Executive Order — National Defense Resources Preparedness  —  NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS  —  By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2061 et seq.) …

Brown Teases Santorum About Using ‘Protection’  —  Sen. Scott Brown joked at a St. Patrick's Day that Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum's secret service detail may be the first time he's ever “used protection.”  —  “I'm hopeful that all of you are actually following presidential politics.

SAN DIEGO TEA PARTY LEADER ARRESTED FOR KIDNAPPING, RAPE  —  Lemon Grove resident Michael John Kobulnicky, 50, a leader in the San Diego Tea Party and former regional director of the Southern California Conservative Party, is under arrest for allegedly kidnapping and raping a local woman on Fiesta Island.

The Collapse of Employment-Based Coverage  —  Reed Abelson at Economix points us to a startling study on the effects of the Great Recession on health insurance.  You can see similar trends in the Census data, but for whatever reason this survey — carried out by a highly reputable group — is even stronger.

The Kennedy assassination: Did Castro know in advance?  —  A new book by former CIA analyst Brian Latell details evidence that Cuban intelligence knew beforehand of JFK's assassination  —  The orders surprised the Cuban intelligence officer.  Most days in his tiny communications hut …

PELOSI'S DAUGHTER: HBO UNCOMFORTABLE WITH ‘FREELOADING WELFARE QUEEN’ VIDEO  —  Alexandra Pelosi debuted a video she made for HBO's “Real Time with Bill Maher” last night.  The video shows multiple welfare recipients in New York City proclaiming they were at the welfare office to get their …

Obama's evolution: Behind the failed ‘grand bargain’ on the debt  —  P resident Obama had just arrived home, walking across Lafayette Square after attending Sunday services with his family at St. John's Church.  In the West Wing, Obama ducked into the spacious office of his chief of staff …

Will Maher Go the Way of Olbermann?  —  David Axelrod's moral-equivalence argument that Limbaugh's smear is worse than Maher's because the former is both more influential and more identifiable with Republican circles is a sad sort of sophistry.  Limbaugh may have a larger audience …

TPM2012  —  Santorum Charges Ahead With Anti-Porn Crusade  —  Rick Santorum has garnered quite a bit of attention recently for his animated remarks against pornography, and on two separate Sunday shows the Republican presidential candidate refused to cede an inch, doubling down on his crusade against “hard-core pornography.”

Progressivism and the authoritarian impulse  —  Performed rather perfectly by Stanley Fish, who — because he has spent an academic career immersed in the insular logic of the linguistic turn — is able to comfortably slide into a description of benevolent “liberal” tyranny that he counsels …