The Republican Party has apparently decided that they really want to have a big public fight with President Obama over whether or not employers with connections to religious institutions should be required to provide birth control as part of their employee’s health insurance. The GOP is acting like they believe the issue is a political winner for them, while the Administration is seeking a compromise to avoid the fight.

Administration officials are preparing the ground for some kind of rollback on universal access for birth control, after the US Conference of Catholic Bishops turned the issue into a major controversy. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney hinted at changes to the regulations and other Admin sources dropped hints.

Keeping a meme aloft is hard work in America’s constantly shifting political landscape. David “Axe” Axelrod must have thought the “Mitt’s weird!” message was in danger of sinking below the waves of Minnesota Not-Nice during yesterday’s FOX/GOP (but I repeat myself) debate in Iowa.

So Body Spray Dave did what all good campaign advisers do: he went on Morning Joke to “tamp down” the rumors that the Obama campaign, bereft of a decent economy or a motivated base, would organize itself around Mitt’s weirdness.

Seriously, David Axelrod? You ride to the White House on a campaign to rise above intolerance, negativity and partisanship, and without a moment of self-reflection, announce a campaign based on … intolerance, negativity and partisanship? Rather than fix the economy by having the political courage to do what you said needed to be done when you were stoking people’s hope in 2008, you now plan to impose the austerity measures they overwhelmingly oppose and raise hundreds of millions of dollars to tell people your “weird” opponent in his “skinny jeans” is not “principled and consistent”? You want to fan the same bigotry and cultural biases the President promised to rise above, hoping win reelection by virtue suppressing turnout?

Unless President Obama changes course — but quick — what this means is: President Romney.

In a defiant, out-of-touch speech on state television, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced in a late-night statement that he will ask the government to resign and install a new one tomorrow. However, Mubarak will not resign or leave the country. Many of the government ministers scheduled to be sacked have been in place a decade or more.

At the beginning of Obama’s term, when he talked about governing as a pragmatist, I perhaps foolishly believed he meant not pragmatism as DC understands it–as a principle-less squishy middle–but as the Pragmatist school of philosophers would mean it–as someone fundamentally open to and respectful of the ideas and viewpoints of all. Mind you, it [...]

The reason some of us were insistent that what Bernie Sanders was doing on Friday was not really a filibuster was that it did nothing to stop or even slow down the advance of the tax cut bill. Today, the Senate will hold the first cloture vote, on the motion to proceed, and it’s expected to pass with up to 70 votes.

Richard Wolffe is doing the rounds, promoting his new book Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House. Looks like the White House is in “blame Rahm” mode:

I have no idea why there hasn’t been a shakeup in the White House, but the fact that Axelrod is still out there flubbing the messaging seems to indicate that they aren’t aware of the scope of the problem.