FASTER, PLEASE: The Rise Of Radical New Rotorcraft.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: A Sudden Realization. “On closer inspection the real reason for the low-level Democrat fever is the unease from the growing suspicion that Obama doesn’t listen to them — listen to people who fancied themselves influential in the Democratic party. One of the foundations of insider self-esteem is to imagine you are a player. If all of a sudden you find the steering wheel through which you imagined yourself exercising influence proved actually like one of those child’s toys which only allow the user to pretend he’s driving — then you realize that you’re not an insider after all. . . . I expect Fournier to keep getting emails from disgruntled Obama confidantes. All I can say is: I hope they encrypted it.”

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Redefining The First Amendment. Dems always like to redefine the “rules” so that they win without fighting. Republicans seem much worse at battlespace prep.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Regulation: Uber’s Problem Is That It Offers Insufficient Opportunities For Graft.

IT’S COME TO THIS: WaPo: ABC News’s Diane Sawyer destroys Hillary Rodham Clinton on Benghazi.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 397.

WELL, THEN LET THE PRESS KEEP FOCUSING ON CHRISTIE: “Scott Walker and his governorship ought to be the modern-day blueprint for the Republican Party on how to win, how to win in other states, how to win the presidency.” Say, I heard a couple of lanes on a bridge were closed for a while. . . .

IMAGINE THERE’S NO INSURANCE: It’s easy if you try:

The ACA is not the only game health care game in town. Either because they are opposed to the values embodied in the ACA or because they are unable to afford the costs it imposes, some people are dropping out of mainstream insurance altogether. WaPo looks at some of the health care programs they are opting into instead. Of particular note are groups like Christian Healthcare Ministries. Members of CHM pool money to pay for each other’s health care bills, out of pocket and unmediated by insurance.

We don’t know how many people are using this kind of system; the piece does tell us that CHM has 80,000 members, and the overall number is probably vanishingly small. But CHM and similar groups represent a kind of approach that deserves more attention than it is getting, for two reasons. First, it encourages responsible health care use. . . .

Cost-sharing groups therefore provide exactly the kind of cost-controlling incentives that an impersonal, national insurance system can’t. Perhaps more importantly, programs like this introduce some sense of social solidarity into the health care market.

George Korda, a Knoxville columnist and radio host, has used CHM for years and tell me it’s been a really good deal for him. I do wonder if it’s scalable.

BAD REVIEWS FOR OBAMA’S STUDENT LOAN SCHEME. It’s just a vote-buying effort aimed at Millennials, and Politico is right that it only adds to the debt.

Related thoughts from Marco Rubio.

UPDATE: Here’s Rubio on Bill Bennett this morning. ““I mean, one of the fundamental problems that we have in America today is we have a mid-20th century higher education system, which is a cartel that protects itself against innovation and competition. And it is awarding a lot of degrees that don’t lead to jobs, and it’s charging a lot of money for it.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Obama: We Have to Do Something About Student Debt and This Is Something.” Heh. That’s about right. “When federal lawmakers forgives debts—in part or in whole—they reward students who borrowed recklessly. They also incentivize universities to raise tuition prices. College administrators know that they can get away with demanding more money, because students will take out more loans, confident that the government will bail them out if they run into trouble—and the government will stick the taxpayers with the bill if the students aren’t able to pay.”

AT AMAZON, 25% off Select Helly Hansen Outerwear.

Also, new deals on Fine Jewelry.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Regulation: Uber’s Problem Is That It Offers Insufficient Opportunities For Graft.

INDEED: Inspector General Testifies: Prosecutions, firings needed to root out corruption at Department of Veterans Affairs.

ENTRENCHED BUSINESSES RUN TO REGULATORS TO BLOCK COMPETITION: 3 Major U.S. Airlines Fight to Cancel Cheaper International Travel. I suppose offering better service and lower prices is out of the question.

“IF YOU GOT THE MATH WRONG, YOU GOT THE MATH WRONG:” Why Piketty’s Book Is “Garbage.”

JAMES TARANTO: Springtime for Warmists: A Beltway commentator endorses “dictatorial” government.

Last month Rush Limbaugh remarked that the reason for “the re-establishment of climate change and global warming as a new primary impetus of the White House” is that “it offers the president opportunities to be dictatorial.”

A defender of the president might counter that “dictatorial” is overwrought. After all, whether or not his proposed regulations are wise, they are based on an act of Congress and an interpretation of that law that has passed muster with the Supreme Court. They won’t take effect until members of the public have had the opportunity to make their views known to the Environmental Protection Agency. And Obama will remain in office for only another 2½ years or so, after which his (democratically elected) successors will have the authority to revise the regulations. Congress also retains the authority to change the law.

But National Journal’s Lucia Graves takes a different approach. Instead of denying that Obama’s actions are dictatorial, she disputes Limbaugh’s implicit premise that there’s anything wrong with that. Lest you think we exaggerate, her piece is titled “Obama’s Thankfully ‘Dictatorial’ Approach to Climate Change.”

According to Graves, Limbaugh “has it precisely backward: The decision to use executive authority is the means, not the ends.” And you’ll never guess what justifies the means: “It also makes a lot of sense when it comes to global warming given Congress’s failure to pass the Waxman-Markey energy bill in 2009, and, for decades before that, to pass any sort of comprehensive climate legislation whatsoever.”

Yes, it has come to this. Americans are being urged to submit to “dictatorial” government because democracy is incapable of controlling the weather.

Have you noticed that the nature of the crisis du jour may change, but the solutions always involve higher taxes and more power for the political class? Show me a “crisis” that called for the opposite and I might take it seriously.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: ABA Allows Law Schools to Admit 10% of Students Without LSAT, Requires Annual Audit of Placement Data, and Rejects Academic Credit for Paid Externships.

BOY, WE’RE REALLY LIVING THE SCANDAL “DENSE PACK” STRATEGY, aren’t we? Can I call ’em or what?

HEH.

SHOCKINGLY, THIS STORY ISN’T ABOUT HILLARY’S SPEAKING FEES: Reactionary Journalist Defends Wealthiest One Percent.

YOUR ONE-STOP 2014 ELECTION CENTER: The Grid.

COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF: Let Innovators Innovate: Preventing services like Uber and Lyft from operating discourages competition and innovation.

ILYA SOMIN: Political Ignorance And The Founding Fathers.

VA SCANDAL NOT GOING AWAY: Report: 57,000 Veterans Waiting For Appointments.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Uh oh: Looks like the IRS violated federal tax law.

According to documents recently obtained by House investigators, the Internal Revenue Service may have been caught violating federal tax law when the agency allegedly transferred confidential information pertaining to a number of 501(c)(4) groups to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to a report from the National Review‘s Eliana Johnson, the “information was transmitted in advance of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s meeting the same month with Justice Department officials about the possibility of using campaign-finance laws to prosecute certain nonprofit groups.”

Among the emails uncovered by House investigators is a conversation between Lerner and Richard Pilger, the director of the Justice Department’s election-crimes branch, in which Lerner confirms that she is preparing data for transfer to the FBI.

I guess we know why she took the Fifth now.