Get out your shovels, Alaskans! The New York Times’ Felicity Barringer reports that the Interior Dept. has opened 2.6 million acres of a petroleum reserve in northeast Alaska. The area could unleash 965,000 barrels of oil.

The Bush administration has not, however, approved opening up 600,000 acres at the tip of Alaska, which is home to migrating caribou and thousands of waterfowl. This land has been protected since the Jimmy Carter administration. It will be interesting to see if the president, a failed oil speculator himself, continues with these oil exploration limitations for his last six months in office.-MB

The Washington Post’s Christopher Lee flags a disconcerting bit of news first reported by the San Jose Mercury News: the U.S. Census Bureau will classify gay, married couples as "unmarried partners" in its 2010 census. There are more than 10,000 gay marriages in Massachusetts and will likely be a few thousand more the next year in California.

With Massachusetts and California the only states to recognize gay marriage, there are likely bigger problems in the gay rights world than the 2010 census. Still, the move is insulting and robs the public of potentially critical demographic information. What is the median income of a gay married couple? What is their median age?

The census workers’ defense is that they are following the Bill Clinton/Newt Gingrich era Defense of Marriage Act. That law prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the government’s "defense of marriage."-MB

The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson reports that back in 2003 then-Attorney General John Ashcroft gave the president five recommendations of people to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Each was a loyal Republican. But the White House was furious that none would clearly advocate for harsh detainee interrogation methods– and that none were Justice Dept. lawyer John Yoo, who wrote the now infamous 2002 "torture memos."

The administration would eventually choose Jack Goldsmith as a compromise candidate to lead OLC. Goldsmith resigned after a less than year, but not before re-writing Yoo’s most notorious memos.

Ashcroft will testify before the House Judiciary Committee today. As Johnson points out, civil libertarians would have never expected to view John "Patriot Act" Ashcroft as a voice of reason. But standards change when the administration policy is state-sponsored torture.-MB

The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin analyzes if the mortgage crisis has led to an inappropriately expanded role for the public/private Federal Reserve. The Fed this weekend engineered the loans necessary to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It did the same with Bear Stearns. The Fed’s mission, however, is to manage the money supply in a way that brings about price stability and low unemployment. As a government agency, it is supposed to tackle financial stability.

The Fed claims it’s only taken this expanded role due to the dire straits of the economy. But the subprime mortgage crisis has been going on now since last August.-MB