Speaking in the White House Briefing Room flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the president said he was not backing away from the “core principle” that “women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services — no matter where they work.”

But at the same time, he said, “we’ve been mindful that there’s another principle at stake here — and that’s the principle of religious liberty.”

The original proposal would have made churches, synagogues and other houses of worship exempt, but not religion-sponsored hospitals, universities and charities.

His contraceptive coverage 2.0 will allow those latter institutions to also opt out, but women will be guaranteed no-cost access to contraception by a requirement that the institution’s insurance company offer the coverage instead.

“The result will be that religious organizations won’t have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” Obama said. “But women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services, just like other women, and they’ll no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars a year that could go towards paying the rent or buying groceries.”

Women’s groups were pleased by the announcement.

“Today’s announcement makes it clear that President Obama is firmly committed to protecting women’s health,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

But more important, the new proposal brought back into the fold many of those who had reluctantly split with the president over the policy.

“I am pleased that the White House has taken further steps to ensure that all women have access to affordable contraception and to ensure that religious organizations will not be asked to violate their beliefs in the process,” said Tim Kaine, former head of the Democratic National Committee, now running for a swing-state Senate seat in Virginia.

The announcement also won back Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, a key ally in getting the 2010 health law passed.

“The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed,” she said in a statement.

But not everyone was satisfied. NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports that while the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the shift “a first step in the right direction,” other church officials weren’t so charitable. Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami labeled the president’s change “a smoke screen” that obscures issues of religious freedom.

And the reaction from Republicans on Capitol Hill was predictably harsh.

“They’re not sorry they violated the First Amendment; they’re sorry Americans didn’t agree with them when they did,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “This whole episode demonstrates why politicians should not be the ones to make determinations about religious beliefs and is just another reason why the deeply flawed health law needs to be repealed.”

Some of the most restrained reactions came from those who would be most affected — the insurance companies.

In a statement, the insurance industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans said only that “we are concerned about the precedent this proposed rule would set. As we learn more about how this rule would be operationalized, we will provide comments through the regulatory process.”

Other industry onlookers were less reticent.

“There is no free lunch, and there is no free contraception,” said Robert Laszewski, an insurance industry consultant.

He said there is simply no way that insurers will actually pay for the benefits and that they will end up passing the cost back to their customers, including the religious entities who are supposedly being excused.

“We’re going to play a game called, ‘You didn’t tell us to do it so we won’t bring this up,’ ” he said.

And even those with a somewhat more charitable view of the proposal are still worried, such as Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health.

“It isn’t clear exactly how it’s going to work,” said Darling, whose group represents large employers.

Darling said she’s happy the president found a formula that seems to satisfy many in the women’s health-vs.-religious employer divide, but that doesn’t mean that formula will necessarily be a workable one.

“The logistics will be a little bit complicated, there’s no question about that,” she said. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Forty-three-year-old Wayne Elise is a conservative and a real life dating guru. He’s otherwise known as the “Libertarian ‘Hitch.’”

“Conservative people have a hard time hooking up,” Elise says. “They have a hard time meeting people sometimes because they’re way too serious.” Have a sense of humor, Elise advises his audience. “Be yourself and avoid being mundane.”

His tips could benefit anyone, regardless of their politics. But then, maybe that’s the point. John Hawkins blogs for Right Wing News, and he invited Elise to the conference.

“It’s not all that different,” Hawkins says. “Conservative dating. They’re still people.” They still have questions about sex, and how to approach someone you’re attracted to. And Elise is full of answers.

Learn how to flirt, he tells the relatively few women in his audience. And guys, “be more sexual.” “That doesn’t mean like, you go and say ‘Hey, you wanna have sex?’” Elise says. “It does mean hey, tell a girl why you find her attractive.”

And don’t be afraid to look outside your own political circles for a partner. “People mostly stick to their own group, and that’s a shame,” he says.

CPAC attendee Jacqueline Otto agrees, but only up to a point. “What wouldn’t work is if you’re a conservative and the other person just doesn’t care,” Otto says. “The other person doesn’t value what it means for you to be conservative.”

What’s important, says John Hawkins, is that there’s room for amicable debate. “It has to be the sort of thing where they’re okay with you thinking Al Gore’s a moron, and you’re ok with them not liking Sarah Palin,” he says.

And you need to enjoy spending time doing other, non-political things together. Elise suggests strolling through downtown Manhattan taking Polaroid pictures of each other.

But 31-year-old Ryan Horn had another idea: a gun range. He says shooting some rounds with his girlfriend was a major part of his wooing process. “That’s what worked on our second date and I think it will work on our fourth and fifth,” he says. Horn says that’s where they’ll be spending Valentine’s Day, too. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Tacitly acknowledging that his past positions on abortion rights and health care mandates have made him suspect with a swath of his party’s base, Romney used his speech to describe his “path to conservatism” as a mix of family values, faith and his “life’s work” in business.

“I know conservatism because I’ve lived conservatism,” Romney told the receptive American Conservative Union crowd that packed the ballroom at a Washington hotel. “I want to get my hands on Washington, D.C.”

Focusing his fire almost exclusively on President Obama, Romney made perhaps his most impassioned and complete case to date for his candidacy, which, despite superior organization and money, has failed to catch fire with the base.

He tailored his language to place himself as one with his audience, frequently invoking “we conservatives” and “as conservatives.”

“This election is a defining moment for America, for the conservative movement,” he said, a time to “go forward shoulder to shoulder.”

What distinguishes the candidates running for the GOP nomination, he said, is the “nature of our life’s experiences.” He stressed his 25 years in business, and elicited applause when he said he was “not ashamed to say” he was successful at it.

He also defended his tenure as governor in Massachusetts, and characterized himself as the only candidate who has not worked in Washington. (He did try to get there twice before, running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1994, and for the GOP nomination in 2008.)

“I fought against long odds in a deep blue state,” he said. “But I was a severely conservative governor.”

Romney’s much-anticipated speech came at a critical moment for the former Massachusetts governor, who, after big victories in Florida and Nevada, was snubbed last week by Republican primary and caucus-goers in three state presidential contests.

He’s also been taking fresh and hard fire from the surging Rick Santorum, who won those contests in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota — though none added to his presidential delegate count.

In a speech earlier in the day, Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, without naming Romney, ripped into him for his support of a health care overhaul in Massachusetts that served as a model for Obama’s health care legislation.

Republicans, Santorum said, can’t cede the “Obamacare” issue before the general election race even begins. He characterized the Massachusetts plan approved when Romney was governor as the “stepchild of Obamacare.”

It’s become the major refrain from Santorum, who, backed by his wife and six of his seven children, drew thunderous applause and a few standing ovations.

Santorum also hit on what has been a common theme at this year’s convention: how to define “electability” — someone who can appeal to the broad middle needed to win a general election, or someone whose staunch conservative bona fides can excite the party.

“We need conservatives now to rally for a conservative to go into November to excite the conservative base,” he said, “to pull with that excitement moderate voters, and to defeat Barack Obama in the fall.”

Romney took a fairly big step Friday in his attempt to position himself as that conservative and to convince his harshest critics that he’s one of them.

“Let’s do it together,” he said.

Later Friday, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will get his star turn at the convention, ready, like Santorum, to direct his fire at Romney, too. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

They’re explaining changes to a controversial plan the administration unveiled in recent days. The goal of the change appears to be to provide the coverage, but at the same time to not force religious groups to violate their principles.

President Obama is going to formally announce the changes later today.

As we said earlier, watch the Shots blog for much more.

Our original post:

Reports are popping up on various newssites that, as The Associated Press puts it, “President Barack Obama will announce a plan to accommodate religious employers outraged by a rule that would require them to cover birth control for women free of charge, according to a person familiar with the decision.”

ABC News’ Political Punch blog, which appears to have been ahead on this development, said earlier that sources say the plan “will be respectful of religious beliefs but will not back off from that goal, which many religious leaders oppose since birth control is in violation of their religious beliefs.”

The New York Times reports that the administration:

“Seeking to rein in a runaway political furor over birth control and religious liberty, is set to announce a possible compromise on Friday that is meant to calm ire from the right about a new administration rule that would require health insurance plans — including those offered by Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and charities — to offer free birth control to female employees.”

The White House has scheduled a 10:30 a.m. ET “background conference call” with reporters to talk about “women’s preventative services and religious institutions.” We’ll be hearing from NPR correspondents about what’s said and will update with the news.

And the Shots blog will be following the story throughout the day. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The former senator from Pennsylvania, while lauding the roles that women are playing in the U.S. military, said he has “concerns about women in front line combat” because it could be “a compromising situation where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.”

This morning on NBC-TV’s The Today Show, Santorum explained he wasn’t trying to say that women are too emotional to be in combat.

“I think men have emotions when [they] see a woman in harm’s way,” Santorum said. “It’s natural. It’s very much in our culture to be protective. That was my concern. I think that’s a concern with all of the militaries.”

Thursday, we asked if it’s inevitable that women will someday be part of combat missions. Today’s question is:

(Note: As we always try to remember to say, that’s a question — not a scientific survey.) [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The former Pennsylvania Senator was hoping to garner more votes in a state where he’s currently third according to a new poll.

The visit comes with less than four weeks from Super Tuesday.

The place which has been dubbed the “Reddest State in the Union” got about a thousand people out to the Meridian Convention Center in southwest Oklahoma City to hear GOP candidate Rick Santorum.

And, he knows well what the stakes are.

“You look at all the states on Super Tuesday; Oklahoma is the bedrock of the Republican Party and the conservative movement in this country.”

Oklahoma has 43 delegates to give out on March 6th along with 9 other states.

Political Science Professor Keith Gaddie says Oklahoma’s evangelicals are very important to the primary race.

“Not only is it a nice little delegate prize but it sets him up to argue that he can win Texas at the beginning of April and Texas is the big delegate prize. So there are good reasons to see people pay attention to Oklahoma because more front runners need to win here.”

The other twist this year is for the first time ever in the GOP, Oklahoma is only a winner-take-all state if one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.

Otherwise, the 43 delegates are split between every candidate who gets more than 15%.

A CNN poll taken before Tuesday’s elections has Newt Gingrich with 34%, Mitt Romney with 31%, Santorum with 16% and Ron Paul in fourth place with 10%.

Among the crowd watching the event is James Brand of Oklahoma City who sports a Santorum button, but he’s still keeping an open mind.

“I’m just studying everybody. Santorum like he says has a good chance of beating Obama because of the contrast so I’m trying to look at everybody.”

Stephanie Broardt of Oklahoma City carries a handful of yard signs for Santorum and doesn’t understand how anyone can still be undecided.

Stephanie has supported the former Senator from the beginning and says there were times she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to vote for him in the primary.

“I was not feeling very hopeful but this it’s electric its wonderful and it’s so exciting to be here and I’m so happy and just filled with joy that he’s made it this far.”

Santorum spent most of his 50 minute speech attacking President Obama, certainly not tough choice in Oklahoma.

He made slight references to his primary opponents, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the front runners in the race even in Oklahoma.

He also brought up his support of energy and manufacturing.

He finished the speech with a call to action from his base in the Sooner State.

“Let this be the center, not only of doing well here in Oklahoma, but having the values and principles of the great people of this state catch fire across this country. Help us out. Make a difference. Heal our land. Save this country. God bless you.”

Since Tuesday, Santorum says he raised a million dollars for his campaign and freely admits he’d like to raise another million through his visit to Oklahoma.

The State Republican Party says no other candidate has scheduled a visit to Oklahoma before Super Tuesday, but Gaddie expects that to change.

Here’s the rub: The only truly novel part of the plan is the “no cost” bit.

The rule would mean, for the first time, that women won’t have to pay a deductible or co-payment to get prescription contraceptives.

“Now millions more women and families are going to have access to essential health care coverage at a cost that they can afford,” says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel with the ACLU. “But as a legal matter, a constitutional matter, it’s completely unremarkable.”

In fact, employers have pretty much been required to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their health plans since December 2000. That’s when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that failure to provide such coverage violates the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. That law is, in turn, an amendment to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws, among other things, discrimination based on gender.

Here’s how the EEOC put it at the time: “The Commission concludes that Respondents’ exclusion of prescription contraceptives violates Title VII, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, whether the contraceptives are used for birth control or for other medical purposes.”

But it’s not only the EEOC that has ruled on the issue. More than half the states have similar “contraceptive equity” laws on the books, many with religious exceptions similar or identical to the one included in the Administration’s regulation.

That’s no accident. “The HHS rule was modeled on the exceptions in several state laws, including California, New York, and Oregon,” says Lipton-Lubet of the ACLU.

There are now lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the policy, including a new one filed on behalf of the religious television network EWTN. But the exemptions have already been tested in court, at least at the state level.

In 2004, the California Supreme Court upheld that state’s law, in a suit brought by Catholic Charities, on a vote of 6-1.

The court ruled that Catholic Charities didn’t qualify as a “religious employer” because it didn’t meet each of four key criteria (which, by the way, are the same as those in the new federal regulation):

The organization’s primary purpose is “the inculcation of religious values.”

It primarily employs people of that religion.

It primarily serves people of that religion.

It’s a registered nonprofit organization.

Two years later, in 2006, New York’s top state court rejected a claim by Catholic Charities and several other religious groups that the state’s contraceptive coverage law discriminated against them because it exempted churches but not their religiously-affiliated groups.

“When a religious organization chooses to hire non-believers, it must, at least to some degree, be prepared to accept neutral regulations imposed to protect those employees’ legitimate interests in doing what their own beliefs permit,” the justices wrote.

Said Lipton-Lubet, “In both the California and New York cases, Catholic Charities made arguments very similar to the ones being made now with respect to the HHS rule. Those arguments failed in that litigation, and they’re no more persuasive here.”

Lawyers for religious litigants, however, say they think they may stand a better chance challenging the federal rule, particularly given a recent unanimous Supreme Court decision exempting religious employers from employment discrimination laws.

Opponents of the Obama adminstration’s rule are also hoping they may find the votes to overturn it in Congress. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Their strategy? Focus on the economy.

“In the last 36 months, the policies of this administration have disproportionately affected our demographic greater than any other group out there,” College Republican Committee Chairman Alex Schriver told Martin on Tell Me More. “And young people are sitting here, three years off, with skyrocketing national debt. They can’t put gas in their tank.”

Schriver is scheduled to be on a CPAC panel Saturday entitled: “Why Am I Living in My Parent’s Basement? How the Obama Administration’s Policies are Detrimental to Young People.”

In 2008, Obama scored big with the youngest voters. A Pew Research Center survey released last year indicated that he could again, at least in a head-to-head matchup with Republican Mitt Romney.

But another Pew survey, this one released Thursday, found that 24 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 say that economic conditions caused them to move back in with their parents. That percentage rises to 34 percent among people ages 25 to 29.

Schriver says that reality presents an opening for Republicans.

“We as a movement are talking about candidates and policies that will allow these young people to provide for themselves, get their own health insurance, get a job that they can actually support themselves and, tongue-in-cheek, move out of your parents’ basement,” said Schriver.

CPAC organizers tell NPR they expect about 40 percent of this year’s attendees to be people under the age of 30. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The vote was 417-2, with 14 members absent. The two nay votes were from Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., and Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga.

The bill passed the Senate by a 96-3 vote last week (the nay votes came from Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Richard Burr, R-N.C.). President Obama is planning to sign it into law.

As Tamara reported for All Things Considered, Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.) had been working on the legislation for quite some time, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

“Then, in mid-November, CBS’s 60 Minutes ran an explosive story about congressional insider trading and other conflicts of interest. Almost immediately, the STOCK Act got very popular.”

And in what for Congress is quite a short time, it’s been passed.

CBS has posted a shorter version of the 60 Minutes report here. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]