MILT WOLF: How To Crush The Dems’ Dumbest Gun-Control Argument. “This is a hanging curve ball just waiting for you to crush it.”

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Law School Applications, Starting Salaries (But Not Tuition) Sink to Pre-1985 Levels.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Latest Shooting Victim? The Constitution.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Inspector General: IRS Has 60% Error Rate in Policing Noncash Charitable Contribution Deduction.

AT CAFEMOM: Obama Uses Kids to Further His Gun Control Agenda.

BLOGGER MAKING TROUBLE: Open Records Request Sets Off Emergency Legislation In The ND House.

AS THEY SAY IN THE COMMENTS, “Near-parodic thumbsucking pomposity.” It’s a Sulzberger trademark!

RAND PAUL: Obama ‘arrogant and presumptuous’ about Israel.

WHILE OBAMA WAS ACCUSING REPUBLICANS OF “HOLDING THE COUNTRY HOSTAGE” ON THE DEBT CEILING, actual Americans were actually being taken hostage by Al Qaeda.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Industrial & Scientific Gear. It’s fun just to browse.

Also, up to 30% off on Lifespan exercise machines.

SHE WASN’T FAKE, SHE WAS A COMPOSITE: Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax.

UPDATE: Okay, maybe she was fake. “While we still don’t know all of the dimensions of this and other than the perpetrators, I can assure you that no one knows all of the dimensions of this there are certain things that I feel confident we do know. The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can’t fully understand but had a certain cruelty at its core, based on the exchanges that we were able to see between some of the people who perpetrated it. Manti was the victim of that hoax. Manti is the victim of that hoax, and he will carry that with him for a while.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

So in all the months of inspirational stories of touching humanity no sports journalist did any real journalism to contact the family/ friends/ acquaintances of the girlfriend? No classmates at Stanford?

But journalism is important and bloggers and Tweeters are kooks.

Indeed. And it’s not new, as Daniel Boorstin pointed out.

DAVID GREGORY UPDATE: D.C. Atty Gen Irvin Nathan — “No other involvement with Mrs. Gregory than that one event.”

ED MORRISSEY: Obama Thumbs Nose at Congress on Gun Control: Are the President’s executive orders abuse of power or the result of executive impotence?

MICHAEL BARONE: “Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern.” “Obama supporters like to portray Republican attempts to negotiate as hostage-taking or extortion. But those are violent crimes. Negotiations — discussions attempting to reach agreement among those who differ — are peaceful acts.”

JIM TREACHER: Wisconsin Occupier invites himself for cocktails with Gov. Scott Walker. Molotov cocktails, that is. “Oh, sorry, my mistake. Occupy is over now, apparently? Now they want to call themselves Idle No More?* And allegedly, one of their members was caught with a bottle filled with gasoline in the Wisconsin State Capitol building. Which seems noteworthy, since today’s news is all about keeping crazy people from doing violent things.”

OUCH: “Journalism didn’t just die. It went to work for the enemy.”

JAMES TARANTO: Other People’s Children: The NRA accuses Obama of hypocrisy. He proceeds to prove their point. “If the president wants his critics to refrain from even indirectly referring to his daughters, he ought to stop exploiting ordinary people’s children in this manner.”

People keep saying the NRA’s PR effort is inept. But it’s Obama who’s adopted the NRA’s signature anti-school-shooting program, not the other way around. . . .

UPDATE: Flashback: In 1999, Obama wouldn’t support tougher prosecution for school shooters.

Meanwhile, more eliminationist rhetoric: Bob Schieffer likens NRA to Nazis.

And Josh Marshall calls the NRA a “disease.”

FASTER, PLEASE: The Machine That Will Help End TB. “Nearly 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis every year, even though most cases can be cured with routine antibiotic treatments. One country’s fight to get the ancient scourge under control has an unlikely hero: a simple diagnostic test.”

DEMOCRATS BAUCUS, MANCHIN NOT SO HOT ON OBAMA’S GUN-CONTROL PROPOSALS.

ANOTHER WHITE MALE: Obama plans McDonough as new Chief of Staff.

FAILING HISTORY: Colleges Neglect Core U.S. Principles.

GUN CONTROL: DOOMED BY DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES? 60 percent of young Americans plan to purchase firearms, study reveals.

SCIENTOLOGY MEETS THE STREISAND EFFECT.

LONGEVITY UPDATE: In The Developed World, Men Are Closing The Gap With Women.

Women and minorities, hardest hit.

MARK LEVIN: Obama’s Executive Orders ‘Un-American,’ ‘Fascistic.’ “‘What do any of these 23 have to do with what happened in Newtown?’ Levin asked Cavuto rhetorically. ‘It’s a weird collection of proposals.’”