While I have many problems with Obama's leadership on certain issues, there is one area where I won't fault him a bit: He's doing a wonderful job as a role model to kids everywhere.

The President of the United States has a lot in common with Philadelphia schoolchildren, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a classroom full of them.

"He didn't know his dad," Sebelius, former governor of Kansas, said of President Obama. "He moved a lot. But he knew how important school was."

Sebelius, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Phila.) and Mayor Nutter watched the president's address to schoolchildren this afternoon at Thurgood Marshall Elementary, a K-8 school in Olney.

Sitting in a classroom with all the dignitaries was Teasia Squire, 12, a 7th grader. She sat up straight and never took her eyes off the big screen that projected the president's image into the room.

She was wowed by the speech, Teasia said.

"It was a wake up call," she said. "It was really good."

Her take away?

"We need to be in school, and we need to be our best," Teasia said.

Her social studies teacher, Crystal Gary-Nelson, was inspired by the message.

"I wrote down key quotes, and I'm going to post them throughout the year," Gary-Nelson said. "We're going to discuss this, and they'll have to take a pledge - 'This is what I pledge to do to help my nation.'"

I think this is hysterical. I mean, progressive Pennsylvania Democrats were pretty pissed off when the Beltway pols made the deal that put the anti-choice, radical centrist Bob Casey in the Senate, and over Ed Rendell promising Specter he wouldn't face a Democratic primary challenge. These backroom deals are how a state with a large liberal voting bloc keeps ending up with conservative representation:

Senior Senate Democrats are objecting to the deal Majority Leader Harry Reid made with Sen. Arlen Specter, saying they will vote against letting the former Republican shoot to the top of powerful committees after he switches parties.

Several Democrats are furious with Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep his seniority, accrued over more than 28 years as a GOP senator. That agreement would allow Specter to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels — including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees.

“I won’t be happy if I don’t get to chair something because of Arlen Specter,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who sits on the Appropriations Committee with Specter and is fifth in seniority among Democrats, behind Chairman Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) and Sens. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Tom Harkin (Iowa). “I’m happy with the Democratic order, but I don’t want to be displaced because of Arlen Specter,” she said.

Specter’s first full day in Washington after turning the Capitol upside down with his decision to switch parties suggested a lonely future awaits in the upper chamber.

While he received a formal welcome Wednesday to the Democratic Party at the White House from President Obama and Vice President Biden, senior Senate Democrats exchanged phone calls to voice their objections to Reid’s gambit and one lawmaker said Specter should be happy with a committee seat at the “end of the dais.” Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and two other members of the Senate Republican leadership asked Specter to refund campaign donations.

One senior Democratic lawmaker told The Hill that the Democratic Conference will vote against giving the longtime Pennsylvania Republican seniority over lawmakers like Harkin, Mikulski and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) when they hold their organizational meeting after the 2010 election.

Under his deal with Reid, Specter would jump ahead of all but a few Democrats when it comes time to dole out committee chairmanships and assignments.

“That’s his deal and not the caucus’s,” the senior lawmaker said of Reid’s agreement with Specter.

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During the hearing held yesterday by the Senate Banking Committee into government assistance for the automotive industry Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) commented on the "scapegoating of the men and women of organized labor" in the auto industry. He also called the false claim about autoworkers making $70/hr a deliberate lie being perpetrated on the American people.

He said:

CASEY: I have to say also, with regard to the labor concessions -- Mr. [Ron] Gettelfinger [UAW president], I wanted to review some of those. Because I am stunned by the kind of -- when you hear the talking heads on television and when you read what some people say in this town and across the country about the mythology that's out there about how we're -- how we got to this situation. And, frankly, the scapegoating of the men and women of organized labor, and in particular, autoworkers.

Point number one: In 2005, cuts in wages for active workers and health-care benefits for retirees -- point number one. I'm reading from your testimony. Cuts for new workers, bringing the wage level down to 14 bucks an hour. How many industries are doing that? Reducing the company's liability for retiree health care by 50 percent. And I realize these have been in the record before, but it is very important.

And wages and benefits. You said yourself that they're about 10 percent -- 10 percent of the budget? You would think listening to some of the people talk out there, some of the so-called experts, that wages and benefits were 70 percent of the cost. So there's a lot of mythology, a lot of myth generally that has been put on the record.

In 20-- since 2003, downsizing by the companies has reduced their workforce by 150,000 people. That doesn't get said very often. The labor-cost gap with foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated. OK? So, it's -- I think it's important to put this information on the record for this hearing. And then we've heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour. It's a total lie, and some people have perpetrated that deliberately in a calculated way to mislead the American people about what we're doing here. It's a lie, and they know it's a lie.

Senator Bob Casey came out swinging Tuesday night and landed a few direct hits on the jaws of the "Bush-McCain Republicans."

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"John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 95% of the time. That's not a maverick. That's a sidekick."

"The Bush-McCain Republicans inherited the strongest economy in history and drove it into a ditch. They cut taxes on the wealthiest of us, and passed the pain to the least of us.  They ran up the debt gave huge subsidies to oil companies and now they're asking for four more years? How bout four more months."

There's something about the camera zoom and the way he says "that's a sidekick" that just cracks me up.

Devilstower at dKos has a great graphic.