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.

Memo to Paul Krugman and Rep. Van Hollen: My Search Was Not in Vain  —  In last Thursday's column, Paul Krugman admitted to having fun watching “right-wingers go wild.”  One of the things that apparently delighted him was this map which Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook page:

Private Sector Sheds Jobs  —  Private-sector jobs in the U.S. dropped by 23,000 this month.  Above, unemployed Americans line up as they wait to gain entry to meet employers at the Los Angeles Career Fair in March.  —  Private-sector jobs in the U.S. dropped by 23,000 this month …

LL Cool J upset with Palin, Fox  —  LL Cool J is taking aim at Fox and Sarah Palin.  —  (CNN) - Rapper LL Cool J appears to be upset with Sarah Palin and Fox news for using footage of a 2008 interview in its promotion for the former Alaska governor's upcoming television special.

Evan Coyne Maloney remembers  —  Evan Coyne Maloney is the documentary filmmaker and proprietor of Brain Terminal.  During the Bush administration, Evan was out in the field with his camera observing protests and interviewing protesters.  He is therefore in a good position to recall the signs …

GOP Wary of Health Law Repeal Push in Fall Races  —  GOP leaders temper call for repealing health law, saying jobs, economy are key to fall races  —  Top Republicans are increasingly worried that GOP candidates this fall might be burned by a fire that's roaring through the conservative base …

Democrats On Top In Ohio Senate, Governor Races, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Obama Bounces Back From Big Negative To A Split  —  Democrats are having a mini-surge in Ohio as two possible candidates for the open U.S. Senate seat have come from behind to pass the Republican contender …

Clinton pollster says if election were held today, 1994 would repeat  —  Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said Wednesday that if the 2010 election were held today, his party would be faced with a similar result to its catastrophic 1994 losses.  —  Greenberg, who was Bill Clinton's pollster …

Gallup: Majority Says Dem Health Reform Tactics Were “Abuse Of Power”  —  Yesterday I noted the seemingly odd finding by Gallup that more Americans blame Democrats than Republicans or conservatives for the rash of violence that greeted the passage of the reform law.

Barack The Good  —  The big government liberalism that Mr. Obama uses to make himself history-making also alienates him in the center-right America of today.  —  It has to be acknowledged that, in his battle for health-care reform, President Obama has shown real presidential mettle.

Sec. Salazar: Cap-and-trade ‘is not in the lexicon anymore’  —  “Cap-and-trade” isn't part of the Obama administration's lexicon anymore when it comes to addressing climate change, a top cabinet secretary said Wednesday.  —  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar sent signals that the White House believes …

Hutchison Will Serve Out Term  —  Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) will announce today she has decided to serve out the remainder of her term, according to a source familiar with Hutchison's plans.  —  The move is a reversal of a pledge Hutchison made to step down as she challenged Gov. Rick Perry (R) earlier this year.

Bill Donohue: Child Molesting Priests Weren't Pedophiles Because Most Boys Were Post Pubescent  —  Bill Donohue seemed very proud of the fact that most child molesting priests weren't actually pedophiles in his words, but only guilty of abusing children who had achieved puberty.

The ObamaCare Writedowns—II  —  Democrats blame a vast CEO conspiracy.  —  So the wave of corporate writedowns—led by AT&T's $1 billion—isn't caused by ObamaCare after all.  The White House claims CEOs are reducing the value of their companies and returns for shareholders merely out of political pique.

Taxes per Person  —  Some pundits, reflecting on the looming U.S. budget deficits, claim that Americans are vastly undertaxed compared with other major nations.  I was wondering, to what extent is that true?  —  The most common metric for answering this question is taxes as a percentage of GDP.

One Man's Quest to Catalog Presidential Minutiae  —  Radio Reporter Keeps Tabs on Vacations, Dinners, Phrases; a 60,000-Word Summit  —  WASHINGTON—When President Barack Obama told a gathering of the nation's governors last month that he was “not going to rest” until each state's economy improves, Mark Knoller was counting.

Excessive Outrage on Retiree Subsidy Accounting  —  So as blogged yesterday, the new health care plan changed the tax treatment of a subsidy for retiree prescription drug benefits, which caused those companies who had received the subsidy to announce a charge against their deferred tax assets.

David Mills, writer for ‘Homicide: Life on the Street,’ ‘NYPD Blue,’ ‘ER,’ ‘The Wire’ and HBO's upcoming ‘Treme,’ dies at age 48 … David Mills, a staff writer and co-executive producer of the upcoming HBO drama “Treme,” died of a brain aneurysm Tuesday in New Orleans, an HBO spokesman confirmed Wednesday morning.

House Flippers in U.S. Crowd Courthouse Steps in Hunt for Deals  —  During the U.S. housing boom, even amateur investors could buy and sell a property within a couple of months and turn a profit.  Today there's nothing amateur about house flipping.  —  Homes with punctured walls …

What Makes Chechen Women So Dangerous?  —  ALMOST every month for the past two years, Chechen suicide bombers have struck.  Their targets can be anything from Russian soldiers to Chechen police officers to the innocent civilians who were killed on the subway in Moscow this week.