Steven Ertelt / LifeNews.com:
Boehner Pledges Congress Will Overturn New Obama Mandate  —  Speaker John Boehner took to the House floor to give a rare speech today pledging that House Republicans will do everything possible to reverse the new mandate the Obama administration put in place forcing coverage of birth control and abortion-causing drugs.

ABCNEWS:
The White House Has No Opinion About Whether the Senate Should Pass a Budget - Today's Q's for O's WH - 2/8/12  —  TAPPER: President Obama is going to be introducing his outline for a budget.  Fed Chair Bernanke has said the lack of a budget having been passed by the Senate has had an adverse affect …

Mj Lee / Politico:
Rush Limbaugh mocks GOP establishment  —  Rush Limbaugh mocked the Republican establishment on his radio show Wednesday for being “shocked” by Rick Santorum's three-state win, saying, “I can't believe how insulated they are.”  —  “They're literally shocked.  The Republican establishment had no idea this was percolating out there.

Peter Schroeder / The Hill:
Grassley: House GOP doing Wall Street's bidding on STOCK Act  —  Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) accused his Republican counterparts in the House of doing the bidding of Wall Street by removing a provision from the STOCK Act that would have required political intelligence firms to register in a similar fashion to lobbyists.

Andrew Stiles / Washington Free Beacon:
Spirit Lobbyist Bundled for Obama, Records Show  —  UPDATE: An Obama campaign official tells Politico that Ron Klein is “no longer associated with the campaign” and never raised any money after registering as a lobbyist.  The campaign does not intend to return the cash.

Laurie Kellman / Associated Press:
Santorum: I won and raised about $250K Tues night  —  WASHINGTON — Resurgent Rick Santorum said his sweep of three GOP contests earned his shoestring campaign $250,000 overnight, cash he needs to take his upstart bid for the Republican presidential nomination to Mitt Romney's turf.

Events have always played an important role in the tech industry. Knowledge exchange and networking opportunities have long been a key draw, as Apple's history attests. The motivations for meeting have certainly expanded since the 1970s. Today, every kind of actor in the tech ecosystem holds events: large vendors host conferences to promote development on their platforms, investors host presentations to promote their portfolio companies, and media companies host events to earn the bulk of their revenues (indeed the case for many of Techmeme's most cited sources).

Just as Techmeme filters the most newsworthy stories in technology, today we begin filtering the industry's most newsworthy events by including a new section (shown here) detailing the next four months of major industry events. That section in turn points to a dedicated page showing an extended calendar that goes well beyond the next four months.

Our aim is not to include all "technology" events, which would be both difficult and pointless for a site like Techmeme. Even tech events of national or international scope are far too numerous to include here without overwhelming Techmeme's readers. Instead, our criteria for inclusion are tailored nicely for Techmeme: we'll include events that are expected to produce the kind of news that appears on Techmeme. For example, events involving major announcements or product launches, or conferences including candid interviews with a major industry figures. As such, we will also include events like earnings announcements (of the more bellwether variety), scheduled project launches, and other kinds of virtual events that one cannot attend in body, but only in browser.

Now-classic Jobs/Gates image from D5 via Joi Ito.

Brian Tashman / Right Wing Watch:
CPAC Set to Host White Nationalist Leader  —  Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, along with several Republican senators and congressmen, are set to appear at the American Conservative Union's Conservative Political Action Conference, but the GOP brass aren't the only ones set to be at CPAC.

Ed Kilgore / Washington Monthly:
The Gasoline “Bubble”?  —  Since we are all trying to get to know Ricky Santorum a bit better, at least until such time as a barrage of attack ads reduce him to a whimpering wreck huddling under a stack of fetus posters, it's worth noting he has some pretty exotic ideas outside the cultural arena.

Christopher Goins / CNSNews:
Hoyer: 'The Fact Is You Don't Need a Budget'  —  (CNSNews.com) - House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that Congress does not need an official federal budget because it can just adopt appropriations bills and authorization policies as needed to keep operating.