At the AFL-CIO Union picnic on Monday, President Barack Obama was back in fiery campaign mode, stumping for his health-care plan that's been mired in Congress. “Every debate at some point comes to an end,” he said. “At some point it’s time to act. Ohio, it’s time to act.” Obama backed the public option, saying it would "help improve quality and bring down costs," although CNN reports the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) will submit a public option-free proposed bill. The president also addressed last year’s financial crisis and its detrimental effect on the middle class. “Wealth was valued over work, selfishness over sacrifice, greed over responsibility, the right to organize undermined rather than strengthened,” he said of the culture on Wall Street.

It appears the Senate will be without a Kennedy: Teddy’s nephew, Joseph P. Kennedy II, announced on Monday that he will not seek his uncle’s seat. Kennedy posted his decision on the Web site of Citizens Energy Corp., the nonprofit he founded to deliver free heating fuel to the poor. "My father called politics an honorable profession, and I have profound respect for those who choose to advance the causes of social and economic justice in elective office," Kennedy said in the statement. "After much consideration, I have decided that the best way for me to contribute to those causes is by continuing my work at Citizens Energy Corporation."

Three men charged with the bomb plot that led to airports severely restricting carry-on liquids were found guilty Monday of intending to deploy bombs disguised as drinks on trans-Atlantic flights. A British jury convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29 of plotting to detonate home-made liquid bombs on flights leaving London, bound for San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Washington, New York, and Chicago. The three were previously convicted of conspiracy to murder. The latest conviction adds that the al Qaeda-linked trio plotted to use their bombs on planes. "This was a particularly complex and daring plot which would have led to a terrible attack resulting in major loss of life," Home Secretary Alan Johnson said.

Get ready for even fiercer TV advertisement wars next campaign season. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court hears Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which challenges legislation like the 2002 McCain-Feingold bill, which limits the amount of money corporations and unions can spend on ads supporting or attacking specific candidates. Experts expect that the court will loosen the current restrictions by expanding the types of ads that unions and corporations can purchase. This would likely benefit Republicans, since many for-profit companies tend to support the GOP. Unions, by contrast, favor the Democratic Party and don’t have the same amount of money at their disposal. In Wednesday’s case, Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit group, is arguing that the FEC violated its free speech rights when it blocked them from paying to advertise and air Hillary: The Movie, a feature-length film criticizing then-Senator Clinton, during her presidential campaign.

Here's one Republican who isn't worried for the nation's children on Tuesday. Former first lady Laura Bush, a onetime teacher, defended the president’s contentious decision to deliver a back-to-school address and said she thinks he is doing a good job overall. “I think he has got a lot on his plate, and he has tackled a lot to start with, and that has probably made it more difficult,” Bush tells CNN. She also said she isn’t surprised Obama is having trouble reaching across the aisle to Republicans, since her husband encountered similar problems when he tried to practice bipartisanship. "He was disappointed that that was not the way it worked out in Washington," she said. "I'm sure President Obama didn't expect it to be that way [either]. All of us need to do what we can to come together on issues." Both Laura Bush and George W. Bush are currently working on their memoirs.

Almost a year ago, Lehman Brothers collapsed and triggered the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. A Reuters reporter tracked down the investment bank's CEO, Richard Fuld, who has since been named in nearly 40 different legal actions and handed subpoenas for three different grand-jury probes. "You don't have a gun; that's good," were Fuld's first words. "You know what? The anniversary's coming up," he continued. "I've been pummeled, I've been dumped on, and it's all going to happen again. I can handle it. You know what, let them line up." Fuld, 63, took the reins in 1994 and built the bank into the fourth-largest in the U.S. until it collapsed September 15, 2008. Fuld was called a villain and protesters demanded that he be jailed. But he maintains he was not out of touch with the bank's problems, and friends think he could make a comeback. "He's keeping a low profile but doing a lot of power lunches," a top executive at an investment bank said. "He's keeping in touch with friends on Wall Street."

Take a breather, Bill O’Reilly: MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has turned his sights to O’Reilly’s colleague at Fox News, Glenn Beck. Olbermann took to DailyKos to implore readers to “Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes,” after White House advisor Van Jones resigned over the weekend following attacks from Beck and Fox News over his previous signature of a 9/11 Truther petition. Olbermann hopes “to remind everybody to walk softly and carry a big popsicle, and most particularly to save this nation from the [Oligarchy] of The Stupid.” He will designate an email address for accepting leads and will take his campaign on-air on Tuesday.

A teenager from Georgia has upset her fourth rival at the U.S. Open on Sunday, becoming the youngest woman to advance to the quarterfinals since Serena Williams 10 years ago. The unseeded Melanie Oudin beat 13th-seeded Nadia Petrova in four sets. The 17-year-old has already blasted through former no. 1 Maria Sharapova and fourth-seeded Elena Dementieva in the tournament, dazzling the crowd with her ability to best older, more experienced rivals with her never-say-die game. Oudin will next face off against the 2004 champ Svetlana Kuznetsova or No. 9 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark. “I know that I can compete with the best in the world now,” Oudin said after her win. “And I will know that forever.”

Listen up, students. We interrupt this classroom for a lesson from President Barack Obama. In a speech to be broadcast in schools nationwide on Tuesday, Obama urges American kids to set goals, take on personal responsibility, and stay clean. "I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well," he says. The president also tries to reset priorities: "You get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work—that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality-TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things." He explains, "Being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher."

The leftist leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, received a warm welcome at the Venice Film Festival, where he walked the red carpet accompanied by 50 bodyguards and director Oliver Stone. Hundreds of admirers chanted "president, president" in greeting and Chavez returned their enthusiasm, throwing a flower into the crowd and repeatedly touching his heart. Chavez is the focus of Stone's new film, South of the Border, which looks at his role in the changes in the region. Stone says Chavez has been unfairly demonized in the press. "Chavez was elected by popular vote in no fewer than 12 different elections. And Venezuela has seen a clear economic improvement with him," Stone said. "I think he's an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure. He's open and warmhearted and big, and a fascinating character," the director told the Los Angeles Times. Chavez, who once called George W. Bush "the devil," said he sees no need to use that term in reference to Obama, and that he hopes to work with the president further.

In the case of Kraft and Cadbury, ifs and buts are not merely candy and nuts, but the potential makings of a $50 billion "global powerhouse." Bloomberg reports that Kraft Foods Inc., the second-largest food company, hasn't given up trying to take over Cadbury PLC, to create an even bigger conglomerate, despite Cadbury's rejection of its $16.7 billion bid. After the bid, Cadbury shares shot up as much as 42 percent, although it said that Kraft's offer undervalued the company. Kraft may have competition for Cadbury. One analyst suggested that Nestlé/Hershey might try to counterbid, with Nestlé taking gum and Hershey taking chocolate.

Perhaps Hamid Karzai took Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "victory" as inspiration? Supporters of the Afghan president created as many as 800 polling places that existed only on paper, Western and Afghan officials say. The supporters also took over about 800 real polling centers. In fact, officials said that in some provinces, pro-Karzai votes may exceed voters by a factor of 10. "We are really talking about orders of magnitude," one official said. The fraud accounts may mean the White House, which has 68,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan, faces the prospect of having to defend an administration widely seen as illegitimate.

Annie Leibovitz is not having a good year. Not only must she repay a $24 million loan or risk losing her homes and the rights to a lifetime of photographs—by Tuesday—but now she's being sued for copyright infringement. The Guardian reports that Siena photographer Paolo Pizzetti has filed a $300,000 suit against Leibovitz over a Lavazza coffee company promotional calendar. Pizzetti says Leibovitz asked him to scout locations for the calendar, including the Trevi Fountain in Rome and the Plaza San Marco in Venice. He alleges that he was told that Leibovitz wouldn't be coming to Italy to finish the assignment, but saw his images of the fountain and plaza in the calendar, published last October. Leibovitz's spokesperson said, "Since we have not yet seen the filing, we have no comment."

Royal relationships are strange things, especially when "friends" leak details to the press. The Telegraph reports that Prince Harry will likely get back together with Chelsy Davy. Evidently, the two have been messaging each other on Facebook and will meet up this weekend for Harry's 25th birthday party. An acquaintance of Harry's thinks they'll give it "one last shot" even though Davy's been "seeing other guys." Although they had been seeing each other for nearly five years, Davy first appeared formally as Harry's girlfriend at the May 2008 wedding of royal cousin Peter Phillips. She also attended Prince Charles' 60th birthday bash at the end of last year, when she let fellow guests know she was uncertain about her future with Harry.

Captain Planet will be proud of Yukio Hatoyama, due to take over as Japanese prime minister on September 16. Hatoyama has pledged that Japan will cut its emissions by 25 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 emissions levels. The targets are more ambitious than those of many industrialized nations, particularly considering that Japan is the world's fifth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and that the targets essentially amount to cutting the nation's emissions by one third in just 11 years. The new government says it will achieve its targets through emissions trading, renovating housing, subsidizing solar panels, and introducing low-energy technologies in cars. Hatoyama's plan, which parts of the auto industry will probably lobby against, is contingent on other nations agreeing to targets at December's climate talks in Copenhagen.

Now that NBC has shuffled its lineup, this fall David Letterman is going up against his old rival, Jay Leno, at 10 p.m. as well as new contender Conan O'Brien later in the evening. So far, Letterman has won against O'Brien because, according to New York magazine's Peter W. Kaplan, he's the last grownup on television. Letterman's rise to maturity derives from three key moments: In 2000, he had quintuple bypass surgery and quipped "a bypass is what happened to me when I didn't get The Tonight Show," evidencing an emotional depth he had previously failed to show; the September 17, 2001, show that made him the first post-9/11 entertainer to return to the air, where he said that "if you live to be 1,000 years old," the attacks wouldn't make "any goddamn sense"; and this year's political incidents, from John McCain's couch-side apology to Letterman for lying, to his apology to Sarah Palin for suggesting that Alex Rodriquez knocked up Bristol.

Lubna al-Hussein has avoided flogging, but she hasn't quite won her case. CNN reports that Sudanese journalist al-Hussein will face a fine instead of 40 lashes after being arrested along with 18 other women at a restaurant by Sudanese authorities in July for wearing indecent clothing, including pants deemed too tight and a blouse deemed too sheer. Al-Hussein, who worked in the media department of the United Nations mission in Sudan, had resigned her position in order to shed her diplomatic immunity and in hopes of having the law declared unconstitutional. She does not intend to pay the fine, which means she'll spend a month in jail, according to her lawyer. During her scheduled trial in early August, demonstrators outside the courtroom in Khartoum carried banners with the messages "No return to the dark ages" and "No to suppressing women."

Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, premiered in Venice on Sunday night. What’s the early word? “ Capitalism: A Love Story does not quite measure up to Moore's Sicko in its cumulative power, and it is unlikely to equal Fahrenheit 9/11 in political impact,” Time’s Mary Corliss writes. “In many ways, though, this is Moore's magnum opus: the grandest statement of his career-long belief that big business is screwing the hard-working little guy while government connives in the atrocity.” The film reviews the financial crisis, and features Moore trying to make citizen's arrests on AIG executives. "The anecdotes are instructive and appalling,” Corliss writes, “and if they meander off the immediate talking point of the trillions the banks took in bailout money last year and the billions they made in profits this year, they bolster Moore's belief that no one should have been surprised by the collapse of a corrupt system.”

It's anything but business as usual at the U.S. Open now that former No. 1 Kim Clijsters is back on the scene. The Associated Press reports that Clijsters temporarily retired from tennis after winning the 2005 championship in order to have a baby. Now she's back, and 18-month-old Jada roots for her mom up in the players' lounge. It seems to be working. Clijsters upended the tournament's rankings by beating No. 3 Venus Williams on Sunday, 6-0, 0-6, 6-4, circumventing the Williams-Williams semifinal match that seemed all but carved in stone. That's not the only upset on the women's side of things. Dinara Safina, the top-seated player, is out of the running after a third-round loss; Maria Sharapova is also gone, thanks to 17-year-old Melanie Oudin; Jelena Jankovic, seeded fifth, lost earlier in the week; and Vera Zvonareva, ranked seventh, lost by six points on Sunday.

In a new interview with Wonderland, Megan Fox says that “I definitely have some kind of mental problem and I haven't pinpointed what it is." Perhaps one symptom is an outsized sense of her own significance? In the interview, Fox compares herself to Marilyn Monroe, saying "I could end up like that because I constantly struggle with the idea that I think I'm a borderline personality—or that I have bouts of mild schizophrenia.” Fox also uses the opportunity to bash Transformers director Michael Bay, who she says is “like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work [for].”

An al Qaeda-inspired group in the Gaza Strip planned to assassinate Jimmy Carter and Tony Blair during their recent trip to the region, according to Mahmoud Taleb, the group's leader. In an email to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Taleb also claimed his group, Jaljalat, would launch attacks on Hamas, the Jerusalem Post said. Taleb, who is also known as Abu Mutasem al-Maqdisi, said Hamas had foiled the assassination plot by his Jaljalat group.

When President Obama first announced that he would give a speech on health care this week, many expected that he would throw the public option under the bus. But, if that’s the case, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs aren’t hinting: Both men reiterated White House support for the public option on Sunday. Axelrod insisted that Obama “is not walking away” from a public plan—that he “believes it should be in the plan, and he expects to be in the plan, and that's our position.” Gibbs was slightly less committal. While he said the public option would be a “valuable tool,” he said “"We're not going to prejudge what the process will be when we sign a bill.”

It doesn't matter if they're Democrats, independents, or Republicans—white voters are abandoning the Obama bandwagon. According to surveys by the Pew Research Center, Obama's approval rating has dropped 11 points among white Democrats, nine points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women—groups that will be crucial in next year's midterm elections, the Los Angeles Times reports. Evidently, the slippage began after the July news conference in which Obama said a white police officer acted "stupidly" while arresting a black Harvard professor. Controversies over health care and the wide publication of false rumors that Obama is a secret Muslim born overseas are also believed to have contributed to the drop. The resignation on Saturday of green-jobs czar Van Jones and the controversy over Obama's Tuesday address to the nation's schoolchildren may have a further adverse impact. Evidently, the post-racial era isn't post-racial after all.

President Obama will spend his Labor Day addressing a friendly audience for a change—the AFL-CIO Union, which will be celebrating the holiday named for their movement at a picnic in Cincinnati. Obama will introduce his new senior counselor for manufacturing policy, Ron Bloom, who has served as senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the auto industry task force. Obama will also talk about his proposed health-care reforms in preparation for his big address to Congress on Wednesday. But the friendly union crowd could turn out to be an oasis of support for Obama in the swing state—"Tea Party" protesters rallied against health-care reform in a Cincinnati suburb on Saturday.