UNDER OBAMA, IT’S WAIVERS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Higher Ed Groups Ask IRS Not To Change Political Activity Rules. “A coalition of higher education associations on Thursday urged the Obama administration not to apply to colleges and universities its proposed rules on political activity by certain tax-exempt nonprofit organizations.”

FIND OUT HOW MUCH YOUR VIDEO GAMES ARE WORTH, with Amazon Trade-In.

Plus, deals on Best-selling Products, updated every hour.

And, today only: Up to 65% Off Award-Winning Movies, Books, and Music.

INSTAVISION: I talk to Megan McArdle about her new book, The Up Side Of Down: Why Failing Well Is The Key To Success.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: President Obama’s Growth Gap Hits $1.31 Trillion. Hopey-Changey!

JAMES TARANTO: Chaplinsky vs. Kozinski: “Innocence of Muslims” and the “fighting words” doctrine.

The dubbed line to which Garcia objected would surely qualify as fighting words if uttered as a taunt to a Muslim on the street. But just as surely it does not as part of a movie, even a dishonestly produced movie intended as a provocation.

A necessary condition for the application of the fighting-words doctrine is the tendency “to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” It would be an understatement to say that “Innocence of Muslims” incited a breach of the peace. But it wasn’t an immediate one. In Kozinski’s account, the incitement didn’t even come from the posting on YouTube but from its (surely mischievous) airing on Egyptian television.

The issuance of a fatwa is a further argument against the application of the fighting-words doctrine. The term “fatwa” was little known among non-Muslim Westerners until 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini pronounced one against Salman Rushdie for “The Satanic Verses.” But “fatwa” is not synonymous with “death threat.” The term refers to any legal decree issued by an Islamic scholar or clergyman. What distinguishes fighting words from merely provocative ones is that the reaction they draw is not premeditated. A fatwa implies a deliberative process, more a plot than a street fight.

To be sure, the Ninth Circuit did not hold that “Innocence of Muslims” is unprotected speech. Judge Kozinski’s reference to “fighting words” was only dictum, which is to say that it was not relevant to the disposition of the case. Judge N.R. Smith didn’t even take up the point in his dissent. Possibly Kozinski meant to use the term only colloquially, in the spirit of the late Christopher Hitchens, whose Slate column was called “Fighting Words” with no implication that its content was constitutionally unprotected.

Still, it carries more weight when a judge uses a legal term of art in an opinion, even only in passing, than when a journalist does so. Whatever one makes of the copyright claims at the heart of Garcia v. Google, it bears noting that defiant and contemptuous words about Islam, or any other religion, are protected by the First Amendment as surely as are those about the American flag.

In law, but not in fact. Because violence works, and our institutions cave before it. May our political class take joy in the incentive system they are creating.

HMM: Lindsey Graham wants special panel to investigate Benghazi attack.

DODGING RESPONSIBILITY: The Hill: Senate Dems To Skip 2015 Budget.

Senate Democrats will not write a budget for the next fiscal year.

One year after writing and passing the first Senate Democratic budget resolution in four years, Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said her conference will not make an effort in the 2014 midterm election year.

No point doing something you might be held accountable for.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Documents Show Ignoring Terror Threats A Pattern With The Clintons. “Court papers reveal the FBI had an informant right next to Osama bin Laden in 1993 sending reports up the chain of command. Yet then-President Clinton did nothing — a pattern with both him and his wife.”

NOT AGAINST PUTIN, BUT AGAINST HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES: The Obama Administration Declares War. Punch back twice as hard.

ADAM FREEDMAN: Politics And The University President: They go together—so long as the politics are left-wing.

Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and current Purdue University president, got himself in hot water back in October for giving a speech to a Minnesota think tank. Not that anyone objects to Daniels making speeches in general; indeed, it comes with being a university president. In this case, however, the venue for the speech was the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative organization. And in the eyes of Indiana’s cultural elites, that made all the difference. . . .

What would mainstream academics say if a former governor used the “platform” of a public university to promote politically divisive “green-energy” policies? Actually, there’s no need to speculate: it’s already happened. In 2011, Bill Ritter, the former Democratic governor of Colorado, became head of Colorado State University’s Center for the New Energy Economy, an organization bankrolled by Democratic Party donors. The express purpose of the center is to lobby state politicians in Colorado and elsewhere to adopt green-energy mandates. On top of that, Ritter has publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. Yet neither Colorado State faculty nor local media seem to have uttered a word in protest about the former governor’s overtly political activities. Imagine that.

Likewise, when former senator Bob Kerrey took the helm of the New School in New York, he made no pretense of steering clear of politics. In 2009, he gave a public speech urging Congress to pass the ill-fated “cap-and-trade” legislation promoted by President Obama. Kerrey argued that the climate-change bill was a “moral” imperative, and even compared it with 1960s civil rights legislation. How much criticism did that speech generate on the left? None.

One wonders what Daniels’s critics expected. When a university recruits a former governor to serve as its president, it is presumably because the university values the governor’s public-policy experience. And since universities are in the teaching business, why should anyone object to a university president sharing the hard-won insights that he gained in office?

Alternatively, they’re in the indoctrination business, and don’t want to send mixed messages.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON UKRAINE: Four Videos And A Powerless President.

Related: If You Like Crimea, You Can Keep Crimea.

RIGHT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Minnesota Man Who Filmed Sheriff’s Deputies Acquitted By Jury.

The prosecution claimed that Henderson was within a few feet of the paramedics (but not physically interfering with them), while Beck testified that he was approximately 35 feet away, quietly filming. That disagreement would have been resolved by the video itself, except that the sheriff’s deputies seized Henderson’s video camera, and the tape that it contained mysteriously disappeared.

The prosecutor offered Henderson a plea bargain whereby he would plead guilty to a petty misdemeanor and pay a $50 fine, but Henderson refused, preferring to defend the case on First Amendment grounds. He received a free legal defense from a prominent Twin Cities law firm.

Since the prosecution admitted that Henderson didn’t physically interfere with the ambulance crew, the case never should have been brought, let alone proceeded as far as a jury trial. That said, it is reassuring that the jury had no difficulty in acquitting Henderson.

Now he should sue.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Daily Caller: Christine O’Donnell’s IRS case reveals more than just a ‘smidgen of corruption.’

Before running, O’Donnell had heard that if she chose to run in 2010 for the U.S. Senate against former Delaware governor Mike Castle, the IRS and others would “F— with her head,” in the words of a top Delaware political insider.

In short order, someone accessed O’Donnell’s tax return information containing private financial details. A U.S. Treasury agent informed O’Donnell that a Delaware state employee may have accessed her tax information and improperly used it. After an inquiry by Senator Chuck Grassley, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration confirmed that unidentified persons, presumably IRS employees, had gained improper access to multiple individuals’ tax information. This indicates more than what President Obama would call a “smidgen of corruption.”

The IRS then wrongly attached an $11,744 tax lien to a property O’Donnell no longer owned, and political opponents speciously used the after-the-fact lien to damage O’Donnell’s standing and manufacture a tax scandal just as she launched her Senate campaign. . . . It was bad enough that the IRS would target O’Donnell with a politically motivated audit, an illegitimate lien and the public release of her private financial information. Worse than that, the misconduct in this matter inappropriately affected the outcome of a U.S. Senate election. Now, worst of all, the IRS is successfully thwarting efforts to find and prosecute illegal conduct within the agency.

The IRS as political hit team for Democrats — and insider Republicans. No wonder the GOP establishment hasn’t moved as hard on the IRS scandals as you might have expected. . . .

HMM: Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed.

If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front-runner in the next presidential race.

But in private, rumors persist that the former Secretary of State may not even be capable of making it to Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, these skeptics often say, will not run for president again because of health concerns.

Even if Hillary can’t run, it’s in the interest of the Clintons to preserve the appearance of inevitability as long as possible as that keeps the money and respect flowing. The interests of the Democratic Party, however, are otherwise.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Lucky Jim: Obama Crony Jim Messina Is Building An Empire.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama Tells the World We Aren’t Going to Do Anything About Invasion of Ukraine.

MOLOTOV GRAD STUDENT: “If only there were some way to connect him to the Tea Party. But that seems unlikely after you look at his Twitter account.”

WHO’S DUMB NOW? Palin Mocked in 2008 for Warning Putin Might Invade Ukraine if Obama Elected.

ADVICE COLUMNIST: Don’t marry a frugal man who won’t spend a lot of money on you.

WHILE OBAMA ENJOYS HAPPY HOUR WITH DEM FUNDERS, 2000 Armed Russian Troops Enter Ukraine.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: Obama Cultivating A Fourth Branch Of Government: Federal agencies that spurn congressional authority are becoming an independent branch.

BRUCE THORNTON: Class Warfare: An American Tradition. “We are no more partisan today than we were at the nation’s founding.”

AT AMAZON, free shipping on orders over $35.

Also, deals on Top-Rated Breadmakers.

ED DRISCOLL: The Middle Class Abandons California.

PROTESTERS IN AMERICA, TOO: Michael Barone: Protesters in Ukraine and Venezuela Seek The Rule Of Law. Oligarchs aren’t so hot on the rule of law. It constrains their options.