ALAN GRAYSON: Obama’s budget “could end up dragging down the entire party.”

ED MORRISSEY ON Obama’s Budget Failure. “Let’s start with the bottom line. Obama proposes to spend $3.78 trillion dollars in FY2014, the highest level of spending ever.”

THIS’LL PLAY WELL WITH HIS BASE: The Hill: Gun control legislation gets a big boost from Sen. Toomey.

Toomey seems to think he’s there to get things done. As a Republican in the current Senate, his chief role is to stop bad things from happening.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: JC Penney’s Johnson Forgot the First Rule of Retail.

APPLE, TREE: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s daughter indicted. “The daughter of President Barack Obama’s former pastor was indicted Wednesday on charges of money laundering and lying to federal investigators in an expanding 2009 state grant-fraud case. Jeri L. Wright, daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was accused of participating in a fraud scheme allegedly orchestrated by former Country Club Hills Police Chief Regina Evans and her husband involving a $1.25 million state job-training grant geared toward minorities.”

TIM CARNEY: Why is a conservative group opposing spending cuts?

TED CRUZ: Obama’s gun-control push is going to cost Democrats the Senate in 2014.

READER K. CHESEBRO WRITES: “Make sure you’ve got plenty of books for sale before asking Instapundit for a reader book plug. Eight hours after the plug of a book on Shakespeare, it’s sold out.”

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OBAMACARE UPDATE: Smoking Is a ‘Preexisting Condition.’ It’s as if the whole thing was just a scam intended to kill private insurance or something.

FIRST FAST-AND-FURIOUS, NOW THIS: 20,000 U.S. M-16s stolen from unguarded warehouse in Kuwait.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “They likely weren’t stolen, they were backdoor transferred to a local ally in exchange for transferring Soviet made guns to Libya or Syria rebels.” Given the Administration’s general approach, this wouldn’t surprise me.

HATRED HAS A FACE AND A NAME: The woman behind an internet campaign to organise street parties to “celebrate” the death of Baroness Thatcher has been identified as a Romany Blythe, a 45-year-old community drama teacher from south London.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: French President Will Get New Camel to Replace One Eaten.

Backstory: “The president of France will soon get a ‘bigger and better-looking’ camel after an apparent misunderstanding led to a West African family eating the original camel that was given to him as a gift.”

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: “Way Of The Knife” Explains CIA Shift From Spying To Killing.

HEH: Joe Biden is the spokesman for the “blank helicopter crowd.”

BUT POINTS FOR SHOWING UP: Francesca Chambers: Rand Paul Gets Cool Reception At Howard.

IMAGES: New high-speed camera system reveals what snow looks like in midair.

MILTON FRIEDMAN ON MARGARET THATCHER.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Most of the rhetoric from the anti-gun fringe in the past few months is coming from babbling idiots who don’t know the difference between a rifle stock and a penny stock. It is impossible to craft “sensible” legislation regarding a topic about which one has no knowledge whatsoever.

How true.

GPS IS A LONG-STANDING DREAM: From Hand-Cranked Maps to the Cloud: Charting the History of In-Car Navigation.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The 5 Best Security and Privacy Tools For Your Mac.

WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: China Exports Miss Forecasts as ‘Absurd’ Data Probed.

PRIORITIES: Eric Holder’s Schedule: Frequent Meetings With Race-Based Groups.

FIGHT CRIME BY ADJUSTING YOUR WALK? Psychopathy and Victim Selection: The Use of Gait as a Cue to Vulnerability.

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