SMALL WARS JOURNAL: A Junior Officer’s Perspective On Brain Drain.

LIVING LONGER THROUGH BLOODLETTING?

READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Reader Kevin Spier recommends Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification.

WELL, REMEMBER, THE DEMS CAN’T EVEN PASS A BUDGET ON TIME: Acing the SNAP Challenge: GOP communications director eats for $4.50 per day.

A Republican hill staffer participated in a publicity stunt designed to bring awareness to the plight of food stamp recipients by spending only as much money on food in a week as the federal food stamp program provides.

The SNAP Challenge, as it’s called, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, isn’t as difficult as many Democrats claim, he says.

“I wanted to personally experience the effects of the proposed cuts to food stamps,” said Donny Ferguson, communications director and agriculture policy adviser for Rep. Steve Stockman (R., Texas), in a news release.

“I didn’t plan ahead or buy strategically, I just saw the publicity stunt and made a snap decision to drive down the street and try it myself,” Ferguson said. “I put my money where my mouth is, and the proposed food stamp cuts are still quite filling.”

About thirty Democrats have said they will participate in the SNAP Challenge, which requires participants to eat on only $4.50 per day, or $31.50 per week. . . .

Ferguson says Democrats are playing up the difficulties of the challenge in order to boost the political case for increasing food stamp benefits.

“Not only did I buy a week’s worth of food on what Democrats claim is too little, I have money left over,” Ferguson said.

“I didn’t use coupons, I didn’t compare prices and was buying for one, instead of a family. I could have bought even more food per person if I were splitting $126 four ways, instead of budgeting $31.50 to eat for one.”

Or you could just raise your debt limit and buy whatever you want on credit. We’ll call that the OBAMA Challenge.

THE PJ TATLER IS reporting from the scene at the Audit The IRS Rally in DC.

THOMAS SOWELL: Government Surveillance And The Loss Of Trust. Moral capital is essential. It is being squandered.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: NYU’s ‘Toxic’ Expansion Prioritizes Marketing Over Debt-Saddled Students, Professors Say.

PBS EXPLAINS: How the Government Is Fooling Us About the Solvency of Social Security.

WEAPONS-GRADE STUPIDITY: Bloomberg’s Gun Control Rally Names Boston Bomber as Victim of Gun Violence.

THE WAR ON MEN: On Coffee and Markets, the Insta-Wife talks about her new book, Men On Strike. Did I mention that she has a book out?

AT THE AUDIT THE IRS RALLY IN DC: A picture tweeted by Judson Phillips:

One from backstage by Justin Binik-Thomas:

And fun with Kerry Picket, Dana Loesch, and Sonnie Johnson, tweeted by Jim Hoft:

UPDATE: Vine video of the crowd from Michelle Fields, who comments, “This Tea Party rally is massive. Especially considering it’s a Wednesday.”

HENRY MILLER: The Right Way To Fight Obesity: Nanny-state activism will not be as effective as market-based reforms.

VINCE FLYNN has died.

SO THE DOORBELL JUST RANG, and there was a guy with a copy of Rich Lowry’s new book, Lincoln Unbound: How An Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved The American Dream — And How We Can Do It Again. Better than “in the mail!”

BLOOMBERG NEWS, UNSURPRISINGLY, WANTS MORE “PUBLIC HEALTH” RESEARCH ON GUNS. They call the ban on funding such research “senseless.”

The problem is, that research has been politicized junk science if not actually fraudulent. Here’s a lengthy discussion by Don Kates, and here’s a shorter one from Reason.

Meanwhile, my suggestion to the “public health” community is to focus on actual diseases, rather than politically-disapproved behaviors.

THAT, BY THE WAY, IS A GRADE SEVERAL STEPS HIGHER THAN WEAPONS-GRADE: Sen. Cruz blasts Obama with one ‘blogger-grade sarcasm’ question.

IT’S KINDA LIKE SYRIA, I DON’T REALLY WANT EITHER TO WIN: Clash Of The Blue Titans In Detroit.

Unions seem determined to fight municipal bond market investors over who should shoulder the burden for Detroit’s debts, setting up a lose-lose situation for blue politics.

If the unions win, it could lead to an implosion in the municipal bond market across the country as lenders realize that money lent to struggling cities may never be paid back. As Walsh notes, this outcome would upend standards that “such bonds are among the safest investments and that for ‘general obligation’ bonds cities could even be compelled to raise taxes, if that’s what it took to make good.” This would be disastrous for other cities, which would find it much harder to borrow money, and would likely need to pay exorbitant interest rates to do so.

If the unions lose, however, it would deal a major blow to support from their own members. Detroit’s pensioners would begin to wonder why they pay dues to a union that can’t guarantee the pensions or benefits they were promised. A similar dynamic all but destroyed unions in the private sector as striking union members saw their jobs shipped away to China.

The stakes are high in Detroit’s looming legal battles, but the results will rock the blue model to its core no matter where the dominoes fall.

One hopes.

PUSHBACK: Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment. “Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests the court makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it is forced to give the government.”

HE’S ALREADY THE GREATEST GUN SALESMAN IN HISTORY. WILL HE ALSO BE THE GREATEST PROMOTER OF LIBERTARIANISM IN HISTORY? CNN poll shows Obama’s case for big government is losing the public. Well, we can hope.

PAPER TIGER: Organizing for Action gathers a whopping three people for gun-control rally in California.

HEH: Texas governor woos disgruntled Conn. gun makers. “Texas Gov. Rick Perry extolled the tax policies and regulatory climate of his state as he courted gun manufacturers that have threatened to leave Connecticut since the state passed new gun-control laws in response to the Newtown school massacre.”

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Berlin Speech: 200,000 for Obama in 2008; Only 6,000 Today. And a bulletproof plastic shield.

AT AMAZON, Coupons Galore in Home & Kitchen.

Also, today only: Goal Zero Guide 10 Plus Solar Charging Kit, $88.99 (44% off). “The Goal Zero Guide 10 Plus Solar Charging Kit is an ultra-lightweight USB and solar charging system that fits in your pocket. It includes the Nomad 7 solar charging panel and the Guide 10 battery charging system. It can be used as a single-unit power pack to power devices like cell phones, tablets, and MP3 players; or as a power source to recharge AA or AAA batteries for use in battery powered devices.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 41.