CHRIS CHRISTIE’S GUN PLAN: Not So Much About Guns.

BLOOMBERG’S WORLD: A Tale Of Two New York Cities: The Rich And The Hungry.

USELESS, EXPENSIVE, AND SHORTSIGHTED: Obama’s tired gun control schemes won’t make children, or the rest of us, any safer.

WHY WOMEN LOVE MEN WHO KILL. “In 2010 while awaiting trial for the murder of Stephany Flores, Joran van der Sloot told reporters that he was being inundated with love letters and offers to bear his children. Scott Peterson who sits on death row for the murder of his wife Laci, received countless letters from women proposing marriage. Even serial killer Ted Bundy reportedly had hundreds of romantic pen pals while incarcerated. And today, a disturbing crop of websites like PrisonPenPals, WriteaPrisoner.com, and ConvictMailbag.com has even emerged for women attracted to inmates. . . . For starters, the desire to be associated with dangerous men may have evolutionary roots.”

This perhaps sheds light on the “nice guy” discussion from last week . . . .

SCIENCE: Women more attracted to “taken” men.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WASHINGTON WOULD BE INSENSITIVE TO RAPE VICTIMS. And they were right! “Police in Washington DC frequently fail to investigate reports of rape, and treat victims so dismissively at times, that they experience fresh trauma while the chances of the perpetrator being caught are undermined, according to a comprehensive report due out next week.”

CRAB LICE ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION due to bikini-waxing’s popularity.

EVERY COP IS A CRIMINAL: In haste, Cuomo and New York Legislature forgot to exempt police from draconian new gun law. If I were a member of the legislature, I’d oppose a fix just as a lesson . . . .

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Ed Driscoll: Anniversaries Celebrated.

FBI: Our Surveillance Strategy Is “Privileged And Confidential.”

[The] Obama administration’s surveillance strategy in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that the installation of a GPS tracker on a vehicle amounted to a search under the Fourth Amendment remains “privileged and confidential,” the Justice Department claims in newly released memos.

What has been made public is that, following the high court’s Jan. 23 decision, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pulled the plug on some 3,000 GPS trackers. The bureau’s general counsel, Andrew Weissmann, acknowledged that fact while speaking at a legal symposium at the University of San Francisco last year.

He also said the government issued two memos on how to proceed following the so-called “Jones” decision — memos the government now claims are not for public consumption. What that boils down to is this: If the government told you how it was spying on you, it would have to kill you.

They have drones for that.

HEY, RUBE! Obama Has Three Big Priorities This Term, and Ending the Drug War Isn’t One of Them.

FASTER, PLEASE: Device Tests Drugs on a Tumor That’s Still in the Body.

PRIVATE SPACE UPDATE: Bigelow to Build Inflatable Room for the ISS. “A SpaceX rocket would carry the first Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) to the station in 2015, where it would provide an extra 330 cubic meters of volume to the station, Space.com reports, and could support six astronauts. The BEAM would travel uninflated to the ISS; crews would attach it to an air lock and blow it up with pressurized air from the station.”

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Grocery & Personal Care.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: WaPo: On MLK holiday, walking for civil rights and the Second Amendment.

When Charles “Chuck” Hicks does the Martin Luther King Jr. Day peace and freedom walks Saturday, he’ll also be taking a step for what the National Rifle Association has dubbed “National Rifle Appreciation Day.” That’s because Hicks is the son of Robert Hicks, a prominent leader of the legendary Deacons for Defense and Justice — an organization of black men in Louisiana who used shotguns and rifles to repel attacks by white vigilantes during the 1960s.

“The Klan would drive through our neighborhood shooting at us, shooting into our homes,” recalled Hicks, 66, who grew up in Bogalusa, La., and has been a civil rights activist in the District for more than 35 years. “The black men in the community wouldn’t stand for it. You shoot at us, we shoot back at you. I’m convinced that without our guns, my family and many other black people would not be alive today.”

Condi Rice tells a similar story, of course. More background here.

PETER SUDERMAN: Yes, we’ve raised the debt limit many times before. That’s the problem. “The White House argues that a clean hike is the only way to avoid a potential downgrade of the nation’s creditworthiness. If the GOP resists authorizing a hike in the limit, political instability will make creditors wary of further lending, raising the nation’s borrowing costs and destabilizing the global economic system. Perhaps they should pay a little more attention to what the big credit rating agencies are actually saying.”

Nothing says good credit risk like a commitment to unlimited increases in debt!

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanometer-scale optical positioning and focusing.

RASMUSSEN POLL: 53% Still Think Neither Party Represents the American People.

IT LOOKS DELICIOUS: McDonald’s Offers France a High-Calorie McBaguette. “Sorry, Gallic purists, but after sampling it, I can tell you that the McDonald’s (MCD) bread is pretty good. OK, not as good as the premium-priced ‘traditional’ baguettes sold in bakeries and served in upscale restaurants, but certainly no worse than the standard loaves consumed daily by millions of French.”

SO NOW I’VE FINISHED ALL THREE OF READER E.C. WILLIAMS’ BOOKS, Westerly Gales, The Cruise of the Albatros, and Into Uncharted Seas. Quite enjoyable and, as I said, sort of like a cross between Steve Stirling’s Change novels and Horatio Hornblower, with maybe a hint of Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen.

TECHNOLOGY GIVES, AND TECHNOLOGY TAKETH AWAY: The Tragic, World-Changing Loss of the Great American Arcade.

THERE’S A LOT OF THAT GOING AROUND: New York City School Bus Strike: A Cosy Cartel, Running Out of Gas.

OUCH: Between a wall and a hard place: Oregon woman freed from tiny space.

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE UNDERMINING GUN-CONTROL MOVEMENT: The new “gun nuts”: Media elites, locavores, and hipster hunters. “The current flare-up in the long political battle over gun laws is coming at a moment when American gun culture is more expansive than ever, having gained a foothold among the type of coastal elites that, just a couple decades ago, would have dismissed the very idea of holding a rifle as obscene and offensive. Hunting and recreational shooting, once viewed by the left as backwater pastimes, have won over a liberal coalition of eco-conscious locavores, hipster hunters, and adventure-seeking New York media elites.”

WAR AGAINST THE YOUNG (CONT’D): Illinois Pension Crisis Will Likely Mean College Funding Cuts.