The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion organization that this week rescinded its support for Representative Bart Stupak, announced earlier today that Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, will be its keynote speaker at a May 14 breakfast here in Washington.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the group, said:

“Susan B. Anthony would be proud of Governor Palin’s consistent, passionate witness for women and the unborn, and especially her commitment to the families of children with special needs. Governor Palin is the modern personification of the authentic leadership modeled by early women’s rights trailblazers like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Our nation’s earliest women leaders understood that women’s rights could never be advanced at the expense of the broken rights of innocent unborn children.”

Ms. Palin has long had the group’s support. In fact, when she was the Republican vice-presidential nominee during the 2008 presidential campaign, the organization formed a TeamSarah.org Web site to expand her backing.

Doug Mills/The New York Times After a rally in Iowa City on health insurance reform, President Obama made a surprise visit to a local bookstore, where he took a look at books by Mitt Romney and Karl Rove.

IOWA CITY — President Obama spent plenty of time in Iowa as a candidate. On Thursday, he had a little homecoming of sorts, making a surprise visit to the Prairie Lights bookstore, a business he had referred to during a campaign-style rally just an hour earlier.

An account by the pool reporter, Carol Lee of Politico, who was traveling with Mr. Obama, offers the details. (To decode just a little bit for the average reader outside the Beltway, POTUS is the code name for the president of the United States, the Gibbs referred to is Robert Gibbs, his press secretary, and your “pooler” means Ms. Lee, the reporter assigned on this day to cover the president as part of a small contingent of print and TV journalists as well as photographers who are among the White House correspondents rotating pool duty, which requires sharing their reports.)

Here’s the pool report:

“Well, this used to be my favorite place,” Obama told the owner as she showed him around.

He remarked how as president he can’t really mosey around bookstores anymore, and said the office comes with the good and bad.

Obama walked around the store apparently in pursuit of the children’s/young adult section.

Along his way, he picked up “No Apology” by Mitt Romney and “Courage and Consequence” by Karl Rove.

“What do you think, guys?” he asked the pool, holding up a hardback copy of each in his hands before setting them back down.

On the same row was “Inside Obama’s Brain,” which Robert Gibbs remarked on as he walked by.

Obama then headed upstairs but was soon back. “All right, I’m supposed to go downstairs,” he explained.

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Updated: Over the past week, David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization, has emerged as one of the leading critics of the way Republicans dealt with President Obama’s health care bill.

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for Meet the Press David Frum during a live taping of “Meet the Press” in March in Washington.

The party, Mr. Frum said, put politics over policy in trying to damage Mr. Obama’s agenda, and lost both the political battle and the ability to influence a key piece of legislation. In a column Mr. Frum posted at the FrumForum, he wrote that the House passage of the health care bill had become the Republicans’ “Waterloo,” rather than Mr. Obama’s, as a leading G.O.P. senator had once warned.

As of Thursday, Mr. Frum had become a former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Frum said he was taken out to lunch by the president of the organization, Arthur C. Brooks. He said Mr. Brooks told him the institute valued a diversity of opinion, and welcomed that one of its scholars had become such a high-profile critic of Republican legislative leaders. Mr. Frum, who has been with the institute since 2003, said that he was asked if he would considering being associated with the institute on a nonsalaried basis.
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The Congressional clash over threats and vandalism against lawmakers in the aftermath of the health care vote took a new turn Thursday as the No. 2 House Republican accused Democrats of recklessly exploiting the incidents for political gain.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, told reporters that he had also been the subject of threats and that a shot was fired through a window of his campaign office in Richmond this week.

But he said he chose not to publicize the incident for fear of inciting more, and he said that Democrats were wrongly amplifying reports of vandalism and death threats made against lawmakers.

“It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain,” said Mr. Cantor, who delivered a stern-faced statement on the issue but did not take questions from reporters. “To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible. By ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels. Enough is enough. It has to stop.”

Mr. Cantor referred to former Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who put out an appeal urging donors to contribute to help Democrats defend against the attacks.

Mr. Cantor’s push back came after House Democrats reported a series of office vandalisms, hate mail, abusive phone calls and other incidents after the health care vote. The incidents have captured significant attention, particularly after protesters at the Capitol over the weekend used racial and sexual slurs against Democrats as they went to vote on health care issues.
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With the finish line in sight, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV seems pretty happy about the status of the health care debate. And he wasn’t afraid to talk about it this morning.

On the day both the Senate and the House will conceivably act on a package of changes to the new health care law, Mr. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, took to the lectern at a news conference – and slammed health insurance companies, in addition to lauding the health care overhaul.

About eight minutes into the briefing, which was convened to talk up how changes to the health care system and student loan programs would help the middle class, he remarked: “It’s a glorious bill. And it’s going to open itself up, kind of like a flower in the spring time.”

A bit later, Mr. Rockefeller seemed to realize that he’d been talking awhile. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, standing in front of a group of students who attended the news conference, seemed to agree. “It is their spring break,” Mr. Dodd said.
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While President Obama promotes health care legislation in Iowa today, polls taken since the bill passed find somewhat more support for the measure, but also reveal a nation still skeptical of overhauling the health care system.

Voters disapproved of the bill, 49 percent to 40 percent, in a Quinnipiac University poll taken this week after the House vote on Sunday. Just before the measure passed, a poll showed that opponents outnumbered supporters by 18 points, or 54 percent to 36 percent.

Similarly, a CBS News poll taken before the vote found respondents disapproving of the bill by 48 percent to 37 percent. That gap closed to 46 percent to 42 percent opposed when those respondents were reinterviewed after the vote.

Both polls also find Mr. Obama receiving better marks for his handling of health care since the bill passed, but his rating on the issue is still below 50 percent.

And in the CBS News poll, while most of those reinterviewed after the vote still said they disapproved of how the Democrats in Congress were handling health care, the sentiment appeared to be dropping. It was down 10 points, from 66 percent to 56 percent disapproval. (For Republicans, the change in the public’s disapproval was smaller — 63 percent now say they disapprove, compared with 67 percent before the vote.)

At the same time, the Quinnipiac poll reveals that none of the major players in Washington have emerged from this debate unscathed. Voters in the poll said they were more apt to think less favorably of Mr. Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans because of their handling of health care, rather than viewing any of them more favorably.
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Updated In a new e-mail letter, Tim Kaine, the head of the Democratic National Committee, asks supporters to pledge $5 or more to help defend lawmakers from the threats they’ve reported after the health care bill passed over the weekend.

Titled “Heroes Under Attack,” Mr. Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, writes:

On Sunday night, many Congressional Democrats in tough districts cast courageous votes for health reform — even though they knew that insurance companies and their Republican allies would retaliate immediately.

Well, the attacks are here. Shameful, negative ads have already hit the air waves. Democratic offices have been vandalized. Republicans are promising to repeal reform and smearing those who supported it.

Carl Hulse, the chief Congressional correspondent of The Times, reports that at least 10 lawmakers reported receiving death threats or have had their district offices vandalized, after a weekend of angry protests outside the Capitol Building while the House debated and voted on the measure.

Mr. Kaine’s letter puts the blame for the attacks on Republicans and their allies, and urges them to tamp down the fury among some opponents of the health bill. In a statement Wednesday, Representative John A. Boehner, the minority leader, tried to do just that: “I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening. But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change.”
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It’s back to the House with the health care bill.

Early this morning, Republicans identified parliamentary problems with the package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping overhaul of the health insurance system, forcing the House to take a second vote on the legislation after the Senate approves it.

Senate Democrats were on an all-night crusade to defeat scores of Republican amendments in what aides and the Congressional press corps termed a “vote-a-rama.” But after defeating two dozen changes to the legislation, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the bill did not meet the complex budget reconciliation rules requiring all provisions to directly affect government spending or revenues. The snag, however, did not appear to endanger the eventual adoption of the changes, The Times’ David Herszenhorn and Robert Pear write.

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said the Senate would complete work on the bill by 2 p.m. today even though lawmakers did not leave the floor until around 2:55 a.m. this morning.

Promoting the Bill: The stumping never stops. President Obama makes his way to Iowa today to promote his health care bill as Democrats begin a public relations campaign to win over skeptical Americans. He’ll address a group at the University of Iowa at 1 p.m. Central time.

Vote Backlash: But anger over the bill and the parliamentary maneuvering used to pass it may run deeper than Democrats expected. Lawmakers who voted for the bill have received death threats and been the victims of vandalism.
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With Florida’s primary now five months – to the day – away, the two leading Republican Senate candidates in the Sunshine State spent Wednesday firing political punches at each other.

Gov. Charlie Crist released advertisements on both television and radio today, with the television spot directly taking on Marco Rubio, the former speaker of the Florida House.

For his part, Mr. Rubio unveiled a new Web video, as well as two television ads responding to Mr. Crist’s shot at him.

Mr. Crist has gone on the offensive with these commercials. Though he was seen by many as all but a shoo-in when entered the Senate contest, the momentum in the Republican primary now seems on the side of Mr. Rubio, who has been embraced by conservative outlets like the National Review and by Tea Party activists. In today’s spots, the governor looks to reverse that trend by taking advantage of some recent unflattering Florida press pointed at Mr. Rubio and by trying to shore up his own conservative bona fides.
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The Times’s Jodi Kantor profiles consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren whom, she calls the “chief conceiver of and booster for a new consumer financial protection agency.” In addition to the article, we produced a video about Ms. Warren’s crusade.

All 18 members of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt have been named now that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday announced three Democratic lawmakers as her choices.

They are Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, a moderate Democrat who is chairman of the House Budget Committee; Representative Xavier Becerra of California, a liberal lieutenant of Ms. Pelosi who is vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a member of the Budget and Ways and Means committees; and Representative Jan Schakowsky, a liberal from Illinois and a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

In recent weeks, Ms. Pelosi was delayed in making her picks by her all-consuming push for passage of health insurance legislation. Since Mr. Obama established the fiscal commission by executive order more than a month ago, his co-chairmen — Erskine Bowles, the former Clinton White House chief of staff, and Alan K. Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming — have been trying to get organized and have expressed mild irritation at the hold-ups.

They have tapped Bruce Reed, the former chief domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, to be executive director. He is expected to take a leave for the rest of the year from his post as chairman of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council. The debt commission has until Dec. 1 to make short-term and long-term recommendations for reducing the debt.
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When an anti-abortion group hosts its annual Campaign for Life gala at the Willard Hotel tonight, Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, won’t be getting his previously announced award. And no one will receive it in his place.

Mr. Stupak stunned his anti-abortion supporters over the weekend when he decided to vote for the health care bill, settling with other Democrats for an executive order outlining restrictions on abortion finance that President Obama signed today.

Once he did so, the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund, a group that backs candidates of varying political parties who are anti-abortion, rescinded its “Defender of Life” award that he was supposed to get. In a release on Sunday after Mr. Stupak’s announcement, the group called the anti-abortion Democrats who changed their minds “pro-life betrayers.”

“It was a total surprise and I really really didn’t believe that he would do it,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president. She and Mr. Stupak had been in conversations before the big weekend debate, she said, and so Mr. Stupak’s course alteration forced the group’s hand.

“And it is no glee at all in not doing it,” Ms. Dannenfelser said of taking back the award, adding that there was quite a bit of disappointment. She also blasted Mr. Stupak and others for latching onto the executive order put in place today, arguing that it can be easily overturned and does not carry the full weight of the longstanding Hyde amendment on this issue.
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The 50 State Quarters Program has a sequel.

The United States Mint will start circulating quarters honoring national parks and other national sites in April. In all, the America the Beautiful Quarters Program is slated to release 56 quarters through 2021, eventually highlighting sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories.

The first quarter will recognize Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. The next four — featuring Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park; California’s Yosemite National Park; Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park; and Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest — will also individually go into circulation this year. (Images of the first five quarters can be found here.)

Future quarters are scheduled to be released — five a year through 2020, with the final one coming in 2021 — in the order in which the recognized place became a national park or site.

According to the Mint, more than 147 million Americans collected quarters from the 50 State program, which released its first coin in 1999.

The opening minutes of “The Senators’ Bargain,” a documentary film appearing tonight on HBO2, show Senator John McCain at a Congressional hearing in 2006, reading out loud from a newspaper article describing the death from broiling in the desert that befalls many immigrants trying to cross the border illegally.

“The brain cooks and the delirium starts,” Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, reads somberly, explaining why he will join Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal Democrats, in sponsoring a bill to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.

The documentary, directed by Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini, is an insiders’ chronicle of the maneuvering and deal-making in the immigration debate that ended in June 2007 with the collapse of the bill that Mr. Kennedy had championed to the end. A civics lesson on how the sausage of such ambitious legislation is made, the film is also an affectionate portrait of Mr. Kennedy, at the end of his career, as he strives to lock in his legacy with a last bill on immigration, his signature issue along with health care.

But as the cameras follow the action down Congressional hallways, the cooperative mood among lawmakers steadily fades. The film also serves as a eulogy for the bipartisan spirit that Mr. McCain and Mr. Kennedy exude at the start.

The documentary is one of 12 films on the inner workings of Washington by the directors. Although it took years to make, its timing is fortuitous, after tens of thousands of immigrants demonstrated on the Washington Mall on Sunday in an effort to keep immigration on President Obama’s agenda.

After his proposal with Mr. McCain stalled in 2006, Mr. Kennedy made a bargain in 2007 with President George W. Bush and a tougher Republican negotiator, Jon Kyl, the other Republican senator from Arizona. Mr. Kennedy agreed to changes in the immigration system that would give priority to foreigners with education and skills over family ties. Cecilia Muñoz, a lobbyist for the National Council of la Raza, observes that the new approach was a repudiation of the family-based system Mr. Kennedy had helped to establish in 1965, in the first bill he marshaled through Congress.
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