ANOTHER LAYER IN THE ONION OF FAIL: Connecticut Obamacare Exchange, Praised in Rose Garden, Gave Wrong Info for Every Single Individual Plan: And the state was aware of the problems a full month before Obama’s speech.

POLLS: Americans Think Better Mental Health Services, Better Parenting and Armed Guards are More Likely Than Gun Control to Stop a School Shooting.

Related: Stricter Gun Control Laws Won’t Prevent Criminals From Getting Guns, Say 63% of Americans.

STANDING UP TO BIG WIND: “One admirable exception to the Wind Belt political rule is Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo, who keeps reminding fellow Republicans that they claim to oppose corporate welfare. Last month he collected 52 House signatures on a letter to Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, noting that the tax credit undermines GOP efforts to reform the tax code and should be allowed to expire.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Chief Judge For 9th Circuit Cites “Epidemic” Of Prosecutor Misconduct.

I’ve had some thoughts on the subject myself.

PEELING THE ONION OF FAIL (CONT’D): ObamaCare “enrollees” don’t seem to be actually paying for their insurance.

UPDATE: Another layer: Obamacare forcing 14 percent cut in Medicare’s home health care program.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 217.

MICKEY KAUS: “The Obama Administration continues to blaze new paths to corporatism (the cozy alliance of government with a few big businesses in each industry to the exclusion of smaller players).” All in the name of helping the little guy, of course. But wait, there’s a downside:

Obama’s second, FDA-style form of corporatism might ironically pose a serious threat to the Washington economy. After all, if all regulations are hashed out informally around a table between regulators, a few oligopolists and industry trade associations**-well, will we need so many lawyers to litigate rules in formal, quasi-judicial agency proceedings, and then to sue to get them overturned in court? Covington & Burling could lay off half its partners.

¡No Pasarán!

MEGAN MCARDLE: Republicans Get The Better End Of The Budget Deal.

Yesterday, Republican Representative Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray announced a mini budget deal. Two interesting things to note: It is a better deal for Republicans than Democrats. And at the moment, Republicans seem more upset about it than Democrats are.

They’re upset because the deal provides temporary relief from some sequestration cuts — about half of the scheduled cuts in 2014, and less than that in 2015. Last night, I heard a powerful conservative activist argue that all in all, this is a good deal for Republicans: The cuts it locks in are matters of law, not discretionary, so Republicans won’t get rolled in the 2016 appropriation process the way that Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush did. Nonetheless, rumor has it that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t vote for it.

Sequestration was a major tactical error by Democrats, who thought that they were safe in agreeing to domestic discretionary spending cuts as long as those cuts were paired with defense cuts; eventually, everyone would go back to the negotiating table and undo both. It turns out that Republicans aren’t as attached to huge military spending as they used to be, which seemed obvious to me even at the time that deal was made. Republicans are very happy to see defense cuts if they also guarantee cuts in other parts of government. That gave them a strong hand in the negotiations, and that’s why they came out with more than Democrats did: some relief on the cuts, but no new taxes or spending increases such as further extending unemployment benefits.

But if they do nothing at all, many reason, they get all the sequestration cuts. Why trade them away?

To avoid another showdown. Though I, too, would like government to shrink, I think this is the right policy trade-off; shutdowns are making it harder and harder to talk about rational budget policy in this town. And tactically, I think this is a clear win for the Republican Party. The last thing they need right now is to take the focus off the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and revive Obama’s flagging poll numbers with an ill-timed budget battle. Their best shot at a budget they really like is, after all, to retake the Senate in 2014.

I think that’s right. I think the problem is that a lot of the grassroots don’t trust the GOP leadership to do that. The leadership might want to think about what it can do to build such trust.

CATHY YOUNG: “Rape Culture” And Free Speech. Like “mansplaining,” the term “rape culture” is now just a functional synonym for “anything a woman disagrees with.” It need be taken no more seriously. Particularly as American/Western culture is among the least-rapey in the world, or in history.

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PEELING THE ONION OF FAIL (CONT’D): Hacker Says ObamaCare Website Security Still Not Fixed.

Another layer: Vote of Confidence: Hill Staffers Warned Not to Rely on Info From ObamaCare Exchange.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Juking the ObamaCare Stats: HHS won’t disclose the enrollment data that really matter.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Colleges can’t ban guns, rules Florida court in major 2nd Amendment victory.

REALITY CHECK: Obama On The IRS Scandal.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obamacare’s rocky rollout improves Republicans’ 2014 outlook. But don’t get cocky, kids.

JAMES TARANTO: Free Hunter Yelton: Meet the littlest casualty in the war on men.

Hunter Yelton of Cañon City, Colo., is accused of sexual harassment. Hunter Yelton is 6 years old and in the first grade. “He has a crush on a girl at school, who likes him back,” reports Colorado Springs’ KRDO-TV. “It may sound innocent enough,” the station intones. But in Barack Obama’s America, even a small boy can become a sexual suspect.

“It was during class yeah,” Hunter tells the station. “We were doing reading group and I leaned over and kissed her on the hand. That’s what happened.” His mother continues explaining:

“[The girl] was fine with it, they are ‘boyfriend and girlfriend.’ The other children saw it and went to the music teacher. That was the day I had the meeting with the principal, where she first said ‘sexual harassment.’ This is taking it to an extreme that doesn’t need to be met with a six year old. Now my son is asking questions . . . what is sex mommy? That should not ever be said, sex. Not in a sentence with a six year old,” said Hunters’ [sic] mom, Jennifer Saunders.

Hunter spent Monday at home, under suspension from school. The school-district superintendent says, in KRDO’s paraphrase, that “Hunters’ [sic] actions fit the school policy description of ‘sexual harassment.’ . . . The school district also says Hunters’ [sic] parents may believe that kissing the girl at school is overall acceptable–but that’s where the school disagrees.”

Clearly buffoons are in charge of the school and the district, but what does that have to do with Obama? The answer is that these buffoons are following orders from Washington.

And the buffoon-in-chief. Another reason to look at alternatives to public schools. Taranto concludes:

As amusing as the story of Hunter Yelton is, however, it is an example of a dire and widespread problem. “Sexual harassment” rules are ostensibly sex-neutral, but in practice they are used primarily to police male behavior. Feminists like Hanna Rosin note with triumph that girls and women do better in school than their male counterparts. One reason is that normal female behavior is seldom stigmatized or punished in the name of “civil rights.”

And while college “justice” is often downright oppressive, the excesses of contemporary feminism know no age limits. As the story of Hunter Yelton demonstrates, the war on men is also a war on little boys.

Well, little boys are cute, but they grow up to become those nasty men, you know. Nits make lice, as they say.

Related: Criminalizing Heterosexuality.

ROLL CALL: Budget Deal Is Better Than Nothing for Weakened Obama. “This isn’t the budget deal President Barack Obama has been seeking for the past three years. It’s certainly not the deal he might have been able to conjure a year ago, when he had Republicans desperate to extend the expiring Bush tax cuts. But for a weakened president under water in the polls and facing the prospect of endless stalemate in Congress, it appears to be better than nothing.”

THEY’RE DESPERATE FOR A SHUTDOWN TO DISTRACT FROM OBAMACARE: The Hill: Dems Threaten Budget Deal.

JOHN STOSSEL TAKES ON CELEBRITY HYPOCRITES:

I’m annoyed that so many Hollywood celebrities hate the system that made them rich.

Actor/comedian Russell Brand told the BBC he wants “a socialist, egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth.”

Director George Lucas got rich not just from movies but also by selling Star Wars merchandise. Yet he says he believes in democracy but “not capitalist democracy.”

Actor Martin Sheen says, “That’s where the problem lies … It’s corporate America.”

And so on.

On my TV show, actor/author Kevin Sorbo pointed out that such sentiments make little sense coming from entertainers. “It’s a very entrepreneurial business. You have to work very hard to get lucky, mixed with any kind of talent to get a break in this business. I told Clooney, George, you’re worth $100 million — of course you can afford to be a socialist!”

It’s bad enough that celebrities trash the only economic system that makes poor people’s lives better.

What’s worse is that many are hypocrites.

Celebrities who support big-government politicians routinely take advantage of tax breaks, which reduce the amount they contribute to that government.

It’s nice that Obama supporter Bon Jovi has a foundation that builds houses for poor people, but at tax time, the musician labels himself a “farmer.” He pays only $100 in state property tax. And his tax dodge gimmick: raising honeybees.

Bruce Springsteen sings about factories closing down but pays little tax on the hundreds of acres of land he owns. His dodge: An organic farmer works his land.

Hollywood’s campaign to “save the earth” brings out the most hypocrisy. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio recently announced, “I will fly around the world doing good for the environment.” Really? Flying around the world? I’m amazed they’re not embarrassed by what they say.

I say: Repeal The Hollywood Tax Cuts!

NOT THE BOTTLED WATER: Robert McManus: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Dasani?

“Invisible Child,” the New York Times’s 29,000-word account of the tragically chaotic life of a rootless 11-year-old girl, is a remarkable piece of work. It is a vivid portrait, unfolding over five days, of a wholly dysfunctional family hard-pressed to cope with the city’s social-services system, to say nothing of life itself. The reporter, Andrea Elliott, has a finely tuned instinct for detail and a rare ability to understate obviously sincere outrage. She’s an accomplished muckraker, and that’s not a bad thing. Her reporting commands attention, and this series of articles deserves the respect it is getting. Still, an agenda shows through: not for nothing did the Times spend 15 months on “Invisible Child”— an undertaking riddled with the same misunderstanding of New York City’s economy that animated Bill de Blasio’s “tale of two New Yorks” mayoral campaign.

The series lacks critical perspective. Yes, poverty and wealth exist side-by-side in New York City, sometimes on the same block. But they always have, and Elliott’s account essentially amounts to an update. Though clearly intended as a call for dramatic action of some sort, “Invisible Child” is pretty much devoid of prescriptions—and of hope, which was abandoned long ago by the drug-addled parents of Dasani (yes, she was named for a bottled-water brand). Elliott is honest enough to characterize Dasani’s circumstances as “largely” of her parents’ making—the hell-hole homeless shelter that the child and her seven siblings must endure; the intermittent hunger; the shame shelter kids feel during the school day. Indignity is the product of profound parental dysfunction, and it defines Dasani’s life. Absent massive municipal intervention, the series implies, the child will be walking the same path as her parents soon enough.

But can city government save Dasani? As Elliott never hesitates to remind readers, Dasani is not unique. There are 22,000 homeless children in New York City. It is, she writes, “the highest number since the Great Depression,” though one never learns whether this is a disproportionately large number relative to other major cities. This is a critical omission for a newspaper series that clearly means to lay ultimate responsibility for Dasani’s circumstances on the steps of City Hall. “With the economy growing in 2004, the Bloomberg administration adopted sweeping new policies intended to push the homeless to become more self-reliant,” Elliott writes. “But the opposite happened. As rents steadily rose and low-income wages stagnated, chronically poor families like Dasani’s found themselves stuck in a shelter system with fewer exits.”

Who could imagined such a result, despite vast government expenditures?

INDEED IT DOES: Over-criminalization undermines respect for legal system.

I’ve had some thoughts on that very subject myself.

HELPFUL ADVICE FROM MY GOVERNMENT: Don’t flush shoes down toilet, Tennessee water resources head advises staff. Well, if you don’t flush them down the toilet, where do you flush them?

JOHN BOEHNER: Conservative Groups’ Reaction to Budget Deal Is ‘Ridiculous.’ Well, John, the problem is they don’t trust you.

IT ONLY TOOK SEVERAL MONTHS: Black Supremacist Who Claimed ‘We Are Going to Have to Kill a Lot of Whites’ No Longer Employed by DHS.