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Greg Sargent tries to explain White House thinking on their decision to embrace entitlement cuts in next week's budget proposal:

They believe a Grand Bargain is good for Democrats in general, because it essentially would lock in a medium-term agreement over core disputes — about the safety net and about the size of government, and who should pay for it — that have produced a debilitating stalemate in Washington.

Yes, Republicans would continue railing about government spending, the thinking goes, but no one would listen, since they would have already endorsed a deal stabilizing the deficit. This would deprive Republicans of the ability to focus attention on one of their core targets — Big Government — as a way to avoid grappling with other issues, such as jobs and long-term middle class economic security, immigration, guns, and perhaps even climate change. Reaching a deal on the deficit will force Republicans to confront those problems more directly and to choose between real cooperation on them or continue to calcify as a hidebound, reactionary party incapable of addressing major challenges facing the country.

Yeah, maybe. Of course, that's also a pretty good reason for Republicans to refuse to cut a deal. Why bother if all it does is pave the way for Obama to spend lots of time on wedge issues that are good for Democrats and bad for them?

The truth is that, for the most part, the deficit isn't a real issue for Republicans. They don't want to raise taxes; they don't want to cut defense spending; they don't want to cut entitlement spending on seniors (the core of their base); and cutting future entitlements doesn't affect the deficit any time soon. The only thing left is cutting spending on the poor, and although Republicans think that's a fine idea, even they can't cut social welfare spending enough to have a serious impact on the deficit.

So it's mostly a charade. And it's a good one! One of the very best, in fact. Cutting the deficit polls well, it lends itself nicely to demagoguery, and it's an all-purpose excuse to oppose any spending proposals they don't like. So why on earth would you cut a deal to take it off the table? That would be crazy. And if they're forced to swallow a tax increase as well, that makes it even crazier. There's literally no benefit at all in this for Republicans.

So they won't do it. Obama's real hope—since I assume he's not an idiot and knows all this perfectly well—is that Republicans will indeed refuse to make a deal, and, as Sargent suggests, this could turn the public against them in the 2014 midterms. I suppose that's possible, depending on how well he plays his hand. It's certainly more possible than assuming that Republicans will voluntarily commit electoral suicide by agreeing to a deal.

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A federal judge has ruled that the emergency contraception drug Plan B One-Step, a.k.a. the "morning after pill," must be made available over the counter to everyone. The decision, issued Friday, overturns a rule that required anyone 16 years old and younger to have a prescription in order to get the pill.

In 2011, despite the Food and Drug Administration's determination that Plan B is safe for all ages, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to block teenagers from buying the drug without a prescription. President Barack Obama endorsed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' decision, arguing that the government "could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be able—alongside bubble gum or batteries—be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect."

But Judge Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court ruled Friday that this was not an acceptable reason to deny access, and that Sebelius' decision "was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent." He wrote:

This case is not about the potential misuse of Plan B by 11-year-olds. These emergency contraceptives would be among the safest drugs sold over-the-counter, the number of 11-year-olds using these drugs is likely to be miniscule, the FDA permits drugs that it has found to be unsafe for the pediatric population to be sold over-the-counter subject only to labeling restrictions, and its point-of-sale restriction on this safe drug is likewise inconsistent with its policy and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as it has been construed. Instead, the invocation of the adverse effect of Plan B on 11-year-olds is an excuse to deprive the overwhelming majority of women of their right to obtain contraceptives without unjustified and burdensome restrictions.

Reproductive rights groups cheered the court ruling, which came after more than a decade of legal wrangling over the issue. "Science has finally prevailed over politics, to the benefit of millions of women across the United States," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the group that filed suit against the FDA over the decision.

Northup and other reproductive rights group argued that the age limits harmed teenagers who required timely access to the drug, which is supposed to be used within 72 hours of unprotected sex. But the age limit also harmed older women, too, because it meant that they had to have a government-issued ID confirming their age in order to access the pill, and its availability was restricted to the hours that pharmacies are open. The use of emergency contraception has become much more common in recent years, with 11 percent of fertile, sexually active women reporting that they have used EC. Now that Plan B will be easier to access, you can expect that number to increase.

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The American economy added 88,000 new jobs last month, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth was actually slightly negative at -2,000 jobs. That's terrible. It's yet another spring swoon, but even earlier than usual. Ever since the end of the Great Recession we've been stuck in an odd pattern where employment growth looks promising in winter and then falls off a cliff in spring, but usually the dropoff doesn't happen until April or May. We're early this year.

Workers continued to drop out of the workforce in large numbers, so the labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage points to 63.3 percent. As a result, despite the terrible jobs numbers the headline unemployment number actually went down to 7.6 percent. The private/public breakdown of the employment numbers followed the same trend as it has for the past few years, with the private sector gaining 95,000 jobs and the public sector losing 7,000 jobs. The size of government continues to decline.

Some of this bad news may have been due to the fiscal cliff deal in January, and the end of the payroll tax holiday, but it's probably too early for any of it to be due to the sequester. However, we can expect that to start biting in April and May. Nice work, Congress.

All in all: yuck.

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Charity Navigator, a nonprofit that aims to provide donors with information about the accountability and transparency of other nonprofits, has issued "donor advisory" notices for five different groups run by the notorious DC-based PR firm Berman and Company.

The company, run by Richard Berman, runs a number of non-profits backed by business interests. Here's how our own Daniel Schulman described Berman's work in a 2009 piece:

Nicknamed Dr. Evil—a moniker he embraces—he's the force behind several industry-backed nonprofits that share staff and office space with his very for-profit communications and advertising firm, Berman and Company. The firm promises clients it will not "just change the debate" but "start" one, and a range of companies, from Anheuser-Busch to Philip Morris to the casino chain Harrah's, have signed up for Berman's "aggressive" and "hard-hitting" advocacy. Some clients pay Berman and Co. directly, while others donate to his nonprofits—but much of the cash winds up in the same place, via hefty management fees the front groups pay to Berman's company.

Charity Navigator has posted advisories for five Berman projects: the Center for Consumer Freedom, which opposes regulation of the food and beverage industry; the American Beverage Institute, another beverage industry group; the Center for Union Facts, which targets unions; the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, which campaigns against minimum wage increases; and the Enterprise Freedom Action Committee, a political action committee targeting Democratic candidates.

In its advisories, Charity Navigator cites the fact that the majority of the expenses for these groups are in fact payments to Berman and Company. For the Center for Consumer Freedom, it notes that their 2010 tax forms indicate that $1.7 million of the $2.4 million in total program expenses went directly to Berman and Company. On the American Beverage Institute advisory, it notes that $1.3 million of the total $1.7 million spent in 2011 went to Berman's for-profit company.

Some of the other non-profit groups that Berman and Company has attacked have asked the IRS to review the tax-exempt status of the 501(c)3s, claiming that they should not qualify as charitable organizations. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which runs the website Berman Exposed, has also filed a complaint with the IRS raising questions about the tax status of the Center for Consumer Freedom specifically. The IRS has declined to say whether it is pursuing an investigation.

The irony of this is that the Center for Consumer Freedom previously crowed when Charity Navigator downgraded the rating of the Humane Society of the United States, one of the main organizations its efforts have targeted. (The HSUS rating has gone back up to four stars since then, however.)

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