THAT WOULDN’T HAPPEN IN A NISSAN LEAF: That time Elon Musk got a speeding ticket showing off the Tesla Model S to Johnny Depp.

THE NATIONAL INTEREST: The Tragic Decline of American Foreign Policy. I think it’s called “smart diplomacy.”

Related: John McCain: Obama lets ‘bad people’ fill U.S. void, says Jimmy Carter was better.

POPULAR MECHANICS REPORTS from the New York International Auto Show.

RESEARCH ETHICS REVIEW: A Failed System Of Risk Management.

WHY ARE WE SUDDENLY HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT ELIZABETH WARREN? SHE’S THE BACKUP HILLARY. WaPo: Poll: Hillary Clinton’s numbers worst since 2008, as GOP brand surges.

IN THIS RECENT POPULAR MECHANICS PIECE, I ARGUED IN FAVOR OF curtailing click-through agreements. Now there’s this: “Like” General Mills on Facebook, Give Up Your Right To Sue. “In language added on Tuesday after The New York Times contacted it about the changes, General Mills seemed to go even further, suggesting that buying its products would bind consumers to those terms.”

WHAT HATH PUTIN WROUGHT: East Ukraine Jews Ordered To Register With Pro-Russia Authorities.

UPDATE: “You can bet one of Putin’s cronies has the market cornered on yellow iron-on Stars of David.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 343.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: A New More Sinister IRS Scandal. “Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison.”

THE POLITICAL-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX: Dee Dee Myers to Join Warner Bros. as Head of Communications. “Dee Dee Myers, once the White House press secretary to Bill Clinton, will be joining Warner Bros. as executive vice president for worldwide corporate communications and public affairs, the studio said on Wednesday. Ms. Myers is not the first political operative to join Hollywood’s ranks. Jim Kennedy, recently named to the top communications post at News Corp. after serving in similar jobs with the Sony entertainment operations, for instance, had also served in the Clinton administration, and was once a deputy press secretary in the White House.”

Plus: “Ms. Myers’ husband, Todd Purdum, is a senior writer for Politico and was formerly a correspondent for The New York Times.”

CHARLES BLAHOUS: The Unfolding Fiscal Disaster Behind ACA Enrollment Figures.

ELIZABETH WARREN: “My words sounded so puffy and self-important, and they made it seem as if I were trying to take credit for a protest I wasn’t even part of.” Yeah, pretty much.

CAN LIMITING DIVORCE MAKE MARRIAGE STRONGER?

I can see the appeal of making marriage more difficult to get out of. My brief tour through the divorce literature indicated that ending a high-conflict marriage is better for everyone, including the kids — despite the financial and emotional drawbacks, it really is better to have two homes, rather than one where Mom and Dad are engaged in a bitter civil war.

On the other hand, the evidence on ending low-conflict marriages — one in which maybe one party, or both, doesn’t feel perfectly fulfilled, but they get along OK — wasn’t so happy. Children of low-conflict marriages whose parents divorce have more difficulty adjusting than the kids of high-conflict marriages. It’s thought that the divorce comes as a shock to these kids; a relationship that seemed fine to them suddenly dissolves, which changes their ability to trust the world and other people.

These divorces aren’t necessarily so great for the adults, either. Divorce tends to be a financial disaster for all but the very rich, because it’s more expensive to support two households than one. And people who exit marriages don’t necessarily find this makes them happier. We tend to think that marriages are good, and then they go bad, and then you divorce and get happy again, but unhappiness can often be a temporary condition that later improves.

Some approximation of this insight is what structured divorce laws before the no-fault revolution. You exited marriages in which there was abuse, adultery, abandonment or wild financial irresponsibility, not because you were just sick and tired of being married.

So could we make marriages stronger by making it harder to exit? Keep people together who rush into divorce court instead of waiting out a temporary spell of unhappiness?

Maybe. But we should be cautious about assuming that this would definitely make marriage stronger. As with so many rule changes, it might have the opposite of the intended effect.

Perhaps we should make divorce a matter of contract instead of status. Let people make their own arrangements, and perhaps incorporate a surety or insurance aspect. But read the whole thing for some excellent cautionary notes.

HEH: Report: Kansas GOP will pay bus fare for Kathleen Sebelius to come home for Senate bid.

ANNALS OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: New York gun owners shrug off tough new rules: What happens now? “The SAFE Act, passed in New York last year, had an April 15 deadline for owners of assault-style weapons to register their guns with the state. Some 1 million residents have refused to abide.”

REVOLVING DOOR: Shocker: EPA official leaves for environmental group. “Lisa Garcia, former associate assistant administrator for environmental justice at the EPA, will become Earthjustice’s new vice president of litigation for health — a position created just for Garcia.” How accommodating of them.

SHOCKINGLY, IT’S NOT JUST A PAGE OF TEQUILA DRINKS: Celebrate Cinco de Mayo at the Amazon Cinco de Mayo Sale!

Plus, leave winter in the dust with the Amazon Spring Cleaning Sale. We’re redoing our master closet, which has produced massive throwing-away.

Also, Deal of the Day: Upstairs, Downstairs, the Complete Series, $68.99 (68% off). The original Downton Abbey.

INSTAVISION: Geopolitics In Space: Will Russia Annex the International Space Station? I talk with Rand Simberg, who’s also got a new book out.

HYPOCRISY: NBC Frets About Too Much Money in Politics, then Praises Bloomberg’s Massive-Money Anti-Gun Crusade.

ROBERT LEVY IN THE WASHINGTON POST ON JUSTICE STEVENS’ BIZARRE VIEWS OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “Responsible citizens who are concerned about extremist views on gun rights should condemn Justice Stevens’s foolishness.”

IN WHICH VIRGINIA POSTREL compares Paul Krugman to Kim Kardashian. That’s unfair. Kim Kardashian owes her success to her ass. Paul Krugman owes being an ass to his success.

On the other hand, they’ve got this much in common: “Krugman has something valuable to offer, and it isn’t his big brain.”

IT’S A ONE-PARTY STATE: Rod Wright and the California Senate’s Culture of Corruption.

JAMES TARANTO: Judd Gregg’s Warning About Obama’s Politicization Of Census Bureau Was Prescient.

Gregg served out his Senate term retiring after the 2010 election, when another Republican, Kelly Ayotte, was elected as his successor. The Democrats eventually got their 60th senator: In April, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter switched parties, and in July, Minnesota’s Al Franken was seated after a prolonged recount. The Democratic supermajority lasted only seven months, until Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown was seated after winning a special election occasioned by Ted Kennedy’s death. That was long enough to push ObamaCare through over united Republican opposition.

Now ObamaCare is providing evidence that Gregg was right to worry about politicization of the census. . . .

This isn’t the first instance of political shenanigans at the Obama Census Bureau. In November 2013 the New York Post’s John Crudele reported that in the run-up to the 2012 election, the bureau put out labor statistics that, “according to a reliable source, were manipulated.” The stats showed a decline in unemployment to 7.8% in September 2012 from 8.1% in August. . . .

As for McArdle, she acknowledges that the earlier census health-insurance reports “probably overstate the true number of the uninsured” and that the new method may be better. But she asks: “Why, dear God, oh, why, would you change it in the one year in the entire history of the republic that it is most important for policy makers, researchers and voters to be able to compare the number of uninsured to those in prior years?”

Hey, good question.

With an obvious answer.

SO WE HAVEN’T RECOVERED YET? “In her first monetary policy speech as Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen said Wednesday that the nation’s economic recovery will be nearly complete within two years, but cautioned that the economy still needs the central bank’s support.” This has to be the slowest “recovery” since the Great Depression.

Related: Points and Figures: It Wasn’t A Financial Crisis, It Was A Systemic Run. “Current policy has guaranteed debt. The US has instituted program after program and the Fed has actively pursued activities that hold interest rates low. All this does is create poor incentives. Banks can game the system and run around any regulation. Regulation has also crushed competition, leaving Goliath banks. Cochrane says it plainly, ‘Too big to fail means too big to lose money, and too big to lose money means too big to compete.’”