MICHAEL TOTTEN: Syria’s Bogus Election.

NOT FIT TO PRINT: New York Times ignores Bloomberg’s speech on PC thuggery, academic freedom.

HAVE A SNO-CONE AND ENJOY THE SHOW: A Brief History Of Ice.

IT’S NOT UNETHICAL WHEN THE GOVERNMENT DOES IT: Sharyl Attkisson: Full Disclosure: Did Government’s Experiment on Preemies Hide Risks? “They were misled to believe everything being done was in the ‘standard of care’ and therefore posed no predictable risk to the babies. . . . Normally, medical personnel constantly adjust oxygen as preemies’ conditions change, based on their individual needs. But the SUPPORT study was designed to keep infants in their randomly assigned range, despite a baby’s individual needs. And in a decision that one government source says shocked seasoned researchers when they learned of it, the babies’ oxygen monitors intentionally were altered to provide false readings. The reason: so medical staff wouldn’t be tempted to adjust oxygen out of the babies’ study-assigned range.”

Is it just me, or does it seem like we’re seeing a lot of phony numbers in government medicine lately?

I LIKE THE IDEA, BUT I DOUBT IT’S PRACTICAL WITHOUT NANOTECHNOLOGY: Solar Roadways raises $1M for solar-panel covered roads.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New Regressives. “Today’s liberalism is about as liberal as the Hellenistic world was Hellenic — a glossy veneer over a rotten core.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: VA Scandal Exposes Greedy Socialism.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 390.

WAR ON MEN: Merrill Lynch manager became janitor after mistaken ID in child sex probe.

A Long Island man says he went from being a Merrill Lynch manager to a shattered school janitor after the feds — in a terrible case of mistaken identity — arrested him at work and threatened to ship him off to Mexico to face charges that he had sex with minors.

Philip Simone, a married dad from New Hyde Park, is suing the government in Brooklyn federal court for $2.75 million, claiming his life went to pot after they wrongly busted him for being a child molester.

The one sentence that tells all about today’s justice system: “They told me I had a week to prove my innocence.”

WASHINGTON POST: Republicans have a mandate for their Benghazi probe.

Democrats in recent weeks weighed whether to abstain from involvement in House Republicans’ new Benghazi investigative committee, labeling it an unnecessary probe into questions that have already been answered.

The American people disagree.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a majority of Americans — 51 percent — approve of the new panel, while 42 percent disapprove. Those supporting the new investigation include 72 percent of Republicans (not surprisingly), but they also include 31 percent of Democrats and a majority — 52 percent — of political independents. The reason Americans want an investigation? Because they don’t believe Democrats when they say that all the questions have been answered.

The obviously politicized ineptitude of the Bergdahl deal isn’t helping the Dems here, either. Plus: “They also don’t think former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is anywhere close to blame-free. The poll shows 50 percent of Americans disapprove of Clinton’s handling of the situation, with just 37 percent approving.”

Related: Hillary distances herself from Bergdahl transfer.

UPDATE: More in WaPo: Prisoner Swaps Are Always A Terrible Idea. Well, wartime exchanges, on a basis of equality, with civilized nations are fine. That’s not what we’ve got here.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN AMERICANS WERE THE MARKETING GENIUSES: The Great Success of the Russian Propaganda Machine.

Propaganda has always been an important tool of war—and its importance grew during the 20th century as Stalin and Goebbels took the dark art to new heights of sophistication and power. As Putin seeks to rebuild Russian power on the rubble of the Soviet Union, he is reaching out for the USSR’s most effective propaganda and espionage weapons. . . .

The West needs to up its game. Cracking down on Russian espionage, both commercial and strategic, tracing and publicizing the flow of money and influence in the Kremlin’s propaganda enterprise, and countering Russian disinformation and attempts to shape world opinion must now become part of Western policy.

It would be easier if we were led by people who believed in America.

STACY MCCAIN: Shockwaves In Mississippi: McDaniel’s Tea Party fight has national consequences.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKING OUT FOR YOU? (CONT’D): Chinese General Says U.S. Foreign Policy Has ‘Erectile Dysfunction’ Problems.

SHOCKER: Report: “Many” in intelligence community fear Bergdahl may have been an active collaborator with the Taliban.

BRAD SMITH & DAVID KEATING, IN THE WALL ST. JOURNAL: Congress Abetted the IRS Targeting of Conservatives: We’ve filed a Senate ethics complaint against nine Senators who prodded the agency to silence opponents. “There is ample evidence that these efforts affected IRS policy, but the senators’ behavior is improper even if it did not. Senate rules require that the Ethics Committee take action. And we as citizens must make sure that the IRS is not abused by Democrats or Republicans for partisan electoral gain.”

The Senators named in the ethics complaint are Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, Michael Bennet, Sheldon Whitehouse, Al Franken, Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley and Tom Udall.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Every Dem senate and house candidate should be asked if they plan to sic the IRS on their political opponents.

If they say that doing so would be wrong, the followup question is whether they’d vote to censure the named senators.

Heh.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: VA Scandal Exposes Greedy Socialism.

ED DRISCOLL ON NEIL GABLER: Puritan Rails Against Popular American Pastime. The unrelenting fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY: Selling out the Constitution for a bad prisoner swap: Obama infringed on Congress’ authority over the military.

JAMES TARANTO: The Mismeasure of Management: The perils of progressivism run deeper than Obama.

“For a president who came to office hoping to restore public faith in government as a force for good in society, the mess at the Department of Veterans Affairs threatens to undercut his reputation for effectiveness,” writes New York Times reporter Peter Baker in a “news analysis.”

That’s a little like describing the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a blemish on Bill Clinton’s reputation for marital fidelity. Yet while the premise that Barack Obama ever had a “reputation for effectiveness” is dubious, there has never been such broad agreement about his ineffectiveness–specifically, about the poor quality of government management under his presidency.

The VA scandal, observes CNN’s Gloria Borger, “is just the latest in a slew of bureaucratic messes that strike at the core power point of the Obama presidency. . . .

That said, what Borger delicately calls “the IRS controversy” was not a case of inept management but of the corrupt use of government power. Its purpose was the suppression of Obama’s political opponents. To the extent that it accomplished this aim, Obama’s re-election looks even less like a triumph of effective management.

He has turned out to be worse — both in terms of competence and ethics — than even most of his critics expected. And less constrained by our alleged guardians of freedom in the press.

JEFFREY TOOBIN: Obama ‘Clearly Broke the Law’ with Bergdahl Exchange. “His critics have a very good point here, that you have a law on the books and you have a direct contradiction. . . . It matters whether people follow the law or not.” I dunno, it doesn’t seem to matter much to Obama. Or to the Washington press corps.

EXPORTING THAT AMERICAN SPIRIT: Mexico’s vigilante movement has a strong U.S. connection.

Many of the vigilantes, like Espejo, are returnees from California, where they worked in farm fields and factories before being deported or coming back voluntarily to protect their long-suffering families here.

Some say a key lesson they learned in the U.S. was that rampant extortion and the kind of brutality that the Knights Templar were spawning should not be permitted — and can be stopped.

“In the U.S. you can work,” said Leno Miranda, 34, as he sat atop a John Deere tractor plowing in a lush lime orchard outside town. “Here, it had gotten to the point where they [the Knights Templar] told you when you could work, what you could charge for your products, and demanded a cut.

“You could be selling candy on a street corner and they’d charge you,” said Miranda, who spent eight years in Santa Ana laying carpet and flooring.

The U.S. connection has helped inspire fundraising events from Southern California to Chicago.

Good. Now we need more of that spirit at home.

UNINTENTIONAL IRONY WATCH: Veterans Affairs Seeks “Executive Director for Ethics in Health Care.”

YOU MEAN LIKE WHEN SHE VOTED FOR THE IRAQ WAR? Byron York: Hillary Clinton’s Senate Years Curiously Missing From Her Memoirs.