"We as leaders occupy these spaces temporarily and we don't get so deluded that we think the fate of our country doesn't depend on how long we stay in office," Obama said.

Obama spoke at a news conference with South African President Jacob Zuma in the midst of a weeklong tour of the continent that also included stops in Senegal and Tanzania. But many other African nations are embroiled in religious, sectarian and other conflicts.

Obama decided to avoid stopping in his father's home nation of Kenya because of international disputes there. The International Criminal Court is prosecuting Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta for crimes against humanity, including murder, deportation, rape, persecution and inhumane acts allegedly committed by his supporters in the violent aftermath of Kenya's 2007 elections.

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As the New York Times reports, Mrs. Obama was speaking before a group of approximately 200 supporters at a Democratic fundraiser in a private home in northwest Washington when she was interrupted by a protester. But when the woman, later identified as Ellen Sturtz, a member of the LGBT rights group GetEQUAL, shouted for the president to "issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity," the first lady wasn't having it. She reportedly left her place at the lectern and moved toward Sturtz, saying, "One of the things I don’t do well is this." And then, quite well, she said, "Listen to me, or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice." With that, the crowd began shouting for Mrs. Obama to stay put, and Sturtz was escorted out, still yelling and calling herself "a lesbian looking for federal equality before I die."

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The Washington Post reports that Obama went and faced Ellen Sturtz, the heckler, eye-to-eye, and Sturtz later said she was "taken aback" by the confrontation:

“One of the things that I don’t do well is this,” [Obama] said to applause from most of the guests, according to a White House transcript. “Do you understand?”

A pool report from a reporter in the room said Obama “left the lectern and moved over to the protester.” The pool report quoted Obama as saying: “Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.”

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According to NBC12, Herb DeGroft forwarded his colleagues emails featuring images of topless African women and racially loaded references to first lady Michelle Obama. Board members have reported receiving other offensive emails from DeGroft beginning in January 2012.

DeGroft says the emails were meant to be "political" and not racist, and thinks that forwarding offensive emails isn't quite the same thing as originating an offensive email chain, apparently: "None of them I initiated, if you look at them. They were all initiated by somebody else," he told the Daily Press. DeGroft sent the emails in question to Vice Chairman Byron Bailey, who went on to share them with other county staff.

In addition to a 4-to-1 vote by school board members calling on DeGroft to resign, Isle of Wight NAACP Chapter president Dottie Harris and other community members have pressured him to give up his seat and threatened a recall effort against Bailey.

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She thought this drainage ditch was another creek and made a run for it (I put her back on the leash):

One stop came in lovely Newton, Iowa, the childhood home of Charles Murray – I won’t hold that against Newton -- as well as Maytag headquarters. We had Sunset Park to ourselves in a cold rain:

So, at one point I broke down and listened to Rush. You know, even the paranoid Sean Hannity sounds a little jauntier. Rush actually seems depressed. He was inveighing against Michelle Obama comparing herself to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old Chicago girl killed in gang violence in January. Obama’s speech was incredibly moving; NPR played long clips of it and she sounded as though she was fighting tears; listening to her, so was I.

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The first lady elevated the conversation Wednesday, during a rare return to her hometown of Chicago. In a city ravaged by violence, with more than 500 gun-related homicides last year alone, she spoke eloquently -- and apolitically -- transcending the partisan politics that seem to subvert her husband's efforts for reasonable gun control legislation.

But what was most unique was for whom, and to whom, Michelle spoke. Her words gave voice to an oft ignored (but disproportionately affected) victim of America's gun violence: the black mother.

The first lady spoke of Hadiya Pendleton, the slain 15-year-old student, gunned down just blocks from the Obama's Chicago home -- and only days after Pendleton had attended the president's second inauguration. With tears in her eyes, Michelle said, "Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her." The first lady went on to add that Pendleton's family is "just like" her own.

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"I mean, I'm proud of him. He's a stylish, I think, man who is healthy and he's smart and he's passionate and he's inspiring. And who wouldn't fall in love with that, you know? It's OK," she said.

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On Twitter Monday and Tuesday, Breitbart fans attacked my focus on their hero’s bizarre racially driven crusades. They continue to insist that they’re being unfairly tarred with the charge of racism, when they’re the real “post-racialists” who just don’t like Barack Obama because he’s a liberal. I have some advice for right-wingers who don’t want it to seem like their anti-Obama animus is racial: Try treating his daughters with respect.

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Russia Today reported:

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President Obama loves “Where Is the Love?" by the Black Eyed Peas:

"The photographer has her iPod playing the Black Eyed Peas song 'Where Is the Love?' It is a mid-tempo hip-hop lament about the problematic state of the world. As the First Lady and an aide laugh together over some inside joke, the president starts nodding his head to the beat: 'Who picked the music? I love this song.' "

As a freshman state senator, the president lived in such a dump that he had to get a hotel room when the first lady would visit him:

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The first lady says in an interview in the April issue of Vogue magazine that she and the president were straightforward when they said — before moving from Chicago to Washington in 2009 — that their family, including two young daughters, would be their priority.

She said "the stresses and the pressures" of the White House are so real that they prefer to spend free time with their daughters, now 14 and 11.

"Our job is, first and foremost, to make sure our family is whole. You know, we have small kids; they're growing every day. But I think we were both pretty straightforward when we said, 'Our No. 1 priority is making sure that our family is whole,'" Mrs. Obama said in the interview, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press before the magazine hits newsstands on March 26.

She noted that most of the couple's friends are parents, too, and that when she and the president go on vacation, usually with longtime friends or relatives, they are surrounded by children.

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On Monday's radio broadcast, Limbaugh said he sent the widely derided Oscars host an "attaboy note." MacFarlane's response, according to Rush? "You know what? I kind of understand how you conservatives feel about the media now."

Limbaugh was fired up about the Oscars, and saw evidence of a liberal conspiracy to create a totalitarian world, and also a political tug-of-war between Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein.

Speaking of Michelle Obama's appearance via video link to hand out the best picture Oscar with Jack Nicholson, Limbaugh said:

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Still, I don’t entirely blame MacFarlane for his insulting, sexist shtick. It’s a symptom of the people who run the awards ceremony – they still call themselves “The Academy” though the awards now have the folksy name “The Oscars” -- utterly losing their way. The Shatner bit mocked the way the show, sadly, has become all about the host, and how badly he or she bombed. Or maybe didn’t bomb, but didn’t do well enough to come back the next year. And let’s face it: The main thing hosts are judged on is whether they skewer the winners, and the entire process, with exactly the right tone. But no one has decreed exactly how nasty that tone should be: How much are we supposed to hate these people, anyway?

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Of course, it turns out she was. And the current first lady, Michelle Obama, is more popular than Clinton was then. So, what does the future hold for her?

After a winning weekend on Jimmy Fallon's show and the Academy Awards, it's clear she will be in demand.

There’s a tradition at the Oscars of an elder statesman of Hollywood (and they are mostly statesmen) presenting the award for best picture at the end of the perennially overtime award show. Last year it was Tom Cruise, the year before that it was Steven Spielberg (his third appearance in 10 years), and before that people like Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood.

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The show's organizers have in recent years flailed about before our eyes to make the evening's proceedings a less grim broadcast – bringing James Franco and Anne Hathaway in hopes of making it a dewy, youthful affair, then turning around and trotting out Billy Crystal with the promise of the balm of the reassuringly familiar. This year, the spaghetti it threw at the wall of television viewers was Seth MacFarlane, and the pitch was basically, "Let's try making the show saucy and fun -- like the 2012 Golden Globes, but without a British person." And now we know how well that idea works.

Herewith, then, are our most memorable moments of a show that will go down in history as the time the awards gave over its power to Stewie Griffin, and the adversity that followed.

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A totally righteous argument, right? But the petition, which has 716 signatures at the time of this writing, says that this sort of language is "counterproductive to the women's equality the President is ostensibly supporting." It goes on to explain, "Defining women by their relationships to other people is reductive, misogynist, and alienating to women who do not define ourselves exclusively by our relationships to others. Further, by referring to 'our' wives et al, the President appears to be talking to The Men of America about Their Women, rather than talking to men AND women."

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It was in the middle of a class discussion that Bob Grisham told his students: “I don’t believe in queers. I don’t like queers. I don’t hate them as a person, but what they do is wrong and an abomination against God,” the Times Daily reports.

And in what might have been a psychic premonition, or, you know, a fair assumption about what happens after a teacher launches into a homophobic tirade in the classroom, Grisham told his students that they could "get pissed off at me or not. You can go tell the principal, call the superintendent and tell her."

Well, one did just that. A student recorded Grisham's rant, and shared it with school officials.

A written statement from the Lauderdale County High School board stated they were “profoundly disappointed in the actions and statements of Mr. Grisham” and that “the board has taken actions specifically calculated to prevent such actions and statements from being made again.”

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