SPYING: Did Obama’s Top Adviser Really Just Joke About Spying On Your Online Activity? “We have ways of finding out everything you’ve been doing online.” Not all that funny.

But then, in 2009, Barack Obama joked about auditing his enemies.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMUNITY WOULD BE OUTRAGED BY THE PRESIDENT’S NOMINEES. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Civil Rights Icon Comes Out Against Embattled Obama Nominee.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 376.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): Democrats Persist in Illegal Use of Capitol Visitor Center.

IT’S NOT JUST BENGHAZI: An Ongoing Policy Failure In Libya.

Dozens have been killed, dozens more wounded, and the clashes between General Hifter’s forces and Islamist militias don’t seem to be winding down. The country is thoroughly fragmented, flirting with the failed state label.

To the extent that the Western media pays attention to Libya, it has focused on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, and specifically the domestic politics surrounding the investigation into that incident. Why not focus on the real failure of policy—namely, the muddled thinking that led us into Libya in the first place?

It was a war of choice, fought on the credit card, with no real understanding of the country targeted and no clear exit plan, complicated by astonishing incompetence in following up after the dictator was toppled.

21ST CENTURY COLONIALISM: N.Y.U. Apologizes to Workers Mistreated on Its Abu Dhabi Campus. “The article described workers being arrested, beaten and deported to their home countries after striking over pay. Recruitment fees, of approximately a year’s wages, were all but required, and laborers had to work overtime, sometimes seven days a week, to earn the base pay they were promised. Not one of the dozens of workers interviewed had his own passport. Some were living in filthy, crowded apartments.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Poll: Americans Less Happy Compared To A Decade Ago.

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Plus, up to 25% off on select Jewelry and up to 75% off on Watches.

RON CHRISTIE: The Scandal at the VA Is Real, and Obama Is Ducking It. “What is most surprising about the present controversy surrounding the substandard treatment at the VA, in which at least 40 veterans lost their lives while awaiting treatment, is that House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-FL) had alerted the president to trouble nearly a year ago.”

ROGER SIMON: The Rise Of The Campus Brown Shirts. “This would all be great fodder for Saturday Night Live, if it still had any spine.”

Related: How The Left Fights Dirty On Campus: Mob Rule.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Wall St. Daily: Damning Evidence Says IRS Is A Predator.

Not surprisingly, once word of the IRS-Tea Party scandal erupted, we heard nearly universal indignation and condemnation. President Obama said, “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that is outrageous… People have to be held accountable, and it’s got to be fixed.”

That’s all fine and good… but as the scandal has dragged on, has anyone been held to account? So far, the answer is, “No.”

Accountability is for the little people.

JAMES TARANTO: Parental Guidance Requested: College students want warning labels on literature.

Students have demanded trigger warnings at Oberlin College, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan and George Washington University as well as UCSB. The Times reproduces an excerpt from an Oberlin “draft guide,” which reads: “Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma. Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other Issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.” (“Cissexism” refers to prejudice in favor of men and women who identify themselves, respectively, as men and women.)

In a recent piece for The New Republic, Jenny Jarvie writes that “some consider [trigger warnings] an irksome tic of the blogosphere’s most hypersensitive fringes.” They started “in self-help and feminist forums to help readers who might have post traumatic stress disorder to avoid graphic content that might cause painful memories, flashbacks, or panic attacks.” They’ve “been applied to topics as diverse as sex, pregnancy, addiction, bullying, suicide, sizeism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, slut shaming, victim-blaming, alcohol, blood, insects, small holes, and animals in wigs. . . . Even The New Republic”–actually a TNR writer named Molly Redden–“has suggested the satirical news site, The Onion, carry trigger warnings.”

But trigger warnings have come in for criticism and mockery even on the left. Jarvie concludes her piece with this sensible observation: “Bending the world to accommodate our personal frailties does not help us overcome them.” She reports that the feminist website Jezebel, “which does not issue trigger warnings, raised hackles in August by using the term as a headline joke: ‘It’s Time To Talk About Bug Infestations [TRIGGER WARNING].’ ” And Susannah Breslin provoked outrage in 2010 when she “wrote in True/Slant that feminists were applying the term ‘like a Southern cook applies Pam cooking spray to an overused nonstick frying pan.’ “

It’s just another I’m-more-sensitive-than-thou ploy. Another positional good for the pampered overclass.

WELL, AS EZRA KLEIN EXPLAINED A WHILE BACK, THE CONSTITUTION’S OVER A HUNDRED YEARS OLD: “In this case, the argument the NYT would like readers to feel free to dismiss out of hand is based on the Origination Clause.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are Tampons Anti-Feminist?

IT’S ALL HILLARY2016 BATTLESPACE PREPARATION: A.J. Delgado: Crying Rape: Is there really a rape epidemic? Probably not. It’s very important for Hillary that women are afraid and looking for a Big Government protector, while men are chastened and silenced. This narrative is part of that.

PUNCHING BACK: Suspended Columbia athlete files federal lawsuit over campus sexual assault conviction.

Related: Kangaroo Courts For Men On Campus.

P.J. O’ROURKE: My Commencement Speech to Rutgers’ Geniuses: Go Forth and Fail: Greetings, Class of 2014. So Condoleezza Rice was too offensive for you. Just wait until Monday morning. Did you learn how to spell KFC?

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: If chosen for HUD, Julian Castro’s work, big payday could face scrutiny.

CHARLES GLASSER: We Are All Google. Or Are We? Some interesting views on the European Court of Justice and the “right to be forgotten.”

ED DRISCOLL ON TRUSTING THE NEW YORK TIMES AFTER THE ABRAMSON DEBACLE: Wait, Who Trusted Them Before This?

A TEACHABLE MOMENT: Replacement Speaker At Smith College Schools Students On Importance of Free Speech.

Former Smith College president Ruth J. Simmons has gone to bat for free speech in remarks delivered at the institution’s 136th commencement, returning Sunday to a college she led for six years before leaving in 2001 to become president of Brown University.

It was only last weekend Simmons agreed to serve as Smith’s commencement speaker, after International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde withdrew amidst student protests. . . .

Speaking from the outdoor stage Sunday, Simmons acknowledged the role protest has played in shaping the course of American history, and told stories of her own defiant nature. But the core of her talk focused on honoring and protecting the free expression of ideas on campus and beyond.

While Smith gives young women a platform to confront injustice, including human trafficking, genocide, and civil rights violations, “one’s voice grows stronger in encounters with opposing views,” said Simmons.

Simmons told of defending a speaker at Brown “whose every assertion was dangerous and deeply offensive to me on a personal level.” The speaker believed blacks were better off as slaves, she said.

Simmons drew applause when she opined that skipping the talk, as college president, would be “to choose personal comfort over a freedom whose value is so great, that the hearing of his unwelcome message could hardly be assessed at too great a cost.”

“Protecting free speech brilliantly insulates us from from being silenced for own unpopular views,” she said.

But these people don’t ever want to hold an unpopular view.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Making Men Marriageable.

But what if they’re on strike?

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Women Explain Why It’s Okay For Women To Stalk Men Online. “I need to go through your Facebook history and look for statements that set off red flags — republicanism, homophobia, sexism, classism, racism, transphobia, ignorance, etc. If I’m going to spend the bulk of the relationship trying to teach you how to be a decent human, then f**k it; not worth my time. . . . Takeaway? Men, we’re watching you. You may think you’re getting away with your dastardly deeds, but we’ve got an eye on you and nothing is going to slip past us. Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg! Thanks, Google!”

DARK MONEY: Democracy Alliance Network Revealed; Funding ‘snapshot’ details nearly $40 million in Alliance support for 20 groups this year. Remember: If they’re complaining about it, they’re doing it.