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Budding style stars Malia and Sasha Obama are proving to be fashion loyalists.

For the past two days, the girls have worn head-to-toe outfits from Crewcuts, the kids line from J.Crew  that boasts “designer details” and couture touches on its mini-me separates.

The First Daughters chose bright hues for Dad’s inauguration: Malia, 10, in periwinkle blue with a coral dress, and Sasha, 7, in a guava coat with an orange scarf and gloves.

Shoppers can pick up highlights from the custom-made outfits in the Fall 2009 line.

Party dresses from the pint-size preppie line run $158-$248 in sophisticated fabrics like silk taffeta and jacquard. Party shoes are $95-$128.

The kids have worn Crewcuts before, too.

For Sunday’s Lincoln Memorial celebration, they picked cream and white coats. For the Kids Inaugural Ball Monday, their mom picked the brand, too.

The retail chain posted a “Congratulations to the First Family” message on its Web site Tuesday afternoon, obviously grateful for its newest high-profile fans.

First daughters Malia and Sasha Obama stand by their brand, J. Crew.

One of the many cool things about President Barack Obama’s inauguration (and the resultant excitement on sites like social network Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter) is the new WhiteHouse.gov web site, which was unveiled as Obama was sworn in. As an Obama fan, it’s exciting to see his agenda (yes, the same one that was already available on the transition team’s Change.gov website) up on the White House site, and I’m glad that Obama’s “Director of New Media” Macon Phillips is promising to use the site to increase communication, transparency, and participation. Too bad it initially falls short on that promise, in ways significant and less significant.

Here’s one way that WhiteHouse.gov is a big step down from Change.gov: It doesn’t allow comments, as Valleywag’s Owen Thomas notes. But wait, there’s a generic “contact us” form that lets you send messages to the administration, just as you would with a giant corporation! Even better, the form limits your comments to 500 characters. That’s barely more than four “tweets” on Twitter. (In comparison, this short post has more than 1,400 characters.)  Goodness knows the administration shouldn’t waste time on comments with any nuance. I guess we’re supposed to save that for old-fashioned paper-and-ink letters, which face no such limit.

Also mildly annoying is the White House blog’s RSS feed, which doesn’t post full items, but rather just the first sentence of each post. Want to read the full text of President Obama’s first proclamation? You’ll have to click through to the blog. Granted, that’s a minor inconvenience, but it’s disappointing when an administration that’s supposed to be tech- and new media-savvy unveils a blog that’s redolent of old media. What, is Obama desperate for page views?

WhiteHouse.gov takes a page from Twitter’s playbook » VentureBeat.

he new president addresses the nation and speaks of work and sacrifice and makes clear that Bush policies will change.

Reporting from Los Angeles — Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office today as the nation’s 44th president — and the nation’s first black chief executive — and told Americans shaken by economic despair and war that shared sacrifice would be required to draw the nation back to prosperity and peace.

“Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed,” Obama declared in a ringing inaugural address. “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done,” he said, ticking off needs in the areas of the economy, energy, education and myriad other fronts. “All this we can do, and all this we will do.”

Obama’s day was replete with the emotion of the past — the son of a white Kansas mother and a Kenyan father took his oath from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln more than a century ago.

But his inaugural address, though filled with eloquent references to American will and its historic successes, was also a sharp attempt to wrest the country from the path set by outgoing President Bush.

Obama sets fresh course for ‘remaking America’ – Los Angeles Times.

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Matthew Cavanaugh / EPA

President Obama’s address was full of soaring optimism but also seemed to criticize aspects of the administrations of both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Most say that restraint and plain speaking distinguished the speech. One calls it a ‘sophisticated view of the world and our role in it.’

By Susan Salter Reynolds
2:35 PM PST, January 20, 2009

More novel than short story; more ballad than poem — most writers agree that restraint and plain speaking were the qualities that distinguished President Obama’s inaugural address. Long on plot (and it will thicken), it did what literature does best: the backward glance, the standing on shoulders, the salute to ancestors and other sources of wisdom.

“He is our first (in the best sense of the word) aristocratic president,” said author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell. “Bush was a buddy. Clinton was the kindly uncle. Obama is a prince.”

Writers praise Barack Obama’s inaugural address – Los Angeles Times.