MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED / OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS. MOSTLY OVERGENEROUS, IT SEEMS. California public pension payouts doubled after bump in benefits.

The average retirement payout for new retirees in California’s biggest public pension system doubled between 1999 and 2012, according to CalPERS data, and initial monthly payments for one group nearly tripled in that period.

State and local cops and firefighters benefited the most.

In the 14 years covered by the data analyzed by The Sacramento Bee, average first-month pensions to state police and firefighters went from $1,770 to $4,978. California Highway Patrol officers’ first-month retirement payments doubled from $3,633 to $7,418, and local government safety employees’ pensions went from $3,296 to $6,867.

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be.

HE’S A LIBERTARIAN AND A NANOTECHNOLOGIST. WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE? Mike Stopa Is Running For Congress In Massachusetts’ Fifth District.

REALITY BITES: Brussels fears European ‘industrial massacre’ sparked by energy costs.

CULTURE WAR: Parents want to know why EHS yearbook doesn’t include rifle team.

Some parents want to know why Emmaus High School’s championship rifle team was not included in the school’s new yearbook. They hoped to find out what happened at Monday night’s school board meeting. But no explanation was offered by school board members, the superintendent or other administrators at the meeting. . . .

Donatelli said 10 high school rifle teams competed in the 2012-13 district competition, which Emmaus High School won in February. “The team went undefeated in the league and in the district,” he told the school board. After the meeting, Donatelli said parents don’t know if the rifle team was not included in the 2013 yearbook because of an oversight – or if someone was afraid to include anything about its victory because of the national debate over gun control. “I’d hate to think it would be that,” he said. “We’re just trying to get answers.” His son Stephen was a member of the rifle team before graduating in spring. When Stephen got his yearbook two weeks ago, he saw it did not even mention the rifle team and there was no photo of the team. A photo of the rifle team was taken by Don Herb, a professional photographer hired to take pictures for the yearbook. It shows 21 team members posing with their advisors. Most of the students are holding rifles.

Quelle horreur!

DISAPPOINTMENT: Jilted Code Pink Founder Confronts Leftist Rep. Keith Ellison Over Syria.

PRIORITIES: Anti-Bush protest in Denver dwarfed by mob at free pot giveaway. Why protest Bush? Bombing brown people is cool, now. Because Obama!

JAMES TARANTO: The Breakfast Club: Can the Syria debacle get any worse? Yes, it can.

It is difficult for any nation, but especially for a democracy, to sustain a military effort if it loses public support. That counsels against beginning a military effort to which the public is already overwhelmingly opposed. And the fecklessness of the Obama administration has even some hawkish conservatives among the opinion elite opposing the resolution. Examples include Charles Krauthammer and Kristol’s own young colleague Stephen Hayes.

Last week, with some intellectual exertion, this columnist formulated an argument that approving the resolution was a less bad option than rejecting it. The administration’s recklessly erratic presentation of its case in the ensuing days has made remaining convinced of that argument too exhausting for us.

Then there’s the Cheerio’s bit — which was no doubt leaked by the White House as a way of gaining support. . . .

A HOLLOWED-OUT MILITARY? Losing a ‘life-or-death skill’? Proponents fight planned changes to combatives training.

Planned changes to combatives training have proponents fighting for the survival of the program and the “life-or-death” skills it teaches.

These hand-to-hand skills save lives, and lives are at risk without those abilities developed over the course of the combatives program, they say.

The Modern Army Combatives Program, headquartered at Fort Benning, Ga., consists of four skill-level courses — a weeklong basic course, a two-week tactical course, and a basic combatives instructor course and a tactical combatives instructor course, each of which is four weeks long.

Proposals from Training and Doctrine Command call for eliminating all four levels of training and creating a master combatives trainer course that would be no more than two weeks long.

On Facebook, this suggestion from Jason van Steenwyk in response: “They should have rebranded as a self-defense course for women, gays and transponders to empower them to protect themselves against barracks bullies and rapists. Then they’d get plenty of funding and Big Army would require an 8-hour combatives stand-down for every unit in the MTOE.”

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY HEAD EMILY LITELLA HAD NO COMMENT: Michael Barone: If the globe isn’t warming, does that undercut EPA regulation of carbon dioxide?

ROLL CALL: Obama Expects Syria Vote Delays. So much for those overheated Munich analogies.

YES, BUT IT’S PUTIN’S KNIFE: Biden Flashback: Obama Has ‘Steel in His Spine.’

THE HILL: Obama: Even Michelle’s answer on war ‘is no.’

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Holder, former IRS chief taught black churches how to skirt tax code.

So the same IRS that was hounding anti-Obama tea party groups in Ohio for alleged political involvement that made their tax-exempt status questionable had a commissioner who was mentoring pro-Obama black churches how to stay just within the bounds of the law.

Cozy.

Indeed.

DO TELL: Washington Post: Obama Administration’s Message On Syria Is Muddled.

Related: Syria Resolution Is No Cinch In The Senate.

Plus: Four Pinocchios For Kerry’s Claim That He Opposed Bush’s Invasion Of Iraq. He was against it after he was for it.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Non-Tenure Track Professors Are Better Teachers Than Tenure Track Professors.

ONCE AGAIN, THE GUARDIAN COVERS A NATIONAL SECURITY STORY THE NEW YORK TIMES WON’T: US consulate attack in Benghazi: a challenge to official version of events.

The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was striking for a number of reasons: the date, 11 September, the toll – four diplomats killed, including an ambassador – and the knock-on effects on the careers of senior American politicians.

But what is perhaps most striking is the inconsistencies: the US version of events compared with those of witnesses and the facts on the ground. The two do not tally. And so, a year later, there remain pressing questions about what happened that night – and what the Americans say happened.

But the American media are shockingly incurious. Because, I suspect, they’re afraid that curiosity would produce a story that might be damaging to Obama — or to Hillary. Or both.

INSANE CLOWN POSSE: Ed Driscoll On The Obama Administration.

A FACE-SAVING WAY FOR OBAMA TO BACK DOWN? Obama would ‘absolutely’ delay strike if Syria turns over weapons. “President Obama said he would put military strikes against Syria on hold if Bashar Assad’s government turned over control of its chemical weapons to international observers, but cautioned he would wait to see if Damascus followed through on the Russian proposal.”

Related: Harry Reid invokes Holocaust in push for Syria resolution, sets test vote for Wednesday.

HISTORY: Four Years Ago Today, Barack Obama Offered America a Pile of Empty Promises. And he’ll repeat that tomorrow night, and for the next 3+ years.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Newlywed Wife Admits Shoving Husband Off Steep Cliff.

INTERNAL DIVISIONS ON THE LEFT: Protesters heckle Tammy Baldwin on Syria by singing “Which side are you on?”

WHICH IS FUNNY, BECAUSE AS I’VE NOTED, HE LOOKS KINDA LIKE A PALER GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: NAACP Pres. Ben Jealous to resign, leaves legacy of racial polarization.

ROGER KIMBALL: Annals Of Medicine: The Problem Is Not Just ObamaCare. “Bad though ObamaCare is, however — and for anyone who needs a refresher course, let me recommend my friend Sally Pipes’s Broadside on the subject, The Cure for Obamacare — it is well to remember that ObamaCare is not the only thing wrong with American medicine. Alas, it was possible to shove ObamaCare down the throats of the American people only because the delivery of medical care in this country had already been so heavily bureaucratized.”

REMEMBERING MANSON WHITLOCK. He used to work on my typewriter. “Mr. Whitlock was often described as America’s oldest typewriter repairman. He was inarguably one of the country’s longest-serving. Over time he fixed more than 300,000 machines, tending manuals lovingly, electrics grudgingly and computers never. . . . The shop, near the Yale campus, attracted a tide of students and faculty members; the Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Robert Penn Warren, Archibald MacLeish and John Hersey; the Yale classicist Erich Segal, who wrote the best-selling novel ‘Love Story’ on a Royal he bought there; and, on at least one occasion, President Gerald R. Ford.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Cheaters Using Maids To Avoid Pricey Hotels. “Manhattan love cheats have hit a new low. With the economy still struggling, more are having illicit trysts in their own pads — and then hiring a maid on the cheap to clean up to avoid renting pricey hotel rooms, sources told The Post.”