THE ATLANTIC: Please Don’t Be Satisfied With This Jobs Report: The labor market continues to be consistently, maddeningly mediocre. Whatever could have happened to cause our economy to add jobs more slowly than in the past?

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Also, today only: 15 Kindle Mysteries, Each $1.99 or Less.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 59.

EGYPT: “Rape Squads” Organized By Morsi Supporters. Need to make examples of a few of these guys.

ANNA FRANCO: Green Appeasement: Oil, Gas Industry Wasting Billions on ‘Alternatives:’ New renewable divisions are about PR, not innovation.

HEH: George Bush’s Birthday Present: A Higher Approval Rating Than President Obama. What’s more impressive is that — unlike the rehabilitation of Bill Clinton — this happened without water-carrying by the media.

SO IT’S BASICALLY LIKE PIGFORD, ONLY FOR HEALTHCARE: Health insurance marketplaces will not be required to verify consumer claims. “The Obama administration announced Friday that it would significantly scale back the health law’s requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status. Instead, the federal government will rely more heavily on consumers’ self-reported information until 2015, when it plans to have stronger verification systems in place.”

Does the law actually give them the power to “scale back the health law’s requirements?” I’d like to see some pro-freedom monkeywrenchers tie them up in court on this stuff. You know it’s what the lefties would be doing if positions were reversed. . . .

Related: George Will: Obama’s Never-Mind Presidency.

Although the Constitution has no Article VIII, the administration acts as though there is one that reads: “Notwithstanding all that stuff in other articles about how laws are made, if a president finds a law politically inconvenient, he can simply post on the White House Web site a notice saying: Never mind.”

Never mind that the law stipulates 2014 as the year when employers with 50 full-time workers are mandated to offer them health-care coverage or pay fines. Instead, 2015 will be the year. Unless Democrats see a presidential election coming.

This lesson in the Obama administration’s approach to the rule of law is pertinent to the immigration bill, which at last count had 222 instances of a discretionary “may” and 153 of “waive.” Such language means that were the Senate bill to become law, the executive branch would be able to do pretty much as it pleases, even to the point of saying about almost anything: Never mind.

So much for Rule of Law.

UPDATE: “An Invitation To Fraud.” For the Obama administration, that’s not a bug, but a feature.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Want To Lose 8 Pounds In Five Days?

It’s funny reading Charlie’s stuff because by contrast my weight is really stable. I neither gain nor lose very easily, and tend to vary within a range of between 205 and 210. When we were in NYC I relaxed my low-carb diet — too much good pasta there — and exercised less (though I was walking several miles a day). Came back and I was at 212 (up from 209 when we left), but I think it was all carb-bloat because in a couple of days I was back at 209. My low-carb diet isn’t as rigorous as Charlie’s — basically, I just try to avoid carbs, especially breads and pastas. And I lift weights 3-4 times a week (sometimes 5) with some interval training mixed in. The result? A fitness level that’s “pretty good, for a law professor.” That’s good enough for me. Hey, if I’d weighed 100 pounds more and then lost it to be at this weight, I’d be ecstatic. With weight-loss, like quitting smoking, the best solution is to never need to do it, though that’s easier advice to propound than to put to use.

THE HILL: Obama channels his inner Al Gore in climate change messaging shift. Just don’t expect me to release your chakra, buddy.

IT’S AFFECTING FLIGHTS: Mexico volcano spits 2 mile-high ash cloud.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Anti-Americanism flares in Egypt as protests rage over Morsi’s ouster: Both pro-Morsi Islamists and the anti-Morsi Rebel group accuse the U.S. of supporting the other and allege elaborate conspiracies against Egypt.

Good thing we got rid of that dumb cowboy Bush. People in the mideast didn’t like him.

Related: Walter Russell Mead on Obama: Still Wrong About Egypt—and Wrong About the World. “Less study of the fine print of the Egyptian constitution, more concern about a strategically important country headed over Niagara Falls in a bucket, please.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS NO DOUBT LISTENING IN: Former NSA whistleblower calls for new American Revolution against surveillance state.

Related: Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables’ data for surveillance. “In months of private talks, the team of lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security demanded that the company maintain what amounted to an internal corporate cell of American citizens with government clearances. Among their jobs, documents show, was ensuring that surveillance requests got fulfilled quickly and confidentially. This ‘Network Security Agreement,’ signed in September 2003 by Global Crossing, became a model for other deals over the past decade as foreign investors increasingly acquired pieces of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure.”

Global Crossing, of course, went bankrupt, but not before enriching Democrat insiders like Terry McAuliffe. But it wasn’t the only company involved in this deal.

UPDATE: More on McAuliffe: “McAuliffe turned a $100K stock buy into $18M thanks to his relationship with the CEO of Internet firm Global Crossing. Shortly thereafter the company went bankrupt, the stock price collapsed and 10,000 employees lost their jobs.”

A REMINDER FROM MATT RIDLEY: Science Is About Evidence, Not Consensus.

Last week a friend chided me for not agreeing with the scientific consensus that climate change is likely to be dangerous. I responded that, according to polls, the “consensus” about climate change only extends to the propositions that it has been happening and is partly man-made, both of which I readily agree with. Forecasts show huge uncertainty.

Besides, science does not respect consensus. There was once widespread agreement about phlogiston (a nonexistent element said to be a crucial part of combustion), eugenics, the impossibility of continental drift, the idea that genes were made of protein (not DNA) and stomach ulcers were caused by stress, and so forth—all of which proved false. Science, Richard Feyman once said, is “the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

My friend objected that I seemed to follow the herd on matters like the reality of evolution and the safety of genetically modified crops, so why not on climate change? Ah, said I, but I don’t. I agree with the majority view on evolution, not because it is a majority view but because I have looked at evidence. It’s the data that convince me, not the existence of a consensus.

As it should be. After all, within my lifetime it was the “scientific consensus” that homosexuality is a mental disease.

OOPS: James Gandolfini’s Will Is A “Tax Disaster.”

UPDATE: Jay Brinker says the will’s bad, but the reporting on it is worse.

FIVE MYTHS about the killing of Trayvon Martin. Though given Zimmerman’s ancestry, when Trayvon said “[N-word] still following me” is literally correct, since Zimmerman is blacker than Homer Plessy. Which makes it even odder that the press has consistently treated this as a black-white affair when, in fact, nobody involved was white. On the other hand, that coverage let them gin up black turnout for 2012, helping Obama.

SECTARIAN VIOLENCE: Egypt: Coptic Christian priest shot dead. By Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers.

PEOPLE DO RESPOND TO INCENTIVES, YOU KNOW: Did Taxes Help Drive Dwight Howard to Sign With the Houston Rockets Rather Than the L.A. Lakers? However much people who don’t want to be constrained by those responses wish otherwise.

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ANN ALTHOUSE RESPONDS LESS DISMISSIVELY. But kind of social-connishly:

That’s true, and that is something that makes the proposal in my post not neatly about equality.

But there really can never be equality about pregnancy and childbirth. It is the woman’s special burden, and the policies have to be arranged to make sense around that basic inequity. I’m not trying to punish men by imposing a corresponding inequity, I’m just not impressed by the whinings of males who were profligate with their sperm. They are not the backbone of society.

The backbone of society is the married, committed couple who channel their sexuality into making and growing the next generation. Those who do other things are free to make choices, but we as a society have no reason to facilitate their choices, especially their destructive choices.

I know people like their free sex, but the expectation that the rest of us will save them from consequences is pathetic. I heartlessly laugh in their face.

What I think about that advice is immaterial, though on a prudential level “don’t sleep with people you don’t trust” or even “don’t sleep with people you wouldn’t want to be the father/mother of your children” is probably pretty good advice.

It’s also, of course, advice one dare not give to women in today’s society without facing a huge backlash. When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control, he was savaged. But to suggest that a man should pay child support for 18 years because a woman lied about birth control is fine. You can’t say “she should keep her legs closed,” but you can say, “he should keep it in his pants.” That’s fine.

Over the past several decades, women have asserted a right to make all the judgments in matters of gender and sexuality. And, in fact, we do “facilitate” destructive choices, when they’re by women. We subsidize unwed mothers, we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males, we give them all sorts of “choice” that men don’t have and then absolve them, culturally and legally, from judgment over the way they exercise those choices. No similar dispensation is given to men.

A society that ran according to Ann Althouse’s views on marriage and commitment might, in fact, be a better one than the one we live in now, but it is most definitely not the one we live in now. Observing that, and noting the unfairnesses involved, is not “victimology” — though given how successful women have been in obtaining power via victimology, no one should be surprised if men start to give it a try.

But I do not believe that women deserve a monopoly in determining what views on gender and sexuality and parenting are acceptable. Why would they?

What’s funny is that so many women seem genuinely perplexed that men would even dispute that monopoly. Ann is a thoughtful and open-minded and smart woman, but at some level I feel like she doesn’t really get it. But then, that’s what women have been saying to men on gender issues for decades: “You just don’t get it!” Maybe the not-getting goes both ways. The problem is, if society is to accomplish the goals that Ann sets out above, it needs to be a reasonably attractive proposition for both men and women. How are we doing with that? At the risk of stepping on my wife’s turf, I’d say not so well.

Meanwhile, before dismissing the fatherhood-by-fraud stories as urban legends, I do recommend my colleague Michael Higdon’s Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support. How often do they happen? I’d say they’re probably at least as common as abortions that are needed to save the life of the mother. So if you don’t want rare cases to drive the law . . . .

FINALLY: If things have gotten so bad that you have to shut down comments, I think I’ll end the volley.

I WAS ALWAYS TAUGHT TO THANK THE HOST OR HOSTESS, BUT APPARENTLY THAT’S ANOTHER OBSOLETE CUSTOM. Don’t say goodbye when leaving a party — just ghost.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Lessons From Egypt: Elections Are Not Democracy. Elections are necessary but not sufficient for a democratic republic. You also need limits on state power, and civil society. Frankly, what’s most impressive to me is how resilient and robust Egyptian civil society has been in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood’s clear effort to establish an Iran-style theocracy.

DISEASE WITHOUT A CURE: Valley Fever.

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THOMAS LIFSON ON THE IRS SCANDALS:

The Treasury Department on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the existence of an inspector general report investigating whether or not former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee illegally accessed tax information on the Koch brothers.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington Free Beacon, declined to acknowledge the existence of the report.

“With regard to your request for documents pertaining to a third party, TIGTA can neither admit nor deny the existence of responsive records,” said in its response. “Your request seeks access to the types of documents for which there is no public interest that outweighs the privacy interests established and protected by the FOIA (5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(7)(C) and (b)(6)).”

Former White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman Austan Goolsbee sparked a mini-scandal in 2010 when he told reporters during a background press briefing that Koch Industries-the company of libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch-paid no income taxes.

The American public deserves answers on this potentially serious scandal.

Maybe someone should ask Austan.

WAITING TO HEAR FROM SPACE ALIENS? “Maybe we just did.”