LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Law-Flouting David Gregory of NBC Parks Illegally Outside Fancy D.C. Jewelry Shop. Hey, if he’s willing to commit a gun felony on broadcast TV. . . .

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: New York Post:

Many of the press accounts we read suggest there is no scandal here unless the targeting of Americans for their conservative political beliefs can be tied back to President Obama or the White House.

We beg to differ. Wouldn’t it be even more frightening if a federal agency as powerful as the IRS on its own decided to use its vast powers to squelch others on the basis of politics and ideology?

Yes.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Brookings: More businesses dying than being created — for first time ever. Behold the power of Obamanomics. . . .

Plus: “Older and larger businesses are doing better relative to younger and smaller ones.”

JAMES TARANTO: Schindler’s List, And Hillary’s.

Obama’s “remarkable title” is itself an example of the power of story telling. It is a commonplace that he rose to prominence almost entirely on the strength of his biography (which Bill Clinton once disparaged as a “fairy tale”). In 2011, when he was at one of his political low points, critics on the left insisted his failure was one not of leadership or of policy but of story telling.

Now here he is telling a story–a story about telling stories. The moral of this story is that leadership is a matter of telling stories. That is partly true–we do not mean to gainsay the hortatory and informative elements of political leadership–but Obama seems to be citing the power of stories as an excuse for inaction.

Also, Hillary’s inaction:

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen. . . .

In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram “are likely sharing funds, training, and explosive materials” with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.

Smart diplomacy!

LOVE THE JAMES BOND ILLUSTRATION: Roger Simon: I was an Israeli Spy. “I told them many Americans were worried they wouldn’t be able to keep their doctors. They told me they had plenty of doctors and started in with a lot of Jewish jokes that I had heard already.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Quinnipiac University to lay off 15 professors, add 12 new faculty members. “The university is adding faculty in areas of growth and reducing the number of faculty in areas that have had declining enrollments over the past two years. . . . As a result, 12 new faculty members will join the university this fall, and 15 professors currently on the faculty have been notified that they will not be reappointed next year.”

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

MICKEY KAUS: Gaslighting The GOPs? “If you’re a top White House political aide, things look bleak for the 2014 mid-terms: slow recovery, stagnant wages, Obamacare distress, serial foreign policy humiliations and a sense that social change is maybe proceeding a bit too rapidly for universal voter comfort would seem to give Republicans an advantage in a relatively low-turnout election in which enthusiasm matters. A Republican Senate and lame-duckness looms. What to do? Answer: Look back to the last Democratic president who faced this bleak prospect, Bill Clinton. . . . I’m not suggesting the White House is intentionally provoking Republicans over Benghazi, the better to produce counterproductive overreach. OK, sorry. I’m totally suggesting the White House is intentionally provoking Republicans over Benghazi.”

STEVE HAYWARD:

The Left has been conducting an open campaign lately to persuade coerce Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose health has been shaky the last few years, to retire immediately so that President Obama can replace her with a high octane liberal while Democrats still have a majority in the Senate. Nothing speaks “confidence” in your prospects more than trying to push a loyal soldier out the door. So far the crusade is failing, and I hope she hangs on for exactly the reason the Left wants her out.

But read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Bad Is the Job Market for the College Class of 2014? “So to sum it up: Today’s crop of new B.A.s are staring at roughly 8.5 percent unemployment, 16.8 percent underemployment. Close to half of those who land work won’t immediately find a job that requires their degree, and for those stuck in that situation, there are fewer “good” jobs to go around. Welcome to adulthood, class of 2014.”

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya? Meanwhile, as should be obvious, it’s going to be hard for colleges to sustain tuition growth in this environment.

I WOULDN’T GO ALONG WITH THIS EITHER: Law professors rebel against new Aspen casebook policy. “The idea, presumably, is to go after the used book market. Publishers and casebook authors make money from selling new books. But especially in slow-changing fields like property law, new editions aren’t needed very often. Old editions can remain in use and used books quickly predominate, especially now that the Internet facilitates the used book market. Under Aspen’s CasebookConnect proposal, however, students can’t resell their books after the semester because they no longer have them.”

Casebooks are overpriced as it is, and the quality is, if anything, in decline.

SALENA ZITO: Only In Washington Is “Climate Change” The Greatest Threat We Face.

NEXT YOU’LL BE TELLING ME HE CHEATED ON HIS TAXES OR SOMETHING: Mitt Romney adviser: Tim Geithner’s lying.

MICKEY KAUS ON Amnesty Gyrations: Two Weeks And You’re In! “The mere fact that Obama is thinking about another de facto amnesty decree shows he is way too solicitous of Latino activists to reliably implement any enforcement provisions in a future amnesty bill such as an employment-verification system.”

WELL, THEY’VE ALREADY GONE AFTER THE PICKUP ARTISTS, SO WHAT’S LEFT? Leftist, terrorism-inspiring Southern Poverty Law Center labels Common Core critics ‘far-right extremists.’

The SPLC is, of course, most famous because a man named Floyd Lee Corkins used an SPLC “Hate Map” to find the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, DC. He entered the headquarters lobby in August 2012 in an attempt to “to kill as many people as possible” and “smother Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces” because he disagreed with the conservative organization about gay marriage. Corkins managed to shoot a security guard. The guard disarmed him. (RELATED: Family Research Council shooter pleads guilty)

In March, the Federal Bureau of Investigations removed links to the Southern Poverty Law Center from the civil rights division’s web page, breaking ties with the group that inspired the would-be mass shooter.

The SPLC is what it pretends to oppose, a hate group that bilks its donors by peddling conspiracy theories.

LIFE IN MASSACHUSETTS: Chicopee woman faces wiretapping charges after allegedly recording her own arrest.

That’s ridiculous. Everyone has a due process right to record the police.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Calif. Rail Authority Tried to Intimidate Consultants to Hide $1B Cost Overrun.

HOW TO RESPOND TO “CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE” BULLSHIT: “What you call ‘privilege’ is just me being better than you.”

Plus: “Don’t worry about not making sense. They’re college students. They are used to not understanding what people smarter than they are tell them.”