TITLES OF NOBILITY: My USA Today column for today: Stop privileges for government officials.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 110.

SPYING: Holder pressed on U.S. drug agency use of hidden data evidence. “Eight Democratic senators and congressmen have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to answer questions about a Reuters report that the National Security Agency supplies the Drug Enforcement Administration with intelligence information used to make non-terrorism cases against American citizens.”

IF ONLY THEY WERE THIS TOUGH WITH FOREIGN ADVERSARIES: Jack Lew’s Debt Ceiling Offer To The GOP: “Nothing.”

IN RESPONSE TO THIS PIECE ON BEING A GENTLEMAN, let me reiterate: Chivalry was a system, in which obligations fell on women as well as men. If you wish for men to behave as they did in past times, you may have to live with women behaving as they did in past times, too. In the age of Miley Cyrus and Sandra Fluke, that doesn’t seem especially likely.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Why Do Education and Health Care Cost So Much?

So how do we explain health care and college cost inflation? Well, health care economist David Cutler once offered me the following observation: In health care, as in education, the output is very important, and impossible to measure accurately. Two 65-year-olds check into two hospitals with pneumonia; one lives, one dies. Was the difference in the medical care, or their constitutions, or the bacteria that infected them? There is a correct answer to that question, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what it was.

Similarly, two students go to different colleges; one flunks out, while the other gets a Rhodes Scholarship. Is one school better, or is one student? You can’t even answer these questions by aggregating data; better schools may attract better students. Even when you control for income and parental education, you’re left with what researchers call “omitted variable bias” — a better school may attract more motivated and education-oriented parents to enroll their kids there.

So on the one hand, we have two inelastic goods with a high perceived need; and on the other hand, you have no way to measure quality of output. The result is that we keep increasing the inputs: the expensive professors and doctors and research and facilities.

Related: Colleges Set To Offer Exit Tests:

The test is part of a movement to find new ways to assess the skills of graduates. Employers say grades can be misleading and that they have grown skeptical of college credentials.
Joe Philipson for The Wall Street Journal David Pate, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at St. John Fisher College outside Rochester, N.Y. The college will offer the new CLA + test.

“For too long, colleges and universities have said to the American public, to students and their parents, ‘Trust us, we’re professional. If we say that you’re learning and we give you a diploma it means you’re prepared,’ ” said Michael Poliakoff, vice president of policy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. “But that’s not true.”

Then why not decouple the competency test and the diploma entirely? All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama Seeks a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ on Syria. Hmm. Seeking a coalition of the willing to take down an Arab Ba’athist dictator over WMDs. Where have I heard this before?

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Cornel West: ‘New Jim Crow’ Increasing Under Obama. “West said that disparity applied to Obama’s economy as well, as corporations have made record profits while there has been ‘massive unemployment’ and ‘increasing wealth inequality.’ He said struggling Americans are ‘giving up work’ or ‘working part time’ in Obama’s economy and those numbers are not reflected in the official unemployment numbers.”

AT AMAZON, hot new releases in Laptops.

Also, I see that they’re selling 4K ultraHD TVs — at surprisingly reasonable prices — but where do you get a 4K signal?

Plus, today only: 40% off on Skechers shoes, boots, and sandals. For men, women, and kids.

JAMES TARANTO ON CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS:

Now, why would blacks move out of big cities in the Northeast, the Midwest and California and into the South and the suburbs? In part for the same reasons nonblacks do: in search of better economic opportunities and quality of life. But also because the factor that drove blacks in particular to leave the South no longer exists. Jim Crow is now long dead, but it had been dead a decade at most by the time the New Great Migration began.

But for some people — for reasons of political power or simple self-image — it must always be 1963.

IMMIGRATION: House Oversight demands Janet Napolitano hand over information on growing asylum requests. “In a letter sent Monday to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, questioned whether illegal immigrants were being instructed on how to beat the immigration system by falsely claim they are in the U.S. to seek political asylum. Immigrants are allegedly learning to claim they face a ‘credible fear’ of persecution at home so that U.S. officials can not immediately expel them. Thousands of such cases have been reported along the U.S.-Mexico border, New York City and other parts of the U.S.”

IT’S PORK ALL THE WAY DOWN: $1.5B for ‘youth jobs fund’? Critics pan pork in Senate immigration bill.

REPORT: Milwaukee’s 2013 Per-Capita Murder Rate Higher Than Chicago’s. But Milwaukee police chief Kevin Flynn has mostly seemed interested in going after legal gun owners.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: After Syria chemical allegations, Obama considering limited military strike.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner Vows to Put States Back Under Federal Election Receivership. “When PJ Media reported that efforts were afoot inside the RNC to re-impose federal oversight, RNC officials became volcanic. They sent broadcast emails to conservative bloggers attacking PJ Media and vowing not to cooperate with publications who use anonymous sources and a nom de guerre for writers who are in positions that do not permit their identity to be known – a practice used at both Breitbart and Hot Air also. Yesterday’s event captured on video provides some factual context to the dispute.”

BRITAIN: MPs recalled to Parliament to vote on Syrian crisis, David Cameron says. Say, I wonder if Obama will ask Congress for a vote?

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT IN THE 21ST CENTURY, IF YOU WANT A CLASSIC RACISM INCIDENT YOU PRETTY MUCH HAVE TO FAKE IT UP: Jersey City high school candidate for student gov’t sent racist texts to himself, school official says.

WAR: Rigell Wants ‘Emergency Session’ for Syria.