CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: House panels demand info on CFPB’s revolving door.

Two House committees are investigating former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials who now appear to be cashing in on their insider knowledge and contacts concerning mortgage underwriting rules they helped to write.

In a July 31 letter, leaders of the House Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded documents from CFPB concerning Rajeev Date.

As previously reported by the Washington Examiner, Date was formerly CFPB’s deputy director and had served at one time as its acting director. He resigned in January, then opened a consulting firm two months later called Fenway Summer that specializes in advising companies on CFPB-related matters.

Signers of the letter said they were concerned about “the appearance of impropriety in Mr. Date’s planned activities for Fenway” and denounced the “lack of transparency” in the agency’s rules concerning former employees.

Just another argument for my revolving-door surtax.

STEVE LONEGAN IS RUNNING FOR SENATE IN NEW JERSEY. I saw him speak back in June. I think he’d be a lot better than Cory Booker.

JAMES TARANTO: It’s Always Selma Again: On the cheapening of civil-rights history.

Jackson is not alone in seeking to trivialize civil-rights history. As Commentary’s Seth Mandel noted the other day, Rep. John Lewis–who suffered a fractured skull when a racist mob beat him on Bloody Sunday–in 2008 scurrilously likened the McCain campaign’s criticism of Barack Obama to the Birmingham church bombings. Lewis has a long history of similar comparisons, and his undisputed heroism 48 years ago does not excuse his inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric.

Some of the efforts to evoke the civil-rights movement today are downright laughable. The Washington Times–in a story reporting that the Smithsonian Institution is trying, no joke, to acquire the sweatshirt Trayvon Martin was wearing when George Zimmerman shot him in self-defense–reports: “The National Museum of African American History and Culture is set to open in 2015 and will display objects related to the Civil Rights Movement, such as the handcuffs used to restrain Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.”

Was Gates arrested at Selma? Unlikely, since he was 14 at the time. It’s a safe bet the event in question is the one that happened in Cambridge, Mass., in 2009, when Gates was trying to break into his own home and a passerby mistook him for a burglar and summoned police. This column sympathized with Gates. But to characterize the kerfuffle as “related to the Civil Rights Movement” is ludicrous.

Yes, but if you admit that Selma is in the past, people will have to rethink a lot of things. Including their own self-image. Meanwhile, a reminder from the real civil-rights era: Bull Connor was a member of the Democratic National Committee.

ED DRISCOLL ON THE CHATTANOOGA NEWSPAPER DEBACLE: Journalism in the 21st Century: Just Be Quiet, And You’ll Be OK. “In the world of the MSM, when a Democrat is in power, we must be a polite and docile palace guard. Breaking news that hurts Dear Leader — or even potential Dear Leader — must be buried, sharp edges must be sanded smooth.”

HURRICANE COLEMAN: Donald Boudreaux On The Death Of Detroit.

Chicago didn’t collapse when its once-booming stockyards closed as meat-packers moved to rural areas. Denver isn’t destroyed because it is no longer a mining town. And the shift of agriculture away from Silicon Valley obviously hasn’t impoverished that region.

The forces that laid Detroit low were hardly beyond human control. The rulers of that city, for example, (according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy) have imposed on Detroiters the highest effective rates of property taxation among America’s 50 largest municipalities. Property-tax rates there run about double the U.S. average – a fact that, by itself, goes far toward explaining why so much of Detroit’s landmass now lies abandoned and decrepit.

Lousy government can ruin anything. Just look at Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa.

I’M NOT SURE “VICTIM” IS THE RIGHT WORD HERE: Anthony Weiner’s Seattle Victim Muses Over His Serial Stupidity. The real sin? “Inadvertently boosting the credibility of Breitbart (RIP).”

I HOPE HE’LL BE ASKED A LOT OF QUESTIONS: Obama Nominates Turnaround Specialist, Former Freddie Mac Chair John Koskinen to be IRS Commissioner.

PRESIDENT ASTERISK: Did the President Win Re-Election by Violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

It’s widely agreed that Mitt Romney lost the race because the President’s base turned out in surprisingly large numbers, thanks in large part to the Obama campaign’s effective use of technology. That much we already knew. But now, thanks to Dan Balz’s “Collision 2012,” we’re beginning to learn exactly how the campaign used technology. And, as Michael Vatis, an alumnus of the Clinton Justice Department, persuasively argues, its key tactic was violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Here’s how the tactic apparently worked. Obama supporters logged on to both a campaign network and their Facebook account, allowing the campaign to search their Facebook network for likely Obama voters whom the campaign believed to be unmotivated or unregistered. Those voters would then get tailored messages from their Facebook friends urging them to register and turn out.

It’s clever. It’s the future. And it’s a violation of the CFAA. Facebook doesn’t let users share access to their accounts, and anything Facebook doesn’t authorize is very likely a federal crime. (Because Facebook is limiting access to information, not just use of information, the conduct was very likely criminal even under the more limited construction of the CFAA adopted in the Ninth Circuit.) . . . Given the importance of turnout to the result in 2012, and the computer crime prosecutors’ already controversial exercises of discretion, I think this issue will go mainstream. If the President even arguably won re-election by violating federal law or by getting special treatment from Facebook or federal prosecutors, half the country will want to know exactly how that happened. And I don’t see how the extraordinary discretion conferred by the CFAA can survive the storm that follows.

I’m sure Eric Holder’s DOJ will be right on it. I wonder if any civil suits are possible?

UPDATE: Speaking of asterisks, a rather major update and correction to the post: “Having talked in some detail with folks at Facebook, I’ve concluded that this post was just wrong.” Apparently, this was an authorized use of a separeate service, Facebook Platform, even though it would have violated Facebook’s terms of use.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Will David Ubben Blow Roof Off ‘Phony’ Benghazi Scandal?

The former commander of special operations in North Africa says he, like our president, was incommunicado during the Benghazi attack. We may soon hear from the hero who survived 20 hours waiting for help.

During the second wave of attacks on Benghazi, diplomatic security agent David Ubben was on the roof of the CIA annex with two former Navy SEALS. Eventually, several rounds of mortar attacks found their mark, killing Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty while shredding Ubben’s right leg.

Ubben was stuck on that rooftop for 20 hours before help finally arrived. He can tell us and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “what difference does it make”that help was not sent — at least two American lives. Ubben sustained injuries at Benghazi so severe he’s still being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The important thing is, they were able to keep it under wraps until after the election. And scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail.

MICHAEL BARONE: Forget The Old South: Trayvon Martin Was No Emmett Till. But if you see things as they are, you can’t engage in reflexive moral superiority, and bullying. Where’s the fun in that?

LEGAL ISSUES: Weiner didn’t declare costs for lavish 2010 wedding. “Anthony Weiner may have violated federal law when he failed to disclose his lavish six-figure wedding in his financial disclosure forms, says a government accountability group. . . . Abedin’s wedding dress may have been almost as expensive as the wedding. Made by world-famous designer and dressmaker to Hillary Clinton, Oscar de la Renta, the custom dress would have gone for over $50,000.”

THE DIPLOMAD: No More Conversations About Race. “When we hear calls to discuss race, those inevitably are about two races, really skin colors, in other words, black and white. That is a grotesque simplification and distortion of American reality. Those who self-identify as black Americans comprise a bit over 13% of our total population (see the US Census chart below). Depending on what you consider race, and liberals prove notoriously flexible on what they consider race–think Elizabeth Warren and George Zimmerman–self-identified Hispanic/Latinos come in just under 17%, not counting a large percent who consider themselves white. Asians make up over 5%. Another 2.4% report two or more races in their ancestry; I suspect that number is much higher in reality.”

The focus is on black and white so that people who lack the courage to buck any social consensus among their crowd can imagine that they’re the bold crusaders for justice of fifty years ago. In fact, these people would have been “all right in their place” types, right up until a different attitude became sufficiently fashionable.

“AN OLDER HIPPIE:” Millikin professor had dark secret: He killed his family 46 years ago. “After he was hospitalized for several years, he was found to be sane in 1974, later changed his name from Jim Wolcott, got his college degrees and joined the Millikin faculty.”

THE JOY OF outlasting your critics.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Dead air: US spends $24 million on anti-Castro TV nobody can watch.

JENNIFER ANNISTON: “What’s Katie Couric?”

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Fantasy & Science Fiction.

FLASHBACK: Jake Tapper: Remember when Rand Paul asked Hillary about gun running in Libya? “There’s little question there’s a massive, ongoing cover-up in progress: the question now is whether it’s motivated more by national security or by politics.”

Related: Hiding The Benghazi Survivors?

SWAT-HAPPY: Armed Agents Raid Animal Shelter For Baby Deer.

HMM: Employer Tipped Off Police To Pressure Cooker And Backpack Searches, Not Google.

NSA FUNDS BRITISH SPYING? Weaker regulation of British spies ‘a selling point’ for NSA.

HMM: Hacker Forces Colin Powell To Deny Affair. “Powell’s swift denial of an affair–especially one possibly conducted with an official of a foreign government while he served as America’s chief diplomat–was clearly prompted by the sensitive nature of the e-mails sent to his personal AOL account. And likely by a desire on Powell’s part to address any appearance of impropriety, especially in light of last year’s crash-and-burn by retired General David Petraeus.”

DANIEL HENNINGER: Obama’s Creeping Authoritarianism: Imposed law replaces checks and balances. “Every president since George Washington has felt frustration with the American system’s impediments to change. This president is done with Congress. The political left, historically inclined by ideological belief to public policy that is imposed rather than legislated, will support Mr. Obama’s expansion of authority. The rest of us should not. The U.S. has a system of checks and balances. Mr. Obama is rebalancing the system toward a national-leader model that is alien to the American tradition.”

A principle based on a national leader. There’s a word for that in German.

WHAT’S THIS “WE” BUSINESS? Why Do We Boycott ‘Ender’s Game’ But Give Roman Polanski An Oscar? The answer, of course, is that to “we” Polanski is one of “us,” but Orson Scott Card is one of “them.”

More thoughts on what that means. “Hollywood’s compassion is peculiarly narrow. They’re still trying to decide whether to forgive Elia Kazan for naming communists in Hollywood more than a half-century ago. Anal rape of a 13-year-old girl merits compassion, but there are limits.”

WELL, YES: McCain Concedes Immigration Reform Bill Won’t Gain GOP ‘A Single Hispanic Voter.’