AT FIRST I THOUGHT THIS WAS ABOUT MEDIA MATTERS, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY ABOUT PEOPLE WHO ARE COMPETENT: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations. “Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: ‘false flag operations’ (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting ‘negative information’ on various forums.”

My question is, were any of these techniques used during election campaigns?

JAMES TARANTO: Blintz Krieg: Jeffrey Toobin’s bizarre attack on Justice Thomas.

On Friday Toobin, who writes about the court for The New Yorker, posted a blog item inveighing against what the headline called “Clarence Thomas’s Disgraceful Silence.” We say “evidently” he disagrees because he doesn’t acknowledge, much less respond to, Thomas’s account of his own behavior. Instead Toobin sets out to stigmatize Thomas as some sort of deviant. . . .

Toobin’s likening of Thomas to a defiant schoolboy is altogether inappropriate. Who exactly is the “schoolteacher” toward whom we are supposed to imagine Thomas is insubordinate? The lawyers whose cases are before the court? No, he (like the other justices) is in a superior position to them. The other justices? No, each of them is Thomas’s equal.

The position of Supreme Court justice is unusual in that it is one of the few institutional roles in which one is subordinate to nobody. Like other federal judges, the justices do not answer to the voters or, once confirmed, to the political branches of government (except in the rare case of impeachment). Unlike other federal judges, their work is not subject to review by a higher court. The chief justice, or sometimes a senior associate justice, has the procedural authority to assign the writing of a majority opinion. But no justice is compelled to join such an opinion. Each is free to vote as he sees fit and to express his own views in concurrence or dissent.

What is it about Thomas that leads Toobin to believe that he, apparently alone among the justices, has a duty to be submissive? Or perhaps we should ask: What is it about Toobin?

Indeed.

POWER LINE: Cleta Chronicles: IRS scandals, part 1.

Cleta Mitchell may be the most dangerous woman in America. She is the prominent Washington attorney who represents several clients victimized by the criminal misconduct of the IRS over the past four years. She speaks with authority when she asserts, as she did recently in her testimony before a congressional subcommittee, that the Obama administration is responsible for “lies upon lies” covering up the multifarious, politically inspired wrongdoing of the IRS.

Part 2:

Cleta Mitchell is the Washington superlawyer who represents numerous clients victimized by the multifarious criminal misbehavior of the IRS. Cleta sat down with me to field a few questions following her outstanding presentation at the Heritage Foundation program on the IRS scandals this past Friday. In the three-minute video below, I ask her to describe the origin of the scandals. Can she trace the source?

Cleta traces the scandals to President Obama and concludes with some choice words on the role of our “state media,” as she calls them, in falling down on the story. Tyler O’Neill’s account of Friday’s Heritage program also focuses on the origin of the scandals.

Part 3:

In her remarks at the Heritage Foundation program on the IRS assault on the First Amendment this past Friday (video here), I was particularly struck by a point Cleta made about the complicity of Congress in the lawlessness of the IRS. She handed up an indictment that extended both to Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

I asked Cleta to reiterate her comments on this subject in a three-minute video for Power Line readers. If you watch only one video in this series, please make it this one.

Some nice reporting from Scott Johnson and Power Line. Didn’t we used to have networks and journalists and stuff for this?

WELL, GOOD: WSJ: Hiring Improves for Law Grads.

HEY, MAYBE WE SHOULD ADOPT POLICIES TO GET MORE PEOPLE TO WORK: “There are five times as many workers in the top 20 percent than there are in the bottom 20 percent.”

FAILURE TO TRAIN: Florida cops are clueless about the law. “This officer doesn’t realize that recording a police officer is absolutely legal. Everywhere. In an effort to intimidate this young lady, he tells her that recording an officer is a felony and notes that he knows more about the law than she does. In fact both of those points are lies.”

THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH A LITTLE INCEST, SO LONG AS YOU KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY: Dingell dynasty may not be over yet. “While the longest-serving congressman in history will end his tenure next year, his wife Debbie Dingell has long been expected to run for his seat and continue the family’s more than eight decadeslong grasp on the Detroit seat.”

CHARLES BLAHOUS: Reform Entitlements — Or Go Bust.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW: Cop Harasses Photographer, Steals His Cellphone Battery And Attempts To Get YouTube To Pull The Incriminating Video.

Related: Police Chief To Critics Of Controversial Arrest: Hey, At Least My Officers Aren’t Sexually Assaulting Arrestees. Setting the bar high there, aren’t you chief?

PEER-REVIEWED SCIENCE: Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers.

The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers. . . .

There is a long history of journalists and researchers getting spoof papers accepted in conferences or by journals to reveal weaknesses in academic quality controls — from a fake paper published by physicist Alan Sokal of New York University in the journal Social Text in 1996, to a sting operation by US reporter John Bohannon published in Science in 2013, in which he got more than 150 open-access journals to accept a deliberately flawed study for publication.

Labbé emphasizes that the nonsense computer science papers all appeared in subscription offerings. In his view, there is little evidence that open-access publishers — which charge fees to publish manuscripts — necessarily have less stringent peer review than subscription publishers.

Not very impressive.

ROGER SIMON: After Ukraine, We Need An American Spring. “The people aren’t the problem. It’s the state.”

BUDGETING IN THE ERA OF OBAMA: War fighters, not bureaucrats bear the brunt of cuts.

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WAIT, I THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: 7 foods that were supposed to be incredibly unhealthy — but are actually anything but. “We were warned by experts to avoid these edibles at all costs. Turns out the experts were wrong.”

“PARANOID, VAIN, AND JEALOUS:” A not very positive assessment of Julian Assange.

WHAT ACTUAL SMART DIPLOMACY LOOKS LIKE: Reagan’s warm personal friendship with Gorbachev was legendary. But the Gipper conceded little of substance in their talks.

HOUSE GOP RELEASES TAX REFORM PLAN:

The long-awaited simplification of the tax code being drafted by House Republicans would slash the top income tax rate to 25 percent from 39.6 percent and impose a surtax on some of the nation’s wealthiest households.

Under the proposal, set for release Wednesday, the vast majority of taxpayers would see little change in the ultimate size of their tax bills, according to a nonpartisan congressional analysis of the legislation.

But the tax system would be dramatically simpler, with seven existing brackets collapsed into just two, set at 10 percent and 25 percent.

In addition, the plan would impose a 10 percent surtax on certain types of earned income over roughly $450,000 a year. The surtax would hit many salaried professionals, such as attorneys and accountants, while dodging farmers and manufacturers — as well as the super-rich, whose income often is derived primarily from interest and investments.

I’d like to see my revolving-door surtax included, as long as we’re talking surtaxes. I’ve got a few other revenue enhancements to suggest, too, if Dems think this doesn’t do enough. . . .

ROBOTS WILL BE SMARTER THAN US IN 2029. Actually, that feat is looking easier and less impressive with every news cycle.

WHOLE FOODS: America’s Temple Of Pseudoscience?

MATT WALSH ON RESPECT:

The respect deficiency in our culture has reached crisis levels.

I’ve discussed at length how men should treat women. I’ve written about the lessons I plan to teach my son; lessons about how he should love, honor, respect, serve, and protect the women in his life. Indeed, men need to respect women, and we, as men, are far from perfect in that regard.

Those posts — the ones where I call on us men to improve the way we treat women — tend to be very popular. They’re popular when I write them or when anyone writes them. Proclaim that women, mothers, and wives should be respected, and a chorus will shout ‘amen.’ Every day on Facebook brings us another viral post excoriating men and supporting women. I’ve written a few of them myself.

But I’ve noticed that the corollary – a message about the respect women must give men, a message challenging wives and encouraging husbands – isn’t quite so palatable for many people. Disrespect for men has become standard practice. That scene I witnessed was sad but unremarkable; we’ve all watched that kind of thing play out a thousand times over. Men are disrespected by their wives – they’re disrespected publicly, they’re disrespected privately, they’re disrespected and then told that they have no right to be upset about it because they aren’t worthy of respect in the first place.

Disrespect for men is a joke to us now.

Some have stopped laughing.

DIVERGING PRIORITIES: The Ruling Class Wants Very Different Things Than America Wants.

LBJ’S OTHER VIETNAM: Why We Lost The War On Poverty. Note the year when the curves start to diverge.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Herkimer County men accused of sexually abusing cows.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: License Plates, Newsrooms, and Guns: Three Examples of Americans Rising Up Against Government.