Obama's Cabinet Slowly Takes Shape

President Barack Obama will get one more of his Cabinet nominees on the job officially today, as the Senate is expected to confirm Timothy Geithner as Secretary of Treasury.

• Attorney General - there will be more hearings this week with Eric Holder, but he still seems likely to be confirmed.
• Health and Humans Services - I'm not sure what is up with Tom Daschle's nomination, which was the very first to get a hearing over two weeks ago.  It has sort of disappeared and I wonder if there is something wrong here.
• Labor - The same goes for the nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis.  She gave a lot of non-answers at her nomination hearing and we haven't heard anything since.  Oddly enough, both the Daschle and Solis nominations are in the same committee.
• Commerce - As of this writing, President Obama has not yet nominated someone to run the Commerce Department.  His first choice, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson bowed out back on January 4.  I know Obama has been busy, but it would seem like they could find someone for that job in three weeks.
• Also up in the air is a deputy defense secretary position, because William Lynn was the top lobbyist for Raytheon, a major defense contractor. You may remember that Mr. Obama laid down new ethics and lobbying rules about who could serve in his administration - and lobbyists who worked on subject "A" can't serve Obama and work on subject "A." So now the Obama White House wants to get a waiver for Lynn.  That isn't sitting right with some Democrats in the Senate right now. As for those other four nominees, Holder will get through, but the others remain in a bit of Cabinet Limbo.   President Barack Obama will get one more of his Cabinet nominees on the job officially today, as the Senate is expected to confirm Timothy Geithner as Secretary of Treasury. Geithner, you may remember, got into trouble because of some tax mistakes that he says were 'unintentional' when it came to ...