AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK: DirecTV Combats Weather Channel Price Hikes By…Actually Showing People The Weather. Note the importance of focus: “In The Weather Channel’s case, their belief that they somehow held an exclusive over weather forecasting, combined with the fact that they have increasingly gotten worse at their one and only job, has given DirecTV the upper hand in the ongoing feud.”

The Weather Channel jumped the shark when it started naming winter storms.

AT AMAZON, new Spring jackets. In case Spring ever comes.

Meanwhile, for the pessimists among you: Free Battery and Charger with Bosch Heated Jacket Purchase.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Ninth Circuit Holds That Second Amendment Secures A Right To Carry A Gun. More here and here.

WHEN A DELICIOUS OBJECT MEETS AN IRRESISTIBLE FORCE: Video: What Happens When You Put a Can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Ravioli In The Path Of Molten Lava.

IT’S ROBERT HEINLEIN’S WORLD, WE’RE JUST LIVING IN IT: A proposal for 10-year contract marriages.

HUMAN GENETIC AUGMENTATION: “A lot closer than you think.” Well, possibly.

RISK: What are the chances that a particle collider’s strangelets will destroy the Earth? “Johnson and Baram are concerned that these changes might increase the possibility that the collider will generate strangelets, hypothetical particles consisting of up, down, and strange quarks. Some hypotheses suggest that strangelet production could ignite a chain reaction converting everything into strange matter.” Leading to the Earth becoming “an inert hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across.”

11 FEATURES YOU NO LONGER SEE IN CARS.

SOME OF THEM ARE QUITE PRETTY, TOO: 10 Insane Rides by Boutique Carmakers.

LIKEABLE ENOUGH: Right after Bill Clinton was impeached, Hillary “sounded very up, almost jolly.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): U.S. Plummets in Global Press Freedom Rankings.

THE HILL: Vulnerable Democrats Want the IRS to Step Up Attacks on Their Opposition.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 280.

ED MORRISSEY: Obama’s Health Care Mandate: My Whim Is Your Command.

YA THINK? Megan McArdle: Latest ObamaCare Delay Is Probably Illegal.

That doesn’t mean that the courts are going to step in. Courts don’t just swoop down and body-check the executive branch or Congress every time one of them oversteps its constitutional powers. They wait for someone to sue. And in order to sue, you need to have legal standing, which, Adler points out, no one seems to. It’s not enough to say that your taxes will be higher, or your government measurably less constitutional, because of the government’s actions. You need to prove that you have been substantially harmed, and it’s not clear that anyone can.

If it were the Dems, they’d find somebody. I’m not so convinced that there’s nobody out there to be found.

MICHAEL GRAHAM STANDS UP FOR PRESS FREEDOM: Dear FCC, It’s None Of Your God**** Business. Yes, and that’s what every media outlet should be saying.

SPYING: Lawmakers want to see the ‘black budget.’ “A bipartisan group of 62 members of Congress wrote President Obama a letter on Wednesday asking him to release the fiscal 2015 spending levels for 16 federal spy agencies when he delivers the rest of his budget to Congress on March 4.” This will cause more pain than Snowden did.

AT AMAZON, the new 2014 Gibson Guitars. I didn’t see the “Government Series” though.

Plus, coupons galore in Sporting Goods.

And, today only: Dyson DC41 Animal Upright Vacuum Cleaner with Tangle-Free Turbine Tool, $339.00 (43% off).

INSTAVISION: I talk with Prof. Nicholas Johnson about his new book, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Surprised?: All 501(C)(4)’s Audited By IRS Were Conservative.

JAMES TARANTO: OmertàCare: The first rule: You do not talk about perverse incentives.

Legal or regulatory changes that affect the cost of labor would fall into the category of “changes in the economic marketplace in which the employer operates.” So it would be more precise to say that employers may cut back employment for any bona fide business reason except to take advantage of the ObamaCare mandate delay.

The administration thus acknowledges that its policy creates a perverse incentive and orders employers not to act upon it. But that can’t be enforced. A business will take into account all relevant factors, including the additional costs imposed by ObamaCare, in making decisions about hiring and firing, including whether to terminate employees for poor performance, sell a division, etc. In practice, the new rule is a ban–under threat of criminal liability–on acknowledging the perverse incentive. Call it OmertàCare, a government-imposed conspiracy of silence.

I’m reminded of Argentina’s policy of punishing people who dispute the official inflation rate.

ANNALS OF CRONYISM: Another Friend Of The Recording Industry Joins The House Subcommittee On Courts, Intellectual Property And The Internet. It’s Jerrold “Jabba” Nadler.

ROLL CALL: Democrats Endorse Documentary Filmmaker for Owens’ Seat. “A political quagmire on the Democratic bench in New York’s open 21st District has emboldened Republicans in a district that was already a GOP pick-up opportunity. On Wednesday, local Democratic officials unanimously endorsed Aaron Woolf, a documentary filmmaker from Elizabethtown, N.Y., in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Bill Owens. Woolf’s endorsement from the 21st District’s 12 county chairmen came after some high-profile Democrats, including former Rep. Scott Murphy, D-N.Y., declined bids for the seat.”

TITLES OF NOBILITY: Obama taps Kennedy widow for postal board.