Obama on his own Addiction, Nixon Library Releases more Tapes Good morning. President Obama has a perfect summer day to hold the Rose Garden ceremony he’s planned for this afternoon to sign the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

The law gives the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new power to regulate tobacco, including the authority to reduce nicotine in tobacco products, ban candy flavorings and block labels such “low tar” and “light.” Tobacco companies also will be required to cover their cartons with large graphic warnings.

President George W. Bush opposed the measure and threatened to veto it, but the legislation has gotten strong support from the current occupant of the White House, who has been very public about his struggles to break a smoking habit.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs pointedly declined to declare Obama free of the grip of the Evil Weed when asked this month. “I think the president would likely tell you, as I think many – anybody would that has smoked or been addicted to smoking, that it is a life–long struggle,” Gibbs told reporters in the White House briefing room.

Details are being worked out as we write, but the White House is adding a morning event on health care to the president’s schedule. Obama wants to spotlight the big weekend deal with drugmakers to reduce seniors’ prescription costs. USA TODAY’s Richard Wolf takes a look at one of the central elements in the president’s plan for overhauling the health care system – a one–stop health insurance bazaar where consumers could shop for the best deal. And in her Faith and Reason blog, the paper’s religion writer, Cathy Grossman, is looking at a health insurance dilemma faced by one Catholic hospital in Boston.

Presidential history buffs alert: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum has announced Nixonmanual plans to release an additional 154 hours of tapes that the nation’s 37th president secretly made of his own meetings and conversations. This marks the fifth release of Nixon tapes, according to Ken Hughes of the presidential recordings program at University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. Hughes says the recordings should be available online almost immediately, but he’ll also be transcribing some of the juicier bits on his wonderfully named blog, Fatal Politics.

The tapes being released tomorrow were made during the first two months of 1973. Our friends at the Miller Center provide some historical context: The current president should be, in the phrase made famous by Nixon, “tanned, rested and ready” after a Father’s Day weekend of fun. On Sunday, Obama hit the links with Vice President Biden. On Saturday, he took daughters Sasha and Malia on an ice cream run.

USA TODAY got the inside, um, scoop on the first family’s visit to The Dairy Godmother, an old–fashioned custard shop in Alexandria, Va., just across the river from the White House. Just so happens that the president’s server was Corey Anklam, the college–age daughter of one of our favorite editors, Fred Anklam.

Corey says she was working her regular afternoon shift as a “scooper” when the boss suddenly handed her a fresh apron and said, “The president is coming.”

When the president and his daughters walked in, “everybody was clapping,” Corey says. “I hear you have some pretty good ice cream,” Corey recalls Obama saying.

She says she served the slurper in chief a small vanilla custard topped with hot fudge and almonds, while Sasha dug into a brownie sundae, and Malia had a small vanilla waffle cone.

Obama put down money for a tip – Corey thinks it was $1 – but took it back after the owner reprimanded him: “We don’t accept tips.”

“We really don’t,” Corey adds.


Source: The Oval