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KURT SCHLICHTER: The Establishment’s Conspiracy to Silence Conservatives Could Destroy Our Country. “When you make a conscious decision to deprive people of their voices, you may not like who they choose to speak for them.”

MY NEW SUGGESTION: Change Washington Redskins name to “Washington Pederasts,” put Harry Reid’s profile on helmets.

COORDINATION: How Did an IRS Official Know with Certainty that the Obama Campaign Would Continue One of Its Attacks? “In the email, IRS tax-exempt official Sarah Hall Ingram tells her cohorts, including Lois Lerner, about a coordinated media campaign against the Citizens United decision. Ingram praises that campaign, and demonstrates foreknowledge of what is to come.” The emails that came out are bad enough that the ones that were destroyed must have been really, really incriminating.

TANSTAAFL: “Free” Wi-Fi from Xfinity and AT&T also frees you to be hacked.

IT’S CLEARLY A GOOD TIME TO BE “RIGHT-SIZING” OUR NUCLEAR DETERRENT: U.S. Eliminates Multi-Warheads on All Ground-Based Nuclear Missiles.

A SMALL VICTORY OVER THE NANNY STATE: Oakland Gets Ready To Legalize Pinball.

LITTLE PINK HOUSE: Ted & Courtney Balaker are making a movie about Kelo.

IN THE FUTURE, ALL RESTAURANTS WILL BE TACO BELL, AND EVERYONE WILL BE A RAPIST: YOU are a rapist; yes YOU! I don’t think this will help colleges and universities maintain the enrollment levels they need.

IN MISSISSIPPI, race-baiting on behalf of Thad Cochran. I’m not surprised to see Dems engage in this, of course, but it’s pathetic that Republicans are, as I’ve noted before.

WELL, I ADMIT I LIKED #8: 22 Photos That Prove Florida Is Paradise. Enough that I didn’t mind it ending with #21.

AMAZING THRILL SPORTS: Step 1: Wear Mentos Suit. Step 2: Fall Into Vat of Diet Coke.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 410.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON, WRITING IN THE DAILY CALLER: Media Aids And Abets Left-Wing Smear Of Governor Scott Walker. Of course they do. They’re Democratic operatives with bylines. Just like they aided and abetted smears of Palin while covering for Obama.

WHEN YOUR FANCY JOURNALISM DEGREE yields a misspelled diploma.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Florida Local Officials Face Threat Of Removal From Office Over Gun Rules.

Under Florida law, city and county officials face penalties for violating the state’s prohibition on local gun ordinances. After that provision was enacted three years ago, gun rights advocates have filed several lawsuits against local governments and individual commissioners—including in Florida’s capital city.

Since the mid-80s, Florida law has said local governments can’t restrict gun use—only the state can. Second Amendment advocates say the preemption of local rules prevents a confusing patchwork of regulations for gun owners. Florida Carry Executive Director Sean Caranna explains it’s the same principal keeping local governments from enacting their own traffic rules.

“You can’t drive into the city of Tallahassee and say, ‘Well, instead of having red lights, we’re going to have blue lights,’” he says.

But he says despite the long-standing state law, about 300 local jurisdictions kept gun restrictions on the books with no repercussions until recently.

We need more repercussions for lawless action by government officials at all levels.

ED DRISCOLL: Fanfare For The Common Man, 21st Century Style.

CATHY YOUNG: California’s Absurd Intervention Over Dorm Room Sex. I think this will help to deflate the higher education bubble.

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MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Consequences Of Syria. “The Syrian civil war is no longer the Syrian civil war. It’s a regional war that started in Syria, has expanded into Lebanon and Iraq, and has drawn in the Iranians and to a lesser extent the Kurds and the Israelis. Wars in North Africa tend to stay local, but wars in the Levant spill over and suck in the neighbors. There’s no reason to believe this war has finished expanding or that an end is in sight.”

Fortunately, we have Smart Diplomacy, implemented by Top Men and Top Women.

JONATHAN TURLEY:

As federal agencies have grown in size and scope, they have increasingly viewed their regulatory functions as powers to reward or punish citizens and groups. The Internal Revenue Service offers another good example. Like the patent office, it was created for a relatively narrow function: tax collection. Yet the agency also determines which groups don’t have to pay taxes. Historically, the IRS adopted a neutral rule that avoided not-for-profit determinations based on the content of organizations’ beliefs and practices. Then, in 1970, came the Bob Jones University case. The IRS withdrew the tax-exempt status from the religious institution because of its rule against interracial dating on campus. The Supreme Court affirmed in 1983 that the IRS could yank tax exemption whenever it decided that an organization is behaving “contrary to established public policy” — whatever that public policy may be. Bob Jones had to choose between financial ruin and conforming its religious practices. It did the latter. . . .

When agencies engage in content-based speech regulation, it’s more than the usual issue of “mission creep.” As I’ve written before in these pages, agencies now represent something like a fourth branch in our government — an array of departments and offices that exercise responsibilities once dedicated exclusively to the judicial and legislative branches. Insulated from participatory politics and accountability, these agencies can shape political and social decision-making. To paraphrase Clausewitz, water, taxes and even trademarks appear to have become the continuation of politics by other means.

What is needed is a new law returning these agencies to their core regulatory responsibilities and requiring speech neutrality in enforcement. We do not need faceless federal officials to become arbiters of our social controversies. There are valid objections to the Redskins name, but it is a public controversy that demands a public resolution, not a bureaucratic one.

They do this because they are not afraid. I’m not sure a “new law” will do that, unless it provides for painful consequences to identifiable federal officials, consequences that make them afraid to abuse their powrs.

WITH NEARLY 4,500 DOWNLOADS, my The Second Amendment As Ordinary Constitutional Law is still #1 on SSRN. Thanks to everyone who’s downloaded it!

THE IRS SCANDAL: Government Beyond Accountability.

To understand the latest outrage in the IRS scandal, mull over what might happen if regulators found significant evidence to implicate Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in an insider trading scheme.

Let’s say Blankfein asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to answer any questions. Say Goldman was subpoenaed to provide all of Blankfein’s e-mails. Goldman replied that, instead of complying with the subpoena, it was itself reviewing the e-mails in question and was considering which ones to release.

Now imagine that, nearly a year later, Goldman admitted that it had not, in fact, reviewed the e-mails in question, because they had been lost in a computer crash two months before it claimed to be reviewing them. Imagine Goldman also said copies of the e-mails were lost, because while under subpoena it had destroyed the “backup tapes” (whatever those are) that held them and that it had also thrown away Blankfein’s actual hard drive.

The thing about dogs eating homework is, it could actually happen. This can’t. . . . Lerner wouldn’t have pleaded the Fifth unless she had reason to believe that there was potential illegality and it could be tied to her.

True.

HMM: Former head of NSA doing very well in the private sector.

Just another argument for my revolving-door surtax!