Assailant Was a Coakley Staffer on Loan from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee?  —  Or just a really good lookalike?  —  A tipster tells me that the man who was pushing me outside of a Capitol Hill fundraiser Tuesday night for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley is Michael Meehan.

PM: Hundreds of thousands dead in Haiti quake  —  Watch live reports from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Anderson Cooper is on scene for firsthand accounts of the horror and devastation from the earthquake.  —  Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) — “Port-au-Prince is flattened” after a 7.-magnitude earthquake struck …

Senate Hopeful in New State Airs Evolving Views  —  In his first extensive interview since he began weighing a run for United States Senate from New York, Harold E. Ford Jr. distanced himself from his previous opposition to same-sex marriage, his description of himself as “pro-life” …

Robertson: Haiti ‘cursed’ since Satanic pact  —  The Rev. Pat Robertson, on his CBN broadcast today, offered his own explanation of the earthquake in Haiti:  —  “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said.

Support Grows for U.S. Health Exchange  —  WASHINGTON — The White House wants to include a national health-insurance exchange in the health bill, which would give House Democrats one of their top remaining demands, according to an official involved in the discussions.

MA-Sen: No longer stealth  —  As E. J. Dionne notes, this past week, things have gotten tougher for Scott Brown: … Brown has been caught in a vice.  His support from teabaggers was critical to becoming competitive — his moneybomb on Monday was the first real moneybomb conservative activists …

Democrat wins Va. Senate race  —  Defying recent voting trends that saw several Northern Virginia Republicans win big in November, Del. David W. Marsden (D-Fairfax) narrowly won a special election Tuesday night to represent a broad swath of southwestern Fairfax County in the Virginia Senate.

How the White House Used Gruber's Work to Create Appearance of Broad Consensus  —  Up until this point, most of the attention regarding the failure to disclose the connection between Jonathan Gruber and the White House has fallen on Gruber himself.  Far more troubling, however …

Prop 8 Court TV blocked  —  Splitting 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked any television broadcast to the general public of the San Francisco federal court challenge to California's ban on same-sex marriage.  The stay will remain in effect until the Court rules on a coming appeal challenging the TV order.

Army prosecutes single mother for refusing to deploy and put her son in foster care.  —  Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old Army cook, refused to deploy to Afghanistan in November because she had no one to take care of her 10-month-old son.  Hutchinson said when she brought her situation …

GOP Senate Candidate Marco Rubio Calls For Suspending Congress For Two Years To Fix The Economy  —  Last night on CNBC, Marco Rubio, a right-wing Republican running for US Senate in Florida, told host Larry Kudlow about his “solutions to the high unemployment” and economic recession.

Unions Tentatively Strike A Deal Regarding Excise Tax  —  by Anna Edney, with Billy House contributing  —  THIS CONTENT IS FOR SUBSCRIBERS OF CONGRESSDAILY ONLY.

Prop 8 trial -day 3 - You all have ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and it even got awards - gay discrimination is over  —  (Marriage Equality USA's Davina Kotulski is blogging for The Bilerico Project and other outlets on a blogger passed shared with Michael Petrelis.  She sent this via email this morning.

When Jon Stewart Fails.  —  There is an unexpected silence in the liberal blogosphere after last night's highly anticipated Daily Show episode, in which Jon Stewart hosted John Yoo, the author of many of the Bush administration's torture memos and one of the people most responsible for giving legal sanction to the practice of torture.