FAILING UPWARD: Samantha Power To Be Named New Ambassador To UN.

STONEWALL: IRS refuses to turn over documents on targeting to Senate.

UPDATE: An unmistakable trend toward “weaponizing the tax code?”

ANOTHER SCANDAL: EPA Targeted Conservative Groups. “The EPA is not preventing groups from becoming tax exempt, but charging conservative groups for information while giving freebies to liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests — allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.”

SCANDALPALOOZA: The Hill: DOJ defends not telling AP of subpoenas in letter to lawmakers.

MAKE HER TESTIFY UNDER OATH: Stephanie Cutter Attended WH Meetings With IRS Chief.

TRYING TO AVOID THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT POLICY: Purging My Syllabus. “I’ll have to come up with some alternative readings if we’re going to have anything at all to talk about in class. I don’t know yet what I’m going to substitute, but I’m leaning toward Winnie the Pooh, Where the Red Fern Grows, and the Sears Roebuck catalog, Fall/Winter 1963.”

UPDATE: More on sexual harassment from Peter Wood.

FLASHBACK: Me on the Arab Spring, in 2011.

YA THINK? The Hill: Poll: Controversies raising doubts about White House ‘honesty.’ “A plurality, 43 percent, also see the IRS missteps as a part of a “widespread effort” to investigate Tea Party groups to 29 percent who blame the scandal on a few tax officials who were acting on their own. Fifty-eight percent say the administration’s handling of the Benghazi Consulate attack also raises questions about the honesty of the White House. The same number say the Justice Department’s subpoenaing of reporter email and phone records in national security leak investigations also raises concerns.”

SOMEONE WITH THE CREDIBILITY THE POSITION DESERVES: Susan “YouTube” Rice to take over as National Security Adviser.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN PRICE INCREASE BEHIND THE CURTAIN: Obamacare breaks promises in California, and supporters would prefer you not point it out. Plus, a reminder from Mary Katharine Ham of what Ezra Klein, et al., were saying in 2009.

JAMES TARANTO: Rich Woman, Poor Man: Why do female breadwinners tend to have unhappy marriages? “Note that Thaler considers only explanations in which men are to blame–either for subjecting their wives to ‘bad marriages’ from which greater earning power can liberate them, or for ‘clinging,’ like Barack Obama’s stereotypical Pennsylvanians of pallor, to retrograde ‘social norms.’ Couldn’t it be that women’s preference for high-earning men is the mechanism by which female economic success leads to the decline of marriage? . . . Implicit in Thaler’s analysis is the economist’s model of individuals as rational maximizers of self-interest. That model would indeed predict that anyone of either sex would prefer–all else being equal–a higher-earning spouse. Since the evidence shows that women do and men do not, these premises lead to the conclusion male mate preference is irrational.”

The rule on gender research, as Ann Althouse noted years ago, is that you can find any difference between men and women that you want, so long as you portray it in ways that establish women’s superiority.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Liz Peek: How Gov’t Student Loans Ruined College Education.

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of students enrolling in degree-conferring institutions increased 34 percent. The portion receiving federal aid skyrocketed from 31.6 percent to 47.8 percent, and the average award nearly doubled. In addition, the percentage taking out student loans climbed from 40.1 percent to 50.1 percent, and the average borrowing rose 76 percent.

The ramp-up in loans to students has not only driven up costs but has undermined the value of a college degree. Some 30 percent of people ages 25 to 29 are college graduates today, up from 12 percent in the 1970s. That is a notable achievement, unless the degrees awarded do not satisfy the needs of the job market. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, has written that we have one million retail sales clerks and 115,000 janitors with college diplomas. At the same time, one fifth of the country’s managers say they can’t find skilled workers to fill job openings. Something is not right.

No, it isn’t.

THOSE WERE ONLY BAD BEFORE THE ELECTION: Ed Driscoll: Yet Another Obama Appointee has a Cayman Islands Trust.

QUESTION: If states are using DNA to verify paternity on births to underage women, why not use it to verify paternity on all births?

SPACE: XCOR COO Warns That Proposed State Department Rule Could Cripple Space Tourism.

WHY GUN CONTROL just got even harder.

MICKEY KAUS: It Pays To Get Schumerized: Tax credit bonanza for illegal immigrants?

WILLIAM SALETAN: Do marriage and parenthood make people more conservative about women and families? “Maybe the difference between under-30s and their elders isn’t the era in which they grew up. Maybe it’s a lack of life experience. As young people pass from their 20s to their 30s, they get married and have kids. They lose their naïvete about self-realization, having it all, the equality of family structures, and the interchangeability of moms and dads. According to this theory, the reason why older people are more likely to believe that unwed motherhood is a big problem, or that kids do better with stay-at-home moms, is that beyond the age of 30, you discover that these things are true.”

I think people also tend to normalize the way they’re living now.

THIS STORY WAS TOO LATE FOR MY USA TODAY COLUMN, but it’s yet another example of school idiocy: Boy suspended for talking about guns on school bus. “The principal told me that with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word ‘gun’ in my school you are going to get suspended for 10 days.”

The principal’s name is Darrel Prioleau. But wait, there’s more: “The boy was questioned by the principal and a sheriff’s deputy, who also wanted to search the family home without a warrant.”

Sue ’em and shame ’em.

I SUSPECT THAT ACADEMICS ARE MORE FAT-PHOBIC THAN MOST, SINCE MOST AMERICANS ARE FAT. Fat-Shaming in Academe.

But note that this guy got more blowback than the guy who called for killing all NRA members.

AT AMAZON, Father’s Day Deals Galore.

CALIFORNIA GOVERNANCE: FBI raids Capitol office of state Sen. Ron Calderon. “FBI agents raided the office of state Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) and at least one other location in the state Capitol on Tuesday to gather evidence for an investigation, law enforcement officials said.”

CLAIRE BERLINSKI: The Real Trigger Behind The Protests In Turkey. “Briefly, it is this: A large segment of the population is infuriated by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attitude. To wit: The people who didn’t vote for me don’t matter – screw them. This is not new; he has always been this way. But the constraints upon his authoritarian impulses – the army, the independent judiciary, the opposition press – have systematically been eroded over time, leading to ever more authoritarian policies.” Good thing nothing like that could happen here.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: White House Counsel Robert Bauer: Architect of IRS Abuse? “When the FBI finally fires up its criminal investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, there is one person the Special Agent in Charge better be sure to interview – former White House Counsel Robert Bauer. The FBI may discover the whole IRS mess leads through the land of campaign finance ‘reform’ and an obsession with speech regulation, an obsession shared by Bauer.”

AIRBRUSHING ON GAY RIGHTS: “The official White House transcript of the first lady’s remarks did not include the portion of the event during which Obama threatened to leave, it did include the protester’s remarks.”