Democrats, Vacation | featured news

President Barack Obama says members of Congress should put country before politics, set aside their differences and find ways to get people back to work. The president is vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, but he recorded his weekly Saturday radio and Internet address earlier in the week while in Alpha, Ill., during an economy-focused Midwestern bus tour.

If it’s August, it must be time for that annual Washington political tradition: griping over the president’s vacation. Through wars and natural disasters, recessions and reelections, the getaway locales for America’s chief executive have been dissected by critics looking for symbolic reasons why the president shouldn’t go.