OUT TODAY FROM LISA DE PASQUALE: Finding Mr. Righteous.

HMM. WOULDN’T THIS JUST MAKE YOU A TARGET FOR SPYING? A $629 Ultrasecure Phone Aims to Protect Personal Data. On the theory that you must have something interesting? I should buy one, just to punish spies engaging in that assumption. . . .

SINCE JEFF BEZOS BOUGHT THE TIMES, IT SURE HAS MOVED TO THE RIGHT. WAIT . . . . The NYT’s Supreme Court writer smacks down the New Yorker’s Supreme Court writer in one devastating sentence.

REP. AARON SHOCK: Ways and Means Committee on Its ‘Last Attempt… to Play Nice’ with IRS. Zero out their travel and conference budget. They seem to care a lot about lavish parties and expensive videos.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Install A Deadbolt.

ELIANA JOHNSON: Bill Cassidy: The End of the Landrieu Line?

YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS: Celebrities Distancing Themselves From ObamaCare. Don’t let the ones who shilled for this off the hook.

ANNALS OF GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: Department of Veterans Affairs employees destroyed veterans’ medical records to cancel backlogged exam requests.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Win Or Lose In Tennessee Vote Dispute, the UAW Is Finished: UAW can’t reverse decades of decline with nothing to offer workers.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Mike Rowe Blasts Media Coverage of His Walmart Ad, Names Writers and Calls Them Out: ‘I’m Sure Matt’s a Swell Guy, But…’

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 292.

CHANGE: In Venezuela, Protest Ranks Grow Broader. “As dawn broke, the residents of a quiet neighborhood here readied for battle. Some piled rocks to be used as projectiles. Others built barricades. A pair of teenagers made firebombs as the adults looked on. These were not your ordinary urban guerrillas. They included a manicurist, a medical supplies saleswoman, a schoolteacher, a businessman and a hardware store worker.” Funny, not long ago all the Chavez shills in the media were telling us that it was just the oligarchs of the “white elite” who opposed Chavez. Now the New York Times is reporting a broad-based revolution.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Exclusive: HHS official found White House in ‘disarray’ months before health law rollout.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR: Glenn Beck talks to Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen of Google about artificial intelligence and more. I had no idea Glenn Beck was so interested in, and knowledgeable about, this subject.

IF FELONS DESERVE THE VOTE, why don’t they deserve guns? I think the requirements for voting and buying guns should be the same, right down to ID requirements.

My thoughts on the felons voting controversy are here.

ANDREW WOODS: The Lessons Of Kiev.

The seismic shift in Ukraine was achieved by its people, not outside forces, and not its politicians. There was no conspiracy, no mob violence let alone “pogroms”, and no march of eastern Ukraine against the west and center of the country in defense of Yanukovych. Of course there were fears and divisions, and the future is uncertain, but the central, momentous fact was this: the refusal of the Ukrainians to accept that their rulers have the right to compel them to obedience, and the lesson that, on the contrary, Ukraine’s rulers must govern in the interests of the people, as their servants not their masters.

It will be some considerable time before the implications of this decisive change sink in. The notion that the war Yanukovych waged on his own people was the product of a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West, with Ukraine as the victim, had, and probably still has, deep roots. It fitted a major plank of those arguing in the United States for a strategic reset in relations between Washington and Moscow. This is an argument that took—sometimes explicitly—the Russian claim to a particular national interest in Ukraine as having a higher value than the hopes and wishes of the people of Ukraine themselves. It fitted with those in EU countries who continued to believe that disputing Russian ambitions to restore its hegemony in the former Soviet space, and Ukraine above all, would scupper the superior objective of gradually persuading the Kremlin that Russia’s true interests lay in realizing shared European destiny and values. The strongly articulated Russian assertions that Ukraine was the object of Western subversion, a geopolitical prize to be seized by fair means or foul at the expense of a disinterested Russia and at the risk of chaos in Europe, played into a Cold War set of attitudes.

It was telling that, while there was anger within the European Union at the way that Russian pressure and inducements achieved Yanukovych’s volte-face on the Association Agreement this past November, the general assumption was that Ukraine’s European option had been shut down. That assumption failed to account for two factors within Ukraine itself: first, that Ukrainians themselves understood that Yanukovych’s November choice implied that he was moving towards the Russian model of centralized authoritarian governance and accepting the dominance of Moscow; and second, Yanukovych’s brutal incompetence in an increasingly desperate attempt to shore up his rule.

Read the whole thing.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Climate change advocates try to silence Krauthammer. You’d think these people would have more faith in science.

A BIT OF ADVICE: Based on a horrific accident within our law school community today, please remember: If your car starts rolling away, don’t try to stop it. Even on a slight incline, moving slowly, it’s got more momentum than you can master, and you can easily wind up run-over, or crushed up against something. (Bumped, at reader request).

FOX BUTTERFIELD, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Violent crimes plummeted in 2013 as gun sales skyrocketed. Oh, wait — Fox Butterfield doesn’t have an office anymore. Well, call Piers Morgan, then. Maybe you two can do lunch.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: The Cost-Benefit Guide to Choosing a College Major. “Texas has the most sophisticated and publicly available higher-education data set in the country, and its officials are aggressive about making sure that state residents can use that information to make better decisions about where to go to college and what to study.”

AT AMAZON, deals on Premium Denim, for men and women.

Also, Top Gift Ideas.

Plus, today only: 50% Off Calvin Klein Clothing for Men and Women.

I WRITE IN POPULAR MECHANICS: Don’t Get Too Comfortable—Nationwide License Plate Tracking Will Be Back.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Obama administration: Health law’s new rules will increase costs for most small businesses.

PUSHBACK: Former Vice President Cheney calls Hagel’s proposed Army cuts ‘absolutely devastating.’ Ridiculous. The world is at peace, and sure to remain so for the foreseeable future, under the steady hand of Smart Diplomacy^TM.