Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time  —  WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

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 …

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) …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jaime Escalante dies at 79; math teacher who challenged East L.A. students to ‘Stand and Deliver’  —  He became America's most famous teacher after a 1988 movie portrayed his success at mentoring working-class pupils at Garfield High to pass a rigorous national calculus exam.  He died of cancer.

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.

Holding back job growth?  Workers' awesome output  —  When workers become more efficient, it's normally a good thing.  But lately, it has acted as a powerful brake on job creation.  And the question of whether the recent surge in productivity has run its course is the key to whether job growth is finally poised to take off.

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.”

Big announcement coming from Hutchison  —  U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has called a press conference for 10 a.m. Wednesday in San Antonio and is expected to announce whether she will stay in the Senate for the rest of her term.  —  Sen. John Cornyn, her fellow Texas Republican …

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.

Obama energy plan would open up Gulf drilling  —  “To set America on a path to energy independence, the president believes we must leverage our diverse domestic resources by pursuing a comprehensive energy strategy,” said a statement provided by an administration official …

Helping One of Our Own  —  It may come as a surprise to many of you, but RedState writers do not get paid.  Well, I do, and I forever remain guilty that I'm the guy getting the check living off the fine writing of others in this community.  Unlike many blogs, we also don't have a regular PayPal tip jar or reader pledge drives.

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.

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 …

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 …

The iPad, internet, and climate change links in the spotlight  —  Greenpeace report shows cloud computing GHG emissions tripling by 2020  —  International — On the eve of the launch of the iPad, our latest report warns that the growth of internet computing could come with a huge jump in greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

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.