44, Day Seven

And on the seventh day, Barack Obama ... signed executive orders on greenhouse gases, saw his pick to head Treasury get confirmed, and got deeper into a pissing match with Rush Limbaugh.

-The Senate voted to confirm Timothy Geithner to be Treasury Secretary, despite problems he had on his personal taxes.

-Obama directed the EPA to examine whether California and other states can have tougher auto emission standards than the federal government and he directed his administration to move faster on new fuel-efficiency guidelines. The moves were in line with what author Edwin Black suggested Obama do in a column Black wrote for Portfolio.com.

-The president, according to FOXNews.com, "did a quick pivot Monday, shifting his focus to foreign policy by contacting a handful of major world leaders -- including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nikolas Sarkozy -- as his new U.N. ambassador restated the desire for vigorous and 'direct diplomacy"'with Iran."

-Last Friday, Obama chastised Republican leaders who came to the White House. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told the Republicans, according to media accounts. Over the weekend, Limbaugh hit back. "If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of the trillion dollar debacle."

-On its website, the White House posted three items on the blog Monday (as of 6:20 pm). One was for the remarks Obama made on his environment executive orders. Another was to commemorate the Chinese new year. And the last one was a statement (made Sunday, but posted Monday) honoring the 58th anniversary of India's independence. Even though Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had a media briefing, the transcript of it wasn't released on the site.

by J. Jennings Moss