Program Note: Join us tonight as Anderson reports LIVE from Israel. AC360° tonight at 10pm ET.

Barclay Palmer
AC360° Senior Producer

For the candidate of change, they're all bringing some quick changes. They're all quickly changing Obama's new world order.

Is Israel getting what it wants from its attacks in Gaza...is Hamas getting what it wants? Is the best we can hope for another TEMPORARY end of violence? Egypt keeping its borders closed, preventing humanitarian aide from getting to suffering and dying "fellow Arabs?"

Obama plans a $300 billion tax cut...some say it's to appease critics on the right. Maybe...But Obama has shown a Bill Clinton-like move to the middle in many more ways than this one.

Roland Burris arrives in DC, saying he wants the Senate to abide by the law and seat him. No irony there.

Bill Richardson wanted to be president.. then vice president.. then secretary of state.. then commerce secretary. Now? Forget about it. Is it possible that neither he nor Obama's vetters didn't see this Grand Jury investigation looming? Never mind - Richardson says he has the best job in the world now anyway.

Finally, two months and a day after the election, Minnesota's election board says it will certify Al Franken as senator, with a margin of just 225 votes over in cumbent Norm Coleman. That's one 100th of a percent. How could two such completely different candidates run so closely...Is this not more evidence that we are two countries attached by just a few percentage points of swing voters?

And yes, John Travolta... why is his son's death awakening anger at the too-cool-for-school star... Given the ambiguity of Jett's condition, should it?

What's your take? Please join us for a special 2-hour edition of AC360 at 10pm tonight.

Citizen Jane Politics

You may remember Bill Richardson as one of the many candidates in the Democratic presidential primary field in 2008. But what else do we know about Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Commerce? So glad you asked.

Richardson has gobs of experience in public life, including as an official and unofficial diplomat, but curiously little experience in private industry for someone whose job it will be to create jobs in the private sector. With that said, here’s the scoop on Richardson:

• He’s the highest profile Hispanic politician in the U.S.. His mother was Mexican and he grew up in Mexico City until high school, when he moved to Massachusetts. Richardson eventually married his high school sweetheart, Barbara.
• He went to Tufts for undergrad and graduate school in international affairs, and was a minor-league baseball player.
• After working on Capitol Hill and running unsuccessfully for Congress in 1980, Richardson won a House seat and represented New Mexico in Congress from 1982 to 1994.
• He joined the Clinton Administration, first as U.N. Ambassador and then as Secretary of Energy. As Secretary, he was criticized for his response to the Wen Ho Lee espionage scandal.  At a hearing about the scandal, Sen. Robert Byrd said to Richardson, “I have to say, I am not calling for your resignation at this moment, but you have shown a supreme, a supreme contempt of the committees of this Congress…you have squandered your treasure, and I am sorry.” Ouch.

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Barack Obama has picked Bill Richardson to be the secretary of commerce.

Ken McLaughlin
San Jose Mercury News

In a move bound to create political tension between Latinos and Asian-Americans, a group of Chinese-American activists in Silicon Valley has launched a nationwide grass-roots movement to fight President-elect Barack Obama's nomination today of Bill Richardson as commerce secretary.

The group is upset at the New Mexico governor for his handling of the nearly decade-old case of Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. officials once suspected Lee of giving nuclear secrets to China when Richardson was President Clinton's energy secretary.

The Chinese-Americans say they realize that challenging the nomination of Richardson, 61, the nation's most high-profile Hispanic politician, will ruffle the Latino community, many of whose leaders felt he should have been named secretary of state instead of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But the Chinese-American group insists that Richardson's refusal to acknowledge making serious errors in the case makes it a moral imperative to oppose his nomination to Obama's Cabinet. They say their criticism of Richardson has nothing to do with him being Latino but everything to do with his lack of judgment in the case.

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