Blog Posts by Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News

Ray LaHood speaks to reporters Friday. (AP Video)President Barack Obama's administration on Friday brought out Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to strike fear in the American public over the sequester right where it hurts: their impatience with air travel.

Ahead of the sequester—across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect March 1 in the absence of a budget deal—the Federal Aviation Administration is planning to reduce expenditures by $600 million, the FAA and Department of Transportation announced on Friday.

LaHood addressed the press at Friday's White House briefing to detail just how badly the department believes that cut would disrupt Americans' travel plans.

"Travelers should expect delays. Flights to major cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and others could experience delays up to 90 minutes during peak hours, because we have fewer controllers on staff. Delays in these major airports will ripple across the country. ... Once airlines see the potential impact of these furloughs, we expect that they will change their schedules and cancel flights," LaHood said.

First lady Michelle Obama wants you to eat your vegetables—and she has Big Bird to help her spread the message.

Obama invited Sesame Street to the White House, where she and the Muppet recorded two new public service announcements related to her "Let's Move!" healthy eating and exercise initiative for children.

"Hi, we're here in the White House kitchen looking for a healthy snack to eat," Obama says in one ad promoting fruits and vegetables as healthy snacks.

The other commercial advocates exercise and offers viewers a chance to see Big Bird "getting moving" in the East Room.

President Barack Obama on Friday afternoon closed out his post-State of the Union, three-state tour with a unusually personal speech in his hometown of Chicago, Ill. There, he advocated the need for strong families as well as successful and safe communities to help create upward mobility for the nation's most impoverished.

Obama, speaking at Chicago's Hyde Park Academy, called for the promotion of marriage and fatherhood, contrasting the two-parent household with his own upbringing.

"Don't get me wrong," he said. "As the son of a single mom who gave everything she had to raise me with the help of my grandparents, you know, I turned out okay." Obama commended the single mothers in the audience, but added, "At the same time, I wish I had had a father who was around and involved."

Obama's father, a central figure in his memoir "Dreams of My Father," and Obama's mother divorced shortly after Barack Obama's birth.

The Chicago visit completes the president's three-state tour to promote the proposals and themes he laid out in the State of the Union, including: universal pre-school; raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour; and the revitalization of neighborhoods—including 20 to be labeled "Promise Zones"—with the help of federal assistance.

Strong communities, he said, are needed to help promote upward mobility—part of an effort to build "ladders of opportunity."

Obama added, "Government alone can’t solve these problems of violence and poverty ... everybody has to be involved."

Iowa Democrats lost a top-tier potential candidate on Friday when U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's staff confirmed he would not run for U.S. Senate in 2014.

The former Iowa governor's decision, first reported by the Des Moines Register, clears a path for Rep. Bruce Braley in the Democratic race to succeed Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who's retiring.

With Iowa being the first-in-the-nation caucus state and a place that remains tough territory for any Democrat in a statewide race, the party has been eager to find someone like Vilsack, whose appeal has been tested among the state's conservative voters.

President Barack Obama on Friday praised the selflessness of six teachers and staff killed in the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., as he posthumously awarded each victim a 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal.

When Rachel Davino, Anne Marie Murphy, Lauren Rousseau, Victoria Soto, Mary Sherlach and Dawn Hochsprung went to work at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, "they expected a day like any other," Obama said during the medal presentation ceremony in the White House East Room. "They had no idea evil was about to strike."

"They gave their lives to protect the precious children in their care," Obama said.

Twenty children, along with the six adults, were killed at the school—one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

Family members were present on Friday to accept the awards—the nation's second-highest civilian honor—on behalf of their loved ones.

Herman Cain (Rick Diamond/Getty Images)Get ready to hear a lot more from former presidential candidate and "9-9-9" spokesman extraordinaire Herman Cain.

Fox News announced on Friday that it has signed Cain on as a contributor.

"Cain’s impressive resume makes him a valuable addition to the Fox News and Fox Business lineup. As a political expert with business savvy, he brings an important voice to the nation’s debates," Bill Shine, Fox News Channel executive vice president of programming, said in a statement.

Cain, a former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, first ran for president in 2000, ran for U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2004, and then made a national splash in his 2012 campaign for president during which he became famous for relentlessly promoting his "9-9-9" tax plan.

Democrats eager to see consumer champion Elizabeth Warren take Wall Street's biggest banks to task got their wish on Thursday when the newly elected Democratic senator made her debut at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

"What I'd like to know is tell me a little bit about the last few times you've taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to a trial," the Massachusetts lawmaker said to applause, speaking to the federal regulators gathered for a hearing on Wall Street reform.

No witnesses spoke up.

Warren raised her eyebrows. "Anybody?" she asked.

Thomas Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, spoke up: "We've actually had a fair number of consent orders. We do not have to bring people to a trial..."

"I appreciate that you say you don't have to bring them to trial," Warren said. "My question is, when did you bring them to trial?"

"We have not had to do it as a practical matter to achieve our supervisory goals," Curry said.

Warren moved on to the rest of the panel, knowing full well that none of the regulators present have brought a Wall Street bank to trial.

"I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial,'" Warren later said.

President Barack Obama on Thursday promoted his new proposal to guarantee high quality preschool for every 4-year-old in the United States citing a need to bring low-income and minority children up to speed with higher-income children-- a move he says will translate into an economic boost.

"Every dollar we invest in high quality early education can save more than $7 dollars later on," Obama said during a speech at a Community Recreation Center in Decatur, Ga. repeating a line first delivered during his State of the Union address Tuesday night when he unveiled the preschool proposal and other initiatives for the coming year.

The president told his Georgia audience Thursday that children who are not exposed to quality early education aren't prepared for kindergarten. They don't know "their numbers," "shapes," they'll know "fewer vocabulary words" and don't have a "capacity for focus." "They're going to be behind that first day," he said.

Obama argued that investing in early education will result eventually in a stronger workforce and will boost the economy.

"The size of your paycheck, though, shouldn’t determine your child’s future," he said.

The states of Georgia and Oklahoma have instituted universal preschool programs and the president said the same benefits seen in these states will be borne out across the country under his federal proposal.