BILL HARWOOD: A Bittersweet Finale For The Discovery.

MUNICIPAL BOND MARKETS in the deep freeze.

AT AMAZON, a sale on digital tire gauges. The President says you should have one!

Also, roadside emergency kits.

CLAIRE MCCASKILL SPENT $76,000 OF TAXPAYER MONEY ON PRIVATE CHARTER FLIGHTS. I don’t want to hear one goddamn word about my carbon footprint from these people. Plus, there seems to have been some self-dealing involved: “As a senator, McCaskill has flown at least 89 flights chartered by Sunset Cove Associates LLC — a company incorporated in 2002 by her husband, St. Louis businessman Joe Shepard, according to records kept by the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office. All of those flights were paid for from McCaskill’s Senate office budget, raising questions about whether the first-term senator and her husband are using public dollars to partially subsidize their aircraft.”

FOLLOWING UP ON LAST WEEK’S iPad / nursing home post, I went to the Apple Store last night and picked up a first-gen iPad for $100 off. I’ll report back on how it’s received.

LAW ENFORCEMENT: ATF, DOJ Launch Damage Control Effort Over Growing Project Gunrunner Scandal.

TIMOTHY CARNEY: More Evidence That Going To A Fancy College Doesn’t Pay. “College graduates do earn more than non-college grads, and Ivy League graduates earn more than non-Ivy types, but the correlation might not spell causation.”

MICKEY KAUS: Why Labor Can’t Compromise In Wisconsin.

MICHAEL WALSH: Wisconsin: The Left’s War On Democracy. “Let’s call this what it is: a campaign to nullify the 2010 election, by a sore-loser party that doesn’t like the results. . . . What the Democrats are doing in Wisconsin is more than just a disgrace. It’s a danger to our republican form of government, a formula for permanent, no-holds-barred combat long after the polls have closed and the people have spoken.” As I said before, they’re setting precedents here, but they’re as myopic politically as they are fiscally.

UPDATE: Dana Loesch on Facebook: “Right now heads collectively exploding in newsrooms across the country as media grapples with the fact that the mostly-white crowd in Madison breaking things isn’t the tea party.”

THE HILL: Two Dems break with White House on Medicare board.

ON SALE, TODAY ONLY: The Sound Of Music on Blu-Ray/DVD combo.

JOSH BROKAW: Surprise! The Secretary of Agriculture Doesn’t Understand Farm Subsidy Effects. You know, I’ve written about the Knowledge Problem, first- and second-order, but these people aren’t even trying.

BANK OF AMERICA SAYS nearly half of its mortgages are “bad.”

THE HILL: Spending plan vote backfires as Democrats suffer defections. “The Democratic bill attracted two fewer votes than the rival GOP measure that would cut spending by another $57 billion this year. The 11 defections will give Republican leaders ammunition in subsequent talks, as they were able to keep their caucus more unified.” Of course, we need to add a zero to even the larger Republican number before we’re really getting anywhere.

MICKEY KAUS: DID WALKER WIN?

Related: Walker has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal. “While it might be a bold political move, the changes are modest. We ask government workers to make a 5.8% contribution to their pensions and a 12.6% contribution to their health-insurance premium, both of which are well below what other workers pay for benefits. Our plan calls for Wisconsin state workers to contribute half of what federal employees pay for their health-insurance premiums.”

BYRON YORK: GOP: Full Speed Ahead On Defunding NPR.

SHALE GAS: Europe May Have As Much as North America. Related: Billions of barrels of untapped U.S. oil. This might be a good time to tap more of these non-Arab sources.

HEH: Rand Paul to Obama energy official: Why are you pro-choice on abortion but not on toilets and lightbulbs?

GOT YOUR ATTENTION YET? World’s Biggest Bond Fund Dumps U.S. Debt.

FASTER, PLEASE: Second Sight retinal prosthesis cleared for sale in Europe, a better one already in development.

RADLEY BALKO: Prison Rape: Still a Problem. Government: Still Not All That Concerned About It.

RUTH MARCUS: Islamic radicalism: The questions that Rep. Peter King is right to ask. “To ignore the religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb to politically correct delusion. To ignore the homegrown religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb even further.”

WELL, IF CHRIS CHRISTIE’S A BIGGER WIMP THAN ME, then he’s in trouble. I mean, I’m just a mild-mannered law professor. Though I was the terror of the Chess Club.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Before NPR scandal, a warning about ‘elite’ liberals: compassion turns to coercion. “Long before the NPR scandal underscored liberal condescension toward conservatives, Lionel Trilling saw the hidden hope of power that lies in the heart of those who seek to improve society. President Obama has renewed this progressive impulse, limiting our freedom and prosperity.”

HMM. THIS WOULDN’T BE GOOD: North Korea Nears Completion of Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb.

UPDATE: A cautionary tale.