WE ALWAYS WIND UP PAYING FOR EVERYTHING: We’re Going to Wind Up Paying For All These Car Recalls.

THE NEW YORK TIMES DISCOVERS MARK RIPPETOE:

Now for the astonishing part: It worked. I was able to lift a tiny bit more every single time, like magic — or, rather, like Milo of Croton, the ancient Greek wrestler who is said to have lifted a newborn calf and then lifted it every day thereafter, as it grew, until Milo carried a full-grown bull. In my own case, I eventually squatted 285 pounds, dead-lifted 335 and bench-pressed 235. Those numbers will not impress strength coaches — I weighed 215, after all — but they were a marvel to me.

This raised a question: If all the latest cutting-edge scientific research says that outdated barbell movements have to be updated with core stability tricks and then integrated into super-short high-intensity muscle-confusion routines, how come none of that did much for me, while the same five lifts repeated for a year caused profound structural changes to my body?

The answer, it turns out, is that there are no cutting-edge scientific studies.

You can get the book here, if you’re interested. But, of course, this is old stuff for InstaPundit readers. The bad news is that as the word spreads, it’ll get even harder for me to get a squat rack at the gym. I got ’em to add one more already, but . . . .

FORTUNATELY, ONLY FIGURATIVELY, SINCE IF YOU WERE REALLY SICK TO YOUR STOMACH YOU’D BE ON A WAITLIST: Chuck Hagel On The VA Scandal: “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

JAKE TAPPER’S TWITTER FEED is all about veterans today.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 382.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Making School Lunches Healthier Doesn’t Mean Kids Will Eat Them.

Los Angeles Unified, the country’s second-largest school system, is home to more than 650,000 students, and 42 percent of them are overweight or obese. In 2011, the district decided healthier school lunches were the best way to help them not be.

At that point, Los Angeles was already on the julienning edge when it came to fighting childhood obesity through food: It outlawed sodas in schools in 2004, banned selling junk food on campus, and swapped the bulk of its canned and frozen produce for fresh.

But the new menus were the most austere measure yet, cutting kid-friendly favorites like chocolate milk, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, and nachos. Instead, little Jayden and Mia would dine on vegetarian curries, tostada salad, and fresh pears.

A student rebellion ensued—kids brought Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to school rather than much on quinoa salad—and L.A. Unified was forced to settle for a middle ground between Alice Waters and Ronald McDonald.

Upside: The kids learned that pushback works.

FRAUD: Local NBC Investigation Discovers Dozens of Illegal Voters in Florida.

AT AMAZON, Most Wished-For Items in Home & Kitchen.

Also, Fishing Rod & Reel Combos under $100.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Lawmakers Seek Details on IRS Targeting From Justice Official. “Two committee leaders investigating the IRS targeting scandal, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, yesterday asked Attorney General Eric Holder to make available the chief of Justice’s Public Integrity Section for a transcribed interview. Issa and Jordan said in a letter to Holder that investigators want to talk next week to Jack Smith, the section head. The request, they said, came after they learned that a Smith deputy met in October 2010 with then-IRS official Lois Lerner at Smith’s direction ‘to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits.'”

POLICE, INTERFERE AT YOUR PERIL: Federal appeals court reaffirms right to videorecord, including at traffic stops. This is the second time the 1st Circuit has denied qualified immunity to officers because the right to record is “clearly established.” That’s a big deal.

The courts need to understand, though, that it’s not just the First Amendment. There’s also a due process right to record the police.

SALENA ZITO: On Main Street, A Building Wave.

This country is in the midst of a quirky wave election, one that is hard to define and doesn’t want to be labeled. The electorate is moving separately toward the middle of each party and away from the political red meat that pundits and strategists use to drive up wedge issues and voter turnout.

Fading on the right is the control once exercised by such groups as Heritage Action, Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and anything with “tea party” attached to its name.

Same for the left: MoveOn and Organizing for America are not the influencers they once were with Democrats, who largely feel their support of President Obama has not gotten them what they expected.

They were told by these progressive groups that they would get an efficient, engaged, compassionate, transparent leader who would stand up for the little guy. Instead, they got a dispassionate, disengaged figurehead who has divided the country by race, gender and equity, who mouths all the right phrases to get elected but displays no leadership when things get tough.

If Pennsylvania truly is a bellwether state that gives political scientists a way to gauge what is happening in coming elections, then pay attention to what it is telling them after last week’s primary. A restless electorate, weary of strident ideology and class warfare, longs for effective, responsible and transparent governing — and to hell with the political hell-raisers.

People want leadership to be outraged by the scandals that rip apart lives (such as the mishandling of patients by Veterans Affairs) or that pick political winners and losers (as in the IRS targeting of conservatives).

They want political leaders who will get to the bottom of what went wrong in Benghazi so we can try to stop that from happening again.

Well, let’s hope.

TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Fed Employees Owe Tax at Twice Rate of Government Workers Generally.

SINS OF THE ELDERS: Who Is Really To Blame For “Rape Culture?”

TOM BELL HAS A NEW BOOK OUT: Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good.

I read it in manuscript, and provided this blurb: “In this lucid and persuasive work, Tom W. Bell makes the case for copyright rules that are closer to what the Framers had in mind, and better suited to today’s ‘packet-switched society.’ A must-read for anyone interested in (so-called) intellectual property.”

A LOT OF PEOPLE LIKED MY POST ON THIS THE OTHER DAY, so here’s more from Austin Bay: Mexico: Anti-Cartel Militias Become Legitimate. “Since the local militias are defending their homes and businesses and know each other they are somewhat resistant to cartel intimidation. That’s a tough circle for the cartels to break into and corrupt. While the government worried that some of these self-defense groups might turn into bandits or private armies for some local leader that has now become a risk worth taking because of the years of persistent and often growing cartel violence.”

CNN’S JOHN KING: Democrats Privately Calling Obama ‘Detached,’ ‘Flat Footed,’ ‘Incompetent.’

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Indiana Tech Law School Dean Resigns After Enrolling Inaugural Class of 28 Students. I don’t think it’s his fault. It’s a bad time to start a law school.

ROGER SIMON: Blame Me For Everything On Memorial Day. “When I think of that moment today I am sick to my stomach with shame. This must have been around 1970 and we were at a medical convention at a fancy Las Vegas hotel – at my father’s invitation, of course, and on his dime. Forget the totalitarian communisms like North Korea and North Vietnam that we were trying to stop, what this was all about for so many of us in those days was beating our fathers, showing them up. . . . Now we have a country of Barack Obama and veterans who are wait-listed for medical care and a foreign policy – not to mention a world – in shambles because this once great land leads from behind, if at all. Sorry. I was just a kid. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I wasn’t alone.”

GIVE THE WORK TO PEOPLE WHO CARE — BECAUSE THEY CAN BE FIRED — INSTEAD OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T, BECAUSE THEY CAN’T: GOP leaders, whistle-blower join in calls to privatize veterans’ care.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Are We Ready For HIV’s Sexual Revolution?

FINDING: Most Geriatricians Would Choose A “Do Not Resuscitate” Order For Themselves. “Doctors see a lot.”

PROOF POSITIVE THAT GUN-FREE ZONES REALLY DO WORK: for criminals.

GUIDO FAWKES on the European elections.