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

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.

by Mark Silva

A somewhat bizarre tale unfolded today of Republican Party fundraising tactics that pictured the president of the United States as "The Joker,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Cruella de Vil and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Scooby Doo.

And better yet, characterized the party's own donors as "ego-driven.''

The 72-page PowerPoint presentation delivered to party fundraisers in Boca Raton, Fla., last month, made a direct appeal to "extreme negative feelings" toward Democrats -- tactics which the Republican National Committee now publicly disavows as inappropriate. It played on memories of an image of the president which had been circulated on street-posters last year (pictured here.)

"What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House or the Senate...?" one slide in the presentation asked its fundraising sales force. "Save the country from tending toward Socialism!"

Republican Party leaders today rejected the pitch, which was revealed by Politico.com -- which notes that GOP leaders are "scrambling'' to distance themselves from the document. Sen. John Thune, a member of the Republican leadership, said: "There is no place for this. Obviously when you're fundraising you want to make points and you want to make direct and succinct points, but using these sorts of tactics is certainly not something that any of us ought to condone."

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called the cartoon images of the president and Democratic leaders inappropriate and blamed a party staffer who made a "decision to say, 'Hey, we'll have some fun with this, and people will laugh and joke about it."'

"Clearly it's not something that I would tolerate and certainly would not want presented to me, and we're dealing with it administratively," said Steele, who maintains that he learned of the document only on Wednesday,. "Yes, you want to get out there and state things that rile people up and get them excited and create images that will do that," Steele said, "but this is the line that we won't tolerate nor cross in the RNC."

The Democratic National Committee pounced on the document as "Republican fear mongering.'' Republicans used "the most despicable kind of imagery, tactics and rhetoric imaginable," DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse said.

The presentation encourages fundraisers to use a direct marketing pitch that exploits "extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration." It also describes ways to appeal to major donors, including "peer to peer pressure," "access" and "ego driven."

Republican strategist John Feehery, a onetime aide to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, said the document points to a fact about fundraising: It takes some scare-tactics to shake the money tree.

"This is inartfully done," Feehery said, while noting that Femocrats once tried to scare their donors about President George W. Bush's "fascism" and about Sarah Palin's supposed "stupidity and her religious zealotry."

"The ugly truth of fundraising is you try to caricature the opposition,'' Feehery said. "You don't get any money if you call your opponent a good guy.''

The Asssociated Press contributed to this report.

by Mark Silva

ABC News' Jonathan Karl -- fresh from his "senator-only'' elevator interview with Sen. Jim Bunning, the one-man filibuster who held up unemployment benefit extensions for five days-- had a little subway interview with Sen. John McCain beneath the Capitol.

In "the subway series,'' as Karl called his brief chat with McCain, the correspondent asked the senator what ever became of that "old John McCain'' who was known for working across party lines -- negotiating with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on immigration reform, bargaining with Sen. Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform. The senator who also was "a thorn in the side'' of his own party for many years.

Now that McCain is in lockstep with his party in opposition to President Barack Obama's healthcare legislation -- and McCain has chafed that what's going on now is not bipartisan by any means, but rather a party-line ramming of a bill through Congress with a reconciliation vote that jeopardizes the integrity of the institution itself -- the senior senator from Arizona maintains that he is doing what he always has done best. Fight.

"The old John McCain and the new John -- the present John McCain,'' McCain told Karl. "I fight for what I believe in. I'm a fighter. I enjoy -- one of the reasons I miss Ted Kennedy so much -- it's because a fight not joined is a fight not enjoyed."

Which will serve McCain well, because he has quite a fight of his own back home with J.D. Hayworth, the conservative Republican challenging McCain for his party's nomination for a fifth term in the Senate. McCain, who was held for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, first was elected to the House in 1982, the Senate in '86. The "old John McCain,'' who overcame a limited role in "the Keating Five'' influence-peddling scandal, went on to become a champion of campaign reform, ran for president in 2000 and became his party's presidential nominee in 2008.

And McCain mixed it up pretty well once again with Obama -- who told McCain, "the election's over'' -- in their recent bipartisan healthcare summit. McCain likes this fight so much that he has posted in, and this interview with FOX's Sean Hannity, on his Senate Web-site, a tape clearly intended for home-state consumption in that Arizona fight.

Asked if Obama had been a little short with McCain, the senator said of their healthcare argument: "I felt that he wanted to get off the subject as quickly as possible, because it's not defensible.... n Arizona, I've been having town hall meetings for the past year all over my state ever since, as he reminded he, I lost... People are as angry about the process as they are the product.'' See that interview here, and Karl's above.

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama motivated many young people in his campaign for the White House, and it turns out that the young have maintained greater faith in his presidency than older Americans have.

The president's job approval among younger people -- those 18 to 29 of age -- has averaged 66 percent during his presidency.

That is 15 percentage points higher than Obama's average approval among senior citizens.

It also represents a divide between younger and older Americans that wasn't seen in the presidencies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, according to the Gallup Poll.

During their entire presidencies, Clinton held an average job approval rating of 55 percent, Bush 49 percent -- though he ended much lower. During his entire presidency, Obama has averaged 57 percent job approval in Gallup's tracking -- though it has been in the low 50s lately.

But Clinton's approval rating was "remarkably consistent'' among the young and old, ranging from 57 percent among the youngest to 54 percent among the oldest Americans.

Bush's approval ratings varied only six points between his 46 percent average approval among the youngest and oldest and 52 percent among the middle-aged.

"The greater age variation in Obama's ratings results largely from his high approval ratings from young adults,'' Gallup's Jeffrey Jones reports today.

"Obama's approval ratings among young adults have consistently exceeded those among older Americans throughout his presidency. Even as his overall approval rating has declined to the 50 percent range in recent months, his support among young adults remains relatively strong, averaging 60 percent last month. By comparison, an average of 43% of senior citizens approved of the job Obama was doing in February.''

by Mark Silva

People can say what "they want,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today, but there "is going to be'' a healthcare bill.

People need to believe in three things, the speaker said about a fight over abortion funding that is dividing conservative and liberal Democrats:

-- "One is, there is no federally funded abortion'' in the bill. "That is the law of the land. It is not changed in this bill.''

-- "It is abortion-neutral in terms of access or dimunition of access'' to abortion.

-- "Third, we want to pass a health care bill.''

"If you believe in all three... then we will pass the bill,'' Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at her weekly briefing today. The House majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), said today that leaders plan to take it to a vote before their Easter recess on March 29.

As for a continuing argument that the Senate-passed legislation which the House will be asked to pass isn't specific enough about blocking federal funding of abortions, Pelosi said: "When people think there isn't going to be a bill, they can take any position they want, but now they know there is going to be a bill.''

by Mark Silva

The groundhog may have delivered bad news this winter.

But in Washington, D.C., where the White House today declared a disaster stemming from the season's record snowfall -- you should see the piles of dirty snow in the parking lot of the Pentagon -- hope springs anew:

The National Park Service's chief horticulturalist, Rob DeFeo, made a prediction today that should warm the hearts of any spring-loving American: The fabled cherry blossoms will be in bloom from March 31 through April 11.

The peak period, for those packing their bags for Washington this spring, should be April 3 through 8.

The annual National Cherry Blossom Festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of tourists and jams the blossom-lined sidewalk around the Tidal Basin, is set to run March 27 to April 11, so it seems the organizers have planned well.

This year marks the 98th anniversary of Japan's gift of cherry trees to the nation's capital. Washington may have been declared a winter disaster area today, but DeFeo says the city's record snowfall hasn't hurt the cherry trees.

by Mark Silva and Michael Muskal

That kiddie-chatter from the control tower at JFK International Airport is the air-traffic-control heard 'round the world today.

And Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood isn't laughing.

The secretary today promised senators a complete investigation into how an air traffic controller allowed his two children to radio instructions to pilots, clearing them from take-off -- "the next generation of air-traffic control,'' their dad told the pilots.

"This is a stunning example of a lack of professionalism, not following the rules, not using common sense," LaHood told a Senate committee. "The air traffic controller and his supervisor are on administrative leave and we are doing a thorough and complete investigation.

"The idea that a young child would be directing planes in and out of an airport is totally unacceptable,'' said LaHood, a retired congressman from Peoria.

The controller, working at John F. Kennedy International Airpor in Queens, N.Y., brought his son to work and let the youngster read a few routine messages to pilots and then brought in his daughter to do the same the next day.

"Roger that,'' one pilot replied.

by James Oliphant and Richard Simon

In an untraditional twist, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) will replace Rep. Charles Rangel as acting chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee rather than Rep. Pete Stark of California.

Because of seniority, Stark had been in line to take the job and, as of last evening, House Democrats indicated that it was his, at least on an interim basis.

But Stark's politics --- he's an unapologetic liberal --- and his volatility, with a history of making controversial and provocative statements, concerned other members of the committee as well as the Democratic leadership.

Stark also has been in ill health in recent years, frequently missing votes. And, as chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on health, he has been intensely focused on healthcare issues rather than larger economic ones.

In a statement, Stark said he wanted to stay in charge of his subcommittee.

"I have decided to remain as chair of the Ways and Means Health subcommittee. We are at the cusp of achieving healthcare reform, and we must remain focused on moving forward," he said. "Once we pass health reform, it will take careful oversight to make sure that it is being implemented correctly."

Ways and Means is charged with writing tax policy, which gives it sweeping authority over any piece of legislation that involves revenue.

In that sense, Levin could make for a better fit. He's an expert on trade issues and is considered to be much more moderate than Stark.

by Mark Silva

Sarah Palin, author of Going Rogue, is going on to "virtues.''

The Republican Party's 2008 nominee for vice president will deliver another book billed as a "celebration of American virtues and strengths," her publisher, HarperCollins announced today.

Going Rogue, the former Alaska governor's first book, has sold 2.2 million copies, according to the publisher.

Palin's second book, arriving as the 2012 election cycle nears, will feature selections of readings that have inspired her and portraits of people whom she admires.

"She will also draw from her personal experience to amplify these timely (and timeless) themes," HarperCollins said in a statement today.

Palin is a commentator for Fox News, where she recently said she was open to a possible White House run in 2012 but had not made up her mind.

" I would if I believed that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family. Certainly, I would do so,'' Palin told FOX's Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday. "I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country. I don't know if it's going to be ever seeking a title, though.''

Republican Mitt Romney, who sought the GOP's nomination for president in 2008 and is widely believed to be planning another run in '12, launched a book tour this week for his own work: No Apology.

HarperCollins, which also is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has not disclosed the advance fee.

by Mark Silva

Rep. Bart Stupak, the Democrat from Northern Michigan who won a controversial prohibition against federal funding for abortion in the House's healthcare bill, says there is no way that he and his allies on the issue will accept the Senate bill lacking a strong restriction.

"In its present form, the Senate healthcare bill is going nowhere in the House of Representatives,'' Stupak said today in an appearance on the FOX Business Network.

But won't the House have to accept the Senate bill and then approve an additional fix? "Certain people say that,'' Stupak said, voicing a willingness to look at the final package. But "no one has yet outlined the process to us about how that is going to be done.....

"My intent is not to hold up this legislation - my intent is to keep current law,'' he said, noting that eight existing laws prohibit federal funding for abortion. "I want to see healthcare passed... but there is a principle and a belief, that the American people agree with, that says no funding for abortion, and that is a principle and belief we're going to continue to fight for'' in the healthcare legislation.

Which is doubly interesting, because some Democrats, such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Chicago, have insisted that there is no way they will accept a final bill if it contains the Stupak anti-abortion funding language.

Schakowsky, who appeared on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show recently, said this about any final bill that House members ultimately address: "The pro-choice members, 42 of us who signed a letter saying we want to maintain the status quo, will not vote for the bill if it includes the Stupak language.''

Healthcare is important to the president, Stupak said, and Democrats want to help. "We'll vote for quality legislation, and the Senate bill is not quality legislation,'' he said. "The underlying principle, for many of us, is no public funding for abortion.''

The Senate bill "won't even come close to passing'' in the House, Stupak said today in the FOX News interview.

However, the way that the ultimate deal is likely to be presented to House Democrats is that they will: 1) accept the Senate-passed bill, and 2) accept a second bill that aligns the two chambers and which leaders are ready to push through the Senate on a 51-plus reconciliation vote.

There is no problem with using budgetary reconciliation in the Senate to pass the ultimate fix, Stupak suggests, because all that means is a 51-vote majority. "I've seen this before - the Bush tax-cuts, basically a party line vote. We've used reconciliation quite a bit.''

(This was the earlier report on Rep. Schakowsky's stance:)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy