PBS NewsHour | PBS

In California, Some Students Rethink Dropping Out

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:29:00 EDT

Santa Barbara High School covers 40 acres in tree-lined hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a few miles away. The Spanish-style main buildings date from the mid-1920s, and when the doors are closed, you could be forgiven for thinking not much has changed.

But when the bell rings, students clad in the latest fashions quickly fill the open spaces. Girls wear fitted shirts and skinny jeans; boys often sport baggy jeans that defy gravity. And when you hear their voices and their stories, you know we're well into the 21st century.

Santa Barbara High School, however, is not immune to poverty, violence, dropouts or any of the other ills that plague most schools. And it is here that Victor Rios has come to share his story and study the achievement gap.

Rios, a onetime gang member and dropout himself, earned a Ph.D. and has become a sociologist. He appears on campus regularly, and has shared his story with dozens of students.

Many, including Joseph Castro and Brandon Smith, admit to rethinking their lives after hearing how dramatically Rios turned his life around.

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Several girls here told us that his story resonated with them as well. We found four seniors who have been through tough times -- and considered dropping out. But Patricia Castillo, Meliza Palacios, Jennifer Gutierrez and Liliana Casian each say they've decided to stay in school, and all of them now have plans for the future.

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American Graduate is a public media initiative focused on the high school dropout problem.

Follow @newshouramgrad

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America's Agricultural Success: A Well-Kept Secret?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:54:00 EDT

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.

Amid all the worry about how long it will take the economic recovery to kick into high gear, there's a little-noticed sector that's doing very well, thank you: American agriculture. Overlooked by many of us in the news media, probably in part because we spend most of our time in big cities, farm sector earnings hit a record last year, with farm income rising just above $100 billion.

I sat down with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a few days ago to get an update on what his huge (90,000 employees) department is up to, and came away surprised by the successes in the American agri-economy. Much of this is being driven by farm exports, which reached a record high last year -- and as Vilsack, a former Governor of Iowa, likes to point out, helped support 1.15 million jobs here in the United States. These exports contributed to an overall U.S. trade surplus that also hit a record in 2011. (Did you know that every $1 billion in overseas trade generates 8,400 jobs in this country?)

The question is WHY is agriculture doing so well? Vilsack, whose grandfather owned a farm, says back in 1975, the most productive farmers planted an average of 12,000 seeds per acre. Today, thanks to science, it's closer to 30,000. After information technology, agriculture is the second most productive sector of the economy. Farm unemployment is dropping at a faster rate than the rest of the job specialties because of this, and because of what Vilsack calls "an extraordinary investment in infrastructure." He describes an extensive supply chain including storage, transport, and equipment manufacturing. Farmers are buying lots of new machinery, like large tractors with sophisticated GPS systems, leading to new hiring on the part of companies like John Deere, which recently added 250 people at a plant in Ankeny, Iowa, that manufactures cotton pickers.

There are many more facets to the success story, but two bright spots in particular stand out at this wide-ranging federal department: housing and food assistance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped arrange 456,000 home loans over the past three years, during perhaps the country's worst housing crisis ever. The homes they helped find mortgage backing for are principally in rural areas. Secretary Vilsack explained "it's our mission to do this; we've been working hard to improve the quality of life for people living in rural areas." Under that same heading, he threw in the assistance the department has provided for school construction, for small business (almost 50,000 loans) and for the expansion of broadband in rural areas -- some 80,000 miles-worth.

Finally, food stamps: a sensitive topic on the presidential campaign trail this year, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has referred to President Obama as "the food stamp president." Run by USDA, its real name is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Vilsack reminded me that while there was a substantial increase in demand for SNAP benefits in the wake of the economic downturn, only 8 percent of recipients are on welfare. More than 50 percent are children and the elderly; the rest are people with disabilities and working men and women who don't earn enough to afford to keep food on the table for their families. "Payment accuracy" is up to 96 percent, in other words, less fraud, in the wake of stepped-up enforcement and investigations. Most impressive: in 2010, SNAP helped lift 3.9 million Americans -- including 1.7 million children -- out of poverty.

There's always something to criticize in government; after all, it's made up of people, and people make mistakes. But there are also some positive stories these days in the agricultural arena that deserve to be heard.

Choose Your Own Health Care Adventure, Part II

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EDT

Strap on the goggles and fire up your DeLorean, it's time to go back to the future of American health care. Unfortunately, Marty McFly's booked. So our traveling companion is Mary -- a 50-year-old, middle-income, single woman with diabetes.

Last week, we met up with her to examine some of the ways the medical, technological, and political ideas swirling around in 2012 -- ideas still unhatched and far beyond her control -- might impact her future health 13 years from now. Using potential scenarios for U.S. health care as defined in a new report, our "time-traveling" pals at the Institute for Alternative Futures laid out four possibilities for Mary's health care in the year 2025.

Watch the videos below for a refresher on the four scenarios. Then, as promised, read the analysis of Clem Bezold, founder of IAF, who explains what would need to happen over the next 13 years for each of those scenarios to become reality.

And don't forget to check out the final results of our audience poll from last week -- found at the bottom of the post -- to see where your ideas on the future of U.S. health care stack up with the other participants.

SCENARIO 1: "Many Needs, Many Models," or the "Expectable Future"

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Bezold: "Among many health care experts, this is the most likely forecast for U.S. health care. It may not be the most preferable, but there's enough inertia in the system to prompt a fair amount of positive change. In this scenario, we have electronic medical records that work, there are advances in system integration, digital coaches have become relatively effective, and the personalization of health care has improved significantly. The good news is we double the percentage of people in integrated care from 20 to 40 percent -- but the bad news is we only double it. The rest remain in fee-for-service or semi-integrated care. So we see improvements, but they're not uniformly distributed.

"To get to this scenario, we assume the Affordable Care Act has been implemented fairly successfully, but the improvements in changing the health care system are modest. We add people to the rolls for health coverage, but we end up with shortages. The employers generally look at the new health insurance exchanges and say they're effective enough, and that they'd prefer to get out of providing health care. So employers continue dropping coverage or shifting to consumer-directed health plans with defined contributions and high deductibles. The triple aim of health care reform -- enhancing the patient's experience, reducing per capita health care costs, and improving the overall health of the population -- has been accepted by most integrated health care systems. Most providers, though, remain unintegrated and the payers don't require it. And that's largely because health reform's Accountable Care Organizations, which were designed to integrate care, haven't been implemented as widely and successfully as they could have been by 2025."

SCENARIO 2: "Lost Decade, Lost Health," or a "Challenging Future"

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Bezold: "In this scenario, the Supreme Court has ruled the individual mandate of health care reform unconstitutional, eliminating a major component of the Affordable Care Act. The United States has made huge investments in electronic medical records but they're not fully interoperable and therefore aren't very effective. In the meantime, prices keep going up, and a lot of people are now uninsured. So they seek out free digital coaches to substitute for regular check-ups. The problem is that advertising revenues fund many of these digital coaches that are free to patients, and many independent providers of these free digital coaches don't adequately check the quality, safety or efficacy of what their advertisers are selling.

"To top it all off, the United States has suffered recurring recessions, several tied to the European financial crisis. And due to that fact, there have been periodic and significant budget cuts -- 10 percent cuts in health care spending happened twice within two or three years of each other. One was in 2013 when Congress failed to find a patch for the Sustainable Growth Rate formula that reimburses doctors for their Medicare services. The second slashed Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates yet again to cope with ever-rising health care costs. Physicians are being told to do more and get less -- and their stresses continue to get worse. Some health care providers just go out of business, including some community health centers. To be sure, there have still been some developments, including the discovery of a successful treatment for Alzheimer's, but you have to be rich to get them. Even if you have health insurance, most plans have stopped covering a number of the cutting-edge, expensive treatments."

SCENARIO 3: "Primary Care That Works for All," or an "Aspiring Future"

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Bezold: "In this scenario, the Affordable Care Act has done very well in moving people toward integrated care. In general, the system also continues to move health care delivery systems into integrated care that focuses on prevention, takes full advantage of digital health coaching and utilizes the entire health care team. Leading health care officials have made a concerted effort to ensure that patient-centered medical homes have evolved into robust community centered health homes. In practice, they see themselves as treating the entire community and addressing social determinants of health in a neighborhood or region, in addition to treating patients. Things have gone well due to a combination factors, including the successful implementation of the ACA - particularly the success of Accountable Care Organizations which have fully integrated and simplified care -- as well as greater transparency of costs and real competition among providers.

"All of that has resulted in much more patient satisfaction. Incentives have shifted enough to encourage the medical community to use the entire team more efficiently. There's less use of physicians and more use of others in the team, including community health workers. It's been found that more and better care can be provided by using people further down on the chain. Community health workers have less training than nurses, but they can visit patients in their homes and effectively reinforce the information, diagnosis and advice from the health care provider. The recommendations are based on the latest medical protocols, the patient's bio-monitoring and community health assessments. It's become increasingly apparent that by focusing on prevention and taking a community-focused approach, you can get better outcomes for less cost."

SCENARIO 4: "I Am My Own Medical Home," or a "Surprisingly Successful Future"

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Bezold: "In scenario four, much of health care moves into integrated systems that work, but the United States also has some economic challenges that have interfered. So we don't get the same degree of access to the effective integrated health care we saw in Scenario 3. The individual mandate within health reform has been ruled unconstitutional, and that means no one is forced to have insurance. We're also seeing a continuing movement where employers stop offering their employees full benefits. Individuals have to be ready to shell out a fair amount of money to get good health insurance -- and many people do that -- but another 40 percent of them say they can handle their health care on their own.

"In fact, technology, competitive insurance plans, and transparency of quality and price for providers, tests and procedures have allowed many individuals and families to self-manage their health care quite well. Most of these people have determined that they either can't afford full health coverage and consumer-directed plans help people take control of their own health care. Forty percent end up using technology and consumer-directed plans to become their "own medical home" and an equal amount buy their health care though integrated plans. For those managing their own care, there are very effective tools that allow people to buy health care "by the piece." For example, if someone needs a test and she can't do it at home, there's an equivalent of Angie's List that links up with that individual's digital health coach to find the result that will work best for them. The same is true for routine care -- it's easy to shop around. Because this consumer-directed care is so effective and lowers cost, it puts a cost pressure on integrated systems to become more efficient and effective. Another positive development is that consumer-directed plans include a very effective digital health coach, with all accompanying advertisements vetted by health insurance companies to ensure the quality of their messages and the safety of consumers."

Which scenario do you think is most likely? Check out the results of the NewsHour poll conducted over the past week. While it's far from scientific, the poll does indicate that many of the participants have a "very gloomy" outlook for U.S. health care, Bezold said. He offers his own assessment below.

Here are the results of a NewsHour poll that asked viewers to rate the relative likelihood of each scenario. Raw scores have been converted to averages:

Scenario 1: "Expectable Future": 60 percent likelihood (average of 5.95 out of 10 for 65 voting)

Scenario 2: "Challenging Future": 70 percent likelihood (average of 6.96 with 78 voting)

Scenario 3: "Aspiring Future": 53 percent likelihood (average of 5.27 with 60 voting)

Scenario 4: "Surprisingly Successful Future": 42 percent (average of 4.15 with 61 voting)

The above results are based on ballots cast between Jan. 31 and Feb. 7. Continue voting here:

Rate SCENARIO 1: "Expectable Future"

Rate SCENARIO 2: "Challenging Future"

Rate SCENARIO 3: "Aspiring Future"

Rate SCENARIO 4: "Surprisingly Successful Future"

src="http://twtpoll.com/js/ibadge.js" >Your browser doesn't support iFrames :( Vote for this poll here.

Bezold: "In terms of relative likelihood, my own opinion is that Scenario 1 is about 55 percent likely, Scenario 2 is about 45 percent likely, Scenario 3 is 38 percent likely, and Scenario 4 is 38 percent likely. I pick Scenario 1 as the likeliest because it includes the strongest aggregation of forces in terms of where we're headed. While I don't like that it's most likely -- especially because we've only doubled the number of people in integrated care -- we will see a number of advances in a whole range of things built into that scenario. So it's not all bad news."

The scenarios were developed in consultation with some of the top health care experts in the country, and with the support of The Kresge Foundation, which is also a NewsHour underwriter. Read the full report here.

Inside Homs, 'The Blood Is on the Floor'

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:38:00 EDT

Reports from the besieged Syrian city of Homs paint a dire picture. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that dozens have died there in the last 24 hours, 14 of them children.

The assault by Syrian government forces came after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Assad regime. "Assad is using the veto as a license to unload on the opposition," said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute.

On Tuesday, the NewsHour spoke with Sami Ibrahim while he was in Homs. He works for a Syrian opposition group and described in detail the frightening increase in violence. Ibrahim also told us what happens when a make-shift hospital comes under fire.

This video shows rockets hitting what appear to be residential buildings, while gunfire crackles through the air. It was posted to YouTube by the Syrian Observatory.

Related Coverage:

All NewsHour coverage of the Arab Spring
An NPR interview with Syrian citizen journalist and blogger Omar Shakir in the Baba Amr section of Homs
An interview with activist Emad Mahou in the southwestern Syrian city Zabadani by PRI's The World

View all of our World coverage and follow us on Twitter.

Is Our Economy Basically Just a Game of Monopoly?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:25:00 EDT

Photo by foreverdigital via Flickr.

Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Wednesday's query:

John Feuille: Most of us have played Monopoly. You set up the board, deal out the money, roll the dice and play until one person collects so much of the wealth that the other players can't buy anything, or pay rent, or pay utility bills. The game stops. The rich guy can't sell anything, or collect any rent, the poor people can't buy anything or pay rent, etc.

Let's say, you want to keep the game going. The rich guy, with his eye actually on collecting more wealth more quickly in the future, might suggest getting rid of all those onerous taxes and fees in Chance and Community Chest. But that won't get the game going again. Someone has to go into the bottom of the closet, find the old broken Monopoly game and deal out more money to the players. If you do that, the game can get going again. Kids can figure out what to do -- it's unfortunate that Congress seems unable to.

An inherent weakness of capitalism as a method to bring the most happiness, to the most people, most of the time, is that if too much wealth gets concentrated in too few hands, the game stops. The correct purpose of regulation is to keep the game going as long as possible.

Paul Solman: Provocative analogy, John. The game of Monopoly was actually invented to make your very point.

One question raised by your email, assuming for a moment that it's true: Why don't the rich understand this? To which a response might be: Many of them do. Hence the Buffett-Gates push for higher taxes on the wealthy. And what about the rich who resist arguments like yours? Could be they're short-sighted. Could be just too greedy to let go. Could be they just don't agree with you.

As to finding an old Monopoly game in the closet and using the money to keep the game going -- it just so happens that's what the Fed did after the Crash of '08 and what the European Central Bank is doing as I write.

This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour's blog of news and insight.Follow @PaulSolman

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Is Our Economy Basically Just a Game of Monopoly?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:55:00 EDT

Photo by foreverdigital via Flickr.

Paul Solman frequently answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Wednesday's query:

John Feuille: Most of us have played Monopoly. You set up the board, deal out the money, roll the dice and play until one person collects so much of the wealth that the other players can't buy anything, or pay rent, or pay utility bills. The game stops. The rich guy can't sell anything, or collect any rent, the poor people can't buy anything or pay rent, etc.

Paul Solman: Provocative analogy, John. The game of Monopoly was actually invented to make your very point.

This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions. Follow Paul on Twitter.

Conversation: Edward Gero on Rothko, 'Red'

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:29:00 EDT

Rothko died in 1970. His life has been turned into art in the play "Red," written by John Logan. Staged first in 2009, "Red" is now at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in a production directed by Robert Falls.

Actor Edward Gero plays the role of Rothko alongside Patrick Andrews as Rothko's assistant.

I spoke to Gero last week about his role:

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A transcript is after the jump.

Mark Rothko was one of the giants of American art in the 20th century, known for his luminous abstract paintings, rectangular fields of color and light, which for many had an almost spiritual quality to them. Rothko died in 1970. His life has been turned into art in the play "Red," written by John Logan. Staged first in 2009, "Red" is now at the Arena Stage in Washington in a production directed by Roberts Falls. Actor Edward Gero plays the role of Rothko alongside Patrick Andrews as Rothko's assistant. Edward Gero joins me now, and Ed, hello. I should say we're good friends, we're old friends.

EDWARD GERO: We are. Yes, we are.

JEFFREY BROWN: Of a few years. Nice to see you here.

EDWARD GERO: It's great to be here.

JEFFREY BROWN: This is a historical character in our own lifetimes.

EDWARD GERO: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Is it different for you in the preparation?

EDWARD GERO: Well, it is a bit different, because of biographical and historical context it really requires some research on getting the biographical story clear and learning from that, finding character traits that might become clear in the reading. I read the Breslin biography, the definitive, spent time with the paintings, met students of Rothko who live in the area to get a sense. I've done a couple of other biographical characters. I did Nixon a few years ago here in Washington and Salieri is also a historical character, so they're fascinating to do, and I think you get to combine the imagination of creating a physical life. There's no film of him, there are only iconic photographs, so it's an interesting process.

JEFFREY BROWN: Because there was a major Rothko exhibition here a few years ago, which I did a story on, so I'm familiar with some of the biographical text you're talking about. He was not a pleasant man is what comes through. I mean, he was in many ways a very difficult man.

EDWARD GERO: Exactly.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you have to make us care about him.

EDWARD GERO: Well, it's interesting. When I particularly spoke to his student -- there's a woman here who studied with him at the Brooklyn College -- and she said he was a really warm, empathetic human being, and I thought, How do I reconcile that? But this personal experience was quite different from the stories I'd read in the book. So it was trying to find those values in the script, and I think that comes across in some small way in his relationship with the assistant.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, let's look at a clip. Do you want to set this up? This is you and your assistant.

EDWARD GERO: Yeah, we're just about ready to prime the canvas and we're talking about his frustration about people not understanding how to look at the work and the sort of shallow approach that most people who are buying his works may take.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, let's look at this clip from Red.

[CLIP]

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, there's a lot of humor in that clip, but it gets to the real drama of the piece of this question of the purpose of art, the value of art in a commercial society, and this focuses on one episode, right, when he was given a commission to do a series of paintings.

EDWARD GERO: Yeah, this was the largest commission in the 20th century at the time, to do about 500 or 600 square feet of canvas for the Seagram Building designed by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe, and it was $35,000 commission, which was a lot of money in 1957. So, yes, he was struggling with this, how we value art and what we want to do with it.

JEFFREY BROWN: I have always thought that one of the hardest things to do in art, in film and theater and books, sometimes is to capture the creative process itself. Now here's what - and I think of various examples where it's sort of unsuccessfully done. Here it works. You're sort of seeing it happen.

EDWARD GERO: We see the canvases being stretched, we see the stretchers being built, the paint being mixed. There's always activity during the play and sort of a multitasking thing. We're talking about Nietzsche and the birth of tragedy while we're mixing paint, putting up canvases, and at the center of the piece is, of course, the sort of burst of painting that happens where we both prime the canvas, which is a great moment to play.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yeah, I'll bet, did all of this -- sort of as you say 'work' aspects to it -- did that help you?

EDWARD GERO: Oh, there's no question about it. I spent some time talking with painters and how to paint, how he held the brush, how he mixed the paint and so forth. But it physically links us to the reality of the event. There was one moment we did where in the beginning of the play actually knocked over a bucket of paint that we were going to use later in the play, and I thought, 'What are we going to do now?' Well the good news was I heard the prop man running back stage to mix another bucket, but Ken, Patrick Andrews, I just tossed him a couple of towels and he just went about cleaning up. Just incorporated it into the evening.

JEFFREY BROWN: You know, maybe because I've been able to watch you over a number of years as an actor I can ask, how does each role, leading up to this one, allow you to grow? What is it that you're aspiring too?

EDWARD GERO: That's a great question. I've had the opportunity to play these very complex, interesting, troubled men, artists -- musician in Salieri, Nixon, Scrooge -- it's a kind of thing that you hope to have happen in a lifetime in the theater where you train and hopefully these opportunities will come where you get to play these great, troubled, complex human beings. And I'm very grateful for this opportunity to do that. With this particular role, there's a little bit of the Chicago, what I would call the Chicago aesthetic. Being Italian I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve a little bit and I think maybe I do that in performance but --

JEFFREY BROWN: What is the Chicago aesthetic?

EDWARD GERO: Well, I think it's a real aversion to any kind of sentimentality, that people have emotion, of course, but just get on with it, you have to survive the winter, they've worked in the slaughter houses or the railroad, there's a real working toughness. That's my sense. I might be imagining it, but that's what I took from it. And I learned how to incorporate that in the role. It was a little bit sentimental, I think. Some of the press had said that in Chicago, and I sort of took that in a little bit and adjusted that along the course of the run and now here in Washington. But he's just fierce, and it's a really interesting thing to play. It seems more simple, but in a way I think the audiences get to come inside a little bit more and bring their own -- like the art -- bring their own experience, their own emotion, to what's happening inside Rothko. It doesn't mean that I don't work on those things, but I don't have to show it as much and it's been a real interesting journey.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Edward Gero as Mark Rothko in "Red." Ed, it's nice to talk to you.

EDWARD GERO: Thanks, Jeff.

The Daily Frame

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:49:00 EDT

Click to enlarge.

Stormtroopers in London promote Friday's release of "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 3D." Photo by Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images.

Santorum Sweeps Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado; Slows Romney's Momentum

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EDT

Rick Santorum, with his daughter Elizabeth, left, and wife Karen, celebrates with supporters in St. Charles, Mo. Photo by Whitney Curtis/Getty Images.

This time Rick Santorum did not have to wait 17 days to find out the good news.

Sure, the former Pennsylvania senator was expected to win a non-binding primary in Missouri that rival campaigns and pundits dismissed as a "beauty contest." And the thinking was Santorum might even win Minnesota's caucuses. But the surprise of the night came in Colorado, where Santorum won by five points after polls showed Mitt Romney the favorite by double digits.

Santorum's sweep of the three contests Tuesday night revived his presidential prospects and stalled Romney's momentum after his two convincing victories in Florida and Nevada.

"I don't stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama," Santorum said at his election night party in Missouri.

Addressing supporters in Denver, Romney offered his congratulations to Santorum but projected confidence that he would eventually claim the GOP nomination.

"We'll keep on campaigning down the road, but I expect to become our nominee with your help," Romney said. "When this primary season is over, we're going to stand united as a party behind our nominee to defeat Barack Obama," he added.

As Team Romney will be sure to remind the world this week, no actual delegates were awarded. But that didn't stop news outlets from projecting counts that now put Santorum in second place.

Click here for the latest on the race to 1,144, courtesy of the Washington Post.

Beyond the delegate count, there is another set of numbers that could portend general election troubles for Republicans. All three states saw fewer voters turn out Tuesday compared to four years ago, with Missouri's drop-off being the sharpest, with less than half the number of ballots cast. (Of course, the "beauty contest" label might have had a little something to do with that.)

In Colorado, voter participation was down by about 7 percent, while in Minnesota, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, voting was off by more than 23 percent.

Dampened enthusiasm in non-binding nominating contests is one thing, but whichever Republican contender emerges with the nomination better hope that turnout is there when the votes really count in November, especially in battleground states such as Colorado and Missouri.

Visit our map center to see full county-by-county results of all three states.

ASKING AXE

On Tuesday night, Judy Woodruff (@judywoodruff) interviewed President Obama's top campaign strategist David Axelrod, who defended their recent decision about super PACs and noted that 98 percent of their campaign's donations are from small donors.

The super PACs have "spent more money than all the Republican candidates in these primaries, over $40 million, and 99 percent of it on negative ads. And that was a little preview. That was the appetizer," Axelrod said. "You know, we're the entree. And they're going to spend multiples of that to try and defeat the president. And it is simply -- it is not wise and it's not right for us to sit by with our hands tied behind our back and allow that, the election to be hijacked by these groups."

In 'Pilgrimage,' Leibovitz Explores Portraits Without People

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:48:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, the story of a portrait photographer viewing her world through a different lens.

Jeffrey Brown has our story.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, photographer: What's interesting about the picture is -- I get asked all the time, well, God, how'd you get to that position to take this picture? You know, it -- actually, it's on the walkway.

JEFFREY BROWN: This is what everybody sees.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: This is what everyone sees. You know, my children are right -- standing right here. I mean, they're right here. And I'm just over them. And they led me to this picture.

JEFFREY BROWN: A photograph of Niagara Falls -- or any landscape, for that matter -- isn't what we normally think of when it comes to Annie Leibovitz.

Beginning in 1970 at Rolling Stone magazine and later for Vanity Fair and other publications, Leibovitz has become perhaps the era's best-known portrait photographer, a chronicler of rock 'n' roll music and the culture at large, creator of numerous famous and attention-grabbing images.

Now, for a change, Leibovitz has given herself an assignment. The result, containing no portraits, is titled "Pilgrimage," a new book and an exhibition now at the Smithsonian Institution's American Art Museum in Washington.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: It's a journey.

You know, it was -- and I certainly didn't realize it until afterwards when I look at these photographs and realized it was -- there was a lot of searching in it. What was beautiful about it was finding photographs that moved me, that were -- that, you know, pulled you in, that were seductive, without, you know, being on assignment or having an agenda.

JEFFREY BROWN: Of course, the big difference here, this famous portrait photographer has created portraits without the people.

And, in a way, that's how she thinks of them, capturing her subjects through the things around them and what they saw. The chronicler of the contemporary instead looked to the past.

She started in Concord, Massachusetts, exploring lives through places and objects, the home of Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau's bed. She developed a broader and eclectic list of people, including Sigmund Freud and his couch, Elvis Presley's family grave site at Graceland, and of places, Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park, the Spiral Jetty sculpture in the Great Salt Lake.

Often, one led to another. Abraham Lincoln, for example, became a starting place.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: I love the Lincoln Memorial. Out of the Lincoln Memorial came not only Daniel Chester French, who was the sculptor of Lincoln. Marian Anderson came out of the Lincoln Memorial. Eleanor Roosevelt came out of the Lincoln Memorial.

One of the best trips I took was, I went to Lincoln's boyhood -- Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky, and drove from Kentucky to Indiana to his boyhood home and then up to Springfield, out in the middle of this country. And then I drove into Ohio for Annie Oakley. I've always loved the road, but I'm just saying, in this time, it's great. It's great to just get out there and make your own list, find your own way.

JEFFREY BROWN: The project grew out of a low point in her life. Her longtime partner, the writer and thinker Susan Sontag, died in 2004. Several years later, Leibovitz went through a much publicized financial crisis that almost left her bankrupt.

She says now she found a kind of renewal in the lives and works of other artists, photographer Ansel Adams, choreography Martha Graham, painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: What was so great about the project is, you know, I thought I knew who Georgia O'Keeffe was. And as you go into these places and -- where they lived and worked, you -- the thrill of it is, you get to really learn who they are.

You know, walking into Georgia O'Keeffe studio in Abiquiu just floored me. It's just -- it doesn't mean I can translate it into a photograph necessarily, all those feelings. And that's -- that was the work. It didn't all come easy.

JEFFREY BROWN: In fact, Leibovitz, 62 years old and decades into a successful career, says she had to learn to shoot objects, such as here of Emily Dickinson's dress.

So, here is the object, right, without the person.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: This is so not my kind of picture, where I come in . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you mean?

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Well, I never come in tight and look at detail like this.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: And -- but in order to tell the story, that it wasn't just any white dress -- these are alabaster buttons. And there were these unbelievable -- you know, the unbelievable detail in this.

It does have a sense of composition and graphics, which -- which is there since the early days in my work. So . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: Another major difference here, these photographs are taken with a digital camera, not film, which Leibovitz normally shoots, and without the equipment and setup required for her portrait work. She says she found unexpected benefits.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: I noticed it right away in Emily Dickinson's house. It was the end of the day. There was hardly any light. And I started to just take pictures with a small snapshot digital camera.

And I found you could see into the corners. Film doesn't have that much latitude. It has only a certain amount of, you know, tones and darks and lights. It's a whole brand-new world. I'm learning along with everyone else.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, and, of course, and we're all doing it, right, even on our smartphones.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Love it. I love it.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: I love it. I think it's great.

JEFFREY BROWN: Leibovitz says this was a project that in some ways actually has no end, though she is continuing the work she's best known for.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: I love my work. I love my portrait work.

And I don't -- this just immediately feeds back into taking portraits. It's . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: So, you . . .

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: You have to take care of your work.

And by, you know, feeding this -- by doing this kind of exercise of going out and, you know, basically, you know, turning your back on everything else you're doing and just, you know, going another way is a really important exercise.

The best work, you don't really know what you're doing when you're doing it. It's -- I love that. I'm beginning to trust that now. I don't -- you know, I mean, I was told . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: You're beginning to trust that now, after all this time?

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: "Pilgrimage" exhibition will continue at the Smithsonian through May 20. It travels next this summer to the Concord Museum in Massachusetts.

Italy's Premier Mario Monti: Time to Focus on Growth in Europe

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:35:00 EDT

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MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Prime Minister. Thank you for having us.

PRIME MINISTER MARIO MONTI: Great pleasure.

MARGARET WARNER: As we sit here, Greece is undergoing yet another 24-hour strike. The financing situation hasn't been resolved. What are the consequences for Italy if Greece should default on its debt?

Mario Monti: The consequences would have been extremely serious for Italy, had a default of Greece happened a few months ago. Now - in fact -- of course, I hope that there is not a default for Greece, but I'm really confident that even in that case Italy is seen by the markets and by the E.U. institutions and by the global community as a country which, since a few months, has really taken some tough structural measures, both as regards the budgetary consolidation and as regards structural reforms for growth.

So I'm confident that we would be much less exposed to a Greek default risk than we would have been a few months ago.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think Greece helps prove the point you've been making to European leaders, though, that austerity without growth can be a recipe for disaster?

Mario Monti: Yes, but Greece is really the extreme case, because of the excesses of deficit, of public deficit in the case of Greece had been over many years so high, so extreme that it would have been hard -- let's face realities -- to have a soft landing from those excesses of deficit without a recession.

But in more general terms, I think there is a valid point if we say that Europe needed to be put under a safe place as regards the public finances of each member state. Thanks to German and other pressures, we could say that most of us are there or nearly there. And now, without going back to fiscal indiscipline, that the time has come to focus more energies on how collectively we can achieve more growth in Europe.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think that in fact there's a real danger of a backlash here in Italy against what they may see as E.U. imposed changes to their way of life that are very, very painful. What are you seeing?

MARIO MONTI: There was -- there was such a risk of backlash, and it is there more generally -- well, let me say a word about Italy.

I try to avoid that backlash by always presenting the necessary sacrifices that Italians have to go through not as an imposition from Brussels or Germany or the European Central Bank, but rather as a necessary step that Italians have to undertaking -- to undertake also at the suggestion of Europe, but basically for their own interests, for the interests of ourselves and of future generations of Italians. This is precisely meant to avoid backlashes.

Having said that, in a wider perspective, the euro zone crisis has indeed brought about quite a bit of misunderstandings and the re-emergence of old phantoms about prejudices between the North, the South of Europe, and a lot of mutual resentment.

And it is very, very important that we all take this with great attention in order to avoid that something that was meant to be the culminating point of the European construction -- namely, the single currency -- turns out to be, through psychological negative effects, a factor of disintegration of Europe.

MARGARET WARNER: The German government is arguing, however, that if the pressure is relieved too soon on the really indebted countries, the pressure of the interest rates in the market, that they won't even do the necessary reforms. Do they have a point about that?

MARIO MONTI: That point was certainly valid in the past, for the long years since the inception of the euro where the financial markets went to sleep, took a long siesta and did not exercise any market disciplining effect. Now, of course, after the recent financial crisis, markets woke up quite brutally and did exercise a lot of pressure for each of us to engage in a serious budgetary consolidation.

Now the role of the markets is there, but I don't think we have to rely basically and mainly on high interest rates for governments to continue the path of sound budgetary and reform policies.

On the other hand, one could also make the case that those countries and those populations -- like, since a few months, the Italians -- who definitely are embarking on all the necessary measures of budgetary consolidation and structure reforms, may be disenchanted and not ready to continue on this path unless they do see some recognition of their efforts through, in particular, a decline of interest rates.

MARGARET WARNER: But you do want Germany to put up more money, do you not, to make this bailout fund, the firewall, bigger, as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's been urging, as the IMF has been urging?

MARIO MONTI: Yes. That goes for Germany, but for all member states. And of course, Germany happens to be the largest one. But one can also make the point that the higher the overall amount of money put in the firewalls, the smaller the probability that it will ever have to be disbursed, because the markets will be impressed by the credibility of the -- of the fire brigades.

MARGARET WARNER: What can President Obama do to help you?

MARIO MONTI: To help me, or to help the E.U.?

MARGARET WARNER: Both.

MARIO MONTI: I think he can help us all through a sound management of the U.S. economy, which he's trying hard to achieve, just as we can help him by avoiding the explosion of tensions to the world economy out of the euro zone. And I think on both sides of the Atlantic, we are working well in the desired direction.

MARGARET WARNER: Back to what you're trying to do here at home, do you think that by calling for more competition in the economy, as well as budget cuts, you are asking the Italian people to really change their central character or culture?

MARIO MONTI: To some extent, yes. I am fully aware of this, and basically our mission and my wish is to have the Italian people value more and more some strong qualities they have in their genes and traditions -- that is, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of -- and a sense of solidarity in society.

But I definitely think that Italy can become a more competitive place only if we introduce in our system much more meritocracy, which means much more competition and accountability in all decision points of corporate, as well as the public administration.

So you can say what you probably think, that this is a tall order for a government which, at most, will be in place until the spring of 2013. But we will be happy if we accompany Italy with a gentle pressure towards achieving at least the first mile of this long road.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Prime Minister, thank you so much.

MARIO MONTI: Thank you very much.

Protests in Greece Take Aim at Europe's Demands for More Cuts

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:33:00 EDT

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Next, a two-part look at Europe's debt crisis.

First, more protests in Greece against austerity measures in the country where the troubles began two years ago.

We have a report from James Mates of Independent Television News in Athens.

JAMES MATES: It is 20 years to the day since the Maastricht Treaty was signed to bring the continent every closer under the euro.

This afternoon, this was a German flag being burned in Athens. Before long, riot police were swinging batons and firing tear gas. Greeks believe they are being driven into poverty on orders from abroad. This is a country is seething with anger.

Inside the parliament, politicians seem to be on the verge of accepting Europe's demands for another round of cuts to wages, pensions and health care. It's designed to reduce Greece's massive debt. But as anyone in this crowd will tell you, they have been cutting for two years now, and the debts have simply got bigger.

EVA KAILI, socialist member of Parliament: I don't think they can take anymore. And I think it's the wrong recipe. That's why. They could take it if they knew that it was a way out. But from what it seems, it's not a way out. It leads us to deeper recession.

JAMES MATES: What the Greek government is having to do today is choose between two appalling options: to take the medicine that Europe has prescribed and with it years more of austerity and recession, no guarantee of success at the end of it; or to forget Europe's money, to go it alone, leave the euro, knowing that in the short term, at least, that would be even more painful. One or the other, they have to choose.

A storm swept through Athens this afternoon, driving many of the protesters home. It was also enough to rip the European flag from its pole, where it flies beneath the Acropolis. Many Greeks, though, are simply too angry to notice the symbolism.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now Italy, another European country and a much larger economy under financial pressure.

On the eve of his visit to Washington and meetings with President Obama, Italy's premier talked today in Rome with our Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: Amid protests in the streets and pressure from abroad, a new face came on to the Italian political scene three months ago.

Prime Minister Mario Monti's mission: try to rescue the country's stagnant economy and unwind its massive national debt.

MARIO MONTI, Italian prime minister (through translator): If we will be able to take advantage of this opportunity altogether to start a constructive dialogue on general goals and decisions, we will be able to redeem the country and to rebuild the confidence in its institutions. Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Italy had not fallen to the same depths as Greece, Portugal and Ireland, needing bailouts by the European Union, but the economy was stalled. The markets were hammering Italian debt. And Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was facing sex and corruption charges. He resigned after he lost his working majority in parliament over austerity measures the E.U. had demanded.

With that, the Italian president turned to Monti. The former professor served as an E.U. commissioner for nearly 10 years, but has never held elected office. Now he leads a government composed mostly of other technocrats. They must try to ensure that Italy can continue to borrow on international credit markets and keep paying off a national debt that equals 120 percent of its gross domestic product.

Among E.U. countries, only Greece has a larger debt load. Monti has pushed through budget and social welfare cuts. But he also has warned his European partners, especially Germany, that austerity must be accompanied by growth.

At the same time, his moves to modernize the Italian economy have run up against longtime traditions, such as the protective hold that guilds have over everything from taxicabs to lawyers. So far, his proposals have been endorsed by parliament, but more tests loom.

Assad Running out of Friends, but China, Russia Still Among Allies

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:27:00 EDT

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RAY SUAREZ: I'm joined by Rania Abouzeid, who's been covering the Syrian story for Time magazine. She's in Istanbul, Turkey, where leaders of the anti-Assad opposition have set up headquarters.

Rania, welcome back to the program.

The Russians announced their arrival in Damascus and their intention to act as mediators. Has there been any response to that overture from the opposition in Turkey?

RANIA ABOUZEID, Time: Well, not officially, not at this point.

However, it's the same -- it's the same thing. The opposition says that the Russian government is merely buying Assad more time for him to continue his killing spree across the country. We heard once again pledges by the Syrian president for reforms.

And the Russian foreign minister was touting an upcoming constitutional referendum as some sort of measure of President Assad's willingness to enact those reforms. However, this is the same talk that we have been hearing for months. And according to all of these amateur videos and the quite gruesome images that we are seeing coming out of Syria, it hasn't changed what has effectively become a war zone across the country.

RAY SUAREZ: Rania, is it significant that the temple of operations against Syrian civilians didn't calm down at all during the Russian visit?

RANIA ABOUZEID: No, it certainly didn't. If anything, it seems to have escalated.

As your report mentioned, Homs has been bombarded for the past four days. And it has been bombarded for weeks and indeed months before that. Syrian opposition members speak of horrific death tolls. I mean, we're talking about 50, 60, 70, sometimes 80 and higher, you know, death tolls of -- sometimes, it hits the triple digits. So we are talking about what seems to be a killing field in Syria.

RAY SUAREZ: There are reports coming out of Syria of overtures from the Russian delegation that would indicate they're trying to find a way out for Bashar al-Assad. Do they really still back his legitimacy at this point? Do they think he can hang on until 2014?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, that's a question that everybody is trying to answer.

I mean at the end of the day, Russia's interests in Syria are strategic. They're not personal. So, one wonders why the Russian government has so closely aligned itself with a regime that most observers say is bound to fall. The only question is when and how many other people are going to die in the meantime.

RAY SUAREZ: France and Italy have followed the United States and the United Kingdom in pulling their ambassadors back from Damascus. If they've got Russia and China, can Syria sort of soldier on as the rest of the world is abandoning it?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, don't forget that they also -- they also have Iran. And they have the Lebanese -- Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as well.

So, you know, Assad is running out of friends, but he still has quite powerful allies. And he certainly hopes that he can hold on until the presidential elections. However, it's a question of whether or not the Syrian opposition is -- I mean, we're already seeing that the Syrian opposition is becoming more militarized.

And, certainly, after the double-veto a few days ago, the Syrian opposition, all of its varied forms, feels quite abandoned. That seems to be the word that we have been hearing most often from activists on the ground, as well as from members of the FSA that I have talked to recently. It's the same word: abandonment.

And you see in some of these amateur videos that are posted online, the chants are, "God, you are the only one who is still with us." So there's a real sense of desperation and also a sense that, you know, they must continue this fight, because, as one activist told me, "We're dead anyway. Either we die free or we simply die, because the security forces will hunt us down."

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk a little bit more about the state of the opposition. You talked about they're feeling abandoned inside Syria.

What about outside the country, as they use diplomatic efforts to try to consolidate the support from around the world? Are they succeeding? Are they seen as a logical next step in the other capitals of the world?

RANIA ABOUZEID: First of all, I think they have to consolidate their own ranks. You know, the Syrian opposition is quite fragmented. The Syrian National Council has presented itself as the de facto opposition group, an umbrella group, if you like, but it has its own problems.

You know, some people say that it has a very heavy Islamist tilt. Others say that it's mainly comprised of exiles who haven't set foot in Syria for many years and that they don't speak for the men and women who are on the streets of Damascus and other cities actually like Homs and other areas in Syria who are living under this bombardment and who are dying in the streets.

So this Syrian opposition in all of its varied forms needs to get its own house in order. And that is a very serious concern, because, you know, the people in the streets are demanding it. And certainly Western governments and others, Arab governments as well, are looking for more from the Syrian opposition.

RAY SUAREZ: Rania Abouzeid of Time magazine joined us from Istanbul.

Thanks for talking to us.

RANIA ABOUZEID: Thank you.

After Russia's Veto at U.N., Foreign Minister Gets Hero's Welcome in Syria

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:25:00 EDT

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GWEN IFILL: Now to Syria's uneasy, uncertain and unfinished revolution.

Ray Suarez has that.

RAY SUAREZ: In the capital, Damascus, a high-ranking Russian visitor, in other cities, more death and destruction.

We start with a report from Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News in Beirut.

JONATHAN MILLER: Artillery and rockets started pounding parts of Homs at dawn again, the fourth straight day, this even as the president promised to cooperate with any effort to promote stability in Syria.

The Russian foreign minister feted like a hero in Damascus by a regime fast running out of friends, Syrian state TV awash with love for Russia, which vetoed the U.N. resolution. Sergei Lavrov reportedly told Bashar al-Assad that every leader should be aware of his share of responsibility, adding that he hoped the Arab people could live in peace and understanding.

But while the president again promised political reforms and assured the Russian mediator that he wanted an end to the violence, his military clearly remaining under orders to stop the uprising, and across Syria, the onslaught continued.

In the restive southern city of Daraa, where the revolt began last March, a street demonstration was met with gunfire. This footage is unverified, but this video among several to emerge of violence in Daraa today. This was filmed in a school. There's clear distress, one woman shouting, "We're going to kill them, we're going to kill them." Then you see soldiers and bound men face down on the ground.

In Homs, where whole neighborhoods remain besieged and under intense bombardment, not much let up. Terrified civilians say they feel abandoned by the world. Here, women and children take shelter in a basement.

In a northern Idlib province, many reports of military operations, many civilian deaths reported, too. In a northern village attacked by government forces yesterday, Free Syrian Army fighters now patrol. The Syrian theater of conflict is expanding, numbers of dead and injured rising by the day. The Russians have brought no diplomatic breakthrough. The revolt has entered a new phase.

Axelrod on Pro-Obama Super PAC: 'We Simply Couldn't Sit by'

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:16:00 EDT

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the race for the White House, shaping up to be an expensive general election battle.

President Obama's reelection campaign reversed its stance against super PACs late yesterday, encouraging contributors to donate money to a group, Priorities USA Action, run by former administration staffers.

"With so much at stake, we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election, whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm," wrote Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in a blog post.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's time to put strict limits . . .

JUDY WOODRUFF: In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama had criticized the Supreme Court ruling wiping away limits on corporate and labor union giving.

The shift by the Obama team comes as super PACs backing Republican candidates and causes have seized an early financial advantage. Groups supporting Republican presidential candidates had raised more than 34 million dollars combined by the end of last year.

Another conservative super PAC, American Crossroads, has hauled in more than $18 million. By contrast, the pro-Obama PAC has brought in less than $5 million.

But the president's own campaign has received more money than all the GOP contenders combined. The administration's change of heart also comes on a day when Republicans are voting in three more states and as the leading GOP candidate, Mitt Romney, continues to lambaste President Obama's record.

And for more on the president's reelection bid, we turn to his senior campaign strategist, David Axelrod.

David, thank you very much for joining us.

First, on this reversal . . .

DAVID AXELROD, Senior Obama Campaign Strategist: Happy to be with you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: . . . on whether to encourage your donors to give money to the so-called super PACs, does this mean you don't think you can win this election based on the contributions of ordinary Americans?

DAVID AXELROD: Well, no.

We certainly appreciate the contributions of ordinary Americans -- 1.3 million people have donated to the president's campaign, most of them in small contributions, 98 percent of them in small contributions. And we appreciate that.

What we're looking at, though, Judy, is something we have never seen before, something unleashed by that Supreme Court ruling. And we've seen massive amounts of money coming in to these super PACs. And by our estimate and by their own estimate, they intend to spend upwards of half-a-billion dollars, above and beyond what the Republican nominee and the Republican National Committee is going to spend in this election.

And faced with that, you know, we had to act. The president believes deeply that these super PACs are an unwelcome development in our politics and is going to continue to try and find ways to reform them, up to and including a constitutional amendment.

But right now, these are the rules, and the question is, are we going to have two sets of rules or are we going to have one set of rules? And we couldn't sit -- we simply couldn't sit by and allow $500 million, $600 million, $700 million of negative ads be run against us, with no one on the other side responding.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But it was pretty clear from the outset that this was going to be the case, a lot of money was going to be raised.

That being the case, why didn't the president stick -- I mean, he clearly felt so strongly about this. Why did he change his mind?

DAVID AXELROD: Judy, I don't think anybody had an idea of just how much money these super PACs were going to raise.

And now, you know, we see the reality of it. They've spent more money than all the Republican candidates in these primaries, over $40 million, and 99 percent of it on negative ads. And that was a little preview. That was the appetizer. You know, we're the entree. And they're going to spend multiples of that to try and defeat the president.

And it is simply -- it is not wise and it's not right for us to sit by with our hands tied behind our back and allow that, the election to be hijacked by these groups.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let me ask you about the economy. There was a good report that came out last Friday on jobs, the unemployment rate.

But a number of respected economists say they don't expect that trend to continue.

Are you, in effect, David Axelrod, sort of held hostage every month to these unemployment numbers?

DAVID AXELROD: Well, first of all, let's stipulate that the most important thing isn't our link to the unemployment rate, but to, you know, how the American people are experiencing this economy.

We're fighting hard to increase - we've had 23 straight months of private sector job growth. That's accelerating. We want to continue to accelerate that because that's good for our country. And, obviously, you know, it is good for us as well.

But -- and in terms of the economists' projections, I think one thing that we have learned over the course of these years is that no one really has a crystal ball on these things. And I have seen more robust projections, less robust.

The best thing for us to do is keep our nose to the grindstone, keep pushing, keep pushing forward and taking the steps we think will help accelerate the economy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, still has a primary fight on his hands, but your campaign has pretty much been treating him as the eventual nominee.

What are the strengths that you see in Mitt Romney that make you assume that he will be?

DAVID AXELROD: Well, look, he's been a weak front-runner from the beginning. He continues to be a weak front-runner. He has far more resources than anyone else. He's run for president now twice. He's got a national organization.

It seems like the Republican establishment has largely embraced him in this race. So it's logical to assume that he -- you know, he continues to be a weak front-runner, and that he may be the nominee of the party. And we're prepared for that. He certainly projects himself that way.

And we'll be prepared for that debate.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And in terms of framing the campaign at this point going forward, your major challenge is what?

DAVID AXELROD: Well, look, we're going to project a positive vision for how we move forward as a country and rebuild, not just regain the jobs we have lost, but rebuild an economy in which the middle class is growing, and not shrinking, in which people who work hard can get ahead, in which people can look forward to a better future for their kids.

That's how we measure progress in the economy. And there is going to be a very distinct difference between the way we approach it and the way the folks on the other side do, and particularly Gov. Romney, who seems to believe that, if we just go back to what we were doing and cut taxes for the very wealthy, cut regulations on Wall Street, that somehow we'll all profit from that and the economy will grow. Well, we just tested that proposition and it failed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The administration decision to require religious charities, universities and others, hospitals, to include contraceptives in the health services they provide has created a huge firestorm in the leadership of the Catholic Church and other religious leaders.

You said earlier today in an interview, David Axelrod, that the administration would work with these institutions to implement this policy. What does that mean? Does that mean you're prepared to give them some sort of an out?

DAVID AXELROD: Well, Judy, let's back up and do -- just recite a little history of how we got to where we are.

The Institute of Medicine recommended to the health and human services secretary, Sebelius, that contraceptive services be part of the package that are in every woman's insurance package, insurance policy, as preventive care. She added an exemption for religious institutions, for churches and their employees.

The question is, does that extend to hospitals? Does that extend to universities where many people work who aren't even Catholic? And do those women get -- essentially don't -- do they get the same rights and the same privileges as everyone else to that preventive care?

And, you know, we believe strongly that that should be the case. And, in fact, that's the policy in 28 states today. So what we have said is, we're going to have a year's period of time in which to transition to this. And that will give us a chance to look at what these others -- how this is implemented elsewhere, how we can implement it here in the best and fairest way, but certainly advancing the principle that women deserve access to contraception, and those women, those teachers, nurses, janitors and so on who work in these institutions deserve access, just like everybody else.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, very quickly, to clarify, are you saying there may be some exceptions?

DAVID AXELROD: I'm saying that there are models all across the country that can be emulated, including, by the way, in Massachusetts, which was in place when Gov. Romney was there, and in Georgia, which has no exemptions, where Speaker Gingrich is from.

These policies have been in place. Half the country has these policies. And we should be able to learn from that in implementing this and move forward.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Axelrod, senior strategist to the President Obama re-elect campaign, thanks very much.

DAVID AXELROD: Good to be with you.

News Wrap: Iran Calls U.S. Sanctions on Central Bank 'Psychological War'

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:13:00 EDT

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Iran today dismissed new American sanctions against the country's central bank. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry charged the move amounted to psychological war, and he insisted the sanctions will not make Iran give up its nuclear program.

RAMIN MEHMANPARAST, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman (through translator): The actual results of these measures will be a stronger and more serious determination from our nation to achieve its great objectives within the framework of the national interest and the nation's rights.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Also today, the Iranian parliament summoned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning over a number of charges. They include allegations that he has mismanaged the country's economy.

In Iraq, ministers from a Sunni-backed bloc ended their boycott of the cabinet and returned to work. The Sunnis walked out last December, after the Shiite-dominated government tried to arrest Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the country's top Sunni official. The Sunnis were under growing pressure to end the boycott, as the government struggles to cope with new violence.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve urged Congress today to find agreement on extending tax cuts. A Social Security payroll tax cut is set to expire this month, and the Bush era tax cuts run out at year's end.

At a Senate hearing, Ben Bernanke said letting taxes rise would hurt growth.

BEN BERNANKE, Federal Reserve chairman: There'll be a very sharp change in the fiscal stance of the federal government, which by itself would -- with no compensating action, would indeed slow the recovery.

HARI SREENIVASAN: On Wall Street today, stocks rebounded late to make up earlier losses. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 33 points to close at 12,878. The Nasdaq rose two points to close at 2,904.

A vice president at the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity resigned today. Karen Handel actively supported a move to halt grants for Planned Parenthood because Congress was investigating the group's funding of abortions. Komen later rescinded the cutoff under heavy criticism. Handel defended the original policy today. She said it was not influenced by her own anti-abortion views and criticism of Planned Parenthood.

The last known veteran of World War I has died in England nearly a century after the war ended. Florence Green joined the Women's Royal Air Force in September of 1918, when she was just 17. The service trained women as mechanics, drivers and for other jobs. Green served as a waitress in an officers' mess. Florence Green would have turned 111 years old later this month.

Those are some of the day's major stories.

Will Prop. 8 Ruling Lead Supreme Court to Consider Same-Sex Marriage?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:03:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

GWEN IFILL: A three-judge federal appeals panel ruled 2-1 today against banning same-sex marriage in California. The decision upheld a lower court that found the ban, known as Proposition 8, violates the Constitution's equal protection clause.

NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels begins our coverage from San Francisco.

SPENCER MICHELS: It was another victory for supporters of same-sex marriage in California. And they celebrated outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco.

Opponents of Prop 8, Felicia Madriz and Allison Spencer, said the appeals court decision was important.

FELICIA MADRIZ, opponent of Proposition 8: Absolutely. You know, this is one more step to equal rights. And hopefully, federally, it will be recognized.

ALLISON SPENCER, opponent of Proposition 8: We're really excited and emotionally moved, obviously. And, hopefully, this'll put the nail in there.

SPENCER MICHELS: On the other hand, backers of Proposition 8 insisted the fight is not over. In a statement, the National Organization for Marriage called the decision predictable, as well as sweeping and wrong-headed. But it also said, "We have every confidence we will prevail."

Nearly everyone agrees that the Prop 8 case will eventually end up before the United States Supreme Court on appeal. But before that happens, the losers in this case, those supporting Proposition 8, could ask for a hearing before a 10-judge panel, a so-called en banc hearing.

The Prop 8 battle goes back to November 2008, when California voters passed it with 52 percent of the vote. The ballot measure banned same-sex marriage, just five months after the state Supreme Court had allowed it under then-existing law.

But in August of 2010, federal Judge Vaughn Walker struck down the ban. He ruled that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry. Later, the judge announced he is gay and in a long-term relationship. Lawyers supporting Prop 8 argued he should have disclosed his relationship or recused himself.

The appeals court said today there was no evidence that Walker was biased in his handling of the case. In the meantime, other states are tackling the gay marriage issue this election year. Those with pending legislation or ballot measures in 2012 include Washington State, Minnesota, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Maine.

They and others will be watching to see the ultimate outcome in the California legal battle.

GWEN IFILL: Today's ruling is limited to California, but in a 128-page opinion, the federal panel emphasized the broader constitutional principle.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for the majority, concluded, "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California."

We get two views now of the decision and its fallout. David Boies is one of the attorneys for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which supports same-sex marriage. And John Eastman is chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, which argues same-sex marriage is not protected under the Constitution.

I want to start by asking -- reading to both of you gentlemen something else from the court's decision today and ask you to respond.

The court also said that California used the initiative power to target a minority group and withdraw a right that it possessed without a legitimate reason for doing so.

Pretty tough language, David Boies.

DAVID BOIES, attorney for the American Foundation for Equal Rights: It was very tough language.

This was a great day for America, a great day for California in particular, but a great day for America and everybody who believes in equal rights. What the Ninth Circuit said was, the court of appeals said is that we're not going to tolerate any longer governmental discrimination against our gay and lesbian citizens.

And they said it in very emphatic terms. And although the decision is, as you say, technically limited to California, the principles that it articulates mean that eventually we're going to have marriage equality throughout the United States. And people need to get into the 20th century, if not the 21st century, and recognize that that kind of discrimination is over with.

GWEN IFILL: John Eastman, what's your reaction to the strong language in this ruling?

JOHN EASTMAN, National Organization for Marriage: Well, Judge Reinhardt has staked an awful lot on this opinion in trying to compare this to Colorado's Amendment 2, and saying that this initiative did absolutely nothing except remove a longstanding right for gays and lesbians to marry.

Of course, it wasn't longstanding. The California Supreme Court had made that up just several months earlier. And Proposition 8 is not so limited. It applies to one man and one woman. That means plural marriages are also illegal under Proposition 8 in California.

So, the notion that the only purpose of this was animus towards gay and lesbians is just patently false on the face of Proposition 8 itself. The basic notion here is, do the people of the state have any right to continue to defend marriage as it has always been understood, tied to the biological complementarity of the sexes, with at least a purpose of procreation and the rearing of children that are the offspring of that relationship?

To say that there is no legitimate purpose and that it's completely unreasonable to adhere to something that has been around in every society and certainly in our country since the beginning, I think, is a great stretch.

And Judge Reinhardt has staked the entire decision on that claim, which is just patently false.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask Mr. Boies about the narrow scope of this ruling. Certainly, you were hoping more than just something that affects only California.

DAVID BOIES: Well, we think the reasoning of the court does.

And let me just respond to the suggestion that somehow Proposition 8 was not -- involved just gay and lesbian marriage, but somehow is against plural marriage. No one has ever suggested that. And to begin to try to defend Proposition 8 on the grounds that it's really directed at polygamy at this stage of the debate I think just shows desperation.

That's not what the proposition was about. It was clearly targeted at gay and lesbian marriage. That's what all the advertisements were about. That's what all the publications were about. And that's what the court held was simply unconstitutional.

And they held it because the evidence was absolutely uncontradicted that this didn't help procreation, it didn't help different-sex marriage. There was no justification for this. As the court said, in order to believe that this served a rational purpose of procreation, you would have to believe that people are going to procreate more if you don't have gay marriage.

And they said that's simply not plausible. There isn't evidence of that, and no one suggested that.

GWEN IFILL: Let me ask Mr. Eastman about this rational basis test which the courts applied in this case, in which they said what Mr. -- a version of what Mr. Boies just said, which is that there was no rational basis to impinge on someone's 14th Amendment rights.

JOHN EASTMAN: Well, the rational basis is the lowest standard of review we have in constitutional law.

It basically means is, if there's any legitimate purpose furthered by the classification that supports some interest of government, the enactment of the legislature, or in this case an initiative of the people, has to be upheld.

And the notion that -- we recognize, for example, that men and women procreate in a way that two men do not and two women do not. To create an institution that fosters that purpose and to give it the benefits of society because there's some benefit to society from fostering that purpose clearly passes the rational basis test. And it just belies reality and biology to suggest otherwise.

GWEN IFILL: Are you, Mr. Eastman, going to take this to the Supreme Court?

JOHN EASTMAN: Well, I'm not representing the proponents of the initiative.

But I think one of the things that all of the judges here agreed with that is the proponents do have the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. And I suspect they will. I think David and I would agree that it's a close call up at the Supreme Court. Most people think it's a 5-4 decision one way or the other, with Justice Kennedy likely the swing vote. And I think we all expect we're going to end there sooner or later.

GWEN IFILL: Do you agree on that, Mr. Boies?

DAVID BOIES: I think we're going to do better than 5-4 on the Supreme Court.

I think that this is an issue that, that under the Romer decision, particularly given the careful way and the limited way that the court crafted this opinion, that it is four-square under Romer. I don't think the Supreme Court is going to go backward on this issue. I think it's going to go forward.

And I'm not giving up on any justice on this issue. And I think it's definitely going to be better than a 5-4 in our favor.

GWEN IFILL: And, finally, to both of you, do we think that this decision today now means, starting with you, Mr. Eastman, that there is going to be weddings that are about to happen, that the stay is now lifted and couples can marry?

JOHN EASTMAN: You know, I haven't gotten to the last few pages of the 90-page majority opinion yet, but I understand that their stay remains in effect until the Supreme Court has a chance to decide whether they're going to take this case, in which case, we won't have any change in the landscape in California in the short term.

But I'd like to ask David if he would like to wager a dinner next time we're together on a panel if the vote is 5-4 my direction or even only 5-4 his direction.

GWEN IFILL: He can answer that right after he answers my question.

JOHN EASTMAN: I will wager you that dinner.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. That's fine. And we settled that.

What do you think about a stay? Are people going to actually be able to get married before this thing works itself out?

DAVID BOIES: What the court did was continue the stay until its mandate issues.

Now, that mandate is going to issue at some point. And if it's delayed because the proponents of the proposition seek to have, for example, a rehearing, we will go in and move to have that stay terminated.

You now have a thoughtful and comprehensive district court opinion holding Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. You now have a Ninth Circuit court of appeals decision holding that it's unconstitutional. It's time to allow people to get married in California.

GWEN IFILL: And would that create any chaos at all if perhaps, for some reason, the court were to reverse itself again?

DAVID BOIES: Well, remember, you had people getting married before Proposition 8 took place. That didn't create any chaos. There's no reason that people ought to be deprived of their constitutional rights now that those rights have been affirmed by the court of appeals. It's not going to create any chaos.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Eastman?

JOHN EASTMAN: The reason would be the -- the reason would be the right of the people to decide for themselves a very fundamental policy question about whether we're going to continue to have an institution of marriage that is rooted in biology, with a purpose of procreation, as it always has been, or whether we're going to allow the courts to mandate a dramatic alteration of that institution, with potentially devastating consequences to society.

So, it's the right of the voters of the people of the state of California to have their judgment about the basic policy question at issue here affirmed. And if the Supreme Court takes this up, I believe the Supreme Court would issue a stay until they have an opportunity to rule on that.

GWEN IFILL: John Eastman, David Boies, thank you both very much.

DAVID BOIES: Thank you.

JOHN EASTMAN: Thank you, Gwen.

DAVID BOIES: Thank you.

Does the U.S. Tax Imports?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:25:00 EDT

The Arsos container ship is unloaded at the Port of Miami in Florida; Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Marc Whitehead sends the follow-up question below after reading Paul's thoughts on tariffs from early January: If we put a 15 percent tariff on all imported goods, how much money would that tax generate each year?

Question: Paul, I don't think you are calculating 15 percent on all imports, only an increase on goods that are currently taxed. I believe that almost all imports are currently un-tariffed. What do you say?

Paul Solman: Good point, Marc. But it doesn't much affect my withering conclusion in the post of Jan. 5: that wiping out the federal debt and "entitlement" obligations by hiking import duties (aka tariffs) is a non-starter.

After reading your question I went online, and have now seen estimates as high as 67 percent for the share of imports that's tax-free. That might require a tripling of the numbers I estimated on Jan. 5. But even if we were to do so, the U.S. would still fall hundreds of billions of dollars short of covering our annual budget deficit with tariffs. Not to mention looming Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. To rid us of all our obligations? I stand by my recent bottom line: "we're surely talking tariffs that would be many multiples of the price."

This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour's blog of news and insight.

Follow @PaulSolman

Around the Nation

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:22:00 EDT

Here are four arts and culture videos from public broadcasting partners around the nation.

Starting in the late-1960s, Swedish journalists traveled to the United States to document the anti-war and Black Power movements. Premiering Thursday (check your local listings), Independent Lens will air "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975," which combines music, the journalists' original 16mm footage, much of it never seen until now, and contemporary audio interviews from leading African-American artists, activists, musicians and scholars:

Watch Looking Back at the Black Power Movement on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

NYC-ARTS is the new name of the WNET program formerly known as SundayArts. The new website and weekly magazine program, which airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at noon in the New York City area, made its debut last week:

MN Original profiles Christopher Poor, founder of Arms and Armor. Poor and his artisans research, model and create pieces for theaters around the world, including Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, as well as many museum and private collections, feature films and television productions:

WHYY's "Friday Arts" for February looks at Pennsylvania Hospital's "Flowers to Pharmacy" exhibition, profiles Suzie Brown, a cardiologist who has found a second career as a singer-songwriter, and explores the first major exhibition devoted to Henry Ossawa Tanner's work in 20 years:

Watch Friday Arts for February 2012 on PBS. See more from Friday Arts.

Italian Prime Minister: Eurozone Crisis Revives 'Prejudices' in Europe

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:03:00 EDT

Watch Video

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said Tuesday that the eurozone crisis has brought up "old phantoms about prejudices between" North and South Europe. View a preview clip above, and watch the full interview on Tuesday's NewsHour.

"The eurozone crisis has indeed brought about quite a bit of misunderstandings and the re-emergence of old phantoms about prejudices between the North, the South of Europe, and a lot of mutual resentment," said Monti.

"And it is very, very important that we all take this with great attention in order to avoid that something that was meant to be the culminating point of the European construction -- namely, the single currency -- turns out to be, through psychological negative effects, a factor of disintegration of Europe."

As for Italy specifically, Monti said he tries to avoid backlashes to EU-imposed changes to Italians' way of life "by always presenting the necessary sacrifices that Italians have to go through not as an imposition from Brussels or Germany or the European Central Bank, but rather as a necessary step that Italians have to undertake also at the suggestion of Europe, basically for their own interests, for the interests of ourselves and of future generations of Italians."

Monti sat down with Margaret Warner on the eve of his trip to the United States and meetings with President Obama at the White House.

View all of our World coverage and follow us on Twitter.

Proposition 8 Ruling Expected in California

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:41:00 EDT

A rally to celebrate the ruling to overturn Proposition 8, Aug. 4, 2010, in San Francisco. That ruling was appealed by supporters of Proposition 8. Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit upheld the original ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a ruling that Proposition 8, the 2008 ban on same-sex marriage in California, is unconstitutional Tuesday.

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the ruling.

The National Organization For Marriage, which supports Proposition 8, condemned the ruling in a press release.

"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the most overturned circuit in the country, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the author of today's absurd ruling is the most overturned federal judge in America," NOM chairman John Eastman said in the press release. "Today's ruling is a perfect setup for this case to be taken by the U.S. Supreme Court, where I am confident it will be reversed."

Read the full court ruling after the jump:

#Prop8 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court

Reaction has been swift on Twitter, including a tweet from GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich condemning the ruling.

Court of Appeals overturning CA's Prop 8 another example of an out of control judiciary. Let's end judicial supremacy bit.ly/nyblQ7
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 7, 2012

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The ruling will have far-reaching implications. The case will likely reach the U.S. Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog reports .

The development does not mean that new weddings will occur right away, The Los Angeles Times explains in a helpful Q&A.

The news comes a year after the court heard arguments that were aired live online. Watch excerpts of those arguments and look back on key moments in the battle over Prop 8 here.

For full coverage and analysis of the ruling and history of Proposition 8, follow news from Northern California's KQED here. Look through past reporting and court documents here.

PBS NewsHour will have coverage of the ruling on the show. NOM chairman John Eastman and David Boies, one of the two lead attorneys who has been arguing to overturn Prop 8, will discuss both sides of the news tonight. Watch live online at 6 p.m. ET here.

For even more background, click through a timeline of the history of same-sex marriage in California from KQED.

Same-Sex Marriage in California on Dipity.

Tune in to NewsHour live online at 6 p.m. ET for more on the ruling and what's next here.

The Daily Frame

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:42:00 EDT

Click to enlarge.

A visitor looks at "Haran II" by Frank Stella, which is part of the exhibition, "Guggenheim Collection: The American Avant-Garde 1945-1980," at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. The exhibition, running through May 6, showcases more than 60 works produced after World War II from the Guggenheim museum's permanent collection. Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.

Obama Plays the Super PAC Game, Endorses Priorities USA

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:11:00 EDT

President Obama greets the audience after delivering remarks on the economy last week in Falls Church, Va. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

President Obama's campaign is getting into the super PAC business.

The president's re-election team announced Monday night that it will openly support Priorities USA Action, a super PAC run by former White House aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney to "fill a hole in our side." Officials said that while Mr. Obama still opposes the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision that opened the floodgates to super PACs, he wants his donors to know he won't stay out of the game.

"[T]his cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina wrote in a post at BarackObama.com. "We will not play by two sets of rules."

"With so much at stake, we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm," Messina wrote. That means senior campaign officials and some White House and Cabinet officials will speak at Priorities USA fundraisers but "won't be soliciting contributions." Mr. Obama, the first lady and Vice President Joe Biden will not get involved.

Messina also emailed campaign supporters detailing how Republican super PACs spent $18 million on attack ads last year. "We decided to do this because we can't afford for the work you're doing in your communities, and the grassroots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads," he wrote.

Burton sent an email to the Priorities USA mailing list with a request for donations and a link to a New York Times story outlining President Obama's decision. "The new policy was presented to the campaign's National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening," Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny reported in that story.

RACE TO 1,144

Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri will get their turn in the spotlight Tuesday, and while the GOP presidential candidates are competing for victories (and the momentum that comes with them), no delegates will actually be awarded based on Tuesday's results.

Colorado's 36 delegates will be awarded at district conventions from late-March through mid-April. Minnesota's 40 delegates will be selected at district conventions between April 14-21. And Missouri's primary is not only non-binding, it is "not recognized as being a part of any delegate allocation or selection process," according to the Republican National Committee.

The process for choosing the Show Me State's 52 delegates will start with precinct caucuses held on March 17. The estimated cost for Tuesday's "beauty contest" in Missouri? $7 million.

Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot in Missouri after he decided against paying the $1,000 filing fee, contending the contest did not count for delegates. Voting in the state starts at 6 a.m. CT and goes until 7 p.m. CT.

The Minnesota caucuses begin at 7 p.m. CT, while the action in Colorado gets underway at 7 p.m. MT. The Colorado GOP has a helpful FAQ section for caucus-goers on its website.

So, with no delegates at stake, what's the point of all this?

It's all about the candidates attempting to wrest some momentum away from GOP front-runner Mitt Romney. Team Santorum thinks the former Pennsylvania senator has a chance after looking at a handful of polls. But it's a long way to 1,144.

The Washington Post has a snapshot of the delegate count, but keep in mind that these numbers will not change after Tuesday night.

Politico's Charles Mathesian and Rachel Van Dongen offer their five things to watch for in Tuesday night's results.

The NewsHour will look at the delegate math this week.

ALL ABOUT BOEHNER

Judy Woodruff sat down with Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, in his ceremonial office Monday night to talk about the Republican agenda and his goal of getting a grand bargain on cutting the deficit.

Among the highlights, Rep. Boehner told Judy (@judywoodruff) that Congress is "not as dysfunctional as people think."

He boasted that a new highway bill would have no earmarks, comparing it to the last measure that had 6,317 of them.

Boehner disclosed that after saying recently he hadn't spoke with the president in a while, the two talked last week. From the interview:

Judy: President Obama has had his own ups and downs in the polls. How would you describe your relationship with him?

Boehner: The president and I get along fine. We really do. We have a very cordial relationship. Doesn't mean we agree on everything, but the president and I have had a lot of frank conversations about the big issues that our country's facing. And whether it was the issue of the debt, whether it was the issue of foreign policy or our defense posture, we've had a lot of very good discussions. Unfortunately, we've not seen a lot of results.

Judy: How recently have you spoken with him?

Boehner: I talked to him this last week.

Judy: You want to tell me about what?

Boehner: Oh, I'm sure you'd love to know....

Judy: Well, it appeared to the public last summer that you and he were pretty close to a deal on the debt ceiling -- both big budget cuts, tax increases -- but that you were, in effect, held back by your own membership. Is that what happened?

Boehner: No, no. I was more than willing to put revenues on the table. I thought if we reformed our tax system, we could produce more revenue from it. But I told the president, I'm not going to put more revenue on the table unless you're willing to make real changes to our entitlement programs because in their current form, they're not sustainable.

The president would never say yes to any of those changes to the entitlement programs. And even though I had revenue on the table and the president hadn't said yes, he came back and wanted $500 billion more in revenue. There is a way to do this, but it takes courage. And I am more than willing to address this problem at any moment with the president, because the future of our country depends on us coming to an agreement that will begin to solve our debt problem.

Judy also asked the speaker about the tone of the presidential campaign. He said he isn't too worried. "Well, no one likes to see nasty campaigns," Boehner said. "But I would remind you that the fight in 2008 between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went on through June of that year. And so while I rather not see it, it's part of the political process. Out of this will come our nominee. And I don't think it'll have any impact on the November election."

Judy asked if the candidates should "tone it down."

"Listen, I'm not going to tell them what to do. That's not my job," Boehner said, later adding just after the interview, "Time heals all wounds."

Watch the full interview here.

2012 LINE ITEMS

NewsHour health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser looks at the election-year battle over contraception.
Stu Rothenberg and Susan Page spoke Monday night with Gwen Ifill about the contraception issue, Republican enthusiasm and Gingrich's delegate strategy.
The New York Times' Mike McIntire reports the Obama campaign will return donations from two American brothers of a Mexico casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States.
Jon Huntsman tells the Salt Lake Tribune that he's ruling out another presidential bid -- for now.
Gingrich has dropped his legal challenge to appear on the Virginia primary ballot next month, reports Politico's Josh Gerstein.
CNN reports that Santorum's campaign has uncovered 49 petition signatures incorrectly rejected by the Marion County (Ind.) board of elections. Officials ruled last week than Santorum had come up 24 signatures short of the 500 needed in the Hoosier State's 7th Congressional District because there were irregularities regarding the listed addresses. The Indiana primary is scheduled for May 8.
NPR's Carrie Kahn looks at the rise of independent voters in Colorado.
Vice President Biden calls Gingrich's food stamp remarks "inappropriate."
The Center for Public Integrity's iWatch looks at Bain donations to Romney.
ABC News' Shushannah Walshe writes about Santorum's friendship with his super PAC's bankroller, Foster Friess, who is traveling with the campaign.
The anti-Obama Americans for Prosperity ad we linked to Monday ran on national cable about 20 times, costing the conservative group roughly $230,000, a source told the Morning Line.

TOP TWEETS

Intrade Update: Obama continues upward swing - now trading at 58% to be re-elected in Nov, up from 50% a month ago: bit.ly/oexmwE
— Intrade Tweets (@Intrade) February 7, 2012

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Romney tacks right on social issues - decries "abortive pills." abcn.ws/A1xO06 via @emilyabc
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) February 7, 2012

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OUTSIDE THE LINES

The Washington Post published an investigation into congressional earmarks, finding that 33 lawmakers "have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers' own property." The story analyzed all 535 members of Congress and "also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards." Read the story here and see the analysis of the data here.
The House ethics committee announced Monday it was extending its investigation into financial disclosures of Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. Investigators are looking into whether Buchanan, a four-term lawmaker, violated ethics rules by failing to report his position with more than a dozen firms, reports the Washington Post's Dan Eggen.
A Sunlight Foundation study released Monday looked at the retention rates of House members based on turnover in congressional offices between the third quarter of 2009 and the third quarter of 2011. Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Ohio, had the lowest retention rate at 19 percent, losing 17 of 21 staffers. Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., had the highest retention rate at 94 percent, retaining 15 of 16 staffers.
The Washington Post's Rachel Weiner looks at the controversy surrounding Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra's campaign ad that aired during the Super Bowl. The spot includes a young Asian woman who speaks broken English while Asian-sounding music plays in the background. The ad is intended to attack Sen. Debbie Stabenow for helping China by increasing the national debt. Hoekstra, a former nine-term congressman, is running in an open primary for the chance to challenge Stabenow in November.
Sen. Mark Kirk's condition was upgraded to "good," and the Illinois Republican was able to watch the SuperBowl, his doctor said. Kirk suffered a stroke last month.
Roll Call's Abby Livingston reports that Rep. Ben Quayle will challenge fellow Republican, Rep. Dave Schweikert, in the race for Arizona's 6th Congressional District. Livingston writes, "The 6th district is far safer for a Republican than the tossup 9th district, which is where Quayle's home is."
Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz talks to retiring members who find themselves in high demand -- thanks to their flush campaign coffers.

NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

Newt Gingrich holds three Ohio campaign events: in Cincinnati at 9:30 a.m., Dayton at 2:30 p.m. and Columbus at 6:30 p.m.
Mitt Romney attends a rally in Loveland, Colo., at 10:50 a.m. and hosts a caucus night event in Denver at 9:45 p.m.
Rick Santorum hits all three of Tuesday's voting states, attending a rally in Colorado Springs at 11 a.m., making a stop in Blaine, Minn., at 4 p.m. and finishing up with a primary night event in St. Charles, Mo., at 10 p.m.
Ron Paul holds a caucus night event in Golden Valley, Minn., at 9:30 p.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @quinnbowman.

Hunter's Moons: Astronomers Use Kepler Spacecraft to Search for Exomoons

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:42:00 EDT

An artist's conception of an exoplanet hosting smaller moons. Image by David A. Aguilar/ CfA.

Astronomers have discovered a trove of exoplanets--more than 700 worlds in orbit around distant stars, with leads on thousands of additional suspects. So now, naturally, they're beginning to ask: What moons might be in orbit about these planets?

It is a reasonable question. Most of the planets in our solar system host sizable natural satellites. And in some planetary systems, the moons of an extrasolar planet could themselves be favorable habitats for extraterrestrial life.

To answer it, a team of astronomers is now digging through publicly available data from Kepler, NASA's prolific exoplanet-finding spacecraft, in hopes of detecting the faint signal of the first known exomoon.

"It's something that I've been very passionate about for a long time," says David Kipping, who wrote his PhD thesis at University College London last year on exomoons. Now a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Kipping is leading the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler project, or HEK. He and his colleagues described the HEK campaign in a recent study posted to the preprint Web site arXiv.org that has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

"When I first started this, I was just seeing what was possible," Kipping says. "As I went on with this, I realized that it wasn't just a crazy idea." He and his colleagues calculated that if large moons are common in the galaxy, Kepler might be sensitive enough to find them.

Since 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has trailed Earth in orbit around the sun, doggedly pursuing a deceptively simple mission. With a giant digital camera, Kepler keeps watch on a field of more than 150,000 stars near the constellation Cygnus. It watches those stars for so-called transits--instances where a planet passes in front of its host star, which slightly and temporarily diminishes the star's apparent brightness. So far, the mission has been incredibly productive; Kepler scientists have discovered more than 60 new exoplanets and have identified more than 2,000 likely candidates that await confirmation.

Some 50 of those candidates fall in the so-called habitable zone, the region around a star where temperatures would allow for the presence of liquid water and perhaps the emergence of life. A gas-giant planet in the habitable zone, akin to a warmer Jupiter or Saturn, would lack a solid surface and hence would not be an ideal habitat for life--but its moons might be. "There could be a lot of habitable moons out there, and we want to know about them," Kipping says.

If any Kepler planets happened to host a very large satellite, the moon's presence would have subtle but detectable effects on the planet's transits. For instance, the moon could itself pass in front of the star, blotting out a small fraction of starlight just before or just after the planet itself transits. Alternately, a massive moon could exert a gravitational tug strong enough to perturb the planet's orbit, causing the planetary transits to diverge from a steady, clocklike recurrence.

Promising signals demanding further scrutiny for the presence of a possible exomoon are selected both by analyzing where large, plausibly detectable moons could exist in stable orbits and by old-fashioned visual inspection. The latter effort is led by Allan Schmitt, a Minnesota citizen scientist and a veteran of planethunters.org, an online project in which volunteers browse through public Kepler data to uncover newfound exoplanets. "He was e-mailing me these candidate signals" of possible moons, Kipping recalls. "I said, 'You've done so much work here, why don't you join the team?' He agreed, and since that time he's been a full-time collaborator for us. He's looked through hundreds and hundreds of light curves, looking for these blips."

The catch is that to produce a detectable blip, an exomoon would have to vastly outweigh any satellites found in our solar system. "In the very best case, Kepler could find moons down to 20 percent the mass of the Earth," Kipping says. That means Kepler would miss moons the size of, say, Ganymede and Titan, the largest moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively--each are only about 2 percent the mass of Earth. An easier target, if it exists, would be a moon of roughly Earth mass orbiting a giant planet. "We're looking for moons that don't exist in the solar system," Kipping acknowledges. But the solar system hardly constitutes a comprehensive sample of what nature allows--most of the worlds turned up by planetary searches of the past two decades are oddballs that do not resemble any of the familiar eight planets. "When you look at the exoplanets that have been found, there's every reason to be optimistic," he adds.

Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler mission are cheering the HEK effort on, even though no one knows if the class of exomoons that the spacecraft could detect even exists. "Plenty of things have surprised us before," says Eric Ford, an astronomer at the University of Florida and a participating scientist on the Kepler mission. "Whether or not [Earth-size moons] actually form, we don't know. That's why we should look," he adds. "Kepler has the sensitivity that if they are there, and if they're common, then we could detect them."

There is no reason to assume that the size limit of satellites within the solar system is a universal law, notes Darin Ragozzine, a postdoctoral astrophysicist at the CfA who works with Kepler. "It's certainly not out of the question that there are moons detectable by HEK," he says. "Kepler's definitely the best shot that we have at this."

Ragozzine notes that the HEK search is systematic enough that even if Kipping and company do not find any moons, they will have learned something valuable. "They are doing the study so carefully and thoroughly that even if there are zero discoveries, we will learn something about exomoons," namely that large ones are rare, he says.

Kipping and his colleagues are now preparing their first preliminary results for publication and hope to have something to say about the frequency of large moons by the end of the year. "Whether we turn up 10 moons or zero moons, my hope is we'd at least have a flavor of how common big moons are in Kepler's field of view and throughout the galaxy," he says.

This article is reproduced with permission from Scientific American. It was first published on February 6. Find the original story here.

U.S., Egypt in Showdown Over NGO Worker Trials

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:46:00 EDT

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RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight, Egypt's military rulers and the U.S. head for a showdown over Egypt's threat to bring to trial 19 Americans and 24 others working for non-government groups.

Among those being held, Sam LaHood, the son of U.S. transportation secretary, Ray LaHood. The Obama administration has threatened to cut off nearly $2 billion in military aid if Egypt goes ahead with a trial.

Hari Sreenivasan talked with Matt Bradley of The Wall Street Journal in Cairo earlier today.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Matt, thanks for joining us.

Exactly what are the charges that these Americans and others are being held on?

MATT BRADLEY, The Wall Street Journal: Well, the 43 people who are being charged are facing charges of establishing an illegal organization and accepting and distributing funds illegally without the approval of the Egyptian government.

And those charges, if convicted, they could get a penalty, a financial penalty, or they could get about five years in prison.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And so this isn't just a threat of deportation that these individuals are facing, right?

MATT BRADLEY: Well, it could be that.

And it seems very unrealistic that the government, that the Egyptian government would want to put these people away in jail for several years. But anything is possible at this point.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, why exactly is the Egyptian government in its current form doing this? Is there a strategic advantage? What are you hearing?

MATT BRADLEY: Well, it's very, very difficult to discern exactly why the Egyptian government would want to do something like this.

The Egyptian government, of course, says that this is a judicial investigation and that, once it hits the judiciary, there's nothing they really can do to stop it, no matter what kind of diplomatic channels the United States tries to use.

However, a lot of people in the NGO community, in the activist community, they say that this is an obviously politicized case and that it started in the government, maybe they're not as in control of it now as they used to be, but they instigated the case against these NGOs, and that they're doing this in order to basically deflect blame on some of the violence and continuing protests that have been going on here in Cairo since the revolution last year on to foreign hands.

So the Egyptian government knows very well that the public will lap up any conspiracy theories that involve foreign hands trying to destabilize Egypt for whatever reason. And so that's one of the things that we have been hearing again and again.

Every time there's murder or killing in the square where Egyptian forces, the military or the police try to suppress angry dissidents, they say that this violence is not caused by Egyptians opposing the regime. They say it's caused by foreign hands trying to infiltrate these protest movements and turning them against the Egyptian regime in order to destroy the economy, in order to create chaos, though it's not quite clear what the political motive is behind that and to what political end that would meet.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So what about the rhetoric from the United States? Everyone from President Obama to Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State Clinton, has tried to turn up the heat a bit and tried to say that this could impact the larger amount of foreign aid that we give to Egypt. Is that resonating at all?

MATT BRADLEY: Well, for one thing, let's be clear. The Egyptian public is not really talking about this.

They were talking about it at the end of December, when the raids on the NGOs occurred, when police, backed by the military with prosecutors, went into these NGOs, investigated, took a lot of documents and cash and sealed up the offices.

But since then, there hasn't really been a lot of talk in the media here in Egypt about what's going on. There's been many, many -- much bigger distractions, including some of the street protests that have been going on now.

But when it comes to what the Egyptian government is saying, they're basically saying that this is not an issue that they can intervene on.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, two of the organizations that have U.S. backing, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, they were actually invited into the country as observers, right?

MATT BRADLEY: Well, at least in the case of NDI. NDI has been here since 2006. And they applied for an application for registration in 2006, but that process has never really come to fruition.

And they've called several times the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Social Solidarity, who normally deals with this sort of thing, and they have said, all of your application papers are in order, but we haven't really come to a decision on whether or not to approve you.

And this is a very similar tactic that the Mubarak regime used, where, if there was sort of an independent satellite station or an international organization that wanted the right to operate here in Egypt, they would allow them to operate openly, but suspend licensing for them, so that they could have a pretext at any moment to shut them down.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, where are these individuals now? Are they in custody anywhere? Or are they just in different parts of the city and scattered and waiting for a court date?

MATT BRADLEY: Well, there are 43 individuals total -- 19 of them are Americans. And 13 of those Americans are not in the country.

And one of the reasons why is because a lot of these people, they work for organizations like NDI and IRI, and they came and they visited for a couple of weeks or a couple of months at a time in the past year. And the Egyptian government took notice of them and included them on this list of charges.

But there are six Americans who are on this list of people who are facing charges who are still here in Cairo. And we know that three of them are actually taking refuge right now at the U.S. Embassy.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, what's the possible outcome here? Could we see a trial situation where we see them in that cage that we have seen so many images of former President Mubarak in?

MATT BRADLEY: It's quite possible. No one really knows. They might not be arrested. You can face trial in Egypt without having been arrested. So it's possible that they will not necessarily have to go behind bars.

But the real important outcome that's coming here is that Congress is going to be taking a very close look at the $1.3 billion in aid that it gives to the Egyptian government every year. Now, in December, there was legislation that was introduced that said that the State Department or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was going to have to certify to Congress that the Egyptian government or the Egyptian military, which is running the Egyptian government, was abiding by the peace treaty with Israel and adhering to certain human rights norms, like freedom of association and freedom of assembly.

And so Hillary Clinton has already threatened the Egyptian military and said that she doesn't -- with -- considering this NGO flap, she doesn't think she is going to be able to certify to Congress that the Egyptian government is abiding by these principles.

And so this $1.3 billion, which is the hallmark and sort of the bedrock on which the Egyptian-American relationship is built, is really at threat, and for the first time really in about 30 years.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Matt Bradley from The Wall Street Journal, thanks so much.

MATT BRADLEY: Thank you.

In Colorado, Romney Ignores Gingrich, Targets Obama

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:37:00 EDT

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GWEN IFILL: Next, to campaign politics.

The two leading contenders for the Republican nomination spent the day campaigning in Colorado, where voters caucus tomorrow. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who came in a distant second in Saturday's Nevada caucus voting, turned his attention to the man who came in first, Mitt Romney.

NEWT GINGRICH (R): And I think the number-one difference between me and the other candidates in this race is the scale of change.

Gov. Romney doesn't represent profound change. He doesn't represent -- if you look at what he did in Massachusetts, he basically accommodated liberal Democrats. And if you look at Romneycare and compare it to Obamacare, if you look at who he appointed as judges, they were people who made liberal Democrats happy. And it's not -- he's not a bad person, per se. But he's also not a person who goes in there with force and will and fundamentally changes things.

GWEN IFILL: But Romney all but ignored Gingrich, deciding instead to focus almost entirely on the man he ultimately wants to unseat.

MITT ROMNEY (R): President Obama three years ago was on "The Today Show," and he said if he couldn't turn the economy around in three years, he' be looking at a one-term proposition.

We're here to collect.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

MITT ROMNEY: All right. And, by the way, he was on "The Today Show" again this morning, and -- on the anniversary of that statement. And he said he deserves a second term.

CROWD: No!

MITT ROMNEY: No, Mr. President, you do not deserve a second term.

I'm afraid, based upon the president's own standard, he has failed. He doesn't deserve a second term.

GWEN IFILL: And now to some analysis from Susan Page, Washington bureau chief at USA Today, and Stuart Rothenberg of The Rothenberg Political Report and Roll Call newspaper.

Stu, let's go back to Betty Ann's piece, because it was kind of interesting that today, not on the stump, but online, Mitt Romney started a petition, talking about how President Obama was forcing a secular vision on America. And we have heard Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum talking about the president's war on religion.

What is at stake?

STUART ROTHENBERG, Editor and Publisher, The Rothenberg Political Report: Well, of course, there's a segment of the Republican Party that really cares about cultural issues.

It's funny. After the last couple of elections, I have read somewhere from -- mostly from Democrats -- that cultural issues don't matter anymore, social issues, and it's all about jobs and the economy and the new economy.

But there is a deep cultural division in this country, with most traditionalists with the Republicans and most liberals or progressives with Democrats. And so when you get an issue injected into a campaign like this, that is so controversial, I think it's bound to create reverberations, where the politicians start to speak out.

GWEN IFILL: A classic wedge issue.

STUART ROTHENBERG: It is.

GWEN IFILL: Susan, does this mean that the Catholic vote votes in a monolith way on this kind of issue? Is this a critical voting bloc?

SUSAN PAGE, USA Today: Well, it is a critical voting bloc. It's not monolith by any means.

But it's been an important voting bloc for President Obama. He made a big effort to go after Catholic voters in 2008. He won 54 percent of them, turning around a deficit that Senator Kerry had suffered four years earlier.

And we find Catholic voters -- about 20 percent of the U.S. electorate is Catholic. And in some swing states, they make up as many -- much as the third of the electorate in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

One other thing to know about the Catholic vote is that a lot of Latinos are Catholic. And we know Latinos are going to be a crucial voting group this time. And they tend to be -- many Latinos tend to be conservative socially.

So, it seems to me that President Obama has kind of opened a fight on this that may not -- may create some problems for him down the road.

STUART ROTHENBERG: I think this is exactly right.

Look, we have had -- battle lines on abortion have been drawn for a long time. And we know there are pro-choice Catholics, there are pro-life Catholics. They're not going to change their views. They're going to vote the parties the way they have.

But there are enough casual voters, independent voters who are Catholic, swing voters in key states that they could determine who wins some of the key states that Susan has identified here.

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about casual voters or the not-so-casual voters. And we saw in Nevada the other night turnout wasn't what was expected, what was predicted. Does that mean the enthusiasm gap has gone away?

SUSAN PAGE: Well, I think it raises some questions.

Down -- also, turnout in Florida, a week earlier, it was down from 2008. I think this does raise questions about how enthusiastic Republican voters really are about this field. We know they're enthusiastic about defeating Barack Obama. Are they enthusiastic about electing Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich? I think this raises some questions.

GWEN IFILL: And how much of this, Stu, is about the process of a caucus? We are going to see a couple more of those coming up. Is it about the way caucuses are conducted? People are less likely to show up?

STUART ROTHENBERG: I don't know about that. I'm not sure it's that.

But I think there is some question about how revved up Republicans are. You would think that they should turn out to these events if they felt strongly about these candidates. And the fact that they aren't showing up in huge numbers -- predictions were that turnout would be bigger. Well, it wasn't. You have to wonder why.

GWEN IFILL: I read that all four of the remaining candidates are going to be in four different states tomorrow night, which means -- which is the next round of voting, a lot of beauty contests, no delegates awarded.

Are what we -- is what we're seeing tomorrow in Missouri, Colorado, Minnesota, is it a pit stop on the way to Super Tuesday?

SUSAN PAGE: Well, it's not one of those big, big election nights, I don't think. But it is important.

For one thing, Mitt Romney, as you pointed out in the piece, wants us to think he already has the nomination. Right? He's focusing his fire on Barack Obama. If he doesn't win all three of these, or at least two of them, doesn't that raise some questions about that, about whether he's really on his way?

We know Rick Santorum is hoping to win in Missouri's nonbinding beauty contest primary that they have tomorrow night, and that Minnesota seems quite competitive. We know Minnesota is a place with a lot of Tea Party voters, as Michele Bachmann taught us.

GWEN IFILL: And how about Newt Gingrich? He has been saying that he has a strategy which takes him through the South and to Texas, and there is a survival path there.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Right. His strategy goes to . . .

GWEN IFILL: You crunch numbers.

STUART ROTHENBERG: His strategy goes to Texas and April 3.

And there are a number of Southern primaries coming up throughout March. I think the key may well be Tennessee. I hate to pick one state already. But on Super Tuesday, you know, Massachusetts is there. You have to figure that Mitt Romney will do well. Georgia is there. You have to figure Newt Gingrich. Ohio is going to be a key state.

But as the former speaker says, the South is the key. Tennessee is a Southern state, but it's really a very mixed state. The eastern part of Tennessee is mountain, mountain Republican, more traditional moderate Republicans, Howard Baker, Sen. Corker, Lamar Alexander. You go west in Tennessee. You go to a more southern part of the state.

GWEN IFILL: Doesn't Rick Santorum have a chance to break out in a place like that?

STUART ROTHENBERG: I think Rick Santorum is looking at a number of places to break out.

Mitt Romney wants to create momentum, the inevitability. I think Rick Santorum in all these states wants -- he wants to become the alternative.

GWEN IFILL: What do you think about Newt Gingrich's path?

SUSAN PAGE: I think hinging your hopes on Tennessee on Super Tuesday sounds a little frail to me. I mean, he's got to wait so long before he wins again.

He won in South Carolina. That gave him a lot of momentum. He's going to wait until March 6 to win again? And then he's going to win in Tennessee, not in Ohio, which is a mega-state, a much more important state when you get to the general election.

So, you know, you don't want to count Newt Gingrich out. He's come back twice when we wouldn't -- we didn't expect it. But this would be historic. We wouldn't have seen before a case when somebody would come back from the deficit he is at now and get the nomination.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Can I respond to the shot she just took at me here?

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: I didn't hear a shot.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Just quickly, quickly, Susan, my point is that Newt Gingrich is talking about a Southern strategy. He's not going to win Virginia because he's not on the ballot. If he can't win Tennessee, that means he wins only Georgia. I think we will discount that, as his home state.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let's not -- I saw Ron Paul being interviewed earlier today on CNN. And he was asked, what is the one state you can win? And he said, oh, I don't worry about that stuff. That's somebody else's job.

Do you see a state that he is positioned to win?

SUSAN PAGE: I think he might win Maine. They report out on Saturday. He's gotten big crowds in Maine.

It's the kind of slightly quirky state, a caucus state, where a small band of really devoted followers perhaps can make a difference. But, of course, I don't think Ron Paul is really running for the nomination. He's running to affect the course of American history, to affect the platform, to make a statement.

So, for him, it seems to me it's easier to see a path for him to stay in this all the way to Tampa than it is for the other two challengers.

GWEN IFILL: You want to take . . .

STUART ROTHENBERG: No, no. I agree entirely.

But if we're looking for a quirky state that Ron Paul could win, I think it says something about his overall prospects.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. As you've said . . .

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: . . . every week sitting in these chairs.

Stu Rothenberg, Susan Page, thank you both very much.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Thanks.

SUSAN PAGE: Thank you, Gwen.

Obama Administration, Catholic Leaders Clash Over Contraception Mandate

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:29:00 EDT

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RAY SUAREZ: Now to the continuing fallout over the Obama administration's recent decision on covering contraceptives in insurance plans.

Leaders in the Catholic community are pushing back hard against a new mandate that requires coverage of contraceptives under the health reform law.

NewsHour health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser reports on the battle lines from both sides.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Holy Ghost Catholic Church in downtown Denver is a popular parish with a chief mission of serving the poor. Yesterday, the focus was not on charity. It was on a new federal regulation regarding health insurance.

From the pulpit, Father Michael Warren had strong words.

REV. MICHAEL WARREN, Holy Ghost Catholic Church: The president of the United States, who has recently made a decision to impose upon Catholic institutions, hospitals, schools, charities that they must provide to their employees coverage for contraception, coverage for sterilization, coverage for drugs that would induce abortion, without choice, this is in direct contradiction to our Gospel values.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: When Father Warren finished his homily, the congregation broke out in wild applause.

(APPLAUSE)

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And when the mass ended, it was clear most of his flock stood behind him.

DR. ANDREW SCHREFFLER, churchgoer: Well, I think it's atrocious. Not only is it bad medicine, but it tramples on our First Amendment rights.

BRITTANY KERLIN, churchgoer: I feel that it's an affront on my citizenship. Entirely about religious freedoms. I am obviously against contraception, but we live in a free country.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The new rule was issued last month by the Department of Health and Human Services. Not only did it say employers who offer health insurance must provide contraception, they must also do it free of charge. Churches are exempt from the regulation, but because Catholic hospitals and universities serve many Americans who aren't Catholic, the Administration said they must comply.

At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney explained.

JAY CARNEY, White House press secretary: The new guidelines require most private health plans to cover preventive services, including contraception, for women without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible. The guidelines were recommended by the non-partisan Independent Institute of Medicine.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The new rule grew out of an IOM report last year that recommended a major expansion of birth control services to women.

The report said in part, women with unintended pregnancies account for almost half of pregnancies in the U.S., and those women are more likely to smoke, consume alcohol, be depressed and experience domestic violence. The IOM also said, expanded birth control services to women will cut down on the number of abortions and make women healthier.

The Obama administration says 28 states already have similar mandates requiring contraceptive coverage.

But some Catholic leaders say the states have broader exemptions than the new federal mandate.

Marcia Greenberger is co-president of the National Women's Law Center in Washington. She supports the new federal rule.

MARCIA GREENBERGER, National Women's Law Center: It's essential for women's health and for the health of their children and ultimately the health of their whole family. And that's why the Institute of Medicine, all of the scientists and medical experts said that contraception is an essential health benefit that should be available without co-pays, without deductibles.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But the scope of the new regulation raises complex legal and moral questions.

John Garvey is the president of the Catholic University of America in Washington.

JOHN GARVEY, Catholic University of America: It is not about whether the health care law ought to provide for or even insist on coverage of contraceptive care for women. It is about whether every institution that provides a health care plan ought to be obliged to pay for that, even if they have religious objections to it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Garvey is also a legal scholar who focuses on constitutional law. He teaches a class weekly at the university and believes it doesn't matter that the students they serve are not all Catholics.

JOHN GARVEY: It requires us to contradict in our actions the very lessons that we're teaching with our words in classes and in our daily activities at the university. It makes us hypocrites in front of the students that we're trying to educate.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But many university employees and students on the school's health plan have used birth control and want the school to comply with the regulation.

Twenty-seven-year-old Erin McCarthy, a non-practicing Catholic, is studying for her master's in social work there. Right now, she says she can't afford to pay for birth control out of pocket.

ERIN MCCARTHY, graduate student, Catholic University of America: A generic would cost $30 a month, something like that, which, you know, it may not seem like a lot, but times 12, without a full-time job, it adds up -- $30 can buy groceries for a few weeks, so --

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Recent studies have found the vast majority of Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives.

And Greenberger believes it's a woman's right to have coverage.

MARCIA GREENBERGER: We don't see families of eight to 12 children these days in religious pews, whatever the religion may be, because of the widespread use of contraception.

And that's really reflective of the recognition that contraception is essential for women's health. It's essential to have healthier children. And, of course, it means that for the well-being of the whole family unit.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, says that's not the point.

ANTHONY PICARELLO JR., general counsel, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: Whether or not individual Catholics or others in society happen to agree with that is really not the issue. Instead, it's the question of whether the government can force this religious institution that happens to have these commitments to violate those beliefs as a matter of federal law.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations in support of the Obama administration say the rule is not an infringement on religious liberty, because women are still free to follow their own beliefs. And, at this point, institutions like Catholic University can apply for a one-year extension to the mandate before having to comply.

But Picarello warns the bishops will still look for ways to stop it.

ANTHONY PICARELLO JR.: The bishops are highly motivated to pursue every means legally available to them to get rid of this mandate. And they will do it by litigation if they have to, by legislation if they can, by public advocacy. But, basically, they're not going to stop until it's gone.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Supporters of the mandate hope it will not be expanded to cover Catholic institutions outside of the church.

MARCIA GREENBERGER: To broaden that exception to well over a million women and their families would be terrible health policy in this country. It's too essential for our efforts with respect to infant mortality, maternal mortality, the health and future of this country. And I put it in those major terms because that's really what contraception is all about.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The new rule takes effect in August, but religious institutions like Catholic University can file for a one-year exemption.

Next Health Care Mandate: Flu Shots for Medical Professionals?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:23:00 EDT

Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.

Brandon Hostler's arm is usually among the first extended for the annual flu shot at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va. He is, after all, a registered nurse -- he knows it can do some good.

But if that shot ever becomes mandatory, he will balk.

"I wouldn't quit or switch jobs," he said. "But we are health care professionals. We know the risks and the benefits, and to force us to do something like that and not have a say in it, I think it would be offensive and unwanted."

In this moment of looming change and controversial mandates in American health care, the debate over whether flu shots should be mandatory for hospital employees has become a smaller but important battle between those who feel government should force its hand to improve the health care system and those who believe that critical civil liberties are being steamrolled.

Mass Casualties

In the thick of the fray is a problem of massive proportion: Influenza kills between 3,000 and 49,000 people each year and sends 200,000 to the hospital for respiratory illnesses and heart conditions. That's according to a subcommittee of the federal government's National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which will meet this week to discuss potential strategies for dramatically boosting immunization and inching closer to a Healthy People 2020 goal.

The U.S. government would like to see 90 percent of America's health care personnel immunized annually against the flu by the end of the decade. But reaching that goal begs a major question: Should the government encourage organization-wide, state-based or even national mandates to get there?

In the 2010-11 flu season, 63.5 percent of health care personnel received a flu shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In hospitals that required immunization, compliance was nearly universal.

"This should be mandated and it should have been done earlier," said Helen Darling, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health.

The nonprofit organization, which represents more than 300 large employers, including 68 of the Fortune 100 companies, threw its support behind a flu shot requirement for health care workers last week, and it did so in part due to three additional statistics, Darling said. The virus can be transmitted to patients by both symptomatic and asymptomatic health care providers. One in four health care workers shows evidence of having the flu each year. And 70 percent of them continue to work despite having flu-like symptoms.

"The idea that a pregnant woman can enter a hospital and deliver a baby in a place where employees aren't required to take every step possible to guard against a preventable disease ... I just think that many people would be stunned by that," Darling said. "If hospital workers don't want to get the shot, they don't need to work in a hospital -- they can go work in a library and spread their germs to people checking out books."

Where's the 'Informed Consent?'

Needless to say, not everyone agrees. Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, says some of the studies supporting the effectiveness of the flu vaccine are "flawed" -- at least enough that workers should be allowed to exercise "informed consent." In a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regarding the subcommittee's recommendation, Fisher and her team also called into question the CDC's estimate for annual flu-related deaths. All told, she said, the evidence is too shaky for any kind of government-imposed mandate.

Certainly, she said, the shots should be available for those that want them. "But there should be in America the right to make informed, voluntary choices about the preventive health care we use. Because when these hospital employees receive flu shots, they're engaging in a medical intervention that carries a risk of great sickness and even death."

Front Line Obligations

Those arguments don't hold much weight with health officials in Colorado who want the vaccine administered to all hospital and nursing home employees -- with no religious or personal exemptions allowed. A narrow set of individuals with documented medical conditions could apply for a waiver, but they would be required to wear a mask during flu season.

The Colorado Hospital Association supports the general idea, which will be taken up by the state board of health later this month.

"If we did face a serious epidemic, it serves no one's interest to have our health care workers on the front line at home, sick," said Steven Summer, the hospital association's president and CEO. "They would be the first-responders, and having them home sick wouldn't work so well. In the absence of a clear mandate, we can't get where we need to be."

On a more individual level, it's an "ethical responsibility," said Amy Garcia, chief nursing officer for the American Nurses Association.

"Part of nursing's code of ethics is that the patient comes first. So we believe if there is a chance that a nurse could expose a patient, it is the ethical responsibility of the nurse to be protected by vaccinations," Garcia said.

A strictly enforced policy is a little different, though, she said. Any formalized rule should always be accompanied by enough protections to ensure that "nurses are treated fairly."

That includes suitable exemptions for those allergic to the vaccine, the ability to opt-out for personal reasons, and bans on discrimination or punitive measures for those who choose not to participate. The policy should also be part of a larger "comprehensive infection control program" that includes the use of masks, gloves and aprons in appropriate settings, Garcia said. And immunization clinics should be free and convenient for employees working all shifts.

Swine Flu Fever

Few of those protections were in place in 2009, when the nation panicked under the building threat of H1N1 and New York state officials issued an edict that medical professionals either receive seasonal and swine-flu vaccines or lose their jobs.

"There was mass outrage because it was put forward without any discussion, there were no personal exemptions, no religious exemptions," said Renee Gecsedi, a registered nurse and director of education practice and research for the New York State Nurses Association. "There was a medical exemption but it was so narrow that people with egg sensitivities -- which often flare up after the vaccination -- weren't included "

The uproar coupled with the vaccine shortage that year caused state officials to rescind the policy. But it served as a telling measurement of public opinion, Gecsedi said: "If these mandates go into effect, employees need to have options."

Uncertain Steps Ahead

At the moment, the subgroup of the federal government's National Vaccine Advisory Committee isn't advocating a full-scale national mandate. In fact, its draft proposal only recommends that health care employers "strongly consider an employer requirement for influenza immunization" after a broader, multi-pronged approach fails to hit certain benchmarks in the build-up to the 90 percent goal for 2020.

Still, the federal government's not ruling anything out, said Dr. Don Wright, deputy assistant secretary for health care quality at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"The National Vaccine Advisory Committee can accept, modify or reject the subcommittee's proposal -- or they can come up with something else," he said. "I'm not sure where the committee will come out."

Do you think a flu vaccine for hospital workers is a good idea? Share your thoughts in the comments section below or on Twitter.

Boehner: Senate Wants 'No Part of Cutting Spending'

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:16:00 EDT

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GWEN IFILL: We turn now to our newsmaker interview with Speaker of the House John Boehner. Judy Woodruff sat down with him in his ceremonial office at the U.S. Capitol this afternoon.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Speaker John Boehner, thank you very much for talking with us.

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER, R-Ohio: Good to be here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you begin this New Year with polls showing the American people have never held Congress in such low regard. Is that something that you think Congress deserves?

JOHN BOEHNER: Well, Judy, welcome to divided government. You know, the House is controlled by Republicans, Senate controlled by Democrats. We have a Democrat in the White House. And, you know, both parties have strongly-held positions. But I think the American people expect, and frankly deserve, for us -- even though we have strongly-held positions -- to find enough common ground to do what's necessary to get our economy moving again and get people back to work.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, the polls also show that people think that a lot of this gridlock, and what they see that they don't like, is due to members spending more time doing partisan bickering than doing what's good for the country. Is that a fair perception?

JOHN BOEHNER: Oh, I don't think so. Because, you know, on an average day, 90 percent of the time members of Congress, both sides of the aisle, are working together and doing the people's business. But the media would only typically focus on us when we're having a disagreement, so that's really what most people see -- are the disagreements.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Are you -- but you're not suggesting that Congress gets along most of the time.

JOHN BOEHNER: No, we do get along most of the time. It's really rather surprising when you look at the number of bills that come through here, the number of hearings that go on where members of Congress on both sides of the aisle actually do work together to do the people's business.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So this perception that members are beholden to their base, in effect, for both parties -- and that it's hard to work --

JOHN BOEHNER: That usually only shows up on the really big bills, where there are some really strongly held beliefs. You know, the president -- when he wants to go out there and raise taxes on the American people, we believe that if you really want fairness, why don't we take the whole tax code and make it flatter and fairer for all Americans?

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think it would take for Congress to function in a way that would be to the benefit of all the American people?

JOHN BOEHNER: I've spent a lot of time over the last year focused on the institution itself. You know, if you look back at over the last 20 years that I've been here, the process on the floor has been tighter and tighter and tighter. Where in the last -- in 2009, 2010, about five members would decide what the beginning and end of a bill were going to look like - it happened to be the same five people -- while 430 of us just literally sat on the sidelines.

I'm a big believer that we need to open up the process. And I think members of the House will tell you, both sides of the aisle, that there's a much more open process here in the House, a much fairer process for members of both political parties.

And secondly, I believe that we need to rebuild the committee system -- because if more bills have to come out of committee and come to the floor under an open process, it will require members on both sides of the aisle to begin to reach out to each other more at the committee level, beginning the process of melting some of the partisan scar tissue that's built up over the years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama has had his own ups and downs in the polls. How would you describe your relationship with him?

JOHN BOEHNER: The president and I get along fine. We really do. We have a very cordial relationship. Doesn't mean we agree on everything, but the president and I have had a lot of frank conversations about the big issues that our country's facing. And whether it was the issue of the debt, whether it was the issue of foreign policy or our defense posture, we've had a lot of very good discussions. Unfortunately, we've not seen a lot of results.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How recently have you spoken with him?

JOHN BOEHNER: I talked to him just last week.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You want to tell me about what?

JOHN BOEHNER: Oh, I'm sure you'd love to know.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because he says that he thinks you would do more - you would be able to work more with the administration, except you have members who just won't let you.

JOHN BOEHNER: When the president and I have been able to come to an agreement, there's been no issue at all in getting -- whatever the agreement was, getting it passed. I think it's an excuse that the White House uses because there're so many areas that we've not been able to come to an agreement on.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it appeared to the public last summer that you and he were pretty close to a deal on the debt ceiling -- big budget cuts, tax increases -- but that you were, in effect, held back by your own membership. Is that what happened?

JOHN BOEHNER: No, no. I was more than willing to put revenues on the table. I thought if we reformed our tax system, we could produce more revenue from it. But I told the president, I'm not going to put more revenue on the table unless you're willing to make real changes to our entitlement programs because in their current form, they're not sustainable.

The president would never say yes to any of those changes to the entitlement programs. And even though I had revenue on the table and the president hadn't said yes, he came back and wanted $500 billion more in revenue. There's a way to do this, but it takes courage. And I am more than willing to address this problem at any moment with the president, because the future of our country depends on us coming to an agreement that will begin to solve our debt problem.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But this perception, Mr. Speaker, that there is a sizable group of Republicans in the House who are more conservative, who are just - want you to go in a different direction.

JOHN BOEHNER: Well, there are certainly -- in both political parties we've got our share of divisions. And while there are some divisions within the Republican side of the aisle, they pale in comparison to the divisions on the other side of the aisle. But my job is to bring our team to do what's do-able, and work with our Senate colleagues and the White House to do the American people's work. But, you know, I'm presiding over an institution that was designed not to work. You know, the founders gave us 435 members from all across the country, one big committee to solve America's issues. It's a demanding job. But I'm glad I've got it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What are your main priorities this year that you think you can get done?

JOHN BOEHNER: Well, I think the issue of getting - of the economy moving again and create more jobs is the number-one issue. We had a fairly good jobs report last Friday. But, you know, I would argue it wasn't good enough. You know, we still have millions of Americans asking the question, where are the jobs? And so, when we look at this year, our focus is going to continue to be on jobs, like it was last year.

We've got the federal aviation re-authorization that finally, after 23 extensions, we were able to come to an agreement with the Senate. Passed the House last week; it'll pass the Senate this week. The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act will be up here in the next couple of weeks, taking, opening up more areas for energy development and using those new revenues -- royalty revenues -- to pay for our aging infrastructure that needs real repair. And we'll do this in a way that has no earmarks. You know, the last highway bill had 6,317 earmarks in it, little projects for members of Congress and their districts -- some of them not so little. No earmarks.

So there are some things that we can do that will get our economy going again. And, you know, the House has had our plan for American job creators since last May. We've passed 30 bills that would help our economy grow -- 27 of them are still sitting in the United States Senate. And if we're serious about jobs and the economy, the Senate has to take up some of these bills and actually act.

JUDY WOODRUFF: One of the unresolved issues from last year was the payroll tax cut extension.

JOHN BOEHNER: Yep.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There was a big hoo-ha over it in December, right before Christmas. Are your members going to be prepared to go along with a year-long extension?

JOHN BOEHNER: Our members were prepared. We passed a year-long extension in the payroll tax credit in December.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But it included material the White House - the administration, Democrats were never going to go along with.

JOHN BOEHNER: We had reasonable offsets in spending that, most of them, came from the president's own budget. And so we've done our work. We're in conference with the Senate trying to come to agreement. But it's pretty clear that our Senate colleagues want no part of cutting spending. Now, if we're going to extend the payroll tax credit, and we're going to extend unemployment benefits with reforms, and take care of the so-called doc fix, we're going to have to offset this spending. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to offset this spending. So it's -- we're in conference with the Senate. Hopefully we'll be able to come to an agreement quickly.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On the bigger question of cutting government spending, the super committee failure, the requirement now that Congress make deep cuts in defense and deep cuts in the entitlements - is that a process that's going to hold, because a lot of members - many members are now talking about ignoring it.

JOHN BOEHNER: Well, one of the real successes from last year is that we were able to cut $2.1 trillion worth of spending over the next 10 years. Now that's already law. It's going to happen. The second part of that agreement came about as a result of the failure of the super committee. So there's another $1.2 trillion worth of spending cuts that needs to occur over the next 10 years.

And because we weren't able to come to an agreement, there's a so-called sequester - automatic cuts that go into place. I'm not happy about the sequester, the way it's made up. I think it could be replaced. I think the defense cuts in, that would take place in January of 2013 are unsustainable and will put America at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to defending our interest at home and abroad.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you think that's going to be undone?

JOHN BOEHNER: I think that it's going to have to be replaced. We just can't undo it; it needs to be replaced.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Two questions about the campaign year. This is another year --

JOHN BOEHNER: Really?

JUDY WOODRUFF: When every single member of the House --

JOHN BOEHNER: We got some other problems with American democracy. We have elections too often. (Laughter.) And it gets in the way of doing good work here in Washington.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, your friends and the Democratic Party and the Democratic side of the House are predicting that they can take back the House majority this year, that they can win back at least the 25 seats it would take to regain the majority. What do you think? Should they be so confident?

JOHN BOEHNER: I don't think they should be that confident, but it's going to be an election. We've got redistricting going on all across the country, so members are - most members are going to be in new districts. But it -- while I think there's going to be a real fight, I think we have a reasonable opportunity to maintain the majority. I promised the American people when we took the majority that my job was to listen to them every day and to follow their will. And while it's - whether it's cutting spending or getting our economy going again, we've done what the American people have asked us to do.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, on the presidential campaign, I know you need to stay neutral. You're officially neutral, because you're the speaker. But it's pretty clear this has been a rough campaign -- a lot of personal attacks among the Republican candidates, the tone negative, the advertising negative. Are you concerned that going into the fall, that this kind of tone -- we've already seen turnout low in the early primary states. Are you concerned that could continue and hurt Republicans in the fall?

JOHN BOEHNER: Well, no one likes to see nasty campaigns. But I would remind you that the fight in 2008 between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went on through June of that year. And so while I'd rather not see it, it's part of the political process. Out of this will come our nominee. And I don't think it'll have any impact on the November election.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Should they tone it down?

JOHN BOEHNER: Listen, I'm not going to tell them what to do. That's not my job.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mr. Speaker, we thank you very much for talking with us today.

JOHN BOEHNER: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you.

News Wrap: Obama Orders New Sanctions on Iran's Government, Central Bank

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:14:00 EDT

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HARI SREENIVASAN: President Obama has imposed new sanctions on Iran and its Central Bank. The move was mandated by Congress to increase pressure on the Iranian regime over its nuclear program. Today's White House announcement followed growing talk that Israel might attack Iran soon to set back that effort.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney said the timing of the sanctions is not related to those reports.

JAY CARNEY, White House press secretary: There has been a steady increase in our sanctions activity. And this is part of that escalation. And it's not related to -- specifically to that issue or the questions about it.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The U.S. and Israel say Iran's ultimate goal is to produce nuclear weapons. Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes only.

Greece agreed today to a major new austerity measure eliminating 15,000 government jobs. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund pressed for the cuts, as part of a bailout deal worth $170 billion. Greek unions have called for a nationwide strike tomorrow to protest the new cuts.

Wall Street got off to a slow start for the week. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 17 points to close at 12,845. The Nasdaq fell more than three points to close just under 2,902.

A deep freeze paralyzed much of Eastern Europe for another day. The cold wave is more than a week old, with no immediate end in sight. Rescue crews in Bosnia used helicopters today to evacuate trapped residents and deliver food to remote mountain villages. And people in Eastern Romania worked to dig out from the heavy snow.
Meanwhile, children across Serbia took to the sleds, after officials declared an emergency and canceled school for the week.
MILIVOJE MIHAJLOVIC, Serbian government spokesman (through translator): The decision to declare an emergency situation is primarily to protect citizens. We made the decision that children do not go to school for a week primarily because of their health and to save energy.
HARI SREENIVASAN: At least 150 deaths have been blamed on the European freeze.

Google India has taken down Web pages within their network that the Indian government deemed offensive to political and religious leaders. The move came today after a New Delhi court ordered 22 major Internet firms to do more policing of what is available to online users. The Indian communications minister insisted it is not a question of censorship, but one of responsible behavior.

The New York Giants arrived home today after beating the New England Patriots 21-17 to win Super Bowl XLVI. The players flew into Newark, N.J., today, bringing with them the Giants' fourth Super Bowl championship trophy. Airport workers waved the players off. A parade and rally are planned tomorrow.

The game was the most watched program in television history. But NBC and the NFL had to apologize today for an incident at halftime, when British hip-hop star MIA made an obscene gesture.

Those are some of the day's major stories.