KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Elizabeth Warren, corporate-welfare queen.

JOURNALISM: Of Course: NY Magazine Story of 17-Year-Old Market Whiz Debunked.

THOU SHALT NOT CONTRADICT THE NARRATIVE, ESPECIALLY WITH ICKY PATRIARCHAL FACTS: Angry protesters denounce George Will at MSU; called ‘rape denier,’ backs turned. Hey, they’ve been turning their backs on the truth for a long time. But the biggest joke: signs stating “rape is not a pawn to be politicized.” Uh huh.

Even more delicious: “At Michigan State’s ‘alternative ceremony,’ one speaker was professor Ruben Parra-Cardona, associate director of MSU’s Research Consortium on Gender-Based Violence. Ruben, in a speech, criticized Will for seeing sexual violence ideologically. The scholar also checked his own privilege.”

Related: Charles C.W. Cooke: Does Truth Matter to the Feminist Left? The reactions to the unraveling of the Rolling Stone story suggest not. “Where most readers accepted with alacrity the possibility that Sabrina Erdely could have got it wrong, the tireless archaeologists of our supposedly ubiquitous ‘rape culture’ took to remolding their position every six-and-a-half minutes and to carrying on in public like a bunch of frothy peanut-gallery-voyeurs at a backwoods 17th-century witch trial. Just a few short weeks ago, when Rolling Stone’s story was almost universally believed to be true, we were urged to read each and every sordid detail of the case so that we might better acquaint ourselves with the broader problems that are presented by ‘rape culture.’ Today, as the story continues to collapse, the opposite view is regnant, and the very same people who pointed excitedly to Erdely’s work now contend that we should not be focusing on an individual case such as this in the first place.”

THE NEW CRITERION ON DOUBLE STANDARDS: “Why is it acceptable for celebrities or other certified feminist icons to prance around in pornographic splendor when men are expected to behave with Mrs. Grundyesque rectitude?” Because feminism, as practiced, is all about expanding women’s options and diminishing women’s responsibilities, while doing the opposite to men. Because equality!

SO IT SEEMS THAT THE MAIN FUNCTION OF THESE “HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT” PROTESTS is to bankrupt blue-state police departments. Now even Deval Patrick is complaining.

“KNOWN WOLF” SYNDROME: Sydney Hostage-Taker Is Yet Another Case. “Monis came to Australia in 1996 from Iran and his immigration status was that of political refugee. He has since had other well-known run-ins with law enforcement. In 2009, he sent a series of hate messages, which he deemed as ‘flowers of advice,’ to the families of Australian military members who had been killed in action. He likened their deaths to the deaths of Hitler’s soldiers, as well as to families of Australian victims of international terrorism attacks. He was given 300 hours of community service. In another case, Monis was charged with 50 counts of sexual assault, where it was claimed that he lured victims in and assaulted them claiming it was a ‘spiritual healing technique.'”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: The great campus rape hoax: The truth – that rape on campus is becoming less common – doesn’t fit the left’s narrative.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 585.

BLOWBACK: ‘Fire University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan’ put to petition.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Why The CIA “Torture Report” Is Like the Rolling Stone Rape Debacle.

By not talking to relevant CIA personnel, the staff weakened what was in most other respects a thorough and troubling examination of poorly conceived and poorly run program. But one needn’t be a supporter of the enhanced interrogations — I’m certainly not — to find unpersuasive the proffered explanation that CIA officials could not talk to the committee while a criminal investigation was pending. The investigation closed in 2012. Had the committee wanted to interview CIA officers closely involved in the program, there was plenty of time to do so, even if it meant postponing the date for finalizing the report. If, on the other hand, there are pending criminal matters to which the public isn’t privy, then releasing the report with all the accompanying hoopla is sure to poison the jury pool.

Why, then, didn’t the staff members speak to ranking intelligence officials, either in the CIA or elsewhere in the executive branch? Perhaps we see at work a malady that has become all too common: a reluctance to disturb the narrative.

Nowadays, narratives are all the rage, and inconvenient facts and testimony are generally left out of the story. This is exactly what got Rolling Stone magazine in trouble. Even back when I was a college journalist, we never ran a controversial story without seeking a response from the other side. But Rolling Stone, in its vivid account of a rape alleged to have occurred at a fraternity house on the University of Virginia campus, did exactly that. No comments from the accused; no comments from the fraternity; no comments from the accuser’s own friends. The accuser supposedly placed these limits as a condition of writing the story. Why on earth did the magazine go along?

Surely the same explanation applies. To do otherwise would have disturbed the narrative. Sexual assault is said to be rampant on campus, and Rolling Stone had a powerful story to tell. Adding even routine denials, to say nothing of the sort of widely varying accounts that a serious investigation would surely have unearthed, would have reduced the power of the tale.

It’s hard to believe that the magazine would have stumbled into the same thicket of unprofessional journalism had it been reporting on, say, a source’s allegations that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative organizations. Possibly the story wouldn’t have run at all; certainly it would not have run without a serious effort at verification.

Journalistic standards, like Congressional ones, are amazingly flexible depending on who is being targeted.

ROGER SIMON: Did Edward Snowden Hack Sony Pictures? “Many of us who have spent even part of our lives working in the film industry, particularly those who have committed the unpardonable sin of not adhering religiously to the orthodox liberal line, cannot but grin at the release of the hacked emails from the bosses of Sony Pictures. We were right all along about these self-described liberals and progressives and now we have proof — they are pond scum. They are about as liberal and progressive as Attila — not that those words mean anything anyway. They’re also racist, but forget about that. It’s hardly surprising. What is surprising is that they are clueless. They don’t know what the average ten-year-old nerd knows.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Four Charts That Explain Why America Has Too Many Law Schools.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: The great campus rape hoax: The truth – that rape on campus is becoming less common – doesn’t fit the left’s narrative.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Average American’s Wealth Down 40% Since 2007, Inequality Has Widened Across Racial Lines.

WHAT’S SAD IS THAT IN THE OBAMA ERA IT’S ENTIRELY PLAUSIBLE: Matt Drudge says spending bill passed because NSA has ‘dirt’ on John Boehner.

Matt Drudge of the influential Drudge Report news aggregation site expressed discontent over a federal spending bill that passed with votes from both Republicans and Democrats in the House.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill that runs through September 2015 is now up for a vote in the Democratically-led Senate. Many conservatives, including Drudge, are upset that the bill funds both Obamacare and President Obama’s immigration executive orders.

“Obama got EVERYTHING,” Drudge tweeted Friday. “NSA dirt on Boehner must be incredible. Chicago wins.”

I’ve seen similar speculation about John Roberts in the ObamaCare case. Sad what this country has become under the Obama Machine.

FROM ILYA SOMIN, a review of Damon Root’s Overruled: The Long War for Control of the Supreme Court.

#ICANTBREATHE: Face-sitting protest outside parliament against new porn rules.

Sex workers and campaigners have gathered in front of parliament to protest against changes to UK pornography regulations.

Organiser Charlotte Rose called the restrictions “ludicrous” and said they were a threat to freedom of expression.

Protesters say the list of banned activities includes “face-sitting”, and campaigners planned to carry out a mass demonstration of this while singing the Monty Python song Sit On My Face.

“These activities were added to this list without the public being made aware,” Charlotte Rose said. “They’ve done this without public knowledge and without public consent.

“There are activities on that list that may be deemed sexist, but it’s not just about sexism, it’s about censorship. What the government is doing is taking our personal liberties away without our permissions.”

Yeah, that’s not an unintended consequence, it’s the whole point.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Wealth gap widens between whites and minorities. “Pew researchers — analyzing data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances— found that the gap between whites and blacks has reached its highest point since 1989. The wealth ratio for whites-to-Hispanics is at a level not seen since 2001.”

AMTRAK, and the resurgence of the non-delegation doctrine.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Hacked Sony e-mails expose white liberal hypocrisy on race.

YA THINK? Daily Beast’s Ana Marie Cox: Rape Story “Tarnishes” Dunham’s Credibility.

SHANNEN DEE WILLIAMS: Black Women’s Lives Matter.