Amid America’s economic doldrums and as world events careen out of control, President Obama will not let a crisis deter him from unwinding.  This same President, advising the American people how to deal with the financial crisis, once said, “If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, you might put off a vacation.”  Here are the Top 10 Obama Leisure Activities:

1.  Golf:  A lot of Americans wish they had the time, let alone the money, to hit the golf links twice a month.  The day after the Japan earthquake and tsunami, Obama played his 61st round of golf, fewer than 26 months into his presidency.

2.  Foreign travel:  All modern Presidents have taken foreign trips, but President Obama knows how to combine pleasure with business, often picking hot vacation spots such as this weekend’s trip (with his family) to Rio, where sightseeing will be mixed with meetings.  And Michelle Obama’s extravagant summer trip to Spain with an entourage of friends and security (but not her husband) during the depths of America’s economic woes invited comparisons to Marie Antoinette.

3.  Vacations:  The Obama clan likes to spend time on tony Martha’s Vineyard in August and go to Hawaii for a lengthy family visit around the Christmas holiday.  They’ve taken a long weekend in Chicago.  And a trip out West to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.  And time at a beach in Florida.  Plus several jaunts to New York for high-society events.  In fact, he has taken nearly a dozen vacations since becoming President.

4.  Dining out:  Whether dining high-on-the-hog or slumming it at Ben’s Chili Bowl, this is a President that likes to eat.  After all, his culinary exploits once inspired this headline on a blog following the first family during a Martha’s Vineyard vacation:  “Obamas Depleting U.S. Lobster Supplly.”

5.  Playing basketball:  At times it seems that Obama would rather be an NBA star than President.  He has a regular pickup basketball game with friends, and even played some hoops last summer with NBA stars LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.  But his passion comes with some danger:  Last year an opponent’s elbow cut the first lip, requiring 12 stitches.

6.  White House concerts:  Nothing like inviting famous singers and musicians to your house for a little concert.  The first couple has been serenaded at the White House by the likes of Paul McCartney, Joan Baez, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, and Bob Dylan during performances honoring Motown, Broadway, and “Music that tells the story of America,” including “Songs of the Civil Rights Movement.”

7.  White House theater:  The Obamas have been getting good use of the White House theater in recent months, having guests over for a Super Bowl party, movie screenings, and sporting events.  During a screening of Thurgood, an HBO film about Thurgood Marshall, he shared popcorn with Al Sharpton, and for a Chicago Bulls-Charlotte Bobcats game he invited Illinois and North Carolina lawmakers over for Chicago-style hot dogs and pulled pork, with Dove bars for dessert.

8.  Sporting events:  Obama likes to take in a ball game from time to time.  He often snarls Washington traffic while attending basketball games at the Verizon Center or baseball at Nationals Park.  Once, when attending a Georgetown-Duke basketball game, he was interviewed at courtside and briefly called the game for the TV audience.  “After retirement, I’m coming after your job,” he told CBS announcer Clark Kellogg.

9.  Youth sports:  During a crisis, Obama can act decisively and selflessly.  He stepped in when his daughter’s basketball coach couldn’t make it to a game and coached the team himself, even though his daughter Sasha was on a ski trip to Vail, Colo. , with her mother.

10.  NCAA brackets:  As Japan’s nuclear crisis neared a meltdown and Libyan rebels were being routed, Obama found time to videotape his NCAA basketball tournament picks for ESPN to air later in the week.  To his credit, the President did pause long enough to urge Americans to think of Japan while filling out their basketball brackets.

Unfortunately, for The Politico and Obama, the attempt by Josh Gerstein to defend The Reluctant President’s South American trip falls flat, as he spends quite a bit of time at the beginning explaining why he should not go, which is what people will remember

Some 26 months into Barack Obama’s presidency, Latin America’s moment has finally arrived.

Obama is set to depart Friday night on a five-day trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador — his first journey in the Americas south of Mexico. But with the crises brewing elsewhere, few outside the region may notice.

Foreign travel has been seen as a political liability for Obama; and with this trip, the pattern is likely to continue.

The worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl is unfolding in Japan, the United States and its allies are crafting urgent plans for a Libya no-fly zone operation that could mean air raids on Tripoli within days, and at home, Republicans and Democrats are in a standoff over a budget for the federal government, which administration officials say is being hobbled by a series of stopgap funding measures.

But in Central and South America, folks have waited patiently for more than two years for a prestigious and high-profile visit of the American president, and Obama seems determined not to disappoint them — whatever the other distractions.

I’m thinking that, if Gerstein is attempting to defend Obama, calling all those domestic and world happenings “distractions” might not be the best way to accomplish that. People will wonder if that’s the way Obama feels, and, based on his actions the last two years, and more specifically, the past few weeks, those things might be considered distractions to Obama. Furthermore

Some presidents, such as Richard Nixon, were famous for cramming in all the foreign trips they could when things were not going well at home. Obama seems to make his domestic political situation worse with his trips — not because of the trips themselves but because of their timing.

Nixon comparisons are probably not the greatest, either, even though people know that Nixon accomplished things while on many of those trips. On Obama trips, we get: an iPod to the Queen with Obama’s greatest hits, losing the Olympics for Chicago, and blowing off the King of Norway during his Nobel trip. Then there is….well, has he actually accomplished anything on the world stage, other than pandering to the Muslim world?

Of course, it is important that US Presidents show the flag around the world, make no mistake about that, even as things happen here at home and in other parts of the world. Presidents certainly work just as well from Air Force 1 as at the White House. The difference with Obama is that he rarely seems to be engaged in what is going on in the first place. There’s always some other distraction, party, sporting event, or policy care that makes him appear, and rightly so, divorced from happenings. Then we get

As with other foreign trips Obama has taken recently, the White House is planning to hammer away at the message that his Latin American journey is a kind of trade-mission-on-steroids aimed almost entirely at creating jobs in the U.S. This theme is intended to guard against criticism that Obama is sightseeing overseas or being toasted at state dinners while unemployment at home remains high and many Americans are struggling economically.

Pushing the jobs meme will only play well with his liberal base, many of whom have never worked a day in their lives. He’s basically beat that meme to death, and few will buy it.

Can’t wait for all the pictures of Obama having fun and attending parties to be released.

Neither the ongoing nuclear emergency in Japan nor the conflict in Libya and looming outside military intervention there will prevent President Obama from embarking on a five-day trip to Latin America on Friday.

The three-country visit includes meetings with the leaders of Brazil, Chile and El Salvador, attendance at a business summit in Brasilia, and speeches in Rio de Janeiro and Santiago. Obama will also visit the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio and Mayan ruins in El Salvador.

In contrast to the president’s unchanged schedule, British Prime Minister David Cameron has scratched his diary for Friday and plans a cabinet meeting and statement to the House of Commons. The move follows Thursday’s passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing measures in response to the Libyan crisis including the enforcement of a “no-fly” zone.

A headline in London’s Daily Mail commented on Obama’s decision to go ahead with the trip: “Nuclear crisis in Japan, a civil war in Libya and where is the President? Heading for Rio de Janeiro.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney for several days has fielded reporters’ questions about whether the trip may be called off, given developments in Japan and Libya. He stressed it would go ahead.

“We are leaving on schedule on Friday,” he told a briefing Wednesday.

“It bears repeating that this is a crisis – there is no question about it. And it is a crisis in Japan. It is not a crisis in the United States,” Carney said.

“We are very concerned about our allies and friends, the Japanese.  We are doing everything we can to help and assist them.  We are very concerned about the safety and security of American citizens in Japan, and we are doing everything we can to ensure their safety.  But it is – we have no plans to change the trip.”

A day earlier, Carney said Obama could deal with the crises while traveling.

“He’s the president of the United States,” Carney said. “And there are major issues all the time that a president has to contend with, which is one of the reasons why he has such a substantial support framework around him when he travels.”

Citing pressing developments Obama has called off foreign trips before, but they related to issues at home. He twice canceled scheduled visits to Indonesia and Australia in 2010 – first to make a final push to get the health care reform bill through Congress one year ago, then again three months later, when the White House said he was staying home “to deal with important issues, one of which is the oil spill” in the Gulf of Mexico. (He eventually traveled to Indonesia in November, but has yet to visit Australia.)

Still waiting on the free trade deals

This is Obama’s first trip to Latin America since becoming president, although he did take part in a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009.

Deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said Wednesday that Obama was “hugely popular” in the region.

Rhodes, Carney and other administration officials have stressed the importance of the trip for the U.S. economy and American jobs.

“The president is taking this trip because he is committed to growing the economy,” Carney said Tuesday.

“This trip fundamentally is about the U.S. recovery, U.S. exports, and the critical relationship that Latin America plays in our economic future and jobs here in the United States,” Mike Froman, deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs, told a separate White House briefing on the same day.

Obama himself emphasized the importance of job creation in a USA Todayop-ed about his trip. He noted that a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Chile had seen a 300 percent growth in exports of U.S. goods to that country since 2004, supporting an estimated 70,000 U.S. jobs.

Still, the president is conspicuously not visiting Colombia and Panama, countries with which the U.S. has negotiated FTAs that have yet to be completed.

Proponents like the National Association of Manufacturers say the delay in the U.S.-Colombia FTA – which labor unions oppose – is costing American exports and jobs, pointing to U.S. International Trade Commission estimates that the agreement would result in $1.1 billion in new U.S. exports each year.

Obama in his State of the Union addresses in 2010 and 2011 referred to the importance of the Colombia and Panama agreements for job creation, but Republican lawmakers say the administration has not clearly identified outstanding issues and put forward reasonable ways to resolve them. They are urging movement on the stalled FTAs by July 1.

“With 14 million Americans out of work, passing these trade agreements and having the president sign them is one of the easiest ways to help American-based businesses create good paying, private-sector jobs,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell argued in a Miami Heraldcolumn Thursday.

The U.S. House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade held a hearing Thursday on the U.S.-Colombia FTA, and plans more soon on the Panama agreement and a third pending one, with South Korea.

“Colombia is a key strategic market with exceptional growth potential right in our own hemisphere,” U.S. Grains Council president and CEO Thomas Dorr, told the hearing.

“The United States is already losing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual exports and this is compounded by the loss or non-creation of thousands of U.S. jobs,” he said. “Without removal of these trade constraints, the U.S. coarse grains producer will lose this market.”

During a White House briefing on Obama’s trip on Wednesday Dan Restrepo, senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council, said Obama had made clear the importance of the Colombia and Panama FTAs.

“We are committed to working on outstanding issues with the governments of Panama and Colombia, and hope to do so in a successful fashion that stays true to our interests and values,” he said.

In the earlier briefing, Froman said Obama has directed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and his team to “enhance their engagement with Colombia and Panama to resolve the outstanding issues as quickly as possible this year and to submit it to Congress immediately thereafter, that is showing leadership.”

President Obama met with Bill Clinton on Friday. Clinton agreed to publicly back Obama on the tax/unemployment extension agreement with Republicans. Obama then brought Slick out before a hastily assembled press corps, and then left Clinton alone with them to work his Bubba magic:

In terms of Washington political drama, Friday was an instant classic.

President Obama ushered former President Bill Clinton to the White House briefing room late Friday for an impromptu press session, then abruptly left the wonky and winsome Arkansan at the podium by himself to defend the Obama administration’s tax deal.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour, so I’m going to take off,” Obama said.

Clinton chuckled, joking, “I don’t want to make her mad. Please go,” and then quickly turned back to the microphone and began taking questions from the White House press corps, which had been given no advance notice of the two presidents’ trip to the briefing room.

The press corps will now report back to Obama’s very disenchanted left-wing base and the rest of those who are contributing to Obama’s perpetually foundering poll numbers of how it reminded everybody in the room of a happier, more competent time — and somebody on Team Obama thought this was good idea?

A few minutes in, President Obama excused himself because he had to “get to a Christmas party.” Clinton barely batted an eye while continuing to take questions for another half-hour under the “White House” backdrop, leaving onlookers with a palpable “let the adults take over now, Barry” feeling:

After the 2008 media deification of Barack Obama, that was like watching somebody who was billed as Zeus getting into a fight and responding by hiding behind his dad.

Why would Obama leave Clinton alone with the press corps under these conditions? A bigger mistake hasn’t been made since Eddie Fisher agreed to let Elizabeth Taylor share a makeup trailer with Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra.

I always thought a “Hillary 2012″ challenge was a real possibility — I just didn’t think Obama would help usher it in so agreeably.

JJudge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the evidence of the main witness in the trial of a Guantánamo detainee could not be heard because he was held in a secret CIA prison “under extreme duress”.

As a result, a federal jury cleared the defendant, Ahmed Ghailani, of all but one of 286 charges, including multiple counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

The 36-year-old Tanzanian still faces 20 years to life in prison after his conviction for conspiracy to destroy government property in the bombings of two US embassies in Africa in 1998 that claimed 224 lives.

Officials had hoped for an emphatic conviction to ease opposition to Mr Obama’s plan for moving Guantánamo detainees out of the facility at the US naval base in Cuba. Instead it is now almost certain that Congressional Repub­licans will stop funding to adapt a US prison to house Guantánamo prisoners.

“They couldn’t come close to getting that done when the Democrats were in charge,” said Peter King, a New York Republican who is expected to be the next chairman of the House homeland security committee. “There’s no way they’re going to get it now that Republicans are in charge.”

Mr King said the judge’s verdict was a “wake-up call to the Obama administration” to abandon the goal of putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other suspected September 11 plotters on trial in conventional criminal courts rather than military commissions at Guantánamo.

Peter Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, said: “This case was supposed to be the easy one, and the Obama administration failed – the Gitmo [Guantánamo] cases from here on out will only get more difficult.”

Like Ghailani, the first Guantánamo detainee to be tried on US soil, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including waterboarding, that, it is assumed, would nullify much of the evidence against them.

Mr Obama came to power nearly two years ago promising to close the prison within 12 months, by sending most prisoners home or to third countries and putting dozens on trial. It was a key means of distancing himself from the controversial anti-terrorism regime of George W Bush.

But finding third countries willing to take detainees has been a struggle, and the largest contingent among the 171 remaining detainees is from Yemen, which is too unstable to receive them.

Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said: “I expect we will see the administration retreat but it doesn’t mean they should.”

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden criticized President Barack Obama’s decision in 2009 to release internal memos defending CIA interrogators’ harsh methods. Hayden said Tuesday that Obama’s move, based on the shifting political policies of his administration, now hinders CIA officers who now fear for their careers, according to a San Francisco Examiner report quoting Fox News.

“Every agency officer today will say, ‘I’ve seen this movie. I used to think this was a contract with the American government. I have been taught this is a contract with an administration. And this contract has the half-life of one election cycle in the American political system,’ That is a very bad place for the espionage system to be.”

Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general who was director of the National Security Agency under Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, said interrogation procedures CIA officers used on captured combatants were essential and successful in the war on terror.

“It was effective,” Hayden observed. “It did what we expected it to do.”

The CIA no longer interrogates suspected terrorists in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of the memos. That responsibility now falls to the FBI under the direct supervision of a member of the Obama administration.

After the year the country’s had, it’s apparent that Obama and Biden have only two things left: denial and each other:

“This guy has a backbone like a ramrod,” Biden said while introducing Obama, adding that he has “a brain bigger than his skull and a heart to match both.”

You’ll not find a bigger brain in any of the 58 states. Biden’s mistaking the “TOTUS pole” for a backbone, which is a common mistake in Washington.

That was some seriously shovel-ready Biden BS, but President Obama returned the favor nonetheless:

Obama took the stage to a hardy ovation from the crowd and said, “I’ve had to make a lot of decisions over the last 24 months …The single best decision I have made was selecting Joe Biden as my running mate.”

Sadly, I’m forced to agree.

It was easy to forget that the two were in Delaware campaigning for Harry Reid’s pet, Chris Coons, whose numbers will probably drop now. A campaign visit from President Obama often does to your lead what a visit from Michael Moore does to the contents of your refrigerator…

From Townhall.com:

Keepin’ it real with a national bromance announcement. If THIS is Obama’s single best decision, we can agree the bar is set at a record low.

BTW: I love Obama’s added, “I mean that! It’s true.”

PS: The new bookend is at the end of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axJwfmLAXSg

Obama and Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy) offered dueling weekly addresses. Full text of both at the LA Times (love the shot of Obama with his feet up on the Resolute Desk. He has no respect for history). Links to the video are at each politicians name.

Ryan Leaf, er, Barack Obama

The other day, I was talking about education with some folks in the backyard of an Albuquerque home, and someone asked a question that’s stayed with me. He asked, if we don’t have homes to go to, what good is an education? It was a heartfelt question, one that could be asked by anyone who’s lost a home or a job in this recession.

Because if you’re out of work or facing foreclosure, all that really matters is a new job. All that really matters is a roof over your head. All that really matters is getting back on your feet. That’s why I’m fighting each and every day to jump-start job creation in the private sector; to help our small business owners grow and hire; to rebuild our economy so it lifts up a middle class that’s been battered for so long.

Me me me me me me me. Hey, the Detroit Lions and Oakland Raiders went out and fought every day, too. How’d that work out the past few years? Then more about me me me, we need even more edumacation money (probably for non-existent green jobs), followed by blamestorming

And yet, if Republicans in Congress had their way, we’d have a harder time meeting that goal. We’d have a harder time offering our kids the best education possible. Because they’d have us cut education by 20 percent -– cuts that would reduce financial aid for eight million students; cuts that would leave our great and undervalued community colleges without the resources they need to prepare our graduates for the jobs of the future.

Except, that is a rather murky claim. There is zip, nada, zilch in the GOP’s Pledge. Chump and his advisors arrive at the figure from John Boehner’s call to reduce federal spending to 2008 levels. Even so, how does the Obama proposal help people get jobs now? He doesn’t say. Because he has no clue what he is doing. To continue the football theme, Obama as president is like a Pee Wee league quarterback being drafted to be the Washington Redskins QB. Or Ryan Leaf.

Senator John Barrasso

I’m John Barrasso, United States Senator for Wyoming.

The Code of the West says “when you make a promise, keep it.” In Washington, promises don’t seem to mean much these days.

For almost two years, President Obama and Democrats in Congress have broken their promises on jobs, on spending and on health care.

He goes on in that vein, discussing the Stimulus, unemployment, Recovery Summer, the deficit, massive spending, and Congress fleeing Washington so that Democrats could campaign, without bothering to address the looming tax hikes.

With all due respect, Mr. President, this money isn’t yours. It belongs to the American people.

The Obama tax hikes are yet another job-killing burden that the American people and American employers cannot afford. Raising taxes on anyone in the middle of a recession is the worst thing we can do.

He goes on to discuss the mess created by ObamaCare, then

The President has failed to keep his promises on jobs, on spending and on health care. Frankly, very little trust remains.

The President’s policies are irresponsible, and unsustainable. Worse, many Americans fear the damage done by these policies may also be irreversible.

Wait, did he just call the president irresponsible and a liar? Finally, a Republican with some cajones. Expect Obama to whine about this during all his campaign events over the weekend and during the coming week. And don’t forget the whining the MSM will do, as well.

The US president had originally been due to visit after a trip to India and Indonesia in March, but his stopover was delayed by domestic debate over the landmark health care bill. A rescheduled visit to Australia in June was also called off after Mr Obama decided to remain in America to deal with the fallout from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

On Friday, Mr Obama announced that he would visit Asia in November, but skip the Australian leg of the tour. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, is due to stop off in Australia before the end of the year, but Mr Obama is now unlikely to be seen in Canberra until late 2011.

Earlier this month Jeff Bleich, the US ambassador to Australia, said that he expected Mr Obama to make it to Australia eventually, but John Wanna, politics professor at the Australian National University, said that the political situation in Canberra made a visit from the president increasingly unlikely.

Mr Obama had initially agreed to visit Australia in March, when Kevin Rudd was still prime minister. Since Mr Rudd was deposed, Mr Obama had fewer reasons to make the detour, he said. “He was very close to Kevin Rudd, they spoke often during the global financial crisis and they had a rapport,” Mr Wanna said. “But that doesn’t mean that this is a snub to [new prime minister] Julia Gillard, he probably thinks that it’s better for things to calm down a bit.”

Ms Gillard, who toppled Mr Rudd in a leadership spill in June, was returned as prime minister this month after elections resulted in a hung parliament. However, her party has a razor-thin majority and is facing strong opposition from the rival Liberal-National Coalition, led by Tony Abbott.

Mr Wanna said that Mr Obama had little to gain politically from taking time out of his schedule to visit Australia. “He is not going to win any votes in America by coming here.”

In the first ever U.N.-mandated self-assessment of America’s human rights record, the Obama administration has informed the world body that it remains committed to closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and to “fixing our broken immigration system.”

A report delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva on Friday and released by the State Department on Monday describes the “great strides” the U.S. has made towards ensuring equality of the law for all Americans. The report also acknowledges that work remains to be done.

The report – which now goes to the U.N. for review — was drawn up following a series of consultative sessions between January and April involving federal agencies and civil society organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Human Rights First.

The report’s compilation is part of the “universal periodic review” (UPR) process in which the HRC probes every U.N. member-state’s human rights record once every four years.

The United States’ UPR is set for Nov. 5, when administration representatives will take part in a three-hour “interactive dialogue” with HRC members in Geneva, based on this report as well as others submitted by U.N. experts and civil society groups.

A “troika” of countries, chosen by lot, will then draw up a document of recommendations arising from the dialogue session, for the full HRC to “adopt” on Nov. 9.

The troika overseeing the U.S. UPR comprises France, Japan and Cameroon.

While the first two are free democracies, Cameroon is one of 13 countries on the 47-member HRC that are ranked “not free” by democracy watchdog Freedom House based on its political freedoms and civil liberties. (The other 12 “not free” members are Angola, Bahrain, China, Cuba, Gabon, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia.)

Cameroon is also one of 18 council members from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a bloc which has drawn fire for an agenda at the HRC characterized by a strong anti-Israel bias and attempts to outlaw religious “defamation.”

‘No comparison’

The presence and conduct of countries with widely-criticized human rights records was a key reason cited by the Bush administration for shunning the HRC, but President Obama made engagement with the body a priority. The U.S. was elected onto the council in May 2009.

“Some may say that by participating [in the UPR process] we acknowledge commonality with states that systematically abuse human rights,” the administration said in the report released on Monday. “We do not. There is no comparison between American democracy and repressive regimes.”

“For us, the primary value of this report is not as a diagnosis, but rather as a roadmap for our ongoing work within our democratic system to achieve lasting change,” it said.

The ACLU and another organization involved during the earlier consultations, Human Rights First, both welcomed release of the review on Monday – but with qualifications.

“It is time for the U.S. to match its human rights rhetoric with concrete domestic policies and actions and create a human rights culture and infrastructure that promote American values of equality and justice for all,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program.

The ACLU said the report neglected some areas, including “inhumane prison conditions” and “racial disparities in the death penalty system.”

Tad Stahnke of Human Rights First called the administration’s participation in the UPR process “an important step in rebuilding U.S. human rights leadership.”

But he added that the organization was disappointed that the report did not reflect more serious consideration of concerns raised and recommendations made by civil society groups during the consultations.

“The review featured an unprecedented level of consultation and engagement with civil society across our country, providing an opportunity to reflect on our human rights record,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Monday. “We hope it will serve as an example for other countries to follow.”

‘Quality, affordable health care’

Among issues of note dealt with in the report are the following:

– The report says the government is committed to protecting the rights of members of Muslim, Arab-American and South Asian communities “and to combating discrimination and intolerance against them.” Steps taken include moves to combat racial and ethnic profiling, an Attorney General review of guidance relating to the use of race by law enforcement agencies and efforts to limit country-specific travel bans.

– The report highlights Obama’s health care legislation as a major human rights advance, saying that it “makes great strides toward the goal that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care.”

– In its war against “al-Qaeda and its associated forces,” the U.S. is committed to upholding all applicable domestic and international laws. “We start from the premise that there are no law-free zones, and that everyone is entitled to protection under law.” The report lists three executive orders issued by Obama on taking office relating to detention, interrogation and transfer of detainees, and the intended shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay facility.

– On immigration, the report says the U.S. seeks to build an effective and fair system of enforcement, and last year began a major overhaul of the immigration detention system. It notes ongoing court action contesting the controversial Arizona immigration law. “President Obama remains firmly committed to fixing our broken immigration system, because he recognizes that our ability to innovate, our ties to the world, and our economic prosperity depend on our capacity to welcome and assimilate immigrants.”

– The report notes that the death penalty in 2009 was applied in 52 cases, about half the number of a decade earlier. Also noted is the Supreme Court ruling that offenders with intellectual disabilities or under 18 at the time of the offense may not be executed.