TEST-DRIVING THE 2014 PORSCHE CAYMAN.

LIBERAL FASCISM: Warrantless Searches Proposed — for Third Time — by WA Democrats.

HENRY MILLER: The High-Tech Future Of Medicine. Faster, please.

ED MARKEY: Hey, blocking campaign-finance laws is like supporting slavery, or something.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

LED BY JOHN CORNYN, 15 Senators Call On Obama To Withdraw Hagel’s Nomination.

BILL WHITTLE’S VIRTUAL STATE OF THE UNION: PART ONE: TALKING ABOUT GUNS.

NICK GILLESPIE ON TAX-CUT HYPOCRISY:

By Friday, expect him to be invoking plagues of frogs and flaming hail. As I noted earlier this week, the $85 billion figure that gets invoked is wrong; cuts in fiscal year 2013 will amount to $44 billion or about 1.2 percent of all federal spending. We’ve been hearing for a long time that sequestration alone would kill about 700,000 jobs.

That’s a claim taken as gospel that is based on what can be called “ugly modeling” at best. Because virtually all government spending is counted by definition as adding to GDP, any cut thus means reductions in activity and jobs. Add to that the idea that projectionists routinely assign a multiplier of more than 1.00 to government spending, so that each dollar the feds spend magically creates more than $1 in economic activity.

The country’s experience with recent stimulus spending should give pause to all of us (if it doesn’t, watch this). When the stimulus manifestly failed to reduce unemployment by its own predictions, its architects and defenders in the press nonetheless pronounced it a success and claimed that it saved us from an ever bigger problem. The real problem, you see, was that the stimulus wasn’t big enough. All it takes is a government failure for stimulatarians to channel their inner Andrea True.

The “stimulus” was just a way to funnel a lot of cash to favored constituencies. By that standard it was a success.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: It Takes A B.A. To Find A Job As A File Clerk.

The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job. Consider the 45-person law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh here in Atlanta, a place that has seen tremendous growth in the college-educated population. Like other employers across the country, the firm hires only people with a bachelor’s degree, even for jobs that do not require college-level skills.

This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office “runner” — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year school. . . .

Economists have referred to this phenomenon as “degree inflation,” and it has been steadily infiltrating America’s job market. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn’t used to require a diploma — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — are increasingly requiring one, according to Burning Glass, a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources, including major job boards and small- to midsize-employer sites.

This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor’s degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.

Some jobs, like those in supply chain management and logistics, have become more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable.

Requiring a major investment of money and time for even entry-level jobs just serves to limit opportunity further and promote class stratification. Kids of well-off parents can afford college; others not so much, especially with tuition skyrocketing.

AT AMAZON, 30% or more off on External Hard Drives.

Also, 50% or more off on USB flash drives.

And, today only: Klipsch G-17 Air Wireless Sound System with AirPlay, $219.99 (60% off).

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WE’D SEE A CONTINUATION OF THE BUSH WAR ON TERROR: And they were right! “With this in mind, it’s not surprising that drone strikes are more popular than the President and Congress combined.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s guilty plea to fraud charges raises fresh questions about the Congressional Black Caucus. It’s a group with many laudable goals, but why do so many in it succumb to corruption? . . . An astonishing one-third of sitting black lawmakers have been named in an ethics probe at some point in their Hill careers. The stat does not include former lawmakers now doing time in prison, such as ex-Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. FBI agents last decade caught Jefferson red-handed with $90,000 of bribery cash stashed in his office freezer.”

DEMOCRATS’ ANTI-LATINO RACISM? Rubio-ridicule, Cruz-hatred, and ethnicity.

UPDATE: More from Patterico. “So, when Democrats denounce Cruz — that awful McCarthyite! — for daring to suggest that Democrats might be targeting Rubio because he’s Latino? When they do that, you look them in the eye, and you say: ‘Oh yeah? What about Miguel Estrada?!?!’ And when they give you a blank look, like they don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about . . . you read them this post.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Where Have All The Generals Gone?

THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY — YOU CAN SEE RIGHT THROUGH THEM: CEI: Lisa Jackson used yet another non-EPA email account as ‘safe harbor’ from transparency.

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson used her old New Jersey state government email account to supplement the account that she operated under the alias “Richard Windsor,” which a watchdog group suggests was another attempt to avoid transparency laws.

“It was no longer an account anyone would think to search under any open records request because there was no defensible reason it still should be in operation,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner said in a statement today. “In other words, like the ‘Richard Windsor’ account, it looks like she assumed this was a safe harbor from the horrors of transparency in public office.”

If there were a Republican in the White House, this would be a big scandal.

HOW UNIVERSITIES DEVALUED HIGHER EDUCATION.

FOLLOWING JOE BIDEN’S SELF-DEFENSE ADVICE could land you in jail. I think it’s a mistake to take advice on much of anything from Joe Biden.

JAMES TARANTO: The Fallows Principle: On Photoshop fakery and “Friends of Hamas.”

GLENN GREENWALD NOT SO HAPPY WITH MSNBC:

I wonder: does someone who goes from being an Obama White House spokesman and Obama campaign official to being an MSNBC contributor even notice that they changed jobs?

Yes. The White House people still have a smidgen of shame.

ROLL CALL: Watchdog Group Sues IRS Over Policing Nonprofits. The entire nonprofit sector, not just those with political profiles, is overdue for serious scrutiny at both the state and federal level. There’s a lot of money sloshing around, with very little in the way of controls.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The Hill: AAA reports largest increase in gasoline prices in three years.

The national average has increased for 33 consecutive days, rising 46 cents or nearly 14 percent during this stretch. This is the longest streak since the price increased 44 cents over 44 days March 22-May 5, 2011. This year’s run-up is not only larger and faster than recent years but is beginning earlier. The national average in 2011 increased by just seven cents during the same 33 day period and in 2012 it increased by 18 cents.

Average nationwide prices were $3.75 per gallon Tuesday, the highest on record for the calendar day.

Press criticism is muted, though, and likely to turn to discussion of how higher gas prices are actually a good thing for everyone.

WELL, AN ASSUMPTION OF FEMALE INFERIORITY AND MALE BRUTISHNESS IS THE BASIS FOR THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT, so let’s not be complaining that people who point that out are trafficking in stereotypes.

FLASHBACK: Thoughts on dealing with the Ruling Class.

ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY: Columbine Survivor Pens Bold Open Letter to Obama Rejecting Gun Control: ‘Whose Side Are You On?’

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