ANOTHER REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR SENATE IN MASSACHUSETTS: “Massachusetts Republican Gabriel Gomez, a private equity investor and former Navy SEAL and aircraft carrier pilot, pulled nomination papers Monday for a Senate bid in the special election, a Republican official confirmed to CQ Roll Call.”

ILYA SOMIN: The War on Drugs, Overcriminalization, and the Rise of Militarized Police Raids.

DEMOCRATIC SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I Do Not Support An Assault Weapons Ban.

SELF-DEFENSE: Highland woman says she had no choice but to shoot intruder.

Keeney, 55, said a man forced his way into her apartment in Highland, threw her to the floor and then put her sister, Donna Carlyle, 47, in a choke hold. He demanded money as Carlyle gasped for air.

“All I could see was Donna’s face going blue, like her life was being choked out of her,” said Keeney.

The alleged intruder, 33, was being treated at a hospital Sunday for two gunshot wounds and was listed in critical condition, police said. They have not released his name.

The quote from a (presumably non-gun-owning) neighbor: “If he had picked my place over theirs, it would have been a lot worse.”

GALLUP: Majority of Americans Disapprove of Obama Gun Policies. 54-42.

CALIFORNIA: Stoking The Next Big Financial Crash? “The next financial market meltdown may already be brewing: not in the housing market, this time, but in municipal bonds. Greedy bankers, opportunistic politicians and hobbled regulators are putting a time bomb in the muni market that could set off another devastating crash. . . . This is irresponsibility on steroids, but it represents a dream come true for crony capitalists and Wall Street I-bankers. Fat fees, enormous interest, and the taxpayers won’t even know what hit them when the whopping bills come due.”

ROBERT LEVY: Reflections on gun control by a Second Amendment advocate.

THOUGHTS ON enjoying the decline.

KIND OF AWKWARD TIMING, GIVEN OBAMA’S PLAN FOR BIG NUCLEAR-WEAPONS CUTS: Did North Korea Just Conduct Another Nuke Test? Plus, nothing says “don’t worry about more enemies with nuclear weapons” like the phrase Secretary of State John Kerry.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA?

A majority of voters believe President Obama has been no better than his immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, when it comes to balancing national security with the protection of civil liberties, according to a new poll for The Hill.

Thirty-seven percent of voters argue that Obama has been worse than Bush while 15 percent say he has been “about the same.”

The results cannot be fully explained as party line responses. More than one in five self-identified Democrats, 21 percent, assert that the Obama administration has not improved upon Bush’s record. So do 23 percent of liberals.

The results are especially striking given the liberal hopes that attended Obama’s election, the opprobrium he heaped upon Bush’s national security policies during the 2008 campaign and his early promise to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

And the moral preening and bullying engaged in by Obama partisans — yes, I’m talking about you, Andrew. It’s like all the hope-and-change/Bush-is-a-war-criminal stuff was just pure partisan hackery or something.

DONALD BYRD HAS DIED. I have his Live At The Half-Note Cafe, and it’s been a favorite for years.

LIFE IN BLOOMBERGISTAN: City hikes taxes on Sandy-hit houses. “We just sustained one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history, and now the city is delusional, claiming our property values went up.”

ON TED NUGENT’S ATTENDANCE AT THE STATE OF THE UNION, reader Roger Baumgarten emails: “This is great…but NUTS if it’s only The Nuge. If the gun-grabbers are exploiti–er, bringing–20 victims of gun violence to the SOTU, then the pro-2A lawmakers should have 25 guests who are alive because they defended their lives with lawfully-owned guns. HUGE missed opportunity this doesn’t happen.” Yes, well, I suggested that earlier. Will they listen?

SEE, THE DIFFERENCE IS, I KNEW THIS BACK WHEN GREENWALD WAS STILL ON BLOGSPOT: DOJ kill list memo forces many Dems out of the closet as overtly unprincipled hacks.

LOSING TRUST IN GOVERNMENT: My USA Today column is up.

THE GREAT COURSES: A new release from my colleague in the UT History Department, Vejas Liulevicius, Turning Points In Modern History. You can watch a preview at the link.

NATIONAL SECURITY: 7 Things Democrats Would Have Freaked Out About If Bush Had Done Them. It’s been enough to drive Josh Marshall to distraction on Twitter already . . . .

THE HILL: Sources: White House to issue cybersecurity order Wednesday. “The executive order would establish a voluntary program in which companies operating critical infrastructure would elect to meet cybersecurity best practices and standards crafted, in part, by the government.”

I HOPE THE ASHEVILLE TEA PARTY GIVES HIM A WARM RECEPTION: Obama visit to Asheville may include gun focus.

THE NARRATIVE HAS CHANGED: After bludgeoning Romney, Dems oddly silent on Jack Lew’s Cayman Islands investments.

MONTANA TV STATION’S EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM HACKED, broadcasts warning of Zombie apocalypse.

BOB MENENDEZ, Senator Of The Evening. “Sen. Bob Menendez is embroiled in a prostitution scandal — and it has little if anything to do with sex. . . . There is no evidence that the squat 59-year-old is selling his body, thank heavens. But reporting does suggest that he has been selling his influence and demeaning the body politic.”

WASHINGTON POST METEOROLOGIST: Bill Nye Is A Weather Idiot. Bill Nye’s descent into partisan talking-head hackery has been painful.

CHANGE: Gas Prices Hit Record High.

FRAMED: Photos shot through windows.