JAMES TARANTO: Not-for-Profit Propaganda: What is the California Endowment? “This column does not think the Internal Revenue Service should take a punitive approach to the endowment’s propagandizing for semi-socialized medicine. . . . But it does underscore why the IRS’s abuse of grassroots conservative groups is so galling. ObamaCare was enacted in 2010 against overwhelming public opposition. This energized the Tea Party, which helped turn the 2010 elections into a referendum in which ObamaCare was resoundingly defeated. Obama’s re-election was another referendum on ObamaCare. That one he narrowly won–but as it turns out, the IRS was cheating on his behalf. The California Endowment’s pro-ObamaCare propaganda may be unobjectionable in itself, but the government’s systematic suppression of dissent lends another layer of illegitimacy to this monstrous law.”

A WHILE BACK I SUGGESTED TESTING ALL NEWBORNS FOR PATERNITY. MAYBE THAT WAS MORE THAN JUST A JOKE: Who’s Your Daddy? The perils of personal genomics. “The rise of personal genomics has not created this phenomenon, of course. Nonpaternity results can arise even in the course of routine medical testing. What happens if a doctor sees that a baby’s blood type could not have come from its father? (If the baby’s is AB and the father’s turns up O, the doctor knows that something is amiss.) In the last few decades, the medical establishment has decided that these findings should be concealed, to protect the mother’s privacy and avoid unnecessary harm.”

It has, has it? Isn’t that kind of maternalistic?

UPDATE: Reader Brett Deal emails:

Count me in as outraged that the medical establishment has taken upon itself the duty to aid women patients in defrauding men regarding paternity. This makes it guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud against an innocent man.

The concept of privacy does not include the right to engage in fraud. The intelligentsia should not be surprised that they are distrusted and despised when they operate from such criminal principles.

They know what’s best for you. Or for someone, anyway.

JOURNALISM: Bloomberg Reporters’ Tactics Become Crucial Issue for Company. “Interviews with more than 30 current and former Bloomberg employees paint a picture of an aggressive, hyperkinetic organization that not only tolerated but encouraged an unusual symbiotic relationship between the company’s news operation and its business interests, including the use of the terminals to break news.”

BIPARTISANSHIP: Alberto Gonzales Takes to Fox News to Defend Prism and Eric Holder: Here’s Why.

WHEN EMINENT DOMAIN OVERREACH HAS A HAPPY ENDING: Attempted Land Grab Ends With Voters Booting Entire City Council.

MAN SURVIVES NEARLY 3 DAYS in underwater capsized tugboat. “Once at the accident site, the divers discovered that the wreck was upside down, and the cook on board the Jascon 4 was indeed trapped in an air pocket in a still intact compartment. After 62 hours trapped in the air pocket, he was brought to the surface safe and well, by the divers from DCN.”

UPDATE: This story answers a question I had: After so long in an air pocket at depth, he had to spend a couple of days in a decompression chamber. I’d expect so. More here. I’m surprised the body-recovery diver whose arm he grabbed didn’t have a heart attack, though. . . .

JUSTICE: DoJ Delaying Prosecution of McConnell Bugger? Sure. He’s a Dem. Why prosecute him?

MICKEY KAUS: The Secret DUI Factor.

I’m told, by a reliable and well-placed source, that a good deal of the Democratic opposition to John Cornyn’s proposed amendment to the Gang of 8 bill has nothing to do with border security. It has to do with DUIs. Specifically, Cornyn’s amendment would bar illegal immigrants with misdemeanor DUI convictions from ”probationary” legal status, which is the immediate legalization offered by Marco Rubio, et al, to most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S.. For the pro-amnesty side, the exclusion of DUI offenders is apparently a deal-killer. There must be a lot of them!

Pro-Gang Democrats (and Republicans) understandably don’t want to publicize their DUI defense. DUI offenders are not an inherently popular group, and accidents in which undocumented immigrant drivers kill innocent civilians tend to be well publicized. It’s not a coincidence that Obama’s executive mini-amnesty of so-called “Dreamers”–issued before the 2012 election–claimed to exclude DUI offenders. But the broader Gang of 8 legislation, written after the election, allows two free misdemeanors–apparently including DUIs–before an illegal immigrant is disqualified.

Why such solicitude? You may well ask. (I am asking! — ed) And well you may!

IT SURE TOOK ‘EM A LONG TIME TO DECIDE THIS: NSA leaker Snowden is lying, say leaders of House Intelligence Committee. “Emerging from a hearing with NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), the senior Democrat on the panel, said Edward Snowden simply wasn’t in the position to access the content of the communications gathered under National Security Agency programs, as he’s claimed.”

I mean, shouldn’t they have known this within an hour or two?

PLANET-KILLERS! How the World Bank could slash its carbon emissions: Start flying in coach. “World Bank staff, who travel across the planet in their duties, are major users of business and first-class airplane seats. Staff at World Bank headquarters in Washington took more than 189,000 trips in 2009, totaling 447 million miles. Some 73.6 percent of those miles were in business class and another 6.9 percent in first class.”

Bah. Sacrifices are for the little people.

THE MORALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION: NYU reportedly ousts blind Chinese activist amid China campus deal. “NYU isn’t letting a pesky thing like human rights stand in the way of its expansion in China. The university has booted a blind Chinese political dissident from its campus under pressure from the Communist government as it builds a coveted branch in Shanghai, sources told The Post.”

A MAJOR PROBLEM FOR AMERICA: We don’t know how to employ geniuses.

CHANGE: Pro-gun Republican wins vacated Democrat seat in Connecticut.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: White House: Syria’s Assad used chemical weapons against rebels. “White House officials on Thursday said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons repeatedly against anti-government rebels, acknowledging the leader had crossed the ‘red line’ that President Obama said would warrant deeper U.S. intervention in the nation’s civil war.”

NEW YORK TIMES PUZZLED OVER GLOBAL WARMING WITHOUT ANY, YOU KNOW, ACTUAL WARMING. “The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists.” Nonsense. Add another epicycle or two and it all works out according to theory.

THIS WAS ALL OVER TWITTER: Maintenance Workers Safe After Scaffolding Stalls on Hearst Tower.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Nutrition & Wellness.

JUSTICE: Horrifying Video Of Alleged Sexual Assault While Family Court Judge Literally Looks The Other Way. “The video is safe for work, but again feels more like a snuff film than a courtroom video. You’re watching a helpless person get violated by the system in real time. . . . Doninger has been sitting on the bench for almost two years since this incident, with no investigation, review, or punishment for her disgraceful behavior caught on video.”

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZED CHILD ABUSE: Suspension over gun-shaped toaster pastry is now permanent mark on kid’s record. “This week brought more bad news for Joshua Welch, the Baltimore-area second-grader who was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a breakfast pastry into something resembling a gun. School officials have denied an appeal to have the suspension expunged from the boy’s permanent record, reports The Baltimore Sun.”

WHAT’S WORSE? THE NSA SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS? Or “the fact that the leaks about them have caused normally reasonable people to publicly commit themselves to so many strange notions in a desperate attempt to defend the Obama administration…”

Well, what people are willing to do in a desperate attempt to defend the Obama administration is educational, and unmasks a lot of “normally reasonable people” as not being so reasonable after all.

IF THEY’RE INNOCENT, THEY SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE: Rep. Stockman requests subpoena of NSA’s, White House, IRS phone logs.

WHY DOES BILL MAHER hate special-needs kids?

DAVID PLOTZ ON the friends you never see after your wedding.

BRANNON DENNING’S PAPER ON STATE RESTRICTIONS ON OUT-OF-STATE POT PURCHASES gets a nice writeup from Jacob Sullum in Reason.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals on Toys.