Obama Chairs His First Hearing

On Tuesday morning, Barack Obama , D-Ill., is scheduled to chair a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing where – among other things – senators are set to approve nominations for ambassadors to Finland, Slovenia, Cyprus and Bulgaria… Why him? At first glance, it might look like a reaction to Clinton’s campaign jabs. She’s been hounding him over his failure to hold any hearings of the European Affairs Subcommittee he chairs. Officially, though, it’s because the nominations hearings are grouped by areas of the world, and they’re always run by the panel chairman who deals with the relevant part of the world. In this case, all the nominations Tuesday morning relate to European countries, which are Obama’s specialty, according to Elizabeth Alexander, a spokeswoman for Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.