KORI SCHAKE: Obama’s Iran Gamble.

ROGER SIMON: Back in the USSR: ‘Honey, Disconnect the Phone.’ You’d better. Eric Holder might be listening!

TIM CARNEY: The IRS is deeply political — and very Democratic. “More than 75 percent of the campaign contributions from that office in the past three elections went to Democrats. In 2012, every donation traceable to employees at that office went to either President Obama or liberal Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The IRS officials whose names appear in the IG report are also Democrats with partisan histories. William Wilkins, IRS general counsel and one of the agency’s two explicitly political appointees, is a former Democratic congressional aide, lobbyist (clients included the Swiss Bankers Association), and Democratic donor. Joseph H. Grant, who ran the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division that includes the Cincinnati office, is a former Democratic staffer on the House Ways & Means Committee.”

UPDATE: Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted In IRS Scandal.

INSANE CLOWN POSSE: Holder’s recusal and the leak investigation are unprecedented. “Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee he recused himself from the leak investigation involving sweeping surveillance of the Associated Press because he was a ‘fact witness,’ meaning he had access to the classified data at issue and was questioned about it. But he can’t recall when he recused himself. And it wasn’t in writing.”

TRANSPARENCY: Benghazi Emails Directly Contradict White House Claims.

WELL, IT’S CERTAINLY REMINDING PEOPLE OF WHAT IT ENTAILS: Ed Morrissey: IRS Scandal Strikes A Severe Blow To Big Government.

JUSTIN HIGGINS: Tea Party Groups Should Capitalize On National Attention.

UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:

Well, here’s a fella, not waiting for a crowd, who’s staged a one-man protest.

I think I like the cut of this fellow’s jib.

It would probably be unsanitary to emulate him on a large scale, but yeah.

MICHAEL WALSH: Eric Holder Plays Dumb.

Don’t miss this amusing video.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Georgia Tech Takes MOOCs To The Next Level.

Georgia Tech announced yesterday that it is teaming up with Udacity, one of the leading providers of massively open online education, to offer a full graduate program in computer science. For a mere $7,000 dollars—or 1/6 the cost of the equivalent program offered on campus—students who meet the prerequisites can fulfill the requirements of a master’s degree entirely through open courseware.

This is a big deal. As the Washington Post notes, even MOOC-friendly colleges like Stanford, Harvard, and San Jose State have been reluctant to actually grant credentials for their online courses, preferring to use them as a teaching aids rather than as the foundation of a program. There have been the usual concerns about quality control, as well as worries that an all-MOOC degree could dilute the value of Georgia Tech’s traditional degrees, but Georgia Tech claims it has taken these concerns into account. . . . At $7,000 per student and with these kinds of enrollment numbers, this may be not just a boon for students but a good way of significantly widening Georgia Tech’s student base: 10,000 is a lot of students, and the open nature of MOOCs makes it relatively simple to scale up without dramatically expanding staff or administrative costs.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

ADVICE TO THE GOP: Scandal Is Not An Agenda. Nope, but it’s still pretty important — especially when it confirms the narrative of the past five years.

LESLIE EASTMAN: My Tea Party group’s futile attempt to get IRS tax-exempt status. “We saw the handwriting on the wall, and gave up trying.”

Meanwhile, reader Tim Nutt thinks it’s time to take to the streets again:

There is currently a lot of furor over the IRS scandal, but it seems to me that while a lot of (digital) ink has been spilled, there is another effective way for the public to voice their displeasure. The Tea Party began as a grassroots movement in response to the financial crisis, and I believe that the biggest factor in its momentum and success was the fact that millions of people across the country got out on the streets and protested. They made signs, they chanted, and they marched. I know, because I marched on the Texas state capitol building with them.

I think the time has come for another public outcry. If the IRS targeting individuals and groups for their beliefs is not tyranny, then I don’t know what is. If people will not march on the streets to protest tyranny, then I don’t know what is worth marching for.

I don’t know how to organize something like this, but a lot of people reading your blog do. Perhaps if you suggested the idea and word got around, this is something that we can get moving.

Perhaps protests at IRS offices?

SARAH HOYT: A Reason To Believe.

METER READERS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE DON’T WANT PUBLIC ACTS OF CHARITY, SCRUTINY. “The Libertarian Free Keene group in New Hampshire has been ‘tormenting’ the city (and the city’s bottom line) by bouncing around town with pockets full of loose change, feeding meters in order to keep people from getting parking tickets and sometimes videotaping officers. This is so frightening to the city that it’s turning to the courts to try to get a restraining order to keep these people away.”

REASON TV: Video: Feds Push Insane Speech Codes!

THEATER CRITIC EJECTED FROM THEATER.

HMM: 7 Caught Trespassing At Quabbin Reservoir; Patrols Stepped Up Across State. “State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and ‘cited their education and career interests’ for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Dan Gillmor: How Journalists Can Protect Themselves From The U.S. Government.

NEW YORK POST: Justice, Tea, and the AP.

At hearings yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, conservatives found themselves defending the press when they hammered away at Attorney General Eric Holder over the Justice Department’s secret gathering of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors.

Pity the AP didn’t show similar vigor when conservatives were hollering about their own mistreatment by overreaching government officials. That was roughly two years ago, when conservative groups complained the IRS was singling them out in its partisan treatment of their applications for tax-exempt status.

Now that the IRS has admitted guilt and the acting commissioner has resigned, the complaints are getting full coverage. But a Factiva search of news stories for the words “IRS” and “tea party” at the time the complaints were raised found only a handful of AP stories on the subject.

They were happy to be tools, until they found themselves treated with the respect that people who are happy to be tools tend to get.

TAXPROF: Roundup: The IRS Scandal, Day 7.

Related: Did The IRS Give Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns To Harry Reid?

Also: Investor’s Business Daily: Did The IRS Try To Swing Election To Obama?

In the end, the IRS managed to put its thumb on the political scale by squelching political activity on the right — some groups report curtailing get-out-the-vote efforts, spending piles of money on legal fees or disbanding altogether in the face of IRS inquisitions.

And all of it happened during a close and hotly contested presidential election where such mischievousness could make a real difference.

Does any of this sound like it’s the result of a random bureaucratic snafu or the work of a couple of “rogue agents”?

Sounds suspicious.

ERIC POSNER: The Killer Robot War Is Coming: The new laws we need to govern the use of drones. “Drone technology poses a paradox that its defenders have not confronted. Because drones are cheap, effective, riskless for their operators, and adept at minimizing civilian casualties, governments may be tempted to use them too frequently.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Two More Schools Admit Cheating On U.S. News Rankings.

WENDY KAMINER: No Sex Talk Allowed: What’s wrong with the Obama administration’s definition of sexual harassment.

What’s the difference between an unwelcome request for a date and rape? Pursuant to the Obama administration’s definition of sexual harassment, this is not an easy question to answer.

You have to read the administration’s latest diktat to colleges and universities to believe it. In a joint letter to the University of Montana, (intended as “a blueprint” for campus administrators nationwide) the Justice Department (DOJ) and the Education’s Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) define sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” verbal or nonverbal, including “unwelcome sexual advances or acts of sexual assaults.” Conduct (verbal or non-verbal) need not be “objectively offensive” to constitute harassment, the letter warns, ignoring federal court rulings on harassment, as well as common sense. If a student feels harassed, she may be harassed, regardless of the reasonableness of her feelings, and school administrators may be legally required to discipline her “harasser.” . . .

FIRE is right to note that fair, inclusive enforcement of this mindlessly broad policy is impossible. But I doubt it’s intended to be fairly enforced. I doubt federal officials want or expect it to be used against sex educators, advocates of reproductive choice, anti-porn feminists, or gay rights advocates, if their speech of a sexual nature is “unwelcome” by religious conservatives.

Conservative student groups must flood the systems with complaints about every Vagina Monologues performance, classroom reference to “testosterone poisoning,” and every single “Sex Week” event until reason returns. It’s an Alinsky principle: Make them live up to their own book of rules. And remember: There’s a lot to make conservative and libertarian students feel uncomfortable on almost any campus.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Multiple Facets Of The IRS Scandal.

JAMES TARANTO ON OBAMA’S IRS SCANDAL:

It may well be that the administration’s Alinskyite tactics were more beneficial to Obama than we realized when we wrote that column last month. As another reader observes: “The Tea Party caused a huge landslide and then suddenly seemed to go silent, right around the time of this harassment.” Perhaps, contrary to David Plouffe, that was a necessary condition for Obama to win a second term. Either way, it will now define that second term.

Indeed.