NEWS YOU CAN USE: Smoking Bedbugs Will Not Get You High.

AT AMAZON, take 20% off Select Swimwear. Summer is coming.

Also, up to 50% off Diamond Jewelry.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: True the Vote president calls Cummings’ damning emails ‘the tip of a very ugly iceberg.’

OF COURSE IT DOES. ALL WORKABLE ALTERNATIVES MUST BE DESTROYED: ObamaCare Threatens The Promise Of Concierge Medicine.

CHECK OUT PRESIDENT OBAMA’S EXPRESSION as he gives Kathleen Sebelius a goodbye hug.

YEAH, WELL, CONSIDERING WHO WE ELECTED AS HER BOSS, MAYBE NOT: Nick Gillespie: We Deserved Better Than Kathleen Sebelius.

Her widely acknowledged incompetence in overseeing the implementation of a major new program is one of the reasons why record numbers of Americans think the government has too much power and have low and declining levels of trust in government to do the right thing. Whether you’re liberal, conservative, or libertarian, that’s not a good thing.

Last fall, when Healthcare.gov went live and crashed again and again, Sebelius’s response was not to take responsibility or explain why the job was botched so badly but to plead for slack from customers. “Hopefully [website users will] give us the same slack they give Apple…. If there’s not quite the operational excellence right away, we’ll continue to press for that,” she told the press. “Apple, you know, has a few more resources than we have to roll out technology, and a few more people who’ve been working on the system for a while, and no one is calling on Apple to not sell devices for a year or to, you know, get out of the business because the whole thing is a failure.”

That reaction helped to explain why HHS botched the job so badly to begin with. The government spent upwards of $677 million on the design and implementation of Healthcare.gov, so Sebelius’s claim wasn’t just misleading but strikingly out of touch with reality. The fact is that if Apple put out rotten products year after year without changing things, they would be out of business, as the rotting hulks of once-giant bankrupted companies can attest. That President Obama parroted the same line didn’t help matters.

No, but it was entirely predictable. And the difference is that we’re free to choose other products if Apple screws up. We have no similar choice regarding governments.

Related: ‘Scared Senate Democrats Demanded Sebelius’ Head.’

GROWTH IN THE NATIONAL DEBT: Ten Years and Ten Trillion Dollars.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANT: Dallas Police Union: Don’t Record Officers.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: It Doesn’t Matter Where You Go To College.

A SWISS READER EMAILS about my Cato Podcast talk on education:

It was interesting for me to hear your talk given to Cato this past week, broadcast yesterday. As a Swiss, I support what you are saying.

I am a citizen of both Switzerland and the United States. I attended university in the US at the Univ. of Texas and the Univ. of Pennsylvania, and have BSChE and MBA degrees from those schools dating 1965 and 1967 respectively. I am retired. I live in Switzerland, but I travel in the US to visit some family and to attend symposiums, like that for example at Hillsdale College this past January. While Manager of Engineering at Bechtel Corporation’s office in Kingsport TN, I recruited often at your campus in Knoxville during the years 1987 through 1991. At that time, your university was unique in visiting and asking companies like Bechtel, Tennessee Eastman, Mead and others in the East Tennessee area simple but profound questions on a more or less annual basis. For example, “What should our graduates know and know how to do to be of greater immediate worth to your organizations?” In other words, “value added” questions. It will not surprise you to know that I hired young men, and a few young women, as engineering graduates from UT-Knoxville. Their strengths outside of academics: apprenticeship experience and an early appreciation of our challenges as private companies.

Here is why your short talk was of interest to me. We here in Switzerland have an educational system that bifurcates young students during their early teenage years between those which will pursue higher education as “Akademikers” (engineers, medical doctors, etc.), and those who will attend trade schools and become professional persons favoring more manual skills. As they progress in cantonal secondary schools, all receive sound historical, literature and art appreciation foundations. Students read classic books. All (including the future Akademikers) experience (largely unpaid) apprenticeships. The respect achievers have within the society is largely the same. We have here, in Nidwalden, a 2% unemployment rate. My opinion: the United States has a high structural unemployment rate (including a low ‘labor participation rate’) due to a seriously flawed educational model beginning with Kindergarten. You are losing an understanding of the founding principles of your country, such as what is the Natural Law. The role of parents in your system is no longer understood or deemed important. Study the Swiss model. It has practical answers that serve a free people and a free society based on private enterprise. There is no occupational or religious coercion. But, there is a well defined Judeo-Christian societal role of parents; of teachers, advisors, testing authorities and of course the students. There is no “Common Core”. Our cantons are all somewhat different in their academic curricula for the primary and secondary levels because the cantons are different. But they are united in the objective that as young men and women approach maturity, they complete rational paths that yield life skills having value within the society, and for which their remuneration is based on “the market”.

I would be pleased to try to answer any questions you might have. I love the United States, and it pains me to see a problem there that could be fixed, but requires a sustained effort to change attitudes toward trades, and the important role of parentage.

Thanks very much. Alas, there are large parts of our apparat that depend on unfavorable attitudes toward trades, and parenting, making change difficult.

And I like hearing good things about my colleagues in Engineering, though to be honest, good things are pretty much all I hear about them.

NEW WAR ON CHILDHOOD: Medicate Kids Who Daydream.

NORTH POLE TRANSMISSION: China’s Arctic ambitions spark concerns.

ABC NEWS: Nevada Cattle Rancher Wins ‘Range War’ With Feds. The feds were violent, but they didn’t win.

HOW DOUCHEBAGS are created.

Related: More Young Women Choosing Dogs Over Motherhood.

AS I’VE NOTED BEFORE, lately the Dems seem extremely concerned about holding their base together. Christian Adams: Obama Lies about Voter Fraud and DOJ Investigations Before Paranoid Audience.

AT AMAZON, 69 cent songs on MP3.

Also, new releases in Country Music.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Rise Of The “Sex Selfie.”

ON THE CATO INSTITUTE PODCAST, I talk about education costs, change, and, well, you know. . .

LAW ENFORCEMENT: “A prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one.”

THEY’RE RERUNNING MY SHOW, so if you missed it last night you can see me on Fox Business’s The Independents tonight at 7 pm ET. My segment is just about the middle of the hour.

RAND SIMBERG: What Makes A Scientist? You’re a scientist if you do science, just like you’re a journalist if you do journalism. Job titles are just fluff.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: ABA Releases ‘Bleak’ Jobs Data for 2013 Law School Grads. Interestingly the University of Tennessee Law College is (again) significantly outperforming its U.S. News ranking on this metric. But what’s really disturbing is how many high-ranked schools are bringing up the rear.

MEH. I FEEL FINE. This Is The End Of Facebook As We Know It.

CENSORSHIP MANIA: UNC Student Gets DJ Fired for Playing ‘Blurred Lines,’ Because Rape Culture.

FIGHTING PARALYSIS WITH SPINAL ZAPS.