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By Garance Franke-Ruta
White House aides prepping for Wednesday's annual turkey pardoning released a humorous video preview in advance of the goofy ceremony, which is among the silliest rituals in which the president participates.

Shot from the perspective of the pardoned turkey and featuring a voice-over by White House assistant press secretary Ben LaBolt, the film by White House videographer Arun Chaudhary features background music from the classic Western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" -- with occasional turkey gobble sounds added at key moments.

A new classic -- of a sort.

Just as it is when you finally make it past the velvet rope, only to find that there's another, more exclusive VIP room... so it is with the nation's most coveted invitation, a White House state dinner. A few hundred get to attend, but only a handful get to sit with the president and first lady. At Tuesday's dinner for India, some obvious picks for the prime seats -- the prime minister's daughters and a Nobel laureate at Michelle Obama's table -- but also some surprising ones: Hollywood titan David Geffen, and his boyfriend Jeremy Lingvall at President Obama's table.

PRESIDENT'S TABLE
Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, the wife of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass)
Ambassador to India Tim Roemer
Mary Johnston, Roemer's guest (likely a relative of his wife, Sally Johnston Roemer)
Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Paul Pelosi, her husband
David Geffen, the Hollywood titan
Jeremy Lingvall, Geffen's boyfriend

FIRST LADY'S TABLE
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
Amrit Singh, the prime minister's daughter, an ACLU lawyer in New York
Upinder Singh, another daughter, a professor at University of Delhi
Dr. Amartya Sen, Nobel-prize winning economist, now at Harvard
Emma Rothschild, Dr. Sen's wife, economic historian, now at Harvard
Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State
Alma Powell, his wife
Rep. Howard Berman, (D-Calif.)
Janis Berman, his wife

The White House has released the list of expected attendees at tonight's State Dinner.

Names of note, beyond the heads of state and their top aides and a number of Hollywood actors and actresses, include the movie moguls David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. The list also includes: Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CBS's Katie Couric, SEIU president Andy Stern, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, friend of Oprah Gayle King, agent Ari Emanuel (brother of Rahm), presidential sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, author Deepak Chopra, writer Jhumpa Lahiri, gay rights activist Urvashi Vaid, economist Amartya Sen, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, the New York Times's Thomas Friedman and Jason DeParle and The Post's own Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Raju Narisetti.

The full list:

The President & First Lady Michelle Obama

Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister, India & Ms. Gursharan Kaur

The Honorable (Rep) Gary Ackerman, United States Representative
Mr. Sant Singh Chatwal (Guest)

His Excellency Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Republic of India, Indian Delegation

Mr. Mukesh D Ambani

Mr. Tim Dutta (Spouse of Ms. Pia Awal)

The Honorable (Mr.) David Axelrod, White House Communications
Mrs. Susan Axelrod

Ms. Preeta Bansal, OMB - General Counsel

The Honorable (Ms.) Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council
Mr. Marland E. Buckner

Folio reports: "The Magazine Publishers of America announced today that the U.S. State Department has enlisted the magazine industry to help decorate 17 rooms for the holiday season at the U.S. State Department buildings in Washington, D.C."

Participating titles include Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Mother Earth News, Natural Home, This Old House and Traditional Home.

Of especial note, given the woes of the magazine industry: "The magazines are funding the makeovers themselves."

Arugula.

Updated 4:45 p.m.
CBS has some of the first shots of the place settings and menu for tonight's White House state dinner with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Sun Times's Lynn Sweet has the full menu here.

The Post's Robin Givhan is providing updates on dinner preparations throughout the day here. And the Mrs. O blog notes what Michelle Obama wore Indian American designer Rachel Roy to the dinner preview Tuesday afternoon.

The New York Observer reports: "Documentary filmmaker and longtime Michael Moore collaborator Meghan O'Hara is currently working on a feature-length documentary about George W. Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard."

By Garance Franke-Ruta
Search engine behemoth Google is apologizing for image-search results delivered for first lady Michelle Obama that show the No. 1 image of her online to be a racist caricature.

"We apologize if you've had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results," says a house ad from "the Google team" served up in conjunction with image results for queries on the first lady's name.

"Search results are a reflection of the content on the web. Our search results simply reflect what's out there," Google spokesman Scott Rubin explained. "According to the way our algorithm works, when we try to deliver the most relevant search results based on other pages that link to it and so on, this is what is returned."

He said it was possible that the image ranked so high because people were linking to it to condemn it, but noted that there was no way for the company to know for sure. Page rank is the result of "more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms," according to Google.

"Because the image is offensive to many, we felt it was important to explain to our users why an image like that would appear," Rubin said.

Longtime CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, left, who resigned from the cable network in November after 29 years. (Kathy Willens/Associated Press)

Updated 11:21 a.m.
By Garance Franke-Ruta
Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs is considering a bid for the presidency.

Asked Monday by former senator and current radio host Fred Thompson if he had given any thought to running for president in 2012, Dobbs replied: "Yes, is the answer."

"I'm gonna be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen to 'em in the next few weeks," Dobbs continued in the appearance on "The Fred Thompson Show." "I mean I don't even know what to tell you in terms of where I'm leaning. Because right now I'm fortunate to have a number of just wonderful options."

Also on Monday, Dobbs told Washington-area radio station WTOP (in remarks first noted by Politico): "I don't think I've got the nature for it...But we've got to do something in this country. And I think that being in the public arena means you've got to be part of the solution."

Dobbs made the disclosure in response to one of the radio hosts joking that pundits had been floating "crazy talk" about him running for office in recent days.

"What's so crazy about that?" asked Dobbs.

Dobbs's spokesman, Robert Dillenschneider, said Tuesday that Dobbs has retreated to his Florida vacation and home and, with his wife, will decide among "30 different opportunities" in the next few weeks.

"Since the day he left CNN, his phone has been ringing off the hook," Dillenschneider said. These calls, he said, are not just from business and television executives but "politicians who are both on the right and some in the center, who are independent. Some say he should run for Robert Menendez's seat," representing New Jersey in the Senate, "and that might morph into something larger. It's just incredible what's happened."

Already, there are two Web sites encouraging Dobbs to run for high office, the legacy of speculation over his political future dating to 2007. One site pitching a national draft campaign to encourage Dobbs to run, loudobbs4president.net, was launched in the summer of 2007 and recently updated for the 2012 cycle. The group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) maintains the other "Draft Lou Dobbs for President" site, loudobbsforpresident.org, launched in 2008 and also updated to be geared to a potential 2012 campaign.

Dobbs toyed with the idea of making a presidential bid in 2007, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund reported two years ago. "Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously contemplating a race for the first time, although it's still unlikely," he wrote. Dobbs dismissed the speculation at the time, telling the Journal's Greg Hitt in early 2008, "I haven't got the personality or nature to be a politician."

But, he added, "I cannot say never."

Washington Post staff writer Howard Kurtz contributed to this report.

Semonti Stephens in her wedding lehenga. (Studio 306)

Almost no one gets to wear their wedding dress twice -- except Semonti Stephens, deputy press secretary to Michelle Obama. Stephens, whose parents emigrated from Calcutta to the United States in the late '60s, will wear a traditional lehenga to Tuesday's state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- the same three-piece gown she wore for her May 24 wedding. Lucky, huh? "I'm considered junior staff here," Stephens told us. "It's a honor to be included in such a historical event."

By Jim Davenport
Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford faces ethics charges he broke state laws more than three dozen times by violating rules on airplane travel and campaign money, according to details of the allegations released Monday.

The civil charges, which carry a maximum $74,000 in fines, stem from a three-month investigation by the state ethics commission and could be pivotal in a push by some lawmakers to remove him from office. The state attorney general is deciding whether the governor would face any criminal charges.

Continue reading»

Attorney James Bopp, pictured in 2006. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Updated 5:57 p.m.
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Conservative Indiana Republican James Bopp Jr. on Monday began circulating a draft resolution calling on the Republican National Committee to end funding and endorsements for any candidate who deviates from three or more of its ten planks.

Bop, an attorney, is vice chairman of the RNC; ten other committee members signed onto his call to arms.

"I think we have a very urgent task as Republicans and that is to reclaim our conservative bona fides and supporting liberal Republican party-splitters is very damaging to that task," Bopp said, referring to the saga in the New York 23rd congressional district earlier this month, where the Republican withdrew and endorsed the Democrat in what had been a three-way race also pitting her against a member of the Conservative Party. "So the resolution puts our money where out mouth is and provides standards for financial supporting Republican candidates."

Bopp said he has not talked to party chairman Michael Steele about the resolution, which Bopp said could come up for a vote at the RNC's winter meeting in January in Hawaii. He also said he hadn't checked to see if any candidates currently seeking RNC funds violate more than two of the document's principles.

"All we're requiring is that somebody agree with us most of the time," Bopp said, calling RNC support for former Republican Sens. Chafee (R.I.) and Specter (Pa.) and "the Republican in New York 23" (Dede Scozzafava) "very damaging to the party" because they "ended up either leaving the party or supporting the Democrat."

A spokesperson for the RNC said it was not yet clear that the resolution would be voted on in Hawaii. "The deadline for submitting Resolutions for the RNC Winter Meeting is more than 30 days away. At this point, we do not know what resolutions will be submitted nor what the final language of any resolution ultimately submitted may be," said the RNC's Gail Gitcho.

The "Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" follows:

Our colleagues at Slate have released the latest version of their hit satirical feature, "Barack Obama's Facebook Feed." This edition has updates on health care and Sarah Palin -- as well as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's iTunes playlist.

In case you missed it: former vice president Al Gore was on Saturday Night Live over the weekend in honor of NBC's "Green Week," joining Seth Meyers to promote Gore's new book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. On the show, Gore proposed -- with his usual deadpan -- a series of outlandish schemes to call attention to climate change, such as taping toy guns to trees and planting them in congressmen's yards in the middle of the night or delivering letters, along with a bucket of ice water, from the glaciers.

By Juliet Eilperin
The U.S. will identify a near-term emission reduction target as part of an effort to reach a comprehensive climate agreement in Copenhagen next month, senior administration officials said Monday.

The officials, who briefed a group of reporters on the condition that they would not be identified, said the U.S. delegation would put forward a target as long as other major greenhouse emitters, including major developing nations, did the same.

One official said any specific greenhouse gas cut the U.S. offers would reflect the fact that Congress has yet to finalize climate legislation. The House has passed a bill calling for a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020 and an 80 percent cut by 2050. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has passed legislation with a 20 percent reduction by 2020, but that number is expected to drop as more centrist lawmakers weigh in on the bill.

"There will be a submission that takes cognizance of where we are in the legislative process," the official said.

U.S. special envoy for climate change Todd Stern told The Post in an interview this month that any emission target the administration identified during the United Nations-sponsored talks would be contingent on the adoption of domestic legislation.

President Obama will make a decision "in the coming days" on whether to attend the Copenhagen talks, one of the senior administration officials said. Dozens of other world leaders have pledged to go, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

President Obama poses with students from various schools following his remarks on science, technology, engineering and math education initiatives at the White House. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

By Michael D. Shear
President Obama today announced partnerships with private businesses to increase achievement in math and science, saying the country must do more to compete with the world in those areas.

The new federal campaign will encourage businesses and non profit groups -- including the Discovery Channel, Intel, and Time Warner -- to focus more energy and money to teach kids about math and science.

"The hard truth is that for decades we have been losing ground," Obama told a group in the East Room of the White House Monday, noting that American students are rated 21st in the world in science and 25th in math. "We all believe that we can't allow division and indifference to imperil our position in the world."

Obama's proposal, called "Educate to Innovate," will feature a new two-year focus on math and science by Sesame Street and a national "lab day," sponsored by several national philanthropic groups.

The president also announced a new, annual White House science fair for the winners of national science and math competitions.

"If you win the NCAA championships, you come to the White House," he said. "Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and celebrities as role models."