NO COVERUP HERE, I’M SURE: White House Clams Up. “The White House said Tuesday night that it would refuse to allow its director of political strategy to testify Wednesday before a Republican-led House committee investigating whether the administration had illegally conducted political activity in the West Wing.”

STACY MCCAIN: Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace.’

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Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Foods.

MYSTERIOUS RASH? Might be your iPad. Or other device containing nickel.

DON’T LIKE WHAT SOMEBODY SAYS? Get the Bar to silence them. The South Carolina Bar has had a shady political reputation for a while, but this certainly isn’t helping. Plus, good advice: “Don’t just expect fireworks, folks. Create them.”

Words worthy of Kurt Schlichter’s new book, which is about doing just that.

VIDEO: From Weird Al Yankovic, “Word Crimes.”

OUT: “PLAYING DOCTOR” IS A NATURAL PART OF GROWING UP. In: 6-Year-Old Boy Charged With Felony Sexual Assault.

BEYOND BLACK: “To stare at the ‘super black’ coating made of carbon nanotubes – each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair – is an odd experience. It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing. Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss.”

IRA STOLL: The Latest Public-Sector Pension Scandal: The state-pension-industrial complex corrupts politics on multiple levels. “The current system takes rich money managers, who ordinarily might be a voice for lower taxes and restrained government spending, and makes them beholden, for business, on public pension boards that sometimes include union officials. Instead of arguing for less generous pensions, or for personal accounts that employees would manage individually, the money managers now have incentives to argue for more generous pensions and to avoid upsetting the system that is enriching them.” Then there’s the outright bribery.

AN EXPLANATION FOR THE ELIZABETH WARREN MEDIA BOOMLET: It’s time to look to the new generation, and Warren’s fresh-faced and 65.

CHANGE: Congressional Budget Office downgrades fiscal outlook, but not because of debt.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Mayor Bill de Blasio Sends a Video Love Letter to the Teachers Union. Kids and Taxpayers Get Jilted. He’s the unions’ guy. His sole purpose is to transfer money from taxpayers to unions.

MORE CONVENIENTLY DISAPPEARING DATA: “Recycled” hard drive at the FEC too? “A probe into Hatch Act violations at the Federal Election Commission ran aground when the electronic communications of the suspect — a former colleague of Lois Lerner — had her computer hard drive ‘recycled.’ Sound familiar?”

It’s a coverup. And what they’re covering up is a conspiracy to destroy political opposition, one that goes all the way to the White House. That’s the only reasonable inference from this chain of events.

UPDATE: Michael Lotus emails:

A conspiracy to destroy the political opposition.

Yes. Of course. These guys are Chicago and Cook County Democrats. That is how it is done there. 50 out of 50 Democrat aldermen, forever. No GOP at all, or merely a front opposition, forever. Government power used to exterminate political opposition and keep it from ever reviving. To Obama and the people around him this is all normal, and is the obvious goal. There is no reason to expect anything else from them.

A fair point. So how to arrange suitable payback/deterrence?

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is the federal personnel system ‘viable’?

I’m beginning to think that the entire Civil Service system should be scrapped.

HMM: Puerto Rico Preparing To Default? Guess I shouldn’t have put my entire retirement portfolio in their bonds. But the Governor promised they were safe! . . .

KINDA MAKING ME WONDER ABOUT THE 2012 ELECTION: Leaked documents reveal online manipulation, Facebook, YouTube snooping. And maybe 2008.

“OUTRIGHT FAILURE.” ShotSpotter Gunshot Detector Produces Hundreds of False Alarms, Misses Actual Shootings.

IT’S ABOUT TIME — NO, WAIT, THAT WAS A DIFFERENT SPACE PROBE: After 10 Years in Space, This Probe Is About to Catch a Comet.

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#WARONWOMEN: How the FBI Is Enabling Violence Against Women While Silencing Speech.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: If You Think 3D-Printed Guns Freaked People Out, Get Ready for 3D-Printed Vaginas.

HMM: Genome-wide analysis reveals genetic similarities among friends. “On average, we are genetically similar to our friends. We have more DNA in common with the people we pick as friends than we do with strangers in the same population.”

Does this have implications for multiculturalism and diversity theory?

MATHEMATICS IS THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE: The Advanced Metrics of Attraction.

#WARONWOMEN: Diane Ravitch: Campbell Brown Shouldn’t Worry Her Pretty Little Head About Education Policy. “Paul Farhi profiles Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor turned education-reform activist, who is working to end strict teacher tenure protections. Naturally, this enrages teacher-union evangelist Diane Ravitch, who not only disagrees with Brown’s position, but expresses offense that anybody should listen to Brown at all.”

Haters gonna hate, hacks gonna hack. Meanwhile, some remedial reading for Ravitch.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Everything You Need to Know About the Air Force’s New Bomber.