WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW: Are Americans “love starved?” And is it because of unrealistic expectations?

Somehow, this reminds me of a great and moving essay by Herbert Stein.

JOHN HAWKINS interviews crusading investigative journalist James O’Keefe.

DID THEY HAVE GUNS? BREAKING: NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg Uses Bodyguards to Bully Journalist in Washington.

INSIDE THE WORLD OF porn stars who brunch.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Brock’s Glock: In anti-gun DC, Media Matters for America gave bodyguard illegal weapons to guard founder David Brock.

VIDEO: Milwaukee County sheriff’s PSA on self-protection.

PROF. NICHOLAS JOHNSON: THE MISEDUCATION OF DANNY GLOVER.

In a January 17 speech to students at Texas A&M University, Danny Glover, the actor from Lethal Weapon etc., attempted to disparage the constitutional right to arms with the critique that “The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans.”

This is abundantly wrong and I hope the students will not consider Mr. Glover a definitive source on the question. But I will give him credit for the try. He attempted to engage the issue by at least skimming one piece of the voluminous scholarship in this area.

His comment seems based on a cursory reading of a 1998 law review article by Professor Carl Bogus. First, it warms the academic’s heart that a Hollywood actor would sit down and read a law review article, although I acknowledge the possibility that someone just told him about it.

Either way, his education is incomplete (as is true for all of us). Mr. Glover’s mistake is to have taken one dubious thing and run with it. That is almost always a mistake and especially so in the gun debate. But Danny Glover’s mistake is also a teaching tool that illuminates the broader conversation.

The article by Prof. Bogus is a useful illustration of the long and ongoing enterprise to render the Second Amendment substantively meaningless.

Long, ongoing, and in many cases well-funded by the antigun Joyce Foundation.

ANN ALTHOUSE CORRECTS PAUL KRUGMAN:

There are 2 propositions: A. Those who are successful should be able to keep the fruits of their efforts, and B. All Americans should have the opportunity to work toward their own success.

Krugman comes close to saying Romney only said A and Jindal only says B.

But Romney continually said both things. His opponents worked constantly — and successfully — to make people feel that he was only saying A. And Jindal is also saying both things. That’s the function of the word “simply.”

Jindal — in the quoted sentence — isn’t saying Romney only said A. He’s talking about the way people think about the Republican Party, which is in A terms, because that’s the way Democrats have successfully framed them. Jindal is saying the B frame is better political rhetoric.

Krugman goes on to explain why B rhetoric doesn’t properly apply to what Jindal and the rest of the GOP are really doing. That is, he’s continuing the process that was used so successfully in the campaign to defeat Romney — pushing A, obscuring B.

There is no major rhetorical shift. Not from Jindal and not from Krugman. Everyone is doing, rhetorically, what they’ve been doing all along.

What the GOP needs to do is overcome its media problem. I’ve offered some suggestions on that in the past.

CRITICISM FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC’S NEW OPERATIONAL STYLE: Dan Kennedy: TNR’s new owner crosses a line with Obama interview.

The New York Times goes deep on The New Republic’s latest reinvention. I wrote a couple of pieces for the venerable magazine many years ago, and I wish it well. But I also wish Times reporter Christine Haughney had explored a conflict of interest in TNR’s relaunch: the participation of new owner Chris Hughes in a major interview with President Obama.

I don’t necessarily begrudge Hughes’ wanting to play a role on the editorial side of TNR. It’s now his magazine, and previous owner Marty Peretz was a legendary interferer — sometimes for better, usually for worse. TNR is a small place, and it’s unrealistic to expect the publisher to exercise the same sort of restraint as, say, the publisher of a major daily newspaper.

But Hughes, the 29-year-old co-founder of Facebook, is also the “former online campaign adviser” to the president, as Haughney puts it — and by all accounts the key person in building Obama’s 2008 online presence. In April 2009, Fast Company ran a long profile headlined “How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign.”

The TNR interview with Obama was conducted jointly by Hughes and the magazine’s editor, Franklin Foer. So what kind of hard-hitting questions did Hughes ask? Here they are.

And what follows is almost a Steve Kroft-level journalistic tonguebath. Note that, as the journalist who sent me this link observes, Dan Kennedy is hardly a right-wing media critic.

UPDATE: Skepticism:

I must say, I’d never paid any attention to Chris Hughes before, and I didn’t yesterday until pushed by my commenters. On the evidence of the interview he and Franklin Foer did with the President, I saw him as another media suckup doing Democratic Party politics under cover of journalism. Seeing this “free of party ideology or partisan bias” business now only inclines me to scoff. If that’s what you wanted as your brand, why did you lead off with that interview? . . .

Based on that interview with Obama, I’d say Hughes is not striving that hard or he’s not good at what he’s striving to do or — most likely — he only wants to appeal to Democrats, so he only wants to do enough to seem to be free of party ideology and partisan bias to Democrats. Is this enough to make our target audience feel good about the nourishment they’re getting from this source? The good feeling is some combination of seeming like professional journalism while satisfying their emotional needs that are intertwined their political ideology and love of party.

If that’s wrong, the burden is on Hughes and TNR to demonstrate that it’s wrong.

ARAB SPRING / “SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Egyptian Path Darkens. “The situation in Egypt continues to darken; President Morsi has just declared a state of emergency and announced a curfew in three provinces following widespread riots. Hundreds of Egyptians have hit the streets in recent days to protest against President Mohamed Morsi and the death sentence handed down to 21 people for rioting at a soccer match. Forty-five people have died since the protests began on Thursday. . . . Most Egyptians these days are poor, unemployed, and frustrated with both the current and the past leadership of the country. And since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Egypt has seen its currency plummet as investors flee. Unless these trends are reversed, the restlessness and violence is only likely to get worse. The latest outbreak of violence and the draconian measures now being taken to contain it only highlight the reality that neither Egypt’s government, its liberal opposition or its military guardians have any idea what to do.”

STEWART BAKER NOT THAT IMPRESSED WITH ANONYMOUS’ ATTACKS ON THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “Apart from turning those who want reform of computer crime law into the allies of lawbreakers, Anonymous has substantively hurt the case for amending the CFAA. Heavy criminal penalties are entirely appropriate for people who hack a Supreme Court Justice’s account and disclose personal secrets. But it’s not easy to redraft the CFAA so it reflects the difference between Swartz and the Anonymous hackers, at least not without relying on precisely the prosecutorial discretion that the Swartz prosecutors misused.”

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US Steps up Role in Mali as French Advance: “The Pentagon announced yesterday that it will, in fact, begin aiding French forces in Mali by providing US air tankers to refuel French aircraft. This announcement comes after weeks of behind-the-scenes tension between the two countries, during which Paris has criticized the US has been dragging its feet on military aid, while Washington has been reluctant to jump into a conflict in which it may be expected to foot much of the bill. Although it still isn’t clear exactly how much aid America is willing to provide, it does at least appear that the US is inching closer to a more active role in the Mali conflict.”

ROLL CALL: “The sky is still really pretty … even when Obama is president.”

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals on Computers.

Also, today only, up to 40% off on Popchips.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Why Not A Waiting Period For Laws? “I’d like to propose a ‘waiting period’ for legislation. No bill should be voted on without hearings, debate and a final text that’s available online for at least a week. (A month would be better. How many bills really couldn’t wait a month?) And if the bill is advertised as addressing a ‘tragedy’ or named after a dead child, this period should double.”

UPDATE: Reader Emory Smith emails: “What about a Legislative Precautionary Principle? No legislation can go into affect until it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will not have negative consequences.”

And another reader emails: “Why not a mental-health screen every time a member of Congress gets elected or re-elected?”

MICHAEL BARONE: Democrats’ dream of permanent dominance is unlikely.

The 2008-2012 Obama campaign — it never really stopped — did an excellent job of turning out just enough voters to win 332 electoral votes. But Obama carried just 26 states to Mitt Romney’s 24, which is relevant when you look at future Senate elections.

As for House elections, Obama carried only 207 congressional districts to Romney’s 228. That’s partly because Republicans had the advantage in redistricting after the 2010 census.

But it’s also because the Obama core constituencies — blacks, Hispanics, gentry liberals — tend to be clustered geographically in central city neighborhoods in big metropolitan areas. His big margins there helped him carry many electoral votes but not so many congressional districts.

And Obama’s in-your-face liberalism, so apparent in last week’s inaugural speech, antagonized some groups in a way that may hurt Democrats for some time to come.

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Hubris is already here, but nemesis is slouching toward Washington, D.C. (Related item here.)

Barone concludes:

George W. Bush’s 51 percent re-election, with 11.5 million more votes than four years before, got his strategist Karl Rove musing about a permanent Republican majority. That didn’t happen.

Now Barack Obama’s 51 percent re-election, with 3.5 million fewer votes than four years before, has Democrats talking about annihilating the Republican Party. That’s not likely to happen either.

Neither party is very popular, nor likely to be.

THE HILL: New special ops command in Mexico politically motivated, analysts claim.

The new U.S. special operations command created to help Mexico combat drug traffickers was allegedly conceived, in part, to bolster President Obama’s reelection campaign, according to defense analysts reportedly involved in the effort.

I wonder if there’s a “Fast And Furious” tie-in.

Plus, a Nobel Peace Prize Update:

U.S. special operations forces and counterinsurgency specialists returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are poised to ramp up operations across the globe, focusing on countries like Mexico, as well as partner nations in Africa and South America.

These small bands of special forces experts will lean upon “innovative methods” learned in Southwest Asia to support local counterterrorism forces and expand American influence in those regions, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at the time.

I’m sure if this were the Bush Administration this would be getting more play.

LIFE IN THE WELFARE STATE: We get £17,680 a year in benefits, buy 40 cigs a day, have a laptop and a home with 47-inch TV… why work?

BOB OWENS: Register … or Rebel: How Many New Yorkers Will Defy New Law? “Already, signs that Governor Cuomo and his allies underestimated the pushback.”

Hey, if you can’t even get orderly Canadians with no Second Amendment tradition to go along with a rifle registry. . . .

HEH: The Steve Kroft Swoon: Was Obama/Hillary interview on ‘60 Minutes’ or ‘60 Shades of Gray’?

ZEROHEDGE: “The only way to understand why employment is dead in the water is to stand in the shoes of a potential employer or entrepreneur. Remarkably, this perspective is unknown to economists and progressive politicians because they have never been an employer (and no, hiring a grad student to grade papers or an illegal nanny to watch your kids does not make you an employer.)”

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Aaron Swartz and Motel Caswell: Book ends to prosecutorial reform?

A judge this week struck down a US government scheme to seize a Tewksbury, Mass., motel because it had become a haven for drug dealers, bolstering concerns about whether US prosecutors in some cases have too much power. The decision in the long-running forfeiture case comes as the US attorney in Boston, Carmen Ortiz, is already under fire for her role in the death of Internet hacker Aaron Swartz, who killed himself on Jan. 11 as he faced a potentially long prison term for what many in the technology field have noted was nothing more than a breach of a contract involving Internet documents.

The two cases are feeding a simmering groundswell among constitutional law professors and others about the inherent discretionary powers of federal prosecutors, especially in an era of books like attorney Harvey Silverglate’s “Three Felonies a Day: How the feds target the innocent.”

Here, by the way, is a link to my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece, which is mentioned in the article.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, THE BRITISH WOULD LOOK DOWN ON OUR PRESIDENT — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Nile Gardiner: Barack Obama looks bitter, arrogant and partisan as he begins his second term.

IT’S NOT A FAILURE IF YOUR GOAL IS EMPOWERING THE POLITICAL CLASS: We’re following Britain’s failed path, not Estonia’s successful one.