REMINDER: Gallup: Few in U.S. See Guns, Immigration as Nation’s Top Problems; The economy and jobs continue to be named as most important U.S. problems. “Few Americans mention guns or immigration as the most important problems facing the nation today, despite the current attention lawmakers in Washington are giving to these issues. The economy still dominates as the top concern, followed by jobs and dissatisfaction with the general way in which Congress and the government work.”

(Bumped). And as I’ve noted before, guns and immigration are priorities mostly to the politico/journalistic class, the members of which already have jobs, and, in fact, are generally prospering while the rest of the country suffers.

PEOPLE CAN’T SEEM TO RESIST IT, THOUGH: Ed Morrissey: Politicizing a Terrorist Act Degrades Victims and Heroes. “In a country that routinely criticizes itself for its lack of exercise, the American media tend to excel at two things – jumping to conclusions and running off at the mouth. In the immediate aftermath of tragedy or crisis, a vacuum of information opens, and cable-news anchors and analysts feel compelled to fill it with uninformed speculation that gets repeated as fact. Pundits and politicians climb onto well-groomed hobby horses, promoting their causes by exploiting the crisis and fear of the unknown. We have seen plenty of that in past crises, and this week’s bombings at the Boston Marathon were no exception.”

Related item here.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball on David Sirota’s white privilege problem.

ROLL CALL: After Gun Defeat, Where Does Obama Go From Here? “The president is vowing that the fight for tighter gun control measures is not over. But Obama’s cachet in Congress has always been low, and it appears his strategy for continuing to push the issue largely rests on something that has proved elusive to him in other recent policy fights, including this one: public pressure. . . . Despite public declarations of optimism from supporters on background checks, sources said privately that the Senate may never be able to pass those items. Republicans and many red-state Democrats — four of whom defected on the background check bill — still fear the repercussions of crossing the National Rifle Association.”

Also, their constituents. Gun-control supporters also poisoned the well immediately after Newtown by accusing the NRA, and gun-rights supporters generally, of being accomplices to murder — when they weren’t actually calling for them to be shot. That polarized things, making it harder for those swing Senators to endorse a bill. This sort of politics may be emotionally satisfying to Obama’s base, but Obama’s base wasn’t big enough to pass the bill.

The result: Headlines like the one above, or this one from The Hill: Senators reject gun control in devastating blow to Obama.

MIKE LEE: Why I Voted Against Background Checks. “The Toomey-Manchin amendment admirably attempted to carve out certain protections for gun owners, but today’s carve-outs are tomorrow’s loopholes. The current ‘gun show loophole’ was itself once considered a legitimate carve-out that protected certain private sales.”

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Harry Lewis & Jane Shaw: Colleges Must Promote Personal Responsibility, Not ‘He-Said, She-Said’ Trials.

JAMES TARANTO: The Privilege of Not Belonging: A Theory of White Racism Against Whites.

Actually the wish for violent criminals to turn out to be right-wingers is very common on the left and in the media (but we repeat). Just today Slate.com had to walk back its previous, ideologically fueled speculation about a murder case by running a piece with the headline: “Suspect in Texas Prosecutor Killings Has Nothing to Do With the Aryan Brotherhood.” And while it’s hard to work up much sympathy for the Aryans, the mainstream left targets mainstream conservatives with similar smears. Remember how the New York Times tried to blame the Tucson massacre, and ABC News the Aurora one, on the Tea Party?

Unlike the Aryan Brotherhood and similar groups, the Tea Party has nothing to do with race. Likewise the antiabortion movement, including its violent fringe. So why are attacks from the likes of Sirota and Wise, as well as from more mainstream media figures, so often framed in racial terms–and by people who are themselves white? . . .

To be white in America is to have the privilege of being able to define one’s political identity in terms of one’s own superiority, whether real or imagined, over other members of one’s own race.

So it’s just white people trying to feel superior to other white people?

BENGHAZI UPDATE: Lawyer up, Issa warns CIA staff.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pushing ahead with his investigation of last year’s fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, by preparing federal agencies to allow employees to lawyer up.

In separate letters to the legal offices of the CIA, State Department and Defense Department, Issa said some witnesses on the issue might need lawyers, if their agencies decide to retaliate against them for their testimony.

“During the course of the investigation, numerous individuals have approached the committee with information related to the attack,” wrote Issa in the letters, which were obtained by The Hill.

He asked agencies to provide details on how to grant outside attorneys the security clearances necessary for them to adequately represent employees discussing classified matters with congressional investigators. . . .

The letters are the latest sign that Issa is ramping up his investigation of the Benghazi attack and potential security and managerial failures that led up to it. He initially launched the probe last year, about a month after the attack.

The administration managed to keep this under control through the election, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a headache now.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Even French Officials Complain of Country’s Regulatory Burden.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Is Labor Turning Against Obamacare?

Some unions are worried that Obamacare is taking away some of the tools they use to control utilization and costs. There’s also a lot of concern that these plans are going to get hit by the “Cadillac Tax” on generous health benefits. The unions are unhappy about this, and not just because health insurance is tax advantaged; they view the generosity of their benefits as both an organizing tool, and a form of social engineering. It takes the same number of hours worked to qualify for health benefits whether you’re a single or a family, and the unions like it that way. They’re fairly socially conservative organizations. And besides, the spouses like the benefits, which keeps ’em in the union.

Obamacare did very little to accomodate the multi-employer plans. Perhaps that was due to be hashed out in the final bill, but of course, we didn’t get a final bill, because the election of Scott Brown threw everything into chaos. Instead they hastily passed what was basically a draft bill, which had done virtually nothing about the MEPs. The unions supported it anyway, undoubtedly because they were assured by the Obama administration that the problems would be fixed later. From what I understand, they still haven’t been.

This business of rushing bills through without proper hearings, markups, etc. — as was done with ObamaCare, attempted with gun control, and may still be done with the immigration bill — is a formula for bad legislation. It’s also bad politics over the long run, as it undermines trust. Had the gun bill gone through ordinary procedures with plenty of time for people to figure out what it did, it might have gotten more support — but a fair inference is that its supporters thought it would do worse if people knew what was in it.

Ending these rushed-through monster bills would not only give us better legislation, it would be good for our political culture.

A LAME DUCK SQUAWKS, BUT WHY?

I wrote here that it was odd for Obama to make gun control the signature issue of his second term, since there has never been any chance of significant gun control legislation being enacted. It couldn’t possibly get through the House. So why, today, was he so irate about its failure in the Senate?

As we have noted more than once, pretty much everything Obama does is intended to stir up the Democratic Party’s base to drive turnout in 2014.

Indeed.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College fires professor who forced students to sign pledge to vote for Obama.

EUROPE’S CARBON-TRADING SYSTEM: Below Junk Status.

GROUPTHINK: Celebrity hive mind outraged by gun control vote.

WASHINGTON POST: Kermit Gosnell trial: It’s about more than politics.

JUDITH GROSSMAN: A Mother, A Feminist Aghast: Unsubstantiated accusations against my son by a former girlfriend landed him before a nightmarish college tribunal.

As more stories like this go public, the gender imbalance in colleges will get worse, putting more pressure on the Higher Education Bubble. Also, this is something the Insta-Wife writes about in her forthcoming book.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Gun-Control Push Consisted Of “Emotional Blackmail.” With more emotion when it didn’t work.

CHANGE: President Barack Obama: A tale of two press conferences.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US sending troops to Jordan as Assad issues warning.

TWEET OF THE DAY: 90% of Americans want lower unemployment too but Obama couldn’t manage that one either.

Runner up: Obama showed the passion and anger at his personal defeat that he wasn’t able to manage after the Benghazi slaughter.

On both counts: Ouch.

THIS DOESN’T SOUND GOOD: Explosion, injuries reported at fertilizer plant near Waco in West, Texas.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Ricin Mailer Is An Elvis Impersonator. No, Really. “Want even more weirdness? If this astonishing story proves out, Curtis won’t be the first Elvis impersonator to be associated with ricin in Google.”

JACOB SULLUM: Obama Responds to His Gun Control Defeat With Self-Righteous Solipsism.

Of course they have a right to speak their minds. But no, their emotions are not relevant when it comes to empirical questions such as the impact of background checks, “assault weapon” bans, and limits on magazines. Their pain tells us nothing about the effectiveness or constitutionality of such measures. To the contrary, it obscures those issues with an impenetrable emotional fog.

Obama does a fine job of empathizing with the parents of Adam Lanza’s victims. But that is something any decent human being should be able to manage. Where he has trouble, despite his lip service to the idea of putting himself in the other guy’s shoes, is in empathizing with his opponents. He not only says they are wrong, which is to be expected. He refuses to concede that people who disagree with him about gun control are acting in good faith, based on what they believe to be sound reasons—that they, like him, are doing what they think is right. His self-righteous solipsism is striking even for a politician.

Most politicians, even if they feel that way, are better at hiding it, because they realize that it’s generally bad politics.

Related: “Let’s put it this way: Passion may have a place, but it is not a substitute for rational argument.” Well, it was used as a substitute here, and as a way of saying if you disagree with me it’s because you don’t care about dead kids, but it didn’t work. Maybe it would have, if life were a Very Special Episode of The West Wing.

More:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), co-sponsor of the background-check amendment, disagrees. Here is how he solicited support for that measure: “If you want to remember those 20 babies—beautiful children—and the six brave teachers…and you want to honor the most courageous family members I have ever met, please vote for this bill.” By extension, if you dare to point out that background checks have absolutely nothing to do with the Sandy Hook massacre, you are dishonoring the memories of those innocent victims. Anyone “with a good conscience,” Manchin claimed, could not possibly question whether a bill supposedly aimed at preventing mass shootings would actually do that. Could it be that Manchin’s intimidation tactics not only failed but backfired?

“This was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” President Obama declared after today’s votes, saying senators who voted against the amendments he supported “caved to pressure.” That seems a more apt description for legislators like Reid and Manchin, who for years opposed gun control measures based on what they claimed were principled grounds, only to abandon those principles because they were afraid of seeming insensitive in the face of raw emotional appeals. But as I’ve said before, Obama seems incapable of imagining that his opponents have any principles at all.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Kreutzmann writes:

With the defeat today of even a modest gun control measure, I’m starting to think of Obama’s 2nd term and the election differently…

Winning by getting out low-information voters that wouldn’t otherwise vote is kind of like all the various SEO practices designed to game the Google algorithm and get a site on page one of the results – it might work, but it doesn’t make you relevant. Relevance takes hard work and authenticity, neither of which comes readily to this President.

Interesting analogy.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Misinformation and Anxiety in Boston Terrorism Investigation. “In most circumstances, this would not create torrents of misinformation. Reporters would corroborate new information through multiple, independent sources (rather than dependent sources who may just be echoing the same bad information). They would refrain from publishing until they were sure. But what is happening in Boston is not normal. It is a frenzy. And even worse than its effect of confusing and angering the public is the help it gives the terrorists. The leak-generated misinformation puts pressure on investigative agencies to correct the record; these public corrections give the terrorists insights into the state of the investigation that they would not otherwise have. It makes them harder to catch. It makes critical evidence harder to obtain.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Want Better Sex? Take A Staycation.

SO ALL THAT ARYAN-BROTHERHOOD TALK WAS JUST THE USUAL CRAP, I GUESS: Wife of ex-official charged in Texas killings.