"Wait Wait," which is now concluding its 12th year, has gained a sizable following by channeling the news through its thoughtful comedic sensibilities.
In front of a live audience, host Peter Sagal quizzes phone contestants on newsmakers and news topics, presented in often offbeat ways. Winners get the priceless honor of NPR newsman Carl Kasell's voice on their home answering machines. Three panelists, from a revolving list of about a dozen, also try to answer news questions, and each week the show welcomes a celebrity to play on a phone contestant's behalf.
On a recent trip to Atlanta -- the show travels from its Chicago home base about a dozen times a year -- all the principals were in place. Sagal, Kasell and the show's staff lingered on stage at the city's Cobb Energy Centre on a Thursday afternoon and ran through the script for the week's program, which would start at 7:30 p.m. In a small dining room nearby, "Wait Wait" panelists Amy Dickinson, Roy Blount Jr. and Charles P. Pierce prepared their stories for the episode's "Bluff the Listener" game.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Spyvate Sector | ||||
| ||||
Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.
The two private groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive — said Monday they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.
It will be years before the public sees any of the recovered e-mails because they will now go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records. Presidential records of the Bush administration won't be available until 2014 at the earliest.
President Barack Obama outlined major new government stimulus and jobs proposals on Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to "spend our way out of this recession."
Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient.
"We avoided the depression many feared," Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, "Our work is far from done."
The number of first-time filers for unemployment insurance fell to 466,000, the lowest level in 14 months, according to a government report released Wednesday.
That's the lowest number in the Labor Department figures since the week ended Sept. 13, 2008, and a decrease of 35,000 from the previous week's 501,000.
Two years of steep job cuts all but ended last month, unexpectedly pulling down the unemployment rate and raising hopes for a lasting economic recovery.
Federal figures released Friday showed that the rate fell from 10.2 percent in October to 10 percent as employers shed the fewest number of jobs since the recession began two years ago. The government also said far fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.
The federal government made $98 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2009, and President Obama will issue an executive order in coming days to combat the problem, his budget director announced Tuesday.
The 2009 total for improper payments -- from outright fraud to misdirected reimbursements due to factors such as an illegible doctor's signature -- was a 37.5 percent increase over the $72 billion in 2008, according to figures provided by Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
