From NBC's Harry Enten
As we approach President Obama's official 100th day in office, his approval rating in the Gallup poll is average compared with past American presidents -- or is it?

Going back to Eisenhower, Obama's 65% approval rating in the most recent daily Gallup poll is equal to the average Gallup approval for the 10 preceding presidents. Kennedy and Johnson had approval ratings in the low 80s at their 100-day mark. President Ford, in the wake of Watergate and the pardon of President Nixon, had the lowest approval rating at 48%.

But when we look only at presidents in the past 40 years, Obama is near the top. His approval is 7-10 points higher than the approvals of the last three presidents. Since Nixon, in fact, only Reagan's 68% is higher than Obama's current approval rating currently possessed by Obama.

President Obama today talks about rising tuition costs. He also "faces a dilemma as he's expected to issue a proclamation on the 94th anniversary of the start of what most scholars regard as the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks."
 
"Legislation to recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide has quickly passed the 100 co-sponsor mark as Armenians mark Genocide Remembrance Day on Friday," The Hill reports. "But it remained to be seen how President Obama would mark the day after a campaign promise that he would recognize the genocide, yet didn't use the word in reference to the 'tragic history' on his recent trip to Turkey."

The New York Times on Obama's meeting yesterday with credit card companies: "Seizing on the growing unpopularity of credit card companies, President Obama on Thursday threw his support behind legislation moving swiftly through Congress that would restrict the ability of banks to impose higher fees and interest rates on consumers."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been a target for Republicans after a Homeland Security "a recent intelligence analysis from Napolitano's agency saying veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan could be susceptible to right-wing recruiters or commit lone acts of violence." Napolitano has "defended the assessment while acknowledging that some of it should have been rewritten." But that hasn't stopped Republicans, particularly conservatives in the House from lashing out.
 
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH): "Secretary Napolitano has an awful lot of explaining to do," Boehner said, charging that the report pertains to "about two-thirds of Americans," who "go to church" and more. "This is -- this is bizarre."
 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): "Has this Homeland Security secretary gone absolutely stark raving mad? She needs to come before Congress. She needs to answer a few questions."
 
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX): "I think the appropriate thing for her to do would be to step down."
 
Rep. John Carter (R-TX): "Janet Napolitano should resign or be fired."

From NBC's Les Kretman
The White House announced that President Obama will hold a primetime news conference at 8:00 pm ET on Wednesday -- his 100th day as president.

The Washington Post on the debate over the interrogation memos: "The legacy of George W. Bush continued to dog President Obama and his administration yesterday, as Congress divided over creating a panel to investigate the harsh interrogation techniques employed under Bush's authorization and the White House tried to contain the controversy over the president's decision to release Justice Department memos justifying and outlining those procedures."

Video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/vp/30365151#30365151" target="_blank">Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., joins the Morning Joe gang to discuss the impact of the torture debate on both the Bush and Obama administrations.

"Obama apparently thought he could avoid what is now playing out. In the weeks when he was weighing the release of the memos, a vigorous debate took place within his administration. There was, according to a senior official, considerable support among Obama's advisers for the creation of a 9/11 Commission-style investigation as an alternative to releasing the documents. But the president quashed the concept."

A New York Times news analysis asks: Did torture help stop terrorist plots, or not? "Mr. Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack, critics may blame his decision to rein in C.I.A. interrogators. But if a strong case emerges that the Bush administration authorized torture and got nothing but prisoners' desperate fabrications in return, that will tarnish what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have claimed as their greatest achievement: preventing new attacks after Sept. 11, 2001."

The story also contains this nugget: "Within the agency, the necessity, effectiveness and legality of the interrogation methods have been repeatedly subject to review. The agency's inspector general, John L. Helgerson, studied the program in 2004 and raised serious questions. According to former intelligence officials, that led to separate reviews by an internal panel headed by Henry A. Crumpton, a veteran counterterrorism officer, and by two outsiders, Gardner Peckham, who had served as national security adviser to Newt Gingrich, and John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary. Their conclusions remain classified, but that could change now that the intelligence agency's techniques have been made public."

The Wall Street Journal: "Experts said the path to prosecution is littered with potential legal problems. There is international precedent for prosecuting officials accused of enabling war crimes. But the two main statutes that could form the basis of a U.S. prosecution have shortcomings for prosecutors. The antitorture statute sets a relatively high standard for prosecutors to meet, particularly when it comes to proving intent. Top officials could argue they relied on the legal memos that authorized the tactics and outlined how specific techniques in question wouldn't cause severe pain and suffering."

In other news… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday that "Pakistan's fragile government is facing an 'existential threat' from Islamic militants who are now operating within a few hours of the capital," the Los Angeles Times says.

Indeed, here's the front-page article from the New York Times: "Pushing deeper into Pakistan, Taliban militants have established effective control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, officials and residents said Wednesday. The fall of the district, Buner, did not mean that the Taliban could imminently threaten Islamabad. But it was another indication of the gathering strength of the insurgency and it raised new alarm about the ability of the government to fend off an unrelenting Taliban advance toward the heart of Pakistan."

"Top US officials are increasingly concerned about Pakistan's ability to confront the Taliban, who appear emboldened by the government's decision to cede a large part of its territory to the armed Islamic militants," the Boston Globe adds in its top story.

Also in her testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday, Secretary Clinton showed the brutal toughness that made her a good debater on the campaign trail, dismissing questions, answering quickly and briefly when she disagreed – even cutting off a Republican questioner when asked about Dick Cheney. "Hillary Clinton mocked Dick Cheney at a Capitol Hill review of her first three months as Secretary of State," the New York Daily News writes. "'It won't surprise you that I don't consider him a particularly reliable source,' Clinton said, dismissing the former Vice President's claim that classified documents prove that harsh interrogations of terror suspects yielded vital intelligence.'"

The New York Times is chock-full of pieces that advance the interrogation story. From the front page: "In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned. This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved -- not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees -- investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate." 

Inside, the Times writes about the White House backtracking on possibly prosecuting the former Bush administration officials who authored the interrogation memos. "The comments knocked the ordinarily smooth White House press operation back on its heels. Mr. Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, spent much of his daily briefing on Tuesday being peppered with questions about precisely what Mr. Obama had meant, declaring at one point, 'To clear up any confusion on anything that might have been said, I would point you to what the president said.'"

"The White House's shifting comments in recent days provide a glimpse into its struggle to deal with one of the thorniest issues Mr. Obama has faced since taking office. That issue has turned all the more prickly for him since his decision to release previously secret memorandums detailing the harsh tactics used by the C.I.A. under President George W. Bush -- memos revealing that, for instance, two captured operatives of Al Qaeda were subjected a total of 266 times to a form of near drowning known as waterboarding." 

And per a third NYT story: "President Obama's national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists. 'High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country,' Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday."   

Last night, Blair released the following statement: "The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

The AP has more on the White House's reversal on possibly prosecuting the former Bush administration officials: "In a flash, the story was not Obama's decision, but whether he had changed his position. The White House said no, but struggled to explain why not. So what happened?  Outside forces, some muddled communication within a tight-ship White House, and a president determined to try to get the debate back on his terms."

More: "White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said over the weekend the administration did not support prosecutions for "those who devised policy." Aides later said he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them." 

Politico: "The Pentagon's senior military leaders are worried that the security situation in Afghanistan is stalemated or deteriorating, and now are preparing a far-reaching plan that would prepare the U.S. military for a war that could last three to five more years, officials said."

According to the AP, "President Barack Obama travels to Iowa today with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The president and the former Iowa governor will visit a former Maytag plant that now houses a manufacturing facility that produces towers for wind energy production."

The Des Moines Register adds,  "Heather Zichal, a top aide on Obama's energy team, said the president would urge Congress to pass a bill that commits $15 billion annually for 10 years to the renewable-energy industry. 'Go back to this plant in 10 years and, once we get this comprehensive energy and climate legislation through, they will see a dramatic rise in the number of employees,' said Zichal, deputy assistant to the president in the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. 'We're not suggesting we would completely fill this hole, but we're making dramatic improvements and steps in the Obama administration to get there.'"

"The money that Obama is seeking in energy legislation would provide longer-term support for clean-energy jobs than the $500 million contained in the federal economic stimulus package, White House officials said." 

Another nugget in the story: "The Des Moines Register's most recent Iowa Poll, taken three weeks ago, showed 64 percent of Iowans approved of the job the new president was doing, down from 68 percent in January."

As reporters try to assess Obama's first 100 days, Norm Ornstein reminds us to not forget the next 100. "A presidency is four or eight years, either a marathon or a triathlon. Measuring progress after the first 100 yards can be very misleading," he writes in Roll Call. He does, however, have some good questions to ask when assessing those first 100.

The AP checks in on Hillary Clinton's early tenure as Secretary of State: "When President Barack Obama chose Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his secretary of state, skeptics foresaw trouble: a clash of ego and ambition, a conflict of policy priorities between former campaign rivals. It hasn't worked out that way. He has taken the lead on foreign policy and she has dutifully followed. Rather than light her own torch, she has chosen to be a team player, deferring to Obama in public while keeping her advice strictly private. The cohesion suggests the two share a common view of how best to put foreign policy tools to work. Of course it's still early. The toughest choices -- and gravest crises -- in foreign affairs likely lie ahead."

From NBC's Athena Jones

WASHINGTON -- President Obama today signed national service legislation he said represented the boldest expansion in opportunities to serve the country since the creation of AmeriCorps.

The president said the bill, called the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, was an opportunity to harness patriotism and "connect deeds to needs" to help people serve their communities. It will triple the size of AmeriCorps to 250,000 members from 75,000 members and help fund successful non-profit service initiatives.

Sen. Kennedy, who is suffering from brain cancer, was on hand for the bill signing, and so was Former President Clinton, the creator of AmeriCorps. In his brief introduction of the president, Kennedy compared the work Obama was doing to what his brother John F. Kennedy had accomplished by establishing the Peace Corps.

"Today another young president has challenged another generation to give back to this nation," Kennedy said. "Last spring at Wesleyan University, candidate Barack Obama summoned our nation to a new era of service. He said 'I believe with all my heart that this generation is ready and eager and up to the challenge.' Mr. President, I couldn't agree more."

Obama has often said government cannot be the solution to all of the nation's problems and made a call to service during the campaign and on Martin Luther King Day, just before the Inauguration. He has said service was a way to help young Americans not only develop as citizens but help pay for college and the bill he signed today links the AmeriCorps education award to the maximum Pell Grant level -- about $5,300 -- to help pay for higher education.

Obama called for bipartisan passage of the bill in his February speech before a joint session of Congress.

"I've seen a rising generation of young people work and volunteer and turn out in record numbers," the president said. "They're a generation that came of age amidst the horrors of 9/11 and Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economic crisis without precedent. And yet, despite all this -- or more likely because of it -- they've become a generation of activists possessed with that most American of ideas, that people who love their country can change it."

He ticked off a series of statistics he said illustrated Americans' desire to serve, saying the Peace Corps had received three applications for every position available last year, 35,000 young people applied for 4,000 spots for Teach for America and that AmeriCorps had seen a 400% increase in applications in the past four months.

In an effort to further encourage a spirit of service, Obama proclaimed April 19th to 25th, 2009 as National Volunteer Week and called upon all Americans to volunteer.

"A week from tomorrow marks the 100th day of my administration," he said. "In those next eight days, I ask every American to make an enduring commitment to serving your community and your country in whatever way you can. Visit whitehouse.gov to share your stories of service and success."

The setting for the event was the SEED School, a local boarding school that offers a service-learning program designed to prepare students to be active citizens.

Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and Caroline Kennedy joined the president for the signing, along with several members of Congress, including Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, Gen. Colin Powell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Republican Sens. Michael Enzi of Wyoming and Orrin Hatch (UT), a co-sponsor of the bill.

"It's as simple as that," Obama said of service near the close of his remarks. "All that's required on your part is a willingness to make a difference. And that is, after all, the beauty of service. Anybody can do it. You don't need to be a community organizer, or a senator, or a Kennedy or even a President to bring change to people's lives."

After the event, the president and first lady, the Bidens and President Clinton headed to a garden in northeast Washington to plant trees. Upon arrival, Obama joked about not having boots before picking up a pick axe to clear away the earth, helping several students plant a tree and then posing for pictures.

The New York Times: "Pressure mounted on President Obama on Monday for more thorough investigation into harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration, even as he tried to reassure the Central Intelligence Agency that it would not be blamed for following legal advice… And while Mr. Obama vowed not to prosecute C.I.A. officers for acting on legal advice, on Monday aides did not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques."

More: "Some Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, accused the administration of endangering the country by disclosing national secrets. Mr. Cheney went on the Fox News Channel to announce that he had asked the C.I.A. to declassify reports documenting the intelligence gained from the interrogations. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director, has also condemned the release of the memorandums and said the harsh questioning had value."

Obama tried to reassure CIA staff yesterday that the agency has his full support, The Hill writes. "Now, in that context I know that the last few days have been difficult," Obama acknowledged. "Obama said that he had some conversations before his publicized remarks with 'senior folks here at Langley in which I think people have expressed understandable anxiety and concern.'"

"Top White House officials described the decision to release the torture memos Thursday as among the toughest of Obama's young presidency," Politico says. "There was a vigorous debate internally about which documents to release and how much detail to redact. In the end, Obama himself was described as carefully editing his final statement to make sure he hit just the right note."

"Republicans are hoping they have finally found the secret to taking on President Barack Obama -- by portraying him as overly apologetic about U.S. misdeeds and naive about engaging unfriendly regimes abroad," Politico writes. "But tagging Obama as a 'Jimmy Carter Democrat' on foreign affairs and national security may prove a difficult critique to make stick -- at least for the moment." 
 
But you have to ask: Isn't that a tough sell because: (1) Obama has a pretty centrist national security team that has been praised by Republicans and very likely some members would have been in a McCain cabinet; (2) his Afghanistan approach in particular has also been praised by Republicans and isn't seen as dovish; (3) his predator drone missions in Northwest Pakistan certainly couldn't be described as "Carter-like"; and (4) his ordering of military force resulted in the killing of the three pirates and the saving of the Maersk Alabama captain?

From NBC's Andrea Mitchell and John Holland
On a conference call this morning with reporters to discuss Iran and the U.N. Human Rights conference, Canada's conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper vigorously defended President Obama's handling of Hugo Chavez at this weekend's summit.

In response to a question about the criticism of Obama by some conservative politicians in the United States, Harper said that he is a conservative, but thinks that Obama's handling of Venezuela was effective at advancing America's values and interests.

"Let me be a bit of a conservative defender of the president in this regard," Harper said. "I was present obviously at all the meetings -- not the meeting between President Obama and the South American leaders, obviously wasn't at that. But I was present at the summit meeting, all of the plenary sessions."

"I thought President Obama did an excellent job of expressing the values, and priorities of the U.S. of America," he added. "I thought that he allowed ... a dialogue to take place in a good spirit to animate the room -- which I thought made the meetings productive. I think [it] made the U.S., took the U.S. to a higher plane than the Venezuelas of the world, and I think was very effective at moving the vast majorities of countries, reaffirming a very centrist position and very progressive position on the things that concern us: democracy, human rights, open markets, trade."

Harper concluded, "I know he got some criticism at home. But, you know, the U.S. is bigger than Venezuela in the end. The U.S. is the U.S., and I thought President Obama led in a way that was very effective at that conference."

From NBC's Ken Strickland
When President Obama meets with his cabinet later this morning, the cabinet still has one key vacancy: Health and Human Services secretary. 

Kathleen Sebelius is the nominee for the post, but she has not been confirmed by the Senate.

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on her nomination tomorrow, but it's unclear when she'll get a final vote on the floor.

From NBC's Athena Jones

PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD, April 18 – The White House wants you to know that sometimes a handshake is just a handshake and a smile is just a smile.

On day two of the Summit of the Americas, U.S. relations with just two of the more than three dozen countries present – Cuba and Venezuela – dominated the headlines, overshadowing the Obama administration's message to the region about a wide range of issues from economic cooperation, to clean energy to fighting poverty and drug trafficking.

Despite the measures Obama announced last week -- including lifting some restrictions on travel to Cuba and on remittances to family members in Cuba -- the hemisphere is all but united in its desire to see the United States do more to normalize relations with Cuba and leaders here repeatedly made that clear in speeches last night and in discussions today.

But it wasn't the Castros – who were not invited to the meeting here in this island nation – but Venezuela's strongman Pres. Hugo Chavez, who repeatedly thrust himself into the spotlight.

Before the summit's opening session on Friday, Pres. Obama greeted Chavez with a handshake and a smile, a moment that was captured on film. The Venezuelan government quickly released the photos showing Obama wearing the wide grin he is known for and congenially clasping the hand of one of the hemisphere's staunchest critics of U.S. policy.

Then on Saturday, Chavez used Obama's morning meeting with South American leaders to present the American president with a book – "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Eduardo Galeano – a tome about the economic exploitation of the region by Europe and the U.S. Obama shook Chavez's hand upon receiving the gift, but this time appeared serious and unsmiling.

The White House seemed concerned about all the attention the Venezuelan leader's actions – and Obama's response to them – were getting.

Four officials addressed the handshake and the smile over the course of the afternoon, beginning with Jeffrey Davidow, a former ambassador to Venezuela, Mexico and Zambia and an adviser to Obama on the Summit of the Americas.

NBC's Chuck Todd spoke with Davidow, who is president of the Institute of the Americas at the University of California at San Diego, about Chavez and other the news making headlines. (Click here to read transcript of the entire interview.)

"Hugo Chavez has a real capacity to get his picture in the newspaper or on TV," Davidow said. "A case in point, last night the president was at a reception. He shook hands with 33 other presidents, smiled with 33 other presidents; one picture gets in the newspaper. I think the press is focused on Hugo Chavez. I don't think Barack Obama is focused on Hugo Chavez.

"I'd say that you know the fact that president was photographed shaking hands with him, a smile and a handshake does not mean a new relationship," Davidow went on to say a few minutes later. "We have a very strained relationship with Venezuela. We'd like to see it get better."

* Driving home the point

And just in case listeners missed the point the White House was trying to make about the insignificance of a handshake and a smile, several administration officials repeated the White House's line on the matter at an afternoon briefing.

To wit. Here was Larry Summers, a top economic adviser: "I think there is also a sense being projected to us from a number of different quarters of desire for a different relationship with the United States than has existed historically, but of course relationships depend on more than smiles and handshakes and so we'll have to see what happens going forward."

A short while later, Denis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser, followed with this: "Let me just underscore a point that Larry made and referred to earlier that obviously there's great hope that with all the outreach to the president from some of the countries in the region, that we are indeed starting new relationships. But, I think the president has been making very clear that while handshakes and photographs and smiles are important, they're certainly not good enough and there will be tests on whether we have in fact entered a new era, or a new set of relationships in days and weeks and months ahead."

And finally there was White House Press Sec Robert Gibbs.

"The smiles and handshakes of one leader saying he wants to be his friend is a wonderful opportunity to match actions with words," Gibbs said

From NBC's John Yang

A senior official says the administration is reviewing comments made by Raul Castro, per radio pooler Peter Maer of CBS Radio. The White House wants a closer look before commenting, but the official suggests Castro's comments could be significant given the timing following the recent Obama Cuba policy announcement.

There are should further reaction during the Air Force One flight.