READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Reader Brenden Luddy recommends this from Jayson Veley, Telephone: Conservative Arguments With Liberal Callers.

I CAN SEE THESE E-BIKES DOING WELL IN L.A., WHERE THE WEATHER’S NEARLY ALWAYS GOOD FOR BIKES: “The Qoros eBIQE concept is a beast of a bike. Fully suspended and capable of quickly hitting 65 kilometers per hour (40 miles per hour) in power mode, it features hand-laminated carbon-fiber bodywork wrapped around a tough steel frame. Its brutish strength is complemented by sophistication, as it’s fitted with a five-inch touchscreen offering a wealth of information and the ability to shape performance with the environment you find yourself in.”

BUSINESS CLIMATE: Report: Tesla turned down California sites for ‘Gigafactory.’

ELON MUSK: Take Launch Business Away From The Russians, Give It To Me.

BRYAN PRESTON REPORTS: There’s More to #SXSW2014 than Skinny Jeans and Hipsters.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 303.

MEGAN MCARDLE: NOTHING EXCITING ABOUT THE JOBS NUMBERS:

They’re not bad — 175,000 jobs were added, mostly in business and professional services and durable-goods wholesalers. Most of the rest of our nation’s industries didn’t do much one way or another, except for motion picture and sound recording, which even in the best of economies is not what you’d call “steady work.” Given that many of those industries spent the last two months shedding jobs the way Lady Gaga goes through costumes, plodding boringly along was a cheering improvement. Especially considering the weather.

On the other hand, these numbers aren’t good, either. Because the economy needs to add somewhere in the range of 100,000 jobs a month just to accommodate population growth, 175,000 still leaves us very far from the level needed to absorb America’s vast reserve army of the unemployed. It’s the sort of number you expect to see in the tail months of an expiring boom, not as we pull out of recession. Numbers like this give credence to any number of depressing theories about permanently depressed labor-force participation — and the permanently lower gross domestic product that comes with it.

This is, of course, exactly the stagnation that critics of Obamanomics predicted.

PUSHBACK:

Tyler Jackson has emailed me an interesting story, soon to apper online (I’ll link to it once it does)– the gist is that the head of the Connecticut Peace Officers’ Assn has released an open letter stating that the police will not “be party to the oppression of the people of the state by enforcing an unconstitutional law.” So far 250 LEOs have cosigned the letter.

The CT law required the registration of AWs, with a deadline for doing so, and it appears that the vast majority of AW owners have simply refused. So now the State faces massive resistance, and some portion, perhaps a large portion, of police refusing to enforce.

Interesting. Stay tuned.

IT DOESN’T HAPPEN OFTEN: When Prosecutors Admit To Cheating.

CHEAP COMPUTING: ASUS CHROMEBOX-M004U Desktop, $179. It’s like a Chromebox Mac Mini.

Also, Save an additional $75 off the current Amazon.com price on select digital cameras. Simply use promotional code K77B9SDB and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

And, today only: Dyson AM05 Hot+Cool Fan Heater (Factory Reconditioned), $149.99 (62% off).

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Tax Analysts: More Arrogance and Secrecy From the IRS.

I am not an IRS basher or hater. As I have said countless times, taking the heat for it every time (and that’s fair game, by the way), I know many fine people who have worked or work for that agency. But we are in litigation with the IRS in an attempt to get information on how it trained people to handle applications from groups seeking to be recognized as social welfare organizations. That litigation has been an incredibly frustrating process.

I don’t know if these apparent political decisions were made by Lerner or others either inside or outside the IRS, because trying to get information out of that agency is like trying to get sweat out of a rock. Over the years, it has fought the silliest things. I’m only half kidding when I say that if you asked the IRS to see the kind of staplers it’s using, it would tell you it doesn’t have staplers.

The IRS will go to great lengths not to be scrutinized. And that breeds an atmosphere of no accountability — which leads to arrogance. We have seen that arrogance consistently throughout the congressional investigations of several IRS officials. And where will it lead us? Not to a good place, especially for those of us getting ready to file our yearly income tax returns. A tax collector that treats its “customers” as guilty until proven innocent is a tax collector out of control. That is precisely what the national taxpayer advocate has been warning about. If IRS officials don’t believe they are accountable to Congress, the rest of us don’t stand a chance.

We really need a tax system that doesn’t give the tax collector so much discretionary power. Also, an end to governmental immunity. IRS employees should be personally liable for misconduct.

I’M PRETTY BIG, SO I MIGHT NOT FARE AS WELL IN COURT IF I USE A DRONE: Judge Dismisses FAA Fine Against Small Drone User.

HOW’S THAT SMART DIPLOMACY^TM WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Western countries alarmed as Libya slides towards chaos.

JAMES TARANTO: Empty Souk: The uninsured aren’t buying what the ObamaCare marketplace is selling.

ObamaCare is now in the sixth and final month of its extended inaugural open-enrollment period. If you want to buy medical insurance through the exchange–a big if, we realize–you have until the end of the month to do it, or wait till autumn to buy a policy for next year.

This column has analyzed the disaster of ObamaCare in terms of three phases. Phase 1, the technical failure, was evident as soon as open enrollment began on Oct. 1 and many of the exchange websites proved to have been incompetently designed. Technical problems continue to emerge, including, as noted here last week, the Internal Revenue Service’s tardiness in preparing the final instructions for Form 8960, which taxpayers must file if they owe the new ObamaCare “net investment income tax.”

Phase 2 is the revelation that ObamaCare’s central promise–“if you like your plan, you can keep your plan”–was fraudulent. In an effort to appease defrauded consumers, the Obama administration has announced a series of unlegislated exceptions to the law, which the president himself attempted to explain the other day. . . .

The third phase of failure is the slow revelation that the basic economic assumptions behind ObamaCare are wrong. A new survey from McKinsey & Co., conducted in February, found that only 10% of those who lacked insurance pre-ObamaCare had signed up for an exchange plan, and that of those who had signed up, just 27% were previously uninsured.

True, those numbers were up significantly from January’s figures, 3% and 11% respectively. Still, they’re low enough that the Washington Post sums it up: “The new health insurance marketplaces appear to be making little headway in signing up Americans who lack insurance, the Affordable Care Act’s central goal.”

It’s train wrecks all the way down.

REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD: Michelle Malkin: Eat Your Words, Debbie Wasserman Schultz; Obamacare’s backers are choking on their promises and running for the hills.

At the end of 2013, Democratic representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) had some nasty words for yours truly. Irked that I used my Twitter feed to criticize her Obamacare propaganda efforts, Wasserman Schultz snarked back at me: “Thanks for spreading the word! You’ll be eating them next year. #GetCovered.”

Classy as always. And completely wrong-headed as usual. Less than three months into 2014, how’s dutiful Debbie and her Dear Leader’s pet government-takeover program doing? . . . While Democrats complain about Obamacare-repeal efforts by Republicans, we may be nearing a special turning point at which the White House will have reneged on more Obamacare regulations than it’s actually enforcing!

Heh. They should have taken the “off-ramp” that Ted Cruz was offering in October.

I WONDER IF SHE WAS USING AN OUTSIDE ACCOUNT? THOSE ARE DE RIGEUR AT THE EPA. IRS caves on Lois Lerner documents, will provide Congress with ALL of her emails since tea party targeting scheme began.

THE DOCS ON INCOMPETENCE WOULD HAVE TAKEN TOO LONG TO COPY: Under legal fire, State Dept. hands over docs on ‘competence’ of ambassadors.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW: Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.

Late last year, South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty joined Kozinski. At a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, Beatty cautioned that prosecutors in the state have been “getting away with too much for too long.” He added, “The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license.”

You’d think that there’s little here with which a conscientious prosecutor could quarrel. At most, a prosecutor might argue that Beatty exaggerated the extent of misconduct in South Carolina. (I don’t know if that’s true, only that that’s a conceivable response.) But that prosecutors shouldn’t suborn perjury, shouldn’t retaliate against political opponents, shouldn’t suppress evidence, and that those who do should be disciplined — these don’t seem like controversial things to say. If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned.

The state’s prosecutors didn’t see that way. . . . The most plausible explanation for all of these stories is that a significant number of prosecutors just don’t want to be held accountable to anyone but themselves. I suppose a lot of us would like to have that sort of protection when it comes to what we do for a living. But few of us do. And the rest of us don’t hold positions that give us the power to to ruin someone’s life with criminal charges, to convince a jury to put someone in prison or to ask the state to put someone to death.

I think that immunity for state officials, including the absolute immunity enjoyed by prosecutors, violates the Titles of Nobility clause.

THE HILL ON CPAC: Rand Paul Electrifies Conservative Base. Well, a libertarian who can do that might just have a shot.

CONGRESSMAN MIKE POMPEO: Cancel The Snowden SXSW Speech.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Party Schools — Years Of Fun Mostly At Other People’s Expense, But Not Much Learning.

CAT TOY: Russia Takes Ukraine Military Base, Gives It Back.

YEAH, SCHEDULED BLOG POSTS WOULD DO THE SAME FOR ME: Woman’s auto-payments hid her death for six years. But not for six years.

THE CORDAIR FOLKS ARE OFFERING 25% off ON ART BY DALE MOMII, which includes some cool aviation pieces. Just tonight.