Yesterday's nor'easter developing from space, via
NASA
Have a storm plan. Which family members will be eaten first? Lead an honest, loving discussion based on merit and caloric value.
— @pourmecoffee via TweetDeck
WaPo:
A Northeast storm that could rival the famed Blizzard of 1978 in New England is organizing.
This possibly historic blizzard is the result of interaction between packets of energy embedded within two streams of flow merging off the Mid-Atlantic coast — one from the north and the other from the south.
Related: Northeast hunkers down for major blizzard; Boston area possible snow bullseye
These “phasing streams” will lead to an explosively deepening area of low-pressure — a meteorological bomb — that will release vast quantities of snow from northern New Jersey across New England.
Winter nor'easters don't have names. They are nor'easters.
If you let Weather Channel name storms, just know this will lead to Dorito's ® Cool Ranch Blizzard of 2014 next year.
— @pourmecoffee via TweetDeck
HuffPost:
Making good on his threat promise that he's not going away, ex-Congressman Joe Walsh reared his head Friday morning to blast the first lady for traveling to her hometown of Chicago to attend slain 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton's funeral.
Because Joe Walsh wasn't enough of a jerk, he wants his legacy established. Oh, and btw, when you read about the Republican civil war between the establishment and the tea party, Walsh embodies the tea party.
Molly Ball:
How the Gun-Control Movement Got Smart
Why are advocates so optimistic now when reform has failed so many times before? Because they have a totally new strategy.
I completely respect the Second Amendment. And I'm from Newtown, where everyone does. Now pass those bills.
More punditry and politics below the fold.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells:
America’s relationship with guns has long been fixed in place by an architecture of partisan resentments, but since the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, there has been some movement. Public support for new gun-control measures tends to swell in the first few days after a highly publicized shooting and then very swiftly ebb; this time, unexpectedly, that support has lasted. At the same time, a second reaction has registered in the news: People are buying more assault rifles and handguns than they ever have. AR-15s—the main weapon that Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook Elementary School—are particularly popular. “Right now, if you own one,” a leading firearms instructor told me a couple of weeks after Newtown, “it’s quadrupled in value.”
Letters to Newtown, via
Mother Jones.
Garrett Epps:
Trust Us' Won't Do: How to Hold Obama Accountable for Drone Strikes
There's a reason the Constitution checks executive power. Here's why -- and how -- to rein in targeted killing.
Katie Hosmer:
The Young Girl Who's Best Friends with African Wildlife
Okay, this is a bit old, but it's just amazing.
Greg Sargent:
Democrats are closing in on a strategy to offer Republicans a plan to avert the sequester with a roughly 50-50 mix of new revenues and spending cuts, to put renewed pressure on Republicans to drop their reflexive opposition to new revenues. Senator Sherrod Brown described some of the details of the plan in an interview with me this afternoon.
Notably, Brown said that Senator Harry Reid had assured Democrats that there would be no cuts to entitlement benefits in the offer, which could mollify liberals worried that Dems will give away too much in some sort of “grand bargain” to avert the sequester.
WaPo:
Several Republican governors have embraced a key pillar of President Obama’s health-care law: Extending Medicaid to 17 million Americans.
Many Republicans balked at the expansion when the Supreme Court made the Medicaid expansion optional in its ruling last in the summer. Supporters of the law worried that the opposition could undermine the entire health-care overhaul by shrinking the pool of Americans who would gain coverage.
But six Republican governors have since come to back the program, including Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Wednesday and Ohio’s John Kasich on Monday. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced her support in mid-January.