It’s been almost 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was warmly welcomed to Ireland; he called his 1963 journey to the emerald isle “the best four days of my life.” Obama gave a rousing address to an estimated crowd of 100,000 people at Trinity College, the same location at which President Clinton spoke back in 1995.

For more on the president’s homecoming read the Washington Post’s story here.

Unfortunately, the president will be cutting his trip to Ireland short in order to avoid flying in the ash cloud released by an Icelandic volcano. Looming volcanic ash sounds like a good excuse to throw back a pint of Guinness, although it appears the president didn’t need much arm-twisting when he toasted his “fellow” Irishmen.

Hours after this performance, the news about Bin-Laden’s death was released, which gave Meyers great material for his Saturday Night Live skit Weekend Update. Check out the clip below:

Wednesday, he will be the first President to have his presidential news conference tweeted to the world. Will he change his style of speaking? Will reporters tweet questions in earlier in the day? Don’t miss Robert Gibbs briefing LIVE on WHCInsider.com and get an advance TWEET!

The Press Conference will now be at 8 PM EST.

Read the whole story on FishBowlDC

Instead of a comedian or impressionist, guests at the Convention Center on Friday night will hear music from Sweet Honey in the Rock, the all-female African-American a Capella group that the RTCA dinner organizers tout as “a favorite of the First Lady.” Humor will come from JibJab.com, which says on its blog that it is “beyond thrilled” that its first satire of the Obama Administration will premiere in front of the man himself. (The satirists entertained President George W. Bush with “What We Call the News” at the 2007 dinner, as well.) Onion News Network will have a “special report.”

“For our dinner, entertainment is a plural term, not a singular term,” says Heather Dahl, a producer at Feature Story News and the dinner’s chair.

Despite the smaller table buys from some news organizations in this money-crunched year, what will stay the same, she says, is the attendance: Her preliminary estimates are that the crowd will number in the ballpark of recent dinners, around 2,000 attendees.

International news organizations took more tables, Dahl says, and some journalists whose employers refused to pony up for full tables have paid their own way. “I believe this shows that people really want to go out and have a nice evening, so that’s what we’re going to deliver,” she says.

With Donald Rumsfeld, who lives down the street, stopping by for a drink, it was a night, a location, and a crowd where anything could happen. Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter, joining party forces this year, welcomed the exclusive guests.

The brave captain of the Maresk Alabama, who offered his life in exchange for his mates, was Bloomberg’s special guest for the weekend. That followed getting the keys to New York City from Mayor Bloomberg the day before. Captain Richard Phillips shrugged off the compliments of celebrities (Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore) and politicos who lined up to shake his hand, but he did pose proudly with another real-life Captain America, Chesley Sullenberger, who safely piloted a US Airways jet onto the Hudson River.

Earlier in the day, Phillips and his wife, Andrea, met with President Obama in the Oval Office, after a private tour of the White House. The unflappable captain told Bloomberg it was an “honor to meet the President. He’s a very amazing man and he’s a very down-to-earth man.” His wife agreed, “It was very overwhelming, surreal to actually, be inside the Oval Office … I was so deeply excited to have met the President like that.”

After being introduced to the Commander-in-chief, Phillips admitted it was hard to get excited about meeting anyone else after being introduced to the Commander-in-Chief.

The dinner that kicked the evening off, the White House Correspondents Dinner, recognizes the stars of the White House press corps, many of whom shined brightly at the Bloomberg | Vanity Fair party afterwards. At one end of the party media veterans – Barbara Walters, Margaret Carlson, Jon Meacham, Jim Bell, Andrea Mitchell, Bill Plante, John McLaughlin, and Al Hunt — rubbed elbows with the new kids on the media block – Katherine Weymouth, Chuck Todd, Savannah Guthrie, Jake Tapper, Lara Logan, Michael Calderone, Betsy Fischer, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei.

And the stars from Hollywood mingled with the brightest lights from stage and screen: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Natalie Portman, Claire Danes, Christian Slater, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, Chace Crawford, Ali Wentworth, Kerry Washington and Denis Leary.

Celluloid royalty Jonathan Rhys Meyers could be found in one room, real royalty, His Highness Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein in another, and a Supreme, Justice Antonin Scalia, in yet another. And real rock stars, like Sting and Jon Bon Jovi, mingled with Obama rock stars: Valerie Jarrett, David and Susan Axelrod, David Plouffe and his wife Olivia Morgan, Peter Orszag, Dan Pfeiffer and Sarah Feinberg and cabinet members Shaun Donovan, Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, and Lisa Jackson. Also at the party, Team Obama’s pit crew led by Tommy Vietor and Katie McCormick Lelyvold, Reid Cherlin, Marissa “Ground Zero” Hopkins, Sally Armbruster, Amanda Anderson, Kate Kochman, Katie Johnson and the cool and collected Eric Lesser.

Jon Favreau standing next to Graydon Carter looked like he belonged at all Vanity Fair parties. Team Fav favorites Sarah Hurwitz, Cody Keenan, and Jon Lovett who helped pen the President’s dinner remarks, were like the President they serve, modest in their success.

The Emanuel family represented multiple spheres of influence: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (the butt of one of Obama’s better jokes) his National Institutes of Health bioethicist brother Zeke, and Ari, a Hollywood agent depicted in “Entourage,” who left early to get his son Noah home for Mother’s Day.

What was unusual about the party was its low-key, matter-of-fact quality. There was no push to meet and greet the biggest bold-faced name, no jostling for position near the celebrities, no rubbernecking fans. As the party wound down, it was just a group of friends, old and new, enjoying the conversation, the trees lit by red, white and blue lights, and the soft warm May breeze.

• “Most of you covered me, all of you voted for me. Apologies to the Fox table.”
• “Sasha and Malia aren’t here tonight because they’re grounded. You can’t just take Air Force One on a joyride to Manhattan.”
• “Mother’s Day is a tough holiday for [Rahm Emanuel]. He’s not used to having to say the word ‘day’ after ‘mother’.”
• “Dick Cheney was supposed to be here, but he was working on his memoirs: How To Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.”
• “During the next 100 days, we will design, build, and open a library to commemorate my first hundred days… In the next 100 days, we will complete 100 days work in 72 days.”

And Wanda’s?
 
“Wanda is Wanda, she comes real and you got to be prepared. But there will be news made later this week, I guarantee you,” said Steele.

Watch Wanda’s routine below.

It’s a “different vibe,” said Mason, “but in terms of the access we get and the information, it’s very much the same.” Tapper said the Obama White House is an improvement over the Obama campaign – staffers can’t “dodge” reporters so easily: “[They're] much more accessible here, because they’re right here as opposed to on the phone.”

Does that mean Ana Marie Cox got it wrong, when she said White House correspondents are not necessary?

“Has Ana Marie Cox ever covered the White House,” asked Mason. “I’m not sure what her credentials are … she was there for the dog story.”

“Having a vigilant press corps in that room is definitely necessary,” Tapper added diplomatically. “I didn’t find her piece particularly persuasive.”