#WARONMEN: Girls commit dating violence as often as boys, studies show. “More girls – 43 percent – than boys – 28 percent – reported committing an act of physical dating violence, said researchers who are presenting their findings beginning Wednesday at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON the peculiar state of the War On Terror. “Al-Qaeda, far from being hunkered down in caves, is holding conference calls. . . . The conference among ‘far-flung operatives’ was an amazing achievement for an organization already declared dead and buried. . . . It’s like Versailles in the days of Louis the XIV: the inmates cannot conceive that an external universe exists, one in which another sun shines more brightly than the Sun King. . . . While a person untutored in the ways of Washington might conclude that recent events show President Obama is in the last stages of losing the vestiges of American influence in the Middle East, passively watching the rearmament of Japan, haplessly presiding over the resurrection of the Cold War, and being driven back by al-Qaeda into a static defense of the homeland, this cannot possibly be true: the Beltway pundits have decreed otherwise. None of these bad things is yet fait accompli, but if any are to be avoided, the political establishment has to acquire a degree of intellectual honesty and vision which it has so far conspicuously lacked. They at least have to start calling things by their proper names.”

DISAGREEING WITH FOUAD AJAMI’S PIECE FROM YESTERDAY, reader Miriam Mendelson writes: “I am currently in Egypt, the national mood is cautiously hopeful, not foul, and there is no great schism. The feeling of freedom pervades and is palpable in the air.”

PATRICK HYNES: Rand Paul vs. Chris Christie, A New Hampshire Cage Match.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 91.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Did Obama officials lie to lawmakers about the status of the ObamaCare data hub?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: “You just always have to be able to at least earn enough so you can support yourself.”

DOES THIS MEAN THAT MICHELLE OBAMA IS ANTI-DIVERSITY? Fat-Shaming Professor Faces Censure.

Bringing training to the entire university is an important step, said Sondra Solovay, who is the director of an company that trains higher education clients in harassment and discrimination prevention and who is also a law professor at San Francisco Law School.

However, she noted that “obesity” is a word that may create stigma. Faculty members need to think about weight as a “diversity issue,” she said.

It’s come to this.

REUTERS: IRS Manual Detailed DEA’s Use Of Hidden Intel Evidence. “Details of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by agents of the Internal Revenue Service for two years. The practice of recreating the investigative trail, highly criticized by former prosecutors and defense lawyers after Reuters reported it this week, is now under review by the Justice Department.”

SPYING: N.S.A. Sifting Broader Set of Data Crossing U.S. Border.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Public-School Advocate Matt Damon Enrolls Kids In Private School.

AT AMAZON, Outlet Deals On Clothing, for men, women & children.

Also, today only: Save 57% or More on Select Bosch Accessories.

STUDENT DEBT: Another call for colleges to have “skin in the game.”

I’D LIKE TO SEE IT ABOLISHED: The Sacrosanct Mortgage Interest Deduction.

JAMES TARANTO: Great Orator Gaffes Again: One comment makes him akin to Akin.

“The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately,” President Obama told NBC’s Jay Leno last night.

Wait, “unfortunately”? Does the president really wish more Americans were killed in terrorist attacks? Indeed, orders of magnitude more, since nationwide traffic fatalities typically run between 30,000 and 50,000 a year?

Of course not. Obviously when he deployed that adverb he was thinking of the unfortunate souls killed in car accidents, not the victims of terrorism. He simply misspoke–just as Todd Akin did last year when he used the unfortunate phrase “legitimate rape.” But for some reason, the World’s Greatest Orator and the most powerful man in the world is held to lower standards of verbal exactitude than a lowly congressman from Missouri.

That wasn’t Obama’s only error last night on “The Tonight Show.” He also got flummoxed by geography: “The Panama [Canal] is being widened so that these big supertankers can come in. Now, that will be finished in 2015. If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf–places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida–if we don’t do that, those ships are going to go someplace else.”

There are major ports along the Gulf of Mexico, most notably the Port of South Louisiana and the Port of Houston. But Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville are all on the Atlantic coast.

Read the whole thing. Why does he get a pass? Because he’s a black Democrat, of course.

YES, BUT DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH: Can NSA Director Keith Alexander Explain His Contradictory Claims?

#WARONWOMEN: Flashback: Bill Clinton endorsed Bob Filner for San Diego Mayor in 2012.

BECAUSE SHUT UP: Why are homicide laws different for women & men?

INSPECTOR GENERAL TO INVESTIGATE charges of IRS/FEC targeting coordination.

BATTLESPACE PREPARATION: Clinton Machine Out To Re-Destroy Monica Lewinsky Before 2016.

HACK JOURNALISM, EASTERN-BLOC EDITION: American ‘Execution’ Photos Published by Chinese State Media Actually From Porn Fetish Video.

But, you know, they’re just following in the footsteps of the Boston Globe, which ran fake photos of American soldiers raping Iraqi women that were actually from a porn site. Does this mean Chinese state media will see their market value drop by 93% over the next decade? Quite possibly . . . .

IT’S INSTAPUNDIT’S 12TH BLOGGIVERSARY TODAY. Here’s the first post.

I’M SURE THEY’LL GET RIGHT TO THE BOTTOM OF IT: US drug agency surveillance unit to be investigated by Department of Justice: Civil rights groups express concern after revelations that secret unit conceals use of wiretaps and telephone records.

HOW JOURNALISM “PROFESSIONALS” KILLED THE WASHINGTON POST.

Plus, how the Huffington Post “mainly survives by Internet trickery and sleight of mouse.”