TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 299.

PAUL RAHE: Could China Be Planning Something? “Putin’s invasion of the Crimea reportedly caught the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department off guard. It is a good time to ask, ‘What else might be in the pipeline?'” I gotta say, all that NSA snooping doesn’t seem to be doing much to give us a headsup.

ED DRISCOLL ON Strange New Respect for older white males.

#GREENFAIL: Titans of EU Industry: Green Follies Are Killing Us:

Europe’s dogged pursuit of a solar- and wind-powered future has jacked up energy prices for households and industry alike. For families, it has meant higher monthly power bills—a tax felt most keenly by the poor. For businesses, it has even farther-reaching implications. As the EUobserver reports, more than a hundred leaders of European industry are warning that these rising costs are threatening the EU’s economic recovery. . . .

This isn’t just a matter of lower-than-expected GDP growth for EU member states. Europe has staked out a position as a global leader in green initiatives, so for many of these CEOs the recent rise in electricity prices is only the beginning. Overall, the costs of doing business in Europe are edging toward the unworkable. For multinationals, healthier energy and regulatory environments are beckoning. In particular, the shale boom has made the United States an especially attractive home for energy-intensive industry.

Europe is beginning to feel the pains of its policy of placing the environment before the economy. This is a shame, because the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. America is an excellent example of a healthier balance: by embracing shale gas, it has been able to wean itself somewhat off of coal, both reducing emissions and bringing prices down. Europe has plenty of shale itself, if it would only embrace it.

Doing so would also weaken Putin, and Arab petro-states. Greens would oppose it — but that’s because they don’t want you to be rich and happy. Much less independent.

MICKEY KAUS ON VW’S PRO-UNION THREATS: “If management made that kind of threat to keep out a union, there’d be trouble with the feds. Can it be an ‘unfair labor practice’ for management to threaten retaliation if its workers don’t unionize?” Well, certainly not under this administration.

HELPFUL ADVICE FOR THE AGE OF OBAMA: Seven Easy Steps for the Downwardly Mobile.

AT AMAZON, High Velocity Running Shoes. For men and women. Spring is coming.

Also, most-wished-for in Home Audio & Home Theater.

Plus, today only: 60% off Furby Boom.

SLATE: Why Obama Got Russia Wrong (and Romney Got It Right). “So you see the politics—they reveal Obama as the player of a cheap trick.”

Also: The New Republic: Mitt Romney Was Right About Russia.

Do tell. And do remember the lefty, and general media (but I repeat myself) mockery with which his statement was greeted.

Related, also from TNR: Enough With the Cliches Already: Obama’s vapid rhetoric on Russia is accomplishing nothing.

UPDATE: Forget the Bush picture. It’s come to this:

BYRON YORK: Should government force businesses to hire felons? Obama nominee Debo Adegbile says yes. The Dem approach is to normalize felon status with regard to jobs and voting. I think, instead, that we should have fewer felonies.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: The IRS Tries To Stifle Internal Dissent. “It’s a naked attempt by those holding the reins of political power to censor their opponents’ political speech and quash their political activity.”

Related: White House threatens to veto bill that would rein in IRS.

ROGER SIMON: What Obama and Putin Do and Don’t Have In Common.

JAMES TARANTO: Disorder in the Court: The case against televising oral arguments.

This columnist is keenly interested in the U.S. Supreme Court, but we’ve never had much of an opinion on the oft-debated question of whether the court should videotape or televise its oral arguments. Had you pressed us, we’d probably have acknowledged a vague aversion to the idea, but we wouldn’t have been able to formulate a clear argument to back it up.

Last week something happened that crystallized our opposition. On Wednesday the court was hearing arguments in a case called Octane Fitness v. Icon Health and Fitness. The parties are litigating a patent dispute in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; the question before the high court, as summarized by ScotusBlog.com, is “whether the Federal Circuit’s promulgation of a rigid and exclusive two-part test for determining whether a case is ‘exceptional’ . . . improperly appropriates a district court’s discretionary authority.”

It’s the sort of case assured of making no headlines outside of specialty publications. But the proceedings were interrupted when a spectator, Noah Kai Newkirk, rose and allegedly delivered a “harangue or oration” in violation of federal law. (He entered a not-guilty plea Thursday.)

In the alleged harangue, Newkirk denounced the court’s 2010 free-speech ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and demanded that the justices rule in favor of the government in the pending case of McCutcheon v. FEC, which challenges certain statutory limits on campaign contributions.

“Newkirk is a member of a group called 99Rise, which says on its website, www.99rise.org, that its aim is to ‘get big money out of American politics,’ ” Reuters reports. The “longtime progressive activist” told the wire service that “99Rise was formed by a small group of people in Los Angeles who were inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

Newkirk’s disruption was illicitly captured on video, apparently by a confederate who had smuggled a camera past court security.

Like streakers at football games, you get more if you televise ’em.

I DUNNO, BUT WE’RE SEEING AN AWFUL LOT OF INTOLERANCE FROM THE LEFT: Michael Barone: How far can society tolerate intolerance?

OH, LOOK, SOMEONE’S SHOUTING “RACISM!” THAT’S NEW. Green group accuses GOP of ‘environmental racism.’ That’s rich coming from a movement made up of lily-white one-percenters.

OUR ENLIGHTENED CLASS: “There are so many insanely stupid things about Fineman’s tweet I don’t even know which of them to single out for scorn.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: How Hard Will We Be on the Post-Obama President? I predict that, if he’s a Republican, the Dems will focus on things they ignored utterly in Obama.

CREATING AN INCENTIVE FOR RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE: “Islamic extremists” put a price on your head? That means you can’t give a speech in this American government building.

I keep noting that our feckless political class will come to regret the incentive system they’re creating. And they keep creating it.

NATIONAL REVIEW: The IRS Is The Problem.

The IRS has willfully and intentionally misled Congress and the American people about the scope and nature of its actions targeting political opponents of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. Former administrator Lois Lerner in particular undeniably lied to Congress after staging a “spontaneous” disclosure of IRS misdeeds with the assistance of a longtime tax lobbyist. Holly Paz, who ludicrously attempted to convince investigators that the IRS’s flagging of the words “tea party” was simply a brand-name for political activity — like using “Kleenex” for “tissue,” she said — has just been promoted to the position of special assistant to the director of the IRS, with a “technical guidance” portfolio.

No rule change from the IRS — nor Representative Camp’s well-intentioned but wholly inadequate reforms, which amount to a list of minor no-nos such as inquiring about an audit target’s political or religious beliefs — is going to change the fact that the agency is full of highly partisan bureaucrats with a political agenda of their own and an inclination to abuse such police powers as are entrusted to them.

True. Abolish governmental immunity and make them personally liable for damages for misconduct.

COWARDS AND TOOLS. MOSTLY TOOLS. Where’s their nerve? Today’s comics mock poop, not the powerful.

ILYA SOMIN: Target The Russian Elites.

RELATIONSHIPS: Hypergamy, Cars, and Phone Numbers. “In a carefully controlled experiment (Guéguen and Lamy 2012) researchers tested the idea of how important status is to women. They placed men in expensive cars and instructed them to approach women and ask for their phone numbers. Then they had the men do the same thing in medium- and low-status cars.”

BRET STEPHENS: Anatomy Of A Feckless Presidency: Gone are the days when the American president was capable of articulating the American interest. You have to believe in it, to be able to articulate it.

Plus: “Mr. Putin’s Russia is a petro-oligarchy whose survival depends on high oil prices and privileged access to the West for the politically connected elite. Raise interest rates, investigate the finances of Mr. Putin’s inner circle, impose travel bans on Putin’s cronies and broaden the scope of the Magnitsky Act, and we’ll see just how resilient the Moscow regime really is.” Start coastal drilling and oil exports. And if the NSA doesn’t know where Putin’s offshore money is parked, it should be abolished.

AN IMAGE THAT SEEMS ESPECIALLY APPROPRIATE TODAY:

UPDATE: From the comments: “Anybody notice how the Russian troops in Crimea are all covering up their faces like war criminals? Wonder why they would do that in advance of any bloodshed?” I had noticed that.

#GREENFAIL: Report: DC’s green-approved buildings using more energy. “The results are measured in EUI’s, a unit that relates a building’s energy consumption to its size; the higher the number, the more energy is expended by a smaller building. Take the Green Building Council’s Washington headquarters. Replete with the group’s top green-energy accolade, the platinum LEED certification, the USGBC’s main base comes in at 236 EUI. The average EUI for uncertified buildings in the capital? Just 199.”

BREAKING THE CODE: ‘A Man Who Changes Your Oil Might as Well Be Reading You Love Poems.’