Less than a week into his presidency, Obama’s in campaign mode again, this time to promote his $825 billion economic recovery plan. He’s using his weekly radio and video address today to try to convince Americans as well as Congress that the stimulus will produce jobs and benefits, and he took the unusual step of convening a Saturday morning meeting of his economic team at the White House. “If we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse,” Obama said in his pre-recorded statement. “This is not just a short-term program to boost employment.” The White House also launched a new website, www.recovery.gov, to provide details about how the stimulus money is spent.

President Obama chose his cabinet with record speed, but getting it confirmed is proving a good deal trickier: He will enter his second week of office without his Treasury, Labor, Health and Human Services, or Commerce secretaries, as well as his attorney general. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had all but one of his secretaries confirmed by the end of his first day. Since Jimmy Carter, only George H.W. Bush has hit more hitches. Obama’s team insists it’s not a big deal, since Congress has an unusual amount of business on its plate, but The Wall Street Journal suggests that this slowness is a sign that “the shrunken Republican Party—with its core of determined conservatives intact—won't be a pushover for the new president.”

It's not surprising, but it's still unsettling: According to The New York Times, at least seven bailed-out banks and several automakers still have lobbyists on their payrolls, begging Congress and the Treasury for more, more, more. In the fourth quarter, Citigroup spent $1.77 million on lobbying, straight from coffers lined with $45 billion in bailout cash. AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and GM also blew significant wads on "government relations" firms. Senators Diane Feinstein and Olympia Snowe are pushing legislation to stop the circular and patently corrupt monetary cycle that links government-funded corporations to the government officials in charge of monitoring them.

Pope Benedict XVI has been soaking up the publicity lately—starting his own YouTube channel, calling Obama “arrogant”—but now he’s got a fight on his hands. He’s lifted the excommunication of four bishops appointed nearly 20 years ago by breakaway Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. One of those appointees, Richard Williamson of Britain, denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers. Israel reacted swiftly to the news, saying Benedict’s decision would “cast a shadow on relations with Jews.” Williamson recently told Swedish TV that not 6 million, but “two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers.”

The Kennedys aren't the only dynasty angry with Governor Paterson's senatorial pick. The New York Times reports that the families Clinton and Cuomo—not to mention a cavalcade of liberal organizations supporting issues like gun control and gay rights—join the ranks of New Yorkers irked with Kirsten Gillibrand's appointment. Advisors' "worst fears have been realized" in the year they hoped would legitimize their boss, who came to power as a direct result of scandal-heavy governing partner Eliot Spitzer's demise.

Iran’s plan to be the nuclear thorn in the world’s side has hit a bump in the road: It’s almost out of yellow cake uranium. The Western powers, including the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, now “have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran,” according to The Times of London. The move, “while unlikely to cripple any effort to develop a bomb, would blunt its ambitions and help to contain the threat, authoritative sources said.” Lobbying is particularly focused on Kazakhstan, which has 15 percent of the world’s uranium deposits, as well as other countries like Uzbekistan, and the DRC.

Good news, Prince Harry Fan Club! The royal heartthrob is single again. “Senior royal sources” report the prince and his girlfriend of five years, blond Zimbabwean Chelsy Davy, split last week. “The couple had a lot of fun but the relationship has run its course,” a senior courtier tells the News of the World. “They are still on speaking terms but they are categorically no longer an item.” But Chelsy’s friends say she broke up with Harry because she could no longer “put up with his lifestyle” and was annoyed with all the “time spent apart.” Although the two just returned from a “romantic break” in Mauritius, the Daily Mail reports, they’ve been leading increasingly separate lives, with Chelsy, 23, studying—ahem—law in Leeds while Harry is doing helicopter training in Hampshire. No official comment yet from Clarence House on the big news.

Has Rod Blagojevich gone rogue? Last night, his lead attorney withdrew from his defense team, hinting, according to The Washington Post, "that his client did not follow his advice." Now Blago says he will boycott his Senate trial. He will not defend himself or send witnesses or lawyers. "Under these rules, I'm not getting a fair trial," he said. "They're just hanging me." Hearings to remove him from office begin next week.

The great Israeli novelist David Grossman has a powerful new op-ed that has been translated and published in The Washington Post. “[I]t would not hurt to keep in mind,” he writes, “that this latest military operation in Gaza was, when all is said and done, just one more way-station on a road paved with fire, violence and hatred. On this road, you sometimes win and you sometimes lose, but in the end it leads to ruin. …The IDF's success confirms only that Israel is much stronger than Hamas, and that under certain circumstances it can be very tough and cruel.” He hopes that “the central conclusion we reach from this last, bloody round of war” is “to talk, in order to understand that reality is not just the hermetically sealed story that we and the Palestinians have been telling ourselves for generations, the story that we are imprisoned within, no small part of which consists of fantasies, wishes and nightmares.”

Bernard Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew have insisted all along that they knew nothing of their father’s scheming, but The Wall Street Journal reports that, while there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, they may have been closer to their father’s investment operation than they’ve let on. They met regularly with their father and other senior officials; invested their own money with Madoff; talked with Madoff’s lieutenant who is now a focus of the criminal investigation; and defended their father’s investment operation against critics. In 2001, Mark reassured dozens of Madoff traders that the investment operation was legitimate after Barron's published a skeptical article. Mark also withdrew his personal funds from his father’s investment-advisory operation sometime before his 2000 divorce for unknown reasons. Andrew, meanwhile, is said to have had several million dollars invested with his father.

Now that we have an African-American president, US schools should get rid of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. That’s what John Foley, an English teacher at a high school in Washington state, is recommending, anyway. Foley says the books, which include the “N-word,” should no longer be required reading for students. “The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms. Barack Obama is [president] of the United States, and novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go,” he wrote in a recent opinion piece for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In place of Huck Finn, students could read Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Foley suggests.

Might the recession make Europeans more American? Hard times spell good news for fast food, and McDonald’s is planning to create 12,000 new jobs and open 240 new restaurants across Europe. The restaurants will be concentrated in Spain, France, Italy, Poland, and Russia, and it is the first time since 2003, when McDonald’s revamped its business plan to get more money out of existing restaurants rather than opening new ones, that it has opened so many new restaurants in Europe. Alongside Wal-Mart, McDonald’s is the only member of the Dow Industrial Average to see its share price go up in the past year.

The Obama family has already saved one person from the recession: Michelle's inaugural gown designer, 26-year-old Jason Wu. Like the rest of America, Wu had no idea which design Michelle had chosen until he saw it on his living room TV. "I know I am an unusual choice for a first lady," he told The New York Times. "I didn't think it was my turn yet." Fashion insiders have been raving about the Taipei-born Wu since he launched his label in 2006. Wu designed three dresses: The one we saw, which was his initial design, plus two colorful ones. "The only protocol, to quote [Michelle fashion adviser] Ikram, was that 'It has to sparkle,' " he said.

Hugo Chavez was belligerent when President Obama first arrived, comparing him to President Bush, but the Venezuelan president seems to have had a change of heart. "He is a man with good intentions; he has immediately eliminated Guantánamo prison, and that should be applauded," Chavez said in a televised speech yesterday. "I am very happy and the world is happy that this young president has arrived ... (we) welcome the new government and we are filled with hope.” Chavez may have been taking his cues from Fidel Castro, who earlier this week praised Obama’s “noble intentions.”

One of David Paterson’s aides should tell him to let it go: The night before he chose Kirsten Gillibrand as New York’s next senator, Paterson told guests a private event that Caroline Kennedy had been “nasty” to him and shown “disrespect” with how she dropped out of the race. Hours earlier, Paterson had sent her a message wishing her well and disavowing quotes by those close to him saying she had never been in the race and was “mired” in personal issues. Paterson claims Kennedy called him saying she was having second thoughts, he asked her to wait a day, and she agreed. Then he said he couldn’t reach her for hours. "He was absolutely frustrated that he couldn't reach her," said one guest. "He thought maybe she was sick. He felt she was being nasty to him, that she showed great disrespect."

Authorities in the Bahamas have charged one and detained two others in an alleged plot to extort money from John Travolta after the death of his son. The detained suspects are Tarino Lightbourne, the ambulance driver who has described to tabloids efforts to revive Travolta’s son, and Obie Wilchcombe, a Bahaman parliamentarian, former tourism minister, and self-described friend of Travolta. Sen. Pleasant Bridgewater, an attorney, was arrested and "charged with abetment to extort and conspiracy to extort." She was released on $40,000 bail. The exact nature of Travolta’s allegations are unknown.