Susan E. Rice, named today by Barack Obama to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is only 44 years old, but it would seem she’s been preparing a lifetime for her new role.

A new study by the Campaign Finance Institute shows that Barack Obama received about the same percentage from small donors in 2008 as George W. Bush did in 2004.

The second-term Arizona governor said to be the top choice for Homeland Security secretary first came to Washington 17 years ago to represent Anita Hill.

The headline in The Onion may have nailed it: “In Thanksgiving Tradition, Bush Pardons Scooter Libby In Giant Turkey Costume.” In fact, many are betting that Libby will be among those pardoned before the president steps down.

The group overseeing Barack Obama’s Jan. 20 inaugural boasts a bipartisan roster of go-getters, most with deep Chicago roots.

Barack Obama has chosen Christina D. Romer, currently a member of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

A lot of people have wondered whether former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer got some help in hanging himself. Now a House committee is preparing to answer that question.

Brent Scowcroft has gone from insider to outsider. Now he’s back on the inside again.

It is testament to her close relationship to Barack and Michelle Obama – and to members of their inner circle - that Desiree Rogers threw an intimate birthday party for her friend, Valerie Jarrett, last week. Among the guests were the president-elect and his wife.

No team of rivals, this. Top members of the president-elect’s economic team - Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers and Peter Orszag - are all proteges of former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, one of the Democratic architects of the financial deregulation undertaken in the Clinton years.