TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 330. Thanks to Paul Caron for keeping this up for 11 months.

MICKEY KAUS: What’s Wrong With Web Journalism In One Sentence. See, I do the opposite — if everyone’s talking about Yellen, I try to see what else is worth talking about. But I suspect Dylan Byers doesn’t think I know what I’m doing, either.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More Colleges Are Feeling The Pinch.

Even with tuition rates soaring, many colleges are still searching under the proverbial sofa cushions to paper over gaps in their operating budgets. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, some are downsizing staff, while others are slashing athletic programs and even selling off buildings. Over the past six months alone, ten schools have cut hundreds of positions, and it appears likely that more schools will follow their footsteps as the year progresses.

Budget woes are particularly acute at small, mid-tier private schools, which lack the massive endowments and guaranteed stream of top students of their more prestigious counterparts. In an effort to compete with higher-profile competitors, many of these schools borrowed heavily to fund expensive construction projects during the early 2000s, only to see their endowments shrink when the financial crisis hit. Making matters worse, tuition revenue has dwindled with declining enrollment.

College presidents may be losing sleep over this, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing from a student’s perspective, especially if it convinces colleges to trim the fat from their budgets.

In particular, I’d like to see downward moves in the administrator-to-student ratio. Maybe even a shift to adjunct administrators.

HEALTHCARE SPENDING’S UGLY SPIKE: “In the fourth quarter of 2013, health-care spending seems to have grown at the fastest pace in a decade.”

AT AMAZON, check out the new Amazon Fire. Mine came last night. I’m going to try it out over the weekend.

Plus, deals on Spring Clothing.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: My InstaVision interview with Bill Quick, about his new disaster novel, Lightning Fall.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: No Country For Young Men. “The Western Left’s biggest lie is that it represents a movement of the young, but it really represents the very old. Their very concerns are geriatric: Marxism, trash recycling, health and safety, public transportation and gossip.”

MARCO RUBIO: Let’s face it, Spanish-language TV is in the tank for ObamaCare. And the Democrats in general.

JAMES TARANTO: Welcome to the Collective: Justice Breyer turns the First Amendment on its head.

In his plurality opinion in yesterday’s free-speech case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts notes an anomaly in contemporary “liberal” First Amendment jurisprudence: “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades–despite the profound offense such spectacles cause–it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”

We’d take the point a step further. The examples Roberts cites all involve fringe political expression. But the First Amendment also protects outré speech outside the political realm–most notably pornography, the subject of a great deal of Supreme Court jurisprudence over the past few decades, in which judicial liberals took the lead in expanding free-speech rights.

In recent years something of a consensus has emerged. When the court extended First Amendment protection to “depictions of animal cruelty” (U.S. v. Stevens, 2010) and violent video games (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 2011), the decisions were written by Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, respectively, for 8-1 and 7-2 majorities.

So why have the court’s “liberals” adopted a hostile attitude toward political speech, which has long been understood as being at the core of First Amendment protection? In his McCutcheon dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer elaborates the theory behind this odd development.

Because they’ve decided that free debate isn’t a winner for the collective.

BYRON YORK: Democrats squawk as cracks form in immigration coalition. “For a long time, opponents of comprehensive immigration reform have thought: Why shouldn’t the Republican-controlled House pass an H-1B expansion as a stand-alone bill? If the tech people got what they wanted, would they — and their millions of dollars — really stick around to fight hard for the rest of comprehensive reform? Passing an H-1B bill would be an excellent way to split the fragile pro-reform coalition. Now, it looks as if that could be happening.”

STATE OF CONFUSION: Boehner Confuses Mental Health Measure for Gun Control, GOP Author Says.

ED DRISCOLL ON BRUCE BRALEY: Fanfare For The Common Man. With a lesson from John Kenneth Galbraith.

JIM MORAN: The Big Problem Is That Members Of Congress Are Underpaid. Instead of a per diem, how about we rent them some dorm space.

WELL, HE CAN’T COME RIGHT OUT AND SAY IT’S ABOUT HURTING NON-UNION SHOPS: Labor secretary inaccurately cites his department’s data in hearing. “Labor Secretary Thomas Perez incorrectly cited data from his own department in a congressional hearing Wednesday to justify heightened safety inspections of auto parts manufacturers in the South, particularly Alabama. The actual data indicates that the state’s manufactures maintain a lower injury rate than the national average, not a higher one as Perez has insisted.”

PEGGY NOONAN: A Catastrophe Like No Other: The president tries to put a good face on ObamaCare.

Support it or not, you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess. It is also utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and government administration.

Its biggest proponent in Congress, the Democratic speaker of the House, literally said—blithely, mindlessly, but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. It is a cliché to note this. But really, Nancy Pelosi’s statement was a historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn’t understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she’d done. This is how we make laws now.

Her comments alarmed congressional Republicans but inspired Democrats, who for the next three years would carry on like blithering idiots making believe they’d read the bill and understood its implications. They were later taken aback by complaints from their constituents. The White House, on the other hand, seems to have understood what the bill would do, and lied in a way so specific it showed they knew exactly what to spin and how. “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan, period.” “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.” That of course was the president, misrepresenting the facts of his signature legislative effort. That was historic, too. If you liked your doctor, your plan, your network, your coverage, your deductible you could not keep it. Your existing policy had to pass muster with the administration, which would fight to the death to ensure that 60-year-old women have pediatric dental coverage.

ObamaCare is a debacle, wrapped in a catastrophe, shrouded in a disaster. And fathered by lies.

TIM CARNEY: Big Business & Big Government vs. Good Beer.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Trainee lawyer ‘falsely accused boyfriend of rape 11 times to avoid taking her Bar exams.’ “She claimed Mr Fensome forced her to have sex a number of times, and on one occasion she told a friend she had lost a baby because her boyfriend had punched her in the ribs, the court heard. . . . After withdrawing her allegations Brooker confirmed they were false, and admitted that injuries seen by witnesses, including her friends and doctors, were self-inflicted, the court heard.”

THE HILL: In 11-3 vote, Senate Intel panel approves CIA report’s release.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG! Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich forced to resign for supporting traditional marriage laws. To be clear, for holding, in 2009, the view of gay marriage that Barack Obama held, instead of the view that Dick Cheney held.

As someone who was publicly supporting gay marriage even before Dick Cheney, I find this degree of bullying and blacklisting repellent. I’m beginning to think that the only thing the left found wrong with the 1950s blacklists was that they were aimed at . . . the left. And so I find myself in agreement with Andrew Sullivan:

Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

Yeah, pretty much. Disgraceful.

GAVIN MCINNES ON THE FUTURE OF MAN.

TWICE AS PRODUCTIVE AND FOUR TIMES AS NICE: How The Volokh Conspiracy has flourished.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “Like many of her peers, Kristina sees her sluttyness through a lens of courtship.” Contrary to the narrative here, that often works — at least, some InstaPundit readers have found marriage via booty-call. But, you know, it depends.

AT AMAZON, deals galore in Washers & Dryers.

Also, refrigerators and dishwashers.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Brooklyn Law School Cuts Tuition by 15%.

THE WORLD’S MOST IMPORTANT SIX-SECOND DRUM LOOP: A history of the “Amen Break.”