• "Top aides to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) held a private meeting on Monday with a bloc of prominent Democratic lobbyists, warning them to hold their fire or be left out of negotiations on President Barack Obama's No. 1 legislative priority," Roll Call (subscription) reports.

• "From the perspective of gun control advocates, the playing field is upside down," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "Their nemesis, the 138-year-old National Rifle Association, seems more powerful than ever. Instead of a Democratic trifecta lending gun control the upper hand, it has energized the NRA, whose membership has grown 30 percent since the November elections. And the NRA has been on the attack."

• "A new analysis of Senate disclosure records by The Center for Public Integrity found that 10 lobbying firms -- all with deep ties to Capitol Hill -- have amassed such large client lists that they represent nearly 100 of the business stakeholders in the [climate legislation] brawl," Politico reports.

• "Reshaping the nation's health care system has spurred some shotgun marriages of convenience," AP reports. "Momentum for redoing the medical system has been helped by unlikely alliances that broadly embrace" Obama's "drive for overhaul but gloss over prickly issues like how to pay for it. Those political unions, though, will likely fray when Congress begins to pencil in the details."