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There were 198,000 jobs added to private employers' payrolls in February, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report — a privately produced snapshot of the employment picture that's sometimes a signal of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics will say when it releases its data from the same month.

ADP didn't only report there was solid, if not spectacular, growth last month. It also revised up its estimate of the growth in January. It now says private employers added 215,000 jobs that month — 23,000 more than previously though.

In the ADP report, Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi says that "the job market remains sturdy in the face of significant fiscal headwinds. Businesses are adding to payrolls more strongly at the start of 2013 with gains across all industries and business sizes. Tax increases and government spending cuts don't appear to be affecting the job market."

The BLS data on February's employment and unemployment figures are due Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET. In its last report, BLS said the nation's unemployment rate edged up to 7.9 percent in January from 7.8 percent a month before, and that there were 157,000 jobs added to public and private payrolls in the first month of the year. According to Reuters, economists expect to hear that there were 160,000 jobs added to payrolls last month and that the jobless rate stayed at 7.9 percent.

March means spring break is just around the corner, and for New Mexico it means mild temperatures and fresh snow — perfect conditions for visiting area ski resorts.

A growing number of resorts are now offering programs that cater to vacationers with disabilities, and resort owners say it has proved to be a boost for business.

At a Taos Ski Valley chairlift, Barbara and Philip Logan prepare their son, Tilghman, for his first day of ski lessons.

The Logans traveled from New York City to Taos, N.M., for a winter vacation, and Tilghman can't wait to begin his ski lesson.

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The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Chris Sprouse, the illustrator slated to work with author Orson Scott Card on an upcoming issue of DC Comics' "Adventures of Superman," has dropped out of the project because of controversy over Card's views on gay marriage. Card has said in the past that homosexuality is "deviant behavior" and that same-sex marriage could lead to the end of civilization. In a statement, Sprouse said, "The media surrounding this story reached the point where it took away from the actual work, and that's something I wasn't comfortable with." The project will be put on hold.

A 9-year-old Australian boy saved himself and two friends from sinking into quicksand after reading a kids' travel book called Not-for-Parents: How to Be a World Explorer: Your All-Terrain Manual, which he got for Christmas. The Lonely Planet guidebook written by Joel Levy also includes tips about fighting bears, building igloos and climbing volcanoes.

The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson on the death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez: "[Chavez] acknowledged that he had come to [socialism] late, long after most of the world had abandoned it, but said that it had clicked for him after he had read Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Miserables."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush caused a stir this week with his shifting stances on immigration. Bush's new book, Immigration Wars, came out Tuesday, and in it, he writes that "those who violated the laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship." But in an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe the same day, Bush said his views had changed and that "we wrote this book last year, not this year."

"Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!" Schroder author Amity Gaige on literary influences, in an interview with The Millions.

House Speaker John Boehner held a press conference the day after the November election.

"The American people have spoken," he said. "They've re-elected president Obama. And they've again re-elected a Republican majority in the House of Representatives."

But last Thursday, when the House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Women Act, it did it without a majority of Republicans. Only 87 voted for the bill; 138 voted against it. The rest of the yes votes came from Democrats. The speaker brought a bill to the floor knowing it didn't have the support of the majority of his caucus, which upset conservatives such as Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.

"Many people in conference expressed their concern publicly and privately about that," he said. "So why would the Republican House pass a Democrat priority bill? I don't know. It was set up to pass that way. We weren't given advance notice it came out. And it's a real concern."

Hastert Rule

The Violence Against Women Act, a disaster-relief bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy and the "fiscal cliff" deal — all three violated what's known as the Hastert rule: For a bill to be brought up for a vote in the House, it has to have the support of the majority of the majority.

"The 'majority of the majority rule' was more of a guideline for speakers in how to keep their jobs," says John Feehery, who was a spokesman for former Speaker Dennis Hastert, for whom the rule is named.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, mostly followed this rule. Boehner did, too, until recently. Feehery says Boehner made a cold, hard calculation and decided that letting these bills pass was best for the party.

"You know, it's not an easy decision because you don't want to alienate a majority of your majority," says Feehery, now the president of QGA Public Affairs. "I mean that's just kind of common sense. But there are also times where the majority of the majority may not like pieces of legislation but they are fine letting it go because they know it is better for them to allow things to pass."

Fears Of A Primary Challenge

New York Republican Rep. Peter King puts it this way.

"Sometimes you have to do what you have to do," he says. "It happened with the fiscal cliff. It happened with Sandy."

Why this happens isn't obvious just looking at the numbers. There are 232 Republicans in the house; 217 votes are needed to pass a bill. But a lot of Republicans don't vote the way leadership wants them to.

Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says these members are afraid of getting hit with a primary challenge.

"The good of the Republican Party as a whole is not something that necessarily resonates with a lot of individual members whose constituents back home don't feel the same way," he says.

As a result, Ornstein says bills that can pass the Senate and be signed by the president often don't have the support of the majority of the majority in the House. Recently, rather than stopping these bills, Boehner brought them to the floor, knowing conservatives would vote no.

"They'll come urge me to vote their way, but they've never insisted I compromise my principles," says Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, who was elected as part of the Tea Party wave. "And that's something I respect the speaker for."

A New Rule?

But that goodwill has its limits, Ornstein says.

"There are only so many times you can do this without damaging your standing as speaker," he says. "And doing things that basically bring votes from more of the other side than your own erodes your authority after a while."

When asked whether the Violence Against Women Act vote was part of a trend, Boehner's answer seemed to be aimed at reassuring his occasionally restive conference.

"We tried everything we could to find, to get the differences in our conference resolved. And the fact is they couldn't resolve their differences," he said. "It was time to deal with this issue and we did. But it's not a practice that I would expect to continue long term."

Maybe there's a new rule. The Boehner rule would be more pragmatic: something like only voting on bills that have the support of the majority of the majority, when possible.