I WONDER how many books Chris Matthews has read (beyond Dick and Jane).

REPUBLICANS: highlight Obamacare failures by offering specific alternatives.

DON'T GIVE MONEY to red-state Democrats who didn't support gun control legislation. Agreed. Give it to red-state Republicans who won't support gun control either.

WHAT!! Lawmakers may vote themselves and their aides an ObamaCare exemption.

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks ... are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

Tough sh*t. They built this pigsty; now they should be required to wallow in it with the rest of the little people.

OBAMACAREFAIL UPDATE: Stephen Green takes note and ends with this observation: exemption or no, "[ObamaCare is] still crappy policy, and one which is already costing Americans money and putting up big barriers between us and our physicians."

POLITICO: Democrats find much to like in immigration bill. Of course we, the people, haven't seen the bill, and at 848 pages are unlikely to do so given the rush to pass it.

I'm afraid we're in for another ObamaCare, having to wait until it's passed to find out just how bad it is.

Vote it down; then start over with smaller, incremental immigration bills. 'Comprehensive' is just a metaphor for 'screwed up mess'.

MORE: The security promise that isn't.

CLEANING ACADEMIC CESSPOOLS: "[T]here's nothing like the sound of pocketbooks snapping shut to open the closed minds of college administrators."

NEWT GINGRICH on the FAA and sequestration:

Americans are exactly right to doubt government is doing everything it can to use taxpayers’ money effectively. When in recent years the Army hired private-sector experts in a cost cutting method called Lean Six Sigma, it reduced costs by approximately $22 billion, mostly eliminating waste in its supply chain.

The rest of the federal government could surely show a little more initiative in distinguishing the critical expenditures from those that can wait.

Take for example the Department of Transportation. As the Wall Street Journal noted this week, the DOT posted an announcement on its homepage Monday about the nearly half-billion dollars in funding for an initiative to help “make communities more livable and sustainable.” The program, designed to fund “projects that will have a significant impact on the nation,” originated as part of the stimulus package in 2009.

Apparently a functioning air traffic control system does not qualify as such a project. At least, it seems the Department of Transportation saw no contradiction between the announcement that more stimulus-style funding was available and the administration’s insistence that nothing could be done to avoid the air traffic control delays.

In fact, the amount allocated to this one program alone would make up for most of the sequester reduction at the FAA.

Read it all.

HO-HUM. Just another defensive use of firearms. Nothing to see. Move along, now.

EXPAND BUSINESSES? What a novel idea. Someone should suggest that to the Obama administration....

THE BOSTON BOMBERS, the assimilation vacuum, and immigration reform.

I blame the Left's culture of victimization.

ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING -- in Illinois. Blue states seem to have a disproportionate share of mass shootings. Could it be because in red states there is at least some probability that the intended target might shoot back?

RI-I-IGHT: Obama Is Just Too Good to Be a Good President.

JOHN STOSSEL: The Education Blob's Revenge.

UNFORTUNATELY FOR LIBERALS, Tom Coburn and John Boehner don’t have their lines faxed over from Hollywood every morning.”

GUN REGISTRATION remains the third rail. 'Universal' background checks -- even for felons and the insane -- will remain impossible until there are ironclad guarantees (i.e., no friggin' way) that the checks cannot lead to registration.

SPACE ARCHAEOLOGISTS call for preserving off-earth artifacts. Somehow I doubt we need worry about the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft being vandalized....

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK: “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks.”

Quick, cover it up. Can't have truth destroy the Liberal narrative....