ATTENTION HOMESCHOOLERS, AND EVERYONE ELSE: Open Culture: The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: UC-Irvine Cuts Class by 29% in Bid for Top 20 Inaugural U.S. News Ranking.

Heh. Just the other day, the parody student newspaper at UT Law contained an announcement that our entering class next year would consist of a single student, recruited with a $1 million scholarship, in order to boost our US News selectivity ranking. . . .

DEVELOP NEW TESTS, DISCOVER NEW THINGS: Minivan crash test ‘among the worst we’ve ever seen.’ “A new series of crash tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) revealed troubling results for minivans that are often perceived as some of the safest vehicles on the road.”

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BEAM ME UP: NASA Just Set a New Quantum Teleportation Record of 15 Miles.

Of course, if you could actually teleport human-sized objects, we’d probably start with warheads. . . .

JAMES TARANTO KEEPS LOBBYING ME TO GIVE THIS A TRY: Bringing Sous Vide to the Home Cook.

I mean, it’s not like it’s especially expensive, I just haven’t ever felt sufficiently motivated.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Scientists: Be Lazy, Don’t Rake Leaves. The science is settled. You don’t want to be anti-science, do you?

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: $4.15 Per Pound: Ground Beef Climbs to Another Record High. “Five years ago, in October 2009, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $2.177, according to the BLS.” Boy, it’s a good thing we haven’t had any inflation or this would be really bad.

BARACK OBAMA: “The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.” That Senator Obama seemed like a sensible fellow. I wish he were President now.

HMM: Triclosan, a common antimicrobial in personal hygiene products, causes liver fibrosis and cancer in mice. This study may overstate the dangers, but it’s also the case that triclosan doesn’t work all that well, and that most of the germs that make us sick are viruses, not bacteria anyway.

MY COLLEAGUE BEN BARTON has a book forthcoming from Oxford University Press: Glass Half Full: The Decline and Rebirth of the Legal Profession. Here’s an early review. Conclusion: “It is, however, a general lack of rose-colored glasses that is precisely this book’s strength. Barton offers some plausible positivity without being Pollyannaish. For its comprehensive and accessible (and often entertaining!) account of where we have been, where we are, and where we are headed, this book should be included on the 2015 ‘must-read’ lists of members of the profession.”

I’ve read this in manuscript and it’s excellent.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: VIDEO: Poli sci prof dresses as Cheney for Halloween, pretends to shoot up class.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 561.

IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS DURING LAST NIGHT’S AMNESTY TALK EXPLOSION: Top Obama bundler accused of child rape.

On Wednesday, Portland, Ore. police arrested Terrence Patrick Bean, who has been charged with two felony counts of having sex with a minor last year. This man is not just any old guy accused of having sex with a 15-year-old – he’s a big-money Democratic donor and liberal political activist with connections inside the Obama White House. Bean raised more than a half-million dollars for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. . . .

A search of the Federal Election Commission’s campaign-finance database turns up thousands in donations every cycle by Bean to the Democratic Party’s most powerful leaders, including Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Dick Durbin, and Rep. Barney Frank, among others. Photos of Bean posted online show him flying on Air Force One with Obama.

Although this report is in USA Today, I assume the major TV networks — which haven’t even covered Jonathan Gruber — will give this story a pass. Remember: Making sure you know what they want you to know is job #2 for them; making sure you don’t know what they don’t want you to know is job #1.

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: The University Policy That Fails Everyone.

Amid growing concern over sexual misconduct on American college campuses, the idea that the accused don’t deserve full legal representation has put some feminists and university administrators on the wrong side of morality and of the law. Fortunately, the reaction against this overreach is gaining ground, according to a new piece in the New York Times on lawyers who are pushing back against the way colleges handle these kinds of disciplinary proceedings. . . .

Rape is a horrible crime. To say that young people accused of rape are entitled to fair legal protections isn’t to endorse, defend, or enable rape. Nor is it to ignore the struggles that victims have in being believed or getting justice or protection. Sadly, some people have lost sight of these obvious facts.

Nevertheless, sending a few more lawyers to college campuses will not change the cultural conditions that have led to widespread sexual assault. The dysfunction of campus sexual assault policy—for the victims and the accused alike—traces to the mess that college life has become for many students. Where binge drinking, drug use, and the hook-up culture have taken hold, vulnerable young people are exposed to painful and damaging interactions. Meanwhile, administrators are often reluctant to address these toxic trends, and ill-equipped to handle the fallout.

Young women (and not only young women) are not helped by a culture that celebrates casual sex in an atmosphere of unrestrained use of alcohol and other drugs. Feminists and others are right that the situation on some campuses is unacceptable, but the “affirmative consent” paradigm seems like a dubious solution in this context.

The upside is that it will make some lawyers rich.

SO, BASICALLY, IT WAS A FAILURE THEN: Children Still Struggle to Read in the Neighborhood Where the Latino-Rights Movement Began.

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HOWIE CARR ON DEMOCRATS’ DESPERATE FLIP-FLOP ON AMNESTY: “These illegal aliens are willing to do the work that Americans will no longer do — namely, vote Democrat.”

UPDATE: You know, if one of the GOP big-money donors — I’m looking at you, Sheldon Adelson — is smart, he’ll fund a welcome-wagon operation in swing states. Reach out to these newly-amnestied immigrants, help them get jobs, connect them with social services, offer them American civics education to help integrate, register them Republican. . . .

DAVID DAYEN: Why Gruber-Gate Is So Devastating To Democrats. “The growing impression that politicians don’t play straight with their constituents is completely toxic, particularly to Democrats, who actually want to use government to improve people’s lives. It’s one thing to downplay unpalatable choices made in the law; it’s another to never disclose the consequences of legislation until it’s too late for anyone to react. Combine that with the moustache-twirling of a Jonathan Gruber, saying that the idiots should be happy for what they got, and you have basically every conservative stereotype about liberal elites confirmed.”

GOOD: Tennessee District Attorney Restricts Use Of Civil Forfeiture. This policy seems like a good policy for law enforcement in general.

TRANSPARENCY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: IRS thinks its employees’ income info should be kept away from investigators.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: VIDEO: Berkeley students prefer ISIS flag to Israeli flag.

JERRY POURNELLE: Don’t Panic Over Obama’s Executive Amnesty.

VIA VOLOKH: The Justice Department’s memorandum on deferring deportation of some categories of illegal aliens.