WELCOME TO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Beware The Tyranny Of Choice. “When I speak about the ‘tyranny of choice,’ I mean an ideology that originates in the era of post-industrial capitalism. It began with the American Dream — the idea of the self-made man, who works his way up from rags to riches. By and by, this career concept developed into a universal life philosophy. Today we believe we should be able to choose everything: the way we live, the way we look, even when it comes to the coffee we buy, we constantly need to weigh our decision. That is extremely unhealthy.”

This is a very uninteresting treatment. I wrote a more interesting one in the Yale Law Report two decades ago. But my version has math — an actual model! — which is too much to expect from a neo-Lacanian, I suppose.

POLITICO: IRS Scandal: Daniel Werfel slammed for ‘incomplete’ report.

NOW THAT THE FEDS ARE CALLING JOURNALISTS CONSPIRATORS, DO THEY HAVE INFORMANTS IN NEWSROOMS? FBI Paid Off Wikileaks Insider To Be An Informant: Imagine If It Was The NY Times. Pay ’em off, blackmail ’em with trumped-up charges, whatever.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Hair Solutions Center.

Also, today only: 50% Off Yesterday’s Prices: Invicta Men’s Watch Sets.

MY PIECE IN TODAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL: What’s Really ‘Immoral’ About Student Loans: It’s not so much the interest rates charged. It is, rather, the principal of the thing.

NO. STAY OUT OF TENNESSEE! UAW ate Detroit: Chattanooga could be its next meal.

LEAKY: Obama’s ‘Favorite General’ May Be the Latest Leaker. “A senior Obama administration official told the Washington Post that the former deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is being investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly leaking information about the computer virus Stuxnet, which was part of the Olympic Games campaign. In a front page story in June 2012, the New York Times revealed that the joint U.S.-Israeli effort was accelerated by Obama, and set Iran’s nuclear program back by up to two years.”

They don’t seem to be running a very tight ship, do they?

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Nearly 1,200 people have starved to death in NHS hospitals because ‘nurses are too busy to feed patients.’

ANGER MANAGEMENT: Alec Baldwin threatens ‘toxic little queen’ reporter in epic Twitter rant.

JAMES TARANTO DISASSEMBLES CLAIRE MCCASKILL: False Witness: In the war on men, truth is the first casualty.

The good news is that we have succeeded in reframing the debate. The headline at the Daily Beast (née Newsweek) is a defensive denial: “There Is No War on Men: Claire McCaskill Replies to James Taranto.”

The bad news is that McCaskill continues her war on Gen. Susan Helms, President Obama’s nominee to serve as vice commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command. Helms committed an “error,” according to McCaskill, in granting clemency to an officer under her command.

A court-martial panel (which McCaskill calls a “jury”) had convicted Capt. Matthew Herrera of aggravated sexual assault. After reviewing the case, Helms concluded that the verdict was unjust. She accepted a guilty plea to an “indecent act,” as a result of which Herrera was involuntarily discharged from the service, but not stigmatized for life as a “sex offender.”

Our review of the facts convinced us that Helms’s decision was just and proper. McCaskill evidently disagrees, and she is entitled to her opinion. But the senior senator from Missouri seems to be under the impression that she is entitled to her own facts.

Not surprising.

CHARLIE MARTIN: The Science Of What Is And Isn’t Happening With The NSA’s Phone Surveillance.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ FOR YA? (CONT’D): Ecuador to US: Take your trade and shove it.

WAS THE NSA METADATA DRAGNET a criminal act? “The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.”

In Obamerica, what’s not explicitly forbidden to the government is permitted, and what’s not explicitly permitted to the citizenry is . . . .

ROLL CALL: Democrats’ Split on Student Loans Breaks Into the Open.

FLASHBACK: U.N. Poll Watchers Baffled U.S. Doesn’t Require I.D. to Vote.

EGYPT: Angry Luxor set to join Egyptian revolt this weekend.

In Luxor, protests erupted last week when Morsy named Adel Al Khayat, a leading Gama’a Islamiyya figure, as the local governor; Al Khayat withdrew when residents barred his office door and burned tires in the street.

Many here resented his connection to the group behind the 1997 massacre. Many believe his selection reflected an Islamist assault on tourism, near collapse since Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

In the past, Hassan says, 20,000 tourists visited Luxor daily. “Now we are lucky to get 400, 500.” Only five of the normal 320 tourist cruise ships sail the Nile, according to guides.

Hassan calls out to a fellow guide, Adel Asad, to ask his opinion about the state of things. “Luxor is dead,” Asad yells back, and the ousted governor “is an idiot, like the president.”

That’s a sentiment heard often here.

When you import half your calories, and tourism is your main source of foreign exchange, putting a tourist-killing terrorist in office probably hurts business more than you can afford. I admire the locals’ spirit of resistance, though.

HISTORIANS PROTECTING THE NARRATIVE:

The hole is one of the features Coly planned to show Obama. The other is the door facing the open water, the so-called Door of No Return through which the shackled men, women and children left Africa, inching across a plank to the hull of a waiting ship. Like with previous tour groups, the curator planned to ask Obama to stand before the open door and contemplate the view, the slaves’ last glimpse of Africa, he claims.

The problem though is that historians say the door faced the ocean so that the inhabitants of the house could chuck their garbage into the water, the preferred means of waste disposal in preindustrial Senegal. No slaves ever boarded a ship through it, they say, because no vessel could have sailed through the rocky shoal that surrounds that edge of the island.

And while the house may have housed slaves, they were likely those belonging to the family who lived there, rather than slaves intended for the trans-Atlantic passage, according to numerous publications as well as three historians of the slave trade interviewed by The Associated Press.

Even though historians have debunked the memorial, calling it a local invention, and despite reams of scholarly articles, treatises and books discussing its dubious historical role, the pink building has become the de facto emblem of slavery. It’s the place where world leaders go to acknowledge this dark chapter and in addition to Obama, the museum has hosted former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush and Pope John Paul II. Its guestbook is bursting with the emotional messages from African-Americans who made their own pilgrimage here in an effort to make peace with their ancestors’ roots.

“There are literally no historians who believe the Slave House is what they’re claiming it to be, or that believe Goree was statistically significant in terms of the slave trade,” says historian Ralph Austen, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago who is the author of several articles on the issue. “The debate for us is how loudly should we denounce it?”

Is that really an issue?

IS IT TRUE THAT “BOYS DON’T READ?” Or is it just true that they don’t read books for girls? “Boys don’t read, on the whole, about sparkly vampires or angsty teen problems. They want stories that speak to them. Adventure and fun and characters they can identify with. (Sound familiar?) So they turn to other options, manga being just one of them. But the publishing powers that be fail to recognize that fact.” And to video games, which have overrun both movies and books in terms of appeal to boys.

WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO LOOK MORE SERIOUSLY AT THE MOSAIC THEORY: License-plate readers let police collect millions of records on drivers.

The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.

That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.” The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.

At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.

Prediction: It’ll be used more to stalk political enemies and law enforcement officers’ romantic interests than to solve crimes. More on the “mosaic theory” here.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, PEOPLE WHO CRITICIZED BIG BANKS WOULD BE JAILED: And They Were Right!

Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.

According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism.

In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children’s chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south.

The Reader reports that Olson’s hearing had gone as poorly as his attorney might have expected, with Judge Howard Shore, who is presiding over the case, granting Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard’s motion to prohibit attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the United States’ fundamental First Amendment rights.

“The State’s Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights,” ruled Judge Shore on Tuesday.

Welcome to Obamerica, where only state-sponsored dissent is protected.

FASTER, PLEASE: No More Chemo: Doctors Say It’s Not So Far-Fetched. “I think we are definitely moving farther and farther away from chemotherapy, and more toward molecularly targeted therapy.”

IT’S NOT JUST UBER: Taxi Alternatives Are On The Move. “Consumers love the alternative ride services. They get more choices for getting around, often at lower rates, and with the ease of an app. They can follow their drivers via a map shown in the app, call them if they need to, and pay via the app — no cash or credit cards need to be exchanged.”

Existing taxi services don’t like the competition, though.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days.

CANADA — “IT’S JUST LIKE NAZI GERMANY.” ‘Hell to pay:’ Residents angry as RCMP seize guns from High River homes.

RCMP revealed Thursday that officers have seized a “substantial amount” of firearms from homes in the evacuated town of High River.

“We just want to make sure that all of those things are in a spot that we control, simply because of what they are,” said Sgt. Brian Topham.

“People have a significant amount of money invested in firearms … so we put them in a place that we control and that they’re safe.”

That news didn’t sit well with a crowd of frustrated residents who had planned to breach a police checkpoint northwest of the town as an evacuation order stretched into its eighth day.

“I find that absolutely incredible that they have the right to go into a person’s belongings out of their home,” said resident Brenda Lackey, after learning Mounties have been taking residents’ guns. “When people find out about this there’s going to be untold hell to pay.” . . .

Officers laid down a spike belt to stop anyone from attempting to drive past the blockade. That action sent the crowd of residents into a rage.

“What’s next? Tear gas?” shouted one resident.

“It’s just like Nazi Germany, just taking orders,” shouted another.

“This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms,” said Charles Timpano, pointing to the group of Mounties.

Read the whole thing.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Some Things Are Beyond Punishment. If we’re going to be irrationally punitive, let’s aim it at politicians. Somehow there’s always plenty of compassion from the system when they go wrong.