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MARK RIPPETOE: Training vs. Exercise: What’s the Difference?

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “For a variety of reasons, online sex workers make significantly higher profits than those on the street.”

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: ‘Being a Programmer, I Decided to Build a Mathematical Model for the Decay of a Shower Curtain.’

RETRO-BLOGGING FUN with Elizabeth Montgomery.

PHOTO: Standing on the Bulbous Bow of the World’s Largest Ocean Liner.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Parents, Kids Rethinking College.

TAX PROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 338. It’s another big one.

JOURNALISM: Boston Marathon bombing survivor rips ‘Meet the Press.’ “A Boston Marathon bombing survivor says in a tweet that she left a Boston television studio in tears before a taping of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.'”

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: How Congress Stayed Wet in the Dry Years of Prohibition.

While members of Congress may have championed Prohibition laws on the House floor, many of them happily broke the rules in any of the 3,000 speakeasies scattered throughout downtown Washington. And when members needed to restock their personal hooch supply, they turned to one man: George Cassiday.

During his time as a booze distributor on the Hill, Cassiday estimated that four out of five members of Congress drank—and many of them availed themselves of Cassiday’s services. Congress even gave Cassiday his own storeroom in the basement of the Cannon office building. . . .

During Prohibition, D.C.’s close, personal relationship with alcohol didn’t end—it was just on the down-low. Peck estimates that from 1920 to 1933, 22,000 gallons of bootlegged liquor flowed into the District every week. More than 3,000 speakeasies opened in Washington, many of them operated out of the second story of row houses or in the backrooms of legitimate businesses.

Nowadays, though, they just go ahead and exempt themselves.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Vermont’s Single-Payer Dream Is Taxpayer Nightmare. “This should be instructive for those who hope — or fear — that Obamacare has all been an elaborate preliminary to a nationwide single-payer system. It isn’t. The politics are impossible, and even if they weren’t, the financing would be unthinkable.”

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DO TELL: ‘A New Level of Secrecy and Control’: Jill Abramson on the Obama White House. Lots of unfavorable comparisons to Nixon.

IT’S NICE THAT THEY APOLOGIZED, BUT WHAT KIND OF PERSON THINKS THAT’S OKAY TO BEGIN WITH? ABC Apologizes for Story That Connected Mozilla CEO to Hateful Westboro Baptist.

Reminder: Fred Phelps was a Democrat.

“SOMETHING POLITICALLY INCESTUOUS:” “Government efforts to regulate campaigns, as apart from elections, suffer from the inability to develop meaningful or even non-arbitrary, judicially manageable standards. However, there is a further, more fundamental reason to be concerned about legislative efforts to regulate campaigns — they inexorably lead to the government placing its thumb on the scale to advantage certain candidates and interests.”

TAX ANALYSTS BLOG: “W]hen you see all of what the Ways and Means Committee compiled about Lerner, it hardly paints a pretty picture of her. To me, it certainly shows that she did many stupid things and that she probably abused her power as a high-ranking IRS official. Did she break the law? I don’t know, but that is why I agree with Ways and Means Republicans that there should be a Justice Department investigation – although I thought one was already going on. … The bad behavior going on at the IRS – whether it is politically motivated or not – does not stop with Lerner. It has to go higher than that. How much higher, I do not know, but that’s yet another reason why we need an investigation – a real one.”

BUT OF COURSE: Global Warming Loon: “I’d Like Nothing Better Than If Thousands of Middle-Class White People Died In An Extreme Weather Event”…

Shockingly, it’s not James Wolcott.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN LEFTY CENSORSHIP: Want proof they won’t stop with your guns? Here it is: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence tries to keep author of The Law of Self Defense off campus. The censors are really crawling out from under their rocks lately.

But what this tells you is that they know their arguments can’t withstand contradiction.

ASHE SCHOW: ‘Ban Bossy’ creator Sheryl Sandberg continues to push debunked claims.

YOU KNOW, TARRING AND FEATHERING REALLY SEEMS APPROPRIATE HERE: Shakedown: Treasury now seizing tax refunds from adult children to pay parents’ decades-old Social Security debts. What makes an extralegal response appropriate is that the Treasury seems to be knowingly proceeding without legal or factual support for its shakedown efforts. If the government isn’t bound by the law, why should the rest of us be? And as our Muslim compatriots have demonstrated, even a small amount of fear goes a long way with the functionaries.

It’s a historically sanctioned response to government lawlessness. . . .

At the very least, it’s more reason never to put yourself in the position of needing a tax refund.

TO BE FAIR, HE DOES THAT HIMSELF AT EVERY PRESSER: Three Pictures in Washingtonian that Make Jay Carney Look Ridiculous.

JUST AS ALL CRITICISM OF BARACK OBAMA HAS TO BE RACIST, ALL CRITICISM OF HILLARY WILL BE DEEMED SEXIST: Media Matters writer cries sexism over column critical of Hillary Clinton. That’s how you have to play it, when your candidate can’t withstand normal criticism.

WELL, WOULDN’T YOU? Kerry Pouts. “In a real sense the world view of the left — our enemies are just confused future friends who need to be told how their interests can really align with ours — is coming apart at the seams. The irony is that the Obama officials have fancied themselves as ‘realists.'”

THOUGHTS ON THE LELAND YEE SCANDAL: What If Uncle Leland Had Won?

Here’s a thought exercise for the Leland Yee scandal. What if the investigation had been delayed, or stayed underground, for another year? What if last week’s raids had come not in March 2014 – but in March 2015?

And what if it were California Secretary of State Leland Yee who was being taken into custody by the FBI?

Such an alternative universe is hardly an unlikely one. Yee was a strong contender in the race, and a victory would not have been improbable.

Would our reaction be the same?

How about this thought experiment — what if Yee had never been arrested? Then there’d be a “Technicolor” crook in charge of elections and voter records in California.