JUST THE KIND OF “IMMIGRATION” EUROPE NEEDS: Italian police: Muslim migrants threw Christians overboard. “Muslims who were among migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy in a boat this week threw 12 fellow passengers overboard — killing them — because the 12 were Christians, Italian police said Thursday. Italian authorities have arrested 15 people on suspicion of murdering the Christians at sea, police in Palermo, Sicily, said. The original group of 105 people left Libya on Tuesday in a rubber boat. Sometime during the trip north across the Mediterranean Sea, the alleged assailants — Muslims from the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal — threw the 12 overboard, police said.”

RECKLESS DISREGARD: Mediaite Screws Up Congressman’s Marital Status (And In This Case, It Matters). “Mediaite did correct themselves (see below). So now it’s a story about an unmarried congressman who’s dating an airline lobbyist.”

#HASHTAGFAILURE: One year later, Nigerian schoolgirls are still missing.

SOMETIMES I SHOW MY CONSTITUTIONAL LAW CLASS THE FILM SEPARATE BUT EQUAL, ABOUT THE BROWN CASE. It’s really, really good, and it’s available on YouTube now. Here’s part one, and here’s part two. The film’s pretty closely based on Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice, an oral history of the Brown case. I heard some of these stories — the bedroom-key joke, for example — direct from Charlie Black when I was in law school.

CRACKING YOUR KNUCKLES DOESN’T CAUSE ARTHRITIS: It might even be good for your joints.

JONATHAN LAST ON TOWING COMPANY ABUSES. They do often tow legally parked cars and demand ransom. I think they should be treated as thieves. Back when I was in college, there was a problem with legally parked cars being towed on Old Fraternity Row, that ended when a mob of frat guys chased off a driver and wrecked his truck. When you tow someone’s legally parked car, you’re breaking the law while relying on the victims to be peaceable and law-abiding in how they respond. That sort of reliance shouldn’t be encouraged.

VIDEO: Watch the Incredible New ‘Star Wars’ Teaser Trailer. It looks good. But. . .

FARHAD MANJOO ON why TurboTax is not your friend.

ANOTHER 2002 POST THAT SEEMS RELEVANT TODAY: Feminists Wishing For A World With Fewer Men.

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LIFE IN THE OBAMA ERA: Ramadi could fall as ISIS militants lay siege, Iraqi official warns.

WAIT, I THOUGHT CALIFORNIA’S DROUGHT WAS DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING: In California, a Wet Era May Be Ending. “Scientists say that in the more ancient past, California and the Southwest occasionally had even worse droughts — so-called megadroughts — that lasted decades. At least in parts of California, in two cases in the last 1,200 years, these dry spells lingered for up to two centuries. The new normal, scientists say, may in fact be an old one.”

My advice: Build big nuclear plants, and use them to power desalination facilities.

MY OLD DIVE INSTRUCTOR LIZ PARKINSON IS NOW AN UNDERWATER MODEL. Here she is in a pic from a set done with a rather large Tiger Shark.

FASTER, PLEASE: Experimental drug that may repair nerve damage in MS moves forward.

JOHNNY ONE-NOTE: Charles Blow: If you oppose Hillary, it’s because you’re sexist. And probably also racist. To be fair, he actually mentions that the Republican field is more diverse, which must have hurt.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT WAS MORE ENLIGHTENED THAN I REALIZED:  Polish archaeologists find an 18th century sex toy made of leather and wood (and I must say, judging by the picture, rather large).  Hope the ladies (or men?) didn’t get splinters.

PARENTS: Don’t get so carried away with teaching kids to share.

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers believe a biological revolution enabling humans to experience everlasting youthfulness is coming.

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WELL, SHE DID SUFFER A HEAD INJURY A WHILE BACK: Hillary Parks in Handicap Spot.

FINALLY, A CHAMPION FOR ORDINARY FOLK AND A CRUSADER AGAINST POLITICAL CORRUPTION!:   . . . which is (more than ironically) what Hillary Clinton is billing herself as.  In her recent Iowa appearance, Clinton revealed these two themes as the basis upon which she’s shaping 2016 presidential bid.

She complained that chief executives make too much money, and of the horror that has befallen politics after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United–which stands for the unremarkable position that groups of people organized in a business (e.g., corporations)  or association (e.g., unions or neighborhood associations) form still have a First Amendment right to free speech.

All of this is coming from a woman whose persona is defined by whose massive political fundraising, multiple ethical lapses, and laughable claims of poverty.  I would call Clinton a hypocrite, but somehow this word fails to capture fully the Orwellian nature of her behavior.  How do Democrat voters let her get away with such obvious doublethink? In the Words of Orwell, in the novel 1984:

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

Ignorance is strength, I guess.

RELATED:  Liberal/progressive groups are urging President Obama to issue an executive order to require government contractors to disclose their donor lists, in direct contravention to the Supreme Court’s decision in NAACP v. Alabama (1958), which held that compelled disclosure of the NAACP’s membership lists was unconstitutional because it created a chilling effect on the First Amendment right to free association.  And we know what liberals/progressives like to do when they find out the names of conservative donors, and it ain’t pretty.

This is all part of the liberal/progressive campaign against so-called “dark money,” which is an incredibly misleading phrase (there’s Orwell again) that refers to political spending by outside groups (i.e., not the political parties or candidates themselves).  An FEC rule requiring broader disclosure was tossed out of court in November, with the federal judge calling the FEC’s attempt “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.”

So much for liberals/progressives belief in “privacy” or “free speech”– that stuff doesn’t apply to other people.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Are Fast-Food Restaurants Hiding Their Condiments Behind the Counter?

HMM: Scientists Warn of Hormone Impacts from Common Solvents.

ER, BRING BACK DDT? Man sets rental car, self on fire trying to kill bedbugs.

SARAH HOYT: If This Goes On. . .

A 30-DAY FREE TRIAL OF AMAZON PRIME. I’ve actually started to take some advantage of the free TV and music offerings, which are surprisingly decent.

I’VE DONE IT BEFORE, but let me offer one more plug for Michael Cottone’s Rethinking Presumed Knowledge of the Law in the Regulatory Age. I really think this addresses a key problem — maybe the key problem — in current overcriminalization issues. (Bumped).

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Flexible supercapacitor from stacked nanomaterial.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY: General Atomics Introduces a Weapons-Grade Self-Contained Laser Cannon That Can Be Mounted On the Roof Of Your Car. “What we were able to find out about this thing is that it’s a laser weapon with output energies (that’s output, not total power in the system) ranging from 75 kilowatts all the way up to 300 kilowatts. To put that in perspective, about a year ago we wrote about how Lockheed was using a portable fiber laser to shoot down rockets at a range of 1.5 kilometers using just 10 kilowatts of power. Suffice it to say, 300 kilowatts is rather a lot.”

WATCH NASA’S PROTOTYPE MARS ROVER do some serious drifting. Video at the link.

HILLARY CLINTON: The Sarah Palin Of The Left?

IN THE MAIL: In-Your-Face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media.

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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 707.

I SAY, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD:

Why has America gone lunatic on the subject of unattended children? Parents hover over their kids as if every step might be their last. If they don’t hover, strangers do, calling the police to report any parent who leaves their child to run into the store for a few minutes. What’s truly strange is that the parents who are doing this were themselves left to their own devices in cars, allowed to ride their bikes and walk to the store unsupervised, and otherwise given the (limited) freedom that they are now determined to deny their own kids. The police are making arrests that would have branded their own parents as criminals. To hear people my age talk about the dangers of unsupervised children, you would think that the attrition rate in our generation had been at least 30 percent.

Even people who haven’t gone crazy are afraid of the Pediatric Patrol. A mom of my acquaintance whose house backs up to a school playground, with a gate that lets her children walk straight into the schoolyard, is afraid to let them go through the gate without an adult, for fear that someone would call the same nutty CPS that has taken to impounding the Meitiv children. She compromises by letting them play alone in the playground only when she is in the backyard, so that she can intervene if the police arrive.

Think about that: Kids have the priceless boon of a playground right in their backyard, but they can’t use it unless Mom drops everything to accompany them. I am running out of synonyms for “insane” to describe the state we have worked ourselves into. What on earth has happened to us?

It’s not us. It’s them.

JOURNALISM: A Florida newspaper is along for the ride — and catches flak. “If a reporter and his newspaper know in advance — months in advance, as it turns out — that a man intended to undertake a stunt that could sow panic in the nation’s capital, are they obligated to alert law-enforcement authorities? And should they be faulted for not doing so until the last minute?”

JUST IGNORE ‘EM!:   What is it about progressives that makes them think it is good for society to ignore the rule of law?  The latest iteration comes in the form of explicit calls to ignore the Supreme Court whenever it rules the “wrong” (i.e., non-progressive) way.

Because the Supreme Court isn’t presently dominated by progressives and none of the 5 current, right-of-center Justices are likely to retire before the end of the Obama Administration, progressives are now trying to create acceptability for the idea of “ignoring” the Court.  A recent New York Times op-ed by William Baude, for example, asserted that if the Court’s King v. Burwell opinion ultimately denies Obamacare subsidies to individuals states without state-run health insurance exchanges, the Obama Administration should only enforce the decision against the 4 named plaintiffs in the case.

For everyone else, Baude suggests that the Administration pretend that the law hasn’t technically been decided.  The justification for such lawlessness?:  “If the administration believes that a Supreme Court loss would be egregious and disastrous, it ought to consider taking the political heat to limit it.”   Oh, okay– that makes sense.  If the President thinks the Supreme Court’s interpretation of a law is “egregious and disastrous,” he should just ignore it for everyone but the named plaintiffs who brought the suit.

Apparently, Baude is channeling the progressive mindset.  A Feb. 2015 Rasmussen poll revealed that only 35% of Democrats disagreed when asked: “Should the president have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are important for the country?”  81% of Republicans and 67% of voters not affiliated with either major party disagreed– an astounding difference of 32 to 46 percentage points from the Democrat perspective.

RELATED:  The Obama Administration has been notoriously disrespectful of courts, having been threatened with contempt for perjury in the ongoing lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obama’s immigration executive orders and actually held the Department of Interior in contempt for its behavior ignoring the court’s preliminary injunction in a offshore drilling case.

And let’s not forget that President Obama’s own remarks bullying the Supreme Court prior to its big summer 201 Obamacare decision, NFIB v. Sebelius, triggered a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to order a DOJ lawyer to provide an explanation– of at least 3 pages, single-spaced– articulating the DOJ’s position on the propriety of judicial review of the constitutionality of laws.  Holder provided the letter– only 2 1/2 pages long, defiantly enough–and used wishy-washy language that only minimally acknowledged judicial review and lectured the court on its limited role.

SUZANNE VENKER: The truth about the so-called “Rape Culture.” “There is no rape culture on campus. (Note I didn’t say no one’s ever been raped on campus.) What there is is an awful lot of gray between the sheets.”

SHOCKER: “Surveys show that Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to agree that taxpaying is a moral responsibility.”

But if you like the idea of taxes as a moral responsibility, you probably shouldn’t corrupt the Internal Revenue Service.

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“THE BARBARIANS ARE BACK:” Ran across this post from 2002, which seems even more relevant in the era of ISIS.

FIRST YOU ELIMINATE DUE PROCESS, THEN YOU INSTITUTE MANDATORY MINIMUM PUNISHMENTS: Ashe Schow: California continuing its quest to brand all men as rapists.

Last year California passed a law that defined nearly all sex on college campuses as rape unless proven otherwise. Now, in addition to making it easier to label someone a rapist for just about every sexual encounter, state legislators want to go further to ensure that accused students’ lives are severely disrupted — if not ruined — by introducing mandatory minimums for their punishment.

The mandatory minimum would be a suspension of two years for students found responsible for sexual assault. But bear in mind that the burden of proof already lies with the accused, thanks to California’s “yes means yes” law. Accusers do not have to provide any proof that that they failed to give consent or were unable to consent due to incapacitation, and now a guilty finding would carry a minimum punishment under this new proposal.

First they made it easier to brand a student a rapist, and now they want to make it easier to ruin that student’s life.

I think that men should avoid California colleges.

WAIT, I THOUGHT FENCES DON’T WORK: White House expected to add steel spikes to fence.

The White House is expected to add half-inch steel spikes to its perimeter fence as a protective measure against potential jumpers, NBC Washington reports.

The report says the spikes would be attached to the existing fence for at least a year, before a permanent fence is built.

The National Parks Service is looking into that proposal, along with a permanent fix to either raise the height to 10 feet or to add a second interior fence, according to NBC, but the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and U.S. Capital Planning Commission must approve the final decisions.

“I want to see those spikes to make sure they don’t look so foreboding that people who visit the White House will figure they shouldn’t be there,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) told NBC.

Uh huh.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO, WELL, DO ANY OF THIS, REALLY: Horny Mom Threw Teen Daughter a Naked Twister Sex Party, AA Sponsor Says. “Lehnardt’s alleged story to her sober buddy only gets wilder from there. According to Augusta Crime: She initially joined in the teens’ naked game of Twister, but ended up f*cking an 18-year-old in the bathroom. Later, because she was still ‘horny,’ she brought out some sex toys and began using them on herself in the living room. The whole naked party eventually moved to the hot tub. . . . The night ended for Lehnardt around 3:30 a.m., when she woke up in her bed to find her daughter’s 16-year-old boyfriend having sex with her.”

And, of course, the piece de resistance: “Mrs. Lehnardt told [the sponsor] she and her daughter had spoken and that her daughter ‘felt guilty because the 16-year-old was 10 inches long and huge, and if she had just been able to take it, he wouldn’t have needed to rape her mother.’”

Sure, you’re saying, he initiated the sex with her. But reverse the genders and there would probably be charges. Well, maybe not: “The horny mom, arrested based on the sponsor’s story, won’t face any sex-related charges because 16 is Georgia’s age of consent.”

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS: Mass movement: US Christians don orange in church to honor ISIS victims.

I’LL BET IT WON’T MAKE THE COVER OF ROLLING STONE, OR SPARK EXTENSIVE CAMPUS DISCUSSION: Third Student Charged in Gang-Rape on Panama City, Florida, Beach.

Note that when white frat boys are (falsely) charged with gang rape, their race and accompanying presumed attitudes toward rape are front-and-center in all coverage. . . .

CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES: A new, improved InstaPundit mobile site. And, as you may have already noticed, we got rid of the annoying popunder ads.

WOW, THAT’S AN UNFLATTERING PICTURE: Gwyneth Paltrow’s Poverty Voyeurism.

THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER IS ON THE STORY: EXCLUSIVE: HILLARY CLINTON LESBIAN LOVERS NAMED IN SECRET EMAILS. “The ENQUIRER learned the list of Hillary’s lesbian lovers includes a beauty in her early 30s who has often traveled with Hillary; a popular TV and movie star; the daughter of a top government official; and a stunning model who got a career boost after allegedly sleeping with Hillary. Hillary made the huge mistake of mixing public and private messages while using her personalized email server – before risking a massive scandal by refusing to make the documents public.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: Wertz was charged by state police Trooper Joel Zimmerman of the Lykens station with reporting that she was raped at a home in Lykens on Sept. 9, 2014, knowing that the accusation was false. “Zimmerman said Wertz then told him she had consensual sex with the man and that she made up the rape charge because she was mad at him and at herself for cheating on her boyfriend. That same day, Wertz provided a written statement that she made up the rape charge, saying she was mad because after the two had consensual sex the man was ignorant to her and called her names.”

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN (CONT’D): BuzzFeed: Hillary Invented “Immigrant” Grandparents. Well, to be fair, maybe she just uses the same genealogist as Elizabeth Warren.

IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Campaign staff DROVE ‘ordinary’ Iowans to Hillary’s first campaign stop – including health care ‘lobbyist in training’ who was an Obama campaign intern and Biden chauffeur.

TO BE FAIR, AL ALREADY LOOKS MANOREXIC, AND PROBABLY SHOULDN’T MISS ANY MEALS: NBC Anchor Stages Rolling ‘Hunger Strike’ to Aid Loretta Lynch’s Stalled AG Nomination.

HISTORY: On Jackie Robinson Day, Let’s Remember When He Was Fired From the New York Post for Being Too Republican.

JEFF JACOBY: Armenian genocide was also a jihad.

Turkish authorities weren’t always so reluctant to accurately label the genocidal horror unleashed against the Armenians a century ago.

Talaat Pasha, the powerful Ottoman interior minister during World War I, certainly didn’t disguise his objective. “The Government . . . has decided to destroy completely all the indicated [Armenians] persons living in Turkey,” he brusquely reminded officials in Aleppo in a September 1915 dispatch. “An end must be put to their existence . . . and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples.”

US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, flooded with accounts of the torture, death marches, and butchery being inflicted on the Armenians, remonstrated with Talaat to no avail. “It is no use for you to argue,” Morgenthau was told. “We have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians. . . . The hatred between the Turks and Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish them. If we don’t, they will plan their revenge. . . . We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia.”

If some of them survived, it wasn’t for lack of effort by the killers. Of the roughly 2 million Armenians living in the country in 1914, 90 percent were gone by 1918. The death toll was well over one million; innumerable others fled for their lives. To read eyewitness descriptions of the ghastly cruelties the Armenian Christians were made to suffer a century ago is to be reminded that the jihadist savagery of ISIS and Al Qaeda is not an innovation.

That key fact is one the pope, to his credit, refuses to downplay: Armenians were victims not only of genocide, but also of jihad. In imploring his listeners on Sunday to hear the “muffled and forgotten cry” of endangered Christians who today are “ruthlessly put to death — decapitated, crucified, burned alive — or forced to leave their homeland,” Francis was reminding the world that the price of irresolution in the face of determined Islamist violence is as steep as ever.

The way you stop a genocide is, you kill the genocidaires until they not only give up, but shrink from the very thought.

SO I GUESS POPE FRANCIS ISN’T GOING TO STAY A LEFTY HERO FOR LONG: Pope Francis: Removal of Differences Between Man and Woman Is the Problem, Not the Solution: Says Gender Theory Causes Society to Take A Step in the Wrong Direction.

MARK RIPPETOE explains about weightlifting shoes. I replaced the Nike Free shoes that I was using, which weren’t bad, with the Rogue strapped shoes that he shows a while back. Walking in the Rogues is like walking with pieces of plywood on your feet — because, basically, that’s what you’re doing — but they’re much more stable for heavy squats.

CONGRESS VERSUS THE IRANIAN PARLIAMENT:  . . . and the Iranian Parliament seems to win.  Today, the Nuclear Committee of the Iranian Parliament issued a strange “factsheet” on the nuclear deal, which seems to contradict virtually every material aspect of the P5+1 Geneva Agreement, as conveyed by the Obama Administration.  In particular, the factsheet states that Iran agrees to only a 5-year deal (not 10-year); will be allowed to continue enriching uranium to 20% (weapons grade) if “needed”; won’t agree to shut down the Arak Heavy Water Reactor (which supplies plutonium necessary for bomb-making); and of course all Iranian sanctions must be terminated immediately, and in one single step.

Would Iran like fries with that agreement?

Meanwhile, back in the Bat Cave… the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday unanimously passed a toothless Corker-Menendez bill that appears to have a veto-proof majority.  After veto-proof congressional approval became inevitable, President Obama magnanimously said he wouldn’t bother to veto the bill.

Under the revised Corker-Menendez, Congress would only have 30 days to reject the Iranian deal; if it fails to do anything (which would not be surprising), the deal goes into effect, with the tacit approval of Congress.  And Congress also caved on the terrorism language of the bill, which used to require the President to certify, every 90 days, that Iran was not supporting terrorism against Americans (or the sanctions could be re-imposed).  That is now gone, an apparently disposable byproduct of garnering Democrat votes.

Wow– way to go, Congress.  You are negotiating away your constitutional prerogative to lift the sanctions you imposed via statute (and/or for 2/3 Senate ratification of treaties), in return for a mere 30-day window of consideration of a deal that the Iranians are already saying they won’t abide by.  This is what happens when a President successfully bullies Article I– Congress eventually gets the courage to feign a modicum of self-respect, but is so afraid that the President will “go around” them anyway (as he is wont to do) that it ends up giving the President its lunch money.

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FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS: Thinking of transferring to UT Law? The transfer period is open!

JUXTAPOSITION WORTHY OF DRUDGE.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Solid-phase synthesis of custom-made DNA nanotubes.

HISTORY: The Lincoln/Bentley Spat Dates Back More than 60 Years—as this 1953 Letter Attests. “At the time of the letter’s writing, in August of 1953, Ford was readying the 1956–57 Continental Mark II, a car many regard as the ne plus ultra of opulent Lincolnosity, a car that could legitimately compete with the Bentleys of the world for exclusivity. In fact, it was so exclusive, it was badged solely as a ‘Continental’—sans Lincoln. At the time, Bentley was preparing the S1-derived S Continental, its third automobile to bear the name, after the short-run Mark VI Continental and the 1952–55 R-type Continental, the cars that had initially aroused Ford’s ire. Have a gander at the two. While the machine from Crewe is not without its charms, the Yankee conveyance is clearly the more elegant of the pair.”

NO SURPRISE HERE: Chipotle Manager: Hillary Clinton Didn’t Leave Anything in Tip Jar.

I BLAME HEAVY STUDENT-LOAN DEBT: The Demise of the Starter Home: Eight reasons why that cornerstone of the American Dream, the entry-level house, is going the way of the dodo. They don’t mention that one, but I think it’s a major factor. So maybe I should’ve tagged this “higher education bubble update.”

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GEORGE LEEF: Sustainability: A new college fad with fangs. Tip: The more a school talks about “sustainability,” the less sustainable its business model probably is.

A 550-HP FORD TAURUS. “This is the fastest couch I’ve ever driven.”

SPACE: 9 of the Most Audacious Space Plans Ever Proposed by Humans.

HMM: Microsoft Surface 3 review: Smaller, slower, cheaper… better? “For all the missteps, the one thing that Microsoft truly nailed with the Surface line has been build quality. They feel like quality devices. The Surface 3 is no exception; it still has a magnesium alloy body, it still has a surprisingly sturdy kickstand, it still has neatly beveled edges. The front is once again all glass, and again the glass is optically bonded to the LCD panel, eliminating the air gap that would otherwise exist. This construction both enhances rigidity and improves the pen experience by ensuring that the digital ink appears as close as possible to the pen tip.”

WHEN LOVE ISN’T FREE:  An organization representing prostitutes in California (yes, you read that right) has filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in San Francisco, arguing that the Supreme Court’s substantive due process “liberty” decisions–which protect the right of consenting adults to engage in sex in private–also protect the right of consenting adults to pay for sex.  If it’s legal to have sex, the plaintiffs argue, how can it be illegal to pay for it?  And relatedly they argue:  If a person can pay for dinner, wine, roses and other items as a prelude to sex, why not just offer to pay the sexual partner cash instead?

This kind of litigation was predictable after the Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas (recognizing the liberty of consenting adults to engage in private, homosexual sodomy), though the Lawrence Court did explicitly note that the case didn’t involve sex-for-hire.   Justice Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence presciently predicted that it would open the floodgates to challenges of traditional marriage laws, prostitution, polygamy, and even incest.

In August, a federal trial judge in Utah struck down that state’s polygamy ban, concluding that it violated the 1st Amendment free exercise of religion rights of the “Sister Wives” polygamist TV show family.  Ruling on First Amendment grounds, however, is much narrower than on substantive due process “liberty” grounds.  So the question remains:  Do the rest of us–who aren’t particularly religious–have a constitutional right to polygamy?  Stay tuned– a lesbian “throuple” (3 persons) in Massachusetts is openly defying that state’s anti-polygamy law, claiming a right to polygamy.  

Polygamy aside, if we have a constitutional liberty to have sex, do we have a corresponding liberty to pay for sex?  Arguably, yes.  After all, doesn’t criminalization of prostitution demean the humanity and dignity of a person who has no romantic sexual partner? Or whose partner is physically unable to have sex with him/her?  Must that person seek out an adulterous or other third party “romantic” relationship, when all he/she really wants is sex?

One possibility the courts may use to distinguish prostitution is that it involves “commercialization” of sex, which is a distinction that still justifies legal prohibition of the sale/distribution of obscenity, but simultaneously allows individuals to consume/possess obscene materials in the privacy of their own home (Stanley v. Georgia).   But then again, if prostitution occurs in private– and particularly, in a private home (as opposed to a commercial establishment, such as a brothel), one would think the privacy-of-the-home rationale of Stanley could similarly grant constitutional protection to in-home prostitution.

Should the courts be “constitutionalizing” these sexual activities, or allow the political process to play out?  One state, Nevada, has statutorily allowed prostitution in certain places, pursuant to state regulation.

Being a libertarian, I see the policy arguments for enacting statutes like Nevada’s.  But being a constitutionalist, I think there are some democratic dangers to giving unelected federal judges the power to constitutionalize every “liberty” claim, which cuts short the political debate inherent with legislative change.  And the mother in me (which is inherently conservative) –with a teenage daughter– gets a little worried when I think of a world in which prostitution and polygamy are legal.  The times, they are a-changin.’

GREEN CARS GET CHEAPER: GM drops price of Spark EV to $25,995; lease to $139/month. All Told, Incentives Can Leave You With A $14,995 EV. Of course, since hardly anybody wants one, they have to be cheap.

GARY PULSINELLI: Happy Together? The Uneasy Coexistence of Federal and State Protection for Sound Recordings.

IN THE MAIL: White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics.

Plus, today only at Amazon: 36% Off New Balance Running Shoes.

And, also today only: 60% or More Off Haggar Suiting.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 706.

REASON TV: Remy: Best Song Ever (Tax Code Edition).

PROBABLY NOT WITH HILLARY AND OBAMA IN CHARGE: The U.S./Russian Diplomatic Debacle: Could It Have Been Otherwise?

Did the West bungle its relations with Russia after the Cold War? Was there a better way? This debate, now a quarter of a century old, will doubtless be with us for decades. The sides don’t seem to change much, nor do their arguments. Those who opposed the enlargement of NATO in the 1990s treat the war in Ukraine as proof that they were right all along. It was madness, they say, to challenge a core Russian security interest. Enlargement’s supporters, of course, claim vindication just as vehemently. For them, Putin’s aggression shows the wisdom of bringing new members into the alliance. Including Ukraine, they suggest, might have avoided the current crisis altogether.

While they differ in their policy prescriptions, these two sides converge on one point: their view of Russia. Great powers don’t change much, they tell us. Habits of domination are not easily unlearned. So expect a future full of potential trouble, and think carefully in advance about how to avoid it.

Centuries of conflict confirm such maxims.

Well, that was before we had Smart Diplomacy^TM so naturally there’s nothing to learn from history.

BRITAIN NEEDS AN INSURGENCY: Life in the Land of Britain’s Political Insurgents: From its base in a sleepy seaside town, the UK Independence Party is forcing a debate about immigration and national identity. But note how The Atlantic has to compare it to the KKK. But remember, Labour imported these immigrants for political reasons, and because it thought Britain was too white. So who’s the racialist, really?

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SHE’S AS INEVITABLE AS SHE WAS IN 2008: Hillary Clinton Isn’t Inevitable.

POLITICS: DNC uses celebrity women with collective net worth of $331 million to attack GOP on #EqualPay.

Should’ve used female staffers from the Obama White House. And Hillary’s office . . .

ASHE SCHOW: A yearly reminder that the gender wage gap is due to choice, not discrimination.

I don’t know how many times this myth has to be busted before people stop repeating it, but here we go again.

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler has a great takedown of the myth, giving “two Pinocchios” to those who continue to push it as a means of telling women they’re perpetual victims of discrimination. One important factor that Kessler points out is that women often choose lower-paying fields. He includes two lists, the first showing that nine of the 10 highest-paying fields are dominated by men (the second highest-paying profession, pharmaceutical sciences, has slightly more women than men). The second list shows that nine of the 10 lowest-paying fields are dominated by women (theology and religious vocations has vastly more men than women).

Proponents of the wage-gap myth like to claim that the patriarchy pushes women into those less lucrative careers. That’s a sad commentary on their way of thinking — their notion that women are simply too dumb or weak to think for themselves and choose the career they actually want. I think the numbers show that women are choosing the careers they prefer but those careers just aren’t as lucrative as those chosen by men. There’s nothing wrong with that. Do what makes you happy.

Mark J. Perry of the conservative American Enterprise Institute has also taken apart the myth, showing that different lifestyle choices made by women contribute to the wage gap. For instance, married women and women with children tend to make less on average than men. Again, proponents say this is patriarchal discrimination that allows women to make as much as men only if they never marry or have children. I see no discrimination, only women choosing to work less or choosing more flexible careers that let them care for children.

Lisa Maatz, a spokeswoman for the American Association of University Women, confirmed my suspicion years ago. When asked how much of the gender-wage gap is due to discrimination, Maatz — whose organization is one of the biggest proponents of the myth — responded: “We’re still trying to figure that out.”

Translation: Despite decades of pushing this number, they still have no evidence that discrimination is the reason.

Evidence is a patriarchal construct of the patriarchy. Like math.

FROM DAVID BOAZ, A PROPOSAL FOR REAL BUDGET DEMOCRACY: We should get to decide how the government spends our taxes: The case for letting taxpayers choose whether their money goes to schools or the police or Medicaid.

Of course, that’s what Congress is supposed to do, but given how clearly broken the system is, perhaps a radical fix like this is in order.

PERHAPS HE’LL WEAR HIS MOM JEANS: Obama journeys to the land of mommy bloggers. Not all of them are buying his spiel, though:

But Lena Gott, a blogger based in Wake Forest who is participating in the town hall, said her experience working as an accountant has made her skeptical of calls for equal pay. Gott, who is now the stay-at-home mother of three young children, said business owners may have to lower some workers’ salaries if they have to bring them in line with those of other employees.

“You can’t just come up w an extra, magical $20,000 for workers,” Gott said. “You have to make it fit within your budget.”

Magically cost-free policy is an Obama trademark.

OF COURSE SHE DOES: Hillary Clinton says she would support a constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform. Proof beyond a doubt that “reform” isn’t about making things more honest or transparent. . . .

USA TODAY: Obama, make good on Armenia: Pope Francis stands brave against Turkey. Why can’t America follow suit?

On April 24, 1915, in the midst of World War I, the Ottoman Empire began systematically massacring its Christian Armenian subjects. At Sunday’s Mass in Rome, Pope Francis described the massacres as “the first genocide of the 20th century.” Turkey, which emerged from the rubble of the defeated Ottoman Empire and has long fiercely denied that a genocide took place, angrily recalled its ambassador to the Vatican. “The pope’s statement, which is out of touch with both historical facts and legal truths, is simply unacceptable,” tweeted Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Will President Obama follow Pope Francis’ lead?

Contrary to the foreign minister’s tweet, there is a solid factual and legal foundation for calling the massacres a genocide, defined as killing or other acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Yeah, I think Obama sees Erdogan as more of a peer than he does Pope Francis.

CORRUPTION-FIGHTING! GOP lawmaker proposes lifetime lobbying ban. “Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) introduced legislation on Tuesday to prevent members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists after they leave office. Blum, a freshman lawmaker, argued his bill would help limit lobbyists’ influence on the legislative process so members of Congress won’t feel pressured to cater to their wishes for their own self-interest.”

We could still apply my revolving-door surtax to the Executive branch.

ROLL CALL: Marco Rubio’s Presidential Bid Creates Open-Seat Scrum.

Marco Rubio on Monday became the third Republican senator to announce a bid for president and the first of the group to leave behind a competitive seat.

Rubio vacating his seat in Florida in favor of national ambition gives the GOP another potentially strong White House contender. But it presents new challenges for Senate Republicans pushing to hold their newly acquired majority by leaving an expensive open seat in a state at the heart of the presidential election.

Two days before Rubio’s formal Monday night announcement in Miami, the race to replace him had already taken an unforeseen turn. Republicans thought they had a top recruit in Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, until he announced on April 11 he wouldn’t run. His decision leaves a wide-open field on the Republican side, with at least a half-dozen potential contenders.

“The race has changed dramatically,” said Adam Goodman, a Republican media consultant in Florida. “There was an emerging consensus that Atwater was certainly, if nothing else, going to be given the first full shot to close out the field and move ahead with the nomination. So everyone had to wake up to the realization [on Saturday] that suddenly the world has changed.”

Since Atwater’s exit, some Republicans have turned their sights to the congressional delegation, particularly Tom Rooney, a four-term Republican from central Florida.

Rooney, who told CQ Roll Call two weeks ago the race wasn’t even on his radar, said in a Monday phone interview he now believes he can win the open seat and has a meeting scheduled at the National Republican Senatorial Committee Thursday.

A potential campaign, he said, is “something that I’m taking very seriously, and I’m talking to a lot of people.” Rooney, the lone member from Florida so far to endorse Rubio, noted he has lingering concerns on the effect a statewide race will have on his wife and three sons, ages 13, 11 and 8.

Republicans are also looking at former state Speaker Will Weatherford, seen as a possible Rubio replacement for some time. The senator even mentioned Weatherford as a potential successor at a breakfast with reporters in January. But Weatherford hadn’t expressed much interest when Atwater was a seemingly certain contender, and Florida Republicans wonder if he would prefer to hold off.

Stay tuned, I guess.

WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ CONGRESS: How the IRS repeatedly rewrites Obamacare tax credit provisions.

HMM: House Dems jump to support new Iran bill.

House Democratic leaders are quickly jumping on board legislation empowering Congress to review an emerging nuclear deal with Iran.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) endorsed the Senate bill on Tuesday, shortly after it passed unanimously through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had rejected an earlier version of the Senate proposal, said she’s also open to supporting it.

“They certainly produced a bill that would be more palatable to our members,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “Most of us don’t think that any legislation is necessary or should be there, [but] from what I’ve seen so far, it’s pretty innocuous.”

Hoyer’s endorsement was more full-throated.

“I believe that Congress has a responsibility to review any final agreement with Iran, and this bill will achieve that goal — setting up a carefully-constructed review period to ensure that a deal meets expectations and prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he said in a statement.

Pelosi had come out in staunch opposition to an initial version of the Senate bill, sponsored by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Echoing President Obama, she’d warned that the legislation could undermine the ongoing talks over Iran’s nuclear program as negotiators face a June 30 deadline for finalizing a deal.

The new Senate bill, a compromise hashed out between Corker and Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, shortens the timeline of Congress’s review of the deal, from 60 to 30 days, and empowers Congress with a vote of approval.

Obama had threatened to veto the initial Corker bill, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday that the president would sign the Corker-Cardin compromise.

Hmm.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Former Atlanta educators sentenced for cheating scandal.

I’D PREFER TARRING AND FEATHERING ALL THE OFFICIALS INVOLVED, BUT I GUESS THIS’LL DO: Parents of “Free-Range” Kids to File Lawsuit, Attorney Says.

SPACE: New Horizons Probe Dishes Up Its First Color View of Pluto and Charon.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANTS! When Hillary Goes to College to See ‘Everyday Iowans,’ Students Get Locked In Their Classrooms.

IT’S SYNTHETIC ESTROGENS IN THE WATER SUPPLY: Why More Men Are Sitting Down to Pee.

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FEAR AND BUTTHURT at UC San Diego. “Though modest on a national scale — it’s a proposal by one student, about one student paper — it’s emblematic of a trend in modern college students. It’s the Magna Carta of Me-Me-Me, the Ninty-Five Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Able to Say That. . . . Why is a petty gesture of attempted censorship notable? It’s notable because it reflects a dangerous trend. Never doubt that the existence of Colin King and his ilk threaten not only the mild annoyance of the UC San Diego campus, but our rights. We rely, as a society, on shared values. Those values include the rule of law and freedom of expression. Never doubt how crucial they are. There will always be a few Colin Kings. But a society made up of them is doomed.”

CATHY YOUNG ON HILLARY AND THE SEXISM CARD: “Even the notion that female pols are subjected to sexist scrutiny for their looks and dress turns out to be shaky. A recent study by political scientists Danny Hayes of George Washington University and Jennifer Lawless of American University showed that male politicians are no less likely to have their appearance mentioned in newspaper articles — and that voters don’t judge women in politics more harshly over personal appearance.”

Women just complain more when it happens.

#WARONMEN: Men With Stressed Out Wives May Have High Blood Pressure As A Result, Study Suggests. “A new study suggests that men whose wives are stressed are more likely to suffer from higher systolic blood pressure than those with more relaxed spouses. Women’s hearts, on the other hand, don’t seem to be affected by a husband’s stress levels.”

BUT SHE WOULDN’T ANSWER, AND NEITHER WOULD THE STATE DEPARTMENT: Hillary Clinton Was Asked About Using Private Email Server 2 Years Ago.

YEAH, BUT TO BE FAIR, BAIN CAPITAL QUIT BEING EVIL IN NOVEMBER OF 2012: Deval Patrick takes investing role at Bain Capital.