Blog Posts by Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News

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.

Scott Brown (Alex Brandon/AP)

Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has found a new home in politics: Fox News announced on Wednesday that it's signing him on as a network contributor.

“Sen. Brown’s dedication to out-of-the box thinking on key issues makes him an important voice in the country, and we are looking forward to his contributions across all Fox News platforms," Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming, said in a statement.

Brown recently passed up the opportunity to run in the special election to replace Sen. John Kerry after losing his own bid for re-election to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in November.

Brown positioned himself as an independent-minded Republican in that race in an attempt to win over the state's many independent and Democratic-leaning voters.

“I am looking forward to commenting on the issues of the day and challenging our elected officials to put our country's needs first instead of their own partisan interests," Brown said in a statement regarding his new position at Fox.

President Barack Obama speaks at Linamar Corp. on Wednesday. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

President Barack Obama on Wednesday flew to North Carolina to rally support for his new manufacturing initiatives—the first in a series of planned trips this week to advocate the agenda he outlined on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address.

“Our job as Americans is to restore that basic bargain that says if you work hard, if you’re willing to meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead," Obama told workers at the Linamar Corp. in Asheville, N.C.

"If you work full time, you shouldn't be in poverty," he later added, noting his proposal Tuesday night to increase the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.

Linamar was chosen for Wednesday's trip because as a Canadian manufacturing company employing 160 Americans—and scheduled to increase that number this year—it's an example of the type of "insourcing" the president hopes to expand with his new manufacturing initiatives.

The president on Tuesday night proposed creating three additional U.S. manufacturing institutes this year and called on Congress to fund 15 more manufacturing institutes costing $1 billion.

There are "steps we can take right now to strengthen our recovery but also to build up our middle class," Obama said on Wednesday.

The White House on Wednesday piled on Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator (and Republican savior-designate) who was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters during Wednesday's press briefing aboard Air Force One that other than Rubio's support for immigration reform, the senator's address "could have been delivered by Gov. [Mitt] Romney."

Carney said Rubio's speech, in which he called for an end to tax raises and spending increases, and offered a personal testament to the Republican Party's connection to hard-working, middle-class Americans, seemed to read from the Romney playbook, which "the American people did not support."

Carney said he didn't know whether Obama watched Rubio's address, but noted the president was occupied on Capitol Hill during the time it aired live.

What does the GOP have in common with Charlie Brown?

House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy of California on Wednesday morning likened President Barack Obama's State of the Union address to a Peanuts cartoon, telling the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe": "We're more than willing to work with the president on any issue he wants to work on, but, to be quite frank, we’re kind of tired of being Charlie Brown and having Lucy pull the football out from under us."

One of the biggest debates in Washington is the fight over the budget and the looming threat of sequestration (across-the-board, automatic spending cuts that would go into effect March 1 should another agreement not be reached). Obama and the White House maintain the sequestration was never meant to be put into practice and instead was designed to force Congress to pass a budget. Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, have publicly expressed their dislike for the sequester, especially given that sweeping defense cuts would be made.

But McCarthy on Wednesday admitted that some conservatives are willing to use sequestration as leverage—something the White House has been accusing Republicans of doing.