by Mark Silva

Near the climax of an epic fight over healthcare reform in which the two parties are embedded deeper than ever -- and the president's own party at odds within on some issues -- and at the threshhold of midterm congressional elections testing the ruling party's ability to keep the reins, the prospect of renewing the debate on immigration reform seems questionable at best.

The two champions of bipartisan immigration reform past are either gone or waylaid: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts has passed away, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona faces a fight for his own seat in a Republican Party primary back home that is likely to leave little room for political heroics in the cause of finding a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

So it is one of McCain's best friends in the Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and one of the Democrats who could become his party's leader if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid falls victim to the electoral turmoil out there this fall, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who are meeting with the Obama White House on opening a new debate over immigration reform.

And President Barack Obama, stung by the partisan divide of the healthcare debate, is courting at least the appearance of bipartisanship here

The two senators presented the president with a bipartisan blueprint, albeit a three-page outline, of how to proceed through a loaded political minefield -- read more about that immigration reform blueprint in Tribune newspapers today, and see the highlights below.

Last night, the president also met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to discuss "a variety of critical issues confronting Hispanics and all Americans, in particular the need to act now to pass healthcare reform,'' according to the press secretary.

"The president thanked the members for their hard work over the past year, and acknowledged the progress that has been made on the economy while also expressing his concern for long-term unemployment,'' the White House said. "The president also updated the Caucus members on his meetings earlier in the day with grassroots activists and Senators Schumer and Graham on immigration reform, and reiterated his strong commitment to fixing the broken immigration system. ''

Obama was joined at the meeting by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Phil Schiliro, and White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz.

Earlier in the day, Obama had met with Schumer and Graham.

As the Washington Bureau's Peter Nicholas reports this morning, Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), had a 45-minute meeting Thursday in the Oval Office, and asked for Obama's help in rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an immigration bill this year.

"Although details of their blueprint were not released, Graham said the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs. Graham also said the proposal included "a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States." He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic.

"We're not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we," Graham said. "But we need a system so they don't get an advantage over others for citizenship."

by Mark Silva

Near the climax of an epic fight over healthcare reform in which the two parties are embedded deeper than ever -- and the president's own party at odds within on some issues -- and at the threshhold of midterm congressional elections testing the ruling party's ability to keep the reins, the prospect of renewing the debate on immigration reform seems questionable at best.

The two champions of bipartisan immigration reform past are either gone or waylaid: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts has passed away, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona faces a fight for his own seat in a Republican Party primary back home that is likely to leave little room for political heroics in the cause of finding a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

So it is one of McCain's best friends in the Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and one of the Democrats who could become his party's leader if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid falls victim to the electoral turmoil out there this fall, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who are meeting with the Obama White House on opening a new debate over immigration reform.

And President Barack Obama, stung by the partisan divide of the healthcare debate, is courting at least the appearance of bipartisanship here

The two senators presented the president with a bipartisan blueprint, albeit a three-page outline, of how to proceed through a loaded political minefield -- read more about that immigration reform blueprint in Tribune newspapers today, and see the highlights below.

Last night, the president also met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to discuss "a variety of critical issues confronting Hispanics and all Americans, in particular the need to act now to pass healthcare reform,'' according to the press secretary.

"The president thanked the members for their hard work over the past year, and acknowledged the progress that has been made on the economy while also expressing his concern for long-term unemployment,'' the White House said. "The president also updated the Caucus members on his meetings earlier in the day with grassroots activists and Senators Schumer and Graham on immigration reform, and reiterated his strong commitment to fixing the broken immigration system. ''

Obama was joined at the meeting by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Phil Schiliro, and White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz.

Earlier in the day, Obama had met with Schumer and Graham.

As the Washington Bureau's Peter Nicholas reports this morning, Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), had a 45-minute meeting Thursday in the Oval Office, and asked for Obama's help in rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an immigration bill this year.

"Although details of their blueprint were not released, Graham said the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs. Graham also said the proposal included "a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States." He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic.

"We're not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we," Graham said. "But we need a system so they don't get an advantage over others for citizenship."

by Mark Silva

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says "a staffer'' had been advised of a problem with former Rep. Eric Massa before actual allegations were made against him.

Initially, Pelosi said her office had heard of a problem in February.

"I'm now finding out that there had been a conversation earlier, but it had nothing to... even come close to any kind of an allegation,'' Pelosi (D-Calif.) says in an interview airing tonight on MSNBC's The Rachel Mddow Show. "In terms of anything that is worthy of the attention of the ethics committee, that was in February when it was reported to the ethics committee."

The House voted today to also let the ethics committee look into when House leaders first knew about allegations of improper sexual conduct on Massa's part, and what they did about it. Massa, a Democrat from western New York State, resigned this week when it was reveailed that the committee was investigating his conduct.

It was in February "that there was an allegation against him, and at the same time, that it was referred to the ethics committee, and that was the appropriate route,'' Pelosi says. Before that, she says in the interview airing tonight, it was "a staffer'' who had a "conversation'' about Massa.

"A staffer in your office, but it was not something that your staff believed rose to the level...?'' Maddow asks.

"Right,'' Pelosi says -- to the level of an "allegation.''
.
"There are all kinds of articles that are written about many members in the Congress, and I don't think we want to get to a place -- besides, I served on the ethics committee for seven years,'' Pelosi says. "When I say served, it was almost like a sentence, because it's very tough duty, and I commend the people who serve there and the service they provide to the Congress.

"But the last thing we would have wanted then was any intervention from the Speaker's office. There's an appropriate way for an allegation to be sent to the ethics committee,'' she says.

Massa "initially... made an allegation that he was being forced out because he was a vote against health care,'' Maddow notes. "And then he recanted that allegation. He's made some other inconsistent statements. But we're left with the impression that he may have behaved inappropriately toward people who worked for him....''

"That's up to the ethics committee to investigate,'' Pelosi says. "But the fact is that you started this conversation in the right way. That it's another subject that people would like to be a distraction. I will not take my eye off the ball, which is to pass health care reform right now, and to at this time to build support for what we are doing....

"In any event... I'm not paying a lot of attention to some of that,'' Pelosi says. "It's appropriately being dealt with where it's being dealt with. What I'm paying attention is how do we get to what we had dreamed of, to follow in the footsteps of Social Security, Medicare, health care for all Americans. It's a very heavy lift, it's very labor intensive.''

by Mark Silva

The Gallup Poll, which has been taking the daily temperature of the Obama administration, reported a new low today in its gauge of public approval for the job that the president is performing.

Just 46 percent of those surveyed over the past three days voiced approval for the job that President Barack Obama is performing, with 45 percent voicing disapproval, Gallup reports today.

The level of disapproval, interestingly, does not represent a record high in Gallup's daily tracking -- that was 48 percent, in late January. But 46-percent approval marks a new low for the president by Gallup's count, by one notch. Other polls have measured lower nadirs, others higher -- Obama's approval has held at 53 percent in a new AP-GFK poll -- but we've showcased Gallup for some time for its neutrality and for the convenience of comparing its measurements of past presidents for six decades.

This president, who started his term with a 69-percent approval rating in the Gallup track, has confronted more than a year of tough economic times and equally challenging politics -- the economy is turning around, by the measure of the Gross Domestic Product, though unemployment still hovers near 10 percent, and now, after more than a year of pressing for healthcare reform, the president is pressing for an "up or down vote'' on legislation that the public appears largely wary about.

"That's okay. Because my job is not being popular,'' Obama said last night at a fundraiser for a Democratic senator in St. Louis. "My job is solving problems for the American people. I've got a greater responsibility. I've got a deeper mission. (Applause.) I'm looking at 10 years from now, will you look back and say that what he did made sense for the American people; not whether tomorrow people are going to be looking and saying, that made him popular..''

by Mark Silva

You really had to ride with Janet Reno in that little red pickup truck that she drove across her native Florida in a perhaps Quixotic campaign for governor to appreciate the morning that she made a detour to an empty shopping mall in Jacksonville in a futile search for voters.

The impromptu stop prompted by a scheduling snafu led the first woman to serve as attorney general through the men's underwear section of a department store -- she even had hosted a real "Janet Reno Dance Party'' in South Beach to raise money for her failing campaign for the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the Sunshine State -- in a desperate quest for a hand to shake, anyone's hand. The Bataan-like walk through the near-empty mall ended at a women's makeup counter, where Reno was offered a makeover. She declined.

Or, you could simply read Matt Labash's account of Reno "riding again'' into the Florida swamp, or his accounts of many other odd days in the journeys of some of the oddest fits in American political suits.

The best of it is collected and bound now, for better or worse, in a volume that the senior writer for The Weekly Standard has dubbed Fly Fishing with Darth Vader And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys.

Simon and Schuster, the publisher, has printed "Labash's masterful profiles of the outsized and outrageous characters who populate America's murky periphery -- Pirate Kingfish Governor Edwin Edwards, Recovering Crackhead Mayor Marion Barry, Dirty Trickster Roger Stone.... alongside devastating pieces on the dying cities of our nation such as Detroit and New Orleans'' and "his hilarious tirades on the health hazards of Facebook and the virtues of dodgeball.... He chronicles Al Sharpton's eating habits on the campaign trail, fishes the Snake River with Dick Cheney, and investigates the "great white waste of time" that is our neighbor to the north.''

Only Matt could diss Canada so easily (we'll save Australia.)

The truth is, Matt is unencumbered by most of the conventions that bind a lot of conventional political reporters -- he still uses commas, for sure -- while marching on in the tradition of some of the best who have widened the boundaries.

They're celebrating the publication of Matt's book tonight at a book party in Washington -- we're not dropping names, so we won't mention that the bash for Labash will be staged at his buddy Tucker Carlson's house, or that Dave "Mudcat'' Saunders, the redneck savant who apparently once fed Labash deer turds, may show up. (See the notice for Matt's book at Carlson's The Daily Caller, or here, for that matter, for an understanding of how inbred Washington actually is.)

Here's to Matt, and the best for his book.

by Mark Silva and updated

Eric Massa may be gone.

But questions about who knew what about the former congressman's alleged misconduct with congressional aides are not.

Amid reports that Democratic leaders may have known earlier than first reported about the alleged conduct of the former Democratic congressman from western New York State, House Republican Leader John Boehner introduced a resolution today calling for an ethics committee investigation of what House leaders knew, when they knew it and what they did about it.

The House voted this afternoon to refer the resolution to the committee, with Democratic leaders quickly acceding to the Republican move to open an inquiry. The vote for referral was 402-1, with 15 voting present (that would be the members of the ethics committee, as is customary.)

"Whereas, numerous confusing and conflicting media reports that House Democratic leaders knew about, and may have failed to handle appropriately, allegations that Rep. Massa was sexually harassing his own employees have raised serious and legitimate questions about what Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi as well as other Democratic leaders and their respective staffs were told, and what those individuals did with the information in their possession,'' the resolution states, noting that all of this has "held the House up to public ridicule.''

by Mark Silva

What shall we say about Eric Massa?

Or, perhaps more significantly, what more shall House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have to say about the disgraced Democrat who resigned from Congress amid word that he allegedly had groped congressional assistants?

"The Massa massage,'' as it apparently has long been known.

The Washington Post reported today that Pelosi's office had been notified in October about concerns about the behavior of the congressman from western New York State, the one who now speaks so casually and publicly on cable TV about those tickle-fests that he enjoyed so much in his Navy days -- with former shipmates of the 20-year Navy veteran elected to Congress in 2008 telling new tales of his old "snorkeling.''

Joe Racalto, Massa's chief of staff, "was uneasy that Massa, 50, was living with several young, unmarried male staffers and using sexually explicit language with them,'' the Post reported, citicing a source. "But what finally prompted him to call Pelosi's director of member services, the source said, was a lunch date that Massa made with a congressional aide in his 20s who worked in the office of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). According to a person briefed on the call, Racalto was concerned that the lunch followed a pattern by Massa -- who is married and has two children -- of trying to spend time alone with young gay men with no ostensible work purpose.''

Massa resigned from the House on Monday, and that might have been the end of it had Republicans not readily seen the significance of the scent of a coverup in a scandal all too reminiscent of the former GOP leadership's mishandling of the behavior of former Rep. Mark Foley of Florida. Not to mention Glenn Beck's cable-broadcast spectacle with Massa (above.)

"Now they're saying I groped a male staffer - yeah I did,'' Massa told Beck this week. "Not only did I grope him I tickled him 'til he couldn't breathe. Then four guys jumped on top of me."

The Atlantic has looked up some old Massa shipmates.

"According to Peter Clarke, a Navy shipmate, Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates. He tells the story of his friend Stuart Borsch, with whom Massa shared a hotel room while on leave during the first Gulf War. "Stuart's at the edge of the bed," Clarke says Borsch told him at the time, "and [Massa] starts massaging him. Massa said, 'You'll have to get one of my special massages.' He called them 'Massa Massages.'" Ron Moss, a Navy shipmate and Borsch's roommate, confirmed that Borsch told him this story at the time.

"Borsch, now a history professor at Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., didn't addresss that specific incident, but did confirm to me in an email that he was groped by Massa: "In 1990, aboard the U.S.S. Jouett, I was awakened when a senior officer, Lt. Commander Massa, seemed to be groping me. (I was a lieutenant at the time.) I believe he may have been drinking. I shouted at him and he left. I mentioned the incident to several other officers. I did not officially report it."

"Clarke says that Massa's roommate, Tom Maxfield, was also assaulted. "Tom lived on upper bunk," Clarke say. "When you're on ship, you're almost exhausted 24-7. So a lot of times you sleep with your uniform on. Tom and Massa shared a stateroom together. Massa climbed up on the top of his bunk, which is hard to do--you never crawl up on somebody else's bunk. He wakes up to Massa undoing his pants trying to snorkel him."

Massa is "a very sick person,'' Pelosi talk-show host Charlie Rose last night.

by Mark Silva

When President Barack Obama speaks of insisting on that "up or down vote'' on healthcare, he, of course, counts on an up vote.

And with that insistence -- in the face of a House whose leaders are strugglng to assemble 216 votes, with a few seats vacant, and a Senate whose leaders are hoping to amass 50 plus one, even if it takes the vice president to break the tie -- Obama effectively is laying his presidency on the line.

It's a damn-the-polls, full-speed-ahead strategy.

"Now, sometimes the decisions we make in the short term are not going to be popular, and the folks in Washington don't understand that I know they're not going to be popular,'' the president said at a fundraiser last night for Sen. Claire McCaskill in St. Louis last night. "They can't believe I'm doing them. See, they just think I'm an idiot -- (laughter, White House note) -- because I'm doing something that's not immediately popular.

"But I've got pollsters. I've got very good pollsters,'' Obama told the Democratic crowd. "They send me the polls. They say, you know what, shoring up the financial system, not popular... Helping out the auto industry, not popular. Passing the Recovery Act, not popular.

"That's okay. Because my job is not being popular,'' Obama said. "My job is solving problems for the American people. I've got a greater responsibility. I've got a deeper mission. (Applause.) I'm looking at 10 years from now, will you look back and say that what he did made sense for the American people; not whether tomorrow people are going to be looking and saying, that made him popular...

"Listen, you remember -- you remember a year ago, everybody was saying -- we had only been there for two months. They said, "Oh, his financial plan is a disaster." Stock market had dropped. Remember that? Everybody is like, his presidency is over; he's been in three months. Now, suddenly you look up, financial system is stabilized.

"People said, "Oh, you know what, why is he getting involved in this auto thing? Big mistake." Now, suddenly General Motors is hiring again. They said, "Well, I don't know about this Recovery Act." Except all over Missouri and all across the nation, roads are being repaved and bridges are being repaired and waterways are being rebuilt. And we're putting Americans back to work. We're laying the foundation for tomorrow. And instead of the economy contracting 6 percent it's now growing 6 percent.

"So I think about what's right and then figure out -- whether the politics will work out or not, I'm confident in the American people,'' said Obama, who campaigned for healthcare reform in Pennsylvania and Missouri this week and will head to Ohio next week and has, in what may be the home-stretch for that "up or down vote'' concluded with the campaign of campaigns, a campaign upon which the credibility of his term in office may rest.

The president is assuring everyone that he has the fuel for the fight.

"You know, we were meeting with some supporters back here, and a couple of them said the same thing.,'' Obama said on stage in St. Louis last night. "They said, "Don't let them wear you down." And I tried to explain I don't get worn down; I wear them down.

"I don't get worn down.''

by Noam N. Levey

Touting a new initiative to reduce waste in Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs, President Barack Obama traveled to suburban St. Louis Wednesday to keep up momentum behind his push to complete work on a health overhaul this month.

Obama redoubled his warning that failing to step up regulation of the insurance industry as part of a broader health overhaul would leave more Americans struggling with rising premiums.

And in a campaign-style speech delivered with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, Obama called for an end to political gamesmanship in Washington and a swift vote on his healthcare plan. "The time for talk is over," Obama told a crowd in St. Charles, Mo. "I'm tired of talking about it."

The president's trip - the second this week outside Washington - came as administration officials and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill work on scheduling a series of votes that will be needed to send Obama healthcare legislation before Congress recesses for its Easter break.

With Republicans opposed to a sweeping overhaul, Democrats are trying to hold the first vote next week in the House, where party leaders hope to pass the healthcare bill that the Senate passed in December.

They then hope to use a process known as budget reconciliation to push a package of changes through the House and Senate.

by Mark Silva

In the end, it may all come down to the meaning of is.

Karl Rove, "architect'' of former President George W. Bush's two election campaigns, is making the rounds with his new book. Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, the columnist who covered Bush closely, calls it "500 pages of... rewriting history... That business about President George W. Bush misleading the nation about Iraq? Didn't happen ... Condoning torture? Wrong!"

"I devoted an entire chapter to showing that Bush did not lie about Iraq," Rove told the Today Show's Matt Lauer, in response to that review. "He may be able to dismiss it in one snarky line, but I have the facts in here."

Rove maintains that Bush misled no one with his warnings that the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

And Rove maintains that the White House was misleading no one when a spokesman maintained in the midst of the Valerie Plame scandal that Rove had not revealed the identity of the CIA operative whose husband accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to make its case for the invasion of Iraq.

When the columnist Robert Novak told Rove he'd heard that Plame was behind her husband's investigation of pre-war intelligence, Rove said, he replied that, yes, he had heard that -- but he was not identifying anyone, he maintains, and not wittiningly serving as the columnist's confirming source for a sensational story that ended with conviction of the vice president's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter'' Libby, for obstruction of justice in the Plame inquiry. Bush commuted Libby's sentence, but never fully pardoned him.

"The intelligence was worldwide agreed that (Iraq) had WMD," Rove told Lauer. "In fact, I quote Democrats. There were 110 Democrats who voted for the Iraq war resolution. Sixty-seven of those Democrats, including John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, on the floor of the Congress, said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

The big mistake Rove made, he suggests, was not forcefully countering the Democrats who later claimed that Bush had lied about WMDs.

In July 2003, then-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who voted against the invasion, accused Bush of lying about Iraq's possession of weapons. Within the next two days, Rove recalls, five major Democrats, including Sens. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, repeated the charge. "When you have five major Democrats pick up the same line in two days which they know is incorrect, it is a political attack aimed at the heart of the administration, and we should have responded stronger than we did," Rove said.

Rove also was investigated during federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's probe of the Plame identity-leak, and appeared before the Grand Jury, but was cleared of lying about his involvement. When he learned that he would not be indicted, Rove has written and said, he wept.

That, it seems, is the way it was.

by Christi Parsons

A former Army intelligence officer is President Barack Obama's choice to head the Transportation Security Administration, an administration official said today.

The appointment of retired Gen. Robert Harding is expected later today, as the Obama administration adjusts the nation's transportation safety system in the wake of the attempted airliner attack on Christmas Day.

Formerly the Pentagon's leading intelligence official, Harding served in the Army for 33 years before his retirement in 2001. He has since gone on to serve as an intelligence consultant to the government.

If confirmed by the Senate, Harding would become the fifth person to lead the TSA, formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Obama originally appointed Erroll Southers, a Los Angeles International Airport official, to serve in the position, but Southers withdrew from consideration as he faced an uphill confirmation battle.

"The TSA administrator is the most important unfilled post in the Obama administration," the administration official said. "Mr. Harding has the experience and perspective to make a real difference in carrying out the mission of the agency. If there was ever a nominee that warranted expedited, but detailed, consideration
in the Senate, this is it."

by Mark Silva

JACSKONVILLE, Fla. -- The return to the moon may be on hold.

But the space program goes on, and President Barack Obama is planning a White House conference on the administration's vision for a future in space.

On April 15, the president will host a conference with other top officials and space program administraitors tol discuss "the new course the administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human space flight,'' the White House announced today.

As the administraition pulls back on funding for another moon mission, the White House says the conference will focus on "the goals and strategies in this new vision, the next steps, and the new technologies, new jobs, and new industries it will create.''

In a state hard-hit by the recession, with "bank-owned'' and "short-sale'' as common a sign on the streets here lately as the "closed'' signs on strip malls and even Wendy's -- an election year in which both the governor's office and a Senate seat are up for grabs -- the conference also will focus on the program's potential impact on Florida.

In the aftermath of a review that has found that "the previous program to return astronauts to the moon was fundamentally un-executable,'' the president has proposed an additional $6 billion for NASA in his 2011 federal budget. This is intended to underwrite "a more dynamic, flexible, and sustainable trajectory that can propel us on a new journey of innovation and discovery,'' the White House said today.

The strategy includes investment in a program for travel to the "nearby Solar System neighborhood in a more effective and affordable way,'' laying a foundation for journeys to the moon asteroids, and eventually to Mars.

In Florida, that means an additional $1.9 billion over five years "to ensure that the Florida space coast remains a world-class space launch facility for decades to come,'' the White House says. That includes a new commercial crew transportation industry that f could create as many as 1,700 new jobs in the Sunshine State.

by Mark Silva and updated

President Barack Obama, intent on an "up or down vote'' on healthcare reform, maintains that Americans cannot wait another decade to address the issue.

"We also know what the future will look like if we don't act - if we let this opportunity pass for another year, or another decade, or another generation,' the president says in his weekly radio and Internet address today.

"More Americans will lose their family's health insurance if they switch jobs or lose their job. More small businesses will be forced to choose between health care and hiring. More insurance companies will raise premiums and deny coverage. And the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid will sink our government deeper and deeper into debt.''

Obama is calling on the Senate and House to act in the next few weeks.

"I know it has been a long and hard road to this point,'' he said today. "And we are not finished with our journey just yet. But we are close. We are very close. And so I ask Congress to finish its work. I ask them to give the American people an up or down vote.''

The Republican counterattack today sounds the party's repeating refrain: Rep. Parker Griffith, a physician from Georgia, says the president's party is trying to "jam through a massive government takeover of healthcare. It would raise taxes, slash Medicare benefits and destroy American jobs.''

Griffith, who arrived in Congress two years ago as an independent, a "conservatve Democrat,'' says he has aligned with the Republicans because he "became increasingly concerned that the policies being pushed by Democrats in Washington were dangerous for our country and out of step with our values.

"Instead of working across the aisle and focusing on creating jobs, Democratic leaders pressed ahead with their partisan, big-government agenda of taxing, spending, and borrowing from our children and grandchildren,'' he says. "The trillion-dollar 'stimulus,' the 'cap-and-trade' national energy tax, I voted against them.''

And now the doctor is voting against healthcare reform.

See the president's address above, the GOP address when it's available at the party's weekly address Website, and read the texts of both below, here in the Swamp now:

Also, here's Griffith explaining his move to the GOP:

by Mark Silva

At the close of this week in which the Brooklyn district attorney found no cause for prosecution of the ACORN workers involved in the infamous undercover video-sting by James O'Keefe and his partner posing as a prostitute -- an episode which cost the national community organization its federal funding -- the suggestion now that O'Keefe's video was a little too artful for its own good (he was not really dressed like a pimp) has prompted Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert to tape his own artfully edited conversation with FOX News' Sean Hannity, one of the conservative commentators who early on praised the work of O'Keefe as pioneering muckraking.

Inasmuch as that was one of the longest sentences we have written in some time, and given the fact that this is Friday, we simply commend The Colbert Report's rap on Hannity for your afternoon viewing. We'll happily welcome Hannity's reply.

TGIF.

by Mark Silva

The first time that John McCain ran for the Senate in Arizona, a state where he had resided for just six years, four of them as a congressman, he made a joke about retired people that he quickly came to rue.

Addressing an audience in Tucson, McCain referred to Leisure World, a retirement golf community in Mesa, as "Seizure World.'' Ninety-seven percent of the residents had voted in the last election, he said, and "the other 3 percent were in intensive care.'' His rival turned the joke on McCain, who learned something about the art of rapid response and also attributed the line to his own irrepressible trait as a "wiseass.''

There's no more joking around in the district that McCain inherited in 1986 from Barry Goldwater. This year, the fourth-term senator faces a fight within his own GOP from a conservative challenger, J.D. Hayworth, tagging McCain as the ultimate insider.

This time, McCain is importing Scott Brown.

The Massachusetts Republican who won the Senate seat held for nearly five decades by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy -- one of McCain's partners in a career of bipartisan legislation in Washington -- is making his first campaign trip as senator.

His visit to Arizona today is a test of his popularity among Republican activists after he broke with the GOP leadership to side with Democrats in supporting a jobs bill soon after taking office and denying the Democrats of their super-majority in the Senate.

"As a nationally popular Republican representing a left-leaning state, Brown walks a fine line between pleasing his base and positioning himself for re-election,'' the Associated Press' Jonathan Cooper writes. "It's a challenge McCain knows well. Some Arizona conservatives have long been skeptical of the Arizona senator over his own work with Democrats in support of issues including campaign-finance and immigration reform.''

Brown's visit is supposed to help the senior senator from Arizona galvanize support on the right. Brown's victory gave Republicans the crucial 41st vote they needed to block Democratic legislation in the Senate. On his first opportunity to do so, however, he was one of five Republicans to prevent a filibuster and allow the jobs bill to advance. It later passed the Senate on a formal vote with support from 13 Republicans.

Brown is stumping with McCain in Phoenix today and Tucson on Saturday, with a fundraiser planned in Scottsdale. McCain was one of Brown's earliest backers in the Bay State special election at a time when he looked like a longshot for the Senate. Days after election, Brown recorded a phone call asking Arizona Republicans to support McCain.

Leaders of four key Arizona "tea party" groups have announced that they will not endorse any candidate in the race, a blow to McCain's GOP primary opponent, who has tried to define himself as the race's tea party candidate. Hayworth, former congressman and conservative talk-radio host, announced in January that he would challenge McCain.

by Julian E. Barnes and Christi Parsons

Key presidential advisors are pushing to move the trial of the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks to a military commission, abandoning plans to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others in federal courts, according to current and former officials.

The recommendation has deeply distressed human rights groups who believe that, if endorsed by President Obama, the change will mean a nearly wholesale return to the detention policies of the Bush administration.

The administration's plans to hold a trial in New York City met widespread, bipartisan resistance, and other venues have proven difficult to find.

"It is politically untenable," said one official. "No place wants to hold a trial."

Officials emphasized that the formal recommendation has not been made to the president, and Obama has made no decisions.

Conservatives have repeatedly demanded that the Sept 11. plotters be tried by military commissions. And embracing the commissions could be a key part of a compromise that would win congressional approval for purchasing a state prison in Thomson, Ill., and moving detainees held at the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to that facility.

If Congress approves the purchase of Thomson, the administration would likely hold Mohammed's military trial at the prison.

Using the military commissions "is part of a broader package the administration is hoping to work out to once and for all put the whole detention policy on a surer footing," said Charles Stimson, a former Pentagon official. "It remains to be seen whether or not if they will get the broad political support to do it, but I applaud them."

by Mark Silva

"I don't answer to my party,'' Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln says in the debut of her reelection campaign's television advertising. "I answer to Arkansas.''

And so we have it, that sign of an endangered Democrat running against part of her own party's agenda in Washington -- against the Wall Street and auto company bailouts, and against "the cap and trade bill.''

And notably: Against the "public option'' that was proposed in the healthcare bill. The Senate, of course, stripped that out of its bill, which all 58 Democrats and two independents support in the days when the Democrats still held a super-majority.

The senator faces a serious challenge from within her own party by Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who has drawn swift and significant support from the party's left.

Organized labor and liberals have committed more than $5 million to Halter's campaign, as Politico.com noted this week, "signaling that the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary is shaping up, for the left, as a hill to die on.

"Virtually overnight, outside groups have erased the seemingly insurmountable financial advantage Lincoln brought to the contest. On Tuesday, an umbrella of four labor groups that have long been frustrated over Lincoln's refusal to support card check legislation -- the AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, AFSCME and United Steelworkers of America -- jointly announced they were each pledging to spend $1 million in an all-out effort to dislodge Lincoln.

"By Wednesday morning, a coalition of liberal organizations led by MoveOn.org -- which blasted out a fundraising appeal calling Lincoln "one of the worst Democratic senators" -- had raised an eye-popping $1.1 million for Halter, Arkansas' lieutenant governor, who announced his candidacy Monday.''

So Lincoln has gone courting the center, while attempting to put some distance between herself and Washington, portrayed in this ad as a bunch of unruly schoolchildren beating one another over the heads with baseball bats and tossing money around like it's, well, kids' stuff.

by Don Lee

The nation's unemployment rate held steady in February at 9.7 percent, the government said today, and employer payrolls dropped by a net 36,000 last month, although most if not all of the decline was seen as due to temporary work stoppages stemming from the blizzards on the East Coast.

The latest snapshot of the economy, though harder to interpret because of the influence of the weather, was generally consistent with a slowly improving job market in which layoffs have fallen sharply but vigorous hiring remains elusive.

Economists on average were expecting net job losses of about 50,000 in February. Without the effects of the weather, some analysts said, the economy probably would have added about 25,000 to their payrolls last month. The nation lost 26,000 jobs in January and 109,000 positions in December, when the unemployment rate was 10 percent.

The payroll jobs data are derived from a survey of employers and are seasonally adjusted, but those statistical adjustments are based on past average fluctuations, and last month's snow storms along the mid-Atlantic were hardly normal, shutting down many businesses, schools and transportation routes. The biggest effect was most likely borne by the construction industry, which dropped 64,000 jobs last month.

There were some hopeful signs as well: Manufacturers added a tiny 1,000 jobs last month after a 20,000 increase in January, the first upturn after factory payrolls plunged by more than two million during the last two years of the deep recession. The temporary-help industry, widely seen as a harbinger of broader hiring, expanded by another 48,000 jobs in February, bringing to 285,000 the number added since September.

By Julian E. Barnes

A California man who attempted to enter the Pentagon by force and was shot by police has died from his wounds, police said this morning.

The shooter, whom official identified as John Patrick Bedell, 36, walked up to the Pentagon Thursday evening, drew at least one gun and started firing, wounding two officers. Police said Bedell acted alone.

"There is no indication at this point there are any domestic or international terror nexus at all," Richard S. Keevill, chief of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, the civilian police agency that guards the five-sided building, said today. "It appears to be a single individual with issues."

Bedell was armed with two 9 mm semi-automatic weapons and had a large number of magazines. Three officers opened fire in return. Two were injured slightly, taken to the hospital and then released.

The gunfight took place at about 6:40 p.m. EST, yards from the entrance to the giant Defense Department installation as workers were heading home, police said. Employees were ordered back to their offices and the building was locked down for a time, with no one allowed in or out.

"He was very well dressed in a suit," Keevill said of the accused shooter. "There was no indication on the way he was dressed he had hostile intent. He was very calm. There was no distress in his appearance. He walked directly to the officers and engaged."

The area just outside the Pentagon has a lot of commuters, serving as a transit hub for the Washington Metro railway system and many of the region's buses. The Metro station is one of the busiest in the Washington-area system, with thousands of commuters passing through, transferring from trains to buses.

The Metro entrance is just outside the doors of the Pentagon, meaning anyone can approach the building from the Metro. A force of officers guards the entrance during working hours, and people who work inside must flash badges before entering. Those without badges are ushered to a metal detector to be searched, then are escorted inside.