Just returned from the Massachusetts funeral of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, his mother-in-law, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a full briefing on the coastal fire situation Saturday afternoon in Watsonville.

The funeral for the mother of California's First Lady Maria Shriver and the founder of Special Olympics was on Friday in Hyannis, as reported on The Ticket here.

Saturday Schwarzenegger met with state wildfire fighters and (above) Matthew Bettenhausen (left) and Del Walters, director of CAL FIRE. Bettenhausen is acting secretary of the state's Emergency Management Agency.

Schwarzenegger said there are currently 11 major fires burning across the nation's third largest state. Forces have made some progress but worry over impending weather changes in the north. And he told local citizens, "We will do everything in our power in order to save properties, to save lives and to save your memories.”

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Justin Short / Office of the Governor

These are the same lawmakers who pummeled Wall Street executives when they "testified" before Congress, excoriating them for taking bonuses while Americans were losing their jobs and their homes amid the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Now, with 14 million Americans still out of work, Congress is seeking $550 million for eight new aircraft that would increase the fleet the Air Force uses to ferry senators and representatives to war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan as well less dangerous locations like London, Paris and the Galapagos.

No question, congressional travel is on the upswing. Overseas trips by lawmakers has increased almost tenfold since 1995. Last year, members of Congress spent $13 million in travel expenses, not counting airfare. So the Obama administration requested $220 million in its budget to buy four passenger jets for congressional use, including two that are currently being leased by the Air Force.

For some reason, the House Appropriations Committee thought that wasn't enough. So just before lawmakers left for August recess, the House doubled the order to eight aircraft, at a cost of $550 million.

With the measure on its way to the Senate, opposition there is mounting.

"The whole thing kind of makes me sick to my stomach," Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill told the Wall Street Journal. "It is evidence that some of the cynicism about Washington is well placed -- that people get out of touch and they spend money like it's Monopoly money."

Republican John McCain, the maverick Arizona senator who has made a career of fighting pork barrel projects, is also said to be opposing the appropriation. He leaves soon with other senators on a week-long trip to Libya, Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iceland.

The uproar is partly of their own making. In 2007, with Democrats newly in control of both the Senate and the House, Congress passed S. 1, the "Honest Leadership, Open Government Act." Cracking down on lobbyist gifts and tightening ethics procedures, the bill also created an online, searchable public database of lawmakers' travel and personal financial disclosure forms.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo credit: Getty Images

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Just after 3 p.m. today, the Senate confirmed federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the 111th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, making her the third woman and first Latino to sit on the nation's highest court.

Sotomayor watched the debate from her office in New York.

For the last few weeks, ever since her high-profile confirmation hearings in Washington, Sotomayor has been quietly back in New York, visiting her courtroom office, taking clerks to lunch, surrounded by a security detail. TMZ, the Los Angeles-based celebrity gossip website, caught her walking in TriBeCa last week and treated her like, well, a celebrity.

"What do you think of Rosie Perez playing you in a movie?" shouted the website's reporter. The judge -- in black blazer and top, white pants and white sneakers, graduated from the crutches that became part of her uniform after a fall on Capitol Hill -- threw back her head and laughed. Later the reporter got very excited about Sotomayor crossing the street, calling it his video's "Abbey Road" moment."

Meanwhile, back in Washington, real estate agents are speculating -- salivating? -- over prospects that Sotomayor will soon need a place to live there. Georgetown Realtor Gay Pirozzi, herself a former New Yorker, said Sotomayor is arriving "just at right time -- not only for politics but the market is great." Besides, said the Coldwell Banker agent, "everybody wants her in their neighborhood." 

-- Johanna Neuman

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It was another first in presidential history.

When President Obama left the White House on Thursday for Andrews Air Force Base, the Marine One helicopter that lifted off from the South Lawn was piloted by the first female helicopter aircraft commander in Marine One history. Maj. Jennifer Grieves of Glendale, Ariz., flew her first Marine One mission in May 2008, and had flown Obama and then-President George W. Bush.

In honor of Grieves' last day in the rotation, the Marines assigned two other female officers -- Maj. Jennifer L. Marino, of Palisade, Colo., and Sgt. Rachael A. Sherman, of Traverse City, Mich. -- to complete the crew. And that all-female crew was another first.

Marines say Grieves is off to Command and Staff College in Quantico, Va.

When the president boarded Marine One en route to try to salvage Gov. Jon Corzine's reelection bid in New Jersey and to address the NAACP in New York, he stopped to talk to Grieves and shook her hand.

Of course Obama is accustomed to being surrounded by women. At the White House he lives with First Lady Michelle Obama; their daughters, Malia and Sasha; and his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson.

Still, it was a singular moment in girl power when the chopper lifted off.

Perhaps CNN put it best when it called Grieves "the woman that shattered Marine One's glass rotors."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photos: President Obama. Credit: Associated Press.

Maj. Grieves. Credit: Getty Images.

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Well, it didn't take long. And came as no surprise.

Just weeks after moving into the Democratic White House, Bo Obama used the occasion of his official photograph release today to call for universal pet health insurance.

Looking just darling and tilting his head as generations of successful public dogs have endearingly done to capture human hearts, the Portuguese water dog said that a society that could send chimpanzees into space certainly could afford to pay for such essential insurance for their beloved home companions.

Using a smaller version of the Obama Teleprompter, the nation's First Dog said millions of hard-panting canines still live in homes where at a moment's notice their sleep is disturbed by orders to sit and come and shake and roll over.

Their barks frequently go ignored. They are expected to relieve themselves according to a human's walking schedule -- and in front of passing strangers. Some humans don't even pick up after their dogs.

And, worse, when these dogs go to all the effort of retrieving a stick, the stupid human always throws it away again.

Yet in 2009 most dogs have no health coverage. None receive even minimum wage. And they are expected to eat off the floor.

Although he admitted coming from a breeder, Bo said millions of other dogs and annoying cats languish in homeless shelters with minimal chance of ever escaping.

Anticipating predictable Republican complaints, the liberal dog dismissed conservative concerns over such an expansive, expensive new national program adding billions of dollars to the federal deficit for future generations.

Bo said, frankly, there would be no future generations from him, he knew nothing about money and never heard any concern over spending too much from members of his household.

Asked about published reports that Vice President Joe Biden had claimed his dog Champ was smarter than President Obama's, Bo Obama paused. He looked around slowly at the assembled throng of human photographers and reporters eagerly noting his every word and movement on the White House lawn.

Then Bo said simply, "Last time I looked back, it wasn't Champ leading the president of the United States around on a leash."   

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Chuck Kennedy / The White House; RCA dog Nipper

They are called courtesy calls, highly scripted visits by a Supreme Court nominee to the offices of the senators who will vote on his or her nomination. The White House usually schools the nominee to make a good impression but commit no news. The senators, both supporters and potential opponents, try out their lines, testing their political instincts about a nominee's assets or liabilities against the live person.

But the visits are no tea party and have been known to torpedo a nomination.

As Roll Call reminded us this morning, White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, President George W. Bush's pick for the Supreme Court, bombed during her courtesy calls, leaving both Democratic and Republican senators dubious that she had the "intellectual weight or experience to merit a lifetime appointment to the high court." Chief Justice John G. Roberts, on the other hand, was a hit with senators when he made the rounds in 2005 -- particularly with Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Patrick J. Leahy, who threw his weight behind the nomination.

So it was more than empty palliatives today (though you'd be forgiven for reaching that conclusion) when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid welcomed federal appellate court Judge Sonia Sotomayor --  President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court and the first Latina nominated.

After a half-hour meeting, Reid ushered the judge into his anteroom, where two chairs had been set up for the benefit of reporters. Among his talking points: He was "terribly impressed" by her academic background (Princeton summa cum laude, editor of Yale Law Review) and "very impressed" by her judicial experience and her life story, "so compelling that America identifies with the underdog."

When a reporter shouted a question to the judge about how she was feeling today, Sotomayor smiled and said nothing, merely following Reid back into his office. Smart cookie, as any White House worth its political stripes coaches judicial nominees to be silent publicly until after they are confirmed.

The judge has a full schedule today -- meeting with Vermont Sen. Leahy, now chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
appointments with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch and Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl and lunch with her two home-state Democratic senators -- veteran Charles E. Schumer and freshman Kirsten Gillibrand.

But perhaps the most interesting meeting today is between Sotomayor and Republican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Sessions was himself rejected as a judicial candidate during the Reagan administration after reports surfaced that he had called the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People "un-American" and had once told a colleague that they "forced civil rights down the throats of people." But Sessions, perhaps bruised by his own judicial scarring 23 years ago, has called on fellow Republicans to stop calling Sotomayor a racist.

That hasn't stopped former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who's running for president, or conservative icon Rush Limbaugh, who likes to fire up the troops. But it might win her more votes.

 -- Johanna Neuman

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Photo: Susan Walsh / Associated Press

As date nights go, it was a little on the pricey side.

Oh, the dinner for two at Blue Hill in Greenwich Village, which specializes in food grown in the Hudson Valley, was probably something Barack Obama could handle. Hey, even those tickets to the Broadway production of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" at the Belasco Theater on West 44th Street, a play about the sons and daughters of newly-freed slaves, was within means for an author whose books sell in the mega-millions.

But the flight to Manhattan, the security helicopters, the shutting down of northbound lanes on the West Side Highway, well, that was all little too much for Republicans. Never mind the cheering crowds that lined the streets, conservatives noted the contrast between the Obamas' fancy Saturday night and the bankruptcy filing Monday for a company that has had to fire thousands of the nation's autoworkers.

"If President Obama wants to go to the theater, isn’t the presidential box at the Kennedy Center good enough?” asked Gail Gitcho of the Republican National Committee. In a research paper called "Putting on a Show," the RNC called into question the taste of a president who would spend taxpayer money to jet off to Manhattan for an evening while millions of Americans are out of work.

As Tucker Carlson told Fox News, "The Broadway show started late and an entire block was shut down during simply to satisfy the Obama's seemingly insatiable thirst for luxury. Please."

The truth is that the real cost of the trip, the political cost, is something Obama can shoulder because he is a popular president in his first year of office. Next year's date nights might not be as extravagant.

But the one thing that seems really off about the trip is that the president, usually cordial, seemed to blame First Lady Michelle Obama for the episode.

Asked about his Big Apple date, Obama said, "I am taking my wife to New York City because I promised her during the campaign that I would take her to a Broadway show after it was all finished."

So far, the ordeal of the campaign has been used as a reason to get Malia and Sasha a puppy and to take Michelle Obama to see a Broadway play. Can't wait to find out what he promised his mother-in-law.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

Much has been written about how President Obama narrowed his Supreme Court selection from 40 to the final four: federal appeals court judges Diane Wood of Chicago and Sonia Sotomayor of New York, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But NPR's Nina Totenberg provided fresh details this morning about how Sotomayor, on everybody's short list, eluded the New York stakeout of cameras parked in front of her Manhattan condo, and the equally eagle-eyed reporters in Washington camped out on the White House lawn.

Apparently, Sotomayor walked out of her New York condo Thursday morning as if she were heading to work -- turning the corner with a brown bag lunch in her hand. But this time she wasn't going to the courthouse. Instead, Sotomayor stepped into a waiting car. Her best friend had lent the family car to the cause, and offered her husband as a chauffeur. He drove the judge all the way to the White House (think New Jersey turnpike. She arived at 1 p.m. and was quickly "whisked inside with little fanfare and no public notice."

It was a long day. First, Sotomayor met with Cynthia Hogan, legal advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. Then it was Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, White House lawyers and political strategist David Axelrod. Only then did she meet with Obama, for about an hour.

On Friday, Biden called and interviewed her for another two hours.

On Monday night at 8 p.m. Obama called Sotomayor, who was still in her office, to tell her she had won the nomination, the first Latino nominated to the high court. Still in her office, she drafted remarks, e-mailed them to the White House for tweaks, went home, packed and prepared to leave Manhattan.

And how did she elude the stakeout this time?

Same best friend's car, same driver, this time in the dead of night, arriving in Washington at 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday, checking into a tourist hotel and driving into the White House at 7:30 a.m. for the ceremony.

Team Obama is famous for being able to keep a secret. But the Great Sotomayor Head Fake adds new luster to the team's reputation.

It helps that Sotomayor, seen in a photo above with her nephews Conner and Corey at Yankee Stadium, was not yet a nationally famous face. (By the way the White House has a delightful slideshow of family photos on its site.)

In any event, the whole incident kind of makes you wonder why we in the media do these stakeouts anyway.

:-)

-- Johanna Neuman

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Photo credit: Sotomayor family photo provided by the White House

This guy and his wife went out to dinner in Georgetown over the weekend, a date-night experience that included one of the city's poshest, trendiest restaurants (details to come).

Then they came home and strolled around their backyard, just another twosome enjoying each other's company in their first date night since moving into the Big White House.

But Barack and Michelle Obama are no ordinary couple. In fact, some people call them the First Couple. And they're also off-the-charts popular.

So maybe local residents could be forgiven for gathering outside a high-end French restaurant run by chef Michel Richard (Citronelle), which created a special menu for the Obamas. They stood for two hours, behind police tape. We're talking hundreds of people.

Most were orderly. Most seemed only to want to wave at the Obamas as they left the restaurant.

But one woman, according to the White House press pool report,  paced up and down shouting into a bullhorn phrases such as, "This is so great that you are here” and “Create fear and terror.”

No wonder they wanted to go home and take a stroll.

-- Johanna Neuman

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It's been such a confusing week. Fridays are always good times to straighten things out with questions nobody knew needed asking:

President Obama, a pedestrian commuter, flies a giant 747 all the way to Iowa to talk green about windmill power when the nation's most powerful, perpetual collection of windbags is about nine blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue.

Susan Boyle, who has a beautiful voice and what Grandma B used to call "spunk," has never kissed Simon Cowell. And this is somehow bad?

Waterboarding, which used to be great fun behind speedboats, is now considered a torture that cannot be applied to terrorist prisoners but is given during training of U.S. military troops.

So Charles Grodin, almost forgotten for his inability to control a large dog in some movies about the famous music composer Beethoven, suddenly appears on the Hannity show because -- why? Is "Hollywood Squares" on hiatus?

And because Grodin is so personally and strongly opposed to waterboarding, which Hannity considers merely an enhanced interrogation technique, Grodin offers to waterboard Hannity and the host agrees to do it for charity.

What?

Miss USA and Miss America haven't mattered in America or the USA since Bert Parks died and currently compete for cable eyeballs with bass fishing. Now, a woman who wanted to be Miss USA but isn't doesn't want to marry another woman and anyone should care?

Meghan McCain, part-time blogger and full-time future beer heiress, tells ...