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In a show of moral support, President Barack Obama called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke on Friday defending her in the face of conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh's "reprehensible ... personal and crude" attacks on her, the White House said. The conversation, which lasted for "several minutes," came after Limbaugh branded Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" for her support of women having access to birth control, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said. The president made the call right before Fluke was scheduled to appear on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports. Obama "wanted to offer his support to her," said Carney. "He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks, and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy." Fluke appeared on the "Today" show Friday morning to talk about the inciden...

The late Stanley Ann Dunham has been described by her son President Barack Obama as a shy and small-town Caucasian from Kansas, an idealist who became a struggling single mother, notes Janny Scott, on leave from The to write "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother." An article to appear in this coming Sunday's Magazine adapted from Scott's book and appearing on the Times' Web site, characterized the view from the other side of the political spectrum: "… In the fevered imaginings of supermarket tabloids and the Internet, she is the atheist, the Marxist, the flower child, the mother who abandoned her son or duped the newspapers of Hawaii into printing a birth announcement of her Kenyan-born baby, on the off chance that he might want to be president someday."

Good afternoon.  It’s great to be back at GW.  I want you to know that one of the reasons I kept the government open was so I could be here today with all of you.  I wanted to make sure you had one more excuse to skip class.  You’re welcome. Of course, what we’ve been debating here in Washington for the last few weeks will affect your lives in ways that are potentially profound.  This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page, more than just cutting and spending.  It’s about the kind of future we want.  It’s about the kind of country we believe in.  And that’s what I want to talk about today. From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity.  More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government. But there has always been anothe...