Protesters have hounded the Miami Seaquarium for years, urging it to free its star, Lolita. The orca was just seven years old when she was captured in 1970 in the waters off of Whidbey Island, and has been performing daily shows ever since.

But now actor Raul Julia-Levy is getting Hollywood involved. He is the son of the late Raul Julia who starred in “Addams Family” films. Also involved in the effort are Ron Howard, Johnny Depp and Harrison Ford.

“I believe we’re going to get her back,” said Julia-Levy.

The Hollywood figures are asking producers and directors to boycott film shoots in Florida.

“I believe Hollywood represents three (hundred) to 400 million dollars in films. We have CSI Miami that brings a lot of money into the state,” he said.

But the Miami Seaquarium says Lolita couldn’t survive in the wild.

“She has entertained and educated millions of children. We think letting her go would be an irresponsible act on our behalf,” said Robert Rose of the Seaquarium.

Aquarium officials point to Keiko, the killer whale who was freed after he starred in “Free Willy.” He died before learning to live on his own.

But activists say Lolita is different. She was captured after she learned to fish and could be reunited with her family, the “L” pod in Puget Sound.

And if Julia-Levy gets his way, she will be back.

With an estimated 2,500 votes still outstanding and other election certification steps still to take place, Mark Begich, the Democratic mayor of Anchorage, had taken a lead of 3,724 votes out of more than 315,000 cast, and he declared victory.

“I am humbled and honored to serve Alaska in the United States Senate,” Mr. Begich said. “It’s been an incredible journey getting to this point, and I appreciate the support and commitment of the thousands of Alaskans who have brought us to this day. I can’t wait to get to work fighting for Alaskan families.”

Mr. Stevens did not immediately concede the race. He could request a recount, but he would have to pay for it if the current vote margins hold.

Mr. Begich’s victory will end the career of Mr. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator ever and a pivotal figure in the history of his state after it initially appeared that he would triumph despite his criminal conviction just days before the election.

The defeat came on Mr. Stevens’s 85th birthday, at the end of a day in which he avoided expulsion from the ranks of Senate Republicans as his colleagues awaited the final results.

“I wouldn’t wish what I am going through on anyone, my worst enemy,” Mr. Stevens said Tuesday morning in the Capitol. Mr. Stevens’s defeat will strengthen a majority that Democrats sought to bolster Tuesday by allowing Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, to retain his high-profile committee chairmanship.

Instead, Democrats dropped Mr. Lieberman from another panel, delivering a mild rebuke for his strong support of Senator John McCain and other Republicans in this month’s elections.

The decision was part of the postelection Congressional tableaux as senators of both parties re-elected their current leadership teams for the first two years of President-elect Barack Obama’s administration. House Democrats met to make Representative Nancy Pelosi of California their candidate for speaker and essentially kept their leadership intact as well, with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland remaining majority leader.

Aware of the legislative battles ahead, Senate Democrats said they wanted to adhere to Mr. Obama’s call for reconciliation and leniency for Mr. Lieberman.

But a pragmatic dynamic was at work as well. Having added seven new senators to their side, Democrats want to avoid driving Mr. Lieberman into the Republican fold. Even though they remain short of the 60 needed to cut off filibusters, the Democrats are aiming to keep their majority as large as possible next year when, for the first time since 1994, they have control of Congress and the White House. Two other Senate seats, in Minnesota and Georgia, have yet to be decided.

“We have got some big issues here, and we need all hands on deck,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who had pushed to keep the retribution against his home-state colleague to a minimum.

Democrats voted 42 to 13 to let Mr. Lieberman stay at the helm of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs while removing him from the Environment and Public Works Committee, where he led a subcommittee. The formal resolution before the Democrats, considered in what was described as an emotional meeting in the Old Senate Chamber of the Capitol, also declared that the Democratic caucus “rejects and disapproves of Senator Lieberman’s statements against Senator Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign.”

Lawmakers who attended the session said that Mr. Lieberman openly discussed the political and personal hurt he had experienced when many of his colleagues campaigned against him after he lost a Democratic Senate primary in 2006 before winning re-election as an independent. After the vote, he expressed some remorse for his campaign comments but noted that the resolution did not chastise him directly for backing Mr. McCain, who returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to resume life as a senator.

Mr. Lieberman, who only eight years ago was the party’s nominee for vice president, said he could have made some statements “more clearly.” He added: “And there are some that I made that I wish I had not made at all. And obviously in the heat of campaigns, that happens to all of us. But I regret that. And now it’s time to move on.”

Some Democrats remained angry that Mr. Lieberman had been so outspoken not only in his support of Mr. McCain, but also in his campaigning for Republicans like Senator Norm Coleman, who continued to hold a narrow lead in his re-election bid in Minnesota. They said that stripping the chairmanship was only fitting.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who aligns with Democrats, said allowing Mr. Lieberman to run the committee was a “slap in the face” to Americans who “worked day and night to get Barack Obama elected and to move our country in a very new direction.”

“Having said that, there is an enormous amount of work that is facing the Senate and we all have to move on and work together to address these issues,” Mr. Sanders said.

The reluctance to move forcefully against their colleagues illustrates again how cautious senators are when it comes to punishing their own. After being thwarted repeatedly by Republican resistance in the past two years, Senate Democrats were unwilling to lose the support of Mr. Lieberman on most domestic policy issues, particularly after Mr. Obama had urged that Mr. Lieberman be allowed to remain in the Democratic fold.

The resolution noted that Mr. Lieberman’s vote gave Democrats the majority in 2007 and that he voted almost 100 percent of the time with the party on important procedural issues.

“I would defy anyone to be more angry than I was,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who will remain majority leader, about Mr. Lieberman’s criticism of Mr. Obama. “But I also believe that if you look at the problems we face as a nation, is this a time we walk out of here saying, ‘Boy, did we get even’? I am very satisfied with what we did today.”

The decision touched off attacks on the Democrats by liberal and progressive groups and on the Internet, where critics accused Democrats of weakness in their posture against Mr. Lieberman, whom they have branded a traitor to Democrats.

But senators pointed to statements by the Obama campaign in support of Mr. Lieberman as justification for their decision. “The Senate Democratic Caucus has decided that if President-elect Barack Obama can forgive, so can we,” said Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware.

Despite a second round of Republican losses, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was returned as Republican leader.

Senate Republicans also easily disposed of a call by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina to impose term limits on the Republican leader and members of the Appropriations Committee, overwhelmingly rejecting the proposals.

In the House, Democrats gathered for the leadership elections and bid farewell to Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who is relinquishing his No. 4 post in the party hierarchy to become chief of staff to Mr. Obama.

Those in the closed meeting said Mr. Emanuel became emotional and told his colleagues it was “not an easy decision for me” to give up his House seat.

“I want you to know, I’ve got your back,” Mr. Emanuel said, according to one account. “I’ll feel better knowing that you’ve got my back.”

But the gangly, bookish Illinoisan galvanized millions across a country in crisis with his soaring rhetoric, speaking in big strokes about transcending partisan politics and creating America as it ought to be. He rose from obscurity to clinch his party’s nomination and the presidency. The New York senator returned home deeply disappointed and bitter, having fallen to a shrewd political tactician.

Sound familiar?

The year was 1860, and Abraham Lincoln had narrowly defeated Sen. William H. Seward to become the Republican presidential nominee. After winning the presidency, Lincoln disregarded personal animosity and took the unprecedented move of tapping Seward to be his secretary of state. He appointed two other political adversaries as well: Salmon P. Chase, a handsome widower and Ohio’s governor, who resented losing to a man he considered inferior, as secretary of the Treasury; and Edwin M. Stanton, a long-bearded Democratic lawyer contemptuous of Lincoln, whom Lincoln inherited as his attorney general but later appointed as secretary of war.

Lincoln chose another foe, Missouri’s distinguished elder statesman Edward Bates, to succeed Stanton as attorney general. Bates had considered Lincoln incompetent but eventually concluded that the president was “very near being a perfect man,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in her 2005 book “Team of Rivals.” As the United States splintered toward civil war, the 16th president assembled the most unusual administration in history, bringing together his disgruntled opponents and displaying what Goodwin calls a profound self-awareness and political genius.

As he has been for many of the nation’s presidents, including the one now holding the office, Lincoln is a source of inspiration for Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated Jan. 20. On a chilly morning 21 months ago, Obama launched his long-shot bid for the presidency from the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. — the same place where a century and a half earlier, Lincoln delivered his historic “House Divided” speech.

And now, Obama is contemplating Lincoln’s particular model of presidential leadership as he moves toward assembling his own team of advisers and Cabinet officials. His overtures to his former foes have suggested he may be mulling his own team of rivals, perhaps led by a certain senator from New York as secretary of state. Obama met with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Chicago last week.

Since winning the election two weeks ago, he has been reading Lincoln’s writings again, Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful.”

Offers Goodwin: “You can’t find a better mentor than Abraham Lincoln.”

“Lincoln said, ‘The country’s in peril. These are the strongest and most able people in the country and I need them by my side,’ ” she said in an interview. “At first, people wondered whether or not Lincoln would be overshadowed by Seward. But in the end, Seward ended up becoming his closest friend. . . . He went on in history in a more profound way than he ever would have had he stayed just a senator from New York.”

If Lincoln is the president against whom all others are measured, it is in no small measure because he was the greatest politician to occupy the White House, said presidential historian Richard Norton Smith. “Lincoln is a crossroads of character and political shrewdness,” said Smith, a scholar-in-residence at George Mason University. By appointing his former rivals, he “displayed a remarkable generosity of spirit. On the other hand, it’s a very shrewd attempt to co-opt your potential enemies.”

Obama may let it drop that his proverbial desert-island book is Goodwin’s 916-page tome, and Garry Trudeau may decree Obama is “The Second Coming of Lincoln” in his “Doonesbury” comic strip, and the president-elect may grace this week’s Newsweek cover standing in Abe’s long shadow.

If you doubt that, ask Bill Clinton. Clinton was elected in 1992 with only 43 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans gained seats in the House. The right felt empowered to treat Clinton as a not fully legitimate minority president and moved into unrelenting opposition. Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and pushed the logic of their hostility to impeachment in 1998.

This time, conservatives can find no silver linings. Obama won the first Democratic majority in 32 years, and Democrats added seats in Congress. And conservatives can’t blame John McCain for running as a moderate. He picked a right-wing running mate, abandoned some of his own unorthodox positions (notably on taxes), and ran a classic conservative attack campaign against the “socialist” Obama. None of it worked.

Note that I have been using the word “conservative,” not “Republican.” This is because the Republican Party is now wholly owned by the conservative movement. The new Democratic majority is built in part on voters who once thought of themselves as moderate Republicans but have abandoned the party in large numbers.

Because of these conversions, moderate Republicans in Congress have been knocked off, one by one, and are nearly extinct. This year’s defeat of Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut is the most evocative symbol of moderate Republicanism’s death.

In the meantime, today’s Democrats are a more confident, disciplined and pragmatic lot than their 1993 counterparts, and this is one of Obama’s big advantages over Clinton. Right-wing Democrats have been replaced by moderates with a greater sense of solidarity with the rest of the party, particularly on economic issues.

The early signals — notably the appointment of Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, an ally of incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, as the House liaison to the new administration — make clear that congressional Democrats are determined to govern with, not against, their new president.

But how conservatives resolve their differences will also matter to Obama’s success. For now, the right is divided into ideological conservatives and dispositional conservatives.

The ideological conservatives hold to a faith linking small government and tax-cutting to extreme social conservatism. That mix is increasingly incoherent and out of step with an electorate that is more diverse and more suburban than ever. Ideological conservatives talk obsessively about returning to the glory days of Ronald Reagan and sometimes drop Sarah Palin’s name as a talisman.

Dispositional conservatives have leanings and affections but not an ideology. They have had enough with rigid litmus tests, free-market bromides irrelevant to the current economic downturn and anti-government rhetoric that bears no relationship to the large government that conservatives would inevitably preside over if they took power again.

The dispositional conservatives want to check government’s influence on the economy but not eliminate it. They would call Obama to account but wouldn’t oppose him on everything. They accept that social problems, notably the growing ranks of those without health insurance, will require new action by government. They want solutions that are as unobtrusive as possible, but they do want solutions.

Think of the dispositional conservatives as the new moderates, and of leaders such as Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota or Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as their potential champions.

The hero for dispositional conservatives is not Ronald Reagan but David Cameron, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Cameron has rehabilitated what once seemed to be a dying outfit by pulling his party back toward a moderate brand of conservatism similar to that of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Tomorrow’s American conservatism will find its own Cameron.

For Obama, a victory by the ideological conservatives could make his life unpleasant — they will attack him on everything — but also allow him to brush the right aside as a pack of irrelevant naysayers.

The less ornery dispositional conservatives would allow Obama to breathe easier in the short run. But they pose a bigger threat for the long term because they would reconstitute the right as a plausible alternative government.

My bet: The ideological conservatives will hold sway for a while, but the dispositional conservatives will triumph eventually. As Margaret Thatcher noted in a different context: For the right, there is no alternative.

Presidential pooch Barney wasn’t leaving the White House without a bite.

The black Scottish terrier snapped at Reuters television correspondent Jonathan Decker today, nipping the reporter’s right index finger as he leaned down to pet him.

“He totally got me,” Decker said after Barney snarled and snapped at him.

“Totally broke my skin. Well, now I have a story to tell.”

Barney, one of two terriers kept by the Bush family, was out for a walk when the incident occurred in the White House driveway. Another reporter captured the whole thing on videotape.

Decker was treated by a White House doctor, and wound up with a bandaged finger. He’ll remain on antibiotics for a few days while the wound heals.

Mills/AP

President George W. Bush holding Barney, who may be distrought that he’s now in the Lame Dog phase of his White House career.

Barack Obama was just minutes into his speech Tuesday to accept the presidency of the United States when he vowed to make good on a very important campaign promise — to get his daughters a White House puppy.

What kind of dog will the Obamas bring into the White House?

(Getty Images)
More Photos

Now it seems everyone has an opinion on what kind of pooch the Obamas should get and where they should get it from.

It’s a big decision. Many White House dogs — most presidents have had at least one — become celebrities in their own rights.

With the help of former first lady Barbara Bush, President George H.W. Bush’s springer spaniel, Millie, wrote her own best-selling book on the daily goings on at the White House.

And the public fawned over pictures of the Clintons’ lively chocolate Labrador retriever, Buddy, later grieving over his death in 2002 after he was hit by a car near the couple’s New York home.

Some White House dogs are much more than just pets. In many cases, the presidential pet helps shape the president’s image with the public.

US president-elect Barack Obama is being urged to make a rehomed dog the first appointment of his administration.

Animal charity PDSA has pressed Mr Obama to break from the White House tradition of making pedigree canines the presidential pet of choice.

The president-elect has promised his daughters, Sasha and Malia, a puppy when they move into the White House.

Sean Wensley, one of PDSA’s senior veterinary surgeons, said a rehomed dog would be ideal for America’s First Family.

He said: “Most US presidents, including George W Bush, have had pedigree pets.

“Many pedigree dogs suffer from breed-related health problems which reduce their quality and length of life.

“Non-pedigree dogs are less likely to have such problems - which is not only good for animals themselves but can spare owners the distress of seeing their pets suffer.”

The Obamas’ new puppy will join an illustrious roll-call of presidential pets, including not only pedigree dogs but the alligators owned by Herbert Hoover, Martin van Buren’s tigers and a garter snake owned by Theodore Roosevelt.

John F Kennedy and his family had a menagerie - including cats, canaries, ponies and hamsters.

Barack Obama has promised his daughters a new puppy. It will be the latest in a long line of White House pooches

If you want a friend in Washington,” Harry Truman said, “get a dog.” He was commenting on what a brutal, backbiting, primordial swamp the capital is. But the sentence could just as well be taken to mean: you won’t make friends if you don’t have a dog.

It should come as no surprise that in his acceptance speech Barack Obama told his daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7: “I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us.”

This was not just a sweet gesture to his daughters: it was a statement of intent. He may have won a landslide with a message of change, but he needed to reassure voters that one of the White House traditions that they hold most dear, whether the occupant is a Republican or a Democrat, would be upheld. More than half of America’s 43 presidents have owned dogs and in recent years a canine friend has meant more than just a way of softening a Commander-in-Chief’s image. It has become an essential job requirement.

We may love our pets in Britain but they rarely play much of a role in politics. Humphrey the Downing Street cat entered the nation’s consciousness only when John Major lost him and again when Cherie Blair had to deny reports that he was removed from No 10 because she disliked the animal. It is hard to imagine any other country in which a newly elected leader would announce as his first executive decision the appointment of a First Pooch. White House dogs are involved in diplomacy, political crisis management, even in helping to hold their owners’ precarious marriages together. Then they write books.

George Washington found time between winning the Revolutionary War and founding the nation to own ten hounds: Taster, Cloe, Tipler, Forester, Captain, Lady Rover, Vulcan, Sweetlips, Madame Moose and Searcher. Theodore Roosevelt, who worked hard on his macho image, kept a pitbull, Pete, that nearly provoked a diplomatic incident when it attacked the French Ambassador, tearing the seat out of his trousers. Pete was banished to Roosevelt’s home on Long Island. His removal, however, did not leave Roosevelt lonely. The President liked keeping animals almost as much as he enjoyed killing them and brought a menagerie to the White House that included a bear, a badger, a macaw, a lizard, a hyena, snakes, guinea-pigs, a hen, a rooster with one leg, a rabbit, three ponies and a barn owl.

Subsequent presidents returned the focus to less exotic, four-pawed pets. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Scottie, called Fala, became so much part of his avuncular image that it received sacks of fanmail, was buried alongside his master and is immortalised in the memorial to FDR on the National Mall. Roosevelt responded to a false story that Fala had been left behind on a trip to the Aleutian Islands and a destroyer had been sent to pick him up, with a speech in which he said: “His Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself…But I think I have a right to resent, to object to, libellous statements about my dog.” Fala supposedly bonded with Rufus, Winston Churchill’s poodle, in the secret confines of a cruiser off Newfoundland in 1941.

The Cold War was thawed by a degree or two when Nikita Khrushchev gave Pushinka, a mongrel descended from Russian dogs sent into space, to President Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline. A litter of puppies was born in the White House. The family’s other dogs included Charlie, a Welsh terrier.

Lyndon Johnson caused uproar when he was pictured picking up his beagles, Him and Her, by their ears. Richard Nixon proved master of using his cocker spaniel, Checkers, to get out of trouble. When he was Eisenhower’s vice-president he was accused of pocketing money from supporters and for accepting the dog as a gift. He went on television to deny the accusations, held up a picture of the dog, said his kids loved the animal and “regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it”. Viewers lapped it up and the crisis was defused.

His successor, Gerald Ford, had a more practical use for Liberty, his golden retriever, whistling for her to come and break up boring meetings.

The Bush political dynasty is matched by that of their dogs. George Bush Sr had an English springer spaniel, Millie. Millie’s Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush, described a day in the life of the President, which burnished his profile and cemented his wife’s status as the nation’s grandmother. Spot, one of Millie’s puppies born in the White House, returned with George W. and died there in 2004. The outgoing President now has two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beasley. However low his opinion poll ratings, the dogs are always ready to come bounding enthusiastically across the lawn to greet him.

His predecessor relied even more heavily on a dog pal in times of trouble. The Clintons arrived at the White House with their cat Sox and later Clinton was given Buddy, a labrador. Dear Sox, Dear Buddy, a collection of letters sent to the pets sold well, but the two didn’t get along. Like most things about the Clintons, their cat attracted controversy. The Clintons had her declawed to save the antique furniture, provoking uproar among animal welfare groups. Then when they left office it was announced that it was off to live with Bill’s secretary, Betty Currie, prompting unfair accusations that Hillary didn’t care for the moggie and had just used it to soften her own image (this was a little unfair given that Sox had been the family pet back in Arkansas).

Buddy was a faithful and helpful presence to his master. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal it appeared to be the only member of Bill’s family that was pleased to see the President. Perhaps this is too cynical, but it was a useful image for Clinton to be seen serving his time in the doghouse with the dog, before his spouse forgave him. After he left office Buddy was accidentally killed near the family home in Chappaqua, New York, when a vehicle ran over it. Bill was said to be heartbroken.

One thing Obama will need to watch out for is competition for the job of top dog. Dick Cheney once dressed his labradors, Jackson and Dave, as Darth Vader and Superman for a Hallowe’en party but, like their owner, they mostly stayed in the shadows.

Joe Biden, however, has said that his wife had promised him a “big dog” if he got elected. Not too big, Mr Vice President-elect.

Expect to hear a great deal more about the First Dog, probably rather more than you will about the two girls for whom it is bought. Then one day there will be a section devoted to it in the Presidential Pet Museum. Yes, of course there’s a Presidential Pet Museum. Where else would you find a portrait of Lucky, President Reagan’s Bouvier des Flandres, made from its own hair?

A dog isn’t just for one term, Mr Obama, it’s for life

As leader of the world superpower, choosing a dog probably does not rate alongside forging relations in the Middle East or reducing America’s national debt, yet the breed of the Obamas’ new canine companion could be more of a headache for the President-elect than he realises. Larger dogs may be more child-friendly but they often have a shorter lifespan and cost more to feed than smaller ones, which must be a consideration in economically blighted times. While a Jack Russell might be lively, it is also more likely to bite than any other breed. This could become diplomatically explosive should the Iranian Ambassador’s attempt to pat the President’s pooch be misinterpreted by the mutt as an act of war.

And then there are allergies. For the Obamas, whose daughter Malia suffers from them, a breed with a short, predictable coat is crucial. Yet, hypoallergenic dogs, such as the American hairless terrier, are not the best-looking of breeds when it comes to those “impromptu” fur-frolicking photo calls.

Lastly, there is the important issue of what your dog says about you. According to Beverley Cuddy, editor of Dogs Today, psychologists have found an inverse correlation between a man’s masculinity and the size of his dog. A man who chooses a very large canine, such as a Great Dane, could signal a lack of confidence. This does not bode well for Jo Biden, who has already announced that he is going to choose a large breed.

Surprisingly, the American Kennel Club has already polled its members on which breed should be the next White House dog basket incumbent and, after 42,000 votes, the poodle beat the soft-coated wheaten terrier by a dog’s hair’s breadth. Here at The Times, however, we have a few suggestions of our own:

THE RODINGLEA SCRUFFY
The brightest dog in town. A blend of bearded collie, border collie and English springer spaniel, this dog has been bred to be a canine genius and is so evolved that it can even speak 15 recognisable words. It could hold its own press conferences and even market its own top-selling books.
Downside: danger of indiscretion and becoming a double agent in return for sausages.

THE LABRADOR
A favourite of British MPs and No1 dog in Britain. Docile, biddable, needs little grooming and would do wonders for the Special Relationship.
Downside: a gun dog (how neocon!) that needs a lot of walking and could run to fat on too many banquet titbits.

THE AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD DOG
A native to America and would be a novel breed for the White House. As a dog with a working past, it could be useful for herding the press corps. It is also loyal and protective.
Downside: its name could be construed as unAmerican.

THE PUGGLE
A cross of the pug and the beagle. It looks like the pug of Hogarth pictures, is flat-coated and much favoured by the rich and famous. It can strut its stuff, so would cope with the cameras and, as it is blessed with the gentle nature of the beagle, would make a perfect presidential companion.
Downside: could demand more attention than strictly needed.

THE RESCUE DOG
Would show that Obama is in touch with the people and that, just as anyone can become President, any canine can become First Dog. Could make rescue dogs fashionable.
Downside: not knowing a dog’s history can mean more work and having to have faith and trust in the future.

Washington D.C. -    Barney,  the President’s beloved Scottish Terrier, bit a reporter on his way to the White House briefing room today.

  Jon Decker, a reporter for Rueters, asked the handler if it was ok to pet Barney and was told yes.  When he did, the dog bit his right index finger and broke the skin.

    “I just wanted to pet barney. My mom has a scottish terrier. I wanted to
pet barney and unfortunately he was not in the mood to be pet,” said Decker afterward.

  A White House physician prescribed antibiotics as a precaution and recommended Decker get a tetanus shot.

There’s no word from the White House explaining Barney’s frame of mind. Perhaps he was not happy with the outcome of the recent Presidential election.

Click on the video below to watch the bite and reporter Jon Decker’s explanation for what happened.