ABC News' Yunji de Nies and Sunlen Miller Report:

When the White House released their schedule last night, it listed the daily briefing with Robert Gibbs as expected.  But somewhere between six p.m. yesterday and noon today, the Press Secretary apparently came down with a cold.

"The problem is that drug makers have not found a Sudafed strong enough for Robert Gibbs, and so he's sitting upstairs, probably watching me talk to you with a sore throat and the sniffles," Deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said.

While Gibbs was back in his office recovering, his deputy took quite a few questions on an interview he gave to the Hill newspaper, where Gibbs blasted the "professional left."

"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs told reporter Sam Youngman. "I mean, it's crazy."

He later said, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

And also added, "They wouldn't be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."

The left's litany of complaints with the Obama administration - over gay rights, the public option, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, environmental policy, oil drilling, government secrecy, financial reform - is long and growing.

For the rest of the news go to ABC News Blog

July 29, 2010 11:56 AM

CBS News' Jan Crawford spoke with Rep, Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) about Wednesday's ruling, eliminating controversial elements in Arizona's immigration law. Plus; a roundtable with litigator Jonathan Benner and CBSNews.com's Brian Montopoli.

July 28, 2010 10:04 AM

 | Associated Press

BELL, Calif.-- Three administrators whose huge salaries sparked outrage in this small blue-collar suburb of Los Angeles have agreed to resign, the City Council said Friday.

Council members emerged from an hours-long closed session at midnight Friday and announced that they'd accepted the resignations of Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo, Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia and Police Chief Randy Adams.

Rizzo was the highest paid at $787,637 a year -- nearly twice the pay of President Barack Obama -- for overseeing one of the poorest towns in Los Angeles County.

Spaccia makes $376,288 a year and Adams earns $457,000, 50 percent more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.

The three will not receive severance packages, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. Rizzo will step down at the end of August and Spaccia will leave at the end of September. Adams will also leave at the end of August, after completing an evaluation of the police department, the Times said.

"I'm happy that they resigned but I'm disappointed at the pension that they're going to receive," said Ali Saleh, a member of the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse or BASTA.

Rizzo would be entitled to a state pension of more than $650,000 a year for life, according to calculations made by the Times. That would make Rizzo, 56, the highest-paid retiree in the state pension system.

Adams could get more than $411,000 a year.

Spaccia, 51, could be eligible for as much as $250,000 a year when she reaches 55, though the figure is less precise than for the other two officials, the Times said.

Saleh said the crowd applauded after the announcement but immediately yelled out questions about what would happen to the council members. Four of the five of them are paid close to $100,000 annually for part-time work. When the crowd's questions were not answered, they shouted, "Recall!, Recall!"

Revelations about the pay in Bell has sparked anger in the city of fewer than 40,000 residents. Census figures from 2008 show 17 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Enraged residents have staged protests demanding the firings and started a recall campaign against some council members.

"Woo-hoo, the salaries. Wow. What can I say? I think that's unbelievable," Christina Caldera, a 20-year resident of the city, said as she stood in line at a food bank.

Caldera, who is struggling after recently losing her job as a drug and alcohol counselor, said she generally was satisfied with the way the city was being run but felt high-paid officials should take a pay cut.

"What are they doing with all that money?" she asked. "Maybe they could put it into more jobs for other people."

Attempts to leave messages seeking comment from Rizzo and Spaccia failed because their voicemails were full. A message left for Adams was not immediately returned.

The county district attorney's office is investigating to determine if the high salaries for the council members violate any state laws. The City Council also intends to review city salaries, including those of its own members, according to Councilman Luis Artiga and Mayor Oscar Hernandez.

"We are going to analyze all the city payrolls and possibly will revise all the salaries of the city," Artiga said.

However, both men said they considered the City Council pay to be justified.

"We work a lot. I work with my community every day," the mayor said, as he shook hands with and embraced people leaving the food bank Thursday.

Council members are on call around the clock, and it is not uncommon for them to take calls in the middle of the night from people reporting problems with city services, Artiga said.

Though many residents are poor, Hernandez said they live in a city they can be proud of, one with a $22.7 million budget surplus, clean streets, refurbished parks and numerous programs for people of all ages. He pointed proudly down a street to a park filled with new exercise equipment.

When Rizzo arrived 17 years ago, Hernandez said, the city was $13 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Rizzo obtained government grants to aid the city, the mayor said.

WASHINGTON -- New jobless claims in the U.S. jumped last week by the most since February, reversing a sharp fall two weeks ago. The rise is partly a result of seasonal factors but also reflects the job market's weakness.

The Labor Department says new claims for unemployment insurance jumped by 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 464,000. Analysts expected a smaller rise, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Pledging "no more" Wall Street bailouts, President Obama on Wednesday signed into law a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations, saying the complex measures would ultimately help consumers make better decisions and help keep the economy out of serious trouble. 

The president called the law the "strongest consumer financial protections in history." He said the law would ensure that taxpayers "never again" have to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes. 

"There will be no more tax-funded bailouts -- period," he said. 

The ceremony marked a signature achievement for the president in his second year, though the package was staunchly opposed by most Republicans in both chambers. GOP lawmakers portrayed the bill as a burden on small banks and businesses and argued it would cost consumers and hinder job growth. 

"Millions of Americans are struggling to find jobs, and yet all they see in Washington are Democrats passing massive bills that, at their core, seem to have one thing in common: more job loss," Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused the president of ignoring the role mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played in the economic crisis that flared in 2008, sinking the country's economy into recession. 

"President Obama's bill-signing charade represents nothing more than an absolute betrayal and abdication of what presidential leadership is supposed to embody," Issa said. 

But Obama said risky Wall Street behavior and a "breakdown" in the financial system more than anything caused the crisis. He accused Republicans and interest groups of playing politics with the legislation. He described Republicans as a "partisan minority determined to block change," though he thanked the three GOP senators who voted with Democrats for the bill. 

The new bill aims to usher in a new era of consumer protections and banking restrictions. The law assembles a powerful council of regulators to be on the lookout for risks across the finance system and creates a new agency to guard consumers in their financial transactions. It places shadow financial markets that previously escaped the oversight of regulators under new scrutiny and gives the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy.

Large, failing financial institutions would be liquidated and the costs assessed on their surviving peers. Borrowers will be protected from hidden fees and abusive terms, but also will have to provide evidence that they can repay their loans. The Federal Reserve will get new powers while at the same time coming under expanded congressional oversight.

Though Obama and his top officials urged Congress to pass the law while the memory of the 2008 financial meltdown was still fresh, many of the law's provisions won't take effect for at least a year as regulators scramble to write new rules and implement them.

"That will take some time, but it is worth it," Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said Tuesday.

While the bill represents the end of a year's work by Congress and the administration, Obama has at least one contentious remnant from the bill to address. He must still nominate a director to the independent consumer protection bureau, an agency that became one of the bill's flashpoints and was attacked by Republicans as a broad expansion of government power over private business.

Among those expected at the signing ceremony is Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor considered a leading candidate for the job. Warren is a consumer advocate who was among the first to propose the idea of a new agency to protect financial consumers. As head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bank rescue fund known as TARP, she has periodically clashed with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.