THIS IS SAD: Reportedly, Whitney Houston has died.

AND WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? What Happened at MF Global?

IF YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY, THE FINAL VERSION OF MY Southern California Law Review piece on Second Amendment Penumbras is now online. It’s short and to the point. Download early and often! (just click the one-click-download button at the top center.)

CALIFORNIA COURT: Owning an “assault weapon” is a crime of moral turpitude.

MICHAEL WALSH: “A specter is haunting America — the specter of violence that challenges the notion of civil discourse and threatens our democracy. Embodied by the Occupy Wall Street rabble and its imitators, and shamefully abetted by far too many Democratic elected officials, what once masqueraded as ‘dissent’ is now unmasked as partisan thuggery.”

Dissent is okay when it’s really just factional infighting among the elite. It’s only when it becomes actual dissent — see, e.g., the Tea Party movement — that elites worry about civility.

OCCUPY KINDERGARTEN?

The greatest predictor of a child’s academic success, even more than economic class, is still their parents’ education level. But among adults, education and income are becoming more and more intertwined. College graduates couple off and use their resources to raise children who will also go on to succeed academically. When he ran the numbers, Reardon actually found that parental education couldn’t explain the entire growth the academic gap between classes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a factor.

Even if we still have to tease out the reasons why, we appear to have reached a point where the children of the rich end up better educated, and more likely to succeed, simply because they’re children of the rich.

The buried assumption here, however, is that this could be changed with money. But it’s just as likely that the higher incomes are the result of a better genetic endowment — higher intelligence, more self-discipline, ability to defer gratification, etc. — that is likely to be passed on to kids. This seems particularly likely in light of Bryan Caplan’s conclusion that parental “investment” doesn’t make as big a difference as people think.

RETRACTO, THE CORRECTION ALPACA demands an apology from Gawker for bogus racism charges.

Have you noticed that lately, bogus racism charges are pretty much the only kind of racism charges you see?

TRANSPORTATION INDICATORS looking kind of grim.

THIS SEEMS COOL: Felix Baumgartner’s 120,000-Foot Space Dive: It’s On. “In August 2010, Popular Mechanics’ cover story featured Red Bull Stratos, the name of Felix Baumgartner’s mission to set the world record by surviving a jump from 120,000 feet that would accelerate him to speeds beyond the sound barrier. But a lawsuit delayed Baumgartner’s attempt—until now. Red Bull Stratos confirmed this week that the jump is back on and scheduled for this summer. Baumgartner talked with PM about the mission, the tech, and what it’s like to wait two years for one big day.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns on jewelry.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: College Student Suspended For Writing About Being Attracted To Professor.

CHANGE: Tough Times For U.S. EV Battery Makers.

HMM: Romney Wins CPAC Straw Poll. And a severe falloff for Ron Paul, who usually wins these things.

HOW YOUR CAT is making you crazy. “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year. . . . My guess is that there are scads more examples of this going on in mammals, with parasites we’ve never even heard of.”

Tom Maguire says this is putting cat-blogging in a harsh new light. But I think my childhood litterbox duties explain why I am fearless and irresistible to women. . . .

UPDATE: Skepticism.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Automotive Outlet Sale.

OPEN YOUR MOUTH, and you’re dead. “How deep can they go? Nobody knows. Competitive freediving is a relatively new sport, and since the first world championships were held in 1996, records have been broken every year, sometimes every few months. Fifty years ago, scientists believed that the deepest a human could freedive was about 160 feet. Recently, freedivers have routinely doubled and tripled that mark.” Yeah, I was talking with a freediving instructor on Cayman a couple of years back and he said he could have me diving that deep (150 feet) in a couple of days. But I stuck with scuba.

PUTTING THE BUBBLE INTO THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: Moody’s May Downgrade Law Schools’ Credit Rating.

JASON FERTIG: Ditch The Textbooks.

DICTATOR SUCKUPS: Leaked emails show Westerners truckling to the Syrian regime.

TOM MAGUIRE: This Contraception Controversy Would Have Been Avoided If Obama Were President.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: IRS Employee Stole Data To Forge $8M In Fraudulent Returns.

BAD NEWS: New Drugs Cost Even More Than You Think.

COUNTING CROWS want you to hear their new album for free.

GOV. SCOTT WALKER: Political Courage at Stake in Recall Fight.