President Obama gets the gold star tonight.  He's found a way to reconcile the goal of good health care, including reproductive health care, for women and what he acknowledges as the legitimate rights of religion organizations.

He did it by mandating that insurance companies swallow the costs of birth control in their policies when church organizations decide they cannot in good conscience do so.

 Today's announcement by the president was evidence that he was both alert to the public debate and strong enough to make an adjustment in policy when needed.  He decided early on in this debate that action was necessary and took it as soon as a solid policy option was before him.  He wanted to bridge the goals of women's advocates with what he recognized as the legitimate position of the Catholic Church.

As is often the case, the way the public decides such issues is to decide who is being the bully. If you viewed the government here as bullying the church, you found for the church.  If you viewed the church as bullying its female employees, then you found against it.

Today the president presented a way to address both perceptions.  By directing the insurance companies themselves to absorb the cost of birth control, he freed the churches of having to do so. 

For people on both sides of the dispute, it was a good way to end the week.  It was especially a good way to end the week for President Obama.  It showed he was awake to the problem, was flexible and humble enough to demand a fix, and that, as he said, he gets better at this job as time goes on.   

Can Mitt Romney connect with conservatives? That's the big question that's dogged his campaign since it started. And it's a question The New York Times asks today. We'll start to get some answers when Romney speaks at the C-PAC convention this afternoon.

The big star of the C-PAC show is Rick Santorum. He's got all the momentum now -- and he's getting rock-star treatment. He's also relegating Newt Gingrich to yesterday's news.

David Brooks writes about how Romney tried to please everybody but ended up pleasing few.

The Times also reports that Roman Catholic leaders mobilized months ago, bracing for a fight with the Obama administration over the rule requiring religious institutions to pay for birth control for their employees. And Politico writes that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has the president in checkmate. Meanwhile, the administration may have a face-saving compromise in the works, and it could come as early as today. But will it go far enough to please the bishops? Not likely. This is a huge political fight the administration should have seen coming, and if they can't find a way out of it soon, it could cost them.

Also tonight on Hardball, a terrific interview with actor James Cromwell of The Artist about how that mostly silent movie mirrors the time and era we're living in today.

Politics in this country is tricky.  The nano-second you think things are under control and - pop - everything goes wild.

Tuesday night - two nights ago! - began with Mitt Romney owning the Republican presidential nomination.  By night's end he'd been beat badly - beaten in the all three states where he was running. All that money of his, all that power of the Republican wait-your-turn crowd, all that media statement that things were just swell - and, guess what! - the voter had something to say.

I am so happy.  I am so happy that voters don't listen to the money men, don't listen to the power of what they're supposed to do, don't listen to us on TV, by that I mean people who are paid to tell you what's going on, what's going to happen, the decisions that have already been made, what you're allowed to do in the voting booth - no, don't listen to anyone; they just go in those voting booths and do what makes them feel good.

Ernest Hemingway once described his moral code as really quite simple. "Good" is what you feel good about afterward.  "Bad" is what you don't.

I don't think people feel good, especially, about voting for Newt Gingrich, just too much stuff there.   After voting for Mitt Romney, it's even worse: they don't feel anything.

The same thing goes for this matter involving the church and birth control.  

If anyone in the White House told the president this thing was cooked they were so wrong-headed, the president should reconsider their value.  The job of people in politics, the pro's is to warn the boss of trouble ahead.  If they did, fine.  If they didn't, not fine, not good.

The Democratic coalition, if it is to be a protest faction, can afford to be about 35 percent or 40 percent of the country.  If it is to be a governing coalition, a Democratic governing coalition it needs to be at least 55 percent.  That's what it takes to govern.  It takes 60 senators - remember! - to get anything through Congress, to get anything done.

To keep that coalition together takes care, especially in an election year that may well be decided by a few percentage points.  Remember, President Obama was elected with 53 percent.  He's done important historic work - like health care - that could cost him much of that 3 percent that took him across the finish line.  He can't afford to give away a one or two more points by a poorly played performance on an issue that cuts close to the grain of those very voters who, like it or not, tend to decide elections.       

Dan Balz of the Washington Post asks the big question dogging Mitt Romney right now: Can he fix the enthusiasm gap? His support among conservatives is collapsing, and the Wall Street Journal says it's a bad sign for Mitt.

Meanwhile The New York Times profiles Foster Friess, the very wealthy patron of the Santorum campaign.

Politico looks at Pres. Obama's pivot to all things political and makes the point that all presidents do it, but Obama promised to be different.

And here's some White House intrigue courtesy of James Fallows from The Atlantic, about what kind of president Barack Obama really is.

In war, he saved the lives of his crewmen, swimming for four hours with the strap of a man's life jacket in his teeth, carrying that badly-burned sailor on his back.
 
Say what you will about Jack Kennedy.  He accepted the call to duty -- and met that duty when his time came. 
 
His time came again as president when he saved his country and the world from a nuclear war, in a way I can't imagine any other president doing, with cool detachment, cold calculation and a brazen ability to cut the secret deal that got us through. 
 
And, oh yes, he was the president who stood up for civil rights right out there in the midst of the fighting down South, with a strong voice and with federal troops to cut through history and begin the change that had awaited three and half centuries, the real end to slavery and its long, cruel afterburn. 
 
So, yes, he met his duty, and yes he had courage, and yes he had the strong, positive, hopeful vision that none of us will ever forget, nor should.
 
But he was, too, what he was.  The new book by Mimi Alford gives us more details of a story most of us already knew well.  Certainly his widow did. The week after he was killed, Jacqueline, just 34, told a friendly reporter "all men are a combination of bad and good." The reporter covered for her, transposing it to "good and bad" when printed in Life magazine.  She said his mother "never loved him; never loved him," she repeated. And the reporter never printed that, though the widow was trying desperately to say something true about the man she'd just lost. 

Rick Santorum had three big wins last night in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. Is the Republican party just not that into Mitt Romney anymore? We’re asking one of Mitt’s top surrogates, Gov. John Sununu (R-NH) and Politico Senior Reporter Jonathan Martin.

Next: The controversy over the Catholic Church and contraception rages on. Is this fight about religious freedom or women’s health? We’ll pose the question to the Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg and the Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger.

Then: Culture Wars. Can we attribute Santorum’s sweep to the three big issues at play today: The Catholic Church and contraception, Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood, and the Prop. 8 ruling in California? MSNBC Political Analysts David Corn and Michael Steele will discuss.

Finally, Mimi Alford confesses the details of her affair with then-President John F. Kennedy—while she was a 19 year old intern in the White House. Her book “Once Upon A Secret” hits shelves today. Author Evan Thomas joins us tonight.

It's about the Obama administration's decision to require as part of the new healthcare bill that religious institutions - colleges and universities, hospitals, charitable organizations - provide full insurance coverage for birth control, including IUDs and morning after pills in addition to those methods strictly defined as contraceptives.

The Catholic Church teaches that birth control and certainly methods like IUDs and morning-after pills, which they view as abortive, are morally wrong.  Here they are here being required by law to pay for them; this is how the church sees it.  And it is something the church believes it morally cannot do.

The conflict is between the right of the government to protect what it views as the public health and the right of a religion to practice its deepest moral beliefs in this free society, one in which the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom.

It is not about the right to birth control or the right even of abortion but, again, about the right of the Catholic Church or any religious organization to refuse to participate in it. 

We are watching a real conflict here.  It will be the duty of religious leaders to follow their consciences.  It will be the work of politicians, the President on down, to do what they do: work this out.

There are millions of liberal Catholics who did not wish for this conflict but can see with powerful clarity its validity.

It's not about the number of Catholics who use birth control or the number of non-Catholics who attend Catholic colleges or universities or receive help from Catholic Charities. It's about what the Church itself teaches. 

This regulation is telling it to do by law what it teaches should not be done.  That's the issue. That's the conflict. 

Drew Katchen | msnbc.com

New York Giants fans lined the 'Canyon of Heroes' on Feb. 7 in Manhattan to celebrate the team's fourth Super Bowl win.

Stu skipped work today--not to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather, but to celebrate what many New York Giants fans were calling “better than Christmas.” Waves of fans decked out in blue and red flooded the streets in Lower Manhattan today for a ticker-tape parade in honor of the Super Bowl Champions. With them, they brought foam fingers, unmatched enthusiasm, and a love for the Giants and their city.

For lifetime New Yorkers like Stu (who declined to give his last name due to skipping work), parades like today’s mark important milestones that should be celebrated with pride. New York City has hosted ticker-tape parades for various occasions since the late 1800s.

“This brings back memories as a youngster, and I can remember ticker-tape parades for the likes of John Glenn and for the Apollo 11 astronauts,” Stu said, recalling the day in 1962 when his mother wouldn’t let him skip school to cheer for John Glenn. “I’m a bit older than some of the people here today, and it’s nice to know that this continues.” 

Lots of talk tonight about this new poll number that shows Obama six points ahead of Romney in a face-off.

I would be careful with that number.  People love talking about elections being a choice.  The way you hear it is that it's not going to be a choice between the president and the Almighty, but one between Barack Obama and the alternative.  In other words, it's going to be easier to beat someone than to beat the deal.

If that prospect gets you - the voter - through the night, fine! But if that prospect gets you - the president and those working on his election - through the night, it's better you stay awake and hear this.

Elections are about the incumbent.  Think of a Major League Baseball game and you're the manager.  You keep your eye on the pitcher and see how he's doing.  If he's throwing hard, mixing up his pitches and getting them out, you keep him in.  If he starts letting the other side scatter some hits, you get a little jittery.  If he gives up some runs, you get him warming up in the bullpen.  If he looks like he just can't get the other side out, you walk out there and take the ball from him.

That's what good managers do - and we American voters are good managers.  We don't keep pitchers in the game when they can't finish the job.  Look at Gerald Ford.  Look at the senior George Bush.  We "yanked" 'em!  We liked them but, when it came to it, we had no problem pulling them.

Why?  Because it's not about who's in the bullpen.  It's not how hard that guy out there is throwing.  It's about the guy on the mound, the pitcher in the game.  If we figure he's got the stuff to get the job done, we keep him; if not, we don't.

So it's not about Romney or anyone else who gets to run against the President.  It's about the President.  And just as we've said Romney's solved his Newt problem and now has to solve his Mitt problem, the President has to meet his own challenge before focusing on Romney.

President Obama will be re-elected if he convinces a majority of voters that he's got the stuff to finish the job and get this country up there on its feet again.  Will he get us back to the kind of economy, the kind of employment outlook we had before all that happened in the last administration? 

People want it back.  If Obama looks like he'll get it back for us, he'll get re-elected.  If it looks like he can't, he won't and the country will put a reliever like Romney in there. 

It's not about the challenger or the match-up.  It's about the incumbent. 

It was a great day in American politics.  In other words, one of those clear days when you can see forever, when the differences between the two parties stands right up there for all to see.

Did you see Donald Trump out there with his new prize candidate?  Did you see Mitt Romney standing up there like he'd just won the Miss World contest, the latest prize figure in the world of Donald Trump, a world of golden buildings and high-rise casinos where it's hard to find the elevators, where all you can see are the endless rows of slots, black jack croupiers and roulette wheels?    

But we Americans just want to make it to the elevators, Donald. Why are you trying to hook us into the latest games where you know - that's why you built this place! - all favor the house.

No, life isn't a casino and most people can't afford to do business with Trump.  Like those "very poor" that never come through the door - even though some people leave those casinos in that category!

Those "very poor" are not on Mitt Romney's telescope.  He says he's not even thinking about them.  They've got this "safety net," he argues - and don't need our attention.  They aren't going to be part of the "we the people" under his presidency.  "We" - those people are going to be the folks a bit better off.

No, Mitt's looking for the upscale crowd to put him into office, that hidden crowd way back behind the scenes who pay for all those millions of dollars of dirtball ads he used to stomp Newt in places like Des Moines and Daytona.

They're the folks he's going to pay attention to and their need to get a great tax deal, another better deal than the one that has gotten him paying below 15 percent in taxes on twenty-mill a year, that allows him to hide his money in the Caymans. 

They're the folks he likes. President Obama?  Where was he on Mitt and Donald's big day in Vegas?  He was down there having a prayer breakfast - talking about our duty to the poor, about the wonders of that good man Billy Graham.  Yes, that's where the president of all the people was - where we want him to be.

Not in Vegas with Trump, not in the Caymans making his latest deposit, not hiding from the "very poor" out of sheer hope they won't be counting on a president like him to be looking out for poor them. As I said, what a day in American politics.  When you can see all the way to Vegas - where Donald makes his money - and to those islands in the Caribbean where his new friend Mitt hides his money from Uncle Sam - and, of course, the American people he says he wants to lead.