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COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Jay Leno Interviewing Obama and Ted Cruz.

TO THE RIGHT KIND OF MIND, TRUTH IS INFINITELY MALLEABLE: “Unnerving:” Chuck Todd thinks Obama does not believe he lied.

SCOTUSBLOG is looking for recognition:

One of the most influential news outlets covering the Supreme Court sets up shop on big decision days not in the pressroom with other reporters, but in the court’s cafeteria.

The justices themselves read the award-winning SCOTUSblog, but unlike other media it has no official status in the marble courthouse.

This curious situation is attributable almost entirely to the unusual, if not unique, circumstances that surround SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein. The 43-year-old lawyer has made a career out of challenging the established way of doing things, first among Supreme Court advocates and more recently in its pressroom.

Goldstein is in the position of both making and reporting the news.

He is not just the founder, owner and publisher of SCOTUSblog, named for the acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States. He also argues before the court, comments on and analyzes news on MSNBC and is quoted widely in media accounts.

SCOTUSblog has gone from a failed marketing ploy designed to attract more business to the law firm Goldstein started with his wife, Amy Howe, to an indispensable aid to Supreme Court reporters and lawyers. The blog’s Twitter account has 144,000 followers.

The blog is so popular among Supreme Court watchers that it is now helping set the agenda for coverage of the institution.

They do good work. I think they deserve a spot in the pressroom as much as any other media outlet, and more than most.

“HE’D RATHER BE IN A LECTURE HALL.”

RIGHT NOW THEY’RE NOT DOING SO WELL AT THAT: Big Data Requires Big Trust. “Unless consumers trust a company with their personal data, most of the trillions of dollars of social and economic value promised from big data could remain untapped. The report estimates that two-thirds of the potential value could be lost if stakeholders fail to establish a trusted flow of personal data.”

JONATHAN SPYER: After The Pax Americana: Three factions vie for influence and dominance in the Middle East.

THERE’S NO JUSTICE, THERE’S JUST US: Family of Kidnapped Louisiana Woman Kills Abductor in Daring Rescue.

OOPS: How Does iPad Air Hold Up Against 5-Foot Drop? Not Well.

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WHAT’S MOST DANGEROUS ABOUT SLEEP DEPRIVATION: You won’t realize how tired you are. I can attest to that from personal experience.

HMM: A Rare New Bacterium Thrives In Spacecraft Cleanrooms.

OBAMACARE CONTRACEPTIVE MANDATE LOSES IN THE 7TH CIRCUIT. “We hold that the plaintiffs — the business owners and their companies — may challenge the mandate. We further hold that compelling them to cover those services substantially burdens their religious-exercise rights. Under RFRA the government must justify the burden under the standard of strict scrutiny. So far it has not done so, and we doubt that it can.”

TEST-DRIVING THE 2015 Audi S3.

SNOW CHAINS MADE EASY: A review of the Thule Easy-Fit chains. Winter is coming.

NEWS FROM 1813: Philadelphia voters elect a Whig to public office.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 184.

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: A Prosecutor Is Punished. “For what may be the first time on record, a former prosecutor in Texas is going to jail for failing to turn over exculpatory evidence in a murder trial. The 10-day jail sentence for the prosecutor, Ken Anderson, is insultingly short — the victim of his misconduct, Michael Morton, spent nearly 25 years in prison. But because prosecutors are so rarely held accountable for their misconduct, the sentence is remarkable nonetheless.”

KEITH HENNESSEY: “I didn’t think it was possible for Team Obama to make their problems with the individual insurance market any worse. I was wrong.”

VIDEO: Ted Cruz on Leno. I think he did well, though I can’t recall a Democrat ever being grilled this way.

ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE: The New Jewish Exodus.

Anti-semitism is reaching terrifyingly high levels in Europe. According to a new survey by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, almost half of the Jews in some European countries have considered emigration due to anti-semitism. . . .

Interestingly, the piece reports that European Jews tend to believe that anti-semitism is coming mostly from Muslim populations and from the European left-wing, not from the European right-wing. It appears that left-wing hostility to orthodox religion and to religious practices like circumcision is combining with Muslim anger about Israel, making the EU an increasingly unfriendly place for Jews. If these trends continue to gather momentum, we may soon see a significant minority of Jews leaving their home countries for more tolerant shores.

This is something that InstaPundit has been covering since the beginning. It’s only gotten worse. If I were Jewish, I’d be buying property in the U.S., or somewhere safe. Related archive item here.

CHANGE: Obama admits government — compared to the private sector — is far less capable of accomplishing anything on computers. “I love the combination of: 1. Barely able to articulate what the hell happens inside these computer systems, and 2. Wanting to leap! . . . It’s like a medieval torturer complaining to his victim about how difficult it is to use pilliwinks while the thumbscrews are on backorder.”

THEY’RE BANNING TRANSFATS NOW, but they used to tell us they were healthy. I wonder if somebody can sue the CSPI for browbeating McDonald’s into abandoning healthy beef tallow in favor of deadly vegetable oils for french fries?

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