President Obama “pushed for quick Senate confirmation of his new picks for budget director, EPA administrator and Energy secretary — although the nature of the positions themselves all but ensures plenty of partisan fireworks on the Hill,” Roll Call reports.

Karl Rove’s American Crossroads released an amusing video slamming President Obama’s outside advocacy arm seeking $500,000 for quarterly meetings with the president’s team.

“Or pay $1 million and you don’t have to meet with Biden–ever!”

[Read more…]

Bob Woodward said last night that a senior White House official threatened him and BuzzFeed reports the official in question is Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president.

Politico has the email exchange between the two and Woodward seems not bothered by the exchange. In response to
Sperling, he wrote, “I for one welcome a little heat; there should more
given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am
listening.”

Bob Woodward told CNN he was threatened by a senior Obama administration official following his reporting on the White House’s handling of the sequester.

Said Woodward: “They’re not happy at all. It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this.”

The Senate confirmed Jacob Lew to be Treasury secretary, “despite opposition from some GOP senators who criticized Lew’s part in budget negotiations and questioned his personal finances and connections with Wall Street,” Roll Call reports.

The vote was 71 to 26 to confirm Lew.

All presidential administrations have vacancies — that’s inevitable — but an analysis of appointments data by ProPublica reveals that more presidentially appointed positions were sitting vacant at the end of President Obama’s first term (13%) than at the end of Bill Clinton’s (11%) or George W. Bush’s (10%) first terms.

Key finding: “At least 68 of the positions remain vacant, including 43 that have been vacant for more than a year.”

Michigan state Sen. Tom Casperson (R) told a radio show he’s not sure where Obama was born, according to Deadline Detroit.

Said Casperson: “I don’t know because it seems like that issue was dropped immediately as far as the major media went. My gut tells me if it had been a different president, say George W. Bush, they’d have been digging into like there was no tomorrow and trying to get to the bottom of, which they never really tried to get to the bottom of.”

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds justt 29% of respondents say they agree “with most” of what Republicans in Congress have proposed versus 45% for Obama and 40% for congressional Democrats.

An identical 29% have a favorable view of the Republican Party (compared with 49% for Obama and 41% for the Democratic Party.

The public also believes the GOP is more partisan: 48% say Obama wants to unifying the country in a bipartisan way, while 43% say he’s taking a partisan approach. By comparison, 64% say Republicans are taking a partisan approach, versus 22% who say it’s focused on unity.

Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew’s original employment contract at Citigroup included a bonus guarantee if he left the bank for a “high level position with the United States government or regulatory body,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Roll Call reports Lew’s nomination is up for a vote in the Senate Finance Committee this week.

President Obama “is just seven days away from the first significant test of his second term as deep spending cuts loom, yet inside the White House a clear sense of confidence stands in contrast to the air of crisis that surrounded previous fiscal showdowns with Republicans,” the New York Times reports.

“The confrontation holds peril for both the president and Republicans. But for now, Mr. Obama believes he is acting from a greater position of strength, advisers say, pointing to several recent polls that show he holds an upper hand in the budget debate. Yet his standing would be at risk if the so-called sequester caused economic growth to collapse.”

Byron York: “There’s no doubt President Obama is using the so-called Washington Monument maneuver
in the fight with Republicans over sequestration budget cuts. It’s a
time-honored tactic of bureaucratic warfare: When faced with cuts, pick
the best-known and most revered symbol of government and threaten to
shut it down.”

A new USA Today/Pew Research poll finds President Obama “starts his second term with a clear upper hand over GOP leaders on issues from guns to immigration that are likely to dominate the year. On the legislation rated most urgent — cutting the budget deficit — even a majority of Republican voters endorse Obama’s approach of seeking tax hikes as well as spending cuts.”

“The survey underscores the quandary for the GOP as it debates the party’s message in the wake of disappointing losses last November for the White House and in the Senate.”

Key finding: “Now just 22% of Americans, nearly a record low, consider themselves Republicans.”

These results mirror a Bloomberg poll released last night.

Hillary Clinton will charge $200,000 for a two-hour speech when she hits the speaking circuit in a few months, the Washington Times reports.

First Lady Michelle Obama cut her hair because she’s having a mid-life crisis, the New York Daily News reports.

Said Mrs. Obama: “This is my midlife crisis, the bangs. I couldn’t get a sports car. They won’t let me bungee jump. So instead, I cut my bangs.”

President Obama “is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House,” Politico reports.

“Not for the reason that conservatives suspect: namely, that a liberal press willingly and eagerly allows itself to get manipulated. Instead, the mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.”

The Obama administration “is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics,” the New York Times reports.

“The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.”

President Obama played golf today with Tiger Woods, “once the sport’s dominant player before his career was sidetracked by scandal,” the AP reports.

Weekly Standard: “The White House confirms today that President Barack Obama will be vacationing in Florida this weekend. His wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, will be in Colorado. The two daughters will be with Michelle.”

“While the rest of his family will be skiing, Obama is expected to be hitting the links with golf pros and buddies in Florida.”

“The president likes to attack Congress, but if he is serious about enacting this agenda, I think it must start with the part of this Congress that his party controls — the United States Senate. What can he get passed in the United States Senate?”

— House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by The Hill.