AP: President Barack Obama's choice to head the CIA faces a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing just hours after lawmakers are expected to receive a classified report providing the rationale for drone strikes targeting Americans working with al-Qaida overseas. John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief and Obama's nominee to run the nation's spy agency, helped manage the drone program. The confirmation hearing Thursday sets the stage for a public airing of some of the most controversial programs in the covert war on al-Qaida, from the deadly drone strikes to the CIA's use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding during President George W. Bush's administration.”

NBC’s Tom Curry reports “President Obama directed the Justice Department to give congressional intelligence committees access to the classified memos justifying the targeted killings policy on Wednesday. Until now the administration had refused to do this.”  

Reuters: “The Senate Armed Services Committee delayed a vote on Chuck Hagel's confirmation as secretary of defense, the panel's chairman said on Wednesday, amid Republican demands for more information from President Barack Obama's nominee. ‘The committee's vote on Senator Hagel's nomination has not been scheduled,’ Senator Carl Levin said in a statement. ‘I had hoped to hold a vote on the nomination this week, but the committee's review of the nomination is not yet complete.’”

List of the cabinet picks to come including Commerce Secretary, Energy Secretary, EPA Administrator, Labor Secretary, per National Journal.

The Atlantic Wire: “As he continues to fill out his cabinet, a report emerged late Wednesday that President Obama is "close to choosing" Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker as America's next Secretary of Commerce. There's only one problem. She and her secretive family have been caught up in some pretty dodgy commercial ventures including but not limited to dodging taxes and running a bank that specialized in subprime mortgages.”

“Palestinian officials said Thursday they hope President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to the region signals readiness to re-engage in Mideast peace efforts, but that negotiations can only resume if Washington is ready to get tough with Israel,” The Associated Press reports. “The Palestinians have long been anxious for the U.S. to revive serious talks with Israel. Their expectations were dampened following a White House statement that Obama will not pursue any new peace initiatives on his visit, expected in late March.”

Haaretz: “Palestinian Authority officials reacted cooly to the White House announcement of President Barack Obama's plan to visit Israel and the PA in March. Perhaps the brief, laconic response of PA President Mahmoud Abbas reflects the Palestinians' sense of hopelessness about the possibility of renewed negotiations leading eventually to a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.”

“President Obama on Wednesday nominated Sally Jewell, the chief executive of Recreational Equipment Inc., to lead the Interior Department, with a vow that she will balance the agency’s sometimes conflicting mandates to promote resource development and preserve the nation’s natural heritage,” the New York Times writes. “If confirmed, Ms. Jewell, a former oil company engineer and longtime advocate for conservation and outdoor recreation, will take over a department that has been embroiled in controversy over the regulation of oil and gas on public lands and in the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic Ocean. She also will be the steward of hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, from the Everglades of Florida to the Cascades of Washington State.”

New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny reports President Obama is already planning to return to the campaign trail, agreeing to hold at least 14 fundraisers this year, a move a Democratic official characterizes as an “aggressive schedule.”

“Just days after he stunned the political world by announcing he was bowing out of contention for another Senate seat, Scott Brown made a return to the private sector, joining the board of a Massachusetts-based paper processing company and negotiating a possible deal to appear on Fox News,” The Boston Globe writes. “A Fox spokesman confirmed Brown is in talks to appear on the network, which recently announced it is not renewing contracts with big-name political commentators Sarah Palin and Dick Morris. It was unclear, however, what role Brown might have on the network. Though Brown has told several Republicans that he will have a gig on Fox, the spokesman said the talks are not final.”

Politico: “Republicans and Fox News are moving to purge the controversial political creatures they created. Both were damaged badly in 2012 by loud, partisan voices that stoked the base — but that scared the hell out of many voters. Now, the GOP, with its dismal image, and Fox News, with its depressed ratings in January, are scrambling to dim those voices.”

CALIFORNIA: “The leading candidates for mayor of Los Angeles have dialed up their rhetoric as a March 5 primary draws closer, but they are still little known to a large number of voters in the city and remain determined to make a good first impression. That helps explain the mostly civil tone that re-emerged Wednesday night as the contenders squared off in a radio debate,” The Los Angeles Times reports.

By the way, the California vs. Texas war of words continues. The Sacramento Bee editorial page: “Poor Texas. With its high dropout rate, lack of health insurance coverage and economic disparities, the Lone Star State appears to be desperate, or least its governor is. How else to explain Gov. Rick Perry's unseemly radio ads attempting to lure businesses away from California? … Yes, come check out Texas. Check out a state that ranks dead last in the percent of its population with high school diplomas. Come check out a state that is last in mental health expenditures and workers' compensation coverage. Come check out a state that ranks first in the number of executions, first in the number of uninsured, first in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted and first in the amount of toxic chemicals released into water.”

More: “Gov. Jerry Brown, visiting a UPS distribution center Tuesday to celebrate a new fleet of all-electric vehicles, suggested that media hounds find something else to cover than the Perry ads. ‘It's not a serious story, guys,’ the governor told reporters. ‘It's not a burp. It's barely a fart.’ Actually, we think it's more than a fart. It's a cry for help. Perry can't create jobs, he can only steal them from other states. His campaign for the Republican presidential nomination was a joke. His beloved Dallas Cowboys haven't been in the Super Bowl since 1996.”

GEORGIA: AP: The worst-kept secret in Georgia politics is official: Rep. Paul Broun is running for the U.S. Senate. The Athens Republican is the first candidate to enter the 2014 field officially, but he’s certain not to be the last as several GOP congressmen mull a race that blew wide open when Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced last month that he would not seek a third term. Other Republicans mentioned are Reps. Paul Gingrey of Marietta, Jack Kingston of Savannah and Tom Price of Roswell. National Democrats, meanwhile, say Georgia is a prime pick-up opportunity, though no clear candidates have emerged.

MASSACHUSETTS: “The race for John Kerry’s former U.S. Senate seat could be getting more crowded in the next few days as a slew of Massachusetts Republicans are considering jumping into the special election,” The Associated Press writes. “Aides to state Sen. Bruce Tarr said the Gloucester Republican was ‘‘carefully weighing’’ a bid, while Governor’s Council member Jennie Caissie, an Oxford Republican, said Wednesday she’s also considering running. Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy Seal, has also expressed interest in the race. On Tuesday, Republican state Rep. Daniel Winslow announced he had formed an exploratory committee and said he was ‘‘99 percent there’’ when asked if he would run. Winslow, who served as legal counsel to former Gov. Mitt Romney, did not say when he would have a final decision.”

MONTANA: VIDEO: Former Montana State Senator Corey Stapleton will challenge Democratic Senator Max Baucus to become the next U.S. Senator from Montana. 

Chris Cillizza notes in the Washington Post: “Marco Rubio’s selection to deliver the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union cements the Florida senator’s role as a first-among-equals when it comes to the future leaders of the party, and sets up an intriguing dynamic over the next few years between Rubio and the man he almost certainly wants to replace.”

“Marco Rubio won’t just give the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. The Florida Senator will give two. One in English. Otro en Español,” according to the Miami Herald. “It’s the first time such a high-profile speech will be given in two languages by the same person, and it’s a sign of how crucial the Rubio has become in the GOP efforts to draw more Hispanic support and rebrand the party.”

“Republican Savior” Marco Rubio is the cover of this week’s Time magazine.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

CIA director nominee John Brennan during a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 31, 2013.

Amid new developments and revelations, President Barack Obama’s national security policies, past and future, are set to come under Senate scrutiny Thursday.

Most notably, Obama’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, will address what role the targeted killings of terrorists, either by using drone strikes or other means, have played and should play in national security policy.

Questions about targeted killings intensified Monday after a report by NBC News revealed a Justice Department memo which argued it was lawful for the president to target U.S. citizens who are leaders of al-Qaida or “an associated force.” Brennan will be appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his confirmation hearing.

On Wednesday, an Obama administration official said the president had directed the Justice Department to give the congressional intelligence committees access to classified memos justifying the targeted killings policy. Until now the administration had refused to do this.  

Addressing the past on Thursday will be Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as they testify before the Armed Services Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Senators on the panel -- especially Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. -- want to know how the U.S. military reacted to the attack, and what the Defense Department’s internal review revealed after the event.

The two hearings will feature contrasting political color: Republicans -- led by Graham, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire -- have been the ones who have made an issue of the Benghazi attack almost since it took place. They’ve implied that a full accounting of what happened was delayed until after the presidential election. Graham held up Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary until he could get a chance to question Panetta about Benghazi.

But Obama’s drone policy -- directed largely by Brennan in his role as Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser -- has drawn criticism both from progressives on the left and those on the right who are fearful of an excessive concentration of power in the presidency.

On Benghazi, much is already known. In its report on the attack, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said last December that Panetta’s Defense Department and Hillary Clinton’s State Department hadn't jointly studied the availability of U.S. military forces to defend or rescue the U.S. diplomats in Benghazi in the event of a crisis.

The Pentagon’s Africa Command didn’t have planes, helicopters, or other forces close to Benghazi on the day of the attack. “The Djibouti base was several thousand miles away. There was no Marine expeditionary unit, carrier group or a smaller group of U.S. ships closely located in the Mediterranean Sea that could have provided aerial or ground support or helped evacuate personnel from Benghazi,” the report said.

As for Brennan and drones, Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a new report called “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,” said Obama’s choice of him as CIA director “now places him as the lead executive authority over all CIA drone strikes. The real question is whether John Brennan’s move from the White House to Langley to be director of the CIA is in fact an effort for the CIA to get out of the drone strikes business.”

Zenko noted that Panetta recently said that the Pentagon, not the CIA, should be conducting the drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects.

But Zenko cautioned against those who would head into the Brennan hearing with high hopes for new information. Having read transcripts of the past 10 CIA director confirmation hearings, he said, “It would be unprecedented if there were an in-depth discussion about ongoing covert activities.” The Senate Intelligence Committee “simply doesn't work that way, especially under chairman Sen. (Dianne) Feinstein” of California, he said.

Zenko added that the most useful line of questioning of Brenna would be regarding his conceptions of airpower. Brennan has repeatedly used the cancer analogy for air strikes killing terrorists without damaging the surrounding “tissue.”

“That's a dangerous, antiseptic, and unrealistic conception of military force,” Zenko said.

Interrogation vs. deadly strikes
But Obama spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at a White House briefing Wednesday, “Far fewer civilians lose their lives in an effort to go after senior leadership in al-Qaida” by using drone attacks “as opposed to an effort to invade a country with hundreds and thousands of troops and take cities and towns.” Implication: if you want to avoid another Iraq or Afghanistan, then support Obama’s drone policy.

Carney said Obama believes “that we need to move forward with more transparency as well as create, in his words, a legal framework around how these decisions are made.” But Obama believes he has the full constitutional authority to order targeted killings -- “transparency” or no transparency.

For those skeptical of Obama’s policy, there will be two other possible lines of questioning directed at Brennan:

1. Do the foreign policy costs of Obama’s use of drones -- alienating and angering people in Muslim countries -- outweigh its benefits?
2. Does the drone policy suggest that Obama would rather kill jihadists than capture them? Adding more detainees to those already held at Guantanamo -- a facility he pledged to close but hasn’t -- could amount to a political public relations headache.

The drone strikes have been unpopular in Pakistan and other countries. Making the case that drone strikes have high costs as well as benefits, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, told Reuters recently, “What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world. The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates.”

Brennan has an opportunity on Thursday to rebut this view. He argued last August that “contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions (drone strikes) are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits” for al-Qaida. The targeted strikes against terrorists, he said, “are not the problem, they are part of the solution.”

Finally, Thursday’s Brennan hearing is a chance for senators on the panel to ask him whether Obama is using drone strikes as a less politically troublesome option than capturing detainees and putting them in Guantanamo.

This is an argument that former Bush administration officials such as ex-CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden and former CIA legal counsel John Rizzo have made.

Last week in a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, Hayden said interrogating al-Qaida operatives is a vital source of insight into the terrorists’ plans and capabilities:

But he warned, “We have made it so legally difficult and so politically dangerous to capture that it seems, from the outside looking in, that the default option is to take the terrorists off the battlefield in another sort of way” – in other words, by killing them. This could result in a loss of valuable intelligence.

Rizzo said, “It’s always been in the agency’s institutional DNA to want to collect intelligence by all sorts of means, especially human intelligence. You can’t collect human intelligence from a dead guy.”

Related:

White House: Congress to get classified drone info

4 key questions about controversial Justice Department drone memo

Legal experts fear implications of White House drone memo

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Ron Wyden figured he wouldn't get a chance to ask President Obama directly. So, in an interview Wednesday at the Democrats' Senate Retreat, the member of the Intelligence Committee -- a day before the president's nominee to be CIA director -- said he had serious questions about the non-classified Justice Department memo, obtained by NBC News.

"The memo doesn't answer the central questions," said the Oregon senator and longtime critic of the drone strikes. To Wyden, the central questions revolve around, "When does the government have the legal right to kill an American?"

The memo outlines the administration's justification for the targeted killing of American citizens overseas -- via drone strikes -- if they are considered high-level al Qaeda operatives and may be plotting attacks against the U.S.

The retreat in Annapolis was highlighted by a visit from the president. He had received a letter from Wyden and 10 other senators, both Republicans and Democrats, asking to see the rationale for that "right," as outlined in the memo.

In fact, Wyden contended, "The administration has essentially been stonewalling the committee and myself and others for over two years by not actually making that memo available with someone willing to answer questions about it."

Brennan's confirmation hearing Thursday will give Wyden his chance.

"And I want it understood that because this is such a central time, where you have an individual with such enormous influence who's really the architect of the counter-terror policy in the Obama administration," Wyden said, "that I'm going to pull out all the stops to get the actual legal analysis, because without it, in effect, the administration is, in effect, practicing secret law."

Brennan has been the president's top anti-terrorism adviser and has 25 years of CIA experience.

Wyden says the inability to get answers, coupled with the thought that life-and-death targeted killing decisions can be made without any judicial process "makes a mockery out of the oversight process."

Before hustling in to hear the president, Wyden concluded, "In effect, this position is no different than the position the Bush administration adhered to in [the overall war on terror], which, I guess is largely, 'Trust us. Trust us; we'll make the right judgments.'"

At the White House, facing a second day of questions about the matter, spokesman Jay Carney indicated the president himself is not worried by the leak.

"He thinks that it is legitimate to ask questions about how we prosecute the war against al Qaeda," Carney said.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will deliver Republicans' response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, GOP leaders announced Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., selected Rubio -- an influential Latino conservative who was first elected in 2010 -- to speak for Republicans in their official response to the president's speech.

The State of the Union response slot is often seen as a potential launching platform for politicians who harbor national ambitions; fittingly, Rubio is one of the most-hyped figures in the GOP, and is thought to have designs on the party's presidential nomination in 2016. The honor carries a degree of risk, however: many past figures to deliver their party's response have been panned for their performance.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP - Getty Images

Republican Sen. from Florida Marco Rubio speaks at the BuzzFeed Brews newsmaker event in Washington on February 5, 2013.

“I’m honored to have this opportunity to discuss how limited government and free enterprise have helped make my family’s dreams come true in America,” the Florida senator said in a statement. “Limited government and free enterprise are the very foundation of what makes America special and separates us from the world, particularly through our strong middle class.  I look forward to laying out the Republican case of how our ideas can help people close the gap between their dreams and the opportunities to realize them.”

Rubio has also helped take the lead recently in working with a bipartisan group of senators to craft a comprehensive immigration reform bill that allows a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Rubio has worked to sell that legislation to conservatives, just as immigration is sure to figure prominently in Obama's yearly address on Tuesday.

"His speech will focus on the Republican Party's agenda to grow the middle class," a Rubio aide said. "Immigration will likely be mentioned as one way to grow the economy, but the speech really is about the Republican Party's commitment to limited government as the best way to help the middle class, and how it differs from the President's plans for bigger government."

"Marco Rubio is one of our party’s most dynamic and inspiring leaders. He carries our party’s banner of freedom, opportunity and prosperity in a way few others can. His family’s story is a testament to the promise and greatness of America,” Boehner said in a statement. 

Added McConnell: "Marco Rubio embodies the optimism that lies at the heart of the Republican vision for America. On Tuesday, he will contrast the Republican approach to the challenges we face with President Obama’s vision of an ever-bigger government and the higher taxes that would be needed to pay for it."

Updated, 5:33 pm ET, Feb. 6. The Senate Armed Services Committee may delay the committee vote on the confirmation of Chuck Hagel to be the next defense secretary.

That vote was expected tomorrow. However, Republicans say the former Republican Nebraska senator has not provided all of the vetting materials requested about some his past speeches and finances, and they are looking into a complaint by a former Hagel staffer that she was harassed by another staffer.

Hagel's explanation is that some of those materials are the property of organizations with whom he has worked. But Democrats see the attempts as an effort to try and get President Obama to withdraw Hagel, something seen as unlikely. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is among those Republicans who have explicitly asked the president to "reconsider" the choice of Hagel. 

"I don't think he's done anything unethical," Graham said. "He got paid to speak in front of groups; that's a common practice around here. I want to know who did he speak in front of, what did he say, and where did the money come from?" 

Hagel said at his confirmation hearing that he does not have all of the speeches because he delivered many of them extemporaneously.

The White House reacted to the potential delay, calling for the Senate to "move quickly," per NBC's Kristen Welker.

"We continue to expect the Senate to move quickly to confirm Sen. Hagel as our next Secretary of Defense," an official said in a statement. "Since his confirmation hearing, more Senators on both sides of the aisle have announced their support for his confirmation, including Sens. [Mike] Johanns [R-NE], Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY], [Tom] Udall [D-CO], [Kay] Hagan [D-NC], and [Richard] Blumenthal [D-CT]. It's clear that Senator Hagel has significant support in the Senate. So with 66,000 troops serving in Afghanistan and other Defense issues to deal with, it's time to move beyond these distractions and move forward with a vote on his nomination."

But without an opportunity to review all the requested information about Hagel's background and views contained in his past speeches, some Republican members have raised concerns and want more time.

Graham supports a delay. "You do have the ability to stop the nomination from going forward to get the information," he said. "I would be willing to do that. I would vote against a motion to proceed until I feel like we have the information that we need to make an informed decision."

Tomorrow, the committee will hear from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on the Benghazi attacks. Their appearance and testimony before a Hagel vote was one condition requested by Graham in order to leverage more access to information about the deadly attack in Libya. Graham said he would seek to put a hold on Hagel's confirmation vote until Panetta testified.

A decision on timing for the committee vote belongs to committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) who aides say is "working very hard to try to address and resolve those concerns today, so the committee can go forward with the vote tomorrow."

However, Levin's office acknowledges that it is unclear now if the vote will go forward as originally planned.

"We were supposed to vote tomorrow," Graham said, "but I think we should wait."

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told The Cable Tuesday that Republicans also are awaiting the results of a their investigation into a claim by a former Hagel staffer of sexual harassment by another staffer in 2007.

"I remember handling it, I thought it was handled," Lou Ann Linehan, Hagel's chief of staff at the time, told The Cable. "I did not bring it to the senator. I would not have taken it to the senator unless it required a termination and that wasn't the case. The term sexual harassment shocks me a little bit. I wouldn't have put up with anything that was actually sexual harassment. I had a very low tolerance for it. I don't put up with that stuff. Hagel didn't tolerate it, I didn't tolerate it."

Updated at 2:42 p.m. ET: In the Budget Control Act of 2011, President Barack Obama and Congress created a fail-safe device intended to spur agreement on a “grand bargain” of spending reductions and tax increases. The law, enacted as part of an escape from a potential debt limit crisis, created the famous “super committee” of 12 members of Congress which was assigned the job of devising entitlement and tax reforms which would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over ten years.

But the law included a default option: if the committee failed in its mission, then automatic spending cuts, called “the sequester,” would begin.

Neither Obama nor most congressional Republicans were happy with the prospect of automatic spending cuts, but once the president put his signature on the bill, those cuts were built into the law. Congress, of course, was free at any point to enact a new law to undo the cuts, but so far it hasn’t done so. Now that the cuts are less than a month from beginning, Obama is again warning of their effects.

Related: Budget battle resumes

In his statement Tuesday he called them “massive automatic cuts” and “deep, indiscriminate cuts to things like education and training, energy and national security” which he said “will cost us jobs, and it will slow down our recovery.” A few minutes later for emphasis he repeated the phrase “indiscriminate cuts.”

On Saturday Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Cater, in a speech at an international security conference in Munich, called the imminent cuts “huge and reckless” and said they would cause “devastating damage to the military.”

Nowhere in Obama’s statement Tuesday did he mention the exact dollar amount or percentage amount of the cuts that are slated to begin on March 1.

So how big are they? And are they “indiscriminate?"

To answer the second question first: in one sense, the cuts are not indiscriminate.

The Budget Control Act does in fact discriminate between entitlement programs, such as Social Security, in which benefit payments are automatically made to those people eligible for them, and what are called discretionary programs, such as the spending on the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Aviation Administration, or the National Park Service, which receive annual appropriations that can go up or down each year depending on the decisions of Congress.

For the most part, the cuts in the BCA exempt the entitlement programs: Grandma’s Social Security check is exempt, as is Uncle Pete’s veterans benefits check, but spending on NIH cancer research and on Zion National Park in Utah, for instance, is not.

As the Bipartisan Policy Center explained in a report last year, “The specified exemptions include Social Security, federal (including military) retirement programs, veterans benefits, Medicaid, and a host of other programs (mostly those benefitting individuals with low incomes). Furthermore, while Medicare would be subject to the sequester in the form of provider payment cuts, those cuts could not exceed two percent.”

But in another sense the cuts are indiscriminate in that they do not eliminate specific redundant or inefficient programs. The cuts are across-the-board to every federal department.

Recommended: GOP embraces cosmetic makeover, tweaking tone not principles

Alex Wong / Getty Images

President Barack Obama makes a statement during a press conference at the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House February 5, 2013 in Washington, DC.

How big will the cuts be in the current fiscal year?

Keep in mind that the current fiscal year, FY2013, began on Oct. 1 so Obama administration officials will have to implement 12 months’ worth of cuts in only seven months.

The Congressional Budget Office said in its annual budget forecast Tuesday that the automatic cuts will reduce spending by $85 billion in FY2013.

Even with the cuts taking effect, total federal spending will still be more than $3.5 trillion, a higher total than in FY2012. At 22.2 percent of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year, federal spending is high by the standards of the past 50 years. The 50-year spending average is 21 percent of GDP.

At the end of the Clinton presidency, a time which many people see as one of prosperity and when in fact there was a budget surplus, federal outlays amounted to only 18.2 percent of GDP. That’s partly because the economy was thriving, so the federal share of it was smaller than it would have been otherwise. When the economy is sluggish as it is today, federal spending – much of it automatic cash transfers in the form of entitlement spending – is relatively larger than it would be if the economy were flourishing.

The automatic cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act will reduce defense spending (other than spending for military personnel) by about 8 percent and non-defense discretionary spending by between 5 percent and 6 percent in FY2013, the CBO said Tuesday.

Members of Congress in both parties – especially those with military bases in their states or districts – have voiced alarm about the effect of the defense cuts. At last week’s confirmation hearing for Obama’s defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C. told Hagel, “Stopping sequestration from occurring is very important to me. North Carolina -- we have seven military institutions -- installations, and we have over a hundred thousand active-duty service members in my state.”

The BCA cuts, she said, “are going to harm our national security, will impair our readiness, will defer necessary maintenance that will help keep our troops safe and delay important investments in research and procurement as well as stunt our economic recovery at this time.”

Hagan was one of 74 senators voting for the BCA in 2011.

At a press conference at the Capitol Wednesday at which Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees offered a proposal to avert spending cuts by means of cuts in federal civilian employee head count, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C. said, “We have our fingerprints as Republicans on this proposal, on this sequestration idea. It was the president’s idea, according to Bob Woodward’s book, but we as the Republican Party agreed to it. We got into this mess together and we’re going to have to get out together….. To the president: we bear responsibility as Republicans for allowing this to happen. Lead us to a better solution.”

Graham was one of the 26 senators who voted against the BCA in 2011.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said bringing up something like the DREAM Act would be "worthy of consideration" a day after his No. 2, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), embraced the plan that would give children brought to the United States illegally a pathway to citizenship.

The idea is "worthy of consideration," Boehner said Wednesday at his weekly press conference. As speaker, he said, he wants to "do everything I can to foster this continuing conversation" regarding immigration.

Yesterday during a speech that aides described as "Republican re-branding," Cantor expressed support for ideas found in the DREAM Act that were voted down by Congress in 2010 saying.

"It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home," Cantor said.

Boehner did not wholly embrace the DREAM Act, however, which is understandable considering the speaker has to weigh politics within his conference.

President Barack Obama’s allies in organized labor and progressive groups are drawing a line in the sand when it comes to so-called “triggers” that would require a secure border as a precondition to allowing undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Left-leaning groups told the president during a meeting this week that any preconditions on creating a pathway to citizenship would be a deal-breaker in terms of winning their support.

 “That is not the starting point,” said Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center when asked about part of the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform proposal that would make prospects for full citizenship contingent on increased border security. “What we are demanding is a road to citizenship that's clear, that's direct, not contingent at all on additional enforcement.” 

The concept is one of the “basic legislative pillars” of a bipartisan Senate proposal on comprehensive immigration reform. While vague, the language is geared towards conservative lawmakers who want tough enforcement mechanisms in place before a path to citizenship can be formed.

The second of the Senate’s four pillars reads: “Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required.”

The trigger has been an essential component for conservatives like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, one of the four Republican senators to help craft the plan.

“I will not be supporting any law that does not ensure that the enforcement things happen," he told conservative blogger Ed Morrisey in late January.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

President Barack Obama waves as he walks on the South Lawn of the White House on Feb. 6 before his departure to Annapolis, Md.

But progressive groups have been ratcheting up the pressure on the president, whom they assert agrees about the concept of a trigger.

“There is clear alignment between us and the president and we look forward to expressing that power as the debate carries forward,” said Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress, adding, “We're going to focus like a laser beam on the path to citizenship.”

While White House press secretary Jay Carney seemed to split the difference between the two approaches, saying the president remained committed to both border security and a path to citizenship, but not going so far as to link the two.

“He remains, as part of the comprehensive immigration reform process, committed to increasing our border security further,” Carney said. “But when we talk about comprehensive immigration reform, we're talking about a whole package that moves as a whole, and that includes a clear path to citizenship for people who are affected here,” Carney said.

Cornell University Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert, said one possible compromise between the two sides would be an enforcement mechanism based on objective criteria, like a certain number of Border Patrol agents along the border or amount of money spent on security.

But he said that if Republicans insist on a subjective measure, such as whether a poll finds the majority of Americans think the border is secure, or whether Republican governors of border states agree the border is secure, common ground will be much more difficult to find.

Asked about the political feasibility of objective measures in a final immigration bill, Yale-Loehr said, “I would hope than an objective one would satisfy the conservatives enough that they could live with it while not antagonizing the other side too much.”

Ashley Judd's not even running yet, if she runs at all, for the Senate in Kentucky, but a powerful Republican outside group is already blasting her potential candidacy, painting her as "an Obama-following, radical, Hollywood liberal" who isn't even from Kentucky.

Karl Rove's American Crossroads posted a video taking aim at at Judd, who some Democrats have pointed to as a potential Senate candidate against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

The video creates an image of the actress as a "radical ... Hollywood liberal," who doesn't like "hillbillies who golf," is attached at the hip to President Obama, and doesn't even consider Kentucky home. That's Tennessee, according to the video.

"Her own grandmother says she's a Hollywood liberal," an announcer says. "Isn't that exactly what we need? Ashley Judd, an Obama-following, radical, Hollywood liberal, who's right at home here in Tennessee. I mean, Kentucky."

Judd, the daughter of country singer Naomi Judd, grew up in Kentucky and California and attended the University of Kentucky. But she also attended high school in Tennessee and lives there currently. She had also been rumored as a potential candidate for the Senate in Tennessee.

The effort by American Crossroads, on the heels of the revelation that it will form another group that would take aim at fringe conservatives, could be as much an effort to curry favor with the influential Republican leader McConnell as it is a way to knock Judd and gain attention.

Budget battle resumes… On drones and executive power: Congress vs. the public… Obama’s Spring Break -- to Israel… President today to tap female CEO to replace Salazar as head of Interior Dept… GOP focuses more on changing tone than changing policies… But one exception: Eric Cantor now supports the DREAM Act… And the “Oh, crap” moments from the 2012 campaign.

*** Budget battle resumes: Goodbye fiscal cliff and debt ceiling; hello to the effort to delay or suspend the sequester -- the automatic defense and other spending cuts set to take effect on March 1. Roll Call: “This time, the scale may be smaller but the game is the same — in the president’s eyes, either congressional Republicans agree to more new tax revenue or they will bear responsibility for the economic damage and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs from the sequester taking effect.” In his brief remarks yesterday, President Obama tried to send two other messages besides the demand for more revenue to delay the sequester. First, the White House wants to dispel the notion that it’s comfortable with the sequester, something that many Democrats (and some Republicans) thought was NOT clear. “Deep, indiscriminate cuts to things like education and training, energy and national security will cost us jobs, and it will slow down our recovery,” Obama said. Second, Obama signaled that once the sequester is delayed, he wants Congress to work its will resolving the outstanding budget issues. “Congress is already working towards a budget that would permanently replace the sequester. At the very least, we should give them the chance to come up with this budget instead of making indiscriminate cuts now that will cost us jobs and significantly slow down our recovery.” What does this mean? The White House is prepared to see Congress work the old-fashioned way: The Senate passes a budget (with White House input), the House passes a budget (maybe all of this done before the August recess at the latest), and then the House and Senate actually negotiate a budget to send to the president for his signature. So no more Boehner-Obama talks, no more Biden-McConnell discussions.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

President Barack Obama calls on Congress to pass a small package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the larger, automatic "sequester" cuts from going into effect during an announcement in the White House briefing room, Feb. 5, 2013.

*** White House vs. House Republicans -- again: For their part, House Republicans are opposing any more revenue to delay the sequester. “We believe there is a better way to reduce the deficit, but Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes,” Speaker John Boehner said yesterday. “The president’s sequester should be replaced with spending cuts and reforms that will start us on the path to balancing the budget in 10 years.” But Republicans are divided here. Some, particularly those in the Senate (like John McCain) don’t want the sequester to take place, given its cuts in defense spending. But many House Republicans (like Paul Ryan) are becoming more and more comfortable with the sequester taking place -- as a way to cut spending. Meanwhile, Politico reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “warned Senate Republicans in a private meeting on Tuesday that spending cuts the GOP seeks are going to require a fight. ‘Nobody said cutting spending would be easy, we need to fight,’ McConnell told Republicans on Tuesday, according to a source with knowledge of the statement.”

*** On drones and executive power: Congress vs. the public: The drone story remains in the news today, and there are two ways to look at this issue. One, the Obama White House has a political problem with Congress here, especially with John Brennan’s confirmation hearing to lead the CIA taking place tomorrow. A senator to keep an eye on here is Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). But two, the White House doesn’t seem to have as much of a political problem with the public. As we wrote yesterday, the public -- like it did in the Bush years -- is content to go after the bad guys, regardless of concerns about a slippery slope. And here is a reason why this drone story might not extend beyond the Brennan hearings: The political opposition has been mostly quiet. As we’ve seen with other political controversies (say Benghazi or Fast and Furious), one party heavily leaning into a story extends its life, no matter the merits. But we’re not seeing that from the GOP, at least not yet. The scrutiny so far is coming from the left and the news media, and that’s it. We’re really surprised at the lack of outrage from Congress so far. Why aren’t more members of Congress upset that a second branch of government doesn’t have any oversight over this executive branch program?  

*** Obama’s Spring Break -- to Israel: As we reported yesterday, Obama this spring will make his first visit to Israel as president, and he also will travel to the West Bank and Jordan. (Obama made a stop to Israel during his 2008 presidential campaign.) The New York Times notes the potential politics behind Obama’s visit, given the rocky relations between the president and Israeli PM Netanyahu. “While Mr. Obama won a clear victory in November, Mr. Netanyahu emerged from elections last month in a weakened state. His party won enough seats for him to retain office, but he will be forced to recruit centrist lawmakers for a coalition that might temper his policies. He has until March 16 to present his new government.” The Israeli press is reporting that Obama’s visit will take place on March 20. By the way, No way the president would agree to go to Israel unless Netanyahu wasn’t promising SOME progress on the peace talks. And given Netanyahu’s new precarious domestic political situation, it seems inevitable that there would be a jump start in the peace talks.

*** Obama to tap female CEO to replace Salazar at Interior Department: NBC News confirms this scoop from the Washington Post: “President Obama on Wednesday will nominate Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) chief executive Sally Jewell to head the Interior Department, according to a White House official who asked not to be identified because the public announcement has not yet been made. The choice of Jewell — who began her career as an engineer for Mobil Oil Corp. and worked as a commercial banker before heading a nearly $2 billion outdoors equipment company — represents an unconventional choice for a post usually reserved for career politicians from the West.  But while she boasts less public policy experience than other candidates who had been under consideration, Jewell — who will have to be confirmed by the Senate — has earned national recognition for her management skills and support for outdoor recreation and habitat conservation.”

*** Let’s talk about tone, baby… Let’s talk about you and me: After their defeats last November, do Republicans modify their policies? Or their tone? NBC’s Mike O’Brien writes that most Republicans -- so far -- have opted for Door No. 2, deciding “that a more articulate re-statement of the party's long-held principles will suffice in their effort to attract new voters to the GOP.” And that’s probably to best way to view House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s speech yesterday to the conservative American Enterprise Institute. With one exception (more on that below), Cantor’s address was mostly a repackaging of policies he and other Republicans have previously backed, albeit with a much softer and more inviting tone. Yet here is the challenge for Republicans as they focus more on tone than policies: Majorities of Americans rejected some of the party’s central principles, according to the exit polls from the November presidential election. For instance, 60% said income tax rates should either go up on all Americans or those with incomes above $250,000; 59% said abortion should be legal in all or most cases; and 65% favored giving illegal immigrants a path to legal status. It’s rare to find politicians in Washington who believe their political beliefs cost them an election or a policy defeat; they almost ALWAYS blame communications.

*** To DREAM the impossible DREAM: The one clear policy shift that Cantor signaled in his speech, however, was on the topic of immigration. He appeared to back the primary thrust of the DREAM Act, despite voting against that legislation in 2010. “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents,” Cantor said, per NBC’s Luke Russert. “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home.” That shift by Cantor tells you that the politics of immigration have changed. Another example: At the House hearing yesterday on immigration reform, House Republicans said they favored a path to legal residency -- but not citizenship -- for illegal immigrants, the New York Times notes. That’s a significant policy difference, which will be debated in the weeks ahead. But it’s also a sign that this is 2005-2007, when even a discussion of legal residency produced cries of “amnesty.” By the way, Republican Govs. Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada hold a conference call at 10:00 am ET to announce the formation of the Future Majority Caucus -- an effort by the Republican State Leadership Committee to recruit and elect more female and minority Republican candidates to statewide office.

*** The “Oh, crap” moments of 2012: Yesterday, at the University of Chicago, one of us moderated a panel with top officials from the Obama and Romney campaigns. We asked them what their “Oh, crap” -- cleaned up here for language -- moments of the campaign were. Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign answered Gingrich winning South Carolina; Beth Myers of the Romney camp said it was Romney’s three-state loss to Santorum (on Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri); Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said it was the close primary race in Michigan; Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said it was their worry that Romney might wrap up the nomination after the New Hampshire primary. And speaking of “Oh, crap” moments, NBC’s Luke Russert explored what happened to that empty chair Clint Eastwood spoke to at the GOP convention in Tampa. As it turns out, the chair now sits in RNC Chair Reince Preibus’ office. 

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*** Wednesday’s “Daily Rundown” line-up: Freshman Rep. Joe Garcia (D-FL) on coming to Washington and the immigration fight... Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren... Highlights from last night's University forum with top 2012 Obama and Romney campaign advisors... Plus USA Today's Jackie Kucinich, Democratic pollster Margie Omero and Alfonso Aguilar of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.

*** Wednesday’s “MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts” line-up:  MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts interviews Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) on the war over the budget and their political parties’ strategies.  Ret. Gen. Barry McCaffrey weighs in on targeted drone killings.   Today’s Power Panel includes:  TheGrio.com Managing Editor Joy-Ann Reid, Democratic Strategist Doug Thornell and Republican Strategist Hogan Gidley.

*** Wednesday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” line-up: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviews Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Ambassador Dennis Ross, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Dr. Shirley Jackson, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and The Boston Globe’s Michael Kranish.

*** Wednesday’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall” line-up: MSNBC’s Tamron Hall interviews Roll Call’s Shira Toeplitz, Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, Michael Smerconish, James Dale, Gay assistant scoutmaster who lost a suit against the scouts in the Supreme Court in 2000, and Time magazine’s Bobby Ghosh.

“Senate and White House aides are offering few details about Obama’s appearance Wednesday at the Democrats’ annual retreat at a hotel in Annapolis, Md., but Obama is expected to address senators before engaging in a candid discussion about the toughest issues ahead,” the AP writes. On the agenda: Immigration, gun control, and spending cuts.

Tomorrow: “House Democrats will hear from Obama at their annual retreat Thursday in Leesburg, Va.”

“Top officials at three domestic agencies say they were instructed by the White House not to talk about the looming sequester cuts unless their talking points were first cleared by the Office of Management and Budget,” Politico writes. “The direction from the White House so infuriated Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski that she’s planning a hearing next Thursday to give domestic agencies a chance to make their case by inviting officials from OMB, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security.” She said, “It’s been under a gag order. I’m against gag rules.”

The White House says it “also told the Cabinet that it was taking the lead in message operations on sequestration, according to three senior Obama administration officials. Yes, the agencies have a green light to talk about the spending cuts. But they must go through the OMB for coordination to avoid ‘causing mass confusion’ for millions of federal employees. ‘You don’t want to send mixed messages,’ said one senior aide.”

Josh Gerstein: “The leak of a secret Justice Department memo on using drones to kill U.S. citizens threw kerosene onto a simmering legal debate — but with most lawmakers showing no appetite to confront President Barack Obama publicly over the strikes, the politics of the issue remain frozen. Still, there’s little doubt the ‘white paper’ made its way to NBC News in an effort to draw more attention to drone questions just as Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan heads to his CIA director confirmation hearing Thursday.”

“President Barack Obama’s speeches have a familiar ring these days — no matter if it’s guns, immigration or the budget,” Politico notes. “Tout what he’s already done. Say the public’s in his corner. Demand Congress do something. Lament Washington dysfunction. Lay out his own plan. Avoid details. Urge voters to keep up the pressure. Warn it won’t be easy. Bask in the applause.”

The decision on whether to lift the national ban on gay members and troop leaders to the Boy Scouts is expected today. President Obama said he believes the Scouts should overturn their policy. Conservatives, like Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum say they should not.

Reuters: “The Boy Scouts touched off fierce lobbying by groups both for and against changing the policy when it said late last month that it was considering removing the national restriction based on sexual orientation and leaving the decision to local chapters. The national executive board, which lists more than 70 members, has been meeting privately since Monday at a hotel near Boy Scouts headquarters in Irving, Texas. The Boy Scouts released no details about the deliberations on Tuesday.”

“President Barack Obama’s proposal to delay sequestration appeared dead on arrival in the House — even before he announced it,” Politico notes.

For those wondering… how costly was it for Menendez to repay that donor for those flights? National Journal: “Bob Menendez Spent Up to 87 Percent of Wealth Paying Back Donor.”

“Former House members are spending their leftover money to pay for everything from luxury cars to foundations that bear their names, a USA TODAY review of new campaign-finance reports shows. The practice is legal but raises questions among government watchdogs about whether these accounts are used as political slush funds. Florida Republican Allen West, for instance, spent more than $17 million in his unsuccessful bid for a second House term, but he had enough leftover campaign cash to donate a combined $500,000 to two foundations, including the Allen West Foundation. Ex-congressman Norm Dicks, a Democrat from Washington state, gave $25,000 to the athletic department of his alma mater. Nearly three years after New York Democrat Eric Massa resigned from Congress amid allegations that he inappropriately touched male staffers, his campaign pays his wife nearly $700 a month.”

Karen Tumulty: “After years in which the Republicans’ answer to almost every question was to reduce spending and lower taxes, some of the party’s most influential voices are beginning to suggest that it is time to take a broader — and softer — focus. The latest to join that movement is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), who in a speech on Tuesday called for Republicans to ‘focus our attention really on what lies beyond the fiscal debates’ and to create ‘conditions for health, happiness and prosperity.’”

But: “Changing the subject from fiscal issues could prove difficult, however, given that congressional Republicans are squaring off with President Obama over the automatic across-the-board spending cuts that are set to take effect on March 1. And later next month, the stopgap resolution that is keeping the government funded will expire, igniting yet another battle over spending.”

“After their electoral drubbing last November — their second straight in a presidential contest — Republicans have faced a choice. Do they change their policies or their tone?” NBC’s Michael O’Brien reports. “For now, many top Republicans in Washington seem to have opted for the latter, deciding that a more articulate re-statement of the party's long-held principles will suffice in their effort to attract new voters to the GOP. ‘I wouldn't say shift in policy,’ pollster Jim McLaughlin said of his advice for fellow Republicans. ‘Republicans have to make adjustments there, but they have to stick to their principles.’”

Look at this split between Democrats and Republicans in National Journal’s latest “insiders’” survey. Democrats (57%) believe the top problem for the GOP is its policies, while the top problem Republicans pointed to was message (33%).

The internecine conservative fight continues. Terence Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of the conservative web site CNSNews.com, writes this: “Karl Rove Is Not a Conservative.” He writes, “If you give him credit for believing in the policies and nominations he helped Bush make and defend, then Rove was wrong on the constitutionally appropriate role of the federal government, wrong on foreign policy, wrong on immigration and wrong on a crucial nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“Republican leaders are launching an effort led by Hispanic governors in New Mexico and Nevada in an attempt to make up ground with Latino voters who have largely turned away from the GOP,” AP writes. “The nation’s only Hispanic governors plan to recruit minority candidates and groom them for state-level offices with an eye toward creating a pool of candidates for higher positions in the future, the Republican State Leadership Committee said in a statement.”

The Christian right is for immigration reform? “Christian conservatives, who stayed on the sidelines in 2006 or opposed reform outright, have sprung into action for the cause,” Politico writes. Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition said, “I think it is night and day, particularly among social conservatives.”

More: “Social conservatives are directly targeting GOP offices and trying to show that they can give cover to lawmakers in the South, West and Midwest, who are worried about facing retaliation at the ballot box in 2014. … There has also been a shift in thinking among southern conservative religious leaders, who see Hispanics as a growing part of their congregations.”

Gallup: “At least two-thirds of Americans favor each of five specific measures designed to address immigration issues -- ranging from 68% who would vote for increased government spending on security measures and enforcement at U.S. borders, to 85% who would vote for a requirement that employers verify the immigration status of all new hires. More than seven in 10 would vote for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants now living in this country.”

ABC/Washington Post: “Public approval of Barack Obama’s handling of immigration has jumped to a career high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, buttressed by majority support for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and, much more broadly, endorsement of stricter border control. While the president lacks majority approval on the issue overall, slightly more Americans now approve than disapprove of his approach, by 49 vs. 43 percent. Obama was underwater on the issue – just 38 percent approved, while 52 percent disapproved – as recently as last July.” Democrats approve of Obama’s handling of the issues by a 79%-16% margin, but just 14% of Republicans approve. Independents are split 46%-46%.

On specific issues, 55% in the ABC/Washington Post poll favor a path to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country illegally. There is a big split by party, however. 

CALIFORNIA: “One day after Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a radio ad in California criticizing the Golden State's business climate and encouraging businesses to relocate to Texas, California Gov. Jerry Brown said today that Perry's campaign is ‘barely a fart,’” the Sacramento Bee writes. "‘It's not a serious story, guys,’ the Democratic governor told reporters at a business event here. ‘It's not a burp. It's barely a fart.’” Perry’s only spent about $25,000 on the radio ad.

FLORIDA: Rick Scott is planning on spending $100 million on his reelection bid potentially against ex-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist (D). “In addition to darkening the sky with paid media, Scott’s team is looking at the possibility of creating a state-specific data and analytics division, either within the campaign or at the Republican Party of Florida,” Politico writes.

GEORGIA: Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R) won’t run for the Senate to replace Saxby Chambliss. The others potential Republicans: Reps. Paul Broun, Jack Kingston, Tom Price, Phil Gingrey and Tom Graves. Broun is expected to announce his bid today.

NEW JERSEY: “Gov. Chris Christie, who has acknowledged to Barbara Walters he’s ‘more than a little’ overweight and munched on a jelly doughnut on David Letterman’s talk show, is addressing his weight issues head-on as speculation intensifies he’s positioning himself to run for president in 2016,” AP writes, adding, “Christie, who is widely mentioned as a possible presidential candidate as his national reputation has grown since the storm, had one health scare during his first term: an asthma attack on a humid summer morning in 2011 that diverted him from a scheduled press conference at a farm to a hospital. He addressed the press when he was discharged hours later, saying the heat, not his weight, contributed to the attack but vowing dietary modifications.”

And catch this: Christie “said Tuesday ‘there is a plan’ for his weight. ‘Whether it’s successful or not,’ he said, ‘you'll all be able to notice.’”

NEW YORK: “Less than a week after a Quinnipiac University poll showed a significant drop in support for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo after the Democrat's successful push to pass new laws restricting gun ownership, a new Siena College poll suggests that any changes in how Empire State voters feel about their governor were more modest, and Cuomo remains very popular,” National Journal’s Steven Shepard writes. “More than two-thirds of voters retain a favorable opinion of Cuomo, the Siena poll shows. His favorability rating of 67 percent is slightly lower than the 71-percent reading on that question in mid-January, during Cuomo's push for new gun laws, and the 72 percent he earned on that measure in December. On the question of Cuomo's job performance, there has been little change over the past two months. In December, 60 percent said Cuomo was doing an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ job. In January, 59 percent viewed his job performance favorably. The new poll shows Cuomo at 58 percent on that measure.”

SOUTH CAROLINA: Ted Turner’s son having trouble raising money in his SC-1 race to replace Tim Scott (that also includes Mark Sanford), National Journal reports. And, it notes: “Turner has a lot of work to do in a crowded field, both to get his name out and to combat certain associations with it; Turner's family are all well-known liberals in the South. Turner admitted that his family's history had been a "little bit of a hurdle," but he said he wasn't worried about the other candidates bringing it up on the campaign trail.”

“It looked on Friday as if Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., might have avoided a primary in 2014, as one of the only remaining potential challengers, state Sen. Tom Davis, decided to take a pass on the Senate race. But on Monday, state Sen. Lee Bright, a fiscal conservative who was recently supported by former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, for reelection, announced that he is seriously looking at the race,” National Journal writes.

Britain’s moving toward legalizing gay marriage.

Updated 10:36 am ET, Feb. 6. President Obama will nominate the head of the outdoor retail chain REI to head up the Interior Department. The president will make the nomination official during a 2:00 pm ET announcement from the White House.

The choice of CEO Sally Jewell is an unconventional one, as the post has been filled in the past by politicians from the West. For example, the last five secretaries have been governors of Idaho and Arizona, a senator and attorney general from Colorado, and a congressman from New Mexico.

If confirmed by the Senate, Jewell would be the second woman to fill the post being vacated by former Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), who announced he would step down last month. Obama has taken some criticism for not replacing outgoing, high-level women in his cabinet with women.

Jewell, a former banking executive and petroleum engineer, began her career as an engineer for Mobil. She worked in the fields of Oklahoma, spending three years there after receiving her degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington.

That's not going to be a problem, though, it appears. The League of Conservation Voters came out in support of her.

"Sally Jewell has a unique appreciation for public lands and has been nationally recognized for her conservation efforts. She's the right choice to promote conservation and protect America's national treasures," League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said in a statement. "We look forward to working with her and thank Secretary Salazar for his leadership over the last four years."

She took over at REI in 2005.

NBC's Peter Alexander reports that a White House official says Jewell's management experience of a $2 billion company makes her "uniquely qualified."

"She will bring to the position integrity, keen management skills, as well as dedication to the Department's mission of managing our nation's lands," the official said, touting her "commitment to conservation."

The official adds, "Conservation has been a central principal of Sally's life, both personally and professionally. She believes deeply in the American tradition of preserving our nation's wild places, while also understanding firsthand the inextricable link between conservation and the economy. She also believes we must be good stewards of our nation's natural resources, underscoring the Administration's ongoing priority of expanding safe and responsible energy production, beginning her career as an engineer for Mobil Oil Corporation.

The official also notes Jewell being "a key contributor to the establishment and implementation of the President's America's Great Outdoors program. In 2011, Sally introduced President Obama at the White House conference on 'America's Great Outdoor Initiative,' noting that the $289 billion outdoor-recreation industry is the source of 6.5 million jobs."

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, addresses the media following a Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. From left are: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA, Conference Vice Chairman Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-KS, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, Rep. Susan Brooks, R-IN, Conference Chairman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, and Rep. Tom Price, R-GA.

Published at 4:35 a.m. ET: After their electoral drubbing last November — their second straight in a presidential contest — Republicans have faced a choice. Do they change their policies or their tone?

For now, many top Republicans in Washington seem to have opted for the latter, deciding that a more articulate re-statement of the party's long-held principles will suffice in their effort to attract new voters to the GOP.

"I wouldn't say shift in policy," pollster Jim McLaughlin said of his advice for fellow Republicans. "Republicans have to make adjustments there, but they have to stick to their principles."

McLaughlin's words echo what many Republicans have argued since the election: It's not the party's long-held principles that are the problem, but rather, the way the party's leaders articulate those principles to voters.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., offered a perfect example of current Republican thinking when he delivered a major policy speech that rehashed a number of familiar policies on education, immigration and entitlements under his new "make life work" veneer.

The No. 2 Republican in the House re-framed some of his party's most familiar proposals as an agenda intended to ease the plight of most American families. (The lone new pronouncement was Cantor's endorsement of the thrust of the DREAM Act, a proposal to allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children a pathway to citizenship.)

He disputed the notion that his speech was part of a broader effort to soften the GOP's image: "The average American is not thinking about and wondering about where the Republican Party is," Cantor told one questioner.

But the Virginia congressman's speech is representative of an emerging consensus that a more modern restatement of their long-held principles will suffice in seeking to broaden the party's appeal.

And indeed, President Barack Obama's agenda seems poised to stress-test some of the Republican Party's most bedrock policies.

If Republicans can rebuff the president, it could prove the resiliency of their stances. A victory for the president, on the other hand, could tear through the GOP like a buzzsaw. The GOP is arguably facing the most direct challenge in decades to the tenets that have formed the foundation of Republican Party politics for the better part of three decades.

Public opinion shifting
Republicans' decision to hew closely to those long-held principles is not without dissent, however.

"People focus on the 2012 elections, but it's deeper than that," said former Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican who leads the moderate "Main Street Partnership."

"It can't just be tone," LaTourette argued. "Because just changing the tone is going to be like putting a lipstick on a pig — it pretties things up, but doesn't really change the fact that it's a pig."

The next four years — the midterm elections in 2014 and the next presidential contest in 2016 — will offer a major test of which school of thought is right.

Obama's second term agenda seems almost directly intended to challenge the GOP on taxes, entitlements, immigration, social issues and foreign policy.

Terminally low taxes, hawkish foreign policy, largely unfettered gun rights and opposition to abortion and gay rights have defined the GOP since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. And as recently as 2004, President George W. Bush's re-election seemed to signify a sweeping affirmation of these central principles.

But Obama already won new revenue during the first installment of the "fiscal cliff" fight, and his forthcoming budget is almost sure to seek more tax increases. The president is demanding an immigration bill and the first major gun law since the 1990s. Obama has also consistently advocated for new gay rights, and public opinion has followed (however slowly). And last month's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a majority of Americans support abortion rights — an issue which Democrats used against Republicans to great effect during the election — for the first time in history.

On an even more foundational issue, last November's exit polls revealed a change in tide against Republicans' opposition to new taxes under any circumstances. Almost half of voters — and 70 percent of independents — agreed that income taxes should increase, at a bare minimum, for households earning more than $250,000 per year.

For Republicans, the road map back to victory involves speaking less stridently about some of these issues, and emphasizing certain elements of the GOP platform over others. Virtually all Republicans recoil at the comments last fall about "legitimate rape" by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, but no mainstream GOP leader has suggested that the party jettison its longstanding opposition to abortion rights. The new strategy might involve sidestepping conversations altogether about abortions in the instances of rape, instead emphasizing Republican policies that might support women's economic mobility.

And already, a new effort led by former Bush political guru Karl Rove has vowed to combat candidates like Akin in primaries and help to nominate more electable Republican candidates. (A separate effort spearheaded by another onetime Bush adviser, Ed Gilliespie, and two Hispanic GOP governors, Suzana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, will look to recruit more minority Republican candidates.)

LaTourette, the former congressman, suggested the answer might be simpler. The GOP, he said, is should just get things — something, anything — done.

"There needs to be some sort of reasonable approach to demonstrate that we're all in this together," he said, "a willingness to do the doable and get things done."

Related:

NBC/WSJ poll: Majority, for first time, want abortion to be legal

Rape remarks sink two Republican Senate hopefuls

Social conservatives say they deserve seat at table in retooled GOP

President Obama will visit Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan this spring, the White House announced Tuesday.

It will be his first trip to Israel as president. Republicans have been hotly critical of Obama for not having visited before now.

The planned trip came after a Jan. 28 talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said. 

"The start of the president's second term and the formation of a new Israeli government offer the opportunity to reaffirm the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Israel and to discuss the way forward on a broad range of issues of mutual concern, including Iran and Syria," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. 

Obama did travel to Israel as a senator in July of 2008 during his run for president.

NBC's Shawna Thomas contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama said if congressional negotiators cannot draft a full budget by March 1, they should at least come up with a short-term combination of spending cuts and revenue increases in order to stave off deep federal spending cuts scheduled for that date.

"If Congress can't act immediately on a bigger package, if they can't get a bigger package done by the time the sequester is scheduled to go into effect," Obama said, "then I believe that they should at least pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the economically damaging effects of the sequester for a few more months until Congress finds a way to replace these cuts with a smarter solution."

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama turns towards cameramen and reacts to a sound as he speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013.

The sequester, reached as part of 2011 budget negotiations, was never actually supposed to take effect. Rather, its deep cuts, including almost $500 billion in defense spending over nine years, were put in place as a trigger to get Congress to agree to more comprehensive budget and tax reform.

House Speaker John Boehner released a written statement before Obama’s remarks, blaming the president for the sequester and saying he would not support any additional revenue increases.

“President Obama first proposed the sequester and insisted it become law,” Boehner said, adding, “We believe there is a better way to reduce the deficit, but Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes."

In recent weeks, members of Congress appeared to be playing rhetorical chicken over the cuts, with some suggesting they were resigned to the across-the-board cuts.

“I think it’s more likely to happen,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was quoted as saying by the Washington Post last week.

But the White House has stood firm on the self-imposed cuts, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney underscoring Friday that the sequester was always intended to be replaced.

“The negative consequences of implementation would be bad across the board," Carney said. "That's the point. So Congress needs to do its job."

And the president hinted that revenues would remain central to all budget negotiations, telling CBS in a Sunday interview that “there is no doubt we need additional revenue coupled with smart spending reductions in order to bring down our deficit."

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor sought to lead Republicans past their dollars-and-cents fights of the last two years, arguing Tuesday for a more expansive agenda that resonates with a broader scope of Americans.

As the GOP works to redefine itself in the wake of an electoral drubbing last fall, Cantor outlined a series of policies he said Republicans would pursue over the next two years. The agenda includes staples of Republican politics — tax and entitlement reforms, for instance — but also education, immigration and research and development, particularly in the sciences.

Recommended: Obama calls for at least short-term fix with cuts, revenue to avoid sequester

"In Washington, over the past few weeks and months, our attention has been on cliffs, debt ceilings and budgets, on deadlines and negotiations," Cantor said at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington. "But today, I'd like to focus our attention on what lies beyond these fiscal debates. Over the next two years, the House majority will pursue an agenda based on a shared vision of creating the conditions for health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families."

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., speaks to the media following a Republican Conference meeting on Feb. 5, 2013 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The speech fits squarely within the rubric of reinvention sought by the GOP at the advent of President Barack Obama's second term. The Virginia congressman offered generally familiar proposals, couched in the rhetoric of middle class advancement. This "softer" approach to policy-making squares with an emerging Republican consensus that the party does not necessarily need to change its policies so much as frame them in a way that is more relevant to middle class, minority, and women voters.

To that extent, Cantor was flanked at moments during his speech by students from schools in inner-city Washington, a master's student from China looking to stay in America, a nurse from Baltimore looking for a more flexible work schedule, and a former intern of Cantor's who benefited from improved medical technology.

Cantor sought with his speech to put a newer, more accessible face on the Republican Party; whether he'll succeed is a question that might not be answered for two or four more years.

First Read: Cantor's shift on immigration

One policy shift Cantor did announce was in regard to immigration. The No. 2 House Republican embraced the thrust of the so-called DREAM Act, a piece of immigration legislation looking to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children a pathway to citizenship.

"It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home," he said.

Other points of emphasis were familiar to any observers of the contemporary GOP.

On education, Cantor called for increased access to vouchers, more efficient spending per student, cost transparency in college tuition and fuller disclosure to students about the career prospects associated with different degrees.

On immigration, Cantor endorsed easier access to green cards to immigrants with high-level degrees, a reformed guest worker program and stronger employee verification tools.

And in an appeal to middle class workers, Cantor endorsed giving all employees greater flex-time at work and simpler simpler ways to file taxes.

On top of this, Cantor appealed to Republican staples: comprehensive tax reform and reforms to Medicare (including streamlined provider networks, and increased leeway for states to administer their own programs).

The recurring theme, though, for Cantor involved an appeal directed intently toward middle class voters.

"Government policy should aim to strike a balance between what is needed to advance the next generation, what we can afford, what is a federal responsibility and what is necessary to ensure our children are safe, healthy and able to reach their dreams," Cantor said.

Eric Cantor seems to have moved more to the middle on immigration, according to prepared remarks the House majority leader will deliver Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington conservative think tank.

Cantor has always been in favor of giving visas to highly skilled immigrants educated in America, but today he takes it a step further, calling for legal residence and citizenship for children brought here illegally by their parents and a guest-worker program.

Cantor also says to stop making immigration a wedge issue. 

"While we are a nation that allows anyone to start anew, we are also a nation of laws, and that's what makes tackling the issue of immigration reform so difficult," Cantor will say, according to prepared remarks. "In looking to solve this problem soon, we must balance respect for the rule of law and respect for those waiting to enter this country legally, with care for the people and families, most of whom just want to make a better life, and contribute to America. 

"A good place to start is with the kids. One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents. It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home. I'm pleased that many of my colleagues in both chambers of Congress on both sides of the aisle have begun work in good faith to address these issues. And I'm pleased these discussions make border security, employment verification and creating a workable guest worker program an immediate priority. It's the right thing to do for our families, for our security, and for our economy. 

"There are some who would rather avoid fixing the problem in order to save this as a political issue. I reject this notion and call on the President to help lead us towards a bipartisan solution rather than encourage the common political divisions of the past."

Cantor does not provide any specifics in his speech and was never too enamored with the DREAM Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for children brought to the U.S. illegally back in 2010.

However, his position today seems to indicate that the man, who controls the legislation that makes it to the House floor, is open to making illegal-immigrant minors full citizens. The key will be for what price.

This is also significant because House Speaker John Boehner declined today to explicitly back a pathway to citizenship similar to what Marco Rubio proposed last week.