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INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: As Gas Prices Spike, Obama Recycles Failed Policies.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Board of Regents to Investigate $5.5 Million in Forgivable Loans to University of Texas Law Profs.

SO I’VE HEARD A LOT OF TRIUMPHANT SCHADENFREUDE, OR WHATEVER YOU CALL IT, about how Iraq was an obvious disaster and it’ll change American foreign policy forever. But then there’s this: Poll: Americans Prepared for Military Action Against Iran. “According to a new Pew poll, 64 percent of Americans believe that it’s ‘more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons than to avoid a military conflict.’ They point out that ‘majorities across nearly all demographic groups’ agree — 80 percent of Republicans prioritized preventing a nuclear Iran over avoiding military conflict, but a majority of Democrats, 62 percent, did too.”

The good news is that with Barack Obama belatedly following my Iran recommendations it may not come to that.

SHOULD’VE SUPRISED THEM AND PASSED IT: The Hill: Dems force GOP to vote down RSC budget. “Democrats voted present to force more Republicans to vote against the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) budget. Democrats hoped that by getting their members to vote present instead of against the budget, it might be approved by the House. That would have allowed Democrats to train their campaign ads on the RSC budget, which would boost the Social Security age to 70 and cut Medicare benefits, including for people now 59 years old. The RSC blueprint would balance the budget in four years.”

Quelle horreur!

Related: Bipartisanship: House rejects Senate Democrats’ budget, with the help of 35 Democrats.

LINE: “Illegal immigrants are to immigration what shoplifters are to shopping.”

SHERIFF: Homeowner’s Gun Was Key to Saving His and Wife’s Lives from Home Invaders.

TAXES ARE OBSOLETE! Why Not Just Put the Entire Federal Budget on Credit?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Taming college inflation shows up on public agenda.

JAMES TARANTO: A Defeat for Demagogy: The failure of the “assault weapons” ban should make Americans proud.

ECONOMIST: State Governments vs. Federal Government: The America That Works.

In May the greatest nation will hit its debt ceiling; unless it is raised, Uncle Sam will soon start defaulting on his bills.

This is the America that China’s leaders laugh at, and the rest of the democratic world despairs of. Its debt is rising, its population is ageing in a budget-threatening way, its schools are mediocre by international standards, its infrastructure rickety, its regulations dense, its tax code byzantine, its immigration system hare-brained—and it has fallen from first position in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings to seventh in just four years. Last year both Mr Obama and his election opponent, Mitt Romney, complained about the American dream slipping away. Today, the country’s main businesses sit on nearly $2 trillion in cash, afraid to invest in part because corporate bosses cannot imagine any of Washington’s feuding partisans fixing anything.

Yet there is also another America, where things work. . . . Pressed for cash, states are adopting sweeping reforms as they vie to attract investments and migrants. Louisiana and Nebraska want to abolish corporate and personal income taxes. Kansas has created a post called “the Repealer” to get rid of red tape and pays a “bounty” to high schools for every vocational qualification their students earn in certain fields; Ohio has privatised its economic-development agency; Virginia has just reformed its petrol-tax system. In this second, can-do America, creative policymaking is being applied to the very problems Congress runs away from.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Nine Percent of Yale Students Surveyed Say They’ve Accepted Money for Sex. “Nine percent of Yale University students who participated in a recent survey on sexual behavior reported having been paid for sex at least once. Three percent said they had participated in bestiality, and more than half said they had ‘engaged in consensual pain’ during sex.”

MICKEY KAUS: Where Are The Anti-Amnesty Democrats? “Are there really no Democrats left in Congress like Sen. Byron Dorgan, the ‘prairie populist’ who helped torpedo immigration amnesty in 2007? Dorgan worried about the effects of an influx of low-skilled immigrants on wages and jobs. His arguments then are still powerful now–but the strategic advantage of playing the Latino ethnic card seems to have trumped concern for low-skilled workers among 100% of today’s Democrats. (‘Screw ’em–they’re losers in today’s global free trade system anyway!’)”

BIG BROTHER IS READING YOUR TWEETS: Teenager arrested for tweeting rap lyric containing the word “homicide.” They weren’t there for the actual crime, but they’re hell on people who tweet about it.

WAIT, IS THAT ALLOWED? An article about gender, written by a man. Well, it’s allowed if it basically says that women are better than men, anyway.

THIS WORKED OUT SO WELL LAST TIME: Jay Leno reported out at the Tonight Show.

DEEP THROAT STAR HARRY REEMS has died.

AT AMAZON, up to 60% off on Men’s Shoes.

TAR. FEATHERS. Family’s Home Raided over Facebook Photo of Child’s Rifle.

New Jersey police and Dept. of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

“Someone called family services about the photo,” said Evan Nappen, an attorney representing Shawn Moore. “It led to an incredible, heavy-handed raid on his house. They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house. They even threatened to take his kids.”

Moore was not arrested or charged.

I hope that he sues, and I hope that the names of the officials involved are publicized far and wide. Along with pictures with the word “Idiot” on their foreheads posted in their neighborhoods. I’m very glad that he told them to get lost when they couldn’t produce a warrant.

YEAH, BUT AFTER THE ASSAULT-WEAPONS THING TODAY, I’M FEELING A STRANGE NEW RESPECT FOR HIM: Talk show host Mark Levin blasts Sen. Harry Reid: ‘Vicious stupid man.’

I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Can Video Games Teach Your Daughter Not To Marry A Loser?

HIGHER EDUCATION: Stanford Axes ‘Moral Foundations of Capitalism’ Class. “There was a huge demand for the class … with students sitting on the floor outside, trying to get in.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Backroom Financial Dealings of a Top University: Jack Lew, 146 Others, Got $72 Million in Lavish Loans from NYU.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before due to a cut-and-paste error. Sorry! This isn’t actually the same one above, but it’s the same story.

CHANGE: After the Aircraft Carrier: 3 Alternatives to the Navy’s Vulnerable Flattops.

The U.S. Navy’s huge, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers — capital ships that have long dominated military planning and budgeting — are slowly becoming obsolete, weighed down by escalating costs, inefficiency and vulnerability to the latest enemy weapons.

But if the supercarrier is sinking, what could rise to take its place? Smaller, cheaper flattops; modified tanker ships; and missile-hauling submarines are three cheaper, more efficient and arguably more resilient options.

And drones, of course. Always the drones.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD GO BACK TO BUTTON-FLY PANTS: ‘Zip-related genital injuries’ send thousands of men to ER each year. Or Velcro. There’s a ZZ Top song about that . . . .