YA THINK? Study: Civil Servant System Outdated. But is the civil service “the most important organization we have?”

Maybe we should return to the “spoils system.” At least then you’d know who to blame.

SUNSHINE, ON MY SHOULDER, MAKES ME SLIMMER: People exposed to earlier sunlight are leaner than those who get afternoon light. “The influence of morning light exposure on body weight was independent of an individual’s physical activity level, caloric intake, sleep timing, age or season. It accounted for about 20 percent of a person’s BMI.” Hmm.

AT AMAZON, take 20% off Select Swimwear. Summer is coming.

Also, up to 50% off Diamond Jewelry.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Bill Quick about his new novel, Lightning Fall, and the threat of EMP attacks and nuclear terrorism.

CONGRESS’S PRIORITIES: Federal Revenge Porn Bill Will Look To Criminalize Websites.

MALWARE’S NEW FAVORITE TARGET: The “Internet Of Things.”

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Eliana Johnson: Oversight Committee Moves To Hold Lois Lerner In Contempt.

MORE THAN YOU THINK, APPARENTLY: How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?

Back in 2002, John Moore, an anthropologist at the University of Florida, calculated that a starship could leave Earth with 150 passengers on a 2000-year pilgrimage to another solar system, and upon arrival, the descendants of the original crew could colonize a new world there—as long as everyone was careful not to inbreed along the way.

It was a valiant attempt to solve a thorny question about the future of humans in space. The nearest star systems—such as our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years from home—are so far that reaching them would require a generational starship. Entire generations of people would be born, live, and die before the ship reached its destination. This brings up the question of how many people you need to send on a hypothetical interstellar mission to sustain sufficient genetic diversity. And a new study sets the bar much higher than Moore’s 150 people.

According to Portland State University anthropologist Cameron Smith, any such starship would have to carry a minimum of 10,000 people to secure the success of the endeavor. And a starting population of 40,000 would be even better, in case a large percentage of the population died during during the journey.

Well, that’s a lot.

NO COPY EDITORS, but a zero-tolerance policy for typos.

AT THE L.A. TIMES, A HIGHLY REVEALING JUXTAPOSITION.

BUT STILL NO CNN, RIGHT? Leland Yee Story Picked Up In Esquire.

MATT KIBBE HAS A GREAT BOOK TITLE: Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 329.

SHARYL ATTKISSON ON Mike Morell’s Benghazi Testimony Yesterday.

THAT’S HOW SOCIALISM ENDS UP, EVERY TIME: Venezuela Wants To Spread The Suffering.

Well, first the late President Hugo Chavez diverted money from capital investment in the oil industry to “social investment” in the poor. Unlike the old lady with the fly, I do understand why he did that. And for a while, it worked — oil production fell, and the decline was more than offset by rising oil prices. After a while, however, oil prices stopped rising, and Venezuela got into a spot of trouble. As the trouble got deeper, the government started having trouble laying its hands on ready cash.

“As the price tag of the Chavez/Maduro regime has grown, the country has dipped more and more into the coffers of its state-owned oil company, PDVSA, and (increasingly) the country’s central bank,” Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins recently explained.

This created a little problem with Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar. Venezuela now has runaway inflation. Naturally, it needed to do something about that, so — price controls. And currency restrictions. Hanke’s data show that the gap between the official exchange rate and the black-market rate for the bolivar has dramatically widened. . . .

Any economist — or, for that matter, anyone who slept through one semester of microeconomics — can tell you what came next: shortages. It became regularly impossible to buy toilet paper, flour or anything else at controlled rates; when such items were available, lines were often hours long, and people started hoarding.

Sales of airline tickets boomed as people used trips abroad (which often took place only on paper) to get around currency restrictions. Then they plummeted when the government cracked down on this dodge and refused to let the airlines repatriate billions in ticket revenue. Some airlines have stopped selling tickets in the country; a couple of weeks ago, Air Canada suspended its flights to and from Venezuela entirely, citing civil unrest. Oh, dear, did I forget to mention the civil unrest? A lot of folks aren’t very happy about the chronic shortages and instability.

Now the government is setting up what appears to be a rationing system, although at the moment it’s still voluntary.

They’ll be going after hoarders and wreckers next. Er, I mean, yesterday.

CHARLES KOCH RESPONDS TO HARRY REID’S PARANOID OBSESSION: I’m Fighting to Restore a Free Society: Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination. Well, I guess that tells you how they think they’d fare in a free debate.

But I love this: “What does @SenatorReid hate most about the Koch brothers? Their support for same-sex marriage or their support for pot legalization?”

AT AMAZON, get the new Amazon Fire. I ordered one.

Also, Top Easter Gifts.

REASON/RUPE POLL: Right Track 30%, Wrong Track 60%. Obama Approve/Disapprove 43/51. Plus, people think that 70% of politicians use their power to help friends, hurt enemies. And 70% people think that abuse of power is worse than extramarital affairs or illegal drug use. Obamacare favorable/unfavorable is 36/53.

Plus, note this question:

Which of the following do you think is a more serious problem?

• Special interest groups spending private money on campaigns to elect the politicians they favor 30%

• Elected officials enacting policies and spending taxpayer money that benefit
the special interests they favor……….. 63%

Interesting. And 63% of respondents rate Obama about the same (32%) or worse than (31%) George W. Bush on foreign policy.

THREE PINOCCHIOS: IRS chief: No ‘targeting’ of tea party groups, just ‘inappropriate criteria.’

THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO PROTECT YOU: Report: EPA tested deadly pollutants on humans to push Obama admin’s agenda.

The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high levels of potentially lethal pollutants, without disclosing the risks of cancer and death, according to a newly released government report.

These experiments exposed people, including those with asthma and heart problems, to dangerously high levels of toxic pollutants, including diesel fumes, reads a EPA inspector general report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The EPA also exposed people with health issues to levels of pollutants up to 50 times greater than the agency says is safe for humans. . . .

According to the IG’s report, “only one of five studies’ consent forms provided the subject with information on the upper range of the pollutant” they would be exposed to, but even more alarming is that only “two of five alerted study subjects to the risk of death for older individuals with cardiovascular disease.”

Three of the studies exposed people to high levels of PM and two of the studies exposed people to high levels of diesel exhaust and ozone. Diesel exhaust contains 40 toxic air contaminants, including 19 that are known carcinogens.

Related: EPA Conducted Pollution Experiments On Children.

In February of 2013, JunkScience.com reported that the EPA gave USC money in the mid 2000’s to find out whether diesel exhaust could “induce reproducible gene expression” in children. From a USC grant in the EPA extramural research grants database, the original December 14, 2012 document showed diesel exposures to children. What now sits on that database is a strongly edited description of the diesel tests on the children. Part of the the experiment’s goal was to examine how particulate matter affects “Asthma in Susceptible Children.”

Junk Science made a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA to explain the deletion and alteration of its database of the documentation regarding diesel experiments on children. The EPA’s response to JunkScience was that the deletion was due to a technical mishap.

There seem to be a lot of those where questionable practices are concerned.

ASHE SCHOW: Honor Diaries is about the real war on women, not ‘Islamophobia.’

BUT FILMMAKER NAKOULA STILL WENT TO JAIL: Hearing: CIA Knew Al Qaeda Involved in Benghazi from ‘Get-go.’

Related: Did CIA’s Mike Morell Lie Under Oath About Changing the Benghazi Talking Points?

JAMES TARANTO: ‘The Debate . . . Is Over:’ Is it mission accomplished for ObamaCare?

“This is President Obama’s Mission Accomplished moment,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas tells Time.com. “Jimmy Fallon Mocks ObamaCare’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ Charade,” according to a Breitbart.com headline. While the host of “The Tonight Show” didn’t say “mission accomplished” in last night’s monologue, he was scathingly sarcastic about the White House’s declaration of victory. On Monday Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin observed: “It is entirely possible that we will look back on today’s deadline and administration celebrations about enrollment as Obama’s version of George W. Bush’s infamous ‘mission accomplished’ moment after Iraq.”

Much as this columnist enjoys blaming things on George W. Bush, we feel obliged to note that he did not say “mission accomplished” during that May 1, 2003, speech. Quite the opposite. He asserted, referring to the broader war on terror: “Our mission continues.” The mission to which the infamous banner referred was the deployment from which the USS Abraham Lincoln, aboard which the then-president delivered the speech, had just returned.

But Bush did open his speech with what turned out to be a premature declaration of victory: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Obama’s speech yesterday included a similar assertion of triumph, albeit against the president’s adversaries, not the country’s: “The debate over repealing this law is over. The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”

More than a few Obama critics have taken offense at his declaration that “the debate . . . is over.” To them he sounded like a dictator commanding his subjects to cease dissent. But Obama is not a dictator, and few of his critics are likely to heed his implicit demand. What’s more, it’s difficult to imagine the likes of Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor successfully deploying the debate-is-over gambit in their re-election campaigns. Our guess is that the debate over whether the debate over ObamaCare is over will be over on Nov. 5.

It is telling, though, how often these people want to end debate. I like this translation, though: “The debate about a law I made sure won’t be fully implemented until I left office, is over!” Heh.

TOM JACKSON: Why You Don’t Know More About Leland Yee.