ANOTHER HELEN’S PAGE SUCCESS STORY: “Hundreds of people from all over the country pledged their support. Parents with kids spoke about their own experiences with indoctrination at school, with friends, and in their communities. People without kids pledged, as they explained, so that the books would be available when their kids were born. The book series became one of the most popular publishing projects on Kickstarter within 48 hours, catching the attention of individuals who then followed the path back to Helen’s Page . . . . Apparently ‘crazy’ ideas and values like personal responsibility, free enterprise, self-sufficiency, individual rights, entrepreneurship, freedom, and liberty are not so crazy after all. ‘Operation Demoralize’ doesn’t work when we aren’t isolated. We aren’t isolated when we have a community like Helen’s Page. Look. Connect. Support each other. Let’s show them what we’ve got.”

DISCOVERY: Remains of King Richard III identified. “The verification came after scientific tests were used to match DNA samples taken from Canadian-born Michael Ibsen, a direct descendent of Anne of York, Richard’s elder sister. . . . Richard, the last king of England to fall on the battlefield, was slain in the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field while defending his crown against the raiding upstart, Henry VII.”

ED DRISCOLL: Mugged By Reality: The Eternal Recurrence.

WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: Argentine Statistical Hanky Panky Draws IMF Censure.

Argentina, the only country in the world that threatens private economists with jail terms for disputing the government’s obviously bogus inflation numbers, is now the only country in the world to be censured by the IMF for unacceptably bad economic statistics. In a rare move by the 24 member board of the world’s most prestigious financial institution, Argentina’s government was censured for failing to improve the quality of the numbers it uses to calculate things like GDP and, especially, the inflation rate.

The current president’s husband fired the professional economists in the statistical office in 2007. Ever since, the patent bogosity of Argentina’s statistics has undermined the government’s credibility at home and abroad. Inflation is a deadly sensitive subject in Argentina, where past bouts of hyperinflation have wiped out the savings of whole generations. Currently the government claims inflation is no higher than 11 percent; when the thought police aren’t watching them, private economists whisper that the real rate is more than 25.

The statistical chicanery isn’t just for political window dressing; thanks to unrealistically low inflation numbers Argentina has been able to defraud holders of inflation-linked bonds of about $6.8 billion since the games began in 2007, suggests a report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Nature intends for Argentina to a rich country like Canada, and gave it everything needed for prosperity, but a deeply dysfunctional political culture continues to frustrate the plan.

Luckily, nothing like that could ever happen here.

ROLL CALL: House GOP Remains on Offense on Budget. “House Republicans want to spend this short congressional week hammering President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats over the budget, hoping to ride the momentum of their ‘no budget, no pay’ ploy.”

“Ploy?” No editorializing from the reporter here. . . .

GUN CONTROL IS A MOVEMENT OF OLD, WHITE PEOPLE: Why the AR-15 is most-wanted gun in America: ‘It’s kind of fashionable … the young generation likes them.’

AT AMAZON, markdowns on swimsuits and more at the Swim Shop. Summer is coming.

Also, today only: Save up to 60% on Select SanDisk Memory and Storage. Flash drives, memory cards, and more.

“THE MOST INSULAR WORLD I’VE EVER SEEN:” Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam on Higher Education.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Moody’s: Higher Ed Downgrades Vastly Exceeded Upgrades in 2012. “Of the seven public universities whose ratings were downgraded in the fourth quarter, five had declines in total full-time equivalent student enrollment.”

KENNETH ANDERSON: More on the Law School Business Model. “I don’t think foreign students will save the law school business model, and in any case, all these considerations point to a basic conclusion. The fundamental problem is less quality than cost.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Billion With a ‘B’: Did Menendez Provide Special Favors to HookerGate Donor? “Follow the money – if Melgen had a billion-dollar contract at stake, his ‘friendship’ with Senator Menendez was obviously more than a mere social acquaintance, which doesn’t necessarily mean that it was illegal for Menendez to pressure the administration to help Melgen enforce his Dominican port security contract. But how and why does a Florida opthamologist become an international port-security mogul?” (Bumped).

MEH. EVEN THE SWIMSUIT ISSUE’S GONE STALE. Andrew Klavan: Why I’m Canceling My Sports Illustrated Subscription.

NO GUN CONTROL IN CAPONE’S DAY. LOTS OF GUN CONTROL NOW. YET: Chicago murder rate far worse than during Al Capone ‘gangland’ days.

ROLL CALL: Goodlatte At Nexus Of Obama Agenda. He’s got a strong Tea Party operation in his district, which may stiffen his spine. But he’s also making moves that look like he might try to bring back SOPA.

Instead, I say repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts! It’s time for Hollywood to pay its fair share!

JERRY BOWYER: Kept Conservatives: Prominent Right-Wingers Who Sound Very Liberal.

TOBY HARNDEN: War chest swings open for 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. “During Obama’s inauguration festivities, Bill Clinton discreetly made contact with a number of top Democratic party donors. He was observed with big Obama fundraisers at a Business Forward lunch at Washington’s Newseum.”

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ: Chuck Hagel’s Defenseless Performance. “No amount of right-wing conspiracies against Mr. Hagel could have done to the former Nebraska senator what his own astoundingly disastrous performance did. One that revealed far more about his lack of capacity for the job, his confusion, than anyone could have predicted—a display not without its saddening aspects.”

IF YOU MISSED IT OVER THE WEEKEND, CHECK OUT THIS BOSTON GLOBE PIECE ON PROSECUTORS AND JURIES. “What we really have is a plea bargain system with a thin froth of showy trials floating on top.”

The reporter on this story, Leon Neyfakh, has brought together a lot of really interesting observations and proposals from a lot of people, some of which overlap with my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece and most of which go well beyond it.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mass Shooter Confesses He Learned to Hate White People in College. “I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today.”

He should get an extra 50 years for dumbassery. And I’d be interested to know what classes he took.