Cheat Sheet

President Obama defended the $787 billion stimulus on Saturday, saying it "has worked as intended," in response to Republican criticism of his handling of the economy. “It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession,” he said in his weekly radio and Web address. “It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and business.” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor responded, calling the bill "full of pork-barrel spending, government waste and massive borrowing cleverly called 'stimulus.'" Obama called for the public to be patient, saying the stimulus "was not designed to work in four months—it was designed to work over two years." Unemployment rose to its highest rate since 1983 in June and Obama has said he expects unemployment to rise further, to 10 percent.

Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings begin Monday, and the Supreme Court nominee has been rehearsing for over a week with Obama administration lawyers to prepare for senators' hard-hitting questions. Republicans will target her "wise Latina" comment, linking it to President Obama's earlier comment that it's important for a judge to have empathy. "Empathy is great, perhaps, if you're the beneficiary of it," Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a Senate speech last week. Republicans say they will press Sotomayor on her 10 years as a board member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, when Sessions said she took "extreme positions," as well as her decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the firefighter discrimination case. Abortion will most likely not be an issue, since she won't tip the court's balance, though if senators press her on hot-button issues she might have to rule on as a justice, Sotomayor will most likely say she can't comment.

Haraz N. Ghanbari / AP Photo

It’s already been a whirlwind trip: when the Obamas arrived in Ghana on Friday night, they were received by local dignitaries and serenaded by African drummers. Obama was up bright and early on Saturday morning to squeeze in a workout before his busy day: he was spotted crossing the lobby of his hotel at 7:30 a.m. in a grey t-shirt and black pants, en route to the gym. Obama then met with Ghana’s President John Atta Mills, and later toured Gold Coast Castle, a major site in the transatlantic slave trade. The First Family has seen a massive outpouring of support in Accra, as citizens lined the roads to wave at every car of the Obamas’ motorcade. The president hopes his visit to Ghana will show his faith in the power of democracy on the continent, which he outlined in a speech to Parliament on Saturday. "We must start with a simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans," he said. "No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end."

Not only did Bush hide his secret wiretapping program from the Department of Justice, but its scope was much larger than was believed, according to a new report. The Washington Post reported Friday that former President Bush conducted a “warrantless eavesdropping program that only three Justice Department lawyers were aware of,” and a team of federal inspectors general now says that the program pulled in “mountains” of information far beyond what was previously acknowledged. The so-called “unprecedented collection activities” began after Bush signed an executive order following the September 11 attacks, the inspectors’ general watchdog report says. The report called the arrangement “extraordinary and inappropriate,” and said the White House “undermined” the Justice Department’s ability to work. The three lawyers who knew about the wiretapping were Attorney General John Ashcroft, Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo, and intelligence policy lawyer James Baker. Most of the intelligence leads had no connections to terrorism, the report says, though the primary architect of the program, Michael Hayden, said the "extremely valuable" surveillance prevented future al-Qaida attacks.

You’ve probably seen it by now: The photo of President Obama “checking out” a woman in a pink dress at the G-8 conference in Italy. It’s been touted by Matt Drudge and Fox News, but here’s the thing: It’s fake. Even Fox’s Greta Van Susteren says so, and provides video evidence, calling it the “lying picture that’s going around the web.” It becomes quite clear from the video that Obama is looking at the ground, and not the woman’s backside. Fox News is, of course, continuing to run the misleading photo anyway.

Is the world ready for little Jacksons to take the stage? The family has been mourning Michael for only two weeks, but Joe Jackson may already be scouting his grandchildren's talent. The stage father—who allegedly abused his own children—told Good Morning America that he thinks Michael’s children pack their own star power. “I keep watching Paris. She maybe wants to do something,” he said. “And Blanket, he can really dance.” Jackson's children were notably sheltered from the spotlight while their father was alive.

Earlier this week The Guardian reported that three of Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers paid more than £1 million to settle court cases that alleged his journalists hired private investigators who illegally hacked into the cell phone messages of "numerous public figures," including Gwyneth Paltrow, Elle MacPherson, the deputy prime minister, and even aides to the royal family. But according to one veteran British tabloid journalist, the wiretapping scandal is nothing new. Wensley Clarkson writes in The Guardian on Saturday that he’s “been involved in my fair share of illicit snooping in the past,” adding that reporters in the “mad years” of the '80s and '90s frequently paid sources for compromising surveillance material of various public officials. The pressure to “make the story work at whatever the cost” drove tabloids to rely on private investigators to do their illegal dirty work. Murdoch has maintained that he knew nothing about payments to the investigators. "If that had happened I would know about it," he told Bloomberg News. But Clarkson writes that “many billionaire business people use the very same dodgy characters to check out their business rivals and other individuals they are interested in.” But the controversy has larger connotations for Rupert Murdoch’s stake in Europe. According to The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee, the European Union “is the one regulatory power stronger than [Murdoch’s] ability to twist the arms of national politicians.” But Murdoch still exerts a considerable amount of control over British officials: “All Tory and Labour leaders canoodle with the Murdoch apparat with a social desperation that demeans them and their office,” she writes.