KIRSTEN POWERS: Liberal Thought Police Usher In New Dark Age. “We have slipped into an age of un-enlightenment where you fall in line behind the mob or face the consequences. How ironic that the persecutors this time around are the so-called intellectuals. They claim to be liberal while behaving as anything but. The touchstone of liberalism is tolerance of differing ideas. Yet this mob exists to enforce conformity of thought and to delegitimize any dissent from its sanctioned worldview. Intolerance is its calling card.”

Gleichschaltung. But my calling card is Nemo me impune lacessit. Hey, maybe I should have some of those printed up.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE $2 BILL.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bonfire of the Humanities: Christine Lagarde is the latest ritualistic burning of a college-commencement heretic. The bubble isn’t just financial. It’s intellectual, too.

MIAMI: What’s The Last Photo On Your iPhone?

FIREFOX LOOKING STEADILY LESS INDEPENDENT, FREEDOM-ORIENTED: Mozilla Adopts DRM.

AT AMAZON, Father’s Day Electronics Deals.

Plus, up to 50% off on Father’s Day Tool Deals.

MARK RIPPETOE: You Only Need These 6 Things For a World-Class Home Gym: How to assemble an incredible facility for the cost of a few years of gym dues.

SEXISM IN AMERICAN MEDIA: How the NYT called Jill Abramson — its axed executive editor — a bitch. “How did the NYT call Jill Abramson a bitch? Well, it all started with the unfit-to-print image of the new executive editor, Dean Baquet, as the angry black man.”

CAPPED PIPE: Comcast plans data caps for all customers in 5 years, could be 500GB.

WHY THE U.S. isn’t creating more small businesses.

I’M NOT SURE PEOPLE SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE. I HEAR THEY’RE HOTBEDS OF RAPE AND RACISM. The campus sexual assault controversy is of liberal higher education’s own making.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Myths About Tornado Safety.

WHAT THE FOSSIL-FUEL DIVESTMENT SCHEME IS REALLY ABOUT: “The leaders of the divestment movement–Bill McKibben especially–fully recognized that divestment itself would not change the finances of energy production. They are playing an entirely different game. When I heard McKibben speak last fall to a rally at the New School, he made the point powerfully. The aim of the divestment movement isn’t divestment per se. The aim is to lay down a long-lasting antipathy to fossil fuel companies in particular and to capitalism in general among today’s college students.”

MICHELE PISTONE & JOHN HOEFFNER: No Path But One: Law School Survival in an Age of Disruptive Technology.

ANGELO CODEVILLA: America’s New Security State: Salus populi suprema lex: In the name of the people’s safety, the dictator’s will is law.

While the Obama administration ceased to use its predecessor’s term “war on terror” to describe its actions abroad, it redoubled commitment to “homeland security,” reorienting it to home-grown “extremism” defined ad hoc. The result seems less compatible with words such as “peace,” than with “Oceania,” the country in which George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is set.

As mottoes go, I prefer Nemo me impune lacessit.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 371.

THOUGHTS ON THE DECLINE OF FLYING COACH:

You know who suffers most from these changes in airline policy? Upper-middle-class people with very good jobs.

Let’s recall that back in the good old days of flying, most people didn’t. They couldn’t; it was far too expensive. An airline flight was something you might do once in a very long while, for a special occasion like a honeymoon or a graduation.

As deregulation pushed prices down, more people flew. After the invention of travel websites, a lot more people flew — and based their flying decision entirely on price.

The result is what you see today: To stay price-competitive for tourists, airlines have ruthlessly slashed services so that the headline price they see on Expedia will be as low as possible. They’ve crammed as many seats as they can into the back section, where those tourists sit. And they’ve used increasingly sophisticated software to make sure that the planes are always as full as possible. Meanwhile, the airports haven’t really gotten much bigger, and the security screenings have gotten much more onerous, which means that unless you have elite status on your airline, you can count on waiting in an interminable queue just to be allowed to walk to your gate. The result is a miserable travel experience, but who really cares if you only take a flight every third August?

The answer is “business travelers,” and they care because a lot of employers are not as generous with the airline bookings as they used to be. Forget business class — now they won’t even let you book on your preferred airline if someone else is cheaper. Farewell, elite status; farewell, upgrades and expedited screening. Hello, fellow cattle, and would you mind getting your elbow out of my eye?

Like Meyerson, I find it all intensely irritating. But I can’t really work up a justifiable rage because too many people are being allowed to fly. After all, takeoff slots are limited, so if the planes had fewer seats, some folks have to stop flying — probably the least well-off, who give up on well-earned vacations or family visits so the business travelers can stretch their legs.

Maybe I could do a Kickstarter for an Insta-Jet?

WANT TO KNOW IF YOUR FOOD IS GENETICALLY MODIFIED? Across the country, an aggressive grassroots movement is winning support with its demands for GMO labeling. If only it had science on its side.

AT AMAZON, up to 35% off on Maglite Flashlights.

Also, take an extra 15% off SOG Tools.

CONVENIENTLY, AFTER THE ELECTION: Ed Morrissey: Big Increases in Obamacare Premiums and Deductibles Coming in November.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Judicial Watch: New Documents Show IRS HQ Control of Tea Party Targeting; Documents also Reveal Unusual Pressure from Key Democrat Senator to Target Conservatives. Interesting, isn’t it, that Levin decided not to run for re-election after the IRS scandal got out.

Related: IRS’s tea-party noose tightens: Targeting campaign was directed by HQ in Washington, D.C. – not by a few ‘rogue agents’ in Ohio, documents reveal.

UPDATE: Judicial Watch Obtains New Documents Showing IRS Targeting Came Directly From Washington D.C.

JAMES TARANTO: Harvard To Be Humble: Self-abnegation as a form of status-seeking.

“The wonks in training at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government will soon be subjected to a new and touchy-feely line of inquiry: Checking Your Privilege 101,” reports Kat Stoeffel of New York magazine. “In response to growing demand from student activists, administrators committed Friday to adding a class in power and privilege to its orientation program for incoming first-year students.”

The ideological basis of the new course is familiar: “Privilege,” Stoeffel explains, is “a catchall term for the perks an individual enjoys in society because of his race, gender, or class.” The idea is “enjoying something of a moment, thanks to social-justice bloggers and their critics.” One such critic is Princeton undergraduate Tal Fortgang, who last month wrote in a much-discussed op-ed for the Princeton Tory that telling someone to “check your privilege” is a fallacious argumentum ad hominem.

If you think there’s something dissonant about elite institutions advertising their discomfort with “privilege,” you’re certainly not alone. But if you look a little deeper, it makes sense. . . .

Perhaps, then, the ideology of “privilege” amounts to a pretense of egalitarianism, analogous to an ostentatious display of charity whose real motive is the philanthropist’s self-aggrandizement. Elite universities are marketing themselves–to prospective students and to the broader society–as bastions of power and privilege. Humility can be a form of vanity, self-abnegation a means of status-seeking.

Yes, it’s basically a form of potlatch. Political correctness is a positional good, whereby one group of white people reassures itself of its superiority to other, lesser white people.

SPYING: DOJ Still Trying To Hide The Fact It Flat Out Lied To The Supreme Court About Domestic Surveillance.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Out: Criticizing women’s sexual transgressions on Men’s Room walls. In: Criticizing men’s sexual transgressions on Women’s Room walls.