Lakeside Grad Picked to be U.N. Ambassador

A Lakeside High School graduate is President Barack Obama's controversial new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Samantha Power graduated from the DeKalb County school in 1988. In its Thursday print edition, the AJC said Power finished with a 4.08 GPA and a 1320 SAT score. She also participated in cross country, track and basketball.

The paper said Power also worked at a local yogurt shop and was treasurer of her senior class.

Power covered the atrocities in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia and her 2002 book on genocide, "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” earned her a Pulitzer Prize. Power worked on President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and ran the human rights office in the White House.

Some say that Obama’s nomination of Power demonstrates his renewed commitment to human rights.

“Power's appointment should be considered a signal that Obama wants his foreign policy legacy to include more than just a footnoted commentary about his desire to advance human rights on a global scale,” Toni Panetta, a political and policy strategist, wrote in blog for The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

However, others were equally critical of the appointment. During his Wednesday nationally syndicated radio talk show, Rush Limbaugh cited the fact that Power is married to Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, who Limbaugh said "is the leader of this entire belief system that the Bill of Rights is anti-government and needs to be changed."

In a forthcoming book, Sunstein writes that he received death threats after being targeted by Glenn Beck while he served as head of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Susnteain stepped down last August to return to Harvard.