No administrative post is planned for McCain. President-elect Barack Obama and his former rival, Republican Sen. John McCain, met Monday in a 40-minute session at Obama’s transition headquarters in Chicago and discussed where they could work together to better America, according to press reports. Read the rest here.

Bowl series coordinator responds to Obama interview. College football’s BCS (Bowl Championship Series) coordinator says he’ll pass on President-elect Barack Obama’s suggestion for restructuring the annual playoffs. Obama told Steve Kroft, of the CBS news show “60 Minutes,” that he’d favor an eight-team, three-round elimination to end the season. His answer closed a wide-ranging interview with Kroft that was broadcast Sunday.  “First of all, I want to congratulate newly elected President Obama, and I am glad he has a passion for college football, like so many other Americans,” reads a statement from John Swofford. “For now, our constituencies – and I know he understands constituencies – have settled on the current BCS system, which the majority believe is the best system yet to determine a national champion while also maintaining the college football regular season as the best and most meaningful in sports.” The present BCS system uses polls and team rankings to determine championship competitors. 

Player hit spectator in his head with baseball. The minor-league pitcher who gave a fan a concussion by throwing a baseball into stands says he’s not guilty. Julio Castillo, 21, entered his plea against two counts of felonious assault in an Ohio courtroom last week. Castillo has said he was throwing the ball at a playor in the Dayton Dragons dugout during a July 24 brawl. Instead, the Peoria Chiefs player sent a man to the hospital. Castillo remains free on bond.

“Big men” camps leader Pete Newell dies. The Hall of Fame hoops coach who helped mentor some of the greatest big men in basketball has died. Pete Newell, who won an NCAA championship and an Olympic gold medal, passed Monday in California. He was 93. Born in Canada, Newell grew up in California where he later coached for 14 years at San Francisco. He went on to help bring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Los Angeles Lakers after moving into the pro management ranks. Through his unofficial “big men” camps, Newell also tutored Ralph Sampson and Shaquille O’Neal. Newell’s 1960 Olympic team was led by future NBA great Oscar Robertson.

Obama’s election spurs racial crimes. Racial epithets on cars and homes, cross-burnings and children chanting “Assassinate Obama,” are among some of the incidents that make up what officials say is a rise in post-election racial incidents across the country. From Maine to California, police have clocked a range of crimes that include vandalism, at least one physical attack and vague threats. There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, Mark Potok, director of the hate-crime monitoring Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Associated Press. Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in the notorious free-speech tunnel, including one that said: “Let’s shoot that (N-word) in the head.” In fact, Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say. In other incidents, crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa. A Black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four White men who shouted “Obama.” Racist graffiti was found in places including New York’s Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and “Go Back To Africa” were spray-painted on sidewalks, houses and cars. Potok, who is White, said he believes there is “a large subset of White people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.”

Obama says farewell to the Senate. President-elect formally resigned from the U.S. Senate on Sunday after a little less than four years of service. He did it with a thank you letter to his Illinois constituents, which began “Today, I am ending one journey to begin another,” and was published in the state’s newspapers. In the letter, Obama wrote, “The challenges we face as a nation are now more numerous and difficult than when I first arrived in Chicago, but I have no doubt that we can meet them. For throughout my years in Illinois, I have heard hope as often as I have heard heartache. Where I have seen struggle, I have seen great strength. And in a state as broad and diverse in background and belief as any in our nation, I have found a spirit of unity and purpose that can steer us through the most troubled waters….With your help, along with the service and sacrifice of Americans across the nation who are hungry for change and ready to bring it about, I have faith that all will in fact be well. And it is with that faith, and the high hopes I have for the enduring power of the American idea, that I offer the people of my beloved home a very affectionate thanks.” Illinois’ Democratic governor is expected to name Obama’s replacement by the end of the year.

A cell phone helps police rescue a Delaware shooting victim. Wilmington, Del., Police used the cell phone of a shooting victim to locate the victim of a gunshot. The 37 year-old Wilmington man had been shot in the neck with a shotgun, but did not know where he was when he contacted police about 6:30 Saturday night. Authorities say they were able to get a general location by tracking which cell phone towers had handled his call. Once police were in the vicinity, they heard the man pounding on a shed door. He was then taken to Christiana Hospital where he is in critical, but stable, condition. There’s no word on what prompted the shooting.

A showdown is expected over an automaker bailout plan.  Proponents, mostly Democrats, say $25 billion of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package should be used to bail out the failing U.S. auto industry.  “The repercussions would be dire” if the nation allowed the auto industry to collapse, President-elect Obama said on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday. But hard-line opponents, mostly Republicans, brand the industry a “dinosaur” that should be allowed to fail. That’s how the debate is expected to go when Senate Democrats introduce legislation today to attach an auto bailout to a House-passed bill that extends unemployment benefits. But if the talk on Sunday news shows is any indication, the measure faces an up-hill battle in the Senate lame-duck session. Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be a mistake to use any of the Wall Street rescue money to prop up the automakers because a bailout would only postpone the industry’s demise. “Companies fail everyday and others take their place. I think this is a road we should not go down,” Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said Sunday. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) also said that automakers are trying to adapt to a changing consumer market, but need immediate help to survive the economic crisis. “This is a national problem,” Levin said Sunday. “The auto industry touches millions and millions of lives.” A White House alternative to the Democrats’ plan would allow the car companies to divert the $25 billion in loans Congress previously approved to develop fuel-efficient vehicles and use the money for more immediate needs. Congressional Democrats oppose the White House plan as shortsighted. A vote on the measure is expected as early as Wednesday. Majority Democrats will need at least a dozen GOP votes in the Senate to prevent opponents from blocking their measure - assuming all Senate Democrats support it, reports The Washington Post.

 Friends and former co-workers gather in Hawaii to pay respects to Obama’s “Toot.” Madelyn Dunham, who missed her grandson’s historic victory by hours, is remembered. About 150 friends and former co-workers paid their final respects to President-elect Barack Obama’s late grandmother yesterday in a 45-minute memorial in Hawaii. The service for Madelyn Dunham, 86, who passed away Nov. 2, just before her grandson was elected President, was held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Obama and his family did not attend the ceremony and neither did his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, a professor at the University of Hawaii. “It broke his heart not to be here,” said Emme Tomimbang, a friend of Obama’s and the service’s master of ceremonies. “Even though Barack and Maya couldn’t be here physically, they were here in spirit. In fact, they both helped put this together.” She said Obama and his family are expected to have another small, private service. Dunham, whom the President-Elect and his sister affectionately called “Toot,” was remembered as “tough” and “hard-working” and “loyal” woman who loved jigsaw puzzles, mystery novels and playing Bridge.  The Bank of Hawaii, where Dunham started her career as a secretary and left as the first woman to make Vice President, helped organize the service. Dunham’s body was cremated.

 One of the two White supremacists who plotted to launch a killing spree aimed at beheading Black schoolchildren and then shooting Barack Obama is arguing that the jury that charged him has too many Blacks. A lawyer for 20-year-old Daniel Cowart filed a petition Thursday seeking to have his client’s indictment dismissed.  It argues that the 23-member grand jury that returned the indictment had just two White members and could not have been fair and impartial. Cowart and 18-year-old Paul Schlesselman face charges that include threatening a presidential candidate and taking firearms across state lines to commit crimes. Authorities say the pair plotted a robbery and killing spree in which they would murder dozens of Black people, including Obama.

 Martin Luther King Jr.’s family says they want their cut of the money being made from t-shirts and other merchandise depicting president-elect Barack Obama alongside the slain civil rights leader.  King’s nephew, Isaac Newton Farris, said that hundreds of thousands of dollars - maybe even millions - is being made, and the King estate is entitled to its share.  “Some of this is probably putting food on people’s plates,” Farris said. “We’re not trying to stop anybody from legitimately supporting themselves, but we cannot allow our brand to be abused.”  Obama, America’s first Black president, will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, the day after the public holiday was created to honor Dr King, who was shot dead in 1968.

Obama camp dismisses Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson inauguration rumors. Beyoncé fans need not take out the claws just yet. The rumor circulating that she’s been beat out by Jennifer Hudson again isn’t true, says the Barack Obama camp. Apparently, speculation about Obama’s hometown connection to Hudson in Chicago mushroomed into word that the singer was asked to perform at Obama’s Jan. 20 presidential inauguration. Be, who was upstaged by Hudson’s Oscar win after they both appeared in the film Dreamgirls, expressed interest in singing at the White House. “An inauguration committee hasn’t even been formed yet,” says an Obama spokesman. No decision has been made about who’ll sing at the event, the rep says. Meanwhile, Hudson is still mourning the recent unsolved murders of three family members.

Bring That Week Back! Kanye’s going to court; Obama’s daughters might be going Hollywood; and Beyoncé wants to be a superhero. Get these stories with photos and more!

President-elect Obama to resign from Senate. President-elect Barack Obama said Thursday that he will resign from the Senate effective Sunday. In a statement, the junior Illinois senator called his four-year term “one of the highest honors and privileges” of his life and said the people of Illinois will stay with him as he leaves the Senate to begin “the hard task of fulfilling the simple hopes and common dreams of all Americans as our nation’s next president.” Obama won the presidency last week over Republican John McCain. He takes office on Jan. 20. Under state law, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich will name Obama’s replacement for the remaining two years of his term. Blagojevich has said he expects to make a decision by year’s end. Obama’s election in 2004 made him the only Black senator. Among the possible replacement is Chicago Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.