforms of primary schooling and modern child-centred teaching methods, seeing them as egalitarian political projects with no educational justification and many educational disadvantages. He bases his case on John Marks's ''The Betrayed Generation'', (Centre for Policy Studies 2001), the Engineering Council's survey of changing undergraduate maths skills in 2000, and Durham University's unvarying annual general ability test, and has also cited a 2004 article by Jenni Russell in ''The Guardian'' which draws attention to this issue. Hitchens has also contended that comprehensive education has brought about a general dilution of education and of examination standards, and explores in detail the history and consequences of this development in Chapter Eleven of ''The Broken Compass''—'The Fall of the Meritocracy'. He believes a further consequence of egalitarian schooling is serious damage to the national culture, and fears that lowered standards in technical, scientific and mathematical education, combined with poor teaching of English and the resulting decline in literacy, threaten to leave Britain lagging behind emerging economic powers such as China and India.

As a means of improving standards in the UK, as well as increasing social mobility, Hitchens supports a return to the academically selective grammar school system which has been gradually dismantled by successive British governments since the issuing of Circular 10/65 by Anthony Crosland in 1965 (though Hitchens prefers the German system of selection to the Eleven Plus examination).

As a supporter of orthodox Christian morality, Hitchens opposes sex education in schools. He argues that the general introduction of sex education in schools has incontrovertibly been accompanied by an increase in sexual activity among the young, with a resultant rise in pregnancies, abortions and instances of sexually transmitted diseases—the very things that sex education is ostensibly intended to prevent. He argues that its real purpose is the undermining of Christian sexual morality, based on stable monogamous marriage.

Labour party

Hitchens contends that the modern version of the Labour party was "formed mainly by struggles in the 1980s" and in a programme of "social liberalism, egalitarian education and the sexual revolution" envisaged at the end of the 1950s by figures such as Anthony Crosland and Roy Jenkins; the latter Hitchens has written critically of at considerable length, and has likened his short book ''The Labour Case'' (1959) to "a revolutionary manifesto".

Hitchens was critical of New Labour for what he called "attacks on the constitution", and described its Prime Minister Tony Blair's constitutional reforms as a "slow-motion coup d'état". He has also asserted that the New Labour policy on immigration was a "slow motion putsch". Hitchens believes that the most profound changes brought about by New Labour were designed to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, to debauch civil service neutrality, and to turn Parliament into a mere tool of Downing Street, with Blair himself as Chief Executive. In Hitchens's view, the most significant single action in this programme was the passing of Orders in Council allowing Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, both political appointees, to give orders to civil servants. This signalled, in his view, a general attempt to politicise Whitehall, which has continued ever since. Hitchens claims to have detected a parallel effort to appropriate some of the trappings of monarchy and to diminish the Crown's significance and standing, which he sees as embryonic presidentialism.

Hitchens also often caricatured Blair as "Princess Tony". This was a reference to Blair's use of the expression "The People's Princess" to eulogise Princess Diana after her death. Hitchens has also been very critical of Blair's activity subsequent to his stepping down as Prime Minister. Hitchens described Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, as a "boring, dismal Marxoid", whose public performances were "horribly like Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of the tormented Captain Queeg in ''The Caine Mutiny''". However, Hitchens criticised what he saw as a "prejudiced, shallow" attempt to destroy Brown by the media after the latter became Prime Minister in 2007.

Conservative Party

Hitchens is dismissive of the modern British Conservative Party, frequently deriding the party's leadership as the "useless Tories". He has often been at odds with fellow conservatives, and has argued that the Conservative Party has a consistent record of ill-considered parliamentary acts and policies that cannot be dismissed as accidents or mistakes. He cites as examples: the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, the introduction of the GCSE exam, the Criminal Justice Act of 1991, the negotiation and signing of the Single European Act and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the severe reduction in defence spending at the end of the Cold War, the privatisation of the UK's railways, the Iraq War and the final abandonment of all attempts to re-introduce grammar schools.

In March 2007 Hitchens wrote and presented a television programme for Channel 4, ''Toff at the Top'', in which he argued this view. Hitchens views Cameron's social, educational, and foreign policies as being indistinguishable from those of New Labour. Cameron, having declined previous interview requests from Hitchens, also declined to participate in the broadcast. Subsequent to the programme's airing the Conservative leader described Hitchens as "a maniac" at a public meeting in Oxfordshire.

Hitchens has called for the establishment of a new political party in the UK, representing the traditionalist conservative strand of opinion that he espouses, and which would, in his own words, be "neither bigoted nor politically correct". He believes that such a movement cannot come into being until the Conservative Party collapses, arguing that many millions of Britons habitually vote for this and other political parties out of tribal loyalty, from which they cannot be detached by reasoned argument.

Poverty and wealth distribution

Hitchens believes there to be a correlation between adherence to strong ethical standards, including conscientious labour, deferred gratification, self-denial and thrift, and middle class status (and the material well-being it generally brings). He has stated that "The middle classes are not good because they are better off. They are better off because they are good." He rejects the belief that any poverty which exists in Britain is anything other than relative. "The British 'poor' of today do not starve, do not freeze, do not go without medical treatment—as truly poor people across the world undoubtedly still do." He argues that the claim that absolute poverty continues to exist in Britain is "a lie the Left uses to destroy the middle class".

Transport

Hitchens has criticised the Privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s, and mocks Conservatives for their belief that road transport, heavily state subsidised, is in some way more conservative than railways. He has also bemoaned the large-scale reductions made to Britain's rail infrastructure in the 1960s, and the subsequent increased focus on the motor car as the central plank of transport policy. Hitchens explores this issue in depth in 'The age of the train', chapter twelve of his book ''The Broken Compass''.

Global warming

Hitchens is sceptical of the alleged extent of man made global warming, has described the fuss surrounding it as "alarmist" and the facts presented as false or misleading or using data selectively. In particular, he praises the Christopher Booker work ''The Real Global Warming Disaster'' as being an effective exposé of many of what he sees as myths surrounding the theory.

Relationship with elder brother Christopher

Hitchens's elder brother is the prominent U.S.-based writer and antitheistic polemicist Christopher Hitchens. Christopher has said that the main difference between the two is their attitudes toward belief in the existence of God. Peter himself has said, "We inhabit separate worlds," and "We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other."

The brothers had a protracted falling out after Peter wrote an article in 2001 in ''The Spectator'' alleging that his brother had said he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon"—a claim denied by Christopher. After the birth of Peter's third child, the two brothers reconciled, although Christopher said "There is no longer any official froideur, but there's no official—what's the word?—chaleur, either."

Peter's review of ''God Is Not Great'' led to public argument between the brothers but not to any renewed estrangement. In the review, Peter wrote that his brother’s book was misguided, "mostly in the way that it blames faith for so many bad things and gives it no credit for any of the good it may have done. I think it misunderstands religious people and their aims and desires. And I think it asserts a number of things as true and obvious that are nothing of the sort".

In June 2007, the brothers appeared as panellists on BBC TV's ''Question Time'', where they clashed over a number of issues, most notably the intervention in Afghanistan. In April 2008, on US soil, they debated the invasion of Iraq and the existence of God, respectively. Peter Hitchens indicated that the occasion would mark the last time he would participate in such events with his brother, "because of the danger that they might turn into gladiatorial combat in which nothing would be resolved and enmity could be created."

However, in October 2010 at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the brothers again had a debate—described as a conversation with the press—over the nature of God in civilisation. The two clashed over the main issues, with Peter lamenting the decline in civility to levels "not far from the Stone Age." However, when the subject of Christopher's illness in concert with religion was brought up, Peter defended his brother's choice of beliefs, stating that he thought "it would be quite grotesque to imagine someone would have to get cancer to see the merits of religion."

Publications

Hitchens is the author of ''The Abolition of Britain'' (1999, ISBN 978-0-7043-8140-7) and ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003, ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), both critical of changes in British society since the 1960s. A compendium of his ''Daily Express'' columns was published under the title ''Monday Morning Blues'' in 2000.

An updated edition of ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003 ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), re-titled ''The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England'' (ISBN 978-1-84354-149-3) and featuring a new chapter on identity cards, was published in April 2004. ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-84706-405-9), was published in May 2009, and ''The Rage Against God'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-4411-0572-1), was published in Britain in March 2010, and was due to be published in the US (Zondervan ISBN 978-0-310-32031-9) in May 2010.

In January 2011 Hitchens announced he was working on a new book entitled ''The War We Never Fought'', about what he sees as the non-existent war on drugs.

Bibliography

See also

Conservatism

List of newspaper columnists

Paleoconservatism

Pro-life

Social conservatism

References

Further reading

"Brothers at war over Britain" Article on a debate about Britain's future with brother Christopher Hitchens, 15 October 1999. Includes some short, selected audio clips from the event.

Hitchens on the European Union" – December 2002. Karl Zinsmeister interviews Peter Hitchens at his home in Oxford.

Bulldog" – Guardian interview, 20 September 1999.

External links

;Regular features

Peter Hitchens's ''Mail on Sunday'' blog

;Book Reviews

Reviews of ''A Brief History of Crime'' in: ''The Daily Telegraph'', and ''The Observer''

;TV Reviews ''Reviews of ''Toff at the Top'' in:''

''The Daily Telegraph''; and

''The Times''.

Description of ''Toff at the Top'' on the Channel 4 website

;Video

Interview about ''The Abolition of Britain'' for the Booknotes series ''Pop-up window with embedded RealPlayer plugin''

;Debates

Christopher Hitchens debates Peter Hitchens

;Sermon

Peter Hitchens's address to City New Year Service, The Parish Church of St. Michael's Cornhill, London, January 2005

Category:1951 births Category:Alumni of the University of York Category:British anti-communists Category:British journalists Category:British people of Jewish descent Category:Converts to Anglicanism from atheism or agnosticism Category:Critics of the European Union Category:Daily Mail journalists Category:English Anglicans Category:English bloggers Category:English columnists Category:English people of Polish descent Category:Living people Category:Old Leysians Category:Socialist Workers Party (UK) members Category:Christopher Hitchens

de:Peter Hitchens es:Peter Hitchens

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Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) served as the 45th Vice President of the United States (1993–2001), under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Gore is currently an author, businessman, and environmental activist. He was previously an elected official for 24 years, representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977–85), and later in the U.S. Senate (1985–93), and finally becoming Vice President in 1993. In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. However, he ultimately lost the Electoral College, and the election, to Republican George W. Bush when the U.S. Supreme Court settled the legal controversy over the Florida vote recount by ruling 5-4 in favor of Bush. It was the only time in history that the Supreme Court has determined the outcome of a presidential election.

He is a founder and current chair of the Alliance for Climate Protection, the co-founder and chair of Generation Investment Management, the co-founder and chair of Current TV, a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc., and a senior adviser to Google. Gore is also a partner in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group. He has served as a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Fisk University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Gore has received a number of awards including the Nobel Peace Prize (joint award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2007), a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album (2009) for his book ''An Inconvenient Truth'', a Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV (2007), and a Webby Award (2005). Gore was also the subject of the Academy Award-winning (2007) documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth'' in 2006. In 2007 he was named a runner-up for ''Time's'' 2007 Person of the Year.

Early life

Albert Gore, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., the second of two children of Albert Gore, Sr., a U.S. Representative who later served as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee, and Pauline LaFon Gore, one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt University Law School. Gore's paternal ancestors were Scots-Irish who first settled in Virginia in the mid 17th-century and moved to Tennessee after the Revolutionary War. His older sister Nancy LaFon Gore, who was born in 1938, died of lung cancer in 1984.

During the school year he lived with his family in The Fairfax Hotel in the Embassy Row section in Washington D.C. During the summer months, he worked on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee, where the Gores grew tobacco and hay and raised cattle.

Gore attended the all boys' St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. from 1956 to 1965, a prestigious feeder school for the Ivy League. He was the captain of the football team, threw discus for the track and field team, and participated in basketball, art, and government. He graduated 25th in his class of 51, applied to only one college, Harvard, and was accepted.

They have four children, Karenna (b. 1973), Kristin Carlson Gore (b. 1977), Sarah LaFon Gore (b. 1979), and Albert Gore III (b. 1982).

In early June 2010, shortly after purchasing a new home, the Gores announced in an e-mail to friends that after "long and careful consideration," they had made a mutual decision to separate.

Harvard, Vietnam, journalism, and Vanderbilt (1965–1976)

Harvard

Gore enrolled in Harvard College in 1965, initially planning to major in English and write novels, but later deciding to major in government. Gore earned an A on his thesis, "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969", and graduated with an A.B. ''cum laude'' in June 1969.

Gore attended college during the era of anti Vietnam War protests. Though he was against that war, he disagreed with the tactics of the student protest movement, thinking it silly and juvenile to take anger at the war out on a private university. He and his friends did not participate in Harvard demonstrations. John Tyson, a former roommate, recalled that "We distrusted these movements a lot .... We were a pretty traditional bunch of guys, positive for civil rights and women's rights but formal, transformed by the social revolution to some extent but not buying into something we considered detrimental to our country." Gore helped his father write an anti-war address to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, but stayed with his parents in their hotel room during the violent protests.

Military service

When Gore graduated in 1969, his student deferment ended and he immediately became eligible for the military draft. His father, a vocal anti-Vietnam War critic, was facing a tough reelection fight in 1970. Gore eventually decided that the best way he could contribute to the anti-war effort was to enlist in the Army, which would improve his father's reelection prospects. Although nearly all of his Harvard classmates avoided the draft and service in Vietnam, Gore believed if he found a way around military service, he would be handing an issue to his father's Republican opponent. According to Gore's Senate biography, "He appeared in uniform in his father's campaign commercials, one of which ended with his father advising: 'Son, always love your country.' Despite this, Al senior lost the election.

Gore has said that his other reason for enlisting was that he did not want someone with fewer options than he to go in his place. Actor Tommy Lee Jones, a former college housemate, recalled Gore saying that "if he found a fancy way of not going, someone else would have to go in his place." His Harvard advisor, Richard Neustadt, also stated that Gore decided, "that he would have to go as an enlisted man because, he said, 'In Tennessee, that's what most people have to do.'" In addition, Michael Roche, Gore's editor for ''The Castle Courier,'' stated that "anybody who knew Al Gore in Vietnam knows he could have sat on his butt and he didn't."

After enlisting in August 1969, Gore returned to the anti-war Harvard campus in his military uniform to say goodbye to his adviser and was "jeered" at by students. He later said he was astonished by the "emotional field of negativity and disapproval and piercing glances that ... certainly felt like real hatred".

Gore had basic training at Fort Dix from August to October, and then was assigned to be a journalist at Fort Rucker, Alabama. In April 1970, he was "Soldier of the Month".

His orders to be sent to Vietnam were "held up" for some time and he suspected that this was due to a fear by the Nixon administration that if something happened to him, his father would gain sympathy votes. He was finally shipped to Vietnam on January 2, 1971, after his father had lost his seat in the Senate during the 1970 Senate election, becoming one "of only about a dozen of the 1,115 Harvard graduates in the Class of '69 who went to Vietnam." Gore was stationed with the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa and was a journalist with ''The Castle Courier.'' He received an honorable discharge from the Army in May 1971.

Of his time in the Army, Gore later stated, "I didn't do the most, or run the gravest danger. But I was proud to wear my country's uniform." He also later stated that his experience in Vietnam "didn't change my conclusions about the war being a terrible mistake, but it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang on to what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments expressed by people who did the laundry and ran the restaurants and worked in the fields was something I was naively unprepared for."

Vanderbilt and journalism

Gore was "dispirited" after his return from Vietnam. NashvillePost.com noted that, "his father's defeat made service in a conflict he deeply opposed even more abhorrent to Gore. His experiences in the war zone don't seem to have been deeply traumatic in themselves; although the engineers were sometimes fired upon, Gore has said he didn't see full-scale combat. Still, he felt that his participation in the war was wrong."

Although his parents wanted him to go to law school, Gore first attended Vanderbilt University Divinity School from 1971 to 1972 on Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for people planning secular careers. He later said he went there in order to explore "spiritual issues", and that "he had hoped to make sense of the social injustices that seemed to challenge his religious beliefs."

Gore also began to work the night shift for ''The Tennessean'' as an investigative reporter in 1971. His investigations of corruption among members of Nashville's Metro Council resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two councilmen for separate offenses.

He took a leave of absence from ''The Tennessean'' to attend Vanderbilt University Law School in 1974. His decision to become an attorney was a partial result of his time as a journalist, as he realized that while he could expose corruption, he could not change it. Gore did not complete law school, deciding abruptly in 1976 to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives when he found out that his father's former seat in the House was about to be vacated.

Congress and first presidential run (1976–1993)

Gore began serving in the U.S. Congress at the age of 28 and stayed there for the next 16 years, serving in both the House (1977–1985) and the Senate (1985–1993). Gore spent many weekends in Tennessee, working with his constituents.

House and Senate

At the end of February 1976, U.S. Representative Joe L. Evins unexpectedly announced his retirement from Congress, making the Tennessee's 4th congressional district seat to which he had succeeded Albert Gore, Sr. in 1953 open. Within hours after ''Tennessean'' publisher John Seigenthaler, Sr., called him to tell him the announcement was forthcoming, Gore decided to quit law school and run for the House of Representatives:

:Gore's abrupt decision to run for the open seat surprised even himself; he later said that 'I didn't realize myself I had been pulled back so much to it.' The news came as a 'bombshell' to his wife. Tipper Gore held a job in the ''Tennessean'''s photo lab and was working on a master's degree in psychology, but she joined in her husband's campaign (with assurance that she could get her job at the ''Tennessean'' back if he lost). By contrast, Gore asked his father to stay out of his campaign: 'I must become my own man,' he explained. 'I must not be your candidate.'

Gore won a seat in Congress in 1976 "with 32 percent of the vote, three percentage points more than his nearest rival." He won the next three elections in 1978, 1980, and 1982 where "he was unopposed twice and won 79 percent of the vote the other time." In 1984, Gore successfully ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. He was "unopposed in the Democratic Senatorial primary and won the general election going away," despite the fact that Republican President Ronald Reagan swept Tennessee in his reelection campaign the same year.

During his time in Congress, Gore was considered a "moderate" (he referred to himself as a "raging moderate") opposing federal funding of abortion, voting in favor of a bill which supported a moment in silence in schools, and voting against a ban on interstate sales of guns. His position as a moderate (and on policies related to that label) shifted later in life after he became Vice President and ran for president in 2000.

During his time in the House, Gore sat on the Energy and Commerce and the Science and Technology committees, chairing the latter for four years. He also sat on the House Intelligence Committee and in 1982 introduced the ''Gore Plan'' for arms control, to "reduce chances of a nuclear first strike by cutting multiple warheads and deploying single-warhead mobile launchers." While in the Senate, he sat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Rules and Administration, and the Armed Services Committees. In 1991, Gore was one of ten democrats who supported the Gulf War.

Gore was one of the ''Atari Democrats'' who were given this name due to their "passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect." On March 19, 1979 he became the first member of Congress to appear on C-SPAN. During this time, Gore co-chaired the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future with Newt Gingrich. In addition, he has been described as having been a "genuine nerd, with a geek reputation running back to his days as a futurist ''Atari Democrat'' in the House. Before computers were comprehensible, let alone sexy, the poker-faced Gore struggled to explain artificial intelligence and fiber-optic networks to sleepy colleagues." Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn noted that, "as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.

Gore introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986. He also sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises."

As a Senator, Gore began to craft the ''High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991'' (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report ''Toward a National Research Network'' submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet). The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."

After joining the U.S. House of Representatives, Gore held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming." He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s. In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries which sought to create a ''Global Marshall Plan,'' "under which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment."

First presidential run (1988)

Gore campaigned for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States against Joe Biden, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson, and Michael Dukakis (who eventually won the Democratic nomination). Gore carried seven states in the primaries, finishing third overall.

Although Gore initially denied that he intended to run, his candidacy was the subject of speculation: "National analysts make Sen. Gore a long-shot for the Presidential nomination, but many believe he could provide a natural complement for any of the other candidates: a young, attractive, moderate Vice Presidential nominee from the South. He currently denies any interest, but he carefully does not reject the idea out of hand." At the time, he was 39 years old, making him the "youngest serious Presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy."

After announcing that he would run, Gore ran his campaign as "a Southern centrist, [who] opposed federal funding for abortion. He favored a moment of silence for prayer in the schools and voted against banning the interstate sale of handguns."

CNN noted that, "in 1988, for the first time, 12 Southern states would hold their primaries on the same day, dubbed "Super Tuesday". Gore thought he would be the only serious Southern contender; he had not counted on Jesse Jackson." Jackson defeated Gore in the South Carolina Primary, winning, "more than half the total vote, three times that of his closest rival here, Senator Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee." Gore next placed great hope on Super Tuesday where they split the Southern vote: Jackson winning Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia; Gore winning Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Nevada, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Gore was later endorsed by New York City Mayor, Ed Koch who made statements in favor of Israel and against Jackson. These statements cast Gore in a negative light, leading voters away from Gore who only received 10% of the vote in the New York Primary. Gore then dropped out of the race. ''The New York Times'' said that Gore also lost support due to his attacks against Jackson, Dukakis, and others.

Gore was eventually able to mend fences with Jackson who supported the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 and 1996, and campaigned for the Gore-Lieberman ticket during the 2000 presidential election. Gore's policies changed substantially in 2000, reflecting his eight years as Vice President.

Son's 1989 accident, 1992 election, and first book

On April 3, 1989 as the Gores and their six-year-old son Albert were leaving a baseball game, Albert ran across the street to see his friend and was hit by a car. He was thrown , and then traveled along the pavement for another . Gore later recalled: "I ran to his side and held him and called his name, but he was motionless, limp and still, without breath or pulse [...] His eyes were open with the nothingness stare of death, and we prayed, the two of us, there in the gutter, with only my voice." Albert was tended to by two nurses who happened to be present during the accident. The Gores spent the next month in the hospital with Albert. Gore also commented: "Our lives were consumed with the struggle to restore his body and spirit." This event was "a trauma so shattering that [Gore] views it as a moment of personal rebirth", a "key moment in his life" which "changed everything."

In August 1991, Gore announced that his son's accident was a factor in his decision not to run for president during the 1992 presidential election. Gore stated: "I would like to be President [...] But I am also a father, and I feel deeply about my responsibility to my children [...] I didn't feel right about tearing myself away from my family to the extent that is necessary in a Presidential campaign." During this time, Gore wrote ''Earth in the Balance'', a text which became the first book written by a sitting U.S. Senator to make the New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's ''Profiles in Courage''.

Vice presidency and second presidential run (1993–2001)

Vice presidency

Al Gore served as Vice President during the Clinton Administration. Gore was initially hesitant to accept a position as Bill Clinton's running mate for the 1992 United States presidential election, but after clashing with the George H. W. Bush administration over global warming issues, he decided to accept the offer. Clinton stated that he chose Gore due to his foreign policy experience, work with the environment, and commitment to his family.

Clinton's choice was criticized as unconventional because rather than picking a running mate who would diversify the ticket, Clinton chose a fellow Southerner who shared his political ideologies and who was nearly the same age as Clinton. The Washington Bureau Chief for ''The Baltimore Sun'', Paul West, later suggested that, "Al Gore revolutionized the way Vice Presidents are made. When he joined Bill Clinton's ticket, it violated the old rules. Regional diversity? Not with two Southerners from neighboring states. Ideological balance? A couple of left-of-center moderates. [...] And yet, Gore has come to be regarded by strategists in both parties as the best vice presidential pick in at least 20 years."

Clinton and Gore accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention on July 17, 1992. Known as the ''Baby Boomer Ticket'' and the ''Fortysomething Team,'' ''The New York Times'' noted that if elected, Clinton and Gore, at ages 45 and 44 respectively, would be the "youngest team to make it to the White House in the country's history." Theirs was the first ticket since 1972 to try to capture the youth vote. Gore called the ticket "a new generation of leadership".

The ticket increased in popularity after the candidates traveled with their wives, Hillary and Tipper, on a "six-day, 1,000-mile bus ride, from New York to St. Louis." Gore also successfully debated the other vice presidential candidates, Dan Quayle, and James Stockdale. The Clinton-Gore ticket beat the Bush-Quayle ticket, 43%-38%. Clinton and Gore were inaugurated on January 20, 1993 and were re-elected to a second term in the 1996 election.

At the beginning of the first term, Clinton and Gore developed a "two-page agreement outlining their relationship." Clinton committed himself to regular lunch meetings, recognized Gore as a principal adviser on nominations, and appointed some of Gore's chief advisers to key White House staff positions [...] Clinton involved Gore in decision-making to an unprecedented degree for a Vice President. Through their weekly lunches and daily conversations, Gore became the president's "indisputable chief adviser."

Gore had a particular interest in reducing "waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and advocated trimming the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations." During the Clinton Administration, the U.S. economy expanded, according to David Greenberg (professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University) who said that "by the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged."

According to Leslie Budd, author of ''E-economy: Rhetoric or Business Reality'', this economic success was due, in part, to Gore's continued role as an ''Atari Democrat,'' promoting the development of information technology, which led to the dot-com boom (c. 1995-2001). Clinton and Gore entered office planning to finance research that would "flood the economy with innovative goods and services, lifting the general level of prosperity and strengthening American industry." Their overall aim was to fund the development of, "robotics, smart roads, biotechnology, machine tools, magnetic-levitation trains, fiber-optic communications and national computer networks. Also earmarked [were] a raft of basic technologies like digital imaging and data storage." Critics claimed that the initiatives would "backfire, bloating Congressional pork and creating whole new categories of Federal waste."

During the election and his term as Vice President, Gore popularized the term ''Information Superhighway'', which became synonymous with the Internet, and he was involved in the creation of the National Information Infrastructure. Gore first discussed his plans to emphasize information technology at UCLA on January 11, 1994 in a speech at The Superhighway Summit. He was involved in a number of projects including NetDay'96 and 24 Hours in Cyberspace. The Clinton–Gore administration also launched the first official White House website in 1994 and subsequent versions through 2000. The Clipper Chip, which "Clinton inherited from a multi-year National Security Agency effort," was a method of hardware encryption with a government backdoor. It met with strong opposition from civil liberty groups and was abandoned by 1996.

Gore was also involved in a number of initiatives related to the environment. He launched the GLOBE program on Earth Day '94, an education and science activity that, according to ''Forbes magazine'', "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment". During the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Gore was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95–0) the Byrd–Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98). In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA satellite that would provide a constant view of the earth, marking the first time such an image would have been made since ''The Blue Marble'' photo from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. During this time, he also became associated with Digital Earth.

In 1996 Gore became involved in a finance controversy over his attendance at an event at the Buddhist Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California. In an interview on NBC's ''Today'' the following year, Gore said, "I did not know that it was a fund-raiser. I knew it was a political event, and I knew there were finance people that were going to be present, and so that alone should have told me, 'This is inappropriate and this is a mistake; don't do this.' And I take responsibility for that. It was a mistake." In March 1997, Gore had to explain phone calls which he made to solicit funds for the Democratic Party for the 1996 election. In a news conference, Gore stated that, "all calls that I made were charged to the Democratic National Committee. I was advised there was nothing wrong with that. My counsel tells me there is no controlling legal authority that says that is any violation of any law." The phrase "no controlling legal authority" was criticized by columnist Charles Krauthammer, who stated: "Whatever other legacies Al Gore leaves behind between now and retirement, he forever bequeaths this newest weasel word to the lexicon of American political corruption." Robert Conrad, Jr. was the head of a Justice Department task force appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate Gore's fund-raising controversies. In Spring 2000, Conrad asked Reno to appoint an independent counsel to continue the investigation. After looking into the matter, Reno judged that the appointment of an independent counsel was unwarranted.

During the 1990s, Gore spoke out on a number of issues. In a 1992 speech on the Gulf War, Gore stated that he twice attempted to get the U.S. government to pull the plug on support to Saddam Hussein, citing Hussein's use of poison gas, support of terrorism, and his burgeoning nuclear program, but was opposed both times by the Reagan and Bush administrations. In the wake of the Al-Anfal Campaign, during which Hussein staged deadly mustard and nerve gas attacks on Kurdish Iraqis, Gore cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, which would have cut all assistance to Iraq. The bill was defeated in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President Reagan. In 1998, at a conference of APEC hosted by Malaysia, Gore objected to the indictment, arrest and jailing of President Mahathir Mohammad’s longtime second-in-command Anwar Ibrahim, a move which received a negative response from leaders there. Ten years later, Gore again protested when Ibrahim was arrested a second time, a decision condemned by Malaysian foreign minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

Soon afterwards, Gore also had to contend with the Lewinsky scandal, involving an affair between President Clinton and an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Gore initially defended Clinton, whom he believed to be innocent, stating, "He is the president of the country! He is my friend [...] I want to ask you now, every single one of you, to join me in supporting him." After Clinton was impeached Gore continued to defend him stating, "I've defined my job in exactly the same way for six years now [...] to do everything I can to help him be the best president possible."

Second presidential run (2000)

There was talk of a potential run in the 2000 presidential race by Gore as early as January 1998. Gore discussed the possibility of running during a March 9, 1999 interview with CNN's ''Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer''. In response to Wolf Blitzer's question: "Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley," Gore responded:

:I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Former UCLA professor of information studies Philip E. Agre and journalist Eric Boehlert argued that three articles in ''Wired News'' led to the creation of the widely spread urban legend that Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet," which followed this interview. In addition, computer professionals and congressional colleagues argued in his defense. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that "we don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet." Cerf would later state: "Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit." Former Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is – and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a "futures group" – the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen." Finally, Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: "I didn't ask him about the Internet. I asked him about the differences he had with Bill Bradley [...] Honestly, at the time, when he said it, it didn't dawn on me that this was going to have the impact that it wound up having, because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative and creating the Internet to—I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it and it wound up being a devastating setback to him and it hurt him, as I'm sure he acknowledges to this very day."

Gore himself would later poke fun at the controversy. In 2000, while on ''The Late Show with David Letterman'' he read ''Letterman's Top 10 List'' (which for this show was called, "Top Ten Rejected Gore – Lieberman Campaign Slogans") to the audience. Number nine on the list was: "Remember, America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it away!" In 2005 when Gore was awarded the ''Lifetime Achievement Award'' "for three decades of contributions to the Internet" at the ''Webby Awards'' he joked in his acceptance speech (limited to five words according to ''Webby Awards'' rules): "Please don't recount this vote." He was introduced by Vint Cerf who used the same format to joke: "We all invented the Internet." Gore, who was then asked to add a few more words to his speech, stated: "It is time to reinvent the Internet for all of us to make it more robust and much more accessible and use it to reinvigorate our democracy."

Gore formally announced his candidacy for president in a speech on June 16, 1999, in Carthage, Tennessee, with his major theme being the need to strengthen the American family. He was introduced by his eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff. In making the speech, Gore also distanced himself from Bill Clinton, whom he stated had lied to him. Gore was "briefly interrupted" by AIDS protesters claiming Gore was working with the pharmaceutical industry to prevent access to generic medicines for poor nations and chanting "Gore's greed kills." Additional speeches were also interrupted by the protesters. Gore responded, "I love this country. I love the First Amendment [...] Let me say in response to those who may have chosen an inappropriate way to make their point, that actually the crisis of AIDS in Africa is one that should command the attention of people in the United States and around the world." Gore also issued a statement saying that he supported efforts to lower the cost of the AIDS drugs, provided that they "are done in a way consistent with international agreements."

Gore faced an early challenge by former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley. Bradley was the only candidate to oppose Gore and was considered a "fresh face" for the White House. Gore challenged Bradley to a series of debates which took the form of "town hall" meetings. Gore went on the offensive during these debates leading to a drop in the polls for Bradley. Gore eventually went on to win every primary and caucus and, in March 2000 even won the first primary election ever held over the Internet, the Arizona Presidential Primary. By then, he secured the Democratic nomination.

On August 13, 2000, Gore announced that he had selected Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his vice presidential running mate. Lieberman became "the first person of the Jewish faith to run for the nation's second-highest office" (Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964, was of "Jewish origin"). Lieberman, who was a more conservative Democrat than Gore, had publicly blasted President Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair. Many pundits saw Gore's choice of Lieberman as further distancing him from the scandals of the Clinton White House. Gore's daughter, Karenna, together with her father's former Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, officially nominated Gore as the Democratic presidential candidate during the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California. Gore accepted his party's nomination and spoke about the major themes of his campaign, stating in particular his plan to extend Medicare to pay for prescription drugs, to work for a sensible universal health-care system. Soon after the convention, Gore hit the campaign trail with running mate Joe Lieberman. Gore and Bush were deadlocked in the polls. Gore and Bush participated in three televised debates. While both sides claimed victory after each, Gore was critiqued as either too stiff, too reticent, or too aggressive in contrast to Bush.

Recount

On election night, news networks first called Florida for Gore, later retracted the projection, and then called Florida for Bush, before finally retracting that projection as well. Florida's Republican Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, eventually certified Florida's vote count. This led to the Florida election recount, a move to further examine the Florida results.

The Florida recount was stopped a few weeks later by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the ruling, ''Bush v. Gore'', the Justices held that the Florida recount was unconstitutional and that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline, effectively ending the recounts. This 7–2 vote ruled that the standards the Florida Supreme Court provided for a recount were unconstitutional due to violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and further ruled 5–4 that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline. This case ordered an end to recounting underway in selected Florida counties, effectively giving George W. Bush a 537 vote victory in Florida and consequently Florida's 25 electoral votes and the presidency. The results of the decision led to Gore winning the popular vote by approximately 500,000 votes nationwide, but receiving 266 electoral votes to Bush's 271 (one District of Columbia elector abstained). On December 13, 2000, Gore conceded the election. Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but in his concession speech stated that, "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."

The 2000 election is the subject of a 2008 made-for-TV movie directed by Jay Roach, produced by, and starring Kevin Spacey called ''Recount.'' It premiered on the HBO cable network on May 25, 2008.

Post Vice Presidency

After maintaining an informal public distance for eight years, Bill Clinton and Gore reunited for the media in August 2009 after Clinton arranged for the release of two journalists who were being held hostage in N. Korea. The two women were employees of Gore's Current TV.

Criticism of Bush

Beginning in late 2002, Gore began to publicly criticize the Bush administration. In a September 23, 2002 speech given before the Commonwealth Club of California, Gore criticized President George W. Bush and Congress for the rush to war prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq. He compared this decision to the Gulf War (which Gore had voted for) stating, "Back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War [...] But look at the differences between the resolution that was voted on in 1991 and the one this administration is proposing that the Congress vote on in 2002. The circumstances are really completely different. To review a few of them briefly: in 1991, Iraq had crossed an international border, invaded a neighboring sovereign nation and annexed its territory. Now by contrast in 2002, there has been no such invasion." In a speech given in 2004, during the presidential election, Gore accused George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. The next year, Gore gave a speech which covered many topics, including what he called "religious zealots" who claim special knowledge of God's will in American politics. Gore stated: "They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against people of faith." After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Gore chartered two planes to evacuate 270 people from New Orleans and criticized the Bush administration's response to the hurricane. In 2006, Gore criticized Bush's use of domestic wiretaps without a warrant. One month later, in a speech given at the Jeddah Economic Forum, Gore criticized the treatment of Arabs in the U.S. after 9/11 stating, "Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong [...] I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country." Gore's 2007 book, ''The Assault on Reason,'' is an analysis of what Gore refers to as the "emptying out of the marketplace of ideas" in civic discourse during the Bush administration. He attributes this phenomenon to the influence of television and argues that it endangers American democracy. By contrast, Gore argues, the Internet can revitalize and ultimately "redeem the integrity of representative democracy." In 2008, Gore argued against the ban of same-sex marriage on his Current TV website, stating, "I think that gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women to make contracts, have hospital visiting rights, and join together in marriage." In a 2009 interview with CNN, Gore commented on former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration. Referring to his own previous criticism of the Bush administration, Gore stated: "I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical, and then of the policy [...] You know, you talk about somebody that shouldn't be talking about making the country less safe, invading a country that did not attack us and posed no serious threat to us at all."

Presidential run speculation

Gore was a speculated candidate for the 2004 Presidential Election (a bumper sticker, "Re-elect Gore in 2004!" was popular). On December 16, 2002, however, Gore announced that he would not run in 2004. Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to draft him into running. One observer concluded it was “Al Gore who has the best chance to defeat the incumbent president,” noting that “of the 43 Presidents, only three have been direct descendents of former Presidents:” John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush, that “all three won the office only after... anomalies in the Electoral College,” that the first two were defeated for re-election in a populist backlash, and finally that “the men who first lost to the presidential progeny and then beat them” (i.e. Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland) “each won a sort of immortality--having his image placed on a unit of US currency,” and that Gore should answer this call of history. The draft movement, however, failed to convince Gore to run.

The prospect of a Gore candidacy arose again between 2006 to early 2008 in light of the upcoming 2008 presidential election. Although Gore frequently stated that he had "no plans to run," he did not reject the possibility of future involvement in politics which led to speculation that he might run. This was due in part to his increased popularity after the release of the 2006 documentary, ''An Inconvenient Truth''. The director of the film, Davis Guggenheim, stated that after the release of the film, "Everywhere I go with him, they treat him like a rock star." After ''An Inconvenient Truth'' was nominated for an Academy Award, Donna Brazile (Gore's campaign chairwoman from his 2000 campaign) speculated that Gore might announce a possible presidential candidacy during the Oscars. During the 79th Academy Awards ceremony, Gore and actor Leonardo DiCaprio shared the stage to speak about the "greening" of the ceremony itself. Gore began to give a speech that appeared to be leading up to an announcement that he would run for president. However, background music drowned him out and he was escorted offstage, implying that it was a rehearsed gag, which he later acknowledged. After ''An Inconvenient Truth'' won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, speculation increased about a possible presidential run. Gore's popularity was indicated in polls which showed that even without running, he was coming in second or third among possible Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Grassroots draft campaigns also developed with the hope that they could encourage Gore to run. Gore, however, remained firm in his decision and declined to run for the presidency.

Involvement in presidential campaigns

After announcing he would not run in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Gore endorsed Vermont governor Howard Dean in December, 2003, weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. He was criticized for this endorsement by eight Democratic contenders particularly since he did not endorse his former running mate Joe Lieberman (Gore preferred Dean over Lieberman because Lieberman supported the Iraq War and Gore did not). Dean's campaign soon became a target of attacks and eventually failed, with Gore's early endorsement being credited as a factor. In ''The New York Times,'' Dean stated: "I actually do think the endorsement of Al Gore began the decline." The ''Times'' further noted that "Dean instantly amplified his statement to indicate that the endorsement from Mr. Gore, a powerhouse of the establishment, so threatened the other Democratic candidates that they began the attacks on his candidacy that helped derail it." Dean's former campaign manager, Joe Trippi, also stated that after Gore's endorsement of Dean, "alarm bells went off in every newsroom in the country, in every other campaign in the country," indicating that if something did not change, Dean would be the nominee. Later, in March 2004, Gore endorsed John Kerry and gave Kerry $6 million in funds left over from his own unsuccessful 2000 bid. Gore also opened the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

During the 2008 primaries, Gore remained neutral toward all of the candidates which led to speculation that he would come out of a brokered 2008 Democratic National Convention as a "compromise candidate" if the party decided it could not nominate one. Gore responded by stating that these events would not take place because a candidate would be nominated through the primary process. When Senator Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president on June 3, 2008, speculation began that Gore might be tapped for the vice presidency. On June 16, 2008 (a week after Hillary Clinton had suspended her campaign), Gore endorsed Obama in a speech given in Detroit, Michigan which renewed speculation of an Obama-Gore ticket. Gore stated, however, that he was not interested in being Vice President again. On the timing and nature of Gore's endorsement, some argued that Gore waited because he did not want to repeat his calamitous early endorsement of Howard Dean during the 2004 Presidential Election. On the final night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, shortly before Obama delivered his acceptance address, Gore gave a speech offering his full support. Such support led to new speculation after Obama was elected President during the 2008 Presidential election that Gore would be named a member of the Obama administration. This speculation was enhanced by a meeting held between Obama, Gore, and Joe Biden in Chicago on December 9, 2008. However, Democratic officials and Gore's spokeswoman stated that during the meeting the only subject under discussion was the climate crisis, and Gore would not be joining the Obama administration. On December 19, 2008, Gore described Obama's environmental administrative choices of Carol Browner, Steven Chu, and Lisa Jackson as "an exceptional team to lead the fight against the climate crisis."

Environmentalism

Overview

Gore has been involved with environmental issues since 1976, when as a freshman congressman, he held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming." He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s and was known as one of the ''Atari Democrats'', later called the "Democrats' Greens, politicians who see issues like clean air, clean water and global warming as the key to future victories for their party."

In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries which sought to create a ''Global Marshall Plan,'' "under which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment." In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95–0) the Byrd–Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".

In 2004 he co-launched Generation Investment Management, a company for which he serves as Chair. A few years later, Gore also founded The Alliance for Climate Protection, an organization which eventually founded the ''We Campaign''. Gore also became a partner in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group. He also helped to organize the ''Live Earth'' benefit concerts.

Criticism

::::::: Gore's involvement in environmental issues has been criticized. For example, he has been labeled a "carbon billionaire" and accused of profiting from his advocacy; a charge which he has denied, by saying, among other things, that he has not been "working on this issue for 30 years... because of greed". A conservative Washington D.C. think tank, and a Republican member of Congress, among others, have claimed that Gore has a conflict-of-interest for advocating for taxpayer subsidies of green-energy technologies in which he has a personal investment. Additionally, he has been criticized for his above-average energy consumption in using private jets, and in owning multiple, very large homes, one of which was reported in 2007 as using high amounts of electricity. Gore's spokesperson responded by stating that the Gores use renewable energy which is more expensive than regular energy and that the Tennessee house in question has been retrofitted to make it more energy efficient. Philosopher A. C. Grayling defended Al Gore, arguing that Gore's personal lifestyle does nothing to impugn his message and that Gore's critics have committed the ad hominem fallacy.

Data in ''An Inconvenient Truth'' have been questioned. In a 2007 court case, a British judge said that while he had "no doubt ...the film was broadly accurate" and its "four main scientific hypotheses ...are supported by a vast quantity of research," he upheld nine of a "long schedule" of alleged errors presented to the court. He ruled that the film could be shown to schoolchildren in the UK if guidance notes given to teachers were amended to balance out the film's one-sided political views. Gore's spokeswoman responded in 2007 that the court had upheld the film's fundamental thesis and its use as an educational tool. In 2009, an interviewer asked Gore about the British court challenge and the nine "errors", and Gore responded, "the ruling was in my favour."

Organizations including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) criticized Gore for not advocating vegetarianism as a way for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. Gore agreed that meat production contributes to increased carbon emissions, but did not want to "go quite as far as ... saying everybody should become a vegetarian". He said that although he is not a vegetarian, he has "cut back sharply" on his consumption of meat.

When asked by Bjørn Lomborg to debate whether spending on health and education should take priority over limiting carbon emissions, Gore responded that he would not debate because the “scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue . . . . It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture."

Awards and honors

Gore is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2007, a Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV in 2007, a Webby Award in 2005 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 2007 for International Cooperation. He also starred in the 2006 documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2007 and wrote the book ''An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It'', which won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2009.

See also

Al Gore and information technology

Al Gore and the environment

Gore effect

Selected publications

Books

''Know Climate Change'' and ''101 Q and A on Climate Change'' from 'Save Planet Earth Series', 2008 (children's books)

''Putting People First: How We Can All Change America.'' (with William J. Clinton). New York: Times Books, 1992 .

Articles

"Toward Sustainable Capitalism: Long-term incentives are the antidote to the short-term greed that caused our current economic woes. ''Wall Street Journal'', June 24, 2010.(With David Blood)

"We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change." ''New York Times'', February 27, 2010.

"The Climate for Change." ''New York Times'', November 9, 2008.

Vice President Al Gore's introduction to ''Earthwatch: 24 Hours In Cyberspace. February 8, 1996. ''24 Hours in Cyberspace''

"Foreword by Vice President Al Gore." In ''The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking (2nd edition)'' by Tracy LaQuey, 1994.

"Introduction. In ''Silent Spring'' by Rachel Carson. 1994. New York : Houghton-Mifflin.

''The Climate Change Action Plan.'' Washington, D.C.: The White House, October, 1993 (with William J. Clinton).

"Infrastructure for the global village: computers, networks and public policy." ''Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks,'' September 1991. 265(3): 150–153.

Notes

References

Agre, Phil. ''Who Invented "Invented"?:Tracing the Real Story of the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" Hoax''. October 17, 2000

Campbell-Kelly, Martin; Aspray, William. "Chapter 12." ''Computer: A History of the Information Machine.'' New York: BasicBooks, 1996.

Chapman, Gary and Marc Rotenberg. ''The National Information Infrastructure:A Public Interest Opportunity.'' In ''Computers, Ethics, & Social Values''. Deborah G. Johnson and Helen Nissanbaum (eds.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1995: 628-644.

Cockburn, Alexander. ''Al Gore: A User's Manual'' (2000) (with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-85984-803-6

Kirk, Andrew G. ''Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism''. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007.

Rheingold, Howard. "Afterword to the 1994 edition." ''The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition). '' Cambridge: MIT, 2000.

Stix, Gary. Gigabit Gestalt: Clinton and Gore embrace an activist technology policy. ''Scientific American'', May, 1993.

Turque, Bill, ''Inventing Al Gore'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000, ISBN 0-618-13160-4

External links

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

;Articles

Ask Mr. Science: The moral flaws of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, Gregg Easterbrook, Slate magazine, May 24, 2006

A challenge to our moral imagination, interview with Al Gore 2007

FACTBOX: Al Gore since 2000 White House defeat, ''Reuters'', July 31, 2008

Al Gore addresses the inaugural The Times-Smith School Forum on Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, July 2009

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