SO THERE’S THIS: The IRS Had A Contract With An Email Backup Company.

SCIENCE: Arthritis drug helps hairless man regrow full head of hair.

A LOOK AT the neuroscience of creative writing.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Brilliant Idea: 3D-Printed Prosthetic Arms for the Children of Sudan.

MORGAN STANLEY: Tesla Is The World’s Most Important Automaker.

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY: Every Senior V.A. Executive Was Rated ‘Fully Successful’ or Better Over 4 Years. “The data also showed that in 2013, nearly 80 percent of the senior executives were rated either ‘outstanding’ or as having exceeded ‘fully successful’ in their job performance, and that at least 65 percent of the executives received performance awards, which averaged around $9,000. Only about 20 percent received the middle of the five ratings.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 408.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Welcome To The White House’s Nightmare: Already swamped by domestic and foreign crises, Obama finds that even his self-proclaimed successes are at risk. That’s just about the last thing he needs now. Why do bad things always happen to him? Excerpt:

“American forces will not be returning to combat,” Obama was sure to pledge to the public Thursday, and White House aides insist that this is a limited mission, that the Iraqi government, ultimately, will have to be the ones to repel the forces of the Sunni insurgency and mend the broken country. Still, the move is a tacit acknowledgment that many of the assumptions that Obama and his foreign policy team made about the world have proven to be incorrect:

That without the leverage of U.S. military power in the country, Iraqi leaders would pursue political change that wouldn’t leave Sunnis alienated and antagonized and that its security forces could counter internal threats;
That Afghanistan would be stable enough for the U.S. to end that war and depart with confidence the government can keep the nation on a stable path;
That the U.S. could pursue a “reset” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia—but then watched his troops take Crimea and threaten the rest of Ukraine;
That the civil war in Syria could somehow be contained within its borders—and could reach a resolution without American intervention.

More than anything, these events and others have served as a rebuke to Team Obama’s worldview that a new generation of leadership could move on from both the Clinton-era and Bush-era policies. Both of those administrations were more hawkish and aggressive about the exercise of American power, whether it was to intercede in regional conflicts in the Balkans or take down Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

Disdainful of much of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, Obama and his close-knit circle of advisers, on the other hand, talked about engaging Iran diplomatically, using sanctions to punish bad actors, “pivoting” to Asia, and neutralizing the threat of terrorism more bloodlessly through the use of drones. They viewed American power in terms of limits. This was a president, after all, who opposed the U.S. “surge” that arguably stabilized Iraq to the point where Obama could pull the troops out.

Yet here was Obama on Thursday using the language of presidents past such as John Kennedy and George W. Bush, talking of sending “advisers” into a global hot spot and warning of the need to deny “safe haven” to terrorist groups. “Right now, this is the moment when the fate of Iraq hangs in the balance,” he said—something that sounded So 10 Years Ago.

Or, you know, maybe that 10 Years Ago stuff was ahead of its time. . . .

A PROFILE OF PAUL CARON: Meet The Tax Professor Behind The Ultimate IRS Scandal Blog.

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Also, deals on new Luxury Watches.

CHRISTIAN SCHNEIDER: The Bogus Scott Walker Scandal: Two judges have already decided that he wasn’t part of a “criminal scheme.”

ROGER KIMBALL: “Never Apologize, Never Explain”: the IRS brazens it out.

MICHAEL WALSH EMAILS:

Hi Glenn — the campaign against the “Klinghoffer” opera is disgraceful. I know all the principals involved and covered the world premiere in Brussels in 1991 for Time magazine. There is nothing anti-Semitic about it.

Here’s an excerpt from his review:

Klinghoffer is no docudrama but rather a stylized, subtle, Rashomon-like retelling of the tragedy. It takes no prisoners, and takes no sides either. On Sellars’ voyage, confusion is captain, and perspectives shift like ocean waves. Along with Leon Klinghoffer, truth becomes a casualty. The director has clad the entire cast in anonymous street clothes, and many roles are doubled — now friend, now foe — and who can tell the difference?

“On the ‘politically correct’ scale, we don’t even register,” comments Sellars gleefully. “People come expecting machine-gun fire and bodies being thrown overboard, and what they get is a bunch of art.” Complementing Sellars’ vision is Morris’ integrated choreography: a silent shadow subtext that swells emotionally as the opera progresses until it hijacks the action, transforming and finally transfiguring it.

That’s consistent with what a reader commented yesterday, and Walsh is a trustworthy source.

OH, GOODY: A ‘new anti-Semitism’ rising in France. I didn’t even like the old antisemitism, and this doesn’t look like an improvement.

IT’S ALL A COINCIDENCE, H8ERS! IRS Official Whose Emails Were “Lost” Visited White House More Than 30 Times.

HIGHER EDUCATION — HOTHOUSE FOR NEO-VICTORIAN SHRINKING VIOLETS? University considered a gun rights speech such a threat that it made students hire cops to patrol it.

IT’S WORSE THAN WATERGATE, BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT TURNED ITS POWER AGAINST ORDINARY PEOPLE: Kim Strassel and the WSJ on the Lost IRS Emails.

SHOCKER: Lawsuit: White House “Model” program didn’t report child sex abuse.

I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY LURED THE INSTA-WIFE out of yoga and into the Rippetoe workout.

CULTURE IS BEFORE POLITICS: David S. Bernstein: What Is Liberty Island? Welcome to the new counterculture. “Conservatives (and independents who refuse to be silenced) didn’t ask for a culture war. But for too long we’ve ceded the battlefield to new left commissars for whom the culture is the only fight that matters. Because their goal is not to win elections; it is to stamp out, utterly and completely, thoughts and ideas with which they disagree. We’ve had enough.”

MICKEY KAUS: Kausfiles Lashes Out At Its Friends!

TRANSPARENCY: McClatchy: Border agency’s watchdog under investigation for coverup. “The internal affairs division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is being investigated for falsifying documents, intentionally misplacing employee complaints and bungling misconduct reports as part of a coverup to mask its failure to curb employee wrongdoing, a McClatchy investigation has found.”

It’s as if the federal government has just become a lawless mob.

DAVID MAMET is not amused.

SHOP — AND REGISTER! — at the Amazon Wedding Store.

Also, deals galore on New Athletic Shoes.