THE WEEKLY TAX ROUND-UP: From Tax Prof, with a video assist from Jon Stewart.

OVERSIGHT: Why not appoint former federal prosecutor Andew McCarthy special counsel to the new Select Committee to investigate Benghazi?

‘Blame the Video’ Fraud Started in Cairo, Not Benghazi 

Here is the main point: The rioting at the American embassy in Cairo was not about the anti-Muslim video. As argued here repeatedly (see here and here), the Obama administration’s “Blame the Video” story was a fraudulent explanation for the September 11, 2012, rioting in Cairo every bit as much as it was a fraudulent explanation for the massacre in Benghazi several hours later.

What was the President doing while terrorists attacked Americans in Benghazi? 

Outnumbered and fighting off wave after jihadist wave, Americans were left to die in Benghazi while administration officials huddled, not to devise a rescue strategy, but to spin the election-year politics. The most powerful and capable armed forces in the history of the world idled, looking not to their commander-in-chief but to a State Department that busied itself writing press releases about phantom Islamophobia. The president of the United States, the only constitutional official responsible for responding, was nowhere to be found.

THE CURMUDGEON’S GUIDE TO GETTING AHEAD: With Glenn taking some much-needed time off to recharge the Insta-batteries, I wanted to kick off my week here with my fellow guestbloggers with something meaty and substantial. Something curmudgeonly. And with graduation season rapidly approaching, something along the lines of my interview with Charles Murray, discussing his new book, The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead.

(And a big thanks to the Professor for allowing me to sit in once again on the bridge of the mighty USS Instapundit.)

INSTAVISION: Privacy In The Age of GPS: I talk with Hiawatha Bray about his new book, You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves.

RON FOURNIER: Seizing Control: A Better Way to Cover the White House; Five ways to shift leverage from the government to the press and public.

My advice: Cover it like there’s a Republican in the White House, whether there is or not.

JAMES TARANTO: Dear Tina: A journalist writes an advice column for Mrs. Clinton.

Tina Brown doesn’t think Hillary Clinton should run for president. In a column for the Daily Beast, the website’s founder and former editor lays out her rationale.

Does Brown disagree with Mrs. Clinton on matters of policy or doubt she would be a good president? One assumes the answer is no, though the column doesn’t say. Nor does Brown offer a more coldly political rationale–say, that Mrs. Clinton would be unlikely to win, or that a different candidate would better enhance the long-term fortunes of the Democratic Party.

Brown sums up her argument as follows: “She should forget it. If she wins, it’s too much stress for too little return.” By “return,” Brown means nothing more than “personal benefit.” By forgoing a campaign, Brown writes, Mrs. Clinton “can have her glory-filled post-presidency now, without actually having to deal with the miseries of the office itself.”

That advice is very precisely targeted. Of all Americans constitutionally eligible to serve as the 45th president only seven other than Mrs. Clinton have the option of a “post-presidency”: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama. As far as we know, none of them are considering a run for the presidency or any other public office. And of course Mrs. Clinton has already been a part of her husband’s post-presidency for more than 13 years.

An obvious question is why Brown offered this advice publicly instead of in a private conversation with Mrs. Clinton.

The real message is to the Democrats: You’d better have a Hillary alternative ready!

SO I’LL BE MOSTLY OFFLINE FOR THE NEXT WEEK, but my usual crew of guestbloggers, plus a couple of new additions, will be keeping things interesting here. Personally, I like InstaPundit better when I’m on vacation, but maybe that’s just me. Or maybe not!

A timely reminder from The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol about how and why Ronald Reagan was one of America’s greatest presidents and the most successful conservative political figure of the 20th Century. Hint: It wasn’t because he told a good yarn and it wasn’t because he and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill got together at night and shared a few bipartisan laughs.

CHARLES MURRAY POSTS A REVIEW of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.

GOOD. NOW HOW ABOUT ANOTHER TO INVESTIGATE THE IRS SCANDAL? Boehner To Form Select Committee To Investigate Benghazi.

Is Jay Carney a disciple of the Baghdad Bob School of Public Relations?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 359.

BAD FAITH: Death Penalty Opponents Get Move To Lethal Injection, Then Ban Effective Drugs, Then Complain It’s “Torture.”

I say go back to firing squads. Plus:

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the Oklahoma execution inhumane. He did not mention the Obama administration’s role in pressuring states to surrender drugs found to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, the Obama Department of Justice actually seized Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental because the drug, among other problems, did not have FDA approval. Really.

“If the White House is upset,” Scheidegger wondered, “why don’t they do something about the supply problem? Everyone knows that pentobarbital, the single-drug method, works just fine.” Maybe President Obama should sign an executive order.

It’s hypocrisy all the way down.

SHOCKER: Report: Too Much Regulation Is Hurting Scientists.

Faculty members in the sciences spend too long on burdensome administrative work, at the expense of their other, more meaningful duties, argues a report out today from the National Science Board. The report, called “Reducing Investigators’ Administrative Workload for Federally Funded Research,” is based on the work of the board’s Task Force on Administrative Burdens, which asked professors to identify through roundtable discussions and requests for information which federal and internal university procedures and requirements were the biggest drains on their time. Financial management, the grant proposal process, progress reports, institutional review boards, and layers of oversight related to working with animals all were common responses.

How many brilliant discoveries of yore would have made it through the process that we have today? It’s a decent system for worker-bee researchers seeking incremental knowledge, but it probably drives away real creatives — or at least burdens them mightily.

This is a theme of the Suffocated Science blog.

ON APRIL 22D I WROTE THAT Obama’s choice of a Clinton-scandal veteran for White House Counsel suggested that he saw bad times coming. Or, in the words of a commenter, he wanted a “wartime consigliere.”

Reader Brian Kuhn looks at this week’s developments and emails: “Nailed it.”

SCARRED FACE, short husband? “At 24 she met her husband, who is 5 feet tall which makes him 4 inches shorter than her. At a subconscious level, this man is not threatening and overbearing like the man who had attacked her when she was sitting on her front porch. She is able to trust him and without even going out with anybody else, she marries him 7 years later. Women in the 20/20 program mentioned earlier were not ready to pick the 5 foot tall man even if he was a millionaire and they would only consider giving him a chance if all the other taller men were murderers. Tina Fey picking a 5 foot tall husband might suggest that she views those other taller men as potentially dangerous at a subconscious level.”

Maybe. Le coeur a raisons, que la raison ne connaît pas.

UPDATE: Roger Simon says forget Tina Fey, what about Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti?

MARRIAGE: Where Feminists And “Family Values” Conservatives Agree.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Are Female Breadwinners A Recipe For Disaster?

THE CONSERVATIVE CASE against today’s copyright law.

I should note that Rob Merges and I wrote on this subject over a decade ago.

ACTUALLY, I THINK THIS SORT OF THING WAS POPULAR IN THE 19TH CENTURY, TOO: The Crazy Train Surfers Who Flirt With Death for Sport.

WELL, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WITH A MORMON LIKE MITT ROMNEY IN THE WHITE HOUSE . . . WAIT, WHAT? DOJ Morality Police May Be Behind Chase Closing Bank Accounts Of Adult Film Actors.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The Rise of “Dronevertising.”