SHALE REVOLUTION PRODUCES THE GROWTH OF FRACK CHIC.

Manufacturers like Carhartt and Wrangler aren’t just selling more clothes and boots, they’re selling higher-quality products. The WSJ reports: “The appetite for fracking gear is leading clothes makers to send research and development teams to consult with oil-field workers in Texas and North Dakota, in the same way Nike Inc. taps elite athletes to test out its track shoes and football cleats.”

The clothes are getting lighter, more breathable, safer, and better looking. One refinery worker told the WSJ that he’ll “even wear the jeans out on the weekends.” Once the hipsters in Brooklyn start sporting flame-resistant overalls and clunky steel-toed boots, we’ll know that the shale boom has fully arrived. In the meantime, we can be grateful for the diffuse economic benefits fracking is bringing the country.

Indeed.

GORDON CROVITZ: Big Government Loses Control: Tea party and other groups use social media to spread the news about IRS abuse world-wide.

SUMMER IS COMING: Up to 40% off on select air conditioners, dehumidifiers and fans.

Also, today only: Save up to 60% on Select Logitech PC Peripherals.

Plus, for just the next few hours, Canon PIXMA MG5420 Wireless Color Photo Printer with Scan, $64.99 (57% off).

TAX NOTES: The IRS Is In Big Trouble.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus: NYT Story Not-So-Exculpatory: “Maybe I’m missing something, but how does this squelch the scandal? An IRS ‘manager’ told the lower level agents to give extra scrutiny to Tea Party groups. What more do you need? Smoking gun, hiding in plain sight. Who was this manager person, and did someone higher up direct him to give that “directive”? The NYT‘s piece’ proceeds to mostly ignore these questions. But wherever the chain of command stops–-that’s where you can look for politicization, no?” A fish rots from the head.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Irony Alert: Scandals Revive Tea Party, Threaten ObamaCare.

IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT UNION TO OPPOSE SENATE BILL: “In a statement, National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council (NCISC) president Kenneth Palinkas said the bill would create an ‘insurmountable bureaucracy’ within his agency, and argued the legislation would interfere with the independent judgment of officers who were already ‘pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation.'”

THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND: IRS Scandal Contradicts Central Narrative of Obama Administration.

YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY TOMAHTO: We’re not “deleveraging”, we’re defaulting en masse. Kinda makes those of us who pay our debts feel like suckers, though. . . .

DEMS TRYING TO RUN A FAKE MODERATE against Susan Martinez in New Mexico?

ROGER SIMON: Benghazi and Going ‘The Full Nixon.’

OBAMA AND THE IRS: The Smoking Gun? President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.

JOHN FUND: 3 SIGNS THERE’S A COVERUP: “Mistakes were made….I don’t recall” and other surefire clues.

ROGER KIMBALL: Benghazi as Lazarus, Back from the Dead.

The presidential election loomed. Obama had offed Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda was supposed to be yesterday’s news. The central fact about Northern Africa was supposed to be the “Arab Spring,” which in turn was supposed to corroborate Obama’s foreign policy genius and justify his Islamophilia. No one — certainly not the mainstream media — was interested in stories that gainsaid that rose-colored picture. Benghazi had died.

Until, that is, the testimony before Congress by Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s number two official in Libya at the time of the attack, earlier this month. Hicks directly contradicted the official Obama narrative. The attack — which took place, remember, on the anniversary of 9/11 — had nothing to do with that hitherto obscure internet video. It had everything to do with al-Qaeda-sponsored terrorism. Suddenly Benghazi, like Lazarus, sprang back to life.

There is still a huge amount we do not know about the event. But more and more pieces of the puzzle are being unearthed, dusted off, and fit into the mosaic. And the more we know, the worse it looks for Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Indeed. Also, filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail, over a YouTube video that no one now thinks led to the attacks.

AROUND THE COUNTRY, TEA PARTIERS WILL BE PROTESTING AT IRS OFFICES ON TUESDAY. At noon, local time. Yeah, it’s short notice, but I’ll bet some people will show up. If you’re at one, send me pics and video.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Packing the D.C. Circuit: Obama prepares to flood an appellate court with judges it doesn’t need.

JOHN KASS: IRS scandal a reminder of how I learned about The Chicago Way.

The Internal Revenue Service scandal now devouring the Obama administration — the outrageous use of the federal taxing authority to target tea party and other conservatives — certainly makes for meaty partisan politics.

But this scandal is about more than partisanship. It’s bigger than whether the Republicans win or the Democrats lose.

It’s even bigger than President Barack Obama. Yes, bigger than Obama. It is opening American eyes to the fundamental relationship between free people and those who govern them. This one is about the Republic and whether we can keep it.

And it started me thinking of years ago, of my father and my uncle in Chicago and how government muscle really works.

Because if you want to understand The Chicago Way of things in Washington these days, with the guys from Chicago in charge of the White House and the federal leviathan, there’s one place you start:

You start in Chicago. . . .

This is America, I said.

“Are you in your good senses?” said my father. “We have lives here. We have businesses. If we get involved in politics, they will ruin us.”

And no one, not the Roosevelt Democrats or the Reagan Republicans, disagreed. The socialists, the communists, the royalists, everyone nodded their heads.

This was Chicago. And for a business owner to get involved meant one thing: It would cost you money and somebody from government could destroy you.

The health inspectors would come, and the revenue department, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, on and on. The city code books aren’t thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations. The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.

And who swings the codes and regulations at those who’d open their mouths? A government worker. That government worker owes his or her job to the political boss. And that boss has a boss.

The worker doesn’t have to be told. The worker wants a promotion. If an irritant rises, it is erased. The hack gets a promotion. This is government.

So everybody kept their mouths shut, and Chicago was hailed by national political reporters as the city that works.

Read the whole thing.

CROSSFIRE: Two IRS Offices Targeted Hawaii GOP Leader At Same Time.

SALENA ZITO: Scandals vs. Sway:

In T.S. Eliot’s drama “Murder in the Cathedral,” kowtowing knights who overhear England’s Henry II vent frustration with Thomas Becket decide to please the king by killing the archbishop.

Confronted with the scandalous murder, Henry is forced to deny involvement and punish his knights. Secretly, he is quite happy to be rid of the pesky archbishop.

Time will tell if the Obama White House will be directly tied to the incompetence and obfuscation surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack, or the IRS’ virtual political-enemies list, or the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records.

Yet the common theme of these Washington scandals may be the degree to which they reveal President Obama’s incredible “referent power.” . . .

Presidents also wield power by influencing those who deeply admire, strongly identify with or highly respect them. This is referent power, which focuses on ability to exploit others’ trust.

Celebrities — with no formal power and little expertise — wield influence through referent power; some people feel so close to and trustful of celebrities that they act upon their perceptions of what a celebrity wants them to do.

So when Obama joked about auditing enemies’ taxes, it wasn’t really a joke at all. . . .

JOHN HINDERAKER: How Much Are Obama’s Scandals Hurting Him? Think back to Bush in 2005. The Abu Ghraib scandal got a lot of media play in the spring, but he didn’t really suffer at the polls until after Katrina in the fall.