MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) – Conservative Sarah Palin returned to the U.S. political arena on Saturday after several months absence with a feisty speech attacking both the establishment Republican Party and Democratic President Barack Obama and proclaiming "the 2012 elections begin here."

In a move apparently aimed at keeping her name in the running for the Republican nomination in next year's presidential election, Palin addressed several thousand people in Wisconsin, a state bitterly divided by a political fight over union rights.

Palin has been mostly absent from politics since the January shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, when she was criticized for accusing opponents of manufacturing a "blood libel" against her.

That absence has seen her standing slide among potential frontrunners for the Republican nomination.

As snow and sleet fell on Madison's main square, Palin attacked the budget compromise between Republicans and Obama on cuts of around $38 billion instead of $100 billion promised by Republicans in elections last November.

"That is not courage, that is capitulation," she said, adding that a recent bruising battle in Wisconsin over union bargaining rights provided a number of lessons.

"We didn't elect you just to rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic," she said. "We didn't elect you just to stand back and watch Obama redistribute those deck chairs."

While former governors Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty have announced they hope to be candidates to challenge Obama, Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, has not said whether she will seek the Republican nomination for president.

KEEP HER NAME OUT THERE

By coming to Madison, the scene of mass demonstrations over a bill to limit union bargaining rights that Governor Scott Walker and local Republicans passed in March, Republican strategists said Palin was guaranteed media exposure.

"In the past couple of months Michele Bachmann has sucked up much of the Sarah Palin oxygen in the Republican Party," said Whit Ayres, president of Ayres, McHenry & Associates, which provides research and advice for Republican candidates.

"This seems to be a way to keep her name out there and the venue appears to be designed to give her maximum exposure."

Palin took fresh aim at the media, which she has frequently accused of attacking her unfairly.

"Hey media, it's not inciting violence and it's not hateful rhetoric to call someone out on their record," she said in a reference to criticism aimed at her after Gifford's shooting. Her past comments include the refrain "don't retreat, reload."

Palin has been largely invisible since then and a March 25 Gallup Poll saw her support fall to 12 percent from 16 percent. Meanwhile Republican Representative Michele Bachmann has been carving out a role as a Tea Party favorite.

Among the crowd in Madison, Sarah Slye, 60, a grandmother of five who held a sign saying "Grandma is a right-wing extremist," said she would vote for Palin for president.

"But I don't think she would get a fair shot from the media," she said. "She stands for what she believes in."

Tim Wersland, 44, an iron worker holding a sign that read "I'd rather guzzle the Kool-Aid than sip the tea" said Palin was like all other Republican politicians.

"They say they want Americans to have jobs. But what they mean is they want us all to have two or three jobs to get by."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Chris Wilson)

HOPE, Arkansas (Reuters) – Former President Bill Clinton returned to his childhood home on Saturday to celebrate its dedication as a national historical site.

Clinton was born in Hope's Julia Chester Hospital in 1946 and lived the first four years of his life in the two-story wood frame house with his grandparents, who owned the house, and his mother, the late Virginia Kelley. His father, William Blythe, died before Clinton was born.

During his 1992 campaign, Clinton used the name of his home town as a campaign slogan, saying he grew up in a "place called Hope." He was often called "The Man From Hope" and used the word 10 times in his 1992 Democratic Party acceptance speech.

The house sits near the quaint downtown and on the edge of a train track. A train whistle interrupted Clinton's speech on Saturday. He said he listened to them as a child and it was a welcoming sound.

"I wondered where those trains were going and if I would ever get to go there," he said.

The Clinton Birthplace Foundation bought the house in 1992 and began raising money to restore it. The home opened to the public in 1997.

The house became part of the National Park System on March 30, 2009, when President Barack Obama signed the measure into law. Arkansas' congressional delegation spent more than ten years trying to get legislation passed for the designation.

In December 2010, the property deed, which had been held by a private foundation, was transferred to the federal government for management by the National Park Service.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis attended the event. The dedication kicked off National Park Week, which President Obama declared for next week.

The house becomes the 394th national park unit, Jarvis said. Salazar said that the house would benefit Hope, a town of 10,000 sits located 112 miles from Little Rock.

"With of all of the things we do, it's about job creation and tourism," Salazar told a crowd of 400 at the dedication. "They will come here and see this great house and help the economy of Hope, Arkansas."

During his speech Clinton told stories about growing up in Hope and addressed problems facing the country with his boyhood home as a backdrop.

"We have gotten away from being a people-centered society," Clinton said. "Everyone is looking for their 15 minutes of fame."

He said people had forgotten how to listen to each other.

"One thing I learned in this home was arithmetic, evidence and aspirations of ordinary people are more important than anyone's ideology," Clinton said.

Many of Clinton's childhood friends attended Saturday's event along with tourists and school children.

(Editing by Peter Bohan)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. aviation regulators, investigating unsettling disclosures of sleeping air traffic controllers, will ban scheduling practices most likely to result in drowsiness at work.

The Federal Aviation Administration also said on Saturday it had suspended a controller in Miami for nodding off on the job, the fifth incident of that type identified in recent weeks and the second at a major center.

"We will do everything we can to put an end to this," FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said in a statement.

The string of cases, including one at Washington's Reagan National airport where the lone controller fell asleep on the March 23 midnight shift with two jetliners en route, have alarmed regulators and safety advocates and raised questions about scheduling.

The FAA official responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of 15,000 controllers at more than 400 airports resigned on Thursday.

The agency also ended the practice of staffing overnight shifts with one controller, which had occurred at more than two dozen airports. Those were mainly small centers with very light traffic after midnight.

In addition, the FAA said on Saturday it would by early next week prohibit scheduling practices most likely to result in tired controllers.

Any changes must be negotiated with the union representing controllers, but they could include doing away with midnight schedule swaps, curbing efforts to compress work schedules, or eliminating cases where controllers end one shift and then report for another after a short period.

"We are taking important steps today that will make a real difference in fighting air traffic controller fatigue. But we know we'll need to do more," Babbitt said.

Controller schedule changes would not reduce tower operations, which would affect airline flights.

The biggest centers, like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, have more than one controller on duty at all times. This also includes Miami, where FAA on Saturday said it suspended another controller for sleeping on the job at an air traffic facility that handles aircraft routing.

A preliminary review of the incident showed the controller did not miss any radio contact from aircraft and that no flights were affected. There were 12 controllers on duty at the time, the FAA said.

(Reporting by John Crawley; Editing by Jackie Frank)