TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 199.

UKRAINE: Big Pro-EU March in Kiev. More here.

CLAY SHIRKY: Healthcare.gov and the Gulf Between Planning and Reality.

The idea that “failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers. That sentiment was invented by a screenwriter, riffing on an after-the-fact observation about Apollo 13; no one said it at the time. (If you ever say it, wash your mouth out with soap. If anyone ever says it to you, run.) Even NASA’s vaunted moonshot, so often referred to as the best of government innovation, tested with dozens of unmanned missions first, several of which failed outright.

Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.”

The management question, when trying anything new, is “When does reality trump planning?” For the officials overseeing Healthcare.gov, the preferred answer was “Never.” Every time there was a chance to create some sort of public experimentation, or even just some clarity about its methods and goals, the imperative was to avoid giving the opposition anything to criticize.

At the time, this probably seemed like a way of avoiding early failures. But the project’s managers weren’t avoiding those failures. They were saving them up. The actual site is worse—far worse—for not having early and aggressive testing. Even accepting the crassest possible political rationale for denying opponents a target, avoiding all public review before launch has given those opponents more to complain about than any amount of ongoing trial and error would have.

Indeed.

MARK STEYN: Knockouts High And Low: Without self-restraint, we slip toward barbarism. Self-restraint is not one of the hallmarks of our ruling class.

THIS IS A PLEASANT SURPRISE: Al Sharpton Condemns “Knockout” Attacks. “We would not be silent if it was the other way around. We cannot be silent or in any way reluctant to confront it when it is coming from our own community.”

HEH: Someone at NASA has a dry sense of humor. Okay, actually, according to NASA it’s a fake, but it’s still funny.

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SLATE: Centrists Should Mourn the Demise of the Filibuster: Only the extremists win—and in the end, mostly the Republicans.

Related: Krauthammer On Filibuster Change: “Democrats Will Absolutely Rue The Day.”

THIS SEEMS FAIR: Chemist who falsified drug tests in criminal cases goes to jail herself. Years ago when I was in college, a criminal lawyer told me he always had an outside lab redo forensic tests. He said a lot of people treated the FBI lab as a gold standard, but he got different results about half the time. State labs even more often. Seems about right.

ALFONZO RACHEL TO OPRAH: “How are a bunch of so-called racist white people making you rich while making Obama fail at the same time?”

A REVIEW of the Insta-Wife’s Men On Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters. “In the battle for women’s rights, has radical feminism achieved a Pyrrhic victory?”

EUGENE KONTOROVICH: The Obamacare ‘Fix’ Is Illegal. If the right weren’t light-years behind the left in lawfare, there would already be suits filed over this.

AS THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER WEAKENS WITH AMERICA’S RETREAT, THIS IS INEVITABLE: The Return Of The Soldier Of Fortune.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama Signs Deal To Keep U.S. Troops In Afghanistan Until 2024.

MICKEY KAUS? Why Did The Dems Go Nuclear Now? It’s About Jobs:

The D.C. Circuit, more than other circuits, is the central institution of America’s regulatory state, which is the basis for the booming economy of the entire National Capital area. Should this court become hostile to regulations, or capable of reviewing fewer of them, there might be correspondingly fewer reasons for corporations and other interests to hire connected D.C. lawyers to lobby government agencies to get the regulations they want, and to then defend those regulations when they’re challenged in court. And there’d be fewer reasons for young men and women to come to the capital to work in its agencies for a few years before moving into the private sector and becoming one of those lawyers corporations hire to manipulate the agencies they worked for.

Regulation is D.C.’s economic substructure, its mode of production, as Marx might say–even more so than legislation. Those big gleaming office buildings aren’t filled with Congressional lobbyists! They’re filled with administrative lawyers. Now, with a full 11 member court stacked to favor Democrats, there will be even more rules to litigate, more counsel to hire, more mansions to house them and restaurants to feed them. Whatever happens in the rest of America, the capital’s economic future is secure.

They should erect a statue of Harry Reid outside the Mazza Gallerie.

True enough.

POINTS & FIGURES: The Difference Between ObamaCare and Private Insurance.

GEORGE WILL: Obama’s Presidency Unravels Through Chaos and Crisis.

HARRISON SCHMITT: JFK And the Moon Decision. One thing not mentioned here is that Kennedy deliberately set up the Moon race as a way of diverting Cold War competition to a comparatively peaceful arena. A long time ago, when he was president of MIT, I spoke with former Kennedy space adviser Jerome Wiesner about this, and he noted that purpose and said he thought it was very astute of Kennedy, even though he had not been a big advocate at the time.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Brooklyn attack arrest: Is ‘knockout game’ a hate crime? Growing reports of the ‘knockout game’ are forcing police to take a closer look at racial motivations while also being careful to not spark copycat attacks.

WHICH IS WHY OBAMA LIED: Poll: If Voters Had Known They’d Lose Their Insurance, They’d Have Voted For Romney.

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I SUPPOSE SMOKING POT IS EXEMPTED: California Town Bans Smoking In Private Homes.

SO APPARENTLY WE’VE REACHED A NUCLEAR DEAL WITH IRAN. Obama will be on TV speaking about it at 10:15. Based on past experience, I’m skeptical that this will end well. But at least it’s a distraction from the ObamaCare debacle!

COUNTERING “EROTOPHOBIA:” Why the American Library Association Wants Porn In Libraries. Libraries are already being disintermediated to death. I can’t imagine that these attitudes, and the contempt for the public that they embody, will make taxpayers more likely to support them.

WHEN CORRECTING MINORITY STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ERRORS is racist “micro-aggression.” If you can’t take having your grammar errors corrected, you’re too dumb and immature to be in college, much less graduate school. Unsurprisingly, this was in the school of Education.