DEMOCRATS’ SELF-ASSESSMENT OF THEIR BASE’S GULLIBILITY: Does anyone seriously believe that the Republicans have proposed a “Rape Audits” bill? Apparently the DCCC thinks its donors can be suckered into falling for this ludicrous claim. Hey, they voted for Obama twice. . . .

JAKE TAPPER: Christie Got More Scrutiny for BridgeGate Than Hillary Clinton Did for Benghazi. Well, yeah.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: U.S. ranks behind Rwanda, Belarus, Azerbaijan in ease of creating new business, World Bank says.

CHANGE: Thad Cochran’s Tea Party Challenger Raises $500K in 10 Weeks.

MEDIAITE: A Libertarian Insurgency In The Press. “In a fractured media environment with an ever-shrinking universe of potential readers and viewers, media firms are seeking out dedicated audiences that they do not have to expend the energy and capital themselves to build. Among the more loyal audience of political news and opinion consumers are those with a libertarian bent – particularly because they have been so underserved for years. That is changing. Media firms appear eager to capitalize on the growing trend among voters towards individual liberty. Good for them. The question then becomes, when will the political class catch up?”

Kinda-sorta related: 3D-Printed Gun Creator Cody Wilson Lands Quarter Million Dollar Book Deal.

When Cody Wilson published the blueprint for the first fully 3D-printable gun on the web last spring, the controversy around that digital weapon led to its being downloaded 100,000 times in two days. Now Simon & Schuster is hoping the same sort of buzz can sell books.

Wilson, who leads the 3D-printed gun group Defense Distributed, signed a quarter-million dollar deal with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint in December to write a non-fiction book chronicling his quest to create the first fully 3D-printable lethal weapon. Though Wilson says the book won’t be a “philosophical treatise,” he tells me he’ll use the opportunity to fully explain his ideological motivations for creating a deadly firearm anyone can download and print in the privacy of their garage. The book’s working title is Negative Liberty, Wilson says, based on a principle of freedom from external restraints in libertarian political theory.

My next Popular Mechanics column is on 3D-printed guns.

ROGER SIMON: How Social Conservatives Are Saving Liberalism. “In reality what is really going on is not a liberal revolution but a libertarian one.”

ADVICE TO UKRAINIANS ON working around Internet censorship.

UPDATE: An Alternative Parliament?

PAUL BEDARD: Report: Tea Party expands influence even in Democratic-leaning districts.

Related: Ross Douthat: The Tea Party and Conservative Reform. “It is not coincidence, I think, that a lot of the G.O.P.’s post-2012 policy innovation is coming from figures elected in 2010 primary upsets — Lee, Rubio, Rand Paul. If you want new ideas, you usually have to find new leaders, and the populist insurgency of 2009-2010 seems to have supplied them.” Personnel is policy.

MARRIAGE: “This couple could very easily get all the lefties to stop criticizing and even to admire them. All they have to do is keep the Biblical quotations to themselves and just tell people they’re really into BDSM, she’s the M and he’s the S, she really likes to be disciplined, he really enjoys disciplining her, and who are you to judge? They can be totally traditional in the privacy of their own home and totally transgressive in public. Win-win!” Or just say you’re Muslim. Multiculturalism FTW.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Obama fails miserably in quest to provide ‘education that doesn’t break the bank.’ “It’s a disastrous failure. According to the College Board, the average cost for tuition, room and board at four-year colleges and universities has increased 28 percent during Obama’s presidency.”

YEAH, THAT WOULD BE TOTALLY SEXIST AND MISOGYNIST OR SOMETHING. Don’t blame Wendy Davis for the things Wendy Davis made up.

MORE ON UKRAINE: Ukraine opposition say they’ll brave bullets after talks with Yanukovich fail. Check out the accompanying picture, which some on Twitter say evokes Warsaw, 1943.

Plus: Ukraine Opposition Pressures Yanukovych After Deadly Riot. Want to succeed? Don’t just protest in the public square. Go after him and his supporters personally. Think Ceaucescu. Because those are the stakes you’re playing for. This is no Velvet Revolution. If that’s not acceptable, you should probably just go home.

ASTRONOMY: Ceres Vents Water Vapor. “Observations of the Solar System’s biggest asteroid suggest it is spewing plumes of water vapour into space.” This means our strikes on the alien base there were successful.

WENDY DAVIS CAMPAIGN ASKS WHAT GREG ABBOTT KNOWS ABOUT STRUGGLES: Here’s the answer. “From what I’ve read about Greg Abbott (most of it in the last two days), he—unlike Davis—doesn’t seem to be one to get into a contest about who’s had more suffering in life. But I’ve done the research, and I’m writing about it. And you know what? The fact that he became a paraplegic as a young man is only part of it.”

ANTI-GOOGLE SENTIMENT IN SAN FRANCISCO IS GETTING WEIRD: Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer. Three things: (1) These people always have to be hating somebody. (2) If you’re successful at anything, sooner or later they’ll probably get around to hating you. (3) You folks probably thought you were on their side, or they were on yours. But you were wrong.

A REVIEW OF THE NEW SCHOOL, from The Anchoress. “I highly recommend this book, particularly if you have kids in middle or high school and you want to get a sense of what is happening right now, and how you might begin to seek alternatives to the status quo.” Plus another book that might be worth your time.

UKRAINE: Injured Ukraine activists ‘disappearing’ from Kyiv hospitals.

PROTECT YOUR CREDIT by freezing it.

UPDATE: Reader G.L. Carlson emails:

A report from the field: We did this 10 years ago, and it is cheap, easy, and convenient. Free, in some states (Tn is one). The unexpected benefit is that one gets no (or almost no) offers of new credit cards (no ability to prequalify you, no offers). In most states, there is a minor fee ($10 or so) to set up, and a minor fee to remove, which can be done on a one-time or limited time basis. Today, it only takes a phone call. The only problem is that one must plan when one needs credit (that is, remove the freeze). When we refinanced, our bank moved a little too fast…and got denied access. They were surprised; we were delighted.

Of course, this does nothing for data breaches on existing accounts. But if you’re concerned that someone might try to establish a new account, unbeknownst to you, this is an effective, low cost countermeasure.

Good to know.

RECIPE: Eggs Baked In Avocado. I haven’t tried this, but it sounds good.

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LESSON FROM BRIDGEGATE? Abolish The Port Authority.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s office has taken most of the heat for screwing citizens by playing dirty politics, but there’s another party responsible that has so far evaded most of the blame. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the government agency that directly caused the gridlock, is an enormously powerful bastion of patronage that violates all commuters every day of the year.

It would be easy to discount the George Washington Bridge scandal as a case of a few bad apples abusing their power. But it’s actually just one example of how an organization that was supposed to rise above politics became a tool for politicians to act out their worst impulses. The episode is an indictment of the very concept of the Port Authority—and the Progressive-Era ethos that good public policy is all about entrusting smart people to run things.

A bi-state agency that controls a good share of the transportation infrastructure around New York City and North Jersey, the Port Authority squanders its wealth and mismanages its assets; it charges high tolls and puts off necessary maintenance work; and it’s a cesspool of dirty politics.

Give politicians power, and they’ll abuse it. The obvious solution is to give them less power to abuse.

Plus: “A major reason New York’s three major airports provide such a lousy experience for travelers is that they’re all operated by the Port Authority, so they don’t have any reason to compete for customers.”

DAD POSES 5-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER in photo recreations of paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt.

HISTORY: Rewinding to Betamax: The path to consumers’ “right to record.” “In the wake of the Betamax decision, ‘a lot of people in Congress felt lied to,’ said Shapiro. The thriving, legal video recorder industry did nothing visible to hamper Hollywood, which was soon making more money selling videos than it did at theater box offices. ‘The VCR turned out to be great for Hollywood. But those members of Congress are mostly gone, and you have to educate a whole new set of politicians,’ Shapiro said.”

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TRANSPARENCY: Yale Blocks Course-Rating Website.