From White Castle to White House

Actor Kal Penn is joining the Obama Administration. Penn will be associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison. The actor turned politician played a doctor on TVs "House" recently.

Penn stumped for Obama during the campaign and expressed interest in being a part of the White House staff. He also says his grandparents marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement.

This latest appoint to the White House prompted the New York Post to make a list of White House hotties. Check them out.

White House Sex Line

White House reporters were given an 800 number for a call-in interview session with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Turns out it was a good old fashioned sex line.

The White House says it gave out the correct number, but obviously everyone did not get the new memo.

If it wasn't a day late, I would have thought it was an April Fool joke.

The Washington Post recorded the outgoing message. Here is the audio.

What's the cost of a vote?

From time to time, we'll have special guest contributors on this blog. Here's Patrick Baldwin.




Despite your feelings on the size, politics and make-up of the Federal Stimulus Plan, there was a WTF element of Friday’s vote you may have missed. The short version is the White House hastily arranged for a private flight from Ohio to D.C. so Democrat Sherrod Brown could cast the key 60th vote in favor of the bill. The entire vote was held up so Brown could race back from his mother’s funeral. In this day of super-security BlackBerries, Pentagon satellite links, and a mobile Oval Office in Air Force One, do elected officials really NEED to be in Washington, D.C. to vote? I mean, if I can access everything from my bank account to my frequent flier miles over the telephone, can’t these guys hit 1 for yes 2 for no?

President Gets to Keep BlackBerry

Once he got to the White House, President Barack Obama was told he had to give up his BlackBerry, but today the self-confessed BlackBerry addict got the good news. The President will get a super-encrypted version of the smartphone costing $3,350. Apparently the White House is technologically speaking in the dark ages, so Obama will be ecstatic to have a connection to the real world. He had to give up his old e-mail address, but that sounds like a small price to pay.
I am really happy for the President and I am all for transparency in government, but doesn't this information sound like a dare to a hacker?
Wondering if you are (like me) a BlackBerry addict? Don't worry, here is how you self-diagnose yourself. It's the top 10 signs you're addicted to your BlackBerry.