FIRE: Due Process Advocates Take Critical Look at How Colleges Are Dealing with Sexual Assault Allegations.

Sexual partners, of course, do not always agree on why they are having sex. Should that really negate otherwise valid consent? How clearly must each partner communicate their reasons for engaging in sexual activity? Is “yes, because” the new “yes”? That OSU has set forth this absurd standard is a stark illustration of how the movement to better protect students from sexual assault has led some institutions astray.

As we move away from a definition limited to what Susan Estrich once critically described as “real rape” — forcible sex by a stranger — into the newer, more ambiguous definitions, a fair system would be charging more women with rape, and finding them guilty. But while the “real rape” definition made rape something mostly done by males, and the new system is far more gender-neutral and encompasses all sorts of suasion and ambiguity as rape, the point of all these programs still seems to be to find and punish male students. That, in itself, is a Title IX violation, and the more that ambiguous, non-violent conduct gets included in the definition of rape, the more women will be included, and the more the disparity in prosecution/punishment will stand out.

Related: We need to teach women not to rape.

SHARYL ATKISSON: Hillary Cronies Sanitized Benghazi Files Before Accountability Review Board Got Documents. “As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story. At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.”

We used to call it “vacuuming” the files back in the day.

Related: Hillary’s “Plumbers” Hid Benghazi Docs.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama forced by events to reverse course — and disillusion base.

One of his chief advantages over Hillary Clinton in 2008 was her vote for the Iraq war resolution in 2002 and Obama’s opposition to it, albeit as a state senator from an overwhelmingly Democratic district.

In the late 1960s Democrats switched from being the more hawkish of our two parties, more likely to support military interventions and commitments, to being the more dovish. Visceral opposition to military action, and suspicion that even the most limited such action will lead to massive war, is deeply implanted in many Democratic voters.

You can expect, therefore, a skittish reaction to Obama’s announcement of a military escalation from senatorial and congressional candidates in states with dovish Democratic electorates like Colorado and Iowa. We also may also see depressed turnout of Democratic doves all over the country in November.

It is apparent that Obama’s decision to take military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, however limited, came despite his deep-seated feelings and was forced on him by events. American voters do not take kindly to videotaped beheadings of Americans. It unleashes a Jacksonian impulse to wipe the people who do these things off the face of the earth.

Obama, like his predecessor, likes to depict Islam as a religion of peace. An unhappily large number of Muslims, however, have other ideas. Their aggression and immunity to appeasement have forced the president to take actions that he, like many of his fellow Democrats, abhors.

Yeah, that keeps happening.

THE HILL: Administration threatens to cut off ObamaCare subsidies to 360,000.

The Obama administration announced Monday it will cut off tax subsidies to about 360,000 people if they do not offer proof of their income in the next two weeks.

Officials will send final notices this week to individuals who signed up for ObamaCare with income levels that didn’t match government records. The announcement marks the administration’s first move to tackle the politically charged issue of income verification, which has remained a key GOP argument against the healthcare reform law.

Those who don’t confirm their income levels could lose their tax credit and face higher premiums and higher deductibles.

Nearly 90 percent of the 8 million people who signed up for ObamaCare have received government subsidies. The average consumer pays $82 per month for a $346 plan, receiving an average subsidy of $264.

The administration had already warned that it would end coverage for the 966,000 individuals whose immigration status could not be confirmed by the government.

So by the rules of discourse arrived at during the ObamaCare debate, this means the Obama Administration hates sick people and wants them to die, right?

ROLL CALL: The Republican Brand’s Recovery Tour, Sort Of.

There was a time, a little less than a year ago, when Democrats salivated at the thought of running against the GOP brand and demonizing Republican candidates by attacking them and their party for “shutting down the government.”

But the Republican brand has largely recovered from its low point in late October, and even former Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Davis might now have to revise and extend his one-time comment that if the Republican Party “were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”

The turnaround in the Republican Party brand — and changes in the brands of the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama — is another reason why Democrats find themselves on the defensive in this year’s elections.

Instead of trying to make the midterms a referendum on the government shutdown and the Republican Party, Democratic strategists are trying to discredit individual Republican nominees.

I think it should be a referendum on Obama.

Related: Democrats Sound The Alarm On Southern California Race. “Democrats are sending warning signals on a previously sleepy southern California House race — a tangible sign of an increasingly tough midterm for the party. Freshman Rep. Julia Brownley is one of three House Democrats receiving extra and early help from the national party. A year ago, her district was barely on the party’s radar of competitive races, after President Barack Obama carried it by 10 points last cycle.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Teacher group: Math is ‘the domain of old, white men.’

CHANGE: In Immigration Debate, Polls Show Tide Turns For GOP.

A FAILURE OF CONFIDENCE: Poll: Americans don’t believe Obama will defeat ISIS; Now what? “Sowing distrust and discord among Americans has served Barack Obama well politically during his 68 months in office. But now as the former community organizer faces ISIS and the worst foreign policy crisis of his ineffective presidential tenure, that distrust and division has circled around to bite its master. After his nationally-televised address Wednesday and a tepid Friday fundraiser talk justifying his belated actions, a new poll reveals that a large majority of Americans says it lacks confidence he can accomplish his stated goals of beating the brutal new terror group that released a video of its beheading of a British citizen over the weekend.”

Weak horse.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, The Great Unraveling. Rodger Cohen also looks at cultural decay, dimly senses cause — even quotes Kipling — but doesn’t quite take it to the hoop.

Meanwhile, Ed Driscoll looks at who’s to blame.

HMM: Did Neil deGrasse Tyson Just Try To Justify Blatant Quote Fabrication?

GAMERGATE: Angry Feminists, Unethical Journalists Are the Ones Not Welcome in the Gaming Community. “To the feminist campaigners trying to ruin video games for everyone and a press that refuses to reform itself despite clear evidence of professional failure, gamers have responded with all the heroic defiance of Will Smith delivering a nuke into the mothership — and with just as much style. Through a series of fundraisers and lobbying efforts, as well as polite but firm advocacy on Twitter, they have begun to formulate a coherent intellectual and activist response to those who mystifyingly claim that their games and their culture are both somehow ugly, bigoted and evil. . . . #GamerGate has exposed both the feminist campaigners and even some gaming journalists as completely out of touch with the very reasons people play games. . . . The only group that genuinely isn’t welcome is that small but noisy battalion of social justice warriors, who bring nothing but gloom and despair, and their loyal band of incompetent, unethical bloggers, who are so desperate to advertise their upstanding moral virtue to the sisterhood that they have forgotten to check their consciences. We should resist this new tyranny.”

RAPE CULTURE: Woman Charged With Breaking Into Home, Raping Man In Seattle. “The unidentified, 31-year-old man said he awoke at 2 a.m. on June 17, 2013 to Gilman straddling him and having sexual intercourse with him. Police say he told the 240-pound suspect to get off, but she allegedly refused and told him to be quiet. He was able to break free from underneath her and said he pushed her out of the apartment.”

We need to teach women not to rape.

FROM VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: World War II — A Six Lecture Series.

WITH ALL THE DIET-AND-FITNESS BLOGGING LATELY, I thought some people might be interested in this interview of Paleo diet expert Nell Stephenson.

Her blog is Paleoista.

THE EURO-MODEL OF POST COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL ORDERING IS COLLAPSING EVERYWHERE: A Court’s Collapse: The International Criminal Court gives up on its prosecution of Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: Mining In The Last Frontier.

SPEAKING OF PHOTOS THAT FORESHADOWED THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY:

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists unveil magnetic cure to clean up blood. “Scientists said Sunday they had invented a device that uses a magnet to extract bacteria, fungi and toxins from blood, potentially throwing a lifeline to patients with sepsis and other infections. The external gadget, tested so far in rats but not yet humans, could be adapted one day for stripping Ebola and other viruses from blood. Acting rather like a spleen, the invention uses magnetic nanobeads coated with a genetically-engineered human blood protein called MBL. The MBL binds to pathogens and toxins, which can then be ‘pulled out’ with a magnet, the developers wrote in the journal Nature Medicine.”

Since I lack a spleen, I’m particularly interested.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: Mining In The Last Frontier.

REMEMBER WHEN SUGGESTING THAT OBAMA’S PHOTO MADE HIM LOOK LIKE AN ARROGANT NARCISSIST WAS RACIST? Good times, good times.

UPDATE: Krauthammer: “Obama is clearly a narcissist. The man lives in a cocoon surrounded by sycophants.”

I CREDIT THE MARK RIPPETOE WORKOUTS: I’m the hottest guy in New Media, according to Politichicks.

AND THEN SHE SAID, THAT’S FUNNY, I HAD TWO WHEN I CAME IN HERE: Women, It’s Time to Reclaim Our Breasts.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals at the Amazon Fall Outlet Event.

Plus, Fall Deals on Metal Detectors. They’ve come a long way since I was a kid.

MARK RIPPETOE: Bodyfat and Age: Just How Important Is Thin?