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.

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.

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:

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

Clinton Pollster: If Election Were Today, It Would Be Like '94  —  WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?  —  The pollster manning the ship for President Bill Clinton during the disastrous 1994 congressional elections is experiencing some déjà vu as the Democratic Party approaches this off-year contest.

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.

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 …

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.