The Numbers Don't Lie  —  A Democratic senator I can't name, who reluctantly voted for the health-care bill out of loyalty to his party and his admiration for Barack Obama, privately complained to me that the measure was political folly, in part because of the way it goes into effect …

EXCLUSIVE: Iran Nuclear Scientist Defects to U.S. In CIA ‘Intelligence Coup’  —  Shahram Amiri Disappeared Last June in Saudi Arabia, Reportedly Now Resettled in the United States  —  An award-winning Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances …

Lady Gaga Versus Mideast Peace  —  Are settlements more offensive than pop stars?  —  Pop quiz—What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?  —  If your answer is (b) …

Sarah Palin To Host First Fox News Show Thursday - With LL Cool J  —  This is not an April Fool's joke.  Sarah Palin will take her first stab at television hosting when she fronts a new Fox News series, Real American Stories, premiering Thursday April 1 at 10pmET.

REAPING WHAT ONE SOWS ON THE CENSUS.... Prominent right-wing voices decided last year that the U.S. census was not to be trusted.  Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said the process could lead to “internment camps.”  Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) called the census “invasive.”

Militia Probe Included Undercover FBI Agent  —  An undercover agent was part of the federal investigation of a Michigan-based Christian militia group that allegedly planned to spark an uprising against the government by killing police officers, court documents show.

Growing ‘Frustration’ With Steele Inside RNC  —  Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele “allowed a certain climate to exist” that resulted in the committee paying for a now infamous visit to a Los Angeles strip club, a senior RNC committeeman tells Fox News.

Charles Johnson “Fairly Sure” the Tennesee State Flag is a Neo-Nazi Logo...  And I'm fairly sure the Husky Ponytailed Blogger's a washed-up has-been...  The link he provides goes to this picture:  —  Umm yeah, that's the Tennesee state flag...  FAIL.

Lo, the Mideast Moves  —  BRUSSELS — The passage of the U.S. health care bill is a major foreign policy victory for President Barack Obama.  —  It empowers him by demonstrating his ability to deliver.  Nowhere is that more important than in the Middle East.

John McCain Calls For National Guard Deployment To The Border  —  Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), under fire from the right for not being tough enough on immigration in his Senate primary race, has called on Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to dispatch National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Henry Waxman's War on Accounting  —  Accounting basics: when a company experiences what accountants call “a material adverse impact” on its expected future earnings, and those changes affect an item that is already on the balance sheet, the company is required to record the negative impact …

NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits  —  NASA can put a man on the moon, but the space agency can't tell you what the temperature was back then.

Dems fear honest Obamacare accounting  —  Remember the Enron scandal in 2001, which drove a bipartisan majority in Congress to demand far-reaching reforms in corporate accounting?  Democrats have discovered this week that maybe they can't handle the truth — at least not when it exposes …

Obama ropes in Romney on healthcare  —  President Obama tied his own healthcare reform law to Romneycare today, a growing theme that isn't helping the former Massachusetts Governor in his early positioning for 2012.  —  “I think that the Republican Party made a calculated decision …

Google Buzz Privacy Flaw Snags Another Victim: White House Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin  —  It's been several weeks now since the disastrous rollout of Google Buzz's initial social networking platform.  It was on February 9ththat Google Buzz unleashed its newest foray into social media to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Half of Commercial Mortgages to Be Underwater: Warren  —  By the end of 2010, about half of all commercial real estate mortgages will be underwater, said Elizabeth Warren, chairperson of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, in a wide-ranging interview on Monday.

Ehrlich announces run for governor  —  Decision to challenge O'Malley comes after months-long ‘listening tour’  —  Former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. confirmed Tuesday that he will challenge Gov. Martin O'Malley this fall.  —  Ehrlich, the state's only Republican governor in a generation …

Palin Inc.  —  I'm increasingly convinced that Sarah Palin is running to head a media empire rather than a presidential campaign.  —  On that front, she is nothing short of an extraordinary success.  She's got a multi-year gig at Fox News.  She just signed a deal with Discovery's TLC for a documentary about her native Alaska.

Two presidents visit U.S. troops: The styles of Barack Obama and George W. Bush in photos  —  President Obama made his first trip as chief executive to Afghanistan over the weekend to, among other things, visit troops close to Kabul.  He spoke to them at Bagram Airfield and we had the full text right here.

The Rich Can't Pay for ObamaCare  —  The president intends to squeeze an extra $1.2 trillion over 10 years from a tiny sliver of taxpayers who already pay more than half of all individual taxes.  It won't work.  —  President Barack Obama's new health-care legislation aims to raise $210 billion …

Obama Prepared to Move Agenda Forward With or Without GOP  —  ABC News' David Chalian Reports: In the aftermath of President Obama's health care victory without a single Republican vote, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod still holds out hope for some bipartisan agreement on future policy proposals …

Trey Grayson, Rand Paul and the politics of Sept. 11, 2001  —  Six weeks out from the Kentucky Republican primary for Senate, Secretary of State Trey Grayson and ophthalmologist Rand Paul are in a pitched battle over that most touchy of political subjects: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Bill Black: Not Dead Yet  —  New Deal 2.0 readers know that Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Bill Black isn't afraid to tell it like it is, and in recent weeks he's been turning up the heat on the banksters who defrauded the American public and brought the country to the brink of economic collapse.