IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Poll: Majority Think IRS Targeted Tea Party, Few Believe It Will Be Punished.

The majority of 1,000 likely American voters who participated in a recent survey say the IRS broke the law when it targeted the Tea Party, but few expect punishment

Fifty-three percent said they think the IRS broke the law when it targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups, but 24 percent disagree and 23 percent are not sure.

Just 17 percent believe it is even “somewhat likely” that criminal charges will be brought against any government employees for the IRS’ targeting of these groups, while 74 percent consider criminal charges unlikely, including 27 percent who say they are “not at all likely.”

Thirty-five percent think someone at IRS headquarters made the decision to target conservative groups, while 44 percent believe orders came from somebody who works in the White House and 20 percent are not sure.

Interesting to see the message get out, despite media footdragging. Also interesting to see the lack of faith in the justice system — which is, alas, merited, I’m afraid.

DEBT CEILING: James Taranto: Was Ted Kennedy A Terrorist? Obama, Nixon and the debt threat.

This columnist was no admirer of Ted Kennedy, and we view government efforts to control political speech as an affront to the Constitution. But it would be ludicrous to suggest that Kennedy was a terrorist, even though that is the implication of the Pfeiffer-Times-Yglesias argument. Agree or not with its cause, it had significant popular support, in large part because of the corruption of the Nixon White House.

Here is where the analogy to the Nixon years gets very interesting. The Republicans did not sneak into Congress to stage a surprise attack. They were duly elected in 2010 precisely because of widespread public opposition to ObamaCare. That law was enacted by the requisite majorities, if bare ones, in both houses of Congress. Yet while it was not illegitimate, it felt that way, and it would be fair to characterize its enactment as a failure of democratic governance. Had members of the House and Senate responded to their constituents’ wishes rather than presidential and partisan pressure, it would have gone down to defeat, probably overwhelmingly.

To be sure, backlash against ObamaCare did not prove sufficient to deny Obama a second term. His supporters claim that even if the 2010 election left the question of ObamaCare unsettled, the 2012 election resettled it. The morning after Election Day, it would have been hard to disagree.

Yet Obama is now in a position very much analogous to that of President Nixon in 1973. We now know that government corruption–namely IRS persecution of dissenters–was a factor in Obama’s re-election. To be sure, Obama himself has not, at least so far, been implicated in the IRS wrongdoing as Nixon ultimately was in Watergate. On the other hand, Nixon’s re-election victory was so overwhelming that no one could plausibly argue Watergate was a necessary condition for it. The idea that Obama could not have won without an abusive IRS is entirely plausible.

The Obama supporters who counsel intractability overlook the practical political risk of such an approach. Maybe Republicans will back down in the end, but maybe they won’t. That is to say, Obama’s intransigence could trigger a catastrophic result, and whether it does is beyond his control.

If that happens, maybe the majority of voters will blame Republicans, but maybe they won’t. Courting and then presiding over a catastrophe is not exactly a fail-safe plan for strengthening one’s presidency.

Obama’s line is “the Republicans are unreasonable because they won’t compromise — and neither will I!”

ED DRISCOLL OFFERS some HOPE for Shepard Fairey.

LAURENCE JARVIK: Al Gore’s Hate Speech Made Me Quit Brookings Email List. Jarvik writes:

Does Brookings want to arrest “political terrorists” now? Call in drone strikes? This rhetoric is simply beyond the pale of civilized discourse, a slippery slope of political dehumanization of the opposition.

As you know, Vice President Al Gore and the Republic survived a shutdown in the Clinton administration very nicely. There were shutdowns in the Carter administration, as well. It is called the congressional power of the purse.

After reading this email, I no longer have confidence in Brookings’ rationality, nor its commitment to civil political discourse.

Funny, not long ago we were being lectured on civility.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Worse Is the New Normal: Mid-20th-century assumptions of generational progress no longer obtain.

DIVIDER-IN-CHIEF: Obama slams Republican threats to ‘burn the house down.’ “In comments from the White House press briefing room, Obama reiterated he would not negotiate on the debt ceiling or relent to GOP demands to delay or defund his healthcare law in exchange for funding the government.”

He seems more willing to negotiate with the Iranians than with the Republicans. But this meme, seen on Facebook, suggests that threats of a government shutdown might not carry as much weight as he thinks, at least in some circles.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, THIS SORT OF THING WOULD HAPPEN: KKK wins lawsuit against bakery for discrimination.

UPDATE: Yeah, it’s a satire site. Though these days, how can you tell?

THOSE OLD FOLKS WITH MONEY HIDDEN IN MASON JARS AREN’T LOOKING SO CRAZY NOW: Cyprus-Style Wealth Confiscation Starting All Over The World. Funny how little press coverage this is getting.

ENTERTAINMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY: “Tragedy is when a woman or person of color feels disrespected or bullied. Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies.”

DO TELL: Shepard Fairey Says Obama Killed Hope.

CHANGE: Italian Men: Lotharios No More. Basically, they’re too broke to keep mistresses: “Those of my generation I know can barely afford one apartment, let alone two, nor have they ever been able to.”

SUBSIDIZING THE ONE PERCENT: Stimulus funds paid for trees in high-income Denver neighborhoods. I’m beginning to think all that class-warfare talk from Obama was a smokescreen to cover policies aimed at helping rich gentry-class types or something.

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HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? A Small President on the World Stage.

“We want American leadership,” said a member of a diplomatic delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he missed an old friend.

“In the past we have seen some America overreach,” said the prime minister of a Western democracy, in a conversation. “Now I think we are seeing America underreach.” He was referring not only to foreign policy but to economic policies, to the limits America has imposed on itself. He missed its old economic dynamism, its crazy, pioneering spirit toward wealth creation—the old belief that every American could invent something, get it to market, make a bundle, rise. The prime minister spoke of a great anxiety and his particular hope. The anxiety: “The biggest risk is not political but social. Wealthy societies with people who think wealth is a given, a birthright—they do not understand that we are in the fight of our lives with countries and nations set on displacing us. Wealth is earned. It is far from being a given. It cannot be taken for granted. The recession reminded us how quickly circumstances can change.” His hope? That the things that made America a giant—”so much entrepreneurialism and vision”—will, in time, fully re-emerge and jolt the country from the doldrums.

Yeah, well, I hope that too — but it’ll happen in spite of the crowd in the White House now, not because of them.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Why Are Science And Politics So Hard? “Complicated decision making is complicated. Trying to study how people make those decisions is even harder. . . . People across all points of the political spectrum like to pretend that there is some vast edifice called Science that is intended to arrive at Truth, but the reality is that science is a social process itself, carried out by human beings, with human motivations and frailties. I see no way around it — or rather I think all the other possibilities are worse. Part of that process is what I’ve called the ‘social contract of science’: the understanding that your work must be presented as clearly as possible, that you must make your data available for critical inspection, and that you expect your results to be examined with a critical eye and subject to robust debate. What Kahan’s and Nyhan’s papers may accidentally have done, though, is to call into question whether social science research of this kind can ever be done in a trustworthy way.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Seven Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Running.

BILL GATES: Control-Alt-Delete Was A Mistake.

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NEWS YOU CAN USE: If Chosen Wisely, Existing Drugs Fight Resistant Bugs. “Medical experts have been powerless to stop the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and are increasingly desperate to develop novel drugs. But a new study finds that smarter use of current antibiotics could offer a solution. Researchers were able to keep resistant bacteria from thriving by alternating antibiotics to specifically exploit the vulnerabilities that come along with resistance—a strategy that could extend the lifespan of existing drugs to continue fighting even the most persistent pathogens.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Second-Tier Law Schools Shrink As They Stubbornly Keep Tuition High.

FUNNY THAT THIS DIDN’T GET MUCH PRESS: Greenville Wal-Mart Shooter Picked Victims By Race. “A man who shot four people near a Greenville Wal-Mart in June picked out his victims because they were white, according to several indictments handed down against him.”

RETIRE COMFORTABLY ABROAD on less than $40 a day? “With the low cost of medicine, English-speaking retirement communities and affordable housing, many are heading to tropical destinations, including South America and Southeast Asia where it’s doable to live on less than $40 per day.”

LUMBER: Shades of Gibson Guitar: Lumber Liquidators Raided By Feds. So I’ve become cynical enough that my first thoughts were (1) Does the CEO, like Gibson’s, give mostly to Republicans? and (2) Is this because they advertise on Limbaugh? But I make no apologies for the cynicism; it’s been well-earned.

GOOD NEWS: Finding no life, but lots of water, on Mars. “Curiosity found concentrations of water in the martian soil as high as 2 percent by weight. At that rate, the scientists say, you could extract a couple of pints of water from every cubic foot of martian soil.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: 12 True Tales of Creepy NSA Cyberstalking. “It’s a fascinating look at what happens when the impulse that drives average netizens to look up long-ago ex-lovers on Facebook is mated with the power to fire up a wiretap with a few keystrokes. . . . Some of the abuses were referred to the Department of Justice, but none resulted in prosecution.”