IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: House Turns Up the Heat on Lerner, Pursues Criminal Charges.

The House can arrest her for contempt itself, of course, if they’ve got the balls to do it.

IF THEY’RE EXPLAINING, THEY’RE LOSING: White House: Yeah, We Pay Our Women Less Than Our Men, But Our Gap Is Smaller Than The National Average!

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Gallup survey suggests sign-ups under ObamaCare not as high as White House says.

JOBS: Where Have All The Good Earners Gone?

AT SLATE, WILL SALETAN WRITES ON Brendan Eich and the New Moral Majority. “It used to be social conservatives who stood for the idea that companies could and should fire employees based on the ‘values’ and ‘community standards’ of their “employees, business partners and customers.” Now it’s liberals. Or, rather, it’s people on the left who, in their exhilaration at finally wielding corporate power, have forgotten what liberalism is.”

I think, rather, that their view of liberalism is like Erdogan’s view of democracy — it’s a bus that you take until you get to your stop, at which point you get off.

WELL, WELL: OkCupid’s CEO Donated to an Anti-Gay Campaign Once, Too.

Last week, the online dating site OkCupid switched up its homepage for Mozilla Firefox users. Upon opening the site, a message appeared encouraging members to curb their use of Firefox because the company’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, allegedly opposes equality for gay couples—specifically, he donated $1000 to the campaign for the anti-gay Proposition 8 in 2008. “We’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together,” the message read. “If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal.” The company’s action went viral, and within a few days, Eich had resigned as CEO of Mozilla only weeks after taking up the post. On Thursday, OkCupid released a statement saying “We are pleased that OkCupid’s boycott has brought tremendous awareness to the critical matter of equal rights for all individuals and partnerships.”

But there’s a hitch: OkCupid’s co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan once donated to an anti-gay candidate. (Yagan is also CEO of Match.com.) Specifically, Yagan donated $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) in 2004, reports Uncrunched. During his time as congressman from 1997 to 2009, Cannon voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against a ban on sexual-orientation based job discrimination, and for prohibition of gay adoptions.

He. Must. Go. Right?

SOME THOUGHTS ON 2016 FROM AN ANONYMOUS JOURNALIST READER: “As delighted as I am professionally at the prospect of a Bush-Clinton extravaganza, I see the pending spectacle as another sign of the decline and fall of the American empire. Two tired old dynasties running two ponderous bloodless parties with advanced cases of syphilis. Bush-Clinton is the best these people can do, on the heels of this current farce? I’d be more enthusiastic about Rand Paul but I have no tolerance for any whiff of isolationism, and I’m afraid the whack apple hasn’t rolled far enough from the whack tree.”

LELAND WHO? California Senate erases websites of 3 lawmakers, including Leland Yee. “The Senate removed pictures, video clips and legislative archives over the weekend involving Democratic Sens. Rod Wright of Los Angeles, Ron Calderon of Montebello and Leland Yee of San Francisco. . . . The three continue to receive their $95,291 annual salaries but are not collecting a daily expense allowance. Lawmakers have been trying to distance themselves from the three suspended senators, and several have proposed legislation aiming to restore public trust in government by untangling the web of money and politics.” Yeah, how about term limits and reduced government powers? That would do more to reduce corruption — which is why it isn’t being suggested.

UPDATE: In the comments, I am corrected on term limits and California. But has Leland Yee really only served two terms?

21ST CENTURY ENTERTAINMENT: Sex, movies and the desperate attempt to shock audiences. (Hint: it’s not working.) Like Dr. Maturin’s laudanum, the dose must be perennially increased — and the effect still weakens.

SO I JUST CHECKED, AND FIREFOX IS NOW THE #4 BROWSER ON INSTAPUNDIT, behind Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Firefox was #1 last time I noticed, though that was a while ago.

VENEZUELA: Globovision Anchor Quits On Air, Cites Censorship. “Chavez tells Fusion he believes most electronic media in Venezuela is experiencing this same censorship (or self-censorship). He says there is a bit more freedom in the print media but notes ‘newspapers [critical of the government] are constantly audited by officials, and if there are any problems with their finances, they are hit with hefty fines.'”

Huh. That sounds kinda familiar, somehow.

Plus:

On top of that you couldn’t say words like ‘food shortages’, barricades, repression, those type of terms were forbidden.

On CNN, the words are “Leland Yee.”

KEN ANDERSON: The WeRobot2014 conference and the diffusion of robots into society.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Gender Divide On Threesomes.

AT AMAZON, THE BLU-RAY DEAL OF THE WEEK: Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection. Dracula, The Mummy, Creature From The Black Lagoon, and much, much more.

Plus, new deals in Jewelry.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ON SILICON VALLEY’S TRUST PROBLEM: Silicon Valley Scares Americans.

RICHARD SAMUELSON: The ObamaCare Penalty As Dhimmi Tax.

DERELICTS: Snooping Around Charles De Gaulle’s Abandoned Cruiser.

STEPHEN GREEN: A modest proposal for coping with the end of the world.

IDIOCRACY WAS STILL HIS BEST — AND, ALAS, MOST PROPHETIC — WORK: Mike Judge Skewers Silicon Valley With the Satire of Our Dreams. “Now Judge is turning his astringent gaze on Silicon Valley—which feels like a particularly ripe target right now. We live in a time when top programmers have agents, just like professional athletes. When Snapchat’s CEO turns down a $3 billion acquisition offer and is rumored to be dating Taylor Swift. When Sean Parker spares no expense to throw a Hobbit-themed wedding among the redwoods. It’s hard to imagine material more in need of the Judge treatment. ‘Anytime you’ve got self-important, pompous, powerful people, it’s always fun to take a shit on them,’ says Alec Berg, a writer, director, and executive producer on Silicon Valley, whose credits include Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

What’s really interesting is what this says about how the perception of Silicon Valley and the tech community has changed. Instead of sticking it to The Man, they are The Man. I think the pivot-point was The Social Network.

HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? What, Me Old? “It’s one thing to admire grace in others as age changes who they are. It’s another thing to accept that you are that someone.” There’s a troubling demographic lesson in the intro, though.

A ONE-MAN ORGANIZATION standing up against racism in college admissions. And looking for plaintiffs to join suits against Harvard, the University of North Carolina and the University of Wisconsin for their race-preferential admissions policies. The NYT piece makes it all sound kinda shady — all that’s missing is a reference to Halliburton or the Koch Brothers — but it seems like straightforward civil-rights litigation to me.

THE SINGULARITY ARRIVED SO GRADUALLY I BARELY EVEN NOTICED (CONT’D): Mainstreaming Augmented And Virtual Reality.

SO THIS IS GOOD NEWS, RIGHT? ESCAPE FROM “THE MALE GAZE” AND ALL THAT? Women begin feeling invisible to men ‘when they turn 51.′

PRIVACY: Driver’s Licenses Contain Too Much Personal Info to Use at a Bar.

GOOGLE CIRCLES THE EARTH IN 22 DAYS, with a balloon.