LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: State Department: Prosecuting journalists is not harassment.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Hate economic inequality? Support Social Security reform.

A UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA STUDENT TELLS HIS STORY OF being falsely accused of rape, and how the University added to the injury.

After the charges were dropped, the University ended my suspension, and I returned to school on November 17th. I rejoined my activities immediately and got back into the swing of things.

The administration expressed their surprise and thoughts about what happened to me. My return to the University was not anticipated, nor was it expected to happen so quickly. It was expected I would plead guilty to a lesser charge because of the weight of the allegations. I am one of few students who has successfully resumed my life at the University after being charged of serious felonies.

I am not honored for holding this position by any means.

I was told that it was unfortunate that this happened and that the system is imperfect, but that ultimately a semester isn’t really that much time in the grand scale of things. I lost thousands of dollars in legal fees alone, I lost my fall semester, and I had to bear the anguish of spending five nights and six days in a jail cell. In that one semester, I was unable to salvage any credits and lost opportunities to enhance my social life at the University. Upon my return, I was asked by my peers where I was, what had happened to me, and why were police escorting me out of Wilson Hall that day. I never had a good explanation for anyone.

The administration told me that there were lessons learned from my events. It was a sobering reality to them that people do get falsely accused and that we do not live in a perfect world.

How much are these administrators paid? Too much. And the University of Virginia already has a 55-45 female-to-male ratio. I doubt this will make more men want to come.

FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: White House Ignores Calls To Pay Interns.

Even as it pushes Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, the Obama administration is resisting calls to pay interns who serve in the White House.

The White House declined multiple opportunities to comment on whether it would rethink its position on not compensating the roughly 300 interns who work there each year. Also met with silence was Stephen Lurie, who elevated the issue in a recent Washington Post op-ed. In it, he told the president: “Unpaid internships contradict your commitments and your economic agenda.”

“It is pretty indefensible from a publicity point of view, given the nature of their outreach on a lot of other economic subjects,” Lurie said of the lack of a response from the administration, which dates back to April 3. “There is not a huge constituency they have to answer to. Who are they going to piss off by not answering? Right now it is just young people and economic-justice advocates.”

With the Senate set to vote this week on minimum wage legislation, however, the politics of unpaid internships may get a little trickier for the administration. Already there is a lively ethical debate surrounding the practice, one that the White House has not been immune to. Previous stories have taken it to task for its intern policy, though the White House does not hide the fact from applicants that the positions are unpaid.

Most employers don’t hide the conditions of employment from applicants. That doesn’t get them off the hook from being regulated. But as usual, the White House is all rules for thee but not for me!

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: Welcome To The Finger-Wagging Olympics.

What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?

Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it. . . .

I hope Sterling loses his franchise. I hope whoever made this illegal tape is sent to prison. I hope the Clippers continue to be unconditionally supported by their fans. I hope the Clippers realize that the ramblings of an 80-year-old man jealous of his young girlfriend don’t define who they are as individual players or as a team. They aren’t playing for Sterling—they’re playing for themselves, for the fans, for showing the world that neither basketball, nor our American ideals, are defined by a few pathetic men or women.

Indeed.

REMEMBER, MALE TEACHERS ARE RARE BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID THEY MIGHT BE SEXUAL PREDATORS: English Teacher Has Sex With Middle Schooler: Police. “Police say that on Feb. 26, Seabury and her student were captured on surveillance video leaving the Caesar Rodney School District school and getting into Seabury’s car. Investigators say Seabury then drove the teen to her apartment where two had sex. Police learned of the alleged assault on March 12 and began to investigate. That investigation revealed a series of ‘explicit phone message and photographs during the inappropriate relationship,’ police said.”

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Congress Can’t Wash Away the Executive Branch’s Sins. “That debate has how spilled over in to the political arena. Right now, the main mission of the Senate Banking Committee’s Johnson-Crapo housing finance bill is to develop a new framework for future residential home mortgages. Unfortunately, the bill also tries to ditch the many lawsuits brought by private shareholders of Fannie and Freddie Mac against the government for existing claims. While the authors of the bill continue to claim that the proposed legislation leaves the issues relating to investors’ rights to the courts, Section 604 of the bill declares that the August 17, 2012, Third Amendment to the original Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement (SPSPA) ‘shall not be amended, restated, or otherwise changed to reduce the rate or amount of dividends’ and thus perpetuates the government’s right to take all the profits from the two companies.” They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, the government would take the side of powerful people who bilked shareholders. And they were right!

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, THE GOVERNMENT WOULD BE GOING AFTER PORN STARS’ BANK ACCOUNTS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

Despite being in good financial standing, adult film performers and others in the porn industry have had bank accounts abruptly terminated—and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have had something to do with it.

Under “Operation Choke Point,” the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuing banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it’s own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included payday lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia, and online gambling sites.

Maybe these folks should all get together.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Student; College Denied Me Entry Because Of My Religion.

MICKEY KAUS: Mario’s Double Secret Magic Amnesty Formula. “For a while now, Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart has been boasting he’s arrived at some sort of Magic Secret Formula that will win the support of enough Republicans to get an immigration amnesty bill through the House. He tends to surface in the press every time the spirits of amnesty supporters need a boost. . . . If Diaz-Balart has such an enchanted formula, isn’t it about time he made it public–maybe in time for Republican voters to debate it and express their opinions in upcoming primaries? Shouldn’t good-government newspaper editorialists be demanding this?” They’d rather voters were bamboozled.

A SORT OF PRE-MORTEM FOR Obama and his press enablers.

YEAH IT’S “PLANET FITNESS” AGAIN: Pregnant Woman Claims Gym Asked Her To Leave Because Of Her Baby Bump.

OBVIOUSLY, THE SOLUTION IS TO REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS: 50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back. And note this: “Residents also identify a more insidious cause of the current social unraveling: the disappearance of the only good jobs they ever knew, in coal mining.”

I’M SURE THEY’LL BE TOTALLY NON-SEXIST AND FAIR TO MEN: Task force to unveil college sexual assault recommendations.

OH, GOODY. A TORNADO WARNING. Now blogging from the Insta-Bunker. Happily, we’re prepared to dig out if necessary. Also, I have a nice glass of Tokai as fortification.

AT AMAZON, $20 off the Kindle. Also, $20 off the Kindle Paperwhite.

Plus, today only: Up to 23% Off Select Contigo Water Bottles.

“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Hill Republicans call on Kerry to apologize, resign for reported Israel ‘apartheid’ remarks. Plus, from Barbara Boxer: “Late Monday Sen. Barbara Boxer added a bipartisan note to the Kerry criticism, tweeting, ‘Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and any linkage between Israel and apartheid is nonsensical and ridiculous.'”

Mark Begich (D-AK) also criticized him.

ILLINOIS’ DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR erases support for Nazi article.

WELL, I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Is James Rickards Right About A Coming Monetary Apocalypse?

WAPO/SARAH KLIFF LAST MAY: Oregon may be the White House’s favorite health exchange.

Washington Post today: Oregon Raises White Flag Over Its Health Exchange.

BRING BACK DDT: Next Stop for Chikungunya Virus: the US?

“I’M SO HAPPY NOW, IT’S AMAZING!” Boob Job A Girl’s Dream Come True.

UPDATE: A physician friend once told me that his plastic-surgery rotation was interesting because no patient, even those whose lives or limbs had been saved, seemed as happy with their results as the women who got breast implants. “They glowed with happiness.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN is on the politicization of science fiction fandom.

THE LEFT: THOUGHT-CONTROL DISGUISED AS MANNERS:

A new word-discouragement campaign at Duke University has labeled phrases such as “Man Up,” “That’s So Gay,” and “Don’t Be a Pussy” offensive language that “delegitimizes” homosexuality and oppresses and insults people.

But as the campaign has gained national popularity, its detractors have bristled at the effort, calling it a politically correct war on words that will stifle free speech and suggesting its true aim is to redefine terms to control public opinion and – ultimately – public policy.

In fact, the “You Don’t Say” campaign creators have admitted as much.

Can we still tell the busybodies to “bugger off?”

MAYBE A GENERATOR IS THE WAY TO GO: America’s Power Grid at the Limit: The Road to Electrical Blackouts. Is it just me, or has America seemed steadily more third-world since Obama came in?