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Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi is embracing his insider role as a former lobbyist and Republican Party chairman, seeing it as a reassuring presence.

Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, became the first candidate in the Republican field. Mr. Pawlenty announced an exploratory committee through a video on his Facebook page.

The president said his role as commander in chief gave him the constitutional authority to authorize the military to join in coalition strikes against Libyan targets.

President Obama, on a five-day trip to Latin America, talked of Chile’s difficult past and its progress in the aftermath of a dictatorship.

An appeals court ruled that a lawsuit over the reach of government eavesdropping, regarding the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, may go forward.

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Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, admitted Monday that she had failed to pay nearly $290,000 in property taxes on a private charter plane in which she has an ownership stake.

In a conference call with reporters, Ms. McCaskill vowed to sell “the damn plane” even as Republicans launched fresh attacks on her credibility and ethics.

Politico had reported earlier that she had charged taxpayers for the use of the plane for political travel. The latest admission from the senator came after Ms. McCaskill said she reviewed those charges.

“This was a mistake, It should have been reported in Missouri. It will be paid in Missouri today,” Politico reported her saying Monday.

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March 15

Frank Buckles, who died last month at the age of 110, was the last American veteran of World War I.

March 15

Representative Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, said on Tuesday that he will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Senator John Ensign next year.

March 15

A bill sponsored by Representative Carolyn McCarthy will try to close loopholes in the system for background checks before gun sales.

March 15

Political junkies, just like sports junkies, love the little items. Here are a few.

March 15

Rather than emphasize his differences with potential Oval Office rivals, the president is taking every opportunity he can to embrace members of the other party.

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* Who thinks that Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is running for the Senate from Virginia? Apparently Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s Republican attorney general, does. His folks appear to have snatched up http://www.timkaine.com/. Clicking on it takes you to Mr. Cuccinelli’s Web site.

* Wondering how Evan Bayh, the recently retired Democratic senator from Indiana, will fill his time? He announced a while back that he had joined a law firm in Washington. But now he has a more high-profile gig as a regular contributor on Fox News. A news release says Mr. Bayh will offer “commentary and analysis across all Fox News platforms and will participate in programming leading up to the 2012 presidential elections.”

* Having trouble deciding whom to pick for the Final Four? President Obama will be offering his picks for the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament on Tuesday and will unveil them on ESPN on Wednesday, reports Mike Allen of Politico.

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In this age of instant communications, beware: Off-hand remarks about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have claimed the careers of three high-profile people in the last several days.

P. J. Crowley, the top spokesman for the State Department, stepped down over the weekend after tweeting that “We’ve been watching hopeful #tsunami sweep across #MiddleEast. Now seeing a tsunami of a different kind sweep across Japan.”

That comment irked the White House, which saw it as insensitive and inappropriate, especially coming from a government official. A day earlier, Mr. Crowley had called the detention of the WikiLeaks suspect “ridiculous” and “stupid.” He was quickly forced out.

On Monday, Dan Turner, the spokesman for Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, resigned after Politico reported that a daily e-mail by him contained jokes about the disaster.

Politico reported that an e-mail from Mr. Turner last week noted that in 1968 “Otis Redding posthumously received a gold record for his single, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”. (Not a big hit in Japan right now.)

Earlier on Friday, the actor and comedian Gilbert Gottfried was fired as the voice of the Aflac duck — the mascot for the big insurance giant — after making a joke about the tsunami.

“I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, ‘There’ll be another one floating by any minute now,’” he said on Twitter.

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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York joined Representative Carolyn McCarthy on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to show support for a bill she will sponsor to try to close loopholes that permit criminals, drug abusers and the mentally ill to bypass the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and purchase guns.

Among other things, the bill would increase penalties for states that do not properly turn over records of people who are already barred by federal law from owning a gun. The bill would also require federal agencies to certify twice a year to the U.S. Attorney General that they have submitted all relevant records to the background-check data base. Senator Charles E. Schumer recently introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

“The vast majority of Americans agree about what should be done,” said Mr. Bloomberg, who as a co-chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns has worked aggressively with other big city mayors to close loop holes in gun laws and end the sale of illegal guns.

Ms. McCarthy, whose husband was killed and son badly injured in a 1993 shooting on the Long Island Railroad, said that she would continue to press for certain types of gun laws, including one that would ban high-capacity ammunition clips like the one used in the shooting rampage in Arizona earlier this year, even though she conceded she did not have support of a single Republican member of the House. “The American people have to back us up on this one,” she said.

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