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.) …

Who Are You Going To Believe, Me Or Your Lying Ears?  —  The NY Times opens a campaign to bring racial justice to Florida.  They may have landed on the right side of the issue, or not.  Their lead:  —  Justice Department Investigation Is Sought in Florida Teenager's Shooting Death  —  By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Police Intervene, Arrest Ron Paul Backers at Missouri Caucus  —  Police and organizers shut down proceedings at one of Missouri's largest caucuses today, as Ron Paul supporters feuded with local GOP leaders.  —  “It's like the Hatfields and the McCoys around here,” St. Charles County's …

TRENDING: Obama raises a pint  —  Washington (CNN) - It wouldn't be St. Patrick's Day without a pint of Guinness, even for the commander-in-chief.  —  President Barack Obama's motorcade made the mile-and-a-half trip to the The Dubliner, a well-known Capitol Hill pub, at around 12:30 p.m. Saturday …

Obama administration issues new contraception mandate rules  —  Takes conciliatory tone, exempts self-insurers  —  Taking a conciliatory tone and asking for a wide range of public comment, the Obama administration announced this afternoon new accommodations on a controversial mandate requiring …

Republicans Brace for Possible Open Convention  —  CHICAGO — For the first time in a generation, Republicans are preparing for the possibility that their presidential nomination could be decided at their national convention rather than on the campaign trail, a prospect that would upend one of the rituals of modern politics.

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 …

Scores Arrested as the Police Clear Zuccotti Park  —  Updated Scores of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on Saturday night as police officers swept Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and closed it.  —  Dozens of demonstrators sat down and locked arms as officers moved in about 11:30 p.m …

Obama's History Lesson  —  Our lesson for today comes from George and Ira Gershwin: … Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sang it in the film Shall We Dance?  (1937).  Seventy-five years on, the president revived it to tap dance around his rising gas prices and falling approval numbers.

Austerity and not wasting a crisis  —  In the austerity versus stimulus debate, I argue from a macroeconomic point of view that this is a false choice if we are talking about economies where markets are eager to buy government debt i.e. pretty well everywhere apart from the Eurozone.