HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: WSJ: Law Schools Slash Professor Jobs as Enrollments Drop.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: How To Save Barnes & Noble. “Separate the discovery and atmospheric value of bookstores from the book-warehousing function. Make them smaller, with the inventory limited to curated examination copies — one copy per title. (Publishers should be willing to supply such copies free, just as they do for potential reviewers.) Charge for daily, monthly or annual memberships that entitle customers to hang out, browse the shelves, buy snacks and use the Wi-Fi. Give members an easy way to order books online, whether from a retail site or the publishers directly, without feeling guilty. And give the place a good name. How about Serendipity Books?”

We like the cafe at B&N, and we do occasionally buy books there. Mostly what I buy, though, are magazines. It’s hard to get a MixMag anywhere else.

I DRIVE THAT IN MY SPORTS CAR OCCASIONALLY: The Great Roads: Tail Of The Dragon.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Are Young Men Ogling Me?

NEWS YOU CAN USE, at Housewife How-Tos.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Grand Theft Treasury. “The U.S. government has unconstitutionally stripped billions of dollars from Fannie and Freddie’s private investors.”

MICKEY KAUS: Beware the Fall Traffic Jam. “Because while a traffic jam of legislation makes it hard for Congress and the President to focus on any one big issue, it also opens up the possibility for big tradeoffs of one blockbuster item for another–scary tradeoffs if, like me, you think a) the immigration legislation currently being considered is very bad policy but b) it still might pass and c) Obama really, really wants it to pass.”

CHANGE: Spain Cuts Green Energy Losses.

Spain is the latest European country to regret its foray into green energy production. On Friday the Spanish government announced some contentious reforms to its regime of green energy subsidies, which were among the most generous in Europe.

Those subsidies (in the form of guaranteed above-market rates for producers) have been wildly successful at encouraging solar and wind farm construction. They have utterly failed, though, to help build profitable industries. Now the Spanish central government is dealing with a residual tariff deficit of €4.5 billion for this year alone. That’s the difference between the amount Spanish consumers pay for electricity and the cost of producing it.

Not surprisingly, industry groups are outraged over the move. . . .

While environmentalists will no doubt be upset, Spain made the clear choice. High electricity rates are an unnecessary and regressive tax on citizens and a serious drag on industry, and green energy has yet to prove itself competitive without substantial subsidies. Spain is right to cut its losses on its costly green energy boondoggle and to refocus its limited resources on the country’s more pressing problems.

Indeed.

PLAUSIBLY: Do 200% Tax Penalties Violate The Eighth Amendment?

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals on Videogames.

Also, today only: Up to 60% Off Select Zwipes Microfiber Cleaning Cloths.

CRONY JOURNALISM? My USA Today column on the new DOJ guidelines.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 68.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: How a Miami School Crime Cover-Up Policy Led to Trayvon Martin’s Death. “Both of Trayvon’s suspensions during his junior year at Krop High involved crimes that could have led to his prosecution as a juvenile offender. However, Chief Charles Hurley of the Miami-Dade School Police Department (MDSPD) in 2010 had implemented a policy that reduced the number of criiminal reports, manipulating statistics to create the appearance of a reduction in crime within the school system.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: With little media notice, Obama’s poll numbers sink.

WILLIAM SALETAN: You Are Not Trayvon Martin: His death wasn’t about race, guns, or your pet issue. It was about misjudgment and overreaction—exactly what we’re doing now to the verdict:

It turned out I had been wrong about many things. The initial portrait of Zimmerman as a racist wasn’t just exaggerated. It was completely unsubstantiated. It’s a case study in how the same kind of bias that causes racism can cause unwarranted allegations of racism. Some of the people Zimmerman had reported as suspicious were black men, so he was a racist. Members of his family seemed racist, so he was a racist. Everybody knew he was a racist, so his recorded words were misheard as racial slurs, proving again that he was a racist.

The 911 dispatcher who spoke to Zimmerman on the fatal night didn’t tell him to stay in his car. Zimmerman said he was following a suspicious person, and the dispatcher told him, “We don’t need you do to that.” Chief prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda conceded in his closing argument that these words were ambiguous.

Read the whole thing. But remember: This was never about Zimmerman or Martin. It was about firing up Obama’s black vote, and keeping his guilty-white-liberal supporters from abandoning him over his many broken campaign promises. Remember: If the GOP wins, blacks will be gunned down in the streets and women will be turned into walking uteri!

UPDATE: Michael Graham: “Amerika” Rants Get Verdict Wrong:

Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson told me the same thing. He participated in Sunday’s march protesting Zimmerman’s acquittal. “You can shoot an unarmed black man in America and get away with it,” the councilor said.

“Really,” I replied, “so does that mean that I could shoot you and get away with it?”

Jackson insisted the case was more complicated than that. But it’s not, and that’s why many Americans are so annoyed with the hand-wringing and protests. Comedian Marlon Wayans tweeted out, “They traded us one O.J. and a Barack for a Zimmerman.” But the Martin shooting was the opposite of the O.J. case.

The evidence of O.J. Simpson’s guilt was overwhelming. The jury had to make a race-based decision to ignore the mountain of evidence and find O.J. not guilty.

In the Martin case, the prosecutors always had a tough job of overcoming Zimmerman’s self-defense claims “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

So a case goes the way the facts and law indicate it’s likely to go — and this proves to Democrats that America is racist?

“USA! KKK! How many kids have you killed today?” was the chant in Providence this weekend.

See the above. It’s all agitprop for low-information voters. If it damages the social fabric, so what? Power is all about power. Our political class has no sense of responsibility or shame.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Feds admit improper scrutiny of candidate, donor tax records, Justice declines to prosecute. “The Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.”

Of course it has. The Justice Department exists to serve the Administration.

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Time to End FISA’s “Star Chamber” Court.

OUCH: “He must have me confused with one of his whores, in this case an old fat one.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Nevada Family’s Third Amendment Rights Violated By Police. Stories like this can’t be doing much for Henderson’s real estate values.

SORRY, THAT’S NOT WHAT’S REWARDED IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Legal Immigrants Seek Reward For Years of Following The Rules. But seriously, the way we treat legal immigrants is disgraceful, and has been for a long time.

THE HILL: GOP leaders pushed to allow House vote on defunding the NSA.

JAMES TARANTO: The Riots That Didn’t Happen: Racial progress and the Zimmerman verdict.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Research: Yes, Aid Fuels Tuition Inflation. “Why? Because cheap aid encourages students to demand stuff they otherwise wouldn’t, and enables colleges to raise their prices at excessive rates.”

DO PROTON-PUMP INHIBITORS RAISE THE RISK OF HEART ATTACKS? “Research by John P. Cooke, clinical professor and chair of the department of cardiovascular sciences at Houston Methodist Hospital, found that stomach acid-suppressing proton pump inhibitors (brand names Prilosec, Nexium, Prevacid) may cause blood vessels to constrict, reducing blood flow.” They lower nitric oxide levels. Solution: Arginine? I take nitric-oxide-boosting weightlifting supplements that are basically arginine. I wonder if that helps?