MAYBE IT’S JUST TIME TO ABOLISH THIS TROUBLED AGENCY: Secret Service agents reportedly told to protect home of former director’s assistant. “Members of a top Secret Service unit responsible for patrolling the perimeter of the White House were reportedly pulled off their posts for several weeks in the summer of 2011 and ordered to protect the home of the assistant to the agency’s then-director. The Washington Post, citing three people familiar with the operation, reported late Saturday that the agents were sent to a rural area outside La Plata, Md. in what was known as Operation Moonlight. The paper said that agents were told that they were there because then-Secret Service director Mark Sullivan was concerned that his assistant, Lisa Chopey, was being harassed by her neighbor after an altercation.”

They certainly don’t seem to regard protecting the President as a priority.

AN UNSYMPATHETIC LOOK AT hashtag diplomacy. It would be different if they were good at it.

AT AMAZON, Kindle Daily Deals.

Also, Digital Deals.

P.J. O’ROURKE: Relax: If 1,000 years of Russian screw-ups are anything to go by, it won’t be long before Vladimir Putin brings himself down.

WHEN REVIEWS BITE BACK: Company That Threatened to Sue Negative Reviewer Just Lost Its Amazon Account.

SCIENCE HAS SPOKEN: Why women who DON’T sunbathe are TWICE as likely to die early than women who do. So if you’re pale, I’m going to assume you’re some sort of science-denier or something.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: EMP Attack On Power Grid Could Kill 9 Out Of 10 Americans.

As we reported early last year, Pry, a former CIA nuclear weapons analyst, believes that North Korea’s recent seemingly low-yield nuclear tests and launch of a low-orbit satellite may in fact be preparations for a future electromagnetic pulse attack.

A copy of a report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security for the Defense Department, obtained by Pry from sources within DHS, finds North Korea could use its Unha-3 space launch vehicle to deliver a nuclear warhead as a satellite over the South Pole to attack America from the south.

Say, have I mentioned that Bill Quick has a new novel out?

ADVANTAGES OF BEING a middle-aged introvert.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 367.

IT’S BEEN A GREAT WEEK, FRIENDS AND FELLOW INSTAPUNDIT ADDICTS, but, sadly, it must end. Keep an eye on the exploding scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s exploding largely because of the reporting of the Washington Examiner’s Mark Flatten. His dogged insistence on facts and verification marks him as a great journalist. Check out a selection of his fine VA reporting here, here, here, here and here. And he’s got a huge VA story coming tomorrow or Tuesday.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: CBS: Fifth VA Office Committed Wait-list Fraud.

THOUGHTS ON INEQUALITY FROM NASSIM TALEB: “Financial inequalities are ephemeral, one crash away from reallocation; inequalities of status & academobureaucrat “elite” are there to stay.”

TESTING “BEAR-PROOF” COOLERS against an actual grizzly bear.

WHETHER SNOWDEN IS A GOOD GUY OR A BAD GUY ISN’T REALLY THE POINT: UK Parliament Finally Admits That Snowden Revelations Reveal That GCHQ Oversight Is Broken.

SHOULD WE stop worrying about cholesterol numbers?

SO this looks cool, but I wonder if it’s one of those things that seems cool but turns out tacky. Anybody got one?

HELLO, I MUST BE GOING: Thanks Glenn for letting us man the bridge of the mighty USS Instapundit once again, and thank you to my co-bloggers for their always superb job. Stop by my usual haunt at Ed Driscoll.com for more blog posts and podcasts — it’s just down the virtual hall here at PJ Media — and follow me on Twitter by clicking here.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: First prosthetic arm wired to muscles approved by the FDA.

THANKS, GLENN, AND SO LONG INSTAPUNDIT VOTARIES:   I’m grateful for the chance to have another shot at helping navigate the USS Instapundit.  She’s quite a beauty.  And as usual, it’s been a fun, wild ride.  :)

I hope to see some of you over at my Facebook page, or you can keep track of me on my website.

Thanks to all my fabulous co-bloggers and InstaP fans– love you all.  <3

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Analyzing Moody’s New Report On Law Schools.

I found a few of their comments particularly interesting. First, Moody’s is not completelysold on what they note is the Brooklyn/LaVerne/Penn State/Iowa approach: the use of transparent price cuts and discounting as a survival strategy. They worry both that the price cuts could tamp down revenue too much and that there are serious reputational dangers to cost cutting. “Many students still associate price with quality.”

Perhaps this is a virtue of the Penn State “scholarship” strategy – as compared to the Brooklyn/LaVerne/Iowa sticker cut strategy. In any case, I think that price cuts at public (or apparently public) schools like Iowa and Penn State are less dangerous reputationally because many consumers may associate low price with generous legislators – rather than poor quality.

I also appreciated the fact that, unlike the WSJ, they ignored outside ranking organizations and instead clustered law schools into four groups, based on job placement. For this purpose, Moody’s used the number of students in JD or JD advantage jobs, full or part-time, long or short-term. (We can infer they included school-funded positions.) Using this method, the top quartile of schools (including all the super-elites) placed at least 84.1% of grads; the second quartile placed between 78% and 84%; the third quartile placed between 71% and 77%; and the lowest quartile placed less than 71% of graduates.

Finally, the report points out what we already know: standalones are under extra pressure. Moody’s has downgraded Vermont and New York Law in the last year. It suggests that these (and other schools) will need to diversify offerings. It also notes that new partnerships and affiliations are on the rise. Thus we have been treated to the WMU Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Moody’s points out that large, wealthy schools can “withstand enrollment challenges for a much longer period” – but does not opine on the bigger question: what will the smaller, poorer universities do?

The most important aspect of this report is that it will land on the desks of these university presidents who will now approach their law school problem with a fresh, objective analysis. I wonder what a similar Moody’s report will look like five years from now.

Well, I can’t predict the future, but I can take a hint.

And note that the University of Tennessee, measured by employment, is in the top quartile.

THANKS, GLENN, for giving us the keys to Instapundit for a week, and thanks to the rest of you for not shooting too many spitwads at the substitute teachers.

THANKS GLENN FOR HAVING ME: It was an honor to be an Instapunditeer for a week, and a great distraction from grading exams. (But I probably would have posted more if I hadn’t been grading.) I don’t know how you do what you do, but keep on doing it for the country’s sake.

You can find me longer-form blogging on the Volokh Conspiracy. Or get the brand-new updated 2014 reasonably-priced paperback editions of my books, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, and The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. Such a deal!

WELCOME BACK, GLENN. I’m happy to have sojourned at your place one more time, and happy to be ousted back to the comfy environs of Althouse. Thanks to all my fellow guest-bloggers for keeping up the flow of posts over the last week. And thanks to all the readers and commenters, including the ones I needed to push back, like that time BurkeanMama and Crawf — both of them — reacted to a post about abortion with the news that I voted for Obama twice. I voted for Obama once. Guest-blogging came with registration as a commenter, so I can (and will) continue to talk back to overstatements of my nefariousness like that. But as for front-page writing, I’m bringing it all back home to Althouse.