Obama visits midwest on bus tour

DECORAH, Iowa — Hitting back against an emboldened GOP, President Barack Obama launched a rare direct attack Monday on the Republican presidential field, criticizing his potential 2012 rivals for their blanket opposition to any deficit-cutting compromise involving new taxes.

“That’s just not common sense,” Obama told the crowd at a town hall-style meeting in Cannon Falls, Minn., as he kicked off a three-day bus tour through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

“You’ve got to be willing to compromise to move the country forward,” the president said later in the day as he delivered the same message at a town hall in Decorah, Iowa.

At the same time Obama was forced to defend his own record as Iowa voters asked him about all the compromises he’s made with the GOP.

“I make no apologies for being reasonable,” Obama declared as he stood in front of a cheery red barn, surrounded by bales of hay.

But his comment underscored that election season is indeed under way. The bus tour, although an official White House event rather than a campaign swing, is taking Obama through three states he won in 2008 but where he now needs to shore up his standing. It’s giving him a chance to return to the grassroots campaigning that helped propel him to the White House, and shed his jacket and tie to mix it up with voters in coffee shops and lunch joints far from the Beltway — as he did in three unscheduled stops Monday, including one in a tree-lined Minnesota town where he was swarmed by enthusiastic kids.

The president is traveling in an imposing new $1.1 million bus, outfitted with tinted windows and flashing lights, that the Secret Service purchased.

Alaska Congressional offices closed over packages

Suspicious packages filled with white powder were sent to the Alaska offices of the state's three-member congressional delegation on Monday, authorities said.


The packages were received in the Fairbanks offices of Sens.Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski and the Anchorage office of Rep. Don Young. Begich is a Democrat, and Murkowski and Young are Republicans.


The federal building in Fairbanks was emptied soon after the package was discovered and two fire trucks and a hazardous materials unit were deployed outside the building, said Assistant Fire Chief Ernie Misewicz told the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.


Peterson Towers in Anchorage was also evacuated and tightly monitored, while hazardous materials workers from the Anchorage Fire Department examined the site, said Anchorage Police Department spokesman Lt. Dave Parker.


One of the aides at Begich's office opened the express mail package, which had an Arizona return address on it, and saw white powder spill out, said Begich's press secretary, Julie Hasquet.


Young's office said in a statement that a white powder was discovered when the package sent to his office was opened by a staffer.


"The FBI has notified Congressman Young's State Director, Chad Padgett, that the substance is in fact a mixture of concrete and is not hazardous," Young's office said.


"It is not clear at this time why the package with the concrete mixture was sent to Congressman Young," it said.


The office will open Tuesday as usual with staff at work.


Matthew Felling, spokesman for Murkowski, said the senator was in Fairbanks but that nobody in her office touched the package, which was taken away by the Federal Protective Service.


"They removed the package before anyone touched it or even thought to open it," Felling said.


Discovery of the packages prompted closure of the entire Fairbanks federal building, where the senators have their Fairbanks offices.


The floor containing Young's Anchorage office, located in an office tower in the downtown district, was evacuated and closed for a few hours while hazardous materials workers from the Anchorage Fire Department examined the site, Parker said.


The floor is now considered safe for the return of workers, Parker said.


Young was not at the Anchorage office when the package was discovered, he said.


Begich was traveling and not in his Fairbanks office at the time either, Hasquet said.

Cell Phones Stay On, but Protesters Disrupt San Francisco Subway

San Francisco- The busy evening commute out of downtown San Francisco gave way Monday to a chaotic cat-and-mouse game between police officers and roving protesters who lashed out at the transit agency for temporarily shutting down underground cellular phone service last week.


BART closed all four downtown San Francisco stations - Civic Center, Powell, Montgomery and Embarcadero - soon after the protest began at 5 p.m. Officers in riot gear blocked entrances as many train riders fumed on the sidewalks and tried to figure out how to get home. All stations were reopened by 7:30 p.m.


Muni Metro stations at the same locations were closed in tandem with the BART stations.


BART's action last Thursday - which ignited an international debate about technology, free speech and public safety - was an effort to diffuse an antipolice demonstration. But it spurred an even larger protest Monday that was organized online by a loose-knit band of computer hackers known as Anonymous.


The protests attracted national attention after BART shut down its underground mobile bay stations, operated by five wireless carriers, last Thursday in hopes of disrupting communication between participants during an earlier protest.


Monday's protesters, many of them wearing the Guy Fawkes masks favored by Anonymous, compared BART to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who cut off cellphone and Internet services in the country when faced with street demonstrations in Cairo.


BART was roundly condemned for last week's cell phone cutoff. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a "shameful attack on free speech." On Monday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said it was looking into the incident.


This time around, BART left mobile services alone, but its station closures left crowds of commuters milling around station entrances waiting for the protest to move on so they could get on their way home. BART carries about 350,000 Bay Area commuters each workday.


Antonio McFarlane, a systems integrator who works in San Francisco, had been waiting for half an hour for BART's Embarcadero station to open up and take him home to Oakland. He said he had some sympathy for both BART and the protesters, but shutting down mobile service in a tech savvy city such as San Francisco was a no-no, he said. "If you mess with technology, it's a big deal.