On Thursday night, the Democratic party appeared to be in disarray over the Obama administration’s decree that private insurance plans, including those offered by religious organizations, must provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and abortifacients.

Here are excerpts from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s prepared remarks that he’ll deliver tonight at a dinner at CPAC in Washington, D.C. (Walker’s staff insists that the governor frequently deviates from prepared remarks.)

Several years ago, I was having drinks at an Irish bar with an intelligence official. (Al Qaeda is always best discussed while drinking Guinness.) He had brought with him several pages of publicly available statements made by leaders within Shabaab, a terrorist-insurgency organization that now controls large parts of Somalia. Shabaab’s leaders offered effusive praise for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, he explained, but some of his colleagues refused to believe that Shabaab was closely allied with al Qaeda. “Why shouldn’t we take their own statements seriously?” he asked.

Here's another interesting finding from the Fox News poll showing Rick Santorum surging nationally: Unlike GOP elites and large elements of the punditocracy, Republican primary voters are not eager to close down the race.

Ramesh Ponnuru notes that Senator Marco Rubio's statement on Obama's adjusted mandate "seems to suggest that this particular battle is over even if the war over Obamacare continues."

Rubio's statement:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney played up his outsider status today in a speech delivered to CPAC in Washington, D.C.

In the first Rasmussen polling taken primarily after Rick Santorum’s hat trick on Tuesday night, Santorum is faring 6 points better than Mitt Romney in their respective matchups versus President Obama.

Late this morning, a senior Obama administration official talked to reporters about the latest tweak to its mandate that private insurers must cover of contraception and abortifacients:

In 2010, the Obama administration's FDA approved a new drug called 'ella' and classified it as a contraceptive. The drug now falls under the Obama administration's mandate of services that private insurers must cover free of charge. But there is a considerable amount of evidence that ella does not merely prevent conception--it can also cause the death of a human embryo after conception and even after implantation. In other words, the Obamacare mandate is not just a "contraception mandate" as many in the media portray it. The mandate also requires coverage of an abortifacient, as Jeffrey H.

A new Fox News poll, conducted between Monday and Thursday, shows that Rick Santorum's primary and caucus victories on Tuesday boosted him in the national Republican primary race. Overall, Santorum has moved into second place, at 23 percent, behind Mitt Romney at 33 percent. Newt Gingrich is not far behind in third place with 22 percent.